Lamb said, ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’
Any debriefing that followed the shooting of an agent would be a lengthy and unpleasant process …
He said, ‘Watching Hobden.’
‘I got that much. Why?’
‘Because he’s got something to do with the kid. The one who’s—’
‘I know which kid you mean. What makes you think that? Because he hangs out with wannabe Nazis?’
River felt his certainties washing away before Lamb’s belligerence. He said, ‘How did you find me?’
A pedestrian crossing brought them to a halt. A hooded troupe of youth dragged itself across the road in front of them. Lamb said, ‘Like I said, lights and whistles. A Service name pops into the system, cops, hospital, whatever, and you’ve got morris dancers and fucking whatnot blowing gaskets. That your idea of undercover? You’re called River, for Christ’s sake. There’s probably about four of you in the whole of Great Britain.’
River said, ‘And the Park let you know about it?’
‘Well, of course not. Do I look like I’m in the loop?’
‘So?’
‘Slough House may be a backwater, but there’s a couple of things we do have.’ The lights changed. Lamb drove on. ‘Ho has the people skills of a natterjack toad, but he knows his way round the ether.’
The people skills of a natterjack toad. It was like there was a whole other world somewhere, in which Jackson Lamb didn’t think that sentence might be used of him.
‘I’m having difficulty imagining Ho doing you a favour.’ Then River added, in fairness, ‘You or anyone else.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t a favour. I had something he wanted.’
‘Which was?’
‘What does Ho always want? Information. The answer to a question that’s driving him buggy.’
‘What’s that?’
‘How come he’s ended up in Slough House?’
River had wondered that himself, on and off. He hadn’t cared much. Still, he’d wondered. ‘And you told him?’
‘No. But I told him the next best thing.’
‘Which was?’
Lamb’s face gave away less than Buster Keaton’s. ‘I told him why I’d ended up there.’
River opened his mouth to ask, then closed it.
Lamb used the hand he wasn’t driving with to find a cigarette. ‘You think Hobden’s the only right-wing fruitcake in the country? Or was he the only one you could think of at closing time?’
‘He’s the only one I know of who’s had two spooks sicced on him in the past forty-eight hours.’
‘So you’re a spook. Congratulations. I thought you’d failed your assessment.’
‘Fuck off, Lamb,’ he said. ‘I was there. I saw her shot. You know what that’s like?’
Lamb turned to study him through half-open eyes, causing River to remember about the hippo being among the world’s most dangerous beasts. It was barrel-shaped and clumsy, but if you wanted to piss one off, do it from a helicopter. Not while sharing a car.
‘You didn’t just see it,’ he said. ‘It was down to you. How clever was that?’
‘You think I let it happen deliberately?’
‘I think you weren’t good enough to stop it. And if you’re not good enough for that, you’re no use to anyone.’ Lamb changed gear like it was a violent assault. ‘If it wasn’t for you, she’d have been tucked up in bed. Hers or somebody else’s. And don’t think I haven’t noticed the looks you’ve been giving her.’ The car growled onwards.
River said, in an unfamiliar voice, ‘She told me she was a plant.’
‘A what?’
‘That she’d been put in Slough House for a purpose. To keep an eye on me.’
‘Was that before or after she got shot in the head?’
‘You bastard—’
‘Don’t even bother, Cartwright. That’s what she told you, is it? That you’re the centre of the universe? Newsflash. Never happened.’
For a dizzy moment, River was aware only of a ringing in his ears; of a throbbing in his palm from yesterday’s burn. All of it had happened, even Sid’s words: I was put there to keep an eye on you, River. You’re not supposed to know about this. That had happened. The words had been said.
But what they meant was anyone’s guess.
The Chinese restaurant, which even when open looked derelict, was definitively shut. Lamb parked opposite, and as they crossed the road River caught a glimmer of light from one of the higher windows.
Probably a reflection from the Barbican towers.
‘Why are we here?’
‘Somewhere you’d rather be?’
River shrugged.
Lamb said, ‘We both know you know nothing, Cartwright. But that doesn’t mean Regent’s Park won’t be looking for you.’ He led the way round the back, to the familiar scarred door. ‘I won’t say this is the absolute last place they’ll look, but it won’t be top of their list.’
Entering, they were met with the sound of newly established silence.
River wasn’t sure how they knew this, but both did. The air trembled like a fork in the darkness. Somebody—some bodies—had recently stopped moving; some bodies were waiting up the stairs.
‘Stay,’ was Lamb’s harsh whisper.
And then he was heading up, light as a whisper. How did he do that? It was like watching a tree change shape.
River followed.
Two flights later he caught up, and here was what they’d missed: Jed Moody, a balaclava peeled from his face, dead as a bucket on the landing.
Sitting three and five steps up respectively, Min Harper and Louisa Guy.
Lamb said, ‘If you had issues with him, I could have spoken to HR. Arranged an intervention.’ He tapped Moody’s shoulder with his foot. ‘Breaking his neck without going through your line manager, that shit stays on your record.’
‘We didn’t know it was him.’
‘Not sure that counts as a defence,’ Lamb said.
‘He had a gun.’
‘Better,’ Lamb said. He regarded the pair of them. ‘He used it earlier, if it helps. Shot Sid Baker with it.’
‘Sid?’
‘Christ, is she—’
River found his voice. ‘She’s alive.’
‘Or was twenty minutes ago,’ Lamb corrected. Bending his knees, he went through Moody’s pockets. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Ten minutes ago.’
‘Maybe fifteen.’
‘And you were planning on what, waiting for it all to go away? What were you doing here anyway?’
‘We’d been over the road.’
‘In the pub.’
‘Can’t afford a room?’ Lamb produced a mobile phone from Moody’s pocket. ‘Where’s the gun?’
Harper gestured behind him.
‘He look like using it?’
Harper and Guy exchanged glances.
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ Lamb said. ‘This isn’t a court of law. Did he look like using it?’
‘He was carrying it.’
‘He didn’t point it exactly.’
‘You might want to reconsider your position on that,’ Lamb said, fishing a faded brown envelope from inside Moody’s jacket. ‘Son of a bitch!’
‘He was in your office.’
‘We figured he was on a raid.’
Watching the pair of them in contrapuntal gear, River recognized something new going on; a shared conspiracy that hadn’t been apparent before. Love or death, he figured. Love in its most banal guise—a quick fumble in the stairwell, or a drunken snog—and death in its usual weeds. One of the two had fused this pair together. And he flashed again on that moment on the pavement outside Hobden’s, when whatever had been starting to grow between himself and Sid Baker ended.
Her blood was on his shirt still. Possibly in his hair.
‘He had a balaclava on.’