‘Yes?’
‘Only I couldn’t help noticing the headline? On your paper? One of your papers …’
She reached across to tap his copy of the Guardian, offering a better view of those freckles, that locket. It wasn’t a headline she meant, though. It was a teaser above the masthead: an interview with Russell T. Davies in the supplement.
‘My dissertation is on media heroes?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Be my guest.’
He slid G2 from its mother-paper, and handed it to her.
She smiled prettily and thanked him, and he noticed her pretty blue-green eyes, and a slight swelling on her pretty lower lip.
But sitting back, she must have misjudged her pretty limbs, because next moment there was cappuccino everywhere, and her language had become unladylike—
‘Oh shit I’m so sorry—’
‘Max!’
‘I must have—’
‘Can we have a cloth over here?’
For Catherine Standish, Slough House was Pincher Martin’s rock: damp, unlovely, achingly familiar, and something to cling to when the waves began to crash. But opening the door was a struggle. This should have been an easy fix, but Slough House being what it was, you couldn’t have a carpenter drop round: you had to fill out a property maintenance form; make a revenue disbursement request; arrange a clearance pass for an approved handyman—outsourcing was ‘fiscally appropriate’, standing instructions explained, but the sums spent on background vetting put the lie to that. And once you’d filled out the forms, you had to dispatch them to Regent’s Park, where they’d be read, initialled, rubber-stamped and ignored. So every morning she had to go through this, pushing against the door, umbrella in one hand, key in the other, shoulder hunched to keep her bag from slipping to the ground. All the while hoping she’d maintain balance when the door deigned to open. Pincher Martin had it easy. No doors on his Atlantic rock. Though it rained there too.
The door gave at last with its usual groan. She paused to shake excess water from her umbrella. Glanced up at the sky. Still grey, still heavy. One last shake, then she tucked the umbrella under her arm. There was a rack in the hall, but that was a good way of never seeing an umbrella again. On the first landing, through a half-open door, she glimpsed Ho at his desk. He didn’t look up, though she knew he’d seen her. She in her turn pretended she hadn’t seen him, or that’s what it must have looked like. Actually, she was pretending he was a piece of furniture, which required less effort.
Next landing up, both office doors were closed, but there was a light under River and Sid’s. A rank smell tainted the air: old fish and rotting vegetation.
In her own office, on the top floor, she hung her raincoat on a hanger, opened her umbrella so it would dry properly, and asked Jackson Lamb’s shut door if it wanted tea. There was no answer. She rinsed the kettle, filled it with fresh water, and left it to boil. Back in her office she booted up, then fixed her lipstick and brushed her hair.
The Catherine in her compact was always ten years older than the one she was expecting. But that was her fault and nobody else’s.
Her hair was still blonde, but only when you got close, and nobody got close. From a distance it was grey, though still full, still wavy; her eyes were the same colour, giving the impression that she was fading to monochrome. She moved quietly, and dressed like an illustration in a pre-war children’s novel; usually a hat; never jeans or trousers—nor even skirts, but always dresses, their sleeves lacy at the cuff. When she held the compact closer to her face, she could trace damage under the skin; see the lines through which her youth had leaked. A process accelerated by unwise choices, though it was striking how often, in retrospect, choices seemed not to have been choices at all, but simply a matter of taking one step after the other. She’d be fifty next year. That was quite a lot of steps, one after the other.
The kettle boiled. She poured a cup of tea. Back at her desk—in a space she shared with no one, thank God; not since Kay White had been banished downstairs on Lamb’s orders—she picked up where she’d left off yesterday, a report on real estate purchases for the past three years in the Leeds/Bradford area, cross-referenced against immigration records for the same period. Names appearing under both headings were checked against Regent’s Park’s watch-list. Catherine had yet to find a name to set alarms ringing, but ran searches on each anyway, then listed the results by country of origin, Pakistan at the top. Depending on how you viewed the results, they were either evidence of random population movement and property investment, or a graph from which a pattern would eventually arise, readable only by those higher up the intelligence-gathering chain than Catherine. Last month, she’d produced a similar report for Greater Manchester. Next would be Birmingham, or Nottingham. Her reports would be couriered over to Regent’s Park, where she hoped the Queens of the Database would pay it more attention than they paid her maintenance requests.
After half an hour she paused, and brushed her hair again.
Five minutes later River Cartwright came upstairs, and entered Lamb’s room without knocking.
The girl was on her feet, using the newspaper as a sort of funnel to direct cappuccino away from her laptop, and for a second Hobden felt a twinge of proprietorial annoyance—that was his paper she was rendering unreadable—but it didn’t last, and anyway, they needed a cloth.
‘Max!’
Hobden hated scenes. Why were people so clumsy?
He stood and headed for the counter, only to be met by Max, cloth in hand, saving his smile for the redhead, who was still ineffectually applying the Guardian. ‘It’s no problem, no problem,’ he told her.
Well, it was a bit of a problem actually, Robert Hobden thought. It was a bit of a problem that there was all this fuss going on, and coffee everywhere, when all he wanted was to be left in peace to trawl through the morning’s press.
‘I’m so sorry about this,’ the girl said.
‘It’s quite all right,’ he lied.
Max said, ‘There. All done.’
‘Thank you,’ the girl said.
‘I’ll bring you a refill.’
‘No, I can pay—’
But this too was no problem. The redhead settled back at the table, gesturing apologetically at the coffee-sodden newspaper. ‘Shall I fetch you another—’
‘No.’
‘But I—’
‘No. It’s of no importance.’
Hobden knew he didn’t handle such moments with grace or ease. Maybe he should take lessons from Max, who was back again, bearing fresh cups for both of them.
He grunted a thanks. The redhead trilled sweetness, but that was an act. She was deadly embarrassed; would rather have packed up her laptop and hit the road.
He finished his first cup; put it to one side. Took a sip from the second.
Bent to The Times.
River said, ‘You thumped?’
Looking at Lamb, sprawled at his desk, it was hard to imagine him getting work done; hard to imagine him standing up even, or opening a window.
‘Nice Marigolds,’ Lamb replied.
The ceiling sloped with the camber of the roof. A dormer window was cut into this, over which a blind was permanently drawn. And Lamb didn’t like overhead lighting, so it was dim; a lamp on a pile of telephone directories was the main light-source. It looked less like an office than a lair. A heavy clock ticked smugly on a corner of the desk. A corkboard on the wall was smothered with what appeared to be money-off coupons; some so yellow and curling, they couldn’t possibly be valid.