“So you can’t, like, change anything? You leave everything the way it was?”
Again: ha! She was so cute and so sexy, but she really didn’t get the things the Rodster could do with a keyboard.
“Kim,” he’d said. “Babes.” She loved it when he called her that. “I can change anything I want. I just make it look like it’s always been that way, you dig?”
And she dug, of course she did, because she laughed too in that sexy way she had, and gazed at him with liquid eyes.
“That’s great, you’re so wonderful, because . . . ”
Because it turned out she had a friend with a problem.
Long story short, the friend had been ripped off by the company she worked for, well, used to work for, only they’d fired her for some made-up shit when the real reason was she was too good at her job, and they couldn’t afford to pay the commission they owed her—“Thousands of pounds, Roddy”—and now she couldn’t afford a lawyer to sue them, so if there was any way he could “ghost” into this company’s system and adjust their accounts so the money they owed her ended up on her credit card or something, that would be beyond wonderful. Because she was such a sweet friend, and pretty too, and she’d be so grateful to Roddy, and Kim would be grateful too, and wouldn’t that be nice, Roddy having two pretty girls feeling grateful and friendly towards him at the same time?
And Roddy had gulped and adjusted himself, and said, “Sure, babes,” but it had come out squeaky.
So anyway. As luck would have it, Kim had had the company’s details jotted down on a piece of card, which was in front of Roddy now. So it was just a matter of getting into submarine mode, diving into the deep web, and it didn’t matter that the others were still floating round Slough House, because not one of them would realise what he was up to if they were watching over his shoulder.
Because he worked better at low temperatures he opened the nearest window, let cold damp air refresh him, then settled to his quest.
At the junction where the road from Smithfield ran under the Barbican complex, Patrice took shelter outside a gym which was disgorging toned, sweaty City workers, bags in one hand, smartphones in the other, already catching up on what they’d missed while on the treadmill. The massive structure overhead kept the rain off, but the air was damp, and the pavements lumpy with some kind of deposit from the concrete overhangs. It felt like the entrance to an underground garage.
For one brief moment, he remembered the cellar.
Each of the boys, on their twelfth birthday, had been locked in a cellar at Les Arbres, with no natural light and just one candle. Every morning, a single bread roll and a beaker of water was delivered. And every morning, they were told they would be released as soon as they asked for their freedom. Bertrand, Patrice remembered, had lasted just seventeen days before asking to be released. Patrice remembered Frank’s look of disdain at his son’s reappearance, as if it were an act of cowardice, or betrayal. Patrice himself had lasted a full month: at the time, a new record.
Yves had lasted two.
Frank should have known, he thought now. Frank should have known that there would come a time when Yves’s desire to prove he could go further than any of them would see him step over each and every line there was. He had grown too used to the darkness. It was a wonder he had survived so long in the light.
But this thought, that Frank should have known, demanded punishment, and Patrice submitted to the moment, lashing out at the pebble-dashed wall, then licking the resulting blood from his knuckles. He had deserved that. Nobody could have known where Yves’s demons would take him. It was this place that was breeding such ideas: rainy London, its blues and greys seeping into his soul. Well, Patrice wouldn’t be here much longer. This last task done, he and Frank could vanish back to the mainland: Les Arbres was smoke and ashes, but they’d find somewhere. And the others would return—except for Bertrand, of course; except for Yves—and life would start again.
But before that could happen, the old man David Cartwright, who had been there at the birth of Les Arbres, had to go. So did Sam Chapman, his driver, his muscle. That they had survived the first attempts to remove them could be assigned to their own blind luck, or to his and Bertrand’s incompetence; or perhaps, he thought now, it had been because of the weather; this never-ending blanket of rain: slowing the joints, dulling reactions. Well, that was about to come to an end. The young spook had worked in that building over the road, the one Frank had called Slough House, and there was a reasonable chance, a working possibility, that that was where the two targets currently were. It was also possible that by now they had shared their knowledge of Les Arbres with the young spook’s colleagues, which rendered the target pool larger. It was important, then, that this time there be no mistakes.
Pulling his collar up, he crossed the road.
Lamb paused in the yard to light a cigarette, sucking in smoke and holding it so long there was barely anything to exhale. Rain on his hat filled his head with the beating of drums.
The door behind him opened, and Catherine was there. She stood in the hallway, framed by light, and said, “He’s in some distress.”
“Boo hoo.”
“I’ve left him with Moira. She’ll make him a cup of tea.”
“Why stop there? Tell her to tuck him in. Read him a story.”
“He’s an old man, Jackson.”
“He’s an old man with blood on his hands. Let’s not pretend he’s a victim here.”
“He couldn’t know what would happen. He thought he was protecting his family.”
“Protecting himself, more like.” He turned to her. “Last thing he wanted was his daughter shacking up with an ex-Agency oddball. Because that might scupper his chances of getting to be First Desk, right? These days they appear on Newsnight, reviewing Bond films. But back then, the whole secrecy thing was more of an issue, and nobody wanted Service gossip headlining in the tabloids.”
“He never wanted to be First Desk.”
“Uh-huh. And Buzz Lightyear never wanted to be first man on the moon.”
“I don’t think you mean Lightyear. And besides, getting Frank what he wanted didn’t work out, did it? He still never got to be First Desk.”
Lamb said, “By the time he’d finished kitting Frank out, running the money through whatever back-channel he dug, the old man probably thought he’d better keep his head down. Putting your hand in the till, that’s one thing. Shovelling the proceeds the way of a paramilitary organisation, that’s borderline treason. He might have rescued his daughter from the clutches of a lunatic American, but he screwed his own career in the process. I suppose that’s a kind of justice.”
“She never forgave him.”
“For rescuing her?”
“I don’t suppose she saw it as a rescue,” Catherine said. “Besides, it wasn’t just her he was rescuing, was it?”
“You’re going to tug my heartstrings now? Remind me there was a foetus involved?”
“If he hadn’t bought Frank off, he’d have been delivering his unborn grandson into Frank’s hands. And Frank would have got what he wanted eventually, because Franks always do. Which means he’d have found some other way to fund his Cuckoo project, and—”
“And River would have been part of it. Yes, I get that.”
“So why are you so sure his hands are dirty?”
Lamb didn’t reply.