“I’ll bet you’ve done things—”
“Some of them on his orders.” Lamb tossed his cigarette against the wall, and a brief firework bloomed in the dark. Then he reached into his raincoat pocket and pulled out what appeared to be a sock. After gazing at it for a moment, he put it back.
Catherine said, “Where are you going, anyway?”
“I’m out of drink.”
“And you’re fetching your own these days?”
“Yeah, well. Sometimes I get my hands dirty too.”
He slunk out into the alleyway that led to Aldersgate Street.
Catherine watched him go, then shut the door, and headed back upstairs.
Moira Tregorian had her hands full again: when was it ever any different? Make him a cup of tea, if you please. This was Her Ladyship, of course; Ms. Catherine Standish, dishing out orders as if neither of them knew her discharge papers were sitting on the desk in broad daylight, not that there was much of that to be seen. Daylight.
“Here you go, then.”
She put it in front of him, and if she did so a little abruptly, causing it to slop over the rim, well, it wasn’t as if he was about to complain, was he?
“It’s already sugared,” she added.
And then, because he stared at it uncomprehending, she felt ashamed, and said, more gently, “You want to drink it before it gets cold. You need a warm drink inside you.”
Whether he did or didn’t seemed beside the point, somehow. There was precious little else she could do for him.
There was work to do, because there always was. Nobody had ever accused Moira Tregorian of not pulling her weight, not that her weight was anything anyone ought to be making comments about. There were still files and folders here from last September, and she had a good mind to call Ms. Standish in, ask if she wouldn’t mind lending a hand as a good part of this confusion had happened on her watch? But she could imagine the frosty answer she’d get from that one. Queening it over the whole department as if she were the Lady of Shallots or someone. No, that wasn’t who she meant. The other one.
“Lady Guinevere,” she said out loud.
That was who she meant.
There was an unseemly slurping from the old man as he revived himself with a healthy gulp of tea. When he set the cup down, he said, “King Arthur.”
Oh Lord help us, she thought. He thinks we’re playing Snap.
But she was still feeling guilty about her rough treatment of him. And it was nice to have someone to talk to, even if it was childish nonsense.
She said, “Sir Lancelot.”
“Sir Percival.”
She wasn’t even sure Sir Percival was a real one, to be honest, but she didn’t want to spoil the old man’s game. “Sir Gawain,” she said, conscious that if this went on much longer, she was going to run out of names.
“Sir Galahad.”
Galahad, she thought. Now that was funny—that rang a bell.
Where had she come across Galahad recently?
But the answer wouldn’t come.
It was clear that nobody used the front entrance—you only had to look at the door, its peeling black paint, to know it hadn’t been opened in years—which meant there must be another round the back. So he passed the Chinese restaurant, on whose grubby windowpane was fixed a yellowing menu, and reached an alleyway lit only by window-leakage from the neighbouring office block. It was one of those lost areas every city knows; an unconsidered gap between postcodes. To his left was a wall with wooden doors set into it at intervals, and when he tried the second one, it opened. Now he was in a small, mildewed yard, looking up at a dismal building which must be Slough House. For a department of the Security Service, it didn’t seem too secure. That said much about the value placed on its inhabitants.
Patrice took the gun from his pocket. The woman who’d owned it had been Service too, and it struck him briefly how difficult it would be for her, knowing her own weapon had been used to erase her colleagues. But this was no more than a blur on his mental horizon; an awareness of the weather elsewhere.
He tried the door, which jammed a little. He had to lean on it, pushing upwards on the handle to ease it open without making a noise. But that took only a moment. And then he was inside, and on the stairs, the gun dangling by his side, as if it were of no more weight or importance than a pint of milk.
Marcus could hear Catherine talking to Shirley in the kitchen. There was a kind of comfort in having her back in Slough House—they were two of a kind, after all—A gambler and a drinker; funny they’d never discussed their respective addictions. Except it was anything but funny, of course; this situation they were in. His family life was more than fraying at the edges; it was perforated right down the middle, and one quick tug would leave him floating wide and loose. As for Catherine—well, she seemed serene. But what kind of life was she living, really; what demons had smuggled themselves into her private corners? So no, of course they’d never spoken of such things. Besides, he’d never admitted it out loud before, had he? Had rarely said as much to himself.
“I have a gambling problem,” he said, very quietly. The words barely bothered the air. His lips moved, but that was about it.
He shook his head. If Shirley had been around for that, he’d never hear the end of it—
And because she wasn’t, he pulled open his desk drawer and stared down into it again. The one thing he could sell, get serious money for—a couple of ton at least—without Carrie knowing. He’d brought it in that morning, carried it through the rush-hour crush in his raincoat pocket; had half-expected Lamb to have found it by now—creepy, the way that man knew what was going on around him without appearing to open his eyes. And this evening, when he left, he’d take it with him, though he wouldn’t be heading straight home. There was a place round by St. Paul’s, a stationer’s shop, except it wasn’t. It had a back office where a man who looked like a hobbit kept court: Dancer, his name was, and Dancer bought guns, and sold them on again to people whose motives it was best not to inquire into.
Putting a gun on the street—can I really do that, Marcus wondered?
But I need the money.
He needed the money and he’d always need the money, the same way Catherine would always need a drink. Except Catherine needed a drink without taking one. Marcus looked down at the gun in his drawer and thought of all the uses it could be put to once it was out of his possession. Uses he’d never know about, though he’d never stop wondering. But meanwhile, he’d have a couple of hundred and could pay some bills; pay more than a few if he did the clever thing, and used the money to stake himself a bigger win . . .
Or I could go upstairs right now and talk to Catherine. She’d listen. Help.
Yeah, he thought. I should do that . . . Except no, not really. Because he didn’t have a problem. What he had was a run of bad luck, and the thing about runs was, they came to an end.
A couple of hundred in hand. All he’d need was one glimmer of light and he could turn his whole situation round. Then buy the gun back off Dancer before any harm was done. He smiled to himself at the thought of this happening, soon.
Then he wondered who that was, out on the staircase.
Bad Sam’s knee still hurt, for all the anaesthetising effects of Lamb’s bottle, but he had to stand anyway, and leave the office. Volkswagon had nothing on Lamb when it came to unfiltered emissions . . . Letting the ice pack slump to the floor, he tried a little weight on his leg and found it more or less bearable.
Half-hopping down to the next level, where the kitchen was, he found Catherine Standish and another woman—Shirley? Shirley—the former busying herself with the kettle while the latter watched. Shirley was short with suede-cut dark hair; broad at the shoulders, but not without a certain appeal, provided you were a lot younger than Bad Sam, and didn’t mind things getting edgy. That was a lot to read into a brief acquaintance, but she had a legible face. She said nothing when Bad Sam arrived, but watched him closely.