“Yes. But it’s my round.”
At the bar, she briefly locked looks with a man down the far end. Six months ago, that would have been enough to trigger an evening’s descent into carnal oblivion; six months from now, who knew, it might be enough to kickstart conversation. For the moment, there were other priorities. She looked away, paid for her drinks, and carried them back to the table thinking about the O.B., a term she’d heard River use—Old Bastard: a term of affection in this case. There were all sorts of legends in the Service—she worked for one of them, for God’s sake—but David Cartwright’s was the kind that withstood scrutiny. Never actually First Desk, but the power behind several incumbents of that throne. Of all the secrets he’d been privy to, a good number could still be radioactive. If he began to leak, there’d be concerned faces at Regent’s Park and elsewhere.
Seated again, she said, “Would they—I mean, the Park. Do they get involved, situations like this?”
“No. I doubt it, anyway. Well, I wouldn’t have put much past Ingrid Tearney, and Diana Taverner probably has men killed just to keep in practice, but Tearney’s out the door, and from what I hear, Lady Di’s using both hands to keep a grip on her desk. She’s probably not authorising clandestine wet work on the old brigade, just to make sure they don’t talk out of turn.”
Louisa said, “Yeah, I wasn’t actually suggesting they’d have him murdered, though I can see you’ve put some thought into that. I was more wondering about a home or something. A home for distressed former spooks. Didn’t there used to be something like that?”
“Sorry. Must be getting paranoid.”
“Goes with the territory.”
He said, “There was a place, but it was closed down a few years ago. Austerity measure.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah. Anyway, it’s not a fate he’d take to lightly. You’d need a crash squad to prise him from his house if he thought you were trying that on.”
“So he’s aware of what’s happening?”
“No. I don’t know. I just meant generally . . . It’s not like he’s forgotten who he is. It’s more like he’s forgotten that that’s not who he is any more. Some days, I think he’s still fighting the Cold War.”
“A lot of old people live in the past.”
“But not many of them have his past to live in. He keeps a gun in the house, Louisa. He’s supposed to keep it in a gun safe—I mean, technically, he’s not supposed to have it at all, but given that he does, he’s supposed to keep it in a safe. But last week I found it on the kitchen table. He said something about keeping the stoats away.”
“Stoats?”
“What they used to call watchers. When you were under surveillance.” River paused to take a drink, then said, “God, I don’t know. After the last few days, the bomb at Westacres, maybe the fate of one old man isn’t something to get worked up about.”
“He’s your grandfather. Of course you’re upset.”
“Yeah.” He looked at his watch. “And I ought to make a move.”
“You’re going to see him now?”
“Yep. Thanks, Louisa. For, you know. Listening.”
“Well. We should stick together.” And then, in case he thought she meant the pair of them, added, “Slough House, I mean. Nobody else is looking out for us.” She paused. “I miss Catherine.”
“So do I.”
“Do you think Lamb does?”
“. . . Seriously?”
“He’s not been much in evidence since she quit.”
River said, “He misses having an alcoholic around. He got a lot of mileage out of that.” He finished his beer and stood. “I have to go. I’ll just make the next train.”
“I hope he’s okay.”
“Thanks. But I don’t think this is something he’s likely to get better from.”
“Maybe not. But, you know. He’s not necessarily going to start reciting his memoirs on the village green.”
“That’s not what really worries me.”
“What does?”
River said, “That someone’ll come to the door and he’ll shoot them.”
From the train window River looked out on London’s dark edges and thought about his mother.
He didn’t do this often. They spoke on the phone occasionally, usually while she was abroad—this gave her licence to broadcast how much she missed him, how he should “pop on a plane” to Antibes, Cap Ferrat, Santa Monica, Gstaad, where they could hunker down for some mother/son time. All safe in the knowledge it wasn’t going to happen. When she was in-country, on the other hand, River found out about it afterwards, or not at all. I was so busy, darling, not a minute to myself. You know I was desperate to see you. But this had long ceased to distress him. When they were together, it felt more like an audience, as if he were a cub reporter summoned to the presence of a fading movie star. The pictures had got small. He was simply there to bear witness to that fact.
And the Isobel Dunstable commanding such attention was a long cry from the young woman who’d dumped him on his grandparents’ doorstep when he was seven, and taken off for two years with a man whose name he couldn’t remember. He wasn’t confident she could, either. But her mercurial twenties were way behind her, and in her respectable widowhood, while she might admit to the occasional youthful indiscretion, she was hardly going to put her hand up to a period of anarchy. Which didn’t mean she’d re-established friendly terms with her father. In some ancient era—before River’s appearance in the world—they’d had what Rose had called “a falling out.” She was big on understatement, his grandmother, but not one for betraying confidences. The details weren’t hers to provide, she’d told him. And neither combatant was offering clues.
The last time he’d seen them together had been at Rose’s funeral, where they hadn’t exchanged a word that he’d observed—and he had observed. River Cartwright, junior spook. He had missed the original Cold War by some years. This one would do until the next came along.
He wondered if his mother should know what state the Old Bastard was in, and which of them he’d be betraying most by divulging it.
The carriage was heavy with wet overcoat smells, and every time a train passed in the opposite direction the windows slapped open. Meanwhile, the man opposite River was explaining to his mobile phone, at some volume, how quickly he had assimilated the implications of the recent changes to Stamp Duty. That everyone hadn’t yet banded together and hanged him by his braces was testament to the forbearance of the British commuter.
His grandfather thought about her often, he knew. He would ask River, carefully offhand, “whether he’d heard from his mother”—never using “Isobel,” as if this would presume a deeper acquaintance than they shared. And when River answered that she was fine, as far as he knew, “That’s good then,” David would say, or something like. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
But the Old Bastard himself was not fine. What River had told Louisa was only a small part of the truth, the worst of which was that on a recent visit, the old man hadn’t known him. So carefully had he carried this off that it wasn’t until he’d been there half an hour that River realised. His grandfather was covering his lapse like a pro: echoing statements River had made; offering bland follow-ups that concealed his ignorance. The O.B. had never been a joe. But he had lived his life among them, and knew how to adapt.
River often stayed over mid-week, but he’d headed back to London on that occasion. The thought of his grandfather lying awake all night, terrified of the stranger in the spare room, was more than he could bear.
The financial guru opposite was growing more pleased with himself by the minute. He was more or less River’s age but about a thousand times his net worth, going by shirt and shoes. Still, money wasn’t everything: River leaned across, tapped him on the knee, and said, “Would you mind finishing your call now?” His tone was polite, but his eyes weren’t.