She waved him ahead, like a driver might a friendly bus.
‘I thought there’d been no actual contact with these snatchers. But you’ve identified them already? That’s smart work. Very smart.’
One or two murmurs of assent met this.
Diana Taverner said, ‘There’s been no contact, no. That’s to say, they’ve not made any demands or identified themselves in relation to this particular, ah, episode.’
‘But you’ve been keeping tabs on them.’
‘That’s well within our remit, I think you’d agree.’
‘Absolutely. Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.’
Down the table, Roger Barrowby made a clucking noise with his tongue.
Barrowby was usually called the Barrowboy, a nickname he detested and pretended to revel in. He had thinning sandy hair, a prominent chin, and a habit of pressing the tip of a finger to its central dimple, as if trying to encourage it back into his jaw. But he appeared to have done something about his dandruff.
‘Roger!’ Leonard Bradley’s tone couldn’t have sounded heartier at a barbecue. ‘You have an interjection? An objection?’ You could have cut the bonhomie with a knife. Taverner wondered why they hated each other.
‘An observation, Len. Merely an observation.’
‘Care to share?’
Barrowby said, ‘Bloody lucky, that’s all. We have a watching brief on a bunch of original thinkers, just as they’re attempting a coup? I mean, how often does that happen?’
Despite herself, Taverner smiled at ‘original thinkers’.
Bradley said, ‘We could argue about gift horses and dental plans. But perhaps Diana has a view?’
‘Watching brief is pitching it high,’ Diana said. ‘They’re one of seventeen groups on the radar right now, which is also a bit high, but there’ve been murmurs something like this was on the horizon. And—’
‘Excuse me?’
Barrowby again.
‘Murmurs?’
She’d have answered, but knew there was no way this was getting past the assembled ex-handlers, who provided a chorus:
‘Not our remit, Roger.’
‘Not even close.’
‘Intelligence gathering’s outside the sphere of this committee.’
‘Of course,’ Barrowby agreed. ‘But if we’re paying for supper, we get to glance at the menu, surely?’
‘We’ll check the books when the financial year closes,’ somebody else said. ‘But how Operations shells out the booty is their game.’
Bradley was nodding. ‘We get to taste the sausages, Roger,’ he said, ‘if you’ll allow me to pursue your metaphor. But we don’t get to watch them being made.’
Barrowby raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘Diana. Forgive me. You heard murmurs. You allocated resources. Fair enough. It looks like you, or perhaps Ms Tearney, made a wise, operational, decision.’
Leaving unaddressed the degree to which Ingrid Tearney had been involved, Diana went on: ‘Like I say, not a watching brief. That is, we weren’t actually keeping them under surveillance, otherwise this caper wouldn’t have got off the ground. And that, I’d agree, would have been bloody lucky. As it is, I’m confident we can roll this up in short order.’
‘Before they chop young Hassan’s head off,’ Leonard Bradley said.
‘Precisely.’
‘Well, there’s no need to spell out the public relations aspect, is there? The half of the country that’s not watching this yet will be glued to it by suppertime.’ He glanced at the papers in front of him. ‘Voice of Albion, eh? I’d be more impressed if there was any chance these halfwits had actually read Blake.’
Silence greeted this.
He said, ‘Our friends in blue?’
‘We haven’t released the details, the Voice of Albion connection,’ Taverner said. ‘We will if necessary, but I’m confident that by this time tomorrow, we’ll be able to present them with the whole package.’
‘The boy was snatched in Leeds city centre?’ someone piped up.
‘Not quite the centre. Headingley.’
‘Don’t they have CCTV? I was rather under the impression one couldn’t cross the road without being a reality TV star.’
‘It appears that the traffic monitoring system was off air for six hours last night, from a little before midnight until a short while ago. Routine maintenance, we’re told.’
‘Bit of a coincidence.’
‘We’re looking into it. Or the police are. But I don’t think Albion have that sort of reach. You’ll find a printout of their homepage in the folder, if you want an idea of the clout they wield.’
There was a general rustling of pages.
Bradley glanced up. ‘“Natoinal purity”,’ he noted with distaste. It wasn’t clear whether it was the concept or the spelling which pained him.
‘We’re not dealing with the sharpest pencils in the box,’ Taverner agreed.
‘Can’t you trace them through the site?’ Barrowby asked.
She said, ‘Now, there they have shown nous. The proxy’s in Sweden, where they treat client privilege very seriously. Getting their details will take a while. More than the deadline allows. But let me repeat, I have every confidence that this crew will be under wraps before the deadline becomes an issue.’
Then Bradley did that thing with his hand again, and said, ‘Let me say on all our behalf—behalves?—that we’re grateful to Diana for a remarkably full picture drawn in a remarkably short time. And that we’ll be equally grateful for hourly updates, leading to a swift and happy conclusion.’
There was a knock on the door, and Tom entered, a folded sheet of paper in his hand. Without a word, he handed it to Diana Taverner, and left.
Taverner unfolded it, and read it in silence. Her expression betrayed not the slightest clue as to whether the information it contained was new to her, confirmation of something already suspected, or an out-of date report on weather happening elsewhere. But when she looked up, the atmosphere shifted.
‘This is fresh. There’ll be copies in a moment.’
Bradley said, ‘Perhaps you might …’
She might. She did.
‘People, it would appear this isn’t the random snatch we’d thought.’
New information demanded at least as much action as discussion. It was Diana Taverner’s role to leave to see about the action, and everybody else’s to get the discussion under way. Or almost everybody’s. She was halfway to the lift when the Barrowboy caught her—almost literally: she turned to find him reaching for her arm. The look she bestowed upon him would have stuck six inches out the back of a more sensitive man.
‘Not a good time, Roger.’
‘When is it ever? Diana, this new information.’
‘You know as much as I do.’
‘I doubt that. But either way, it doesn’t change anything, does it?’
‘You think? Not even a little?’
‘What I meant was, you seemed confident enough before this apparent bombshell went off. Who he is doesn’t make your job harder.’
‘“Apparent”?’
Each vowel was its own icicle.
‘Poor choice of word. All I meant was, you’ve an asset in place, yes? You don’t get Mozart-grade info from random phone-grabs or lists of dodgy loan applications.’
‘It’s nice to hear from an expert, Roger. Remind me, where was your finest hour? Beirut? Baghdad? Or the bar at the Frontline Club?’
But it washed off him. ‘I only meant, that’s the stuff they do over at Slough House.’ He barked a self-appreciative laugh. ‘Hoping to bore the deadweights into jumping ship. This is higher grade. So. You have an asset.’