A garment unsuitable for the season, today being wet and cold.
“News?” asked Diana.
Flyte said, “He’s still missing.”
“Wonderful. How old is he, ninety?”
“Not quite.” She paused. “Someone’s reported a stolen car. About a mile away.”
“You think he could walk a mile?”
“I’m told he’s an old bastard,” said Flyte. “They tend to be tough.”
“Who said that?”
“Jackson Lamb.”
“Ah.” For some reason, whenever Lamb came up in conversation Diana felt a reflexive need to smoke. “The thing about Jackson is, he gives lessons to corkscrews. If he tells you the right time, it’s because he’s just stolen your watch.”
“I’ve heard similar said of you,” said Flyte in a level tone.
Taverner regarded her. Emma Flyte shouldn’t be in the Service, she should be on a catwalk—that was the kind of judgment the Park’s dinosaurs were prone to passing when a perfect ten hoved into view. But seriously: Christ. Watching her hail a taxi must be like seeing the flag drop on a chariot race. Which didn’t earn her any latitude with Lady Di, but it was interesting to note she had moxie to go with her looks. “Yes, but when it’s said of me it’s a compliment,” she said.
“I know.”
Okay, that was better.
She conquered the nicotine twitch, because it never did to show weakness early in the game, and while Diana Taverner had been playing for some while, the game always started anew when fresh blood joined. She had yet to work out whether Flyte was a team player, let alone whose team she was on. In part, that was what this meeting was for. And team player or not, Flyte had worked that much out for herself, because now she said, “You didn’t bring me here just for a heads-up on the Cartwright mess.”
“No.”
“So what is it you wanted?”
Which wasn’t quite the tone Diana had been hoping for, but was at least a start. A pawn shifted out there, front and centre. She’d never learned the notation, but she knew what the object was: to hang, draw and quarter the opposition’s king.
She said, “Giti Rahman.”
“She’s one of your girls.”
“On the hub, that’s right.”
One of the brightest and the best, in fact; an appraisal she had confirmed a little less than three hours previously. Currently she was taking some crash-time in one of the Park’s sleeping pods, or Diana hoped he was. Where she wanted Giti Rahman to be right now was dreamland, because the information she’d uncovered was such that the Park itself might come crashing round their ears if she was awake and broadcasting it.
Flyte said, “What about her?”
“I need her taken care of.”
The barge, some hundred yards downriver now, let out a whistle; a curiously jaunty note for what was basically a waterborne dustbin. The gulls ballooned away, scrambled for purchase in the air, then renewed their cackling onslaught.
“I’m going to have to ask you to be a little more specific.”
“Good grief, what on earth do you think I’m asking?”
“I’m not about to speculate, Ms. Taverner. I simply want to be sure that whatever it is, you have the authority to ask me to do it, and I’m going to be comfortable carrying it out.”
“How very extraordinary,” Diana said smoothly, though it was in fact useful to have the parameters clarified. “I wasn’t aware that I had to meet your standards when issuing instructions. I’d better check your terms and conditions. Better check my own, in fact. No, what I had in mind was a C&C.”
Collect-and-Comfort, in the jargon. Meaning scoop up and isolate, and cause no harm in doing so.
“If that doesn’t offend your code of ethics, obviously,” she added.
Flyte wouldn’t be drawn on that. “Where?”
“The Dogs have their own safe house, I believe.”
“Several,” said Flyte. “Where is she now?”
“In a sleeping pod. Wake her up, dust her down, and get her off the premises before you put the mufflers on. I don’t want anyone knowing she’s in your hands.”
“How long for?”
“Until I say otherwise.”
“I’ll need overtime authorised.”
“The budget will stretch. One of the advantages of being on red alert.”
“Is this to do with Westacres?”
“I’m pretty sure I can issue orders without needing to explain my reasons,” Diana said. “Unless you’re about to tell me that’s not so?”
“I’ll have to check my terms and conditions,” Flyte said, without the faintest suggestion of a smile. “But just out of curiosity, why are we here? And not in your office?”
“Not everything we do should be behind closed doors,” Diana said. “All part of the new openness.”
“And nothing to do with keeping this particular order secret?”
“If you have something to say, Emma, why not say it? We’ll both feel much better, I’m sure.”
“The Dogs aren’t a private army,” Flyte said. “Forgetting that brought Mr. Whelan’s predecessor grief.”
“Dame Ingrid retired with honours.”
“Only because the Tower’s just for tourists these days.”
“Yes, well. I’m not saying there weren’t those who felt she deserved a bullet in the head more than a whip-round when she left, but you can’t read too much into that. She didn’t have my gift for getting on with people.” This didn’t produce a smile either. Diana sighed. “All right, if it makes you feel more comfortable.” She produced the warrant she’d had Claude Whelan sign; the third sheet of a supposed triplicate. “Good enough?”
Emma Flyte read it before responding. “More than,” she said, and made to tuck it into her jacket pocket, but Diana extended a hand.
“This stays under wraps. You report only to me, and I report to Claude in confidence. That’s the chain of command. Are we clear?”
“We are.”
“I do hope we’re going to get along, Emma. You came to us with impeccable credentials.”
Flyte relinquished her grip on the warrant, and Diana made it disappear.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll get onto it now,” Flyte said.
Diana Taverner watched her walk away, noticing the number of men, women too, who glanced her way as she passed. Not the greatest asset for a member of the Service, but it cut both ways. Who was going to believe that’s what she was?
The seagulls’ cries were ever more distant. You moved the rubbish somewhere else, and the racket followed it. It all seemed so simple, put like that. Complications only set in once you moved away from the metaphorical.
Free from observation she awarded herself a cigarette, willing her mind into a blank: no plots, no plans, no corkscrew machinations. Around her, the world carried on: business as usual on a January morning, and London recovering from the seismic shock of violence. In front of her, only the river; grey, and endlessly travelling elsewhere.
When the kettle boiled its switch flipped up to turn itself off. When she was a child, electric kettles hadn’t been invented, or not in her house – kettles back then had sat on the stovetop, and when they boiled they whistled, so you’d come and turn the gas off. Nothing about the process had been automatic. Catherine was thinking these thoughts largely to stop herself thinking any others: it was dangerous having thoughts with Jackson Lamb standing behind you. He might not be able to read the contents of your head, but he could make you think he could. Sometimes, that was enough.