Ho said, “I was just swapping—”
“Not you, dickhead. Her.”
“Who’s a dickhead? Oh, him,” Shirley said from the doorway.
“Not a fucking word. Anyone.” This included everyone in Louisa’s orbit: Marcus too, on the landing with Shirley. “Except you.” This to Moira. “What. The fuck. Are you talking about?”
“I really don’t appreciate—”
“You have to understand this. You really have to understand this. I am this close to wringing your fucking—”
“Louisa.”
It was Marcus, his hand on her elbow.
“Louisa, you need to cool it. Just sit down, yeah?”
And she wanted to scream that she’d sit down when she was good and ready and what the hell did he know about it, anyway? Because he hadn’t been there when this bitch had said what she’d said, that River was dead—how could he be dead? But she didn’t say any of that because she was shaking too hard. It was as if she’d fallen from a tree into cold, cold water, and would never be warm again.
A chair was being scraped across a floor, and that was Shirley. Two arms were lowering her into it, and that was Marcus.
Who said, “And now I really need to know what the hell is going down.”
There are only so many ways of ringing a doorbelclass="underline" the brief dash delivered by the confident; the short dot of those who don’t want to disturb you; and the gunna-lean-on-this-thing-till-it-opens approach favoured by bailiffs, ex-husbands, and anyone else unused to a friendly welcome.
“Jackson,” Catherine Standish said. “What a surprise.”
This without a flicker of emotion.
Catherine lived in an art-deco block in St. John’s Wood; a building with rounded corners and metal-framed windows, vaguely futuristic once, and charmingly retro thereafter. In the lobby the tiles were polished to an ice-rink sheen, and the lift had an actual dial over it, indicating which floor it was on. She sometimes imagined a Hollywood musical breaking out there: some business with a bellhop; a haughty matron with fur coat and lorgnette; and Fred twirling Ginger in and out of the lift while its doors slid open and shut: yes/no, yes/no . . . Not prone to whimsy, Catherine occasionally indulged herself when it came to where she lived. There’d been a time when a future in a series of shop doorways had not seemed implausible. A one-bedder in St. John’s Wood was a safe haven in anybody’s book.
Though not enough so to keep Jackson Lamb at bay.
“Nice welcome,” he said. “You might have put some feeling into it.”
“I did. Just not the kind you were hoping for.”
“Going to invite me in?”
“No.”
“Mind if I come in anyway?”
She stepped aside.
The last time Lamb had been here, it had been the middle of the night, and the slow horses were being rounded up. Today it was morning, and she was dressed . . . All things considered, his appearance wasn’t much of a shock. Some fates you escape. Others keep turning up regardless.
While most guests would hover in the hallway, awaiting further invitation, Lamb barrelled through to her sitting room. “How about a drink?”
“At this hour?”
“I meant tea,” he said, with an air of shocked innocence.
“Of course you did. Why are you here?”
“Can’t drop in on an old friend?”
“Possibly. But why are you here?”
“I’ve just come from identifying River Cartwright’s body,” he said. “And I wanted you to be the first to know.”
“River . . . ”
“His body.”
“How . . . ?”
“Two bullets to the head. Face, actually. Doesn’t leave much, you’ll not be surprised to learn.”
Catherine turned away, to look out of the window onto the street below. There was little happening there. A man walking a dog, a Cockapoo or Labradoodle or something, one of those breeds that didn’t exist one day and the next were everywhere: all bright eyes and floppy tongues. She watched him wait for it to do its business by the side of the road, then scoop its mess into a plastic bag. If he leaves it hanging off the hedge, she thought, I’ll open the window and throw something—the iron, the coffee table. But he didn’t. He walked on, bag swinging by his side. Sometimes people behaved like they were supposed to. Quite a lot of the time, probably. But it was easy to start believing otherwise, the line of work she’d been in.
She thought: River Cartwright, and tried to imagine how she must be feeling now, having just been told he’d been killed, two bullets to the face. But she couldn’t reach whatever feelings this information might be supposed to deliver. She could only watch the man and his dog continue up the quiet road, until they were lost to sight.
“You’re not going to respond?”
“This is me, responding,” she said. “Where did it happen?”
“In a bathroom. Just like old times, eh?”
Because she’d found her former boss, Charles Partner, dead in his bathroom, gun in his hand.
Bullet in his head.
Just the one. Few suicides took two.
“Have you told the others?”
“Sent Ho a text. I expect he’ll have spread it round by now.”
Despite herself, despite all she knew of him, this time she was actually shocked. “You sent a text?”
“You thought I’d tweet it? Jesus, Standish. A man died.”
“You know what that’ll do to Louisa?”
“That’s why I sent it to Ho. You think you invented tact?” He was holding a cigarette now. It had appeared in his hand just like that: no sign of a packet.
She shook her head; at the cigarette, at him, at the way he broke news, which was the way he broke everything else: with a certain grim joy at watching it shatter.
He said, “You didn’t ask whose bathroom.”
“Whose bathroom?”
He wagged a finger. “Sorry. Need to know.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I’d enjoy it more with a cup of tea. I’ve been up since sparrowfart.”
“For God’s sake—”
“Are you alone? I should have asked.”
She said, “Do I look like I have company?”
“Had to ask. Hard to shake off a reputation, isn’t it?”
“You’d know. Everyone you’ve ever met has you pegged as an utter bastard. Now was there anything else? Because you’re free to leave any time.”
“His grandfather’s.”
“. . . What?”
“It was his grandfather’s bathroom. The O.B.?”
“That’s what River called him,” Catherine agreed. “I’m not sure you have the right.”
Lamb said, “Ah, don’t you hate it when people have private jokes? It’s like everyone’s a fucking spy.” He tucked the cigarette behind his ear. “You haven’t asked who yet.”
“Haven’t asked who what?”
“Who shot River,” Lamb said. “Are you just out of bed? You’re not exactly firing on all cylinders.”
“I’m still reeling from your presence,” she told him. “I’d feel a lot happier if you weren’t here.”
“Then I’ll go.”
“Thank you.”
“Just as soon as I’ve had that cup of tea,” he said, and bared yellow teeth.
A barge was puttering down the Thames, rubbish piled high in its middle, and there were seagulls all over it, a great boiling mass of them, arguing and scrapping for riches. Earth has not anything to show more fair. For Diana Taverner, it looked like politics as usual. She was waiting by a railing near the Globe, on a stretch of pavement which fell neatly into a CCTV blind spot, so highly prized by those aware of the fact. It was before ten, and while once pedestrian traffic would have been at a lull, all decent citizens at their jobs, now there were streams of people passing, a good proportion of them plugged into Smartphone and Tablet, working on the move. From a distance, there’d be little to choose between the upbeat rat-a-tat of their mobile conferencing and the screaming of the gulls, which was heading downriver now, and might make it as far as the sea. She checked her watch: two minutes to the hour. And then Emma Flyte was there, one gloved hand on the railing, an immaculate profile taking in the view: the City, draped in the beauty of the morning.