“Sorry about the cloak and dagger.”
“No you’re not.”
“But some conversations are best kept out of the headlines.”
He was alone. His driver was still in a traffic jam, and tensions had to be running high before First Desk warranted an armed escort.
“What are you up to, Diana?”
“I want to catch a bus. This one will do.”
A bus ride up Oxford Street was a lengthy business at the best of times, and late morning wasn’t one of them. She paid cash, so there’d be no Oyster-card record, and they sat upstairs at the back like teenagers, except they weren’t texting. Whelan wore an amused expression, to cover whatever forebodings Taverner’s phone call had summoned, and she allowed him a minute to get used to where they were, assuming correctly that he hadn’t been on a bus in some time.
He’d noticed the flickering monitor on the lower deck. “You do realise there’s CCTV.”
“Which will be wiped tomorrow morning, provided no intervening event requires otherwise.”
“Well, let’s try to make sure that doesn’t happen. What’s going on, Diana?”
“We have a problem, Claude.”
“We do?”
“Well, technically you do. It seems you’ve supplied misinformation to a COBRA meeting. I don’t think that counts as actual treason, but—”
“Misinformation?”
“—it almost certainly amounts to dereliction of duty, and not in a small way, either. How long have you been in office now?”
“How long have I—Diana, what’s going on?”
“I’m just wondering if it’s a record, that’s all. Shortest serving First Desk.”
He said, “One of two things is going to happen. Either you start making sense, or I’m getting off this bus. And if it’s the latter, then the moment I’m back at the Park, I’ll be issuing a suspension notice. Have I made myself clear?”
“Crystal. What did you tell them about Winters?”
“You know what I told them about Winters. That we have his passport, for God’s sake. And that we’re ninety-nine per cent certain it’s the genuine article, which means it’s the key to unlocking everything else about him.”
“Yes, you see, that’s rather the problem.”
“What is?”
“Robert Winters’s passport.”
A bus going in the opposite direction jerked to a halt, and for a moment Whelan was looking past Taverner at another pair, another man and woman, sitting on a different top deck, heading somewhere else. Whoever they were—clandestine lovers, bored professionals—for a second he wished he were part of their conspiracy instead of this one. “What are you saying?” He hissed the words, his vehemence causing the nearest other passenger, a man four seats in front, to turn.
“Oh darling, don’t be like that,” Diana cooed, and the man smirked as he looked away. Lovers’ spat. Well, sometimes they did.
It occurred to Whelan that one reason she wanted this conversation to take place on a bus was to lessen the possibility he might strangle her.
She said, “Robert Winters—he’s one of ours.”
“He was an agent?”
“Not exactly.”
“An asset? Jesus—”
“Not an asset either. He’s what they call a cold body. You’re familiar with the term?”
“Stop spinning this out. Tell me what you know.”
So she did.
This triangulation shit, the way Marcus explained it, was pretty basic, and had Shirley never attended a standard training session? She probably had a head cold that day, she explained. Since “head cold” was accepted code for “cocaine hangover,” Marcus acknowledged the likelihood of this. So anyway, this triangulation shit:
“You’ve got two pieces of information, you can draw a straight line between them, no more. You’ve got three—”
“Okay, yeah, I get it.”
“—you can pinpoint—”
“I said I get it, okay?”
“Now you get it. A minute ago you knew nothing.”
“Yeah, well, I remembered.”
Marcus felt like saying more, but there was no sense poking a stick at Shirley when you didn’t need to. Any given day, the odds on her going postal were marginally in favour, and if she’d calmed down lately, that wasn’t—Marcus figured—on account of anything in particular getting better, but just things not getting appreciably worse. Everyone drew a line somewhere. And maybe the AFMs were helping. In fact, now he thought about it, it had been a while since she’d—
“Christ on a fucking pedalo!”
Okay. Maybe not that long.
He said, “What now?”
“Password’s expired.”
The Service network required a new password every month, for security reasons, though since you could only register a new password by first entering your old one, there were those who questioned the value of this procedure. Shirley was among their number.
“What you looking for?” Marcus asked, as Shirley went through the process of acquiring a new login, which took up some nineteen seconds of her precious bloody time, as she dubbed it under her breath.
“Phone number.”
“Bit early for Chicken Shack.”
“It’s never too early for Chicken Shack,” said Shirley. “Besides, fuck off. This is work.”
Logged in, she accessed the internal phone directory: everyone you might need to contact, at the Park and all other Service outposts—except Slough House. Nobody needed to contact Slough House.
Marcus was curious now, but didn’t want to ask. Shirley took pity. “Molly Doran,” she said.
“The wheelchair wonder?”
“Well, I think of her as the legless legend, but basically, yeah, we’re thinking of the same person.”
“Impression I got, she was pretty sick of Slough House. Didn’t River try to nick one of her files?”
“News flash. I’m not River.”
“You’re a slow horse, though.”
Shirley shrugged. “She’s a walking history book. She’ll either know something or not. And tell me or not. Only one way to find out.”
She dialled the number.
The café smelt of coffee and grilled cheese, and the faded pictures on the walls were of girls in rural costumes, with mill-and-cornfield backgrounds. A flyer for a circus had been taped to the door, alongside a coatstand, heavy with damp clothing. To River’s right was a glass-topped counter whose interior displayed pastries and sandwiches; most of the rest of the floorspace was occupied by chairs and tables, except for immediately in front of the counter, where a child’s buggy was parked. Its usual occupant sat in a high chair, slapping the tray with one hand, tugging an ear with the other, and gurgling as his/her—its—mother spooned into it a confection which was luridly green enough to look radioactive, though presumably wasn’t. The woman glanced River’s way, registered that the buggy was blocking his passage, and turned back to her child. River, offering a Gallic shrug, shifted the buggy enough to get past, then sat at a table against the far wall.
It wasn’t quite full. Mother and infant aside, there were only four others; a man in his fifties, with neat beard and pencil-thin eyebrows, reading a paper, and three young men sprawling round an array of cups and crumb-riddled plates and mobile phones. One watched River with open curiosity. The man with the newspaper didn’t look his way at all. An amiable woman, a little plump, appeared through a bead-curtained door behind the counter, and plucked a notepad from a shelf as she made her way towards River, pausing en route to cluck over the infant.
“Monsieur?” she said.
River ordered coffee.
He sat with it for half an hour. The three young men left in a noisy dazzle of endearments for the waitress; two girls came in and chattered ceaselessly over toasted sandwiches. River’s stomach growled, but he had barely enough cash for the coffee. The newspaper reader was brought another plate: an omelette, with mushrooms folded into it, judging by the smell. The coffee was good, but nowhere near filling. He examined the receipt once more: it was from five days previously, on the old side of the New Year, and Adam Lockhead had enjoyed two bottled beers and a steak-frites. The slip of paper had been crumpled into a ball, a forgotten piece of pocket detritus rather than deliberately retained for expenses; the distinction, in River’s mind, meaning that trips to Le Ciel Bleu had been regular, ordinary experiences for Adam Lockhead. Meaning that people here would recognise him; would know where he was staying, who his associates were . . . That, anyway, was what River had been telling himself for twelve hours or more. But it was starting to feel tenuous, here at this end of the argument, and not for the first time in his life, he wondered whether his initial instincts might have borne more rigorous inspection.