She jabbed the lift button with an index finger. ‘Yes, Roger. We have an asset. That’s how intelligence gathering works.’
‘But he didn’t know this latest twist?’
‘If he knew everything he wouldn’t just be an asset, Roger. He’d be Wikipedia.’
‘So how close to the action is he?’
‘Pretty close.’
‘Handy.’
‘Some might say so. Others call it foresight.’
‘Well, there’s foresight and foresight, isn’t there? Not much credit in reading the runes if you laid them out in the first place.’
‘That’s right up there with apparent, Roger. Are you trying to tell me something?’
The lift arrived. Before its doors were fully open she was inside; pressing the button for floor level. Pressing it three times, in fact. Someday they’d invent a button which made things happen faster the more you pressed it.
‘Nothing really, Diana. Just that it might be an idea to be careful.’
The doors didn’t quite cut off his coda:
‘Swimming with sharks, that kind of thing.’
Swimming with sharks, she thought now, crushing her cigarette underheel. She checked her watch. It was fifteen seconds short of one o’clock.
He approached from the east, and even if she hadn’t pulled up his records earlier, before making the call, she’d have recognized him. At Regent’s Park they called them slow horses, and half the fun had been letting the slow horses know it. So it became self-fulfilling: when Slough House met Regent’s Park, it was always clear who was wearing the boots. And here he came, approaching her with a slow horse’s determination, as if reaching the finishing line meant the battle was won. When, as anyone with breeding knows, coming first is the only result that matters.
At the bench, he treated her to a look half aggressive, half defensive, like a wronged lover, and then curled his lip at the bench itself.
She said, ‘It’s not real and it’s quite dry.’
He seemed dubious.
‘For God’s sake. This is a useful bench. You think we’d let a gull crap on it?’
Jed Moody sat.
Out on the water the shag was halfway through another circuit, while near Bankside Pier a street-preacher had staked out an imaginary pulpit, and was haranguing passers-by. Everything normal, in other words.
Taverner said, ‘I’m told you reached out last night.’
‘Nick’s an old friend,’ Moody said.
‘Shut up. You told him Jackson Lamb was running an op, that he’d sent one of your junior colleagues on a data-snatch. That this wasn’t anything Slough House does, and that if it was, it should be you doing it.’
‘It’s true. I spent six years—’
‘Shut up. What I want to know is, how did you find out about it?’
‘About what, ma’am?’
She’d been focused on the buildings on the far bank, but now turned to face him. ‘Don’t for a moment imagine we’re having a conversation. When I ask for information, you give it. You don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you don’t dream about telling anything but the truth. Or you’ll find there are colder, deeper things than this river, and I’ll take pleasure in burying you in one of them. Clear?’
‘So far.’
‘Good. Now, I gave Lamb a specific instruction about a specific job. I don’t remember telling him to let you know about it. So, how did you find out?’
He said, ‘There’s a bug.’
‘There’s. A. Bug.’
It wasn’t exactly a question. So Moody didn’t exactly answer. He just swallowed, hard.
‘Are you seriously telling me you planted a bug in Jackson Lamb’s office?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sweet Jesus.’ She threw back her head and laughed. Then stopped. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ she said again.
‘It wasn’t …’
‘Wasn’t what? Wasn’t something that could get you, what, thirty years? Given the climate?’
‘Have you any idea what it’s like?’
But she was shaking her head: not interested in his prepared outburst. He might be frustrated, thwarted, feel he’d been made to carry the can for a Service balls-up. But the fact was, he’d never have made it out of his current pay grade. If you needed a walking definition of foot soldier, a glance at Jed Moody’s file would do it.
‘I don’t care. All I want to know is, how come the sweeps didn’t pick it up? Oh, no. Don’t tell me.’
So he didn’t.
‘You do the sweeping.’
He nodded.
‘Set a thief to catch a … Christ. What else do you lot get up to over there? No, don’t even start. I don’t want to know.’
True to her earlier forebodings, Diana Taverner fished her cigarettes out again. She offered the pack to Moody. He’d already produced a lighter, and with one big hand shielding the flame, lit them both. For a brief moment, membership of the twenty-first century pariahs’ club united them.
He said, ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping. Well, I was. But not for anybody else. I used to be one of the Dogs. Lamb’s got me running background checks when they get a new waiter next door. Not because he thinks anyone’s about to post an asset there. He’s just taking the piss, and doesn’t care if I know it.’
‘So why not quit?’
‘Because it’s what I do.’
‘But you’re not happy.’
‘Nobody’s happy at Slough House.’
Taverner concentrated on her cigarette, or pretended to, but had good peripheral vision, and was studying Jed Moody. He’d probably been handy once, but the drink and the smoking had put paid to that, and it was a safe bet that exile had sealed the downward spiral. These days, he probably guilt-splurged at the gym; seven-hour workouts making up for lost weekends. He’d keep kidding himself this was working. Whenever the truth looked like breaking in, he’d have another drink, and light another smoke.
‘Not even Lamb?’ she asked.
Rather to her surprise, he gave her a straight answer: ‘He’s a burn-out. A fat, lazy bastard.’
‘You ever wonder why he’s at Slough House?’
‘What good would he be anywhere else?’
That wasn’t quite so straight. The one self-evident fact about Lamb being allowed to run his own little kingdom—even from a crackpot palace like Slough House—was that he must know where bodies were buried. Moody didn’t want to raise that with Diana Taverner. Which meant, she surmised, that Moody was treading round her with caution. Which was exactly how she preferred it.
Moody’s cigarette had burned to the filter. He let it fall from his fingers, and it rolled into the crack between two paving stones.
When he looked up, she fixed him with a stare that left no doubt who was in charge. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘You’re going to do one or two favours for me. Off the books.’
‘Illegal.’
‘Yes. Which means that if for any reason things go even slightly wrong, and you end up in a small room being questioned by angry men, there’s no possibility I’ll pretend to have heard of you. Are we clear on that?’
Moody said, ‘Yes.’
‘And are we happy about it?’
Moody said, ‘Yes’ again, and she could tell this was the truth. Like other slow horses before him, he wanted to be back in the game.
From her bag, she produced a mobile phone, and handed it to him. ‘Incoming only,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘And dump the bug. Slough House may be a dead end, but it’s a branch of the Service. It gets out it’s been compromised, and your former mates from Internal Investigations’ll take you apart, bone by bone.’
She stood, but instead of moving straight off, she hovered a moment.
‘Oh, and Moody? Word of warning. Lamb’s a burn-out for a reason.’