Not long after midnight, the thought occurred to River: maybe he did.
That was how it had been for the past eight months. Every so often, he’d take the bigger picture and give it a shake, like it was a loose jigsaw. Sometimes the pieces came together differently; sometimes they didn’t fit at all. Why did Jackson Lamb want this journo’s rubbish, enough to give River his first out-of-the-office job since he’d been assigned to Slough House? Maybe the point wasn’t getting the rubbish. Maybe the point was River standing in the rain for hours on end, while the hack laughed with Lamb about it over the phone.
This rain had been forecast. Hell, it had been raining when Lamb had given him the op.
Residents’ parking, he’d said.
Don’t get caught.
Ten more minutes, and River decided enough was enough. There was going to be no bag of rubbish, or if there was, it wasn’t going to mean anything, other than that he’d been sent on an idiot’s errand … He’d walked back the way he’d come, collecting a random rubbish sack on the way; had flung it into the boot of the car he’d parked by the nearest meter. Had driven home. Had gone to bed.
Where he’d lain for two hours, watching the jigsaw reassemble itself. Jackson Lamb’s Don’t get caught might have meant just that: that River had been given an important task, and mustn’t get caught. Not crucially important—if so, Lamb would have sent Sid, or possibly Moody—but important enough that it had to be done.
Or else it was a test. A test to discover whether River was capable of going out in the rain and bringing back a bag of rubbish.
He went out again not long after, abandoning the random sack of rubbish in the first litter bin he passed. Cruising slowly past the journo’s, he could hardly believe it was there, slumped against the wall below the window: a knotted black bag …
The same bag’s contents were now strewn across the floor in front of him.
Lamb said, ‘I’ll leave you to clear that, right?’
River said, ‘What am I looking for precisely?’
But Lamb was already gone; audible on the stairs, this time—every creak and complaint echoing—and River was alone in Sid’s half of the office; still surrounded by unsweet-smelling crap, and still weighed down by the faint but unmistakable sensation of being Jackson Lamb’s punchbag.
The tables were always packed too close in Max’s, in optimistic preparation for a rush of custom that wasn’t going to happen. Max’s wasn’t popular because it wasn’t very good; they re-used the coffee beans, and the croissants were stale. Repeat trade was the exception, not the rule. But there was one regular, and the moment he stepped through the door each morning, newspapers under his arm, the body on the counter would start pouring his cup. It didn’t matter how often the staff turned over: his details were passed down along with instructions about the cappuccino machine. Beige raincoat. Thinning, brownish hair. Permanently irritated. And, of course, those newspapers.
This morning, the windows were a fogged-over drizzle. His raincoat dripped on to the chessboard lino. If his newspapers hadn’t been in a plastic bag, they’d have been a papier-mâché sculpture waiting to happen.
‘Good morning.’
‘It’s a lousy morning.’
‘But it’s always good to see you, sir.’
This was the morning’s Max, a name they all shared as far as Robert Hobden was concerned. If they wanted him to tell them apart, they shouldn’t all work the same counter.
He settled in his usual corner. A redhead, one of only three other customers, was at the next table, facing the window: a black raincoat hung from the back of her chair. She wore a collarless white shirt and black leggings cut off at the ankle. He noticed this because her feet were hooked round her chair legs, the way a child might sit. A baby-sized laptop sat in front of her. She didn’t look up.
Max delivered his latte. Grunting acknowledgement, Hobden placed keys, mobile and wallet on the table in front of him, like always. He hated sitting with lumps in his pockets. His pen and notebook joined them. The pen was a thin-nibbed black felt-tip; the keyring a memory stick. And the newspapers were the quality dailies, plus the Mail. Piled up, they made a four-inch stack, of which he would read about an inch and a half; significantly less on Mondays, when there was more sports coverage. Today was Tuesday, shortly after seven. It was raining again. Had rained all night.
… Telegraph, Times, Mail, Independent, Guardian.
At one time or another, he’d written for all of these. That wasn’t so much a thought that occurred to him as an awareness that nudged him most mornings, round about now: cub reporter—ridiculous term—in Peterborough, then the inevitable shift to London, and the varied tempos of the major beats, crime and politics, before he ascended, aged forty-eight, to his due: the weekly column. Two, in fact. Sundays and Wednesdays. Regular appearances on Question Time. From firebrand to the acceptable face of dissent; an admittedly long trajectory in his case, but that made arrival all the sweeter. If he could have freeze-framed life back then, he’d have had little to complain about.
These days, he no longer wrote for newspapers. And when cab drivers recognized him, it was for the wrong reasons.
Beige raincoat discarded for the moment; the thinning, brownish hair a permanent accessory—as was the irritated look—Robert Hobden uncapped his pen, took a sip of his latte, and settled to work.
There’d been lights in the windows. Ho knew before opening the door that Slough House was occupied. But he’d have been able to tell anyway—damp footprints in the stairwell; the taste of rain in the air. Once in a harvest moon, Jackson Lamb would arrive before Ho; random predawn appearances that were purely territorial. You can haunt this place all you like, Lamb was telling him. But when they pull down the walls and count the bones, it’ll be mine they find on top. There were many good reasons for not liking Jackson Lamb, and that was one of Ho’s favourites.
But this wasn’t Lamb, or not Lamb alone. There was someone else up there.
Could be Jed Moody, but only if you were dreaming. Nine thirty was a good start for Moody, and it was generally eleven before he was ready for anything more complicated than a hot drink. Roderick Ho didn’t like Jed Moody, but that wasn’t a problem: Moody didn’t expect to be liked. Even before he’d been assigned to Slough House, he’d probably had fewer friends than fists. So Ho and Moody got on okay, sharing an office: neither liking the other, and neither caring the other knew. But there was no way Moody was here before him. It was barely seven.
Catherine Standish was more likely. Ho couldn’t remember Catherine Standish ever arriving first, which meant it had never happened, but she was usually next in. He’d hear the door’s agonized opening, and then her soft creak on the stairs, and then nothing. She was two floors above—in the small room next to Lamb’s—and out of sight, she was easy to forget. Actually, standing in front of you, she was easy to forget. The chances of sensing her presence weren’t good. So it wasn’t her.
That suited Ho. Ho didn’t like Standish.
He made his way up to the first floor. In his office he hung his raincoat on a hook, turned his computer on, then went into the kitchen. An odd smell was drifting down the stairs. Something rotten had replaced the taste of rain.