Service officers were red-flagged, so as soon as the name was entered on the hospital records, it was pinging its way to Regent’s Park. Hobbs had picked it up: since then he’d put out an officer-down alert; broken a few limits getting to the hospital; established the agent’s injuries; and taken instruction from Duffy: Secure whoever’s still standing and wait there. So Hobbs had, in the only available room: a store cupboard down here among the ghosts.
That had been half an hour ago, and not a peep since, and even as that thought occurred to Hobbs he squinted at his phone once more, and an awkward truth hit him.
He had no signal.
Damn.
A quick trip upstairs. It would take less than a minute. And the sooner he was back in touch with the Park, the less chance anyone would know he’d lost contact to start with.
Then he heard the rubbery squeaks that meant someone was coming down the stairs.
Righting the chair, Hobbs planted his feet on the floor.
This time, there was no doubting it. There’d been a noise, loud enough to distract Louisa and Min from what they were doing. Three minutes later it wouldn’t have done, but those were the edges on which outcomes balanced.
‘Hear that?’
‘I heard it.’
‘Came from upstairs.’
‘Lamb’s office?’
‘Or Christine’s.’
They waited, but heard nothing further.
‘You think it’s Lamb?’
‘If it was, there’d be a light on.’
They eased apart, zipping up, and moved for the door without noise. Anyone watching might think they’d rehearsed movements like these: stealthy progress through dark territory, with an unknown third party lurking near.
‘Weapon?’
‘Desk.’
It yielded a glass paperweight, which fitted neatly into a fist, and a stapler which would serve as a knuckleduster.
‘You sure we want to do this?’
‘I’d rather be doing what we just nearly did.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘But now we’ve got to do this instead.’
Or first, perhaps. Whatever.
And anyone watching wouldn’t have guessed either had recently succumbed to drink or lust, because both looked like sober joes as they slipped on to the landing again; Min taking the lead and Louisa watching his hands as she followed, alert for any signals he might drop into the silence that drifted behind him.
The approaching man was overweight and trod heavily, and perhaps had wandered downstairs by mistake; was actually here to get his heart sorted, or have a gastric band fitted. Hobbs ran seven miles daily, rain or shine, and thought being out-of-shape was slow suicide. It meant you’d always come off second best in a physical encounter, which wasn’t something that had happened to Hobbs yet.
He prepared himself for a brush with the public at whose service he technically served.
But the man turned out not to be public. He didn’t even ask who Hobbs was. It was as if he already knew, and already didn’t care.
‘Here’s a tip,’ he said. ‘Mobiles? RaspBerries? Gizmos like that? Not at their best underground.’
Hobbs retreated into bland civil-servantese: ‘Can I help you?’
‘Well.’ The fat man pointed to the locked door. ‘You could open that.’
‘You must be lost, sir,’ Hobbs said. ‘They’ll help you up at reception. With whatever you’re after.’
The man tilted his head to one side. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Jesus wept. Hobbs licked his teeth and prepared to unfold himself from his chair. ‘Don’t have that pleasure, sir.’
The man bent low and spoke directly into Dan’s ear.
‘Good.’
His hands moved.
The stairs seemed steeper after lights out, or maybe they were steeper after an evening in the pub, and a knee-trembler in a dark office. But that thought was broadcast from a different set of experiences. The Louisa who’d come from the pub, the Min who’d just been fumbled with, those skins had been sloughed when they’d heard the intruder. Now they were real people again; the people they’d been before calamity had struck, and exiled them to this damp building on the edge of nowhere important.
No more noises yet. Maybe it had been an unattended accident: a picture dropping off a wall. When the tube rattled past, not many yards away, unanchored objects felt gravity’s pull. Min and Louisa might be creeping upstairs, armed with stapler and paperweight, to launch an attack on a moment’s slippage.
On the other hand, whoever was up there might have frozen on realizing they weren’t alone.
Silent messages passed between the pair:
You okay?
Of course …
We trained for this.
So let’s go …
Up they went.
Whatever had just happened ended with the sound of something being lowered to the floor. This had been preceded by voices, one of which River recognized, so he wasn’t surprised when the door opened and a familiar shape appeared. ‘Jesus on a skateboard.’ Jackson Lamb was loud as a train. He flicked the light switch. ‘Get on your feet, man.’
Because River was lying on the floor. Cardboard boxes were piled against the walls, their labels indicating that they held rubber gloves; fitted sheets; plastic cups; disposable cutlery; other stuff: he’d lost interest and turned the light out. It was clear, though, that Hobbs had locked him in a store cupboard.
‘How long have you been in here?’
River shook his head. Ten minutes? Twenty? Three? Time had happened differently once the key had turned in the lock.
He’d put up no resistance. Getting here had left him drained; had been a nightmare ride through zombiestrewn streets, following a racing ambulance. There was blood all over him. Head wounds bleed. Head wounds bleed bad. This was a factoid he’d clung to. Head wounds bleed bad. That Sid Baker was bleeding bad from the head didn’t necessarily mean anything critical had happened. Could be a graze. So why had she looked so dead?
He’d watched her strapped to a gurney and rushed along a corridor by medical staff, and hadn’t even attempted to come up with a fake identity. A bullet wound meant police, of course, but say what you like about the Service Dogs, their response time was sharp. Hobbs had got here first, and had secured River, pending debriefing.
River suspected that any debriefing that followed the shooting of an agent would be a lengthy and unpleasant process.
‘Well, how long were you planning on staying?’ Lamb asked. ‘Get a move on.’
Maybe this would be lengthy and unpleasant too.
River got to his feet and followed his boss into the light.
At the top of the stairs, nobody lurked. The paperweight felt comfortable in Min’s hand by now; a round smooth heavy presence, not entirely dissimilar to—but he thrust that thought away; stepped into Jackson Lamb’s office. The blinds were down. Pinpricks of light poked in from London’s night sky; the neon glow that settled on the city like a bubble.
Shapes took on slow substance. Desk, coatstand, filing cabinet, bookshelf. No human form. No waiting stranger.
Behind him, Louisa checked out the cubicle-sized kitchen. Unless whoever had made the noise could fit in a fridge, it was danger-free.
‘Catherine’s room.’
Similar story: desk, shelves, cabinets. But there was a skylight, and a ghostly grey light hovered over Catherine’s absence. She’d left her keyboard balanced on top of her monitor, and aligned her folders with the edge of the desk. There were shadows here too, but most of them seemed empty.
‘I’m going to turn the light on.’
‘Okay.’
It hurt both their eyes for a second, as their drunkenness re-bloomed.