And then came a sudden noise, the like of which she’d never heard before. Terrified, she looked at Marcus, and saw that he, too, had heard it—if he hadn’t, she thought afterwards, she’d have happily sworn off narcotics for good; uncomplainingly attended her Anger Management sessions; might even have gone back to the Church, so forever after, she was grateful that Marcus had heard it too, proving that it was really happening, not a hallucinatory nightmare.
Out on the landing, heading down the staircase, was Jackson Lamb. With him was Moira Tregorian.
And the pair of them were laughing happily.
The sound hovered mockingly once they’d gone; it lingered in the stairwell, fluttered about like a moth in search of a bulb. Marcus looked like someone had just swatted him with a shovel. Shirley’s own expression was equally graceless. But even as she closed her mouth an idea was forming, and the fact that Molly Doran was still on the line made it glimmer all the brighter.
“Are you still there?” she asked.
A faint sigh supplied the answer.
“Guess what I just heard,” she said.
“I’m certainly not going to do that.”
“You should. You should try. I’ll give you three guesses and a major clue.”
“A major clue?”
“Uh-huh.”
Molly Doran said, “And I imagine the forfeit—”
“I know what that means,” Shirley said.
“Very good. And I imagine the forfeit in the event of my failing to guess correctly is that I have to help you with your enquiries.”
“Yep.”
“Forgive me, but I fail to see what I have to gain from this.”
“Well, if you guess right, I hang up and never bother you again.”
“That does sound tempting,” Molly admitted.
Shirley said, “The clue is, it was Jackson Lamb made the noise.”
“Well,” Molly said after another pause. “Given Jackson’s limited repertoire, that sounds like the odds are in my favour, doesn’t it?”
The bus had arrived at a scheduled stop ten minutes previously and had remained there since, engine off, though traffic flowed freely past. None of the passengers made any audible complaint. Either they were regulars and had expected the hiatus, or were new to buses and had lost the will to live. On the top deck, at the back, Diana Taverner was in session with Claude Whelan:
“A cold body,” she said, “is a ready-made identity. Birth certificate, passport, National Security number, bank account, credit rating, the works. Constructed over the course of years, through official channels. This isn’t master forgers at work, this is the wheels of the Civil Service doing what the Civil Service does best. Which is paperwork, Claude. Cradle-to-grave paperwork. That’s what a cold body is. All you do is add flesh and blood, and you’ve got a fully documented life.”
“I thought that was standard practice. Creating false IDs.”
“These aren’t false. That’s the point. They’re real identities awaiting an owner. Don’t get me wrong, we can create fakes. And they’re good. If we fake a driver’s licence, it’ll look real to the last detail, but that last detail is the expiry date. Once we reach that, we’ll need to make a new one. With a cold body ID, that’s not an issue. You simply apply for a renewal. Because the expired one’s real, issued by the DVLA.”
Whelan said, “That must have required full-time maintenance.”
“Of course. Back in the day we had the resources we deserve. But the wardrobe department was closed once the Cold War was declared won, which for all intents and purposes was the day the Wall came down. It was deemed surplus to requirements, but don’t get me started on Treasury myopia. No, these days field identities are strictly off the cuff. Even long-term relocation covers are done on the cheap.”
“So what happened to these . . . cold bodies? When wardrobe was discontinued?”
“Mothballed. Or so it was thought.”
“But Robert Winters . . .”
“Was one of them. Yes.”
“How? How in the hell could he be? According to the passport, he’s twenty-eight. And you’ve just told me the project was closed way back—”
“Claude. You’re not listening. A cold body was a cradle-to-grave service. Identities created from scratch, in real time. The department had been running since the war, so the IDs it rolled out in the sixties were for twenty-year-olds. And so on. Get the picture?”
“A long-term undertaking,” he said faintly.
“You might say. Which means that when the department ceased to exist, they would have had any number of IDs in different states of preparation. Including one for a two-year-old Robert Winters.”
“If all we’re going on is the name—”
“And date and birthplace. Trust me, the Robert Winters who blew himself up in Westacres was a Service creation. There’s no other way he could have had that passport.”
“Jesus Christ.”
The bus lumbered into life, shuddering nose to tail.
“How long have you known?” he asked. “Who brought this to you?”
“One of my kids. A few hours ago.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me then?”
“And if I had? What would you have done?”
He struggled to contain his anger. “What do you think? I’d have included it in my presentation to the PM—”
“And what would have happened then? No, don’t bother. I’ll tell you. We’d be in lockdown, Claude. The Park, over the river, even bloody Slough House—every department, every agent. We’d have Special Branch, or worse still Six, going through every desk. It would make the Cambridge spies inquiry look like garden party chit-chat.” She paused. “Which, to be fair, it more or less was.”
“Where’s your . . . kid now?”
“With the Dogs.”
“You’ve used internal security on this? They’re supposed to be upholding the law, damn it, not acting as your praetorian guard!”
Taverner shook her head. “You still don’t get it, do you? If even a hint gets out about this, any credibility the security services have in this country will be over. Every crackpot conspiracy nut in the world will be calling Westacres a black flag op, and even normal people will believe it.”
“That’s hardly—”
She rolled right over him. “Do you know how long it took, after the bomb, before rumours of cover-ups were plastered across the internet? Less than two hours. That’s the level of trust we’re looking at. We are losing this war, Claude, and believe me, it is a war. They said it couldn’t be waged on an abstract, and I’ll leave that to the philosophers and the pedants, because when you’ve got broken kids being carried out of a wrecked shopping centre, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a war. And we need to be on the front line. We do. You and me. Because without our guidance, the Service will be flapping around like a damp sock instead of doing what it was built to do, which is catch these bastards. So let’s make sure we’re on the same page, here and now, before we get off this bus. And in case you’re having difficulty making up your mind, remember this. You signed the C&C.”
“I signed the what?”
“The warrant authorising the Dogs to pick up Giti Rahman—the kid who found this—and hold her.”
“I didn’t—ah.”
Your signature, please, in triplicate, he recalled.
And: Do I need to read all this?
“Which I did,” he said slowly, “before briefing COBRA.”
Thus proving prior knowledge.
It really was surprising, he thought, how slowly buses moved.
“No need to look like that,” she said after a while. “I’m on your side.”
“Good to know. But was it really necessary to make sure my balls were in your pocket before declaring your support?”