We feel that you’re not . . . happy in your work.
He could not remember how he had answered this question, which, anyway, was not a question. He had the feeling he’d simply sat, fingers twitching in his lap. Reaching for a tune that swirled around his head.
Coe wasn’t sure when this had begun. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, to mime his way through a series of improvised piano recitals; it was simply something he’d discovered himself doing, or rather, had discovered somebody else discovering him doing—he’d been on a bus, moving in fits and starts along a crowded Regent Street, when he noticed that the young woman next to him was edging away, casting worried glances at him, at his fingers, which were thrumming a non-existent keyboard. He hadn’t until that moment connected the music in his head with the movement of his hands. At the time, he hadn’t even been wearing his iPod. The music was simply inside him, something he relied on in moments of anxiety, which now included, he was barely surprised to learn, travelling in fits and starts in a crowded bus on Regent Street.
We were wondering if a transfer might not be in your best interests.
Always that we, underlining the plurality of the forces lined against him. Not that it was the Service’s HR department that gave him sleepless nights.
Today, beneath his grey hoodie, JK Coe wore a T-shirt and jeans ripped at the knee. It had been a while since he’d worn anything else. He was three-days unshaven, and while unarguably clean—he showered twice daily; more often when time allowed—there always followed him a whiff of something that seemed to float at the outer edge of his ability to smell it. Sometimes, he worried it was the smell of shit. But really he knew it was fear; the odour of his own worst memory, when he’d been tied naked to a chair while another man, also naked, threatened him with an electric carving knife. In his dreams, in his insomniac nightmares, he relived what might have happened; the ripping of steel through his flesh; the wet slap of his innards as they hit the plastic sheets spread on the floor. When his fingers weren’t searching for music they crept to his stomach, interlocked across his belly, struggled to hold inside what might have been carved out.
All of this had taken place at home, in his fifth-floor flat. He’d bought when he’d been earning well in banking, before he’d sickened of that career, shortly before everybody else had sickened of it too, and people began to look on bankers like there ought to be bags to collect them in. A narrow escape, he’d thought at the time, having fallen back on his degree subject and taken a post with the Service’s Psych Eval section, where he hoped to prove useful. A modest ambition, and no longer a career target.
Slough House might be a better fit, we think. Fewer . . . alarms.
In the weeks and months following his ordeal, Coe had tired of most things. Food lost flavour, and alcohol served to make him throw up long before he’d achieved any kind of anaesthetised state. If he’d had ready access to weed or stronger he’d have given it a shot, but acquiring illegal substances demanded social interaction; interaction with people he could imagine providing . . . “alarms.” He couldn’t read for long without becoming furious. Music was all that was left. Coe had never played the piano in his life, and it was a toss-up as to whether his fingers were going in the right direction when the notes in his head climbed the scale; nevertheless, here he was, exiled to Slough House with the other catastrophes of the Intelligence world; sentenced to plough away at a series of unpromising projects with no end in sight, instead of which he was making unheard music on an unplayable instrument, and finding in the process, if not peace, then at least a certain amount of white space.
From across the room, River Cartwright watched him dispassionately. If he’d learned anything as a slow horse, it was that there was no helping some people—sometimes, you had to let them drown. Which was what it looked like JK Coe was doing: not waving but drowning, scrabbling for purchase on a desk that was never going to keep him afloat. Whichever shore he was poling for, he’d either make it or he wouldn’t. Until that happened, River planned on leaving him be.
Besides, he had troubles of his own.
At the junction where the driveway met the lane lay the Great Lake, an annual event caused by poor drainage. David Cartwright skirted it unsteadily, one careful footstep after another along what remained of the kerb: little more than a series of narrow stepping stones. The hedgerow shivered at his passage, and tipped a pint of water straight into his boot, blast it! But now he was over, and back on firm ground. He waved a greeting at his neighbours’ house, though its windows were dark, and squelched past the bus-shelter, where a newspaper lay plastered to the floor. Torn images of parental grief screamed up. A streetlamp flickered uncertainly, unsure whether it should be on or off.
The lane led to the village in meandering fashion, literally going round the houses, but the footpath through the wood was direct. A wooden kissing-gate, semi-obscured by hedge, offered entrance. You watch your step now, Rose admonished. The way was carpeted with leaves, thickly sludged with them in places, but he’d always been mindful of treacherous ground, something he’d learned when plotting a course through history. You lived your life day by day, the O.B. thought, but days were mere splinters of time, no useful measure. The sudden events that blind us with their light had roots in the slowly-turning decades. Even now, he could make out shapes from the past behind the headlines, like predators glimpsed through murky waters. Twenty years retired, and he still knew when there were stoats on his trail. His neighbours’ house shouldn’t be empty at this hour: the cleaning woman should be there, unlikely to be vacuuming in the dark. And that flickering streetlamp: no doubt its innards had been tampered with, the better to insert some surveillance device.
He waited. Of all the sounds in the wood, all the damp rustlings and furtive scratchings, none paused, to allow him to focus on their absence. Everything continued as it had been. But then, he would expect no different. These were not amateurs.
“But if you know it’s a trap,” the boy said, “shouldn’t you avoid it?”
“No. You want them to think you’re oblivious to their presence. And then, first time they blink—pouf! You’re gone.”
He blinked—pouf!—and River was gone too.
The trees grumbled rustily. Someone whistled in imitation of a bird, and someone whistled back. The O.B. waited, but that was it for the time being. Carefully, eyes alert for snares among the leaves, he headed towards the village.
“Think he’s an issue or a fuck-up?”
“Who are we talking about now?”
“Mr. Air Piano.”
Marcus pretended to consider the matter. Sometimes it was easiest to go with Shirley’s flow. When Lamb wasn’t around she grew restless, as if his absence required celebration; and since Shirley’s definition of celebration was wide, anything that didn’t involve controlled substances was, on the whole, to be encouraged.
“You want to offer a little context?” he asked.
“Well, you and me, we’re issues. You’ve got your gambling addiction—”
“It’s not an addiction—”
“—and me, apparently I’m ‘irritable.’”
“You broke a dude’s nose, Shirl.”
“He was asking for it.