Real Tigers

On a night hot as hell in the borough of Finsbury a door opens and a woman steps into a yard. Not the front street—this is Slough House, and the front door of Slough House famously never opens, never closes—but a yard that sees little natural light, and whose walls are consequently fuzzy with mildew. The odour is of neglect, whose constituent humours, with a little effort, can be made out to be food and fats from the takeaway, and stale cigarettes, and long-dried puddles, and something rising from the drain that gurgles in a corner and is best not investigated closely. It is not yet dark—it’s the violet hour—but already the yard is shadowy with night. The woman doesn’t pause there. There’s nothing to see.

But supposing she were herself observed—supposing the slight draught that brushes past as she closes the door were not a longed-for breeze of the type that August seems to have abjured, but a wandering spirit in search of a resting place—then the moment before the door is firmly closed might be one in which an opportunity is briefly open. Quick as a sunbeam in it slips, and because spirits, especially wandering spirits, are no slouches, what follows would happen in the time it takes a bat to blink; a lightning survey of this half-forgotten and wholly ignored annex; this “administrative oubliette,” as it was once dubbed, of the intelligence service.

Our spirit flies up the stairs, no other option presenting itself, and as it ascends notes the contours marked on the staircase walls; a ragged brown scurf-mark, like the outline of an unfinished continent, indicating the height to which damp has risen; a wavy scribble that might almost be taken, in the gloom, for the licking of flames. A fanciful notion, but one reinforced by the heat and the general air of oppression that smothers the house, as if someone—something—were exerting a malign influence over those in his, its, thrall.

On the first landing, two office doors. Choosing at random, our spirit finds itself in an untidy, shabby office; one with a pair of desks on which sit a pair of computers, their monitors’ stand-by lights quietly blinking in the dark. Spillages here have gone so long unmopped they’ve evolved into stains, and stains so long ignored they’ve been absorbed into the colour scheme. Everything is yellow or grey, and either broken or mended. A printer, jammed into a space not quite large enough, boasts a jagged crack across its lid, and the paper lantern masking one of the overhead bulbs—the other has no shade—is torn, and hangs at an angle. The dirty mug on one desk is missing its handle. The dirty glass on the other is chipped. The lip-ring on its rim is a Goth’s kiss; a sneer in grease.

No place then, this, for a wandering spirit: ours sniffs, but not audibly, before disappearing then reappearing in this floor’s companion office, and then in the pair on the next floor up, and then on the landing of the floor above that, the better to contrive a view of the building as a whole . . . Which is not, it turns out, a favourable one. These rooms which seem empty are in fact teeming; they froth with frustration, and not a little bile; they roil with the agony of enforced inertia. Only one among them—the one with the classiest computer kit—seems relatively unscathed by the torment of eternal boredom; and only one other—the smaller of the pair on this top landing—shows any sign of efficient industry. The rest hum with the repetitive churning of meaningless tasks; of work that’s been found for idle hands, and seemingly consists of the processing of reams of information, raw data barely distinguishable from a mess of scattered alphabets, seasoned with random numbers. As if the admin tasks of some recording demon had been upsourced and visited upon the occupants here; converted into mundane chores they are expected, endlessly, ceaselessly, to perform, failing which they will be cast into even remoter darknesses—damned if they do and damned if they don’t. The only reason for the absence of a sign requiring entrants to abandon all hope is that, as every office worker knows, it’s not the hope that kills you.

It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you that kills you.

. . . These rooms, our wandering spirit has said, but there remains one still unvisited—the larger of the pair on this top floor, which, while shrouded in darkness, is not in fact empty. If our spirit had ears, it would hardly need press one to the door to ascertain this, for the noise emanating from within isn’t shy: it is loud and rumbly and might plausibly come from a barnyard animal. And our spirit trembles slightly, in an almost-perfect imitation of a human experiencing distress, and before that noise, part snore part belch part growl, quite fades away, has descended through Slough House again; past the abysmal offices on the second and first floors; down the final stretch of stairs which is all the property boasts of ground level, wedged as it is between Chinese restaurant and jack-of-all-trades newsagent’s; and out into the mildewed airless yard just as time reasserts itself, erasing our wandering spirit like a windscreen wiper sweeps away an insect, and so suddenly that it leaves a little pop behind it, but of such a small, polite nature that the woman doesn’t notice. Instead, she tugs on the door—making sure it’s closed, though she’s half-convinced she’s performed this action already—and then, with that same efficient industry she lends to her top-floor office, makes her way from the yard into the lane and round onto Aldersgate Street, where she turns left, and has barely walked five yards before a sound startles her: not a pop, not a bang, nor even an explosive belch of the sort Jackson Lamb specialises in, but her very own name, wrapped in a voice from another lifetime, Cath—

“—erine?”

Who goes there? she thought. Friend or foe?

As if such distinctions mattered.

“Catherine Standish?”

And this time came the tremor of recognition, and for a moment she was mentally squinting, though her face remained unlined. She was trying to locate a memory that shimmered behind frosted glass. And then it cleared, and the glass she was looking through was the bottom of a tumbler, empty now, but filmy with residue.

“Sean Donovan,” she said.

“You remember.”

“Yes. Of course I do.”

Because he was not a forgettable man, being tall and broad shouldered, with a nose that had been broken a time or two—an even number, he’d once joked, else it would look even more crooked—and if his hair, streaked with iron now, was longer than she recalled, it was still barely more than a bullet-cut. As for his eyes, they remained blue, because how could they not, but even in this fading evening she could see that tonight they were the stormy blue of his darker moments, and not the shade of a September sky. And tall and broad, which she’d already marked off, twice her size easily, and they must look a pair standing here in the violet hour; him with warrior written all over him, and her in a dress buttoned to the neck, with lace at the sleeves, and buckles on her shoes.

Since it had to be addressed, she said, “I hadn’t realised you were . . . ”

“Out?”

She nodded.

“A year ago. Thirteen months.” The voice, too, was not one to be forgotten: its touch of the Irish. She had never been to Ireland, but sometimes, listening to him, her head would fill with soft green images.

Being a drunk had helped, of course.

“I could give you the figure in days,” he added.

“It must have been hard.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” he said. “You literally have no idea.”

For that, she had no reply.

They were standing still, and this was not good tradecraft. Even Catherine Standish, never a joe, knew that much.

He read this in her posture. “You were heading that direction?”

Pointing towards the Old Street junction.

“Yes.”

“I’ll walk with you if I may.”

Which is what he did, exactly as if this were what it appeared to be; a chance encounter on a summer’s evening, as light began to fade at the edges; one old friend (if that was what they had been) stumbling upon another, and wanting to prolong the moment. In another age, thought Catherine, and perhaps even in some corners of this one, he would have taken her arm as they walked, which would have been sweet, and a little corny, but mostly would have been a lie. Because Catherine Standish—never a joe—knew this much too: that chance encounters might happen in some places, to some people, but they never happened here, to spooks.

In a bar near Slough House, Roderick Ho was contemplating romance.

He’d been doing this a lot lately, with good reason. The simple truth was, everyone thought Roddy and Louisa Guy should have coupled off by now. Her thing with Min Harper was history, and if the internet had taught Ho anything, it was that women had needs. It had also revealed that there was no scam so risibly transparent that someone wouldn’t fall for it, and that if you wanted to cause a shitstorm on a message board, you simply had to post something mildly controversial about 9/11, Michael Jackson or cats—yep: one way or the other, the internet had made Ho the man he was. Roddy was a self-taught citizen of twenty-first-century GB, and all clued up on how to conduct himself therein.

Bitch was ripe was how he read it.

Bitch was ready.

All he had to do was reach out and pluck it.

But while theory was nine tenths of the game, he was having trouble with the remaining fraction. He saw Louisa most days, and had taken to appearing in the kitchen whenever she was making coffee, but she kept misreading his signals. He’d actually commented, and this was over a week ago, that since they were driven by the same caffeine needs it made excellent sense for her to make enough for two, but this had gone whistling over her head and she was still carrying the pot back to her office. You had to laugh at her feeble grasp of mating rituals, but in the meantime he was stumped for ways to get down to her level.

Ho didn’t even like coffee. These were the lengths he was prepared to go.

There were strategies he’d come across, heard about: be kind, be attentive, listen. Jesus—did these people still live in wooden houses? That crap took ages, and it wasn’t like Louisa was getting any younger. As for Ho himself, frankly, he had his own needs, and while the internet catered for most of them, he was starting to feel a little tense. Louisa Guy was a vulnerable woman. There were men might seek to take advantage. He wouldn’t put it past River Cartwright, for a start, to try it on. And while Cartwright was an idiot, there was no second-guessing what a vulnerable woman might do, especially one misreading the signals.

So Ho figured he needed a little practical assistance. Which was why he was in this bar with Marcus Longridge and Shirley Dander, who shared the office next door.

“Spoken to Louisa lately?” he asked.

Marcus Longridge grunted.

They were the newest of the slow horses, this pair, which accounted for their not saying much. Slough House had no rigid hierarchical structure, but it was pretty clear that once you’d ticked off Lamb at the top, you were looking at Roddy Ho—the place ran on brains, not muscle. So these two must regard him as their natural superior, hence their being overawed. Ho’d have felt the same in their shoes. He took a sip of his alcohol-free lager and tried again.

“At all? In the kitchen or anywhere?”

Again, Marcus grunted.

Marcus was into his forties, Ho knew, but that didn’t mean you could rule him out entirely. He was tall, black, married, and had definitely killed at least one person, but none of that stopped Ho figuring Marcus probably looked on him, Ho, as a younger version of himself. There must be practical stuff he’d be happy to pass on, which was the reason he’d elected Marcus to join him for a guys’ night out. A few jars, a few laughs, and then some opening up. But reaching that stage was an uphill struggle with Shirley Dander sitting the other side of him, like a malevolent fire hydrant. He had no clue why she’d tagged along, but she was cramping both their styles.

She had a packet of crisps in front of her, opened up like a picnic blanket, except when he’d reached to take one she’d slapped his hand. “Get your own.” She was levering about 15 percent of the total quantity into her mouth now, and once she’d done that she chewed briefly and said, “What about?”

Ho gave her a look that meant men talking.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Lemonade go down the wrong way?”

“It’s not lemonade.”

“Yeah, right.” She used some of her own, definitely non-alcohol-free lager to sluice the crisps down her throat, then returned to topic. “Talk to Louisa about what?”

“Just, you know. Anything.”

Shirley said, “You’re kidding.”

Marcus stared into his pint. He was drinking Guinness, and Ho had spent a few minutes working up something to say about this, about Marcus and his drink being the same colour—observational comedy—but had shelved it until the moment was right. Which might be soon if Shirley shut up.

She didn’t.

“You have got to be kidding.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“Louisa. You think you’ve got a chance with Louisa?”

“Who said anything about—”

“Ha! That is fantastic. You seriously think you’ve got a chance with Louisa?”

Marcus said, “Oh God. Shoot me now,” but didn’t seem to be addressing either of his companions.

Not for the first time, Roderick Ho wondered if he’d made a tactical error in his social life.

Sean Donovan said, “You’re not at the Park any more.”

As this wasn’t a question Catherine didn’t answer it, instead saying, “I’m glad you’re out, Sean. I hope life’s treating you better.”

“Water under the bridge.”

But he said this with the air of one who spent a lot of time on bridges, waiting for the bodies of his enemies to float past.

They were approaching the junction, where small queues of cars, mostly taxis, waited. Through the windows of the pub opposite she could see heads bobbing in conversation and laughter. It wasn’t a pub for serious drinkers; was strictly for casuals. She was very conscious of Sean Donovan at her side; of his thick soldier’s body. Still a physical presence, well into his fifties. Behind bars, he’d have haunted the gym. In his cell he’d have done push-ups, sit-ups, all those crunching exercises which kept the muscles strong.

A row of buses trundled past. She waited until their noise abated before saying, “I have to be going, Sean.”

“I can’t tempt you to a drink?”

“I don’t do that any more.”

He gave a low whistle. “Now we’re really talking hard time . . . ”

“I get by.”

But she did and she didn’t. Most days she did. But there were difficult passages, in the early summer evenings—or the late winter nights—when she felt drunk already, as if she’d slipped without noticing and woken enmeshed in her old ways, doing that some more. Drinking. Which would start an unravelling that might never end.

Taking another drink was not about lapsing. It was about becoming someone she planned never to be again.

“A cup of coffee then.”

“I can’t.”

“Jesus, Catherine. It’s been how long? And we were . . . close.”

She didn’t want to think about that.

“Sean, I’m still with the Service. I can’t be seen with you. I can’t take that risk.”

She regretted the phrase as soon as it escaped her.

“Risk, is it? Touching pitch and all?”

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. But the truth is, I just can’t be with you. Spend time with you. Not because of . . . your troubles. Because of who I am. What I am.”

“‘Your troubles.’” He laughed and shook his head. “You sound like my mother, rest her soul. ‘Your troubles.’ A phrase she’d trot out to a grieving widow or a fussing child. She was never one for making fine distinctions.”

That phrase again. Making distinctions.

“I’m glad to see you’re well, Sean.”

“You’re looking grand yourself, Catherine.”

It was perhaps indicative of their respective conditions that each left it to the other to affirm their essential roadworthiness.

“Goodbye, then.”

The lights were in her favour, so she was able to cross immediately. On the other side she didn’t look back, but knew that if she did she’d see him watching her, the colour of his eyes unknowable at this distance, but still that shade of stormy blue they became in his darker moments.

“You look like you could use company.”

Louisa didn’t reply.

Undeterred, the man slid onto the stool next to her. A glance in the mirror told her he was passable—maybe mid-thirties and wearing it well; wearing, too, a made-to-measure charcoal suit, with an intricately patterned tie, blues and golds, loosened enough to indicate the free spirit blooming within. His spectacles had a thin black frame, and Louisa would have bet her next vodka and lime their lenses would be plain glass. Nerd-chic. But she didn’t bother turning to check this out.

“Only you’ve been here thirty-seven minutes now, and you haven’t once checked the door.”

He paused, the better for her to appreciate the cuteness of that specific amount of time, the sharpness of his observation. Sitting here thirty-seven minutes, and not expecting anyone. He’d doubtless counted her drinks, and knew she was on her third.

And now a chuckle.

“So you’re the quiet type. Don’t get many of them round here.”

Round here being south of the river, though not far enough south to be free of made-to-measure suits and classy ties. It was a bus-ride from her studio flat, which, since the weather had turned and the streets become heavy with smells of tar and fried dust, felt smaller than ever, as if shrinking in the heat. Everything in it seemed to pulse. Arriving there was a constant reminder she’d rather be anywhere else.

“But you know what? Beautiful woman, all mysterious and quiet, that’s an invitation to a guy like me. Gives me a chance to shine. So tell you what, any time you want to chip in, feel free. Or smile and nod, whatever. I’m happy just admiring the view.”

So she’d showered and changed, and now wore a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and skinny black jeans over gold sandals. The blonde streaks in her hair were recent, as was the blood-red toenail polish. He wasn’t entirely wrong. She was sure she wasn’t a beautiful woman. But she was certain she looked like one.

Besides, a hot August evening, and chilled drinks on the bar. Anyone could look beautiful when the context allowed.

She raised her glass and its ice whispered musical promises.

“So I work in solutions? Clients mostly import-export, and a real bastard landed on my desk this morning, two-and-a-half mill of high-spec tablets chugging out of Manila and the paperwork’s only been bollocksed . . . ”

He chuntered on. He hadn’t offered her a drink—he’d time it so he’d finish his own a beat ahead of her then raise a finger for the girl behind the bar, vodka lime, plenty of ice, then carry on with his story so as not to draw attention to the minor miracle he’d performed.

This, or something like it, was how it always went.

Louisa placed a finger on the rim of her glass and traced round it before tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. The man was still talking, and she knew, without looking round, that his companions were at a table by the door, alert for signs of success or failure, and prepared to have a laugh either way. Probably they worked in ‘solutions’ too. It seemed a job title that could stretch pretty far in any direction, provided you weren’t fussy about the range of problems it encompassed.

Her own problems—the day she’d had, like every other working day of the past two months—involved comparing two sets of census figures, 2001 and 2011. Her target city was Leeds, her age-group 18–24, and what she was looking for were people who had dropped out of sight or appeared from nowhere.

“Any particular language group?” she remembered asking.

“Ethnic profiling is morally obscene,” Lamb had admonished. “I thought everyone knew that. But yeah, it’s the sand-jockeys you want to focus on.”

People who’d vanished and others who’d materialised. There were hundreds of them, of course, and rock-solid reasons for most, and potentially rock-solid reasons for most of the rest, though tracking those reasons down was a pain in the neck. She couldn’t approach the targets themselves, so had to come in at a tangent: social security, vehicle licensing, utilities, NHS records, internet use: anything that left a paper trail, or indicated a footprint. And blah blah blah—it wasn’t so much looking for a needle in a haystack as rearranging the haystack, stalk by stalk; grading each by length and width, and making them point the same way . . . She wished she worked in solutions. The current project seemed mostly a matter of contriving unnecessary problems.

Which was the point. Nobody left Slough House at the end of a working day feeling like they’d contributed to the security of the nation. They left it feeling like their brains had been fed through a juicer. Louisa had dreams of being trapped in a telephone directory. The fuck-up that had put her with the slow horses had been bad—a messed-up surveillance job resulting in a large quantity of guns being dumped on the street—but she’d surely been punished enough. Except the point was, no amount of punishment was enough. She could set her own terms, serve her own sentence, and walk away whenever she felt like it. That was what she was supposed to do: give it up and walk away. So, like all the rest of them, it was the last thing she’d ever do. Something Min had said—no, don’t think about Min. Anyway, without discussing it, she knew they all felt the same way. Except for Roderick Ho, who was too much of an arsehole to realise he was being punished, which, given he was being punished for being an arsehole, seemed apt.

And meanwhile, her brain felt like it had been fed through a juicer.

The man was still talking, might even be reaching the climax of his anecdote, and Louisa was more certain than she was of anything else that whatever this turned out to be, she didn’t want to hear it. Without turning to face him, she placed a hand on his wrist. It was like using a remote: his story ended, mid-air.

“I’m going to have two more of these,” she said. “If you’re still here when I’m done, I’ll go home with you. But in the meantime, shut the fuck up, okay? Not a word. That’s a deal-breaker.”

He was smarter than he’d so far suggested. Without a sound, he waved for the bartender, pointed at Louisa’s glass, and raised two fingers.

Louisa faded him out, and got to work on her drink.

Shoot me now, thought Marcus again, this time not out loud.

Shirley was having fun with the idea Ho fancied his chances with Louisa. “That is brilliant. Have we got a noticeboard? We are so going to need one.” She made a crosshatch sign with her fingers. “Hashtag deludedmale.”

The bar was the far side of the Barbican Centre, and Ho thought he’d suggested it because it was a favourite dive of his, somewhere he hung with his friends, but the truth was Marcus had never set foot in it before, and had picked it for precisely that reason. It was exactly the kind of place he’d wager money no actual friend of his would ever set foot, so the chances of running into any of them while in company with Roderick Ho were minimal.

On the other hand, wagering money was what had got him here in the first place, so placing further bets wasn’t his wisest course.

A giant TV screen fixed to a wall was tuned to rolling news. The breaking-headline ribbon was unspooling too quickly to follow, but the picture would have been difficult not to identify: blue suit, yellow tie, artfully tousled haystack of hair and a plummy grin you’d have to be a moron or a voter not to notice concealed a degree of self-interest that would alienate a shark. The brand-new Home Secretary, meaning Marcus’s new boss, and Shirley’s, and Ho’s, not that the relationship would bother Peter Judd—to attract his attention, you had to have royal connections, a TV show or enhanced breasts (“allegedly”). Straddling the gap between media-whore and political beast, he’d long since made the leap from star-fucker to star-fucked, stealing the public affection with shows of buffoonery, and gaining political ascendancy by way of the Hollywood-sanctioned dictum that you keep your enemies close. It was one way of dealing with him, but old Westminster hands agreed that he couldn’t have been more of a threat to the PM if he’d been on the opposition benches. Which, if the opposition had looked likely to win an election soon, he doubtless would have been.

To borrow an assessment, Dreadful piece of work.

To coin another, “Honky twerp,” muttered Marcus.

“Hate speech,” warned Shirley.

“Of course it’s hate speech. I fucking hate him.”

Shirley glanced at the TV, shrugged, and said, “Thought you were one of the party faithful.”

“I am. He’s not.”

Ho was looking from one to the other, as if he’d entirely lost his place.

Shirley returned her attention to him. “So when did it start, this insane notion you might be in with a chance with Louisa?”

Ho said, “I can read the signs.”

“You couldn’t read welcome on a doormat. You seriously think you can read a woman?”

Ho shrugged. “Bitch is ripe,” he said. “Bitch is ready.”

Shirley backhanded him. His spectacles went flying.

Marcus said, “That’ll be my round, then.”

Friend or foe?

There was no getting round it, anyone from that time of her life was a foe.

Catherine lived in St. John’s Wood, but had no intention of heading there yet. Laying a false trail came naturally—alcoholics learn to dissemble. So she walked north, heading vaguely for the Angel; a woman with a destination, but no great urgency about it. Everyone she passed was thirty years younger, and wearing about as much clothing as covered her own arms. Some shot her glances full of wonderment at one or other of these facts, but this didn’t concern her. Friend or foe didn’t cover all contingencies. These strangers were neither, and she had other things on her mind.

Sean Donovan was a foe, because anyone from that time of her life was a foe, but he was a decent man, or so Catherine’s memory suggested. He was a soldier, and while this was in some ways an error of tense—Sean Donovan had been a soldier; Sean Donovan was demonstrably, dishonourably, no longer such—it remained the most accurate description Catherine could summon: you only had to look at him. Mid-fifties now, by rights he should be taking salutes on parade grounds, and having his opinion sought by Whitehall mandarins. Not difficult to picture him before cameras justifying the latest military action. But the last time he’d been before the cameras had been as he was led from a military tribunal in cuffs: found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving, and sentenced to five years.

For Catherine, this had been a newspaper item rather than a personal shock. She was sober by then, and part of the process of becoming so had been avoiding the company she’d kept when she’d been otherwise. This meant men, of whom Sean Donovan had been one; not a particularly important one, or no more important than any other man from that period, but then again, that was a long list.

She crossed a road. This made her a little dizzy; not the action in itself, but emerging from her memory to concentrate on doing so. It took effort, peering back into her past. It wasn’t pleasant. For some reason an image of Jackson Lamb swam to mind, cloistered in his gloomy office, but it swam away again. Safely over the road, she risked a look back. Sean Donovan was not following. She hadn’t really expected him to be. At the very least, she had not expected to be able to spot him doing so.

He was part of her past, but other than knowing that much, she had little to go on. Of their actual lovemaking, if it could be so described, she had no memory. In those days, two drinks in, her immediate future became a blank slate, with everything scrawled thereon erased within moments of its appearance. He could have written her sonnets, or transcribed arias, and it would all be the same to her. But she knew that was never the case; that it had been fuck-buddy sex like always, because in those days anyone would have done, just so long as she had someone to cling to as she slid into the dark. Poems and operas were not required. A bottle would do the trick.

But while it was true that there were many she’d forgotten, of whom she’d barely been aware even while they were inside her, Sean Donovan had at least been there in the morning once or twice. Fond of the drink himself, he’d done her the false kindness of pretending they were bad as each other. Man, my head this morning. We pushed the boat out all right. But what for her had been blackout territory, for him had been a night on the tiles. She’d been a willing enough partner in this, because she was always willing back then. And if she’d been otherwise, Catherine wondered now, if she’d been sober, would they have stood a chance together? But there was no answering that.

She wasn’t far from a tube station. From there she would make her way home, but first she took out her mobile and made a call. At the other end a phone went straight to voicemail. She didn’t leave a message.

Phone back in her bag, she continued up the road.

A hundred yards behind her, a black van idled.

Shirley watched Roderick Ho scrambling for his glasses, and wondered whether she should have slapped him like that. A backhander gave you the drop, sure, generally surprising the backhanded, but if she’d made an effort and formed a fist she could have broken the little bastard’s nose. After informing him of her intention in writing, if she’d felt like it. Forewarned wouldn’t have meant forearmed in Ho’s case. Forewarned would have meant being punched in the nose anyway, after worrying about it first.

What was mildly disquieting about the incident, though, was that it didn’t seem to have calmed her down.

In the general order of things, getting physical was releasing a valve, releasing endorphins, so afterwards you felt that sweet high, halfway between an ache and a caress—by rights, she should be watching Ho’s cack-handed fumbling with a great big grin on her face, at peace enough to lend him a hand even, though the ungrateful little sod wouldn’t thank her. Instead, she still felt wound to full pitch, enough to want to give him another slap. Which wasn’t out of the question, obviously, but might put a strain on the remainder of the evening.

Marcus wasn’t at the bar; he must have gone to the gents, unless he’d snuck off through the side door. Which must have been a temptation for him, but the way things stood, he wouldn’t dare.

That morning, he’d said to her, “You know what that little shit’s doing?”

There were any number of little shits this might have been, but top of the list was always going to be Roderick Ho.

“Cyberstalking you?”

“Well, duh. Apart from that.”

“He’s dobbed you in?”

“Not yet. But he says he will.”

“Bastard.”

“You’ve not heard the half of it. Guess what his price for keeping shtum is.”

Shirley reflected now that it might have been a better idea not to laugh when he told her.

“A night in the pub? That’s it?”

“I’d sooner give him cash.”

“Oh, that is fabulous. Take notes. I’m gonna want to hear all about this.”

“That’s not a problem. You’re coming too.”

“Dream on.”

“’Cause if it’s just me and Ho, who knows where the conversation might lead? Once we’ve run through sport and politics, we might end up discussing our colleagues. Like, you know, who sneaks off early when they think no one’s looking, and who leaves their dirty mugs in the sink.”

“Enthralling.”

“And who snorts coke.”

Shirley dropped her pen. “You wouldn’t.”

“Won’t get the opportunity. Not if you’re there too.”

“That’s blackmail.”

“What can I say? Learned from a master.”

So here she was, here they both were, suffering the company of Roderick Webhead Ho. No wonder she was feeling . . .

But she didn’t want to use “uptight.”

Shirley had been at the dentist’s the previous week, and flipping through a lifestyle magazine in the waiting room had encountered one of those diagnostic quizzes, How uptight are you?, and had started mentally checking off answers. Do you get annoyed at queue-jumpers, even when you’re not in a hurry? Well, obviously, because it’s a matter of principle isn’t it? But other questions seemed designed to rile her. You discover your partner met his/her ex for a drink, “for old times’ sake.” She didn’t need to read the rest. This was supposed to show how “uptight” you were? Far as Shirley was concerned it was grading you on common sense . . . She’d hurled the magazine at the door, giving the dental nurse, who was just popping her head round, something of a fright. And who got her own back five minutes later, being over-zealous with the waterpick.

And yeah, besides that, so she liked the odd toot, but who didn’t? Tell her Marcus never snorted a line of the old marching powder—Marcus had been Tactical, the squad that kicked down doors, and once you’d tasted that adrenalin high, you’d want another boost, right? He said he never, but he would say that. Besides, it wasn’t like Shirley was an habitual user. It was a weekend thing with her, strictly Thursday to Tuesday.

There was a thump as Roderick Ho sat down. His right cheek was flaming red, and his glasses hung lopsided.

“What you do that for?”

She sighed heavily.

“It needed doing,” she said, half to herself, and wished she were anywhere else.

Though maybe, all things considered, not where River Cartwright was.

River was in a hospital room, standing by a window there was no point attempting to open. It had been painted shut years ago, back when the NHS still ran to the occasional lick of paint, and even if it had opened, the air that would have crawled in would have been thick as soup, with a saltiness that caught the back of the throat, and left you gasping for a glass of water. He tapped the pane, looking down on a covered walkway. The noise was in brief counterpoint to the blipping of one or other of the machines ranged by the bed, on which a gradually diminishing figure lay, making no greater impact on its surroundings than it had done for the past however many months it was.

“You’re probably wondering what I’ve been up to,” said River. “You know, while you’ve been taking it easy.”

There was a fan on the bedside shelf, but the barely wavering slip of ribbon tied to its frame revealed how feeble it was. Several times River had attempted to fix it, this taking the form of flicking its switch on and off. DIY skills exhausted, he settled for nudging the visitor’s chair nearer the draught-zone, and slumping onto it.

“Well, it’s fascinating stuff.”

The shape on the bed didn’t answer, but that was no surprise. On three previous occasions River had sat here, sometimes silent, sometimes making one-sided conversation, and there was no indication that the bed’s occupant was aware of his presence. Indeed, the patient’s own presence was an open question: River wondered, while the body was lying there, where the mind was; whether it was wandering the corridors of its interrupted life, or cast into some nightmare of its own devising; a Dali-world of two-faced jackals and multi-headed snakes.

“It’s before your time, and mine too, but there was a Civil Service strike in ’81. Went on months. Can you imagine the paperwork that piled up? Everything needing doing in triplicate, and none of it happening for twenty-odd weeks . . . When the firefighters go on strike, they bring in the army. Who do you get to come in when the pen-pushers down tools?”

River was a pen-pusher too. Who would do his job if he wasn’t there to do it? He had a sudden, unwanted vision of his own ghost floating round Slough House, sifting through unachieved tasks.

“Anyway. See where this is going? You’ll get there, given a minute, and a nodding acquaintance with how Jackson Lamb’s mind works. Because what he likes to do is dream up tasks that aren’t only boring, and aren’t only pointless, and don’t only involve months of crawling over lists of names and dates, looking for anomalies that you can’t know are there, because you don’t know what they consist of . . . Not only all of that, designed not just to bore you rigid but to kill your soul one screaming pixel at a time . . . But you know the worst thing about it? The really worst?”

He wasn’t expecting an answer. Didn’t get one.

“The really worst thing is the infinitesimally small, but nevertheless conceivably possible chance that he might just have something. That if you do it right, and turn over all the rocks, you might just find something that didn’t want to be found. Which is exactly what we’re supposed to be looking for, right? Us in the . . . intelligence services.”

The intelligence services, which River had joined at a young age, following in his grandfather’s footsteps. David Cartwright had been a Service legend. River was a Service joke, having crashed King’s Cross at rush hour during a training exercise, and been exiled to Slough House in consequence. The fact that he’d been set up was the joke’s real punchline, but not one many people had heard, and not one River laughed at.

“It’s the passport office,” he said at last. “All that huge backlog of passport applications, hundreds of them ushered through on the nod once the suits went back to work. So maybe someone out there saw that coming, right? Maybe it was a fire sale on the old false identity front. And what better false identity than a genuine British passport? Renewed so many times since, it’s beyond reproach.”

The machines chittered and whirred, blinked and bleeped, but the shape on the bed didn’t move, and said nothing.

“Sometimes I think I’d sooner be where you are,” River said.

But he almost certainly didn’t mean it.

Catherine didn’t see the van. What she saw was the soldier near the entrance to the tube.

He wasn’t uniformed, or she wouldn’t have spared him a second glance—there were always squaddies in London. But he had the watchfulness that goes with having occupied hostile territory, a wary stillness, and that made two she’d seen tonight, and any lingering doubt about chance encounters evaporated. He held a rolled-up newspaper to keep his hands busy, and wasn’t so much standing vigil as soaking everything in; cataloguing movement, alert for anomaly. Or not anomaly, she corrected. He was alert for her.

In which case he had already seen her; and if he hadn’t yet he had now, because she made an abrupt 180-degree turn. Bad tradecraft, but she wasn’t a street agent—never a joe—the nearest she’d come to an op was having her tonsils out, and was this paranoia? When the bad old days revisited, when she felt she’d slipped into a dry drunk, anything could happen . . .

She didn’t look back; focused instead on the pavement in front of her. A black van rolled past, and she had to step aside for a group of teenagers, but she kept moving. There was a bus stop not far ahead, and if she was lucky her arrival there would coincide with a bus. On the bus, if one came, she’d call Lamb again. If one came.

The streets were far from deserted. People in office clothes, others in T-shirts and shorts; shops were still open, though banks and bookies and so on had darkened their doors. Pubs and bars had theirs propped open, letting heat escape on a tangle of music and voices. The canal wasn’t far, and it was the kind of summer’s evening when young people drifted that way, and shared picnics and wine on the benches, or unfolded blankets on grassy patches, where they could lie and text each other in drowsy comfort. And all Catherine had to do was raise her voice, shout for help . . .

And what would that get her? An exclusion zone. A woman having a meltdown in a heatwave: someone to avoid.

She risked a look behind. No bus. And nobody following. The soldier, if he’d been one, wasn’t in sight, and Sean Donovan was nowhere.

At the bus stop she paused. The next bus would take her back the way she’d come; it would drop her opposite Slough House, rewinding the evening to when she’d emerged from the back lane. None of this would have happened, and in the morning she’d look back on it as a minor blip; the kind of bump in the road recovering drunks learn to negotiate. Up at the junction the lights changed, and fresh traffic began flowing her way; she was hoping for a bus, but the largest vehicle among them was a black van, the same one that had just gone past in the opposite direction. Catherine left the bus stop, her heart beating faster. One soldier, two soldiers; a recurring black van. Some things were echoes from a drunken past. Others weren’t.

Why on earth would anyone be targeting her?

A question for another time. For the moment, she had to go to ground.

Before the approaching traffic reached her, she darted across the road.

On his way to the bar Marcus had called into the gents, for the relief of a few solo minutes, and finding the cubicle free had occupied it to contemplate what had happened to his life. This past while—since his exile to Slough House, certainly, but more specifically the past two months—it had been heading down the toilet. No wonder he felt calmer in here than out there.

Back when everything was as it should have been, one of Marcus’s combat instructors had laid down a law: control is key. Control the environment, control your opponent. Most of all, control yourself. Marcus got that, or thought he got it, first time of hearing, but had soon discovered it was the large-print version: control didn’t just mean keeping a lid on, it meant nailing that lid down tight. Meant making yourself into one of those soldier’s tools, the kind that fold away until they’re all handle, no blade, and only snap open when needed.

But the thing about training—and Marcus wasn’t the first to notice this—was it filled you with skills that remained unflexed. Lots of stuff he’d had crammed into him, like how to bury himself in woodland for forty-eight hours straight, hadn’t been called on since. He’d kicked some doors down, and not so long ago had placed a nicely tight circle of bullets inside a human being, but by and large his career hadn’t made demands. And now Slough House, the slow annihilation of every ambition he’d ever had . . . The control factor was the only thing keeping him sane. Every day he nailed himself down, did what he was told, as if this might prove worthy of reward in the long run. And this despite what he’d been told by Catherine Standish, right at the start; that every slow horse knows there’s no going back, apart from that small part of every slow horse that thinks: except, maybe, for me . . .

And control, of course, was where the gambling came in—ceding control was what gave him the kick. No matter how much he kidded himself it was a balancing act, that he only surrendered the environment but at all times maintained control of himself—set boundaries, established limits—the truth was, he was stepping into the unknown every time he entered a casino. Which hadn’t mattered until lately, because until lately, he’d not been in the habit of losing.

It was the machines that had got him, those damn roulette machines, that had appeared in bookies it seemed like overnight. One-armed bandits, he’d never had trouble with: the clue was in the name. Those things were always going to rob you blind. But for some unaccountable reason the roulette machine was more alluring, more seductive . . . You started with a few coins, and it was astonishing how close you came to winning without actually winning, so you put a few more in, and then you won. Winning cleared the decks. Once you’d won you were back where you started, though with slightly less money . . . He’d played poker with Vegas pros and left the table walking; had scooped outsider bets on horses that were walking dog-food, and here he was, taken to the cleaners by a fucking machine, feeding it twenties like it was his firstborn. He’d once boasted he was the house’s worst nightmare: a gambler who played by the clock. As in, I’m leaving here at ten, ahead or behind. These days every time he looked at his watch it had skipped ahead thirty minutes, and every time it did, his next payday got further away.

He’d been digging into savings. Had found himself studying the loan ads on the tube, the ones with rates that annualised at 4,000 percent plus. Cassie was going to kill him, if he didn’t shoot himself first.

Worst of all, playing catch-up in office hours—logging onto casino sites in a bid to recoup lunchtime losses—he’d been snared by Roderick bloody Ho, Slough House’s answer to the tachograph. Which was why, tonight, he was Ho’s drinking buddy, with only cokehead Shirley Dander as backup. Yep, the toilet was the right place for him, but he couldn’t stay here forever. Heaving himself upright, he headed back into the bar.

When he rejoined his colleagues Shirley was asking Ho if his mouth was connected to his brain. “‘Bitch’? You’re lucky I just slapped you.”

Ho turned to Marcus with relief. “You believe that, dog?”

“Did you just call me ‘dog’?”

Shirley raised a hand, for the pleasure of seeing Ho flinch. “Mind your fucking language,” she warned.

“Did he just call me ‘dog’?”

“I think he did.”

Marcus plucked Ho’s glasses from his nose and tossed them onto the floor. “I’m a dog? You’re a dog. Fetch.”

While Ho went scrabbling again, Marcus said to Shirley, “I didn’t know you and Louisa were tight.”

“We’re not. But I wouldn’t fix Ho up with a nanny goat.”

“Sisterhood is powerful.”

“Got that right.”

They chinked glasses.

When Ho sat back down, he was holding his spectacles in place with two fingers. “. . . What you do that for?”

Marcus shook his head. “I can’t believe you called me ‘dog.’”

Ho shot Shirley a glance before saying, “Did you forget the terms of our, uh, arrangement?”

Marcus breathed out through his nose. Almost a snort. “Okay,” he said. “This is what’s what. We’re renegotiating terms, right? Here’s the deal. You breathe one word about those casino sites, to anyone, and I’ll break every bone in your chickenshit body.”

“I’m not chickenshit.”

“Focus on the broken bones. Are we clear?”

“I’m not chickenshit.”

“But you will have broken bones.”

“I will have broken bones. But I’m not chickenshit.”

“You pick weird places to set your boundaries. And you know what your problem is?” Marcus was warming up now, developing his theme. “You never do anything. You just sit in your office and surf your machines like, like, like a fucking elf. Day in, day out, churning through reams of pointless information, just to keep Jackson bloody Lamb happy.”

“So do you.”

“Yeah, but I hate it.”

“But you still do it.”

Shirley shook her head.

Marcus explained, “You’re a dweeb, Ho. All you are, all you’ll ever be. A woman like Louisa’s never gonna give you a second glance, and nor is any other woman without seeing your credit card up front. Me, I don’t have that problem. You know why? Because before I was stuck doing this shit, I was doing other shit. Proper shit. You, all you’ve ever done is this shit, and this is the shit you like doing.”

Ho said, “So what are you saying?”

“Give me strength . . . Do something, that’s what I’m saying. You want to make a mark, you want to impress people, do something. Doesn’t matter what, just so long as it’s not sitting at a screen crunching . . . data.”

If that last noun had involved bodily fluids rather than information, Marcus couldn’t have put a more disgusted spin on it.

Now he stood. “I’m going. Broken bones, remember? If you take nothing else away, take that. Broken bones.”

“Aren’t we having another round?”

Shirley did the thing with her fingers again. “Hashtag missingthepoint.”

“Stop doing that,” Marcus said. He looked down at his unfinished beer, shrugged, and headed for the door.

Shirley reached across, carefully removed Ho’s specs, folded them, and dropped them into Marcus’s Guinness. “There,” she said.

Ho opened his mouth to say something, but wisely changed his mind.

There was construction work on the other side of the road, as there seemed to be everywhere else: an office block had been taken down, a new one would one day go up, and meanwhile the empty space had been boarded off in case anyone noticed that not everywhere had to have a building on it. Catherine hurried past, buckled shoes tip-tapping on the pavement. An approaching man shot her a troubled look, but whether at her speed or her choice of clothing couldn’t be determined.

This area was only vaguely on her map, but she knew if she swung right she’d soon join the main road leading to King’s Cross; the other way, and she’d be into one of those enclaves London specialised in, whose small pockets of history had been left largely unmolested. This one was Georgian squares, many of them intact; one or two with a side removed due to war or development damage. Parked cars lined the kerbs. It struck her, and felt like an observation somebody else was making, how tranquil London could look, from the right angle, in the right light.

Out on the main thoroughfare loud cries would create confusion, and confusion was the enemy’s friend. Here, away from the rapid pulse of traffic, she could knock on a stranger’s door and plead sanctuary . . . She risked a look behind. There was no sign of the black van, which would have to travel some way down the road before effecting a turn, because of the median strip. But there was someone, a hundred yards back, or had been—in the moment of her turning he melted in the evening’s heat; was an imp of her unconscious, playing with her mind.

Or he was a man, and had dropped behind a parked car.

It might all be a heat dream. Paranoia, the sober drunk’s companion, blooming in the swelter of the evening. But it felt real. First Sean, then the other soldier; the van that had looped round, as if coming to collect her. Panic was welling inside Catherine, though it would have taken a pro to notice. She looked distracted, nothing more. At Slough House, this might have been cause to pull up the barricades; here on the streets, it didn’t register.

She believed she was being followed, and that he had dropped behind a car.

And she believed that any moment the black van would reappear, and that for some unknown reason it was coming for her—that Sean Donovan had tagged her for a cohort of watchers, who were gathering, and would soon pounce.

On the move, walking faster, she found her phone, re-called Lamb, and went straight to voicemail again. Disconnecting, she once more considered knocking on a stranger’s door: but then what? She was not unaware that Shirley Dander referred to her as the Mad Governess. Dangerous territory, snarking on others’ appearance when you were five-two high and favoured a buzz cut, but there it was—the mode of dress in which Catherine felt comfortable labelled her eccentric. Would you let this woman into your home? Besides, knocking on a door would mean coming to a halt, and movement felt safest. Lamb, she thought, would keep moving. Not the Lamb he was today, but the Lamb he’d been back whenever, living the life that had turned him into the Lamb he was today.

She hurried through the square and into a connecting terrace. Streetlights were coming on and the quality of the heat was changing, radiating up from the pavements instead of pulsing down from the sky. Night would bring no relief. Still, when it fell she hoped to be home, behind a locked door, wondering what momentary madness she’d fallen prey to, out on the sun-struck streets.

This terrace was thirty houses long, and ended in another square. At the next junction, she’d head back to the main road: hop on a bus, rejoin the transport network that held London together, when it wasn’t holding it up. Another look behind. Nobody. The shape that had dropped behind a car had been a falling shadow, nothing more. Two black vans was well within an ordinary margin. A car rolled by, looking for a parking space, and rounded the corner ahead. As it passed from sight the black van turned into the road. Catherine swung on her heels, and Sean Donovan scooped her into his arms like a fairytale hero; cradling her and stopping her mouth in a single embrace. The black van slowed, its back doors opened, and Donovan stepped inside carrying Catherine. The doors closed, and the van swept off.

Seven seconds, if that.

The streets quietly smouldered, as the violet hour grew purple.

It was still hot as hell when Jackson Lamb emerged from Slough House into the backyard and, fiddling in his pocket for his lighter, found his mobile phone instead, and noticed he had two missed calls—Standish. Missed calls. A stationery delivery gone astray, or a complaint about a printer not working. Standish persisted in laying such issues at his door, no matter how many times he outlined department policy, which was that he didn’t give a toss. Cigarette smouldering in hand he shambled into the lane, a coronet of smoke lingering in the air behind him, like an image of a wandering spirit . . .

Which lasted but briefly, though in the moments before its passing swelled outward, as though pregnant with impressions of the building’s inhabitants, weighed down as they were with grief and gambling debts, with drug habits and self-involvement; unburdening themselves to the comatose, squabbling in pubs, hunting oblivion in strangers’ beds, or else grown lazy, fat and complacent—sifting through all these as if somewhere among them lay the answer to a question posed recently, quite some distance away: Which of your colleagues would you trust with your life?

And then the air shifted, and the smoke was gone.

It must have been a nursery at one time, nestling quietly under the eaves, because beneath the plain white of the ceiling Catherine could make out faint shapes from a previous scheme, stars and crescent moons, decorations to enchant the tenant of a crib. But that was in the distant past, judging by the plaster dust lying in icing-sugar drifts by the skirting board. The floor, too, was bare—no protection for infant feet—though a thin rug had been laid next to the single bed, and the padlock on the outside of the door was heavy-duty, beyond what even the most mischief-prone child warranted. A nursery no more. Though not the securest of prisons.

They’d travelled for an hour at least; slowly at first, through the never-empty streets of London, then faster once free of the capital. Less than an hour, she thought, but her watch had been taken from her, and she had lacked the presence of mind to perform a slow count . . . Besides, she’d blacked out on being dumped in the van. Partly the grip Sean Donovan had exerted, a clasping of—was it her carotid—plus the shock and the heat and, crazily enough, a momentary relaxation at knowing the worst had happened, and she need no longer dread its approach. She had grown dizzy, and life had grown dark. So there’d been no running tally of corners taken; no memorising of audible landmarks. If churchbells had rung, she’d missed them. If the van had passed a waterfall, she’d failed to notice.

There’d been two others. One driving, obviously. Sean himself, who had lifted her from the street like a sack left for recycling; and a third, the soldier she’d seen loitering by the tube. Being spotted, it occurred to her, had not been his error: she’d been meant to notice him, and turn away. What use would their van have been on the underground?

Here and now, like any prisoner, she checked the window first. Set in an alcove formed by the slant of the roof and mullioned into a diamond pattern, it was closed by a simple latch, and easily large enough to fit through, but there were iron bars set into the external sill which a brief tug told her weren’t going anywhere. Not that she was built for scrambling down the side of a house. It wasn’t the securest of prisons, but didn’t have to be—she was a middle-aged woman who’d never been a joe; a recovering drunk who was PA to a drunk still working on it. Why did they want her in the first place? And who, Sean Donovan included, were they?

Unsuited for squeezing through them, Catherine settled for leaving the windows open instead, causing a slight adjustment in the air. Nothing you could call a breeze. There was a hum of distant traffic, but she couldn’t see the road from here. It had felt like a motorway, though that didn’t narrow things down much. An hour or so from Central London, somewhere off a motorway . . . A house set on its own in what must be countryside, because it was too dark to be anything else.

In the van, she’d been blindfolded and gagged, her hands bound, but none of it roughly—it might have been a sex game, a party promise. And that had been it for the rest of the journey. She’d contemplated thrashing about, but to what end? Best to preserve her strength for whatever came next.

When they’d left the motorway, the terrain had swiftly deteriorated: slip road, B-road—she’d heard bushes swishing the van’s panels. Then the crunching of gravel, and the sudden dips and bounces of rough ground. The van had lurched to a stop; no negotiating its way into a space. They’d untied her but left the blindfold on as they helped her out, one strong arm—not Donovan’s—at her waist until she’d found her feet. Then out of the country air, which was softer, greener, richer than the city’s, and into a house whose floors were wooden, on which her buckled feet sang, and produced a faint echo.

“There’s stairs.”

Again, not Donovan.

There were stairs, yes, and then more stairs; three floors’ worth. And then she was in here, this one-time nursery, and the blindfold was removed.

“Your quarters.”

It was the second soldier, the one from the tube: chipped from the same block as Donovan. Before she had time for a more detailed analysis, he was gone. She heard him fitting the padlock in place, then heading downstairs.

Here she was, then. They’d taken her bag: her money, tissues, lipstick, Kindle, travel pass, other stuff; her phone too, of course. Her watch. They hadn’t searched her, though, which could easily have proved their undoing, if she’d been in the habit of carrying a concealed weapon or the means of improvising one. And still she had no clue what they wanted . . . The slightest of draughts now, through the opened window. There were hills in the distance, a starless expanse blocking the heavens. A few faraway lights, which must be other dwellings; a more focused blaze of electricity which was probably a garage, servicing the nearby motorway. All plainly visible. Almost an amateur operation, except for Sean Donovan’s involvement. No one would call him amateur.

Looking down on the immediate surroundings, she could make out other structures, half-revealed by the pools of light splashing through downstairs windows. They looked like outhouses—barns?—further suggesting that this was a farmhouse. Something else, too, in the darkness; a vehicle the size and shape of a London bus; one of the old Routemasters that were either out of service or about to be reintroduced, depending what the transport policy was on any given morning. Just another touch of the bizarre to throw into the mix. What was going on?

She doubted it was personal. Donovan would hardly put a crew together to kidnap a former girlfriend. Or not even girlfriend; one of his former lays. Some other reason, then . . . He knew she was no longer at the Park, because he’d said as much, on Aldersgate Street. What did he know about Slough House? Did he think it was important? He had a serious disappointment coming if so.

There was a second door on the far side of the room and Catherine tried it now, expecting to find it locked, but it opened without complaint. An en-suite bathroom: loo, sink, bath. There was no cabinet on the wall, though screw marks, and a less-discoloured rectangle of magnolia paint, indicated that there had been once: yes, well, she thought. Give a girl a mirror, she can make herself a knife. Presumably similar thoughts about the weaponising potential of shampoo, tubes of toothpaste, cans of hairspray, etc. had also occurred to her captors, because the only toiletry, a single loo roll aside, was a complimentary-sized bar of soap, still in its wrapper. Stick a hairpin in it, you’ve got a one-use-only shiv, she thought, but she didn’t have a hairpin, and didn’t imagine it would take anyone bigger than a boy scout to take it away from her if she did.

There was another window in here, a skylight, but it too was barred over, and anyway out of reach.

She returned to the bedroom. It occurred to her that maybe she should try to get some sleep, there being few other activities available which didn’t involve pacing and growing scared, but decided against it. To sleep was to become vulnerable. For the time being, she was in charge of herself, if nothing else. She’d sit and wait. Sooner or later, information would start to flow. Meanwhile, she’d carry on being herself: not drunk, unbowed, and as organised as the situation allowed her to be.

It was perhaps half an hour before anyone came. Catherine had turned the light off, the better to familiarise herself with the view through the window, but no great insights arrived in the dark. Sean Donovan, she remembered, had been in a liaison role when she first met him; had attended a meeting with Charles Partner, her former boss and then head of the Security Service, and various other bigwigs, some from Down the Corridor, as Westminster was locally known; others from Over the River, where Intelligence was supposedly housed. Alone of those gathered, he had looked her in the eye as she handed out the morning’s dossiers. One thing had led to another. In those days, it usually did.

And now, hearing someone rattling the padlock, she assumed it would be him, but the man who entered was a stranger; neither Donovan, nor the other soldier, but a third man: younger, stocky. He wore a once-white short-sleeved shirt, and up his arms crawled inky designs, which also peeped out from the collar, and crept onto the back of his hairless head. He held something in his hand: two somethings. One was the pair of handcuffs she’d been made to wear in the van. The other was a mobile—it looked like Catherine’s own.

“Put these on.” He dangled the cuffs.

“Why am I here?”

“Lady, just put the cuffs on. And this.”

He produced the gag from his back pocket.

“Is that my phone?”

“Yes.”

His vowels were flat, she noted: northern. She was no expert on regional accents, but thought North-West rather than East. She noted, too, that her own pronunciation had sharpened in response, becoming more BBC. Maybe Lamb was rubbing off on her. That was the kind of trick he’d play.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Seriously?”

“It was worth a try.”

He said, “Let’s just get the cuffs on, okay?”

Catherine said, “Well, since it’s traditional.”

She offered her wrists, then he leaned across her to tie the gag round her mouth. She could smell him when he did this—sweat, inadequately masked by his deodorant, which was marginally less pleasant. When he’d finished, he stepped back and aimed her iPhone at her. She remained still while he took her picture, and stayed that way while he examined the result, nodding to himself. Good lord, who did he think he was?

Perhaps he caught something of this in the blank gaze she levelled at him, because while he ungagged her, he said, “Just checking.”

“Thank you, David Bailey.”

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter.” But he was Bailey now, which pleased her. Information, even the kind you make up yourself, gives you a handle on what’s going on.

He uncuffed her and left, padlocking the door behind him. She wondered what time it was, decided after midnight, and wondered if they planned on feeding her. She wasn’t hungry, but to feed her someone would have to come back and maybe talk some more . . . Thinking about not being hungry made her thirsty instead, so she returned to the bathroom, where she cupped her hands and drank from the tap. Where would she normally be now? At home; most likely asleep. She didn’t always sleep well. Some nights she played music quite late, but softly. Alcohol used to blur the edges of even the roughest days. Now she had to rely on other comforts, and the days never quite became smooth.

She must have dozed, or hovered on the border, because the noise of the door opening startled her; brought her back with a wildly beating heart. She sat up so quickly her head buzzed.

This time, it was Donovan.

He didn’t speak at first but surveyed the room, as if she’d paid a security deposit, and he was looking for reasons not to return it. While he did that, she studied him for signs of guilt. It was there, she thought. Whatever was going on, he felt bad about this part, at least.

When he at last looked at her, his eyes were still the bad-times stormy blue.

She said, “Bailey didn’t give much away.”

“Bailey?”

“Private joke.”

“Glad to see you’re making friends. I thought you’d given that up.”

“Is that what this is about? Have you been nursing a passion for me all these years, Sean?”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think yet. What happened to you?”

He laughed, or nearly did. It was a noise, anyway, and had an edge of amusement to it. “We’ve both come down in the world, haven’t we?”

“Oh, I get by. You, though. You look pretty rough.”

He glanced down at himself.

“Not your clothes. It’s you, Sean. You’re not the man I knew. It’s like you’ve taken a slow-acting poison.”

“A slow-acting poison.”

She gave her signature shrug, which is to say she held her palms upright, to show she had nothing to hide.

“Quite the lady, aren’t you? Now you’ve given up the booze.”

There was a looser aspect to his movements than earlier, as if his joints had been oiled. This would have been enough to tell her he’d taken drink, even if she hadn’t been able to smell it on him. She pictured him downstairs, the downstairs she hadn’t seen. A comfortably shabby room, looking out on that courtyard with its outhouses and its double-decker bus, if that’s what it was. There’d be a sideboard, a drinks cabinet: straight out of fifties’ rep. He’d have poured from a cut-glass decanter, downed it in one, then poured another for a more contemplative sip-and-savour. Nothing to dull his edge, he’d have thought, because everyone thought that. Like smokers unable to smell their habit on their clothes, drinkers always thought themselves unaffected.

Her hands had curled into fists. Thinking drinker’s thoughts could do that.

Uncurling them, she brushed at her skirt, as if it harboured crumbs. There was something very precise about her movements, and this seemed to annoy him.

“All buttoned-up. Who’d think to look at you the times we once had?”

“I’m an alcoholic, Sean,” she said calmly. “I had lots of times, did lots of things. I wouldn’t do them now.”

“Too good now.”

“It’s not about goodness.”

“You were, though. On your back or on your knees, you were always good.”

He waited for her to respond, but she said nothing. Just regarded him unflinching, simply being who she was now instead of who she’d been then, and letting him know she felt no shame or self-disgust. Simply the determination never to be that person again.

Only when he looked away did she speak.

“What do you want, Sean? If you’re expecting a ransom, you’re going to be seriously disappointed, but either way, what brings you upstairs? A chat about the weather?”

That seemed to amuse him, for some reason. But the answer he gave was, “To find out who you trust.”

“I’m not in the mood for that conversation.”

“It’s not a conversation. Just a question. Which of your colleagues would you trust with your life?”

“With my life,” she said flatly.

He didn’t answer.

She said, “I used to trust you. Does that count?”

“Someone from Slough House,” he said. “I need a name. Longridge? Cartwright? Guy?”

So this wasn’t about her. It was about Slough House.

Probably, when you got down to it, it was about Jackson Lamb.

“Catherine?”

She gave him a name

He left, locking the door behind him. For a long while afterwards she sat in the same position: upright, with her hands clasped on her knees. A Mad Governess again, and not just mad, but locked in an attic. That would give Shirley Dander a laugh, supposing she caught the reference.

After a while Catherine lay on the bed instead, and after a further while, slept.

However many miles away, in whichever direction it was, Slough House boiled in the morning’s heat. Everyone was there by nine save Catherine and Lamb, and the former’s unfamiliar absence struck a jarring note. It did with River, anyway, and as he stood by the kettle, pouring a cup of instant coffee, he asked Louisa, who was brewing a pot of the real stuff, if she knew where the other woman was.

She didn’t reply.

“Louisa?”

“What?”

“Seen Catherine?”

She shook her head.

Why bother? Since Min’s death she was a walking time bomb: not much given to conversation, but if you listened carefully, you could hear her tick.

River took his cup to his office, and contemplated another day of studying ancient passport applications, scanned and pasted into a database so creaky, if it was a boat you’d be watching rats abandon it. Picking up a biro, he tapped it against his front teeth. Eight and a half hours of this, minus whatever he could get away with for lunch. Five times that to make up the week, and forty-eight weeks in the working year . . . He might see this task off before his fortieth, if he really hammered it. Yeah: get a wiggle on, and he could celebrate putting this to bed alongside the big four-oh.

Or he could just beat himself to death with a hole punch.

Gathering one up, pumping it like a stress reliever, he crossed to the window whose gold-tooled lettering spelled ww henderson, solicitor and commissioner for oaths for the benefit of those on the street who wondered what poor fools toiled away in here. An oath or two had been uttered in these parts, that was true. The hole punch clacked in his hand. He heard the downstairs door open then close, and thought, Catherine, then: no. She comes up the stairs like a ghost. Lamb could too when he felt like it, but this morning he was his usual bothersome presence: navigating the staircase with the grace of a hippopotamus steering a wheelbarrow. He thumped past River’s office, then into his own room overhead; the precursor, usually, to a one-man-band performance: the farting, cursing, furniture-rattling overture to the day. River returned to his desk, where his pile of passport applications had grown while his back was turned. It wasn’t going anywhere, and until it did, neither was he. But he hadn’t done more than pluck the topmost sheet off the pile before it occurred to him that the expected overhead symphony hadn’t occurred; that what he was listening to now was that kind of silence that descends before a tree comes crashing down . . . He stood. When the thumping started, he was already halfway out of the door.

Lamb eyed his crew—some say “team”; he preferred “minions”—with a malevolent eye, the other being scrunched shut against the smoke from his cigarette. The blinds were drawn as usual, but sunlight had found a little leverage, and was currently painting stripes on the wall, and across the heads and shoulders of said minions, who were bunched like suspects in an old-fashioned film.

In the same hand that held his cigarette Lamb was wielding a Danish pastry, and he waved it now in their general direction. “You know, seeing you all together, it reminds me why I come into work every morning.”

Golden crumbs and blue-grey smoke flew in opposite directions.

“It’s ’cause I’ve a cockroach infestation at home.”

“Can’t think why,” murmured River.

“It’s rude to mutter. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s bad manners.” Lamb bit off some pastry and continued, mouth full, “Christ, it’s like being in a zombie movie. You lot need to perk yourselves up. Where’s Standish?”

“Haven’t seen her,” Ho offered.

“I didn’t ask if you’d seen her. I asked where she is. She’s usually here before me.”

“But not always.”

“Thanks. Next time I forget what ‘usually’ means, I’ll know who to ask.”

“Bathroom?” Shirley suggested.

“Must be the world’s longest dump she’s taking,” Lamb grumbled. “And I speak as an expert.”

“None of us doubt that.”

“Maybe she has a domestic emergency,” Marcus said.

“Like what? Her bookshelves got out of alphabetical order?”

River said, “It’s always possible she has a life you don’t know about.”

“Like you, you mean? How is your old pal Spider?”

Meaning Spider Webb, “injured in the course of duty” according to the official report—“injured in the course of being a dickhead, more like” (Lamb)—and still on life support; unlikely ever to make a full recovery, or even regain consciousness. River had visited him a number of times, though how Jackson Lamb knew that was one of those things that made Lamb Lamb: you didn’t know how he managed it, but you wished he wouldn’t.

Knowing an answer was expected, River said: “He’s hooked up to about seven different machines. Nobody’s expecting him to wake up anytime soon.”

“Have they tried switching him off then switching him on again?”

“I’ll ask.”

Lamb displayed yellowing teeth and said, “Has anyone actually checked the bog?”

“She’s not in there.”

Louisa said, “She’s probably got a doctor’s appointment. Or something.”

“She seemed all right yesterday.”

“Sometimes people need to see doctors. They don’t actually have to be visibly injured.”

“This is the Secret Service,” said Lamb. “Not frigging Woman’s Hour. And besides, she should have called in.”

“It might be on the chart,” Ho suggested.

“There’s a chart?”

“On her wall.”

Lamb stared at him.

“It says when people are absent—”

“Yeah, I’d worked that out, mastermind. I’m wondering why you’re still here. Go and check it.”

Ho left.

“Why the big concern?” River said. “Maybe her train’s buggered. Happens all the time.”

“Yeah, because she was last late when, exactly?”

But Lamb wasn’t looking at them when he said this. He’d glanced instead at his mobile, which was on the desk in front of him.

She tried to get in touch, River thought. And Lamb ignored her call.

My God. Is he feeling guilt?

Lamb killed his cigarette end in yesterday’s half-full teacup.

“Besides,” he said. “It’s not like her to disappear.”

“‘Disappear’ is a bit strong,” said Shirley.

“Really? What would you call it?”

“. . . Not being here?”

“And what would happen if we all did that? What would it be like if I was just not here all of a sudden?”

Shirley seemed about to speak, but changed her mind.

“It would be like Hamlet without the prince,” River suggested.

“Precisely,” Lamb said. “Or Waiting for Godot without Godot.”

Nobody touched that one.

Ho returned.

“Well?” said Lamb.

“It’s not on the chart.”

“And that took you five minutes? An idiot would have been back in half the time.”

“Yeah, that’s because—”

Everyone waited.

Ho slumped.

“Pop it on a postcard,” Lamb said. “No hurry.”

He glared round the room.

“Any more bright ideas?”

The phone in River’s pocket vibrated, and he sent up a prayer of thanks it was on silent.

“Maybe she left a note on somebody’s desk,” he said.

“When?”

“She might have got here first and had to leave in a rush. I’ll go check.”

He slipped out of the room.

“Anyone notice a note on their desk?” Lamb asked the rest of them.

“We might have mentioned it,” Marcus said.

Lamb’s lip curled. “Well, thank you, action man. Good to know you’ve not lost your edge.”

Louisa said, “Can we go get on with our jobs now?”

“You’re very eager. Discovered a taste for paper-shuffling, have we?”

“Well, it’s pointless and boring. But at least we can do it in silence.”

“My my. I’m starting to think we should go on one of those team-bonding courses. Though maybe we should wait till your mother hen’s back in the coop. What was that?”

None of them had heard anything.

“That was the back door. Standish!”

He bellowed this loudly enough, and unexpectedly enough, that Shirley actually felt her bladder release, just a tiny bit. But there was no reply from downstairs, and no Catherine Standish appeared.

“Where’s Cartwright gone?” Lamb said suspiciously.

“Bathroom?” said Shirley.

“That’s your answer for everything this morning. Something you want to share with us?”

“I’ll go look.”

“Stay bloody there! Another member of staff goes missing, I’ll lose my deposit.” He bellowed again, this time for River, but River didn’t appear either.

In the quiet that followed, Louisa thought she could hear the windowpanes ringing.

“Jesus wept,” said Lamb at last. “It’s not like I’m not glad to see the back of you, but we’re supposed to be a functioning department.”

Marcus snorted, but it might have been hay fever.

“Right,” said Lamb. “Enough of this. You”—he indicated Louisa—“go find Standish. And if she’s face down in a pool of sick, I want photos. And you two”—this was Marcus and Shirley—“find out where Cartwright’s got to and bring him back.”

“By force?”

“Shoot him if you have to. I’ll sign off on it.”

Leaving Roderick Ho.

“I’ll go with Louisa,” he said.

“No you won’t. She can screw up on her own. With you to help, it’ll just take longer.”

The others were already heading downstairs, but Ho lingered at the door and looked back.

“What?”

Ho said, “That’s because an idiot wouldn’t have checked as carefully as I did.”

“Well, you’ve saved yourself a stamp. Feeling better?”

Ho nodded.

“Good,” said Lamb. “Now fuck off.”

The incoming message had been from Catherine’s phone, and River had opened it heading down the stairs, still congratulating himself on a neat escape. He was expecting a brief explanation for absence: late-running tube, sudden illness, alien invasion. What he read instead was an even briefer summons—

Pedestrian bridge. Now.

Which didn’t sound like the Catherine Standish he knew.

An attachment came with it and he paused on the landing while it effortfully opened—it took half a second to work out what he was looking at: a woman, handcuffed, gagged, like a come-on for an amateur porn site except she was fully clothed and, Jesus, it was Catherine . . .

Why the hell would anyone take Catherine?

Pedestrian bridge.

Now.

There was only one pedestrian bridge it could be; not a dozen yards away, spanning the road between the tube station and the Barbican. And before checking it out there were alarm bells to ring: slow horse or not Catherine was an agent of the security service, and Regent’s Park ran a full-court press when one of their own came under threat . . . As for Lamb, he’d hang River out to dry if he took another step without putting him in the picture. That was something to think about, so River thought about it as he stuffed the phone away, and took the rest of the stairs three at a time.

It was already stifling outside, the heat much worse in the mouldy backyard. Round the alley and out on the street, and there was a man on the bridge, looking down on the traffic like all this activity amused him . . . Too far away to make out his face, but that was the impression River gained, as he ran up the road, through the station entrance, up the stairs and onto the bridge.

One hand on its railing, the man was waiting for him, and River had been right: he did look kind of amused. He was fiftyish, lean, in a suit the colour of early mist; his dark hair tinged with silver. His yellow tie might have come from a club; his superior smirk, he’d have had drummed into him about halfway through Eton or wherever. And he wore rings on both little fingers, confirming one of River’s deepest prejudices.

At River’s approach, he removed his hand from the railing. Extended it, as if expecting a handshake.

Instead, River took him by the lapels. “Where’s Catherine?”

“She’s perfectly safe.”

“Not what I asked you.” River drew him closer. “Answer carefully. Speak slowly.”

“She’s. Perfectly. Safe.”

Making a joke of it; in vowels, if not cut glass, at least precision-tooled.

River shook him like a stick. “The photo showed her handcuffed. With a rag in her mouth.”

“To get your attention. You’re here, aren’t you?”

“On a bridge above a busy road, yes. You want to go over that railing?”

That earned a broader smirk. “You’re not going to tell me you don’t know how this works, are you? Ms. Standish is safe and will continue to be so provided I make a phone call within the next thirty seconds. So I rather think you’d better stand back, don’t you?”

Over grey-suit’s shoulder, River saw a couple on the street below pause, and one of them point their way.

He loosened his grip.

“That’s better. Much more civilised.”

“Don’t push it.”

The man produced a phone and exchanged a few brief words with someone. That done, he put the phone away and said, “So you’re River Cartwright. Unusual name.”

“It means someone who makes carts.”

“Ms. Standish said she trusted you. With her life, as it happens.”

“Where is she?”

A mock-sad shake of the head. “Let’s move on to how you get her back, shall we?”

He was enjoying this too much, River thought. As if whatever it was he wanted was secondary to the method of acquiring it.

“What are you after?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

“You don’t need to know about what. You simply have to steal it.”

“Or?”

“Do you really want me to go into details? Very well . . . ”

He paused and River knew, without turning, that someone was behind him. It turned out to be the couple who’d pointed up at them a minute ago. They walked past, trying not to appear curious; maybe civic-minded types who wanted to be sure a violent assault wasn’t underway; maybe locals who were hoping one was. When they reached the Barbican side they looked back, but only once, and then were gone.

“The men holding her have . . . poor impulse control.”

“Impulse control,” River repeated.

“Poor impulse control, yes. I’d say about eighty minutes short of going critical, in fact. If you wanted to put a figure on it.”

River reached out and smoothed down the man’s lapels where his two-fisted grip had crumpled them. “You might want to remember this later,” he said. “That you once found all this funny.”

“Can’t wait. Meanwhile, you have an errand to run. And,” and he looked at his watch, “seventy-nine minutes before those men I mentioned start loosening their belts. Do you want to waste any more of them threatening me?”

“What do you want?” River said.

The man told him.

Two minutes after River left the bridge at a run, Marcus Longridge and Shirley Dander emerged from the alley onto Aldersgate Street. Marcus looked one way and Shirley the other. Pedestrians, freshly released from the underground, were trooping across the road at the lights, and more were clustered round the entrance to the gym on the corner. There were buses heading in both directions, and a cyclist who, judging by his disregard for other vehicles, had an organ donor card and was in a hurry to use it; there was a woman in Council livery pushing a dustcart their way, and a man in a grey suit observing all this from the pedestrian bridge into the Barbican. But there was no sign of River Cartwright.

“See him?” Marcus asked.

“Nope,” said Shirley. “You?”

“Nope.” He paused, allowing River one last opportunity to reveal himself, then said, “Fancy an ice cream?”

“Yeah, all right,” Shirley said.

They headed off towards Smithfield, where they were less likely to be spotted.

The man on the bridge had disappeared from sight.

Catherine kept a spare set of doorkeys in a matchbox taped to the underside of her desk, where Louisa had stumbled upon them quite early in her Slough House career. She collected them now, and headed off to St. John’s Wood by cab. It was into the twenties already, bright sunlight blindly bouncing off glass and metal surfaces: enough to make you want to sit in a dark room, even if you didn’t want to do that anyway. She’d never been to Catherine’s flat before. For a while she wondered what that said about her, about the whole of the Slough House crew, and the paper-thin friendships their daily lives were scribbled on, but mostly she concentrated on not thinking; on simply moving in a bubble through London; not being at her desk, not filling the space left by Min.

The flat was in an art deco block, shielded at the front by a well-maintained hedge. Louisa paid the taxi and pocketed the receipt. The block’s rounded edges and metal-framed windows lent it a science-fiction air: this had once been how the future would look. Its tiled and shiny lobby made her sandals clack, but that was the only obvious noise. The whole block seemed unnaturally quiet, as if Catherine weren’t the only occupant to have gone missing. It was a fate Louisa would cheerfully have wished on her own neighbours. Unnatural quiet wasn’t so much of a thing around her way.

Catherine lived on the topmost floor. Louisa rang the bell and waited a full minute before letting herself in, calling Catherine’s name as she did so. No reply. She did a quick scoot through, making sure the place was empty. The bed was made, but that was no surprise—Catherine made a place look neater just by being in it. She was never likely to leave havoc in her wake. There was a landline in the sitting room, but no pad for taking messages; a calendar on the kitchen wall, but nothing marked for the month save a hairdresser’s appointment two weeks hence. A shopping list on the fridge door gave nothing away, and while a pile of books four deep on the bedside table suggested Catherine was a restless reader, none of the scraps used as bookmarks taught Louisa anything. It wasn’t a sterile environment—was a lived-in space—but it held no clues as to where its occupant might have gone. The wardrobe was full, resembling a dresser’s rack from a Merchant-Ivory production, and there was an empty suitcase in the hall closet. Nor was there any sign of those things Catherine might be expected to carry round with her: purse, phone, sunglasses, travel pass. At first glance, it looked like Catherine had had an ordinary morning: had got up and left for work as usual, and whatever had kept her from arriving there had happened en route. But when Louisa checked the dishwasher, she found it full of clean dry crockery long since cooled to normal, and there were no breakfast dishes stacked and ready for the next loading. A palm on the kettle came away stone cold. Either Catherine had left without breakfast, or she hadn’t been here last night.

“Dirty stop-out,” Louisa muttered, but without conviction.

She’d stopped out herself last night, of course. Had got home at seven, time enough to shower and change for work. More than once last year she and Min had spent an evening in a bar, passing comment on the hook-ups happening around them, encounters that increased in desperation the later they occurred, and had congratulated each other on being out of that game. Louisa had been careful never to add “for good” because fate was the kind of attack dog you didn’t want to taunt. But tempting fate or not, “for good” didn’t happen. “For bad” looked like it had come to stay instead.

Enough of that. She checked the bathroom. The air was dry, and there were no damp towels. Catherine hadn’t been here for a day or more.

Louisa returned to the sitting room, trying not to compare and contrast with her own studio flat, which was tiny and crooked and needed serious attention, like maybe arson. Everything here was, if not arranged in straight lines, at least in its proper place, and care had been taken in deciding what that place was. So far, so Catherine. None of this would surprise any of the slow horses, except probably Ho, to whom it wouldn’t have occurred to form an opinion. But it didn’t tell the whole story. This was where the surface Catherine lived, that was all. Which was why there was no wine cache in a cupboard; no spirits in the fridge, or emergency sherry on a dresser. Or even any glasses, or not proper ones. Louisa frequently ran out of glasses, but that was because glass broke easily, not because she was avoiding the issue. Here, it was deliberate, as if the occasional use of a suggestive receptacle, even for a virgin fruit juice, might nudge a scale that would tip the drinker into a puddle outside the nearest bar.

So now came the obvious thought, that Catherine had fallen off the wagon. She knew Catherine was an alcoholic, not because the two women had ever discussed it but because Lamb made reference to it often enough. And one thing everyone knew about alcoholism was, it wasn’t like the flu. You didn’t shake it off and carry on; you tamped it down and hoped it wouldn’t reignite. Which meant anything could have happened; Catherine could have been on her way home and some tiny incident, invisible to everyone else, could have thrown a switch inside her, redirecting her to oblivion. Louisa wouldn’t put it past Lamb, even—who always kept booze in the office—to have tempted her with a taste. Leaving Catherine with an unkillable thirst, and the whole of London mapped with watering holes.

But the image wouldn’t stick. Catherine drunk; Catherine passed out under a hedge, or under a stranger—it was like a punchline to an unsuccessful joke. Because all of Catherine’s ramrod rectitude—the right-angled efficiency of her office; the primness of her dress; the fact that she so rarely swore—these things didn’t make it funny that she’d once been an habitual drinker; they were her defences against ever again becoming one. The same way her flat was, with its places for everything, and all of them filled. Even the private parts of her public life were a form of cover, because they were all joes in the end, all spooks were joes, even those who never set foot outside their secret offices; from the anoracked stoats monitoring phone calls in GCHQ to the intelligence weasels over the river; from the blue-eyed boys and girls on Regent’s Park’s hub to the slow horses themselves, gradually disappearing under reams of yellowing paper—they were all joes, every last spook of them, because they all knew what it was like to live nine-tenths of their lives undercover. It was why they’d joined the Service in the first place: this sneaking suspicion that the whole damn world was hostile. The only ones you could trust were those you worked alongside, and you couldn’t trust them either, because there was no friend falser than another spook. Always, they’d stab you in the back, cut you off at the knees, or just plain die.

Louisa didn’t yet know which of those Catherine had done, but she was certain she hadn’t gone off on a bender. She guessed Lamb thought that too, but she opened her phone to let him know anyway. There was no such thing as too much information.

Seventy-nine minutes . . .

It had not taken the man long to explain what he wanted. He gave the impression of being used to imparting instructions: a class thing, River thought—the country still riddled with this, and especially London: walking talking suits, inflated by their own self-importance, each and every one of them asking for a good hard kick in the slats—

This the beat in the background as he ran.

Bond would have leaped from the bridge onto a passing bus, or drop-kicked a motorcyclist and hijacked his wheels. Bourne would have surfed the streets on car roofs, or slipped into parkour mode, bouncing off walls and wheelie bins, always knowing which alley to cut through . . .

River threw a quick glance at the nearby row of Boris bikes, shook his head, and ran down into the tube station.

Not far from Regent’s Park, below a recently renovated local authority swimming baths, lurk several subterranean levels unknown to the public. Here, Service members—joes and handlers alike; desk staff too, when their annual appraisals demand—undergo various forms of hand-to-hand combat training, partly to improve their chances of surviving assault by an armed opponent, should such circumstances arise, but largely to ensure they can maim an unsuspecting victim should the opportunity present itself. Pens, coffee cups, spectacles, pocket change: all and any can be used to inflict permanent damage on a potential enemy.

How to do the same to a subordinate is a skill you pick up on the job.

There were six of them at the meeting in the Park, five Second Desks and Dame Ingrid Tearney, but to all intents and purposes, four of them might have been the articles of furniture their informal designation suggested. Because, like most other meetings with this cast list, this was all about Tearney and Taverner: Dame Ingrid, who’d helmed the Service for the best part of a decade, and intended to carry on doing so until they gave her a state funeral or made her queen, and Diana Taverner—“Lady Di”—who was Second Desk (Ops), and ruled the hub at Regent’s Park, which gave her life-and-death control over joes in the field, but meant she had to hold doors open for the Dame.

It was no secret that she coveted the top job. But, twelve years younger than Tearney, her window of opportunity was closing with every passing day.

The meeting was about resources. Every meeting was about resources these days, whatever their agenda—the bumpy road of austerity having rattled the Service’s axles as much as anyone else’s—but this one was literally about resources, and how there were going to be fewer of them for the foreseeable future, even though there had already been fewer of them for the recent past. Cuts were in the interests of efficiency, according to a Treasury Department nobody was ever going to mistake for an embodiment of that virtue, and cuts were, more to the point, going to happen, so the Service might as well learn to live with them. Especially since, with the recent reshuffle, the Service had no defender Down the Corridor.

Because their new boss—the new Home Secretary—was Regent’s Park’s loudest critic. The fact that, decades previously, Peter Judd’s application to join the Service had been given the thumbs down was widely held to have played no small part in fostering this antipathy, but his psychological assessment had been so damning—had basically been written in block capitals, using red ink—that even now, old hands agreed, it cut both ways. On the downside, they were paying the price for having pissed off a narcissistic sociopath with family money, a power complex and a talent for bearing a grudge; but on the up, had Judd actually been allowed into the Service, he’d almost certainly have escalated the Cold War into a hot one, if his intervening years in diplomatic roles were anything to go by. But failures in diplomacy often score highly with the public, and Judd’s star remained obstinately in the ascendant. For the moment at least, the Service would have to live with him.

Besides, while it cut both ways, every two-edged sword has a handle. Which was what Tearney was grasping now, preparing to wield the blade where it would do her most good.

“I know this isn’t what any of you want to hear,” she said. “But the figures are in on projected spending levels for the next two quarters. There’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that the bad news isn’t as bad as it might be.” She paused, allowing a rueful grin to sweep round the table like a Mexican wave, breaking only on the stony reef of Diana Taverner. That was fine. Dame Ingrid knew how to play a room, and isolating the troublemaker was always a good move.

She removed her glasses, which were looped round her neck by a chain, and allowed them to drop onto her bosom. Her wig, today, was the blonde halo—a sure indication, for Dame Ingrid–watchers, of serious intent; its downy appearance meant to soften the blows that were coming.

“There’ll be no recruitment at Desk-support level for the remainder of the financial year. In fact, come the Autumn Statement, we might well find ourselves having to shed those appointed within the last two years—I know, I know, and I’m sorry.” She looked it, too. But this was one of Ingrid Tearney’s natural strengths; what she lacked in comeliness, she made up for in apparent empathy. “But these are the realities we’re dealing with, and it will do none of us any good to kick against them.”

Taverner, of course, was first to ignore that.

“I need admin support.”

“But you’re doing so well without it, Diana.”

“Ingrid, I’m spending half my time chasing up office supplies.”

“I’m sure that’s an exaggeration.”

She was sure it wasn’t. Taverner’s junior had transferred across the river a while back, and for ten months she’d been holding down two roles: acting as her own assistant, as she’d put it in a memo. Given the tendency of Taverner’s assistants to burn out within eighteen months tops, there were those who were anticipating a schizophrenic meltdown soon, but Dame Ingrid wasn’t holding her breath. If Diana Taverner ever self-destructed, she’d find a way of doing so to her own advantage.

She said, “Diana. We all know you’ve been hamstrung by the lack of assistance this past year, but Finance feels it’s better to make sacrifices at office level than to risk having to make them on the streets. I’m sure you understand that.”

Because not to do so would have been tantamount to declaring she’d sooner put the public in danger than make her own coffee.

“And besides, and this is something I was going to bring up anyway, it’s not gone unnoticed what a splendid job you’ve been doing flying solo. Finance was most complimentary about your solution to the, ah, logistical difficulties we’ve been facing with Confidential Storage. Most impressive.”

Dame Ingrid’s use of capitals was a trait all were familiar with. It meant footnotes were following.

She said, “For those of you who don’t know, Diana’s solution to our Information Overload was actioned as of the end of Q1, and I believe I’m right in saying that your own sector’s process has now been completed—Diana?”

Taverner gave the slightest of nods; acknowledging not so much the implied praise as Dame Ingrid’s skill in placing it so neatly. Well played. She could already sense the killer thrust which was surely on its way.

But which was temporarily diverted by one of her fellow D2s.

“This would be the rehousing of operational records?”

“That’s right, George,” Ingrid Tearney said sweetly. “So good of you to pay attention. And as we all know, where Ops goes, the rest of us follow, like children trotting after the Pied Piper. There’ll be a memo circulated, but, in brief, we can expect our on-site paperwork mountains to become, well, molehills in the near future. If it works for Ops, it’ll work for everyone. Operations was always going to be the biggest problem. When Ops go wrong it creates so much paperwork.”

“But not as much as our successes do,” Taverner said through not-quite-gritted teeth.

“Of course, my dear. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

“Of course not.”

Confidential Storage, to use Dame Ingrid’s capitals, had long been an issue. Confidentiality was key, obviously, but the rather more prosaic problem of where to keep everything had grown exponentially. Digitalisation was no cure-all: encryption was one thing, and Ingrid Tearney had enormous faith in Regent’s Park’s ability to render all and any information in its possession incomprehensible—it was, after all, a branch of the Civil Service. But fear of records being, to employ the modish word, disambiguated was a lesser concern: a more alarming threat was the cyber-equivalent of a dirty bomb, a virtual attack that would render departmental records so much spam.

The fact was, this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. There were documented activities from her years at the helm Tearney would happily see reduced to a pixelated mash, but the Limitations Committee, with a ministerial hand on its rudder, insisted all such were preserved under Freedom of Information legislation. So, since a nasty cyber-scare two years previously, sensitive records were kept off-grid, either on air-gapped systems or in transcript form, hence the storage difficulties. Anything deemed unsuitable for database entry was either in Molly Doran’s archive, largely dedicated to personal dossiers, or was the individual department’s problem. For Ops, this one had growed like Topsy. Dame Ingrid’s sly jab notwithstanding, operations always produced paperwork: the more secret something needed to be, the more arse-covering was necessary for when it leaked. And nothing covered departmental arse like reams and reams of paper.

For once, it seemed, Ingrid Tearney and Diana Taverner had been of one mind. A Confidential Storage facility was required, separate from Regent’s Park, and ticking three main boxes: acreage, security, and a potential for plausible damage. In other words, somewhere files could safely be said to have been lost to fire and flood, or eaten by rats, or consumed by mould.

And credit where credit was due, thought Tearney—a firm believer in this principle when it suited her—Diana had come up trumps. Which explained the smile Tearney bestowed upon her now, the smile on the face of the owl before it rips the mouse to shreds.

“One might almost say you’re your own worst enemy,” she said. “You’ve been performing these tasks so efficiently, it might almost seem foolish to assign a deputy you can foist them off onto.”

Diana Taverner nodded, upgrading her Well played to Fine shot. Paper-shuffling and throat-clearing from the others, who recognised a shafting when they saw one. Diana Taverner’s chances of getting an admin assistant were being buried in real time, with Ingrid Tearney stamping down the dirt.

At length, Taverner said, “It’s always nice to have one’s efforts appreciated.”

“You’re an ornament to the hub, Diana. I honestly think the Service would grind to a halt without your input. If it weren’t so early, I’d suggest we raise a glass to you. As it is, we really have to press on now and deal with the rest of these matters.”

Diana said, “So there’s no chance of relief, then.”

Dame Ingrid was one hundred percent concern. “Relief? My dear, you’re not feeling stressed, are you? If you’re feeling stressed, then obviously we’ll have to do something about it.”

“I’m not feeling stressed, Ingrid.”

“You’re sure? There’s a very good medical package available, you know, Diana. Absolutely no stigma attached. Just say the word. We’ll ship someone in to man the hub and damn the budget! All that matters is that you’re fighting fit and in full control of all your very commendable abilities.”

A silence fell.

She was not one to fly the white flag, Diana Taverner, but she knew when to make a tactical retreat.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Really.”

“Then let’s continue, shall we?” Dame Ingrid said, and the meeting progressed.

River had read stats on how much of the average Londoner’s life was spent waiting for, travelling on or stuck in public transport: he had a pointlessly good memory for figures, but he’d deliberately suppressed these. Some days you could feel yourself growing older, going nowhere . . . Two minutes on the platform before a train had arrived, six minutes inside it since, leaving what, seventy minutes until deadline? The picture of Catherine seared into his eyeballs: sitting cuffed on a bed, a gag in her mouth. Seventy minutes before her captors loosened their belts . . . His fists were clamped between his knees. He wanted to hit something, ideally the bastard on the bridge. But that would have to wait. The train lurched and hauled itself forward a few yards, then stopped again. He swore to himself, or nearly to himself. It didn’t seem to help.

“This should test your ingenuity,” the man had said.

His tone had that same punchable quality you heard when government ministers dripping with inherited wealth lectured the nation on the culture of entitlement.

Another lurch, and this time the train began to move.

Reaching his destination was one thing; how to go about fulfilling his task once he got there was another. This was one place where his Service ID would be less than no help: he’d stand a better chance if he pulled a gun . . . It was a measure of his state of mind that he gave this more than a moment’s thought. But the nearest gun he knew of was in his grandfather’s safe, miles away.

He unbunched his fists, and stretched his fingers as far as they’d go. Words he’d spoken last night swam into mind, the description of his job he’d favoured James Webb with; that it was designed not just to bore him out of his mind, but to kill his soul one screaming pixel at a time.

Yeah, well, today was turning out a bit different.

And he couldn’t quite quell the little starburst of pleasure this thought gave him, even though that image of Catherine hadn’t left him yet, and even though he hadn’t a hope in hell of fulfilling the task he’d been assigned.

Which of your colleagues would you trust with your life?

None of them would have been the short answer, but Catherine didn’t think that would have sufficed.

But then, parental bonds aside, how many people could answer that without doubt in their hearts? Perhaps there were marriages that strong, though she suspected there weren’t many, and fewer than many married couples thought. Friendships, perhaps. But colleagues . . .

Early in her career, she’d had Charles Partner as her boss. Partner had been a rock of a kind; not the sort you’d want to dash yourself against, but one it was good to know would always be there. Except, of course, he wasn’t, because she’d arrived at his flat one day to find his corpse in the bathtub. This had been after her drying out. Where most anyone else would have shunned her on her return to Regent’s Park—how could First Desk have a recovering alcoholic as a PA?—he’d simply allowed her to slip back into place, and had never spoken of it again. Catherine supposed that that was the greatest act of trust she’d ever had bestowed upon her. Either that, or the way he’d arranged it so she’d be the one to discover his body. It was a difficult call.

And now, instead of Partner, she had Jackson Lamb. Lamb had been Partner’s joe once upon a time, and as fairytales went, that must have been grim indeed. Where Partner had been bank-manager straight—the old kind of bank manager, from the days when they’d been trusted—Lamb was as tightly wrapped as a fart in a colander. This, anyway, was the Lamb who’d come back from his wars, all those years he’d spent hopping this side and that of the Wall. He’s one of a kind, Partner had told her. And so he was, to everyone’s relief. But maybe the Lamb Charles Partner had known had been a different man, one who hadn’t buried himself inside a self-made monster.

In his way, she thought, Lamb had protected her the same way Partner had. When Charles died her career should have died too, but when Jackson Lamb was sent into exile in the reshuffle that followed, he’d taken her with him. And it was true, she knew, that Lamb would never leave a joe in the lurch—having been one himself; having been left there himself, more than likely. So maybe she should have nominated Lamb as the colleague she’d trust with her life, except that there wasn’t much else she’d trust him with. The collateral damage didn’t bear thinking about.

River, though. He’d keep it together. Whatever they asked of him, he’d do his best.

This might turn out to have to be quite good.

Off the train, River took the stairs three at a time, ignoring the “Watch it, mate!” thrown at his back. The sudden brightness of the street pulled him up short: loud traffic, a quantity of pedestrians, the glare and dazzle of a summer’s morning. The heat as thick out here as in the underground, and accompanied with smells of tar and rubber. A clock thumping in his head, reading forty-eight minutes . . .

He crossed the road against the lights, and was nearly clipped by a cyclist—and that too, like the stalling tube train, and the trembling in his knees, seemed familiar, as if racing the clock was an everyday experience, or an everynight one—yes, he thought, running now, leaving the main drag, heading for the leafier areas: that was it. This was the stuff of his dreams. Everyone knew what it felt like, struggling to reach somewhere that receded with every effort made, so your heart felt ready to burst from sheer frustration, though for River it was more of a memory than a suppressed fear; it was what he’d been through, years before, when King’s Cross crashed, and it was all his fault. A training exercise that went wrong, a mis-identified “terrorist”; twenty minutes of slapstick in the morning rush-hour . . .

That was how you got to be a slow horse.

Mind you, he’d had help.

Thank you, Spider Webb.

The pavement widened. There was parkland to his left, behind iron railings, and branches overhead mottling everything with patchy shadow. A couple sat in a parked car, having what looked like a row. River’s lungs were punishing him. Forty-four minutes. He stopped to calm his breathing: no point arriving like a damp rag. He had to look like he belonged, which was exactly what he might have done if not for King’s Cross and Spider bloody Webb . . .

Sometimes, a career went off like a volcano. Somewhere under the ashes of his own hid the glowing coals of what might have been, but only River himself, and possibly his grandfather, still believed they might yet spark back to life. And River only believed that sometimes, and not today.

Today was where he was, though. He ran a hand through his dirty-blond hair, and approached the front door of Regent’s Park.

The meeting had drawn to a close and the Second Desks dispersed, all but Diana Taverner, whom Dame Ingrid addressed on her way out of the door.

“Diana? Could you spare a moment?”

Leaving Diana hovering while Tearney fussed: looking for her glasses, which remained on the chain round her neck; collecting her papers; pausing interminably for no obvious reason, as if struck by an idea whose genius demanded immediate inspection, in absolute stillness. All of it, Diana had no doubt, for the pleasure of making Diana hover.

It was grim. From almost any angle, she knew she held the advantage. Looks: no competition. Height: ditto. Ingrid Tearney was a hobbit of a woman, one Y-chromosome short of being a trainspotter. She did her best—she could afford to—but all the designer labels in the world couldn’t disguise a coypu on a catwalk. Squat body, short legs; and the trio of wigs she regularly rotated, grey, blonde and black, to cover the hair loss she’d suffered in her teens, though moulded by experts to look soft and buttery, still resembled something you might ask to borrow if you needed a bike helmet. Wealth, okay, Tearney had the edge there, but her education was so-so (LSE, as against Diana’s Caius, plus a year at Yale), and her upbringing was Staffordshire or somewhere, one of those counties that only existed because otherwise there’d be gaps in the map. In all those areas Diana Taverner had Tearney beat cold, and if there were any way of making a fair fight out of it, which Diana had been known to resort to when desperate, the result would hardly be in doubt.

But Tearney had other strengths. She was smart—desk smart—committee smart—and what she lacked in sex appeal, she made up for in a nanny-knows-best briskness which cowed the public schoolboy still cloistered inside those other Second Desks, not to mention the weak-kneed politicos of all stripes Down the Corridor. And she had, too, a bred-in-the-bone instinct for knowing how to needle, humiliate and frustrate her underlings. Like now: Diana hovering in the doorway, waiting for her Dameship to finish gathering herself together, which she’d only do once satisfied that Diana was starting to twitch.

Dame Ingrid said, “There. Sorry about that. Walk with me?”

They headed off down the corridor.

“Terribly dull these meetings can be,” Tearney said. “I do appreciate your taking the time to attend.”

Attendance was compulsory. The Service was a corporation like any other.

“I should be on the hub,” Diana said. “Will this take long?”

“I just wanted your confirmation that the records transfer has been completed satisfactorily.”

“As of last month, yes.”

“And we’re talking about records up to Virgil level, yes?”

“As per the brief.”

The grading system changed on a biannual basis, but Virgil was currently the second-highest classification. The service being what it was, this meant that a lot of sensitive data was logged Virgil, on the ground that those most likely to wangle access to intelligence—oversight committees, Cabinet Ministers, TV producers—tended to focus their attentions on the highest grade, Scott-level, on the assumption that this was where the hardcore secrets were. Virgil-level, being more accessible, was generally overlooked. Which didn’t mean Ingrid Tearney wanted those records stored off-site.

“Ingrid, I thought you already knew all this.”

“Merely dotting i’s, my dear. You’ll be warmly acknowledged in HR’s weekly catch-up this morning, I can assure you.”

“I’m so grateful. Was that all?”

“You know, one of the burdens of leadership,” Tearney continued, as if Diana hadn’t spoken, “is not being privy to the gossip below stairs. It can be difficult to take the temperature, if you know what I mean.”

Assuming she was not genuinely being asked if she understood a common idiom, Diana said nothing.

“And it would be good to know precisely how things stand.”

“Well, we’re over-worked, under-resourced and under-appreciated. The general mood more or less reflects this.”

Dame Ingrid laughed, a rather more tinkling sound than you’d expect the warthog to make, Diana thought grudgingly. She said, “I can always rely on you to deliver uncomfortable truths, Diana. That’s one of the reasons you’re such a valuable Second Desk.”

“Is there a problem, Ingrid?”

“Our new overlord is rattling his sabres. He’s spoken of the need for fresh starts, for—I think he said a reboot. Always keen to appear savvy.”

“All new ministers say that.”

“This one means it. Too many skeletons falling out of closets, apparently. As if it were possible to maintain an effective security service without an occasional blurring of the boundaries.”

Which was a polite way of describing, among other faux pas, the wholesale illegal surveillance of the nation’s online footfall, not to mention the toothless surrender of same to a foreign power.

Diana made a non-committal noise.

“We’re not natural allies, are we? You and I.”

“I’m fully committed to the Service,” Diana said. “Always have been. You know that.”

“And you’re currently wondering how best to make that commitment known in the event that Peter Judd succeeds in removing me as head.”

Issuing a denial would have been tantamount to confession. Instead, Diana said, “What makes you think he wants to do that?”

“Because it’s the most obvious way of flexing his muscle, which he’s going to want to practise doing before taking on the PM. Or did you think Home Secretary was the pinnacle of his ambition?”

Nobody over the age of three thought Home Secretary the pinnacle of Peter Judd’s ambition.

“So I thought it best to advise you that any assault PJ makes on the Service won’t stop with lopping off the head. I have it on good authority he’s not keen on the Second Desk role. That he wants an intermediate level built into the command structure, to allow for greater political oversight. This would be by ministerial appointment, you understand. And almost certainly filled from outwith the Service.” She glanced sideways. “As I said, we’re hardly natural allies. But there’s an adage that fits.”

My enemy’s enemy is my friend, Diana supplied mentally. She said, “And I remain fully committed to the Service. As I said. We’ve weathered ministerial interference in the past, Ingrid. Judd might be one of the big beasts when he’s on home ground, but he’s going to have his work cut out for him if he’s taking on Regent’s Park.”

At that moment, her pager buzzed.

Dame Ingrid said, “Thank you, Diana. I’m glad we had this little chat.”

She thinks we’ve made an alliance, Diana thought, as the Service chief nodded in farewell, and moved on down the corridor.

Then she reached for her pager, recognised Security’s number, and called the front desk on her mobile.

“Ma’am? We have a walk-in, an off-site agent. He says you’re expecting him. But there’s nothing on the time sheet.”

“I’m not expecting anyone. Who is it?”

“One River Cartwright.” Security reeled off Cartwright’s Service number.

“Sign him in,” Diana said. “I’ll be on the stairs.”

Thirty-nine minutes . . .

Being in Regent’s Park always gave River a hollow feeling; the same you might get on stepping inside the marital home once the divorce had come through. Well, he said “always.” There’d been a time when that might have been the right word, early in his career, when it was still a “career”; before he’d become persona non grata, which was Latin for slow horse. Since then, he’d been inside its precincts, what, twice? On one of those occasions, summoned by Spider Webb. That had been Spider rubbing it in; letting River know he might as well be in Siberia. Well, Siberia might as well be where Spider was now: all those endless white spaces, bare of life. Was that what being in a coma was like? River hoped never to find out.

At the desk he showed his Service card, and said he was there to see Diana Taverner. An all-or-nothing play; one she’d go for, he hoped, if only to find out what he thought he was doing, turning up at head office—she might let him in just to have him beaten up.

While the security woman paged Taverner, he looked around.

Thirty-eight minutes.

What struck River, as ever, was the dual nature of the building; the Oxbridge kerb-flash a nod to the best traditions of the Service—its history of civilised thuggery—while the modern aspects were sunk below pavement level, safe from dirty bomb and prying eyes alike. On one of its upper corridors hung a portrait of his grandfather. He’d never been that high. You had to be some sort of mandarin.

His attention was being sought.

“. . . Yes?”

“Ms. Taverner will meet you on the staircase.”

This being handy in case she wanted him thrown down it, he surmised.

The woman handed him a laminate on a lanyard, visitor, and pointed him in the right direction.

They’d settled on an Italian place near Smithfield, and were upstairs eating ice cream out of tin bowls: Marcus strawberry and pistachio, Shirley peach and stracciatella. Cutlery scraping against tin was as much conversation as they made until both were about finished, then Shirley nodded towards Marcus’s bowl and plucked her spoon from her mouth with an audible pop.

“That’s a stupid combination. Strawberry and pistachio don’t go.”

“Go well enough for me.”

“Then your taste buds are wrong. Strawberry needs chocolate or else vanilla. Pistachio’s not even a real flavour. They only invented it in like 1997.”

“You’ve been dumped, haven’t you?”

“What do you mean, dumped? What kind of question’s that? We’re talking about ice cream.”

“Right.”

“And no, I haven’t.”

“Right.”

“And even if I had been, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

“Right.”

“And anyway, how can you tell?”

“Christ, I don’t know,” Marcus said. “Maybe it’s the way you’re such a bundle of fun.”

“Piss off.”

“What happened, she meet someone else?”

“Piss off. Why do you assume I’m gay?”

“You’re saying you’re not?”

“I’m saying how would you know? Do I bring my private life into work?”

“Shirley, sharing an office with you lately’s like having my own personal thundercloud, so yes, on balance, you bring your private life into work. Which gives me the right to hear the dirt. Did she meet someone else?”

“And again with the ‘she’ . . . ”

Marcus laid his spoon on a napkin and licked away the hint of a strawberry moustache. “It’s like in books,” he said. “Thrillers, whodunnits, you know? You read much?”

“You got a point to make?”

“In thrillers, when the writer says the killer this, the killer that, and never says if it’s a he or a she, it’s always because it’s a she. And you’re like that with your girlfriend. You never say if it’s a he or a she. Which means it’s a she.”

Shirley sneered. “Maybe I’m just messing with your head.”

“You might be, except you’re not. So what happened? She meet someone else?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough. But that means you have to drop the angry victim act. Deal?”

“You really are a hardass, you know that?”

“Yeah, that used to be my job description.”

“Well not any more it’s not,” Shirley said. “Now you’re a desk jockey, like the rest of us. Get used to it.”

“That’s what I was told months back,” Marcus said, picking up his spoon again. “Still got to shoot someone, didn’t I?”

“I doubt you’ll get that lucky twice.”

“Well just in case I do,” Marcus said, “you know what I don’t need? I don’t need a partner pissing and moaning behind me. That shit throws your aim off.”

Shirley picked up her spoon too, but her bowl was empty. Watching her tap the one against the other, causing a high-pitched note to ring around the room, Marcus was struck, not for the first time, by how intense her concentration could be. With her near–buzz cut and her broad shoulders, an idiot might think her mannish, but there was nothing remotely masculine about her skin tone or her deep brown eyes. Still. Crouched over the ruins of her ice cream, she might almost disappear into androgyny. But either way, she had a right hook could knock you off your feet.

She looked up at him. “Is that what we are? Partners?”

“In the absence of a better offer,” he said.

“In that case, I’ll have another one of these, partner. Butterscotch and mint.”

“Seriously?”

She stared at him, unblinking.

Marcus went to fetch more ice cream.

“Cartwright.”

Taverner, as promised, was on the staircase, a feature which fell on the kerb-flash side of the line, being wide enough to dance down, and boasting, on this particular landing, a narrow window which must have been eight foot tall. Dusty sunlight slanted through it, catching Lady Diana’s hair and roasting a chestnut tinge onto its curls, momentarily distracting River. His mind had blanked. What was he supposed to call her? “Ma’am,” his mouth supplied. A glimpse of her wristwatch, as she glanced at it, reminded him: thirty-six minutes.

She said, “You’re not supposed to be here, you do remember that?”

“Yes, but—”

“And you look a mess.”

“It’s hot out,” he said. “Ma’am.”

It was cooler in here, though; air-con and marbled floors.

“. . . Well?”

They had history, River and Diana Taverner. Not the kind of history people usually meant when they said history, but not far off: treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back—more like a marriage than a love affair. And most of it at a remove, so their actual face-to-face encounters hadn’t been frequent. Here and now, on this landing, his shirt clinging to his back, River was remembering how distracting her presence could be. It wasn’t just her physical attractions; it was the way she visibly weighed up every situation she was in, calibrating the moment to maximise her own advantage.

He said, “It’s about James. James Webb.”

“Ah.”

“I’ve been . . . visiting him.”

Spider had been Taverner’s protégé once, though he’d split what he’d have no doubt called his loyalties fairly evenly between her and Dame Ingrid. At the precise moment he’d been shot by a Russian hood it was hard to tell whose side he was on, though as he’d been mostly on his own back ever since, it probably didn’t matter in the long run.

She said, “You were still friendly? I didn’t realise.”

“We trained together.”

“Not what I asked.”

River said, “We weren’t that friendly in the end, no, but we were close at one time. And he’s got nobody else. No family, I mean.”

He had no idea whether Spider had family or not, but he was busking here. And banking on Taverner not knowing Spider’s family situation either.

“I didn’t realise,” she said. “So . . . what’s his current condition? Any change?”

“Not really.”

Just for an instant, he saw something in her eyes that might have been unfeigned concern. And then he mentally kicked himself—why wouldn’t there have been? She’d worked with him. And here was River, using his former friend’s condition to bluff his way back into the very place Spider had had him exiled from . . . It occurred to him that Spider might have seen the funny side of this. That this small act of treachery was more tribute than revenge.

Thoughts for later.

Thirty-five minutes.

He said, “None at all, in fact. And no real chance of any occurring.”

Taverner glanced away. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the reports,” she said vaguely.

“Then you’ll know. It’s a vegetative state, his brain activity’s almost entirely dormant. A flicker here and there, but . . . And his organs, they’re not functioning on their own. Take him off the machines, and he’ll die in the time it takes a heart to stop beating.”

“You obviously have a point to make.”

“We talked about it once, the two of us. On one of those endurance courses, up on the Black Mountains?”

She gave a brief nod.

“Long story short—” River said.

“Good idea.”

“—if he ever wound up plugged into a wall-socket, if that was all that was keeping him alive, he’d want to be switched off. That’s what he told me.”

“Then that information will be on his personal file.”

“I doubt he ever got round to making an official declaration. He was, what, twenty-four at the time? It wasn’t something he was planning for. But it was something he’d given thought to.”

“If he’d given it a little more thought, he might have noticed planning doesn’t come into it.” Thirty-four minutes. “What exactly are you asking me to do?”

“I just wanted to speak to someone about it. How long is he going to be lying there before a decision is made?”

She said, “You’re talking about letting him die.”

“I’m not sure what the alternative is.”

But a Lamb-like crack came to mind: They could re-skill him. Use him as a speed bump.

She said, “Look, I don’t have time for this right now. Are you sure there’s no family? Weren’t there cousins?”

“Don’t think so.”

“But anyway—it’s hardly a decision we can make standing on a bloody staircase.” She fixed him with a glare, but let it soften. “But I’ll look into it. You’re right. If there’s nobody else to take decisions, the Park will have to do it. Though I’d have thought the medical staff . . . ”

“They’re probably terrified of liability.”

“God. They’re not the only ones.” She looked at her watch again. “Is that it?”

“. . . Yes.”

“You’re not going to explain why you should be back on the hub? Why Slough House is a waste of your talents?”

“Not right now.”

“Good.” She paused. “You’ll be informed. About Webb, I mean. James. Whatever’s decided.”

“Thank you.”

“But don’t do this again. Turn up unannounced. Or you’ll end up downstairs.”

This time there was no softening in her expression.

Thirty-two minutes.

“Off you toddle.”

“Thank you.”

River walked back down the stairs, sure she was watching him every step of the way. But when he reached the bottom and looked back up, she’d gone.

Thirty-one minutes.

Now came the tricky bit.

The man from the bridge was elsewhere now; in Postman’s Park, whose neat little garden was a popular lunch spot for local workers, mostly because of its shelter, the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. The tiles on its walls were dedicated to those who’d given their lives in the attempt, sometimes futile, to rescue others, and recalled Leigh Pitt, who “saved a drowning boy from the canal . . . but sadly was unable to save himself,” and Mary Rogers, who “self-sacrificed by giving up her lifebelt and voluntarily going down in the sinking ship.” Thomas Griffin was fatally scalded in a boiler explosion at a Battersea sugar refinery, returning to search for his mate, while George Elliott and Robert Underhill “successively went down a well to rescue comrades and were poisoned by gas” . . . Sylvester Monteith—“Sly” to those who knew him, or simply suspected his true nature—was drinking iced tea from a polystyrene cup, and wondering why self-sacrifice was deemed so honourable. Every age calls forth its heroes, he supposed. For his own part, he’d come to manhood in the eighties, and his response to any of these emergencies would have been one of pragmatic withdrawal. Later, he would have been among the first to deplore the inadequacy of the equipment at fault, and to enquire about the possibility of furnishing much-improved replacements, at a price that could only be deemed reasonable from the point of view of all future miners, sugar-refinery workers, ship-goers, and foolhardy passers-by. All would be safer, some would get richer, and the world would turn. So it goes.

Meanwhile, to ensure that the world was in fact still turning, Monteith checked his watch. It was some twenty minutes since he’d dispatched River Cartwright on a mission which was as much an act of self-sacrifice as any of those memorialised on the walls of Postman’s Park. That was one of the things they didn’t tell you when you signed up for duty, Monteith thought. That there was a huge divide between those who lit the cannon, and those who flung themselves in front of it. Lighting the cannon was the path to a long, happy life. The one he’d lit for Cartwright was unlikely to prove fatal, but it would make exile at Slough House seem like an extended vacation.

Even fast horses finish at the knacker’s yard. That slow horses get there first was one of life’s little ironies.

He finished his tea and reached for his phone.

Sean Donovan answered on the first ring. It sounded like he was driving.

“You’re on your way?”

“Yes,” said Donovan.

Monteith paused to admire a passing jogger: her hair damp, her T-shirt tight, her head bobbing in rhythm to whatever was pulsing through her earphones.

“How’s our guest?”

“How do you think? She’s unharmed, a little nervous and very pissed off.”

“Well, she won’t have to endure it much longer,” Monteith said. “Not that there’s any harm in giving her a little scare in the meantime.”

Donovan was silent for a moment, then said, “That’s what you want?”

“It is.” The jogger had gone, but the feeling she’d provoked still lingered: a wish to hear a woman squeal. The fact that Monteith wouldn’t hear it mattered less than that he’d have caused it.

He said, “What’s your ETA?”

“Thirty.”

“Don’t be late,” Monteith said, and ended the call.

Collecting his empty cup, he dropped it into a bin, and paused to look once more at the tiles affixed to the shelter’s walls; their fragments of story, each highlighting an ending, because there was nothing to the beginnings and middles that anyone would want to hear about. He shook his head. Then he left the little park and hailed a taxi.

River walked back up the stairs. Behind him, the woman at the security desk called out.

He turned. “I forgot, I need Ms. Taverner’s signature.” He mimed a scribble in the air. “I’ll be one minute.”

“Come back down. I’ll page her again.”

“She’s just there.” He pointed towards the next landing, then waggled his laminated visitor badge. “One minute.” He reached the landing, and was out of sight of the desk.

Thirty minutes.

Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

Truth to tell, Catherine Standish was no longer at the front of his mind. The op was the op. This was enemy territory, and the fact that it was also headquarters simply gave it an extra edge.

He pushed through a pair of swing doors. River was coasting on memory, an imperfect blueprint in his head, but there ought to be lifts here. Unclipping the laminate from his shirt, he stuffed it into a pocket, and yes, here they were, in a thankfully unpeopled lobby. What he’d have done had Lady Di been waiting was a question for another life.

Pressing the button, he fished his mobile out. Regent’s Park’s front desk was still in his contact list: unused for years, but still stored because . . .

Because you always hung onto the numbers, in case your old life was given back.

It was answered on the second ring.

“Security.”

“Possible threat,” he said, pitching his voice low.

“Who is this?”

“There’s a couple in a car out front, twenty yards down the road. Making like a lovers’ quarrel, but the male is armed. I repeat, the male is armed. Suggest immediate response.”

“Could I have your—”

“Immediate response,” River repeated, and ended the call.

That might keep everyone occupied for a little while.

The lift arrived and he stepped into it.

Sean Donovan was entering London from the west. The van’s air-con was unreliable, so until Monteith’s call he’d been driving with the windows open, the twin blasts nearly cooling the interior. But now he closed them to ring Traynor, who answered in his usual way:

“Here.”

He didn’t ask Traynor if everything was okay. Benjamin Traynor had served with him in hot places; crouched with him behind walls being pounded to dust above their heads. If Traynor couldn’t handle one middle-aged woman in an attic, they should both reconsider their futures. Especially the next twenty-four hours.

He said, “I’m in the city. Everything’s on schedule.”

“I’ll pull out soon. Spoken to the . . . boss?”

Donovan said, “He’d like you to put a scare into the lady.”

“Put a scare into her.”

“His exact words. ‘No harm in giving her a little scare.’”

Traynor said, “Well, he’s in charge.”

“Where’s the kid?”

The kid, whom Catherine had dubbed “Bailey” for some reason.

“Out front. Just in case.”

“He’s a tryer, isn’t he?”

“Doesn’t hurt to stay alert,” Traynor recited. All those hot places, all those pulverised walls, and he still kept an eye out for the newbies. Of course, he hadn’t spent five years counting the bricks in a series of small rooms. “He’s a good kid.”

“Like his sister,” Donovan said.

“Yeah. Like his sister.”

He ended the call and wound the windows down again. What came blasting into the cab was all petrol and scorched rubber, but anything that didn’t taste of prison smelt like freedom. He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes before meeting Monteith: a car park off the Euston Road. He’d make it with time to spare.

A lot could go wrong, but it wouldn’t be this bit.

Some lifts descended further than River wanted to go. This one didn’t—it was standard, staff-for-the-use-of—but there were others which required top clearance and disappeared deep into London’s bowels, offering access to secure crisis-management facilities, and even a rumoured top-secret underground transport system; a rumour River had regarded with scepticism until he’d learned that it had been officially denied. That there were other areas where deniable interrogations took place, he’d taken as read. Such were the foundations on which security is built.

But he was heading towards the level where the records rooms were.

He’d rarely had occasion to visit these in his time at Regent’s Park, but knew from conversations with his grandfather, the O.B., that they’d long been in danger of reaching capacity, containing as they did hundreds of yards, miles even, of hard-copy information: reports and records, personnel files, transcripts and minutes of varying levels of sensitivity. River had affected surprise that physical documents remained the mainstay of the Park’s archives, but only to give the O.B. the opportunity of riding one of his favourite hobby horses.

“Oh,” the Old Bastard, a purely affectionate monicker, said, “they had to rethink a lot of those early storage protocols, once they realised computers were like bank vaults. Nice and secure, safe as houses, right up to the moment someone blows the doors off and walks away with the loot.”

On the most recent occasion on which they’d had this conversation, it had been late evening: rain pattering on the windows, brandy splashing with almost as much regularity into their glasses.

“Because computers talk to each other, River—that’s what they’re for. Your generation can’t boil an egg without going online, you rely on them for everything, but you tend to overlook their major function. Which is that they store information, but only in order to divulge it.”

Which River had known, of course. Knew that was why the Queens of the Database worked on air-gapped systems, their USB ports gummed up to prevent flash drives being inserted. The Queens had to skip from one row of computers to another to go online—internet and internot being the waggish coinage. Electronic poaching had replaced the nuclear threat as the Big Fear. The Service liked to steal, but it hated getting robbed.

Give a born thief like Roderick Ho five minutes with an internet connection, River thought, and he’d bring back the PM’s vetting history, if it was out there to be snaffled.

Which was why the PM’s vetting history wasn’t held online, but stored in the Park’s personnel archive, on the level River was heading to now.

It was definitely a double-decker bus. One of the old-fashioned type, with a deck you could jump onto as it pulled away, if you didn’t mind being shouted at by the conductor. It was open topped, its upper deck shrouded in canvas, and was parked head-on to the house, so Catherine could see its destination window, which read hop aboard! There were no other vehicles in sight. She’d been right about the outhouses, though; three smaller, bluntly functional buildings, flat-sided, windowless, with sloping roofs. Garages or storage units. Nothing looked currently in use. It was as if her captors had stumbled on this place as a vacant possession, and taken advantage. Except that stumbling on things didn’t fit into Sean Donovan’s worldview. Any mission he was on would be double-plotted; every detail stress-tested for the unexpected, the potential loose screw.

A sudden bitter thought flared. A loose screw—that’s all I was to him then.

So what am I now?

She had been awake for hours; had barely slept. Too much confusion flying around her mind, and this question the biggest of them all: What am I now? A figure out of Donovan’s past, snatched into his present—why? She couldn’t pretend it was because of anything she meant to him; it had to be because of what she did. And what she did was nothing much; was only tangentially Secret Service. What she did was Jackson Lamb’s paper-shuffling; organising the slow horses’ ditchwater-dull number-crunching into what resembled reports, which she then parcelled off to Regent’s Park so they could be officially ignored. If anything they’d done at Slough House lately warranted this kind of excitement, it had passed her by . . . Hours ago, lying on the narrow bed thinking all this, she’d heard the front door closing, and had reached the window in time to see Donovan climbing into the van they’d fetched her here in. He’d driven down the track, turned into the lane, and vanished from sight.

Whatever was happening, there was no stopping it now.

The light on this corridor, three levels below where he’d been talking to Diana Taverner, was blue-tinted, as if replicating the effect of dusk in the outside world. It was mildly disorienting, stepping out of the lift: not only the light, but the blank white walls and tiled white floor. Below the surface, everything changed. Wood panelling and marbled surfaces were nowhere to be seen.

Behind him the lift door closed, and machinery murmured.

Twenty-eight minutes.

So far, no alarms. River had left his pass in the lift, in case it was chipped so Security could track him. He hoped they’d been distracted by the pair of armed terrorists down the road, but it wouldn’t take long to shoot them and get back to work. And he had twenty-eight minutes, or twenty-seven, to retrieve the file the man in the suit wanted, so his thugs wouldn’t vent their poor impulse control on Catherine.

“. . . Break into the Park? Seriously?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

The thing was, he almost had. It was that supercilious smirk he’d worn, the upper-class sneer.

“I’ll keep it simple. You don’t even have to steal it. Pictures will do fine.”

“They don’t let you just walk in,” River had said, stupidly.

“We’d hardly have needed to take your colleague if they did.”

Through an open door down the corridor, a figure appeared.

She was quite round, with a messy cap of hair, and her face was a thick white mask of powder; a childish attempt to make up as a clown, was River’s first thought. But there was nothing childish about her eyes, which were steely-grey as her hair; and nothing of the toy about her wheelchair, which was cherry-coloured, with thick wheels, and looked capable of powering itself over or through any manner of obstacle: a closed door, an enemy trench, River Cartwright.

And this was Molly Doran, of whom he’d heard much, some of it good.

She rolled towards him, head to one side. A faint ping from the closed shaft behind him was the lift stopping on another floor, but could as easily have been this woman beginning to speak: he’d not have been surprised if she vented in a series of pips and squeaks—nothing to do with the wheelchair (he told himself); everything to do with that doll-like face, its porcelain veneer.

But her voice, when she spoke, was standard-issue, no-nonsense, mid-morning BBC.

“One of Jackson’s cubs, aren’t you?”

“I . . . Yes. That’s right.”

“What’s he after this time?”

Without waiting for a response she reversed through the doorway she’d appeared from. River followed her, into a long room not unlike a library stack, or what he imagined a library stack looked like: row upon row of upright cabinets set on tracks which would allow for their being accordioned together when not in use, and each stuffed with cardboard files and folders. Somewhere along this lot was the file he’d been told to steal. No, keep it simple. He only had to photograph its contents.

Molly Doran slotted neatly into a cubbyhole designed to accommodate her wheelchair. Her legs were missing below the knee. For all the tales River had heard about her, not one had ever laid down the indisputable truth as to how she’d lost them. The only thing all accounts agreed on was that it was a loss—that she’d once had legs.

She said, “Maybe you didn’t hear me. What’s he after this time?”

“A file,” River said.

“A file. So you’ll have the requisition form then.”

“Well. You know Jackson.”

“I certainly did.”

She was a bird of a woman, though not the usual bird people meant when they used that phrase. A penguin, perhaps; a short fat bird in squatting mode, head tipped to one side; her nose becoming beakish as her head jutted upward. “What did you say your name was?”

“Cartwright.”

“I thought so . . . You’ve the look of him. Your grandfather.”

He could feel himself becoming heavier, as if the time ticking past was accruing weight, loading him down with the consequences of its passing.

“It’s around the eyes. The shape of them, mostly. How is he?”

“He’s sprightly.”

“Sprightly. There’s an old person’s word if ever there was. Women are feisty and old people sprightly. Except when they’re not, of course. What’s this file Jackson’s after?”

River began to recite the number the man on the bridge had given him, but she cut him off.

“I meant what’s it about, dear? What interest does our Mr. Lamb have in it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Keeps you in the dark, does he?”

“You know Jackson,” he said again.

“Better than you, I expect.” She appraised him. “How did you get in?”

“Get in?”

“Upstairs. Or have they adopted an open-door policy since this morning?”

“I made an appointment.”

“Not with me you didn’t. Where’s your laminate?”

“I had a meeting with Lady Di.”

“My, aren’t we grand. I didn’t know she lowered herself to parleying with exiles. Or does your grandfather’s name open doors?”

“I’ve never relied on it,” River said.

“Of course not. Or you wouldn’t be a slow horse.”

River didn’t care to follow this thread. And the seconds were ticking away. It occurred to him to take out his phone and show this woman the image of Catherine. All he’d have to do was ask her help.

And Security would be kicking down the doors a moment later.

She said suddenly, “How is he?”

Without needing to ask, he knew she’d changed the subject.

“Lamb? Same as ever,” he said.

She laughed. It wasn’t an especially happy sound. “I doubt that,” she said.

“Believe me,” River said. “There’s been no improvement.”

Twenty minutes now, if that. And he didn’t just have to trace the file and photograph its contents, he had to get somewhere he could transmit them, which meant leaving the Park. Anywhere inside these walls, trying to send an attachment out would be sounding a fire alarm.

The couple in the car would have been checked out by now. His own failure to reappear would have been noted. He doubted they’d put the building into lockdown—he was only a slow horse; could easily have got lost—but they’d send people looking, and soon. He had to make a move. But Molly Doran was talking.

“Jackson Lamb’s lived so long under the bridge he’s half-troll himself now. But you should have met him a lifetime ago.”

“Yeah,” said River. “I bet he was a heartbreaker.”

She laughed. “He was never an oil painting, don’t worry about that. But he had something. You’re too young and pretty to understand. But a girl could lose her heart to him. Or other parts of her body.”

“About this file.”

“For which you don’t have a chitty.”

“Even when he was young, and girls were losing their hearts to him,” River said, “did you ever know him to fill out a form?”

“That’s smooth. I like that.” Without warning, Molly rolled forwards, so her chair was back in the aisle. “You get that from your grandfather, I expect.”

“The thing is,” River said. He leaned forward, bending so his mouth was near her ear. “I’m not entirely supposed to be here.”

“You amaze me.”

“But since I had an appointment with Lady Di anyway, and knowing Jackson needed to see this file . . . ”

“You thought you’d kill two birds with one stone.”

“Precisely.”

“Maybe you’ve picked up a bit of him to go with your grandpa,” Molly said. “Jackson was never one for going round the houses. Not when he could drive a battering ram through them.”

“I told you he was the same as ever.”

“What was the file you wanted?”

He repeated the number. He’d always had a good memory for numbers; he had, too, a good memory for the man on the bridge. He hoped they’d meet again.

“That’s curious,” Molly Doran said.

“How so?”

“Slough House is all closed cases and blind alleys, isn’t it? Nothing live, nothing contagious. That’s what I’ve always heard.”

“We crunch numbers,” River admitted. “And chase tails. If anything interesting popped up, we’d probably hand it over to the Park.”

“Probably?”

“It hasn’t happened yet.”

Fifteen minutes. Or fourteen. Or twelve. He’d studied Molly Doran’s face as he gave her the number, but not by the slightest eye movement had she indicated in which direction the file might be found. And without some kind of clue, he could wander round here for hours without coming close. The last kind of system a Molly Doran would have would be one where the numbers explained where they were.

“Then what’s happening now?” she asked. “Because this file’s most definitely live. What with its subject being the Prime Minister and all.”

Her tone hadn’t changed.

Someone walked down the corridor, their heels loud as boots on cobbles. When they paused, River felt his heart do the same. Something hummed and something murmured, and that was the lift door opening. The boots found their way inside, and the hum and murmur repeated themselves in reverse.

All this while, her eyes were breaking him down like Lego.

“Can I tell you the truth?” he said.

“I really don’t know,” Molly said. “But it might be interesting finding out.”

“Jackson’s in one of his . . . playful moods.”

“He has those,” she agreed.

“Right.”

“About as often as I go jogging.”

“There’s a bet involved.”

“That sounds more plausible.”

“He bet me I couldn’t find out the PM’s schoolboy nickname.”

“And Wikipedia isn’t helping?”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you? I expect he’s got someone wiping it.”

“So a quick glance would be all you need.”

“That’s right.”

“And maybe I should turn round while you’re doing that. A quick three-pointer.”

“. . . If you like.”

“Well, if I wasn’t watching, I wouldn’t be involved, would I? So that would save me being your accomplice while you break the Official Secrets Act. And I really can’t be doing with a five-year stretch in Holloway. Prison food plays havoc with the digestion, so I’ve read.”

River didn’t have to turn to know they had company. As he felt his arms gripped from behind, and the plastic restraints clip into place, he was conscious mostly of Molly Doran’s gaze, which was partly pitying, partly curious, as if his behaviour was beyond anything she could readily understand. And this from a woman familiar with Jackson Lamb, he thought. I must really be in trouble.

She didn’t speak again as he was taken, moderately politely, from the room.

When Catherine heard the padlock being shifted, she sat up on the bed, feet on the floor. Wasn’t this how prisoners responded to a rattle on their chain?

She’d thought it would be Bailey again—the young man who’d taken her photo—but it was the second soldier; the one whose presence at the Angel had driven her back onto the streets. Like Sean Donovan, he had the lifetime soldier’s way of entering a room: taking it all in in one sweeping glance. Nothing could have changed since the last time he’d been in here, but that was no reason for taking chances. This done, his gaze rested on Catherine.

She waited.

“Sorry about this,” he began.

But he didn’t look sorry.

Time was, walking up Slough House’s stairs made every day midwinter for Louisa. Now, she carried her own weather with her. Stepping through the yard, pushing open the door that always stuck, didn’t affect her. It was a mood she was already part of, wherever she happened to be.

On the first landing she stopped at Ho’s office. Ho was at his desk, four flat screens angled in front of him as if he were catching a tan. He was nodding in time to something, which the well-padded earphones dwarfing his head suggested might be music, but could as easily be the binary rhythms of whatever code was conjuring the images swarming on his screens. More than once she’d come into this room and he hadn’t even noticed, though he’d configured his workstation for a view of the door: when he was in the zone, if the webheads still said that, it was like he’d relocated to the moon. Because while Roderick Ho was a dick, that was only the most obvious thing about him, not the most important. Most important was, he knew his way round the cybersphere. This was arguably the only thing keeping him alive. If he weren’t occasionally useful, Marcus or Shirley would have battered him into a porridge by now.

But today he wasn’t on the moon because he was watching her as she stepped into his office. He even pulled his earphones off. That put him in Jane Austen territory, etiquette-wise: Louisa had known him to hold a palm up, as if warding off traffic, if he suspected somebody was about to speak when he was doing something more interesting, like popping a cola can, or preparing to exhale.

He said, “Hello.”

. . . That was weird.

“You feeling all right?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why?”

“No reason. Can you trace Catherine’s phone?”

“No.”

“I thought you could do that. GPS. Whatever.”

“I can, but only if it’s on. And it’s not on.”

“You already tried? Was that your idea?”

He shrugged.

Marcus was standing behind her now; Shirley too. Marcus said, “You didn’t find her, then.”

Shirley said, “We didn’t find Cartwright either.”

“I can tell,” Louisa said. “Here, you missed a bit.”

She touched her upper lip, and Shirley rubbed her own, obliterating a smudge of ice cream. She scowled at Marcus. “You could have said.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Ho was watching all this as if it were taking place behind bars. Louisa said to him, “How about River’s phone?”

He shrugged again, sulkily this time. “I’d need his number.”

Louisa read it out to him off her own.

Ho said, “Have you got everyone’s number in there?”

“No.”

Shirley nudged Marcus.

Ho’s fingers started salsa-ing across his keyboard.

Louisa walked to the window. Same view as from hers, but lower down. She thought: when I joined the Service, this was not what I was expecting. The same view every day, with minor variations.

For a while last year that had seemed less important, but like everything else, this had turned out a false reprieve. Life’s cruellest trick was letting the light in, just enough so you knew where everything was, then shutting it off without warning. She’d been bumping into the furniture ever since.

Back in her flat, replastered into a section of wall behind her fridge, was a fingernail-sized uncut diamond, booty from a heist she’d helped derail. She had no idea how much it was worth, but couldn’t see that it mattered much.

Min, you stupid bastard, why did you have to die?

And then she shut that thought off because there was nowhere it could lead her that would do anyone any good.

Ho finished tapping. “Cartwright’s blocked,” he said.

“What do you mean, blocked?”

“His phone’s on, but he’s somewhere that’s scrambling the signal.”

“Like somewhere with thick walls?”

Marcus said, “No, like somewhere with the ability to fuck with GPS.”

“Golly,” said Shirley, who’d been Comms in her pre-Slough House life. “Wonder where that might be?”

The room he’d been locked in was underground; its only window one-way, and that from the other side. From where River stood it was a mirror. About a metre square, it threw back at him the room’s blankness and his own oddly calm exterior. Inside his chest his heart thumped like a little drummer boy: all beat and no tune.

The minutes he’d been counting down were long gone, and their deadline history. These men have poor impulse control . . . Soon they’ll be loosening their belts. He watched his reflected hands curl into fists. He’d made more than one poor choice this morning. Principally, he should have stayed on the bridge and dropped the man off it. Whatever happened to Catherine would have happened anyway, but at least he’d have wiped the smirk off that chancer’s face.

And why didn’t I do that? he asked himself.

He’d have sat, but there was nowhere to sit. The room was bare; a cube, near enough. There was no handle on the door. There was no visible light fitting either, though the ceiling emitted a steady bluish glow, which lent his reflection an alien cast. Alien, except he belonged here. It was where he’d willed himself, as much as if he’d offered his wrists to Lady Di half an hour ago. Lock me up, he should have said. I’m here to steal, and I don’t have a prayer.

There were protocols, and even a slow horse knew them. Slow horses, after all, underwent the same training as any other kind. Threats to fellow officers, actual physical danger, required immediate, official response: the line of command in River’s case ran upstairs through Slough House and onto the desk of Jackson Lamb. Who, for all his faults—and that wasn’t a short list—would walk through fire for a joe in peril; or make someone walk through fire. By ignoring that, River had stepped across the chalk line, and by bluffing his way into the Park, he’d made things worse twice over.

So they took you in, they trained you up, they prepared you for a life you’d be expected to risk when the occasion demanded, and then they locked you in an office with a view of a bus stop, and made you pour your energy, your commitment, your desire to serve into a sinkhole of never-ending drudgery. Of course he’d gone off reservation. He’d been ripe for it, and whoever had fingered him for this morning’s fun and games had known it from the beginning.

Had they also known he’d screw up?

River leaned against a wall, hands on his head, fingers laced, and wondered what his grandfather was going to say. The Old Bastard had steered the Service through the Cold War without ever actually taking the helm—the real power, he’d told River more than once, lay in having one hand on the elbow of whoever was in charge. If not for the O.B. he’d have been out on the pavement after the King’s Cross fiasco. But not even his grandfather could protect him this time.

The door opened without warning, and Nick Duffy came in carrying a plastic bucket seat.

Duffy was in charge of the Service’s internal police; the Dogs as they were called. The position was more akin to enforcer than executive, and the Dogs were kept on a pretty long leash, so Duffy’s role basically meant he could bite whoever he liked, and not expect more than a tap on the nose. The way he slammed the chair down, and the angry squeak its legs made scraping along the floor, suggested he was in a biting mood. The grim smile he summoned for River confirmed it. Other than the chair he’d brought nothing into the room with him, but when he straddled it backwards, the hands he gripped it with were calloused at the knuckles.

But it was the fact that he was wearing a tracksuit that gave River most cause for concern.

Tracksuits were what you wore when things might get messy.

As mornings go, Dame Ingrid’s hadn’t been a bad one. Pulling Diana Taverner’s tail was always a useful exercise, and sounding her out afterwards had nicely muddied the waters. It was always a good idea to make a predator think you’re more vulnerable than you are. When Peter Judd made his inevitable move to stamp his newfound authority onto the Service, Dame Ingrid would at least know where on the battlefield Taverner would be. She’d be right behind Ingrid, looking for her weak spot.

It used to be simpler. There was the Service, and there were the nation’s enemies. These changed identity every so often, depending on who’d been elected, deposed or assassinated, but by and large the boundaries were clear: you spied on your foes, kept tabs on the neutrals, and every so often got a chance to fuck up your friends in a plausibly deniable way. A bit like school, but with fewer rules. Nowadays, though, in between monitoring the nation’s phone calls and scanning the latest whistle-blower’s Twitter feed, geopolitics barely got a look-in. If asked to list the greatest threats to the nation’s security, Ingrid Tearney would start with ministers and colleagues. Working out precisely where Ansar al-Islam came seemed little more than academic.

But you worked with what you had. Dame Ingrid was a great believer in occupying the here and now: if the Great Game had deteriorated to the status of the Latest App, so be it. So long as there was a podium for the winner, she knew where she wanted to end up.

On her desk was the usual collection of documents for signing: the minutes of the morning’s meeting; various reports from various departments. A memo on top, suggesting she ring Security, had appeared while she’d been out of the room. Security meant internal, so whatever had just happened, it probably wasn’t a threat to the nation. She rang downstairs anyway; was put through to the Kennel—the inevitable in-house name for the Dogs’ office—and given a twenty-second summary of an off-site agent’s incursion into the Park.

“And where is he now?”

“Downstairs. Mr. Duffy’s talking to him.”

It was a frequently regretted state of affairs, being talked to by Mr. Duffy.

She said, “Is there any obvious reason for—what was his name?”

“Cartwright. River Cartwright.”

“Any obvious reason for Cartwright’s presence?”

“He’s Slough House, ma’am.”

“That’s context, certainly. I’m not sure it’s a reason. Okay, let’s let Mr. Duffy deal with it. Have him call me when he’s done.”

Cartwright, she thought. Grandson of, if she wasn’t mistaken.

She shook her head. Probably nothing.

She’d barely picked her pen up before the phone rang again.

Nick Duffy said, “Every morning I wake up and think, who’s going to mess with my karma today? Because there’s always someone. Job like mine, you rarely get the chance to sit back, read the papers and watch the clock till opening time.”

For a moment River had thought Duffy was going to mime the sitting-back part of that, but the older man knew what he was doing. He tilted the chair slightly was all, then let its legs slam back down. River didn’t blink. This was pantomime. So far, Duffy hadn’t said anything he’d not have said a hundred times before.

“No, because there’s always someone got his tit in a wringer, and it’s Muggins here has to pry it free. Left your Service card in the pub? Let’s have Nick sort it out. Unwise conversation with an over-friendly reptile? Let’s see if Nick can’t smooth over the traces. Shagged the wrong bit of spare at the embassy disco? Don’t worry, Nick’ll throw a fright into her minder. You know the type of thing. We have a code for it in the Dogs. We call it the Really Dumb Shit.”

Hoping to short circuit this, River said, “Am I under arrest?”

“So usually, see, I’m just a glorified au pair, making sure everything’s tidied away nicely, no lasting ramifications, no nasty surprises in the tabloids. But what do we have today? Something special. Somebody’s ambled into the Park on my watch, and thinks they can take the Really Dumb Shit onto a whole new level.”

“Because if I am, I get a phone call, right?”

“And this is a serving agent, I’ll grant you, but one with less security clearance than we give the janitors round here. Because the janitors get up close and personal with some nasty crap.” He shifted position suddenly, and River knew he was changing gear. “Whereas you, Mr. Cartwright, of Slough House, Barbican way, the most classified information you’re privy to is whether the fifty-six bus is on time or not. And you’re only allowed to share that if you get written permission from a superior. Which would be just about anybody, yes? Correct me if I’m wrong.”

River said, “So I don’t get a phone call.”

“Of course you don’t get a fucking phone call. You’ll be lucky to get a blindfold.”

“Because it would be handy to have my phone back. There’s something on it you need to see.”

“What I need and what you think I need are likely to be very different things, Cartwright. Let’s see if I’ve got the order of events straight. You waltz into the Park without authorisation. You drag Ms. Taverner out of a meeting, spout crap about Mr. Webb, a colleague who might be incapacitated but, unlike you, remains an officer of good standing—”

“He wasn’t standing last time I saw him.”

Duffy paused. “You’ve been buddying up to Jackson Lamb for too long. That wasn’t funny and doesn’t help.”

River said, “I came here for a reason.”

“I’m sure you did. But I don’t fucking care. You were found in a restricted access area, and according to Molly Doran you were planning on putting your hands on a classified file. A very classified file. You know the penalty for breaches of the Official Secrets Act?”

“I didn’t breach the Act.”

“Attempted breach. You know the penalty? They’re not going to have you picking up litter, Cartwright. This isn’t some ASBO offence. You’re a member of the Service, a fuck-up member right enough but you carry a card and you’re on the books. Which makes what you did not some petty offence; it puts it into the realm of treason. What were you planning on doing with the file? That’s what I need to know. Who were you planning on selling it to?”

Lamb had taken his shoes off and his office smelled of socks, which was the fourth worst thing Louisa remembered it smelling of. She took a breath, stepped across the threshold and told him what Ho had just told her.

“He’s back at the Park?” Lamb considered this for a moment. “That’d make his grandad proud, if he was still alive.”

“He is still alive, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but finding out Junior’s been arrested’ll probably kill him,” Lamb said reasonably.

“What makes you think he’s been arrested?”

“If his phone’s blocked, it means he’s downstairs. And if he’s downstairs, it’s not because they’ve opened the dungeons to the public.”

Louisa, remembering tales she’d heard of below-stairs interrogations at the Park, wondered what the hell had River done to wind up there. And how he had managed it so quickly. It was only a couple of hours since they’d both been in the kitchen, making coffee. He’d asked her where Catherine was. And Catherine was still nowhere.

She said, “It’s not a coincidence.”

“What, him and Standish both going AWOL? I doubt it.”

“So what do we do?”

“I do what I always do. And you do whatever you were doing yesterday.” With dexterity surprising in one so large, Lamb raised his right foot and rested it on his left knee. He began massaging it roughly. “Census project, right?”

“So we all just carry on as normal.”

“As if you were normal, yes. Nothing like ambition.” He grabbed a pencil from his desk, and began using it as a scratcher, working it between his toes. “Are you still here?”

“What’ll happen to River?”

“When they’ve finished stripping the flesh from his bones, I expect they’ll send him back. He’ll only make the place untidy otherwise.”

“Seriously.”

“That wasn’t serious? Which part of it did you find funny?”

“You’ve got two joes missing, and you’re just going to sit there making holes in your socks?”

“None of you are joes, Guy. You’re just a bunch of fuck-ups who got lucky.”

“This is lucky?”

Lamb’s lip curled. “I didn’t say what kind of luck.”

He tossed the pencil back onto the desk, where it kept on rolling until it dropped off the other side.

Louisa said, “We’re not joes, no. But we’re your joes. You know that.”

“Don’t get carried away. This is Slough House. It isn’t Spooks.”

“You’re telling me. It’s barely Jackanory.” She took a step into the room. “But you think something’s happened to Catherine, or you wouldn’t have sent me round to her flat. And whatever River was up to has to have something to do with that. So no, I’m not going back to the census project. Not until you tell me what you’re going to do about it.”

It was dark in Lamb’s room, as usual; he’d closed the blinds and turned his low-wattage desk lamp on. This sat on a pile of telephone directories, long since rendered obsolete, and the shadows it cast mostly confined themselves to floor level, where they crawled about like spiders. The ceiling sloped and the floorboards creaked, and such things as he’d hung on the walls—a cork notice board on which clipped coupons faded to brittle yellow dustiness, like the corpses of pinned moths, and a smeary-glassed print of a bridge over a foreign-looking river, which had almost certainly come from a charity shop—served to underline the general creepiness. It wasn’t a cosy atmosphere he aimed for, and the look he directed at Louisa now underlined that fact.

“I think you’re forgetting who’s top banana round here.”

“No. I’m just reminding you that you are.”

She was expecting one of his leers, or perhaps a raspberry, or even a fart—there’d been indications in the past that he could deliver these at will, unless he was just unusually lucky with his timing. But instead Lamb put his foot heavily on the floor, and leaned back in his chair so far it audibly strained. In place of his usual repertoire of grimaces, his face seemed blank, lineless almost; a passive mask behind which she could sense his thoughts rolling around themselves.

At last he said, “I’ll make a call,” with all the enthusiasm of one preparing to tote a barge, or lift a bale.

Louisa nodded, remaining where she was.

“It’s a phone call, not a shag. I don’t need someone watching to make sure I’m doing it right.”

That wasn’t an image Louisa wanted in her head. She left him to it, but didn’t close the door on her way out.

“What were you planning on doing with the file?” Duffy said. “And who were you planning on selling it to?”

“I wasn’t going to sell it.”

“Course not. Going to keep it for a little bedtime reading, right?” Duffy stood and pushed the chair, which fell flat on the floor. “Rub one out while rummaging through the PM’s little secrets.”

“Does he really have secrets worth rubbing one out to?”

Duffy paused in front of the mirror, pretending it was a mirror. He ran a hand through his cropped hair, maybe checking for bald patches. Or perhaps making secret hand signals to whoever was on the other side.

He said, “What’s really funny is you finding this funny.”

“I’m not.”

“Because this is one joke’s going to have to last you an awful long time. Couple of years down the road, you might have trouble squeezing any more chuckles from it.” He took a step towards River, who was leaning against the wall, and stood directly in front of him. River could smell the fabric conditioner he’d used on his tracksuit. Duffy had put it on fresh from the wash.

He said, “They have Catherine Standish.”

“Standish.”

“There was a photograph. Came to my phone from hers. It was taken this morning, last night. They wanted the file.”

“Standish,” Duffy said again. “She’s another of your special needs crew, right?”

“Can I be there when you say that to Lamb?”

“You don’t get to be anywhere without somebody’s say-so, Cartwright. Your whole future’s one long yes-sir, no-sir.”

That sounded horribly plausible. And River was scared, because Duffy was good at this, but he was scareder, somehow, of letting it show.

Not letting it show was all he had left right now.

“They’ve got Catherine Standish, and somebody needs to go find her. The picture’s on my phone. Whoever’s behind that mirror needs to take a look at it now.”

“This isn’t about your amateur porn collection, Cartwright. It’s about your attempt to steal the PM’s vetting file. Did you really think you’d get away with that?”

“The guy I spoke to was early fifties, five nine. Grey suit, yellow tie, black shoes. Dark hair going silver at the temples. English, white, upper-class accent—”

Duffy slammed his left hand against the wall, an inch from River’s ear. “And he’s your buyer, right? He’s the man instructed you to break into the Park.”

“I didn’t break in.”

“Well you weren’t fucking invited. Where’d this happen?”

“Over by Barbican.”

“And this toff what, dropped in on Slough House?”

“I told you, he sent—”

Duffy slammed his other hand against the wall, and leaned forward so his forehead was almost touching River’s. “You want to know why I’m having trouble believing this fairy story, Cartwright?”

“Look at my phone.”

“It’s because if any of it even remotely happened, you know where you’d be now? Back at your desk, doing your job. Having reported all these . . . unusual events to your boss, who’d have passed them up the line exactly the way it says in the protocols. Because if you’d done anything different, Cartwright, you’d have knowingly endangered the life of your fellow . . . What is it they call you over there?”

River could smell Duffy’s breath. Could feel the heat of the sweat forming on his brow.

“Can’t hear you.”

“You know what they call us.”

And then he was doubling over in pain, that familiar terrible pain men learn early and never forget. In a minute or two, it would get worse. But for the moment the impact of Duffy’s knee into his testicles wiped out all thought of his future.

Duffy stepped away, and River fell to the floor.

Diana Taverner answered on the third ring and said, “What do you want?”

“No, really,” said Lamb. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

He’d called her mobile, though he knew she’d be at her desk—she had that level of devotion to duty at least partly fired by fear that someone would move into her office if she left it for long.

“Been meaning to call you, actually,” she said. “Finance are querying your latest expense sheet. How come you clock up so much in travel costs when you barely leave your room?”

“How come Finance are passing their queries on to you?”

“Because her high-and-mighty Dameness has decreed that all and any manner of crap be redirected my way.” A pause followed, just long enough for her to be lighting a cigarette if that weren’t a shootable offence at the Park. “She wants to underline how indispensable I am, which means she thinks she’s found a way of dispensing with me.”

Because he wasn’t at the Park, and because nobody got shot at Slough House without his permission, Lamb lit a cigarette. “You sound quite relaxed about it.”

“She’ll have to get up earlier than she thinks she has,” Taverner said, which would have sounded cryptic from anyone else, but was reasonably lucid for her. “So. These expense sheets.”

“Don’t push me, Diana. I have hostages, remember?”

“They’re not your hostages, Jackson. They’re your staff.”

“You say potato,” said Lamb. “Anyway, I don’t have as many as I used to. A birdy tells me you’ve got one of mine in your lock-up.”

“That would be River Cartwright.”

“Yes, but don’t blame me. I think his mother was a hippy.”

“Smoke a lot of dope while he was in the womb, did she? That might explain today’s dipshit behaviour. And I thought he was one of your cleverer boys.”

“Mind like a razor,” Lamb agreed. “Disposable. Anyway, when you’ve finished ticking him off, pack him back this way, would you? I’ve thought of three different ways of making his life hell, and I’m itching to put them into practice.”

That he was itching was beyond doubt. His pencil being out of reach he’d grabbed a plastic ruler, and was sawing away at the gaps between the toes on his right foot, a task made easier now the fabric of his sock had given way.

“Yeah, right.” Taverner gave her throaty chuckle, famous for making the old boys on the Oversight Committee stand to attention. “You might need to practise your latest . . . wheezes on someone else.”

“‘Wheezes’?”

“This isn’t one of your daily misdemeanours, Lamb. Cartwright attempted to steal, or photograph, a Scott-level document, leaking which would have caused serious embarrassment to both the Service and the government. We’re not going to send him back to you with a slapped wrist. Anyway, it’s out of my hands. He’s with the Dogs. And when they’re finished with him, they’ll hand him over to the Met.”

Lamb took a long drag on his cigarette, noisily enough that Taverner knew what he was doing. He said, “Scott-level? You’re still playing Thunderbirds over there?”

“Yes, but don’t blame me. Unquote. Tearney thinks they’re astronauts.” Her chuckle floated into Lamb’s room once more, mixing with the cloud he’d just breathed out. “And if you think I don’t know when you’re processing, you’re sadly wrong. You’ve no idea what your boy was up to, have you?”

“Well, I’ve got a birthday this year. Perhaps he was looking for that special gift.”

“I’ll get those expense details emailed over. You might want to give them some more thought.”

“Diana?”

This time, it was more than a chuckle. This time it was an outright laugh. “Oh dear. Sounds like you’re about to make a plea.”

Lamb said, “Cartwright’s not my only joe gone walkabout. If there’s anything happening I need to know about, you’d best email those details too. Save me having to come over there and ask you myself.”

He hung up, and gave his foot one last vicious tweak with the ruler, which split in half with a noise like a gunshot.

This being Slough House, and Lamb being Lamb, nobody came to find out if that’s what it had been.

When he could see again, all he could see was the floor. He spat, and then he could see the floor and some spit, and then his vision went wavy again, and then it came back.

So now you know, a small voice in the back of his head told him, what it’s like to be kneed in the balls by an expert.

It’s surprising how even the most basic of skills can become, in the hands of an artist, a minor masterpiece.

“I’m waiting,” another voice said. This one wasn’t in his head; it existed in the rest of the world too.

River hauled himself into a squatting position where the pain didn’t exactly subside, but allowed him to think that it might one day do so, and took a deep breath, half-scared that doing so would rupture something important. He looked for his voice, and found it a little farther away than usual. “Slow. Horses. They call us. The slow. Horses.” Even to himself, he sounded like a nonagenarian refugee. “And you know. What they call. You?”

“Everyone knows what they call us,” Duffy said. “They call us the Dogs.”

“No. They call the Dogs. The Dogs. They call you. A useless prick.”

“And yet you’re the one lying on the floor.”

“You ever. Try that. Outside your own backyard,” River said. “We’ll see who ends up. On the floor.”

It was getting easier again, this old talent of his: making words come out of his mouth. He looked up, and found Duffy looking straight back down at him.

“Maybe we can check that out,” he said. “But not anytime soon. You’re going to be busy for a while yet.”

“Standish,” said River. “They have Catherine Standish.”

“Yeah, well. It’s not like we were doing anything with her. And you’re going to have one hell of a job persuading anyone she’s worth the PM’s vetting file.” Duffy ran his left index finger over the knuckles of his right hand. “Now get to your feet, and let’s try again.”

Queasily, River managed to stand.

Duffy said, “Who were you planning on selling it to?”

River said, “They have Catherine Standish. Check my phone, you moron.”

This time, Duffy hit him in the stomach.

“Sorry about this,” the soldier began.

He didn’t look sorry.

“But we’re out of milk.”

He put the mug of tea he was carrying on the bedside table.

“Room service?” Catherine said.

“Well, we can hardly let you wander down to the kitchen at will. Security issues.”

“This is the weirdest kidnapping I’ve ever heard of,” she told him. “Not that I’m an expert. But seriously? Is this your first time?”

The soldier pursed a lip, as if giving it thought. “We’ve taken prisoners before. But the circumstances were different.”

“You’re not going to kill me, then.”

“We’re not animals.”

“Can I have that in writing?” She’d hoped for a chuckle, and when she didn’t get one asked, “Where’s Donovan?”

“Downstairs.”

No he wasn’t. He’d left earlier, in the van. But it didn’t hurt to pretend to believe him.

She said, “I could do with a change of clothing.”

“I said we weren’t animals. I didn’t say we were Marks and Spencer’s.”

He turned to leave, and Catherine reached for a hook to hold him. She found it just as he was closing the door.

“Does he talk about her much?”

“. . . About who?”

“The girl who died.”

He paused. Then said, “She wasn’t a girl. She was a captain in the armed forces.”

“My apologies. But she’s still dead, right? Does he talk about her at all? I’m sure I would.”

Catherine could hear her own voice rising as she spoke—she rarely lost control of her tone, but she was desperate for him to stay, say more, cast light on why she was here, and what was happening elsewhere.

“If I’d been drunk-driving the car that killed her, I mean,” she finished.

He shook his head, sadly it seemed to her, and left the room, padlocking the door behind him.

After a while, Catherine reached for the tea.

Nick Duffy splashed water onto his face, then gazed hard into the bathroom mirror, finding nothing out of the ordinary there. A morning’s work. They weren’t all like this—well, they couldn’t be. It wasn’t a police state.

After he’d dried himself on a paper towel, he checked on Cartwright through the two-way. He’d have expected the kid—not entirely a kid, but Duffy felt entitled—to have parked himself on the chair, which Duffy had left for that specific purpose, to make taking it away from him the next gambit. Cartwright, though, had remained upright. He was leaning against the wall, and if he didn’t look happy—looked pale as a fish with stomach pains—he hadn’t, Duffy noted, positioned himself out of view of the mirror. In fact, he raised a middle finger towards it at that moment, as if he knew Duffy was watching.

Could have been a lucky guess.

He moved away and released the phone from its hook on the wall. A three-digit extension got him Diana Taverner.

“He’s not changing his story.”

“Remind me what his story was.”

Duffy ran through it: the photograph of Standish, the brief instruction. The man on the bridge who’d worn a suit and had a toff’s accent.

“Sounded like he got up Cartwright’s nose.”

“You believe him then?” Taverner asked.

Duffy looked at his free hand. Nothing about it suggested he’d done anything rougher that morning than carrying a hot coffee.

“I think he’d have changed his story if it wasn’t true,” he said.

He was used to Lady Di’s silences, which generally meant she was assimilating information, dividing it into pros and cons. This one, though, felt different, as if she already had a handle on what was going on.

In the room next door, Cartwright made the middle-finger gesture again. He was on a loop, Duffy decided. A cycle of defiance, because despite all that had happened to him in the past twenty minutes, he hadn’t yet grasped the nature or the depth of the shit into which he’d stepped.

Taverner said, “Have you sent anyone looking for this man? The one on the bridge?”

“There was a man, in London, on a bridge, two hours ago,” Duffy said. “We could cordon the city off, I suppose.”

“Talk to me like that again,” Taverner said, without altering her tone, “and you’d happily swap places with Cartwright. What about the woman—Standish?”

“The photo’s on his phone. Like he said.”

“And it came from where?”

“Her phone.”

“Of course it did . . . Any trace?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“How badly have you hurt him?”

“Hardly at all.”

“By your standards, or anyone’s?”

“He might be a slow horse, but he’s not a civilian. He’ll live.”

“Just as well. Lamb can get . . . tetchy when his crew get damaged.”

“I thought he despised his crew.”

“That doesn’t mean he likes other people messing with them. Okay, let Cartwright sweat for the moment. We’ll get word from on high sooner or later.”

“On high?”

“Oh yes. Dame Ingrid’s been summoned to the Home Office And you know how jolly that makes her.”

Cartwright was doing the thing with the finger again. He couldn’t know Duffy was there, obviously, but it was still starting to get on his wick.

He said, “Look. That crack about cordoning off the city. I—”

“You’d just finished putting the leather to someone. It made you feel cocky. Made you feel invulnerable.”

“I guess . . . ”

“Trust me. You’re not.”

Taverner hung up.

Duffy replaced the receiver and stood by the two-way a while longer. Every so often, River Cartwright repeated the finger gesture, but to Duffy’s eye, it looked a little less convincing each time. What was it they used knackered horses for again?—oh yeah: dog food and glue. Give it a while, he’d pop next door and remind Cartwright of that. Meanwhile, he deserved a cup of coffee.

He left the room quietly so the kid wouldn’t hear. The thought of him standing there, repeatedly offering the finger to an empty room, wasn’t quite enough to wipe away the memory of Lady Di’s parting shot, but it didn’t hurt.

There were many thorns in Ingrid Tearney’s garden—the constant need for vigilance; the ever-present threat of terrorism; Diana Taverner—and here was another: a summons from the Home Secretary. Until recently, such phone calls had been a minor nuisance, requiring her to attend the minister’s office and deliver platitudes while maintaining eye contact, as if soothing a worried puppy. But Peter Judd didn’t look to her for reassurance, he sized her up for weaknesses. In company he claimed they got on like a house on fire, but it was clear which of them provided the petrol.

It was Dame Ingrid’s habit to catch the tube into work, but she used her official ride for everything else. It took her now through streets that were wilting in the heat. When the freak weather had started it had splashed the capital in colour, but as hot days turned into baking weeks, brightness had faded like old paint. Greenery died, turning parks brown and lifeless. People scurried now from shadow to shadow, wearing the caved-in expressions of trauma survivors, and greeted rumours of rain like news of a lottery win. That the weather was not normal was a staple of internet traffic. The streets, meanwhile, were cruel reflections of an unforgiving sky, where everything dazzled and everything hurt.

But inside the car frosted air circulated, and to all outward appearance Ingrid Tearney was unruffled by heatwave or grim thoughts. Her summer outfit was new, the fruit of a recent upturn in her finances, and her mannish features were relaxed into a benevolent-seeming mask. She looked like the friendly grandmother, the one who offers oranges, but behind that mask steam valves hissed. Judd’s telephone summons had come from the man himself instead of the usual lackey, but he’d given no clue as to what it was about. His tone, though, had reeked of triumph. Whatever game he was about to play, he’d been dealt a useful hand.

Still, let the chips fall. Dame Ingrid didn’t negotiate with politicians.

Unless they had her by the throat.

At the minister’s residence, the front door was opened by a pretty young man with the faintest hint of a lisp. Nobody doubted Judd’s heterosexuality, which was as enthusiastic as it was indiscriminate, but his entourage tended towards the fey—Judd hadn’t dubbed them his camp followers for nothing. It was always possible the quip had occurred to him first, and he’d chosen his retinue accordingly.

“Dame Ingrid,” he said now, as she entered his office.

“Home Secretary.”

“I’ve taken the liberty.”

Which sounded like a bullet-point summary of his Home Office tenure to date, but was in fact a reference to the tea tray on a nearby table.

Following his guide, she sat in an armchair. The room, she noted, remained much as it had done during his predecessor’s ministry, which is to say that not only was it still walnut-panelled, book-lined and Turkish-rugged, but that Judd hadn’t even bothered to have the art changed: some drab nature morts, a few sea battles, and a large and politically obsolete globe. Given Judd’s tendency to leave his stamp on things, Tearney took this as a clue that he didn’t expect to remain here long. Which had been true of his predecessor too, but for a diametrically opposite reason.

“Milk? Sugar?”

She shook her head.

Peter Judd poured, placed cup and saucer on a table by her elbow, and lowered himself into the chair opposite.

He was a bulky man, not fat, but large, and though he had turned fifty the previous year, retained the schoolboy looks and fluffy-haired manner that had endeared him to the British public and made him a staple on the less-challenging end of the TV spectrum: interviews conducted on sofas, by scripted comedians. Through persistence, connections and family wealth, he’d established a brand—“a loose cannon with a floppy fringe and a bicycle”—that set him head and shoulders above the rest of his party, and if the occasional colleague had attempted to lop that head off those shoulders in the interests of political unity, they’d yet to find the axe to do the job. Tearney’s own file on him was long on speculation, short on facts. So clean of cobwebs, in fact, that she was sure he’d airbrushed his past of serious sins as carefully as he arranged his haystack of hair.

He was eyeing her now in a manner that suggested he was about to enjoy what followed.

“So, minister,” she said, never keen on being made to sign her own punishment slips. “What seems to be your problem today?”

“Oh, I have no problems. Only a bagful of solutions awaiting opportunities.”

She pretended not to sigh, or at least, pretended she didn’t want him to notice her trying not to. “So this is social? It’s always a pleasure, Minister, but I am somewhat busy.”

“So I gather. Bit of a rumpus over your way this morning, what?”

“Rumpus” was a favourite PJ-word; one he’d employed to describe a recent tabloid splash about his friendship with a lap dancer. It was also a term he’d used in reference to both 9/11 and the global recession.

“What sort of, ah, rumpus would this be?”

“An incursion.”

He meant the Cartwright business, she realised. Which was unimportant and without consequence, which meant there was something to it she wasn’t yet aware of.

“I’d hardly call it an incursion,” she said. “An off-site agent lost his bearings. The Park can be disorienting.”

“So I recall.”

“Besides, the incident was done and dusted inside twenty minutes. When I left, the young man was being, ah, chided by our head of security.” She sipped again at her tea. “Are you sure such matters are worth your attention? I’d have thought there were weightier issues on your desk.”

Though the question of how he’d become aware of Cartwright’s frolic almost before she had was a matter Dame Ingrid definitely didn’t consider minor.

“I deem few things beneath my attention,” he said, adopting the plummier tones ex–public schoolboys use when bringing words like “deem” into play. “And certainly not those issues which call into question the integrity of our national Security Service.”

“‘Integrity,’” she said. “Really?”

He leaned back in his chair. “More tea?”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure? You don’t mind if—?”

She shook her head.

He refreshed his cup, and stirred the contents slowly, not taking his eyes off her.

“Minister, precisely what is this about?”

“Well, it’s quite simple, Dame Ingrid. Tell me, are you familiar with the term ‘tiger team’?”

Dame Ingrid lowered her teacup.

“Oh dear,” she said.

The taxi left Monteith outside the multistorey car park. It was a drab, soulless building, precisely because of its function: if an architect ever designed a car park the sight of which lifted the heart, civilisation’s job would be done. Monteith made a mental note to drop this aperçu into conversation next time he was with Peter Judd, and walked down the slope into the structure. Even with heat rising from the pavement, the lower storey carried a grave scent of damp earth and mildew. He stepped around an oil patch on the scabbed concrete, and pulled open the heavy door into the stairwell.

A different splash of odours, urine among them. Civilisation’s job was one long uphill battle round here.

He took the stairs two at a time. Into his fifties, he remained proud of his physical condition: barely smoked, and then only good Cuban; never drank port or liqueurs; red wine just three evenings a week (white the rest). If this didn’t precisely add up to a fitness regime, it gave him a head start. Besides, he was a leader, not a foot soldier. When River Cartwright had taken him by the lapels earlier, he’d felt no physical fear precisely because of that difference between them. Cartwright was a pawn, and didn’t know it. Monteith’s place was among the kings, and today’s work would serve to consolidate that.

Pawns don’t take kings. Basic rule of nature.

Donovan was waiting on the top storey, by the van. Another case in point, Monteith thought. Sean Donovan could have been wearing Monteith’s shoes now, near as damn it, if he’d understood the game. But that was the problem with coming up through the ranks—there was a reason the phrase was officer class. It came with breeding, wasn’t something they could drill into you.

None of that showed in his voice when he called out, “Donovan!”

Donovan didn’t respond.

Another oil patch to skip around. The light was better up here; the sides open to the city, technically allowing for airflow. But the midday heat shunted around as if in blocks. Every time you encountered it, it was like walking into a wall.

He resisted the temptation to run a finger around his collar. Appearances: you kept tight hold of them.

“Donovan,” he said again when he was no more than a yard away. “Everything in order?”

“So far.”

When he’d pictured this moment, Sly Monteith realised, he’d imagined it as one of high-fiving celebration—a plan brought to fruition; the pair of them delighted with each other and themselves. But Sean Donovan seemed, if anything, even less inclined than usual to unbend.

It didn’t matter. Monteith didn’t need Donovan’s approbation. The real celebrations would come later.

Because say what you like about Peter Judd, he knew how to mark a job well done.

“A tiger team,” Ingrid Tearney said.

“A tiger team.”

“I know perfectly well what a tiger team is,” she told him.

That feeling she was getting now was of Judd’s fingers round her throat.

Tiger teams were hired guns, essentially. Hired not to wipe out your enemies but to test the strength of your own defences. You set a tiger team to launch a simulated attack: recruited hackers to stress-test security systems, assigned a wet-squad to put a bodyguard team through its paces, and so on. Earlier that year, she had herself overseen a Service-propelled assault on one of the city’s major utility providers, to verify concerns that the capital’s infrastructure was dangerously vulnerable to attack. The results were mixed. It was, it turned out, surprisingly easy to cripple a large energy provider, but in the wake of recent price hikes, people seemed mostly in favour of doing so. Besides, the populace at large evidently regarded a global wine shortage as a more serious threat to its well-being than terrorism. In rather the same way, Dame Ingrid was now realising, that the greatest threat to the Service—and her own role within it—seemed to be emanating from the Home Secretary rather than its more traditional enemies: terrorists, rival security agencies, the Guardian.

“And this was your doing,” she said.

He nodded, pleased with himself. This was not in itself an unusual sight—being pleased with himself was Peter Judd’s factory setting—but at this close distance, it made Tearney want to throw the teapot at him.

“Can I ask why?”

“Why are these things ever done? I wanted to reassure myself that the Service’s protocols are in tip-top order. Not much point in relying on a security provider which can’t secure itself, is there?”

“Then you’ll have been relieved at the result,” she said. “No harm done.”

He wagged a finger at her. With most people this would have been a metaphor, but the Home Secretary’s tendency towards pantomime ensured that an actual finger was involved. “One of your agents was taken off the street. Another was induced to attempt a data theft from your very own precincts.”

“And failed.”

“But shouldn’t have got even that far. There are procedures, Dame Ingrid. The moment he was approached, your boy should have escalated the matter upwards. He didn’t. That’s a severe lapse by anyone’s standards. And by the standards I expect to appertain while I am minister in charge, it’s a shortcoming that requires action.”

After several years of dealing with a minister who could be reduced to jelly by the very thought of taking action, it was salutary to be reminded that not all politicians covered arse first and made decisions afterwards. It was galling that it had to happen on her watch, though.

“This . . . tiger team,” she said. “Who, precisely, are we talking about?”

“Chap called Sylvester Monteith.” Judd had the air of one explaining that he’d had a little man from the village round to prune his hedge. “He runs an outfit called Black Arrow. Ridiculous, really. Still, goes with the territory, I suppose.”

“Black Arrow.”

“No reason it should have crossed your radar. Mostly corporate security, to date. You know the kind of thing, give the company firewalls a rattle, see what’s loose. All on home turf, mind. No foreign adventures.” Judd placed his cup and saucer on his left knee, which he’d crossed over his right. “Gave the Afghan shenanigans a wide berth, sensibly, if you want my opinion. Plenty of money in that line, of course, but the premiums are crippling.”

“How very distressing for all involved,” Tearney said. “And you’re telling me you hired this man?”

“Damn reasonable rate, too. Are you sure I can’t tempt you to more tea?”

“Yes. And I suppose this Sylvester Monteith is an old crony of yours.”

“He prefers Sly.”

“Which answers my question.”

“We both know how Westminster works, Ingrid. It’s not called a village for nothing. Obviously we’ve crossed paths in the past.”

“Like I said. A crony.”

“That’s not a useful term in my book. No successful business, no thriving corporation, can afford to ignore networking. It’s how things get done.”

“Eton?”

“I’m not going to play this game.”

“Twenty seconds after leaving this office, I’ll know his inside leg measurement.”

“Well then. Yes. As it happens.”

“Oxford?”

“No, actually.” He picked up his cup once more. “Well, yes, but St. Anne’s for Christ’s sake.”

“In the eyes of most people, that would still count.”

“That’s why we don’t let ‘most people’ take the important decisions.”

“An interesting slant on the democratic process.”

“Don’t pretend to be naïve. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Let’s stay on topic then, shall we? You decided, without consultation, to hire an old school chum to set an, ah, tiger team onto the Service you have ministerial responsibility for. You don’t see any conflict of interest?”

“None at all. Consultation would have undermined the whole purpose. When was the last time you didn’t have the minutes of a closed-door meeting in your hands before the principals were out of the gates? The slightest sniff of this and you’d have gone to a war footing.”

She couldn’t fault his logic.

“Besides,” he said. “As you say, I have ministerial responsibility. Confirming the Service’s fitness for purpose is well within my remit. An obligation, even.”

“One minor lapse in protocol is hardly—”

“One minor lapse is more than enough, even if I agreed it was minor. But you had an unauthorised entry into Regent’s Park, which in anyone’s eyes is a serious breach of security.”

“By a member of the Service. Not by one of your mercenaries.”

“It remains an unauthorised entry. And the young man in question is hardly an agent in good standing, is he? From what I hear, he has his grandfather to thank for the fact that he wasn’t drummed out before he’d finished his training. He crashed King’s Cross, I gather. In rush hour. At the very least, that’s a demarcation issue. Buggering up the transport infrastructure is the mayor’s job.”

A line Dame Ingrid suspected he’d used before, or would again, with a bigger audience.

She said, “I’d take issue with his entry being unauthorised. It was approved by one of our Second Desks. Diana Taverner, I believe.”

“And having gained entry, he went walkabout. Let’s not split hairs, Ingrid. He was found attempting to access classified information. He should be in a cell. I think we could guarantee him ten years minimum.”

“And what about your merry band of friends? They ‘took’ an agent? Kidnapping carries a tariff too.”

He waved a hand as if shooing a wasp. “There’ll be a waiver. And it will be signed.”

“You’re very sure of that.”

He graced her with a bland smile.

A loose cannon with a floppy fringe . . . But an important thing about Peter Judd, she reminded herself, was that his affability was polymer-deep. In front of the cameras, in front of an audience, in any kind of best-behaviour scenario, he played the hail-&-well-met card like a pro, as comfortable among punters in an East End corner shop as he was in front of twelve pieces of cutlery at a black tie event. But a very short way below the surface lay a temper that could scorch chrome. It was one of the reasons she knew he’d taken an airbrush to his past. Nobody with his psychological makeup had led a damage-free life.

But right here, right now, he had the upper hand and they both knew it.

She said, “Very well. Wormwood Scrubs for young Cartwright, treble G&Ts all round for the private sector. I assume we can expect to hear that Sly Monteith’s about to land some lucrative contract or other? Perhaps he could replace those clowns who did their best to scupper the Olympics.”

“Bitterness is so unbecoming.”

“Are you expecting my resignation?”

He bared a palm, as if to demonstrate no evil intent. Only one palm, she noted. “Heaven forbid.”

“Then what is it you want?”

Unlike many another politico, he didn’t waste time pretending he didn’t know what she meant. “An, ah, what shall we call it? An understanding. No. An alliance.”

“You’re my minister. I answer to you on a daily basis. I’m sure we already understand each other, and as for alliances, there should be little doubt that we’re on the same side.”

“Oh, we’re all on the same side. But that doesn’t mean we don’t pick teams. You’re a civil servant. I’m a politician. With a fair wind, you might expect to be head of your Service until retirement. But one way or the other, I don’t expect to be in this office for more than another year. If I leave it on my terms, it will be because I’m moving into Number Ten. Otherwise . . . Well, political careers have been known to founder.”

“And you’re worried yours might.”

“Once the PM decides he’s in a strong enough position, yes. He brought me inside the fold to forestall a challenge from the back benches. Any such challenge now would seem . . . ”

“Treacherous.”

“Impolite.”

“And thus unlikely to garner support within the party.”

Judd blinked in silent agreement.

“Unless his circumstances changed.”

Judd blinked again.

It was cool in the office. A fake breeze hummed somewhere, as if it were blowing in off a carpet of ice cubes. But as an undercurrent to that, Ingrid Tearney felt a sudden access of warmth; that of acquired knowledge. Judd wanted to render the Service a sharp kick in the teeth, that had always been clear; a way of both asserting his own current mastery, and revenging himself for a rejection three decades ago. But in addition to that, he wanted—needed—her cooperation. Tearney recognised this ability to layer scheme upon scheme, to allow for maximum benefit. It wasn’t so much playing both ends against the middle as securing the middle and flaying anyone within reach with the ends.

She said, “I see.”

“I rather thought you might.”

“So the file Cartwright was sent to steal—that wasn’t a random choice.”

“For the purposes of the exercise, one file was as good as any other,” he said smoothly.

“Of course. I’m just getting an inkling of the use you might have put it to if he’d succeeded.”

“Well,” he said. “That was never likely to happen, was it? Not unless security at the Park turned out to be in even more parlous a state than was the case.” He rose suddenly, and carried his empty cup and saucer to the tea tray. With his back to her, he went on, “Besides, there’s no need for me to go to such lengths to examine the contents of an old file housed in a department over which I have ministerial control.”

“Subject to the usual limitations,” Dame Ingrid said.

He returned to where she sat, and held a hand out. She gave him her crockery.

He said, “Of course. I’m simply seeking an assurance that all and any information relevant to the security of the nation is brought to my attention. That would inevitably include information relating to the reliability or otherwise of those entrusted with the great offices of state.”

“Which might then be used to ease those same unreliables out of those offices.”

“Well now. Once we’ve established the unfitness of an office holder, it would be a dereliction of duty not to do something about it.”

He carried her crockery to the table and carefully arranged the empty cups and used saucers in as efficient a tableau as possible. Then he returned to his chair and sat once more, smiling pleasantly.

She said, “Have you any idea how many times over the past half century the Service has been asked to consider doing what you’re suggesting?”

He pretended to give it some thought. “I would guess at least once during each administration. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The important thing is that we both know whose team we’re on.”

“I see.”

An important thing perhaps, but promises of future cooperation were easily given. If the worst that happened here and now was that she be allowed back to the Park to lick her wounds, Ingrid Tearney would count the day a victory. But she knew as well as she knew her own mind that, having manoeuvred her into a corner where she could hardly fail but to indicate surrender, Judd would take it one step further and demonstrate his power. Victory, she had once heard someone say, was about ensuring your opponent never again put head to pillow without thinking with hatred on your face. Tearney, who had never married, had thought this over the top, but had little difficulty accepting it as one of Judd’s credos.

It was of small consolation, in such circumstances, to be proved right almost immediately.

Peter Judd picked up a small metal implement from the table by his chair—a cigar-cutter, or some equally ridiculous tool—and examined it with an air of absent-mindedness. For such a dedicated politician, it really was a beginner’s tell.

He said, “This Slough House place. Amusing name. I gather it’s a decrepit set of offices near the Barbican.”

She nodded.

“Somewhere you can send the rejects.”

“It’s not always politic to fire people.”

“Isn’t it? Can’t say I’ve ever found that a problem.”

It was true that he’d never seemed to worry about lawsuits, whether relating to employment or paternity issues.

“And that’s where this Cartwright chap was assigned.”

She saw little point in replying when it was clear he knew the answer.

Judd sighed to himself as if enjoying a private little moment of pleasure, and replaced the metal tool on the table where it belonged.

“Well, it’s obviously unfit for purpose if its aim was to retrain the morons,” he said. “So let’s close it down.”

“Slough House?”

“Yes,” he said. “Close it down. Today.”

Jackson Lamb didn’t believe in omens. When he got a feeling in his gut, it was generally because of some mistreatment he’d subjected said gut to, though frankly the thing was so inured to his lifestyle, he’d probably have to pour weed-poison into it to provoke a serious reaction. Nevertheless, he didn’t like the way the day was shaping up. Cartwright getting arrested at the Park was a serious fuck-up, even for the boy wonder; Lamb didn’t doubt Lady Di had meant every word when she’d said they could kiss him goodbye. And while he could contemplate a future without River Cartwright in it with a degree of equanimity, Catherine Standish would have plenty to say on the subject if she ever turned up. And Lamb had learned long ago not to piss off whoever made your morning tea.

If she turned up . . . His gut aside, facts were starting to accumulate. The odds on Cartwright doing something monumentally stupid on any given morning were evens; the chances of Catherine Standish going AWOL were lower. That the two things had happened at the same time meant there was a connection, and if Lamb had to place a bet, he’d put it on cause and effect. Cartwright had learned something about Standish’s disappearance that had set him haring off to the Park where he’d hit a brick wall, full tilt.

Time for an older, wiser mind to take charge.

He farted, and settled into Catherine’s chair.

Lamb didn’t often come into this office. The rest of Slough House he prowled at will, poking into nooks and late-night corners, but Standish’s office he left alone. If it contained anything she genuinely didn’t want him to find, he probably wouldn’t find it without causing structural damage. And by the time he was drunk enough to find this prospect appealing, he was usually beyond putting a plan into action.

The desk was neatly organised, which was no surprise. Front and centre was a pile of reports that should, by rights, have been on Lamb’s own desk when he’d arrived this morning; by now, he’d have pawed them out of their pristine state, and spilled enough of one beverage or another onto them, in lieu of actually reading the damn things, to warrant their being reprinted before they were shuffled into secure folders and shipped off to the Park. The knowledge that they’d receive equally scant attention there had never prevented Standish from rendering them as professional-looking as possible. It was one of the ways Lamb could tell she didn’t have sex any more.

He picked up the reports, weighed them reflectively as if gauging the intelligence they contained, then dropped them into the wastebasket. “Prioritise,” he murmured to himself. Then he stood and moved around the small office.

A faint smell of blossom lingered in the air, or had done until quite recently. The culprit wasn’t hard to find: a small muslin bag hanging from the window frame. Lamb tugged at it gently between thumb and forefinger, but not gently enough not to snap the thread it hung from. Letting it fall, he continued his circuit. Two sets of filing cabinets. A coat stand from which a linen tote bag dangled, alongside an umbrella. All of it like a Disneyfied version of his own office: smaller translating into cosier; neater into cleaner. Well, cleaner into cleaner too, to be honest. She’d been here as recently as last night, but already the room was subsiding into a museum piece. He had the strange sensation that, given another twenty-four hours, everything would be laced with cobweb.

Get a grip . . .

There was no point turning the office over, because he already knew there were no clues here. Standish had called him twice after leaving last night, indicating that whatever had happened happened after she left Slough House . . . Still, he went through her desk anyway, on principle. The spare keys to her flat were missing, which gave him a moment’s pause before he remembered Louisa Guy had checked her place out. There was nothing else of interest except, in the bottom drawer, a bottle-shaped object wrapped in tissue paper so old it crinkled to his touch. He pulled it free. The Macallan. Seal unbroken. After studying it a moment he rebundled it, and stuffed it back in the drawer.

He looked up to find Louisa leaning on the door frame.

“What?”

“Looking for something?”

“If I was, I’d have found it by now.”

He fell back into Standish’s chair, which registered its discomfort with a sharp twang.

Louisa said, “You don’t think she’s drunk somewhere.”

“No.”

“You’re sure.”

Instead of replying, Lamb fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced a cigarette. He lit it eyes closed, and wheezily inhaled.

“What did they say at the Park? About River?”

“He’s under arrest. Something about an attempt to steal a file. You can go clean his desk out if you want.”

“Didn’t take long, did it?” Louisa said. “Catherine goes off reservation, and we’re one down not twenty-four hours later. I’d give us till the end of the week.”

“‘Us’?”

“Slough House.”

Lamb chuckled.

“You don’t think we’re a team?”

“I think you’re collateral damage,” said Lamb.

“And yet here you are, looking for clues. What was the file River was trying to steal?”

“Wrong question. You should be asking, what the hell was Cartwright doing, trying to steal a file?”

“Well, I assume it was a ransom demand,” Louisa said. “Whoever took Catherine got in touch with him.”

“Has Ho traced her phone?”

“She’s taken the battery out. Or someone has.”

Lamb grunted.

“So what now?”

“Well it’s long past lunchtime,” he said. “And no bugger’s fetched me a carryout yet.”

“So that’s the bigger picture sorted. But what about these other issues? You know, the danger your team’s in. That sort of thing.”

“Cartwright’s not in danger. They might work him over a bit, but they’ll give him to the plod soon enough. He’ll be perfectly safe.”

“But in prison.”

“Yeah, well. Silly sod should have thought of that before having his awfully big adventure. He’s in MI5, not the Famous Five.” Lamb flicked ash onto Catherine’s desk. “You’d think he’d have worked that out by now.”

“And what about Catherine?”

“Remember what I just said about collateral damage?”

“So whoever’s fucking about with Slough House, you’re just going to let it happen.”

The chair creaked dangerously as Lamb leaned back, dangling his arms over the sides. “What do you expect me to do?” he said. “It’s not as if we know who’s doing the fucking about.”

“And when we find out?” Louisa asked.

“Ah,” said Lamb. “That’ll be a different story.”

“Slough House,” Judd said. “Close it down. Today.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Do we own the building?”

“Yes.”

“Better still. We can flog it off now the market’s recovered. That’ll pay for the odd decoder ring, what?”

“And the agents?”

“Have them put down.”

“. . . Seriously?”

“No. But it’s interesting you felt the need to ask. No, just sack them. They’re all retards or they wouldn’t be there anyway. Hand them their cards, tell them goodbye.”

“Jackson Lamb—”

“I know all about Jackson Lamb. He’s supposed to know where some bodies are buried, yes? Well, newsflash, nobody spends a decade in this business without stumbling across the occasional corpse. And if he feels like kicking up a fuss, he’ll find out what the Official Secrets Act’s for. Wormwood Scrubs is more than big enough to hold him as well as Cartwright. Speaking of whom, yes, hand him over to the woolly suits. Don’t see why having a grandfather in the business should buy him any favours.”

Thus spoke a man whose own grandfather had paid his school fees.

Tearney knew what this was, of course. Slough House meant nothing to Judd; he cared less about it than she did, and she didn’t care at all. Were it not that it acted as a thorn in Diana Taverner’s side, she’d have erased it without a moment’s thought. Lamb was a Service legend, but there were museums full of one-time legends: label them, hang them on a hook, and they pretty soon lost their juju. The slow horses could be history by teatime, and would have passed from her thoughts before supper. But to wipe Slough House out of existence on Peter Judd’s word was a different matter entirely. And if she let him get away with it, she’d wind up in his pocket.

Of course, a pocket was a good place to be if you were probing the wearer for soft tissue.

She said, “Consider it done.”

Donovan turned away and opened the van, producing something from its depths which for one heart-quelling moment Monteith thought was a pistol, with elongated neck. A silencer? But when Donovan unscrewed the cap and took a pull from it, Monteith saw it was a bottle of water.

He shook his head. Too much heat, too much excitement. From the bright sun outside to the petrol-fumed air of the car park had been like stepping from one form of battery to another: having been slapped silly by sunshine, he was now being rabbit-punched by pollution. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that London was more than one city. There was the one he was taxied comfortably about in, whose views were spacious and spoke in agreeable accents of wealth and plenty, while the other was cramped, soiled and barbarous, peopled by a feral race who’d strip you bare and chew the bones. The divide itself didn’t worry him—it was why the security business paid dividends—but he didn’t like being caught on the wrong side.

He remembered a late instruction he’d given, and something tightened behind his waistband. “The woman. Did you, ah . . . ”

“Shake her up a bit?” said Donovan, screwing the cap back on the bottle. His voice was flat, but Monteith heard judgment in it.

He bridled. Rank be damned: money went one way, respect the other. That was business.

“Just a joke, man. Is she still at the house?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want to speak to Judd in person before we all stand down.” He paused to look around before continuing. “No point changing shirts before the final whistle.”

There was nobody in sight, and the only vehicle in earshot was on the level below, and getting lower. Out on the street, traffic noise didn’t count; it was simply the natural state of being, like the buzzing round a hive.

Donovan said, “You don’t trust him, you mean.”

“. . . Why wouldn’t I trust him?”

The van’s back doors were still open. The soldier put a foot on its floor and began retying a bootlace. “Because he’s a sneaky piece of shit.”

“. . . I beg your pardon?”

“Your pal. Peter Judd. He’s a sneaky piece of shit.”

“He’s also a senior officer in Her Majesty’s Government. So I’d thank you to keep a civil—”

“Where are you meeting him?”

“—Did you just interrupt me?”

Donovan put his boot back on the ground, and Monteith was forcibly reminded that the older man was bigger, fitter; altogether more . . . substantial.

He took a step back. “Let’s not forget who pays your salary, Donovan.”

“Yes, let’s not do that.”

“You’re lucky to have a job at all, with your record.”

“Don’t kid yourself. My record’s the reason you hired me. Puts hair on your balls, doesn’t it, Sly? Having the real thing about the place, instead of plastic heroes.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Oh, I thought you enjoyed it. Makes you think people like you, doesn’t it, when they call you Sly?” Donovan leaned closer, to bestow the following confidence. “I have to tell you, though. That’s not the reason they do it.”

“Ring Traynor. Now. Tell him to release the woman, and get back to the office. And you can consider that your final act in my employment. You’re sacked.”

Even Monteith could hear the quiver in his voice, the barely repressed anger. Let Donovan give him one more excuse . . .

Donovan laughed. “Sacked? You don’t want to try for, what, ‘cashiered’? Tinpot little general like you, I’d have thought ‘cashiered’ more up your street.”

“If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be queuing up for your jobseeker’s allowance. Bit of a change from the parade ground, that, was it? Lining up with all the ex-squaddies for your charity handout?”

Donovan shook his head, facing the floor, but when he looked up, Monteith saw he was laughing. For a moment he thought the last few minutes had just been erased, that Donovan had been having a soldier’s joke, but that bubble burst in short order. Donovan wasn’t laughing with him, but at what he’d just said.

“‘Charity handout’? I swear to God, I’ve fought wars against people I had more respect for.”

Monteith said, “I’ve had enough of this. Ring Traynor. And give me the keys to the goddamn van.”

“Where are you meeting Judd?”

“This conversation is over.”

“Not yet it isn’t.”

Forgetting the keys, Sly Monteith turned to leave, and the next moment the world whipped past him like it was a yo-yo: he was heading for the doorway and its urine-perfumed stairwell, and then he wasn’t. Instead, he was slammed back against the van’s panels, breathless, his ankles dangling in space. Donovan’s fists were scrunching his lapels, and Donovan’s voice was drilling into his ear.

“Once more,” Donovan suggested. “Where are you meeting him?”

There was a sudden sense of release, several sudden senses of release, and Monteith’s feet were back on the ground, and the contents of Monteith’s bladder were heading the same way. Donovan’s face twisted in contempt, and as much to prevent him expressing it as anything else, Monteith found the words tumbling out.

“Anna Livia Plurabelle’s.”

“. . . Where?”

“Park Lane. Really quite decent, they do a good . . . ” Monteith’s memory, or imagination, tailed away. What did they do that was good? A sudden taste of spring lamb in a blackcurrant jus filled his mouth, almost real enough to wash away the smell of his own piss.

Standing in a car park, slumped against a van. Discovering that the scheme he’d been orchestrating had been someone else’s all along . . . Every age calls forth its heroes: he’d thought that just this morning. Back when he’d been one of the heroes he was talking about, surrounded by memorials to idiots who’d thrown everything away.

At least that had been their choice.

“What time?”

Monteith said, “Half an hour?”

His trousers were clammy, and for a disconnected second he pictured himself turning up at Anna Livia’s—no one used the ‘Plurabelle’—steaming in the sunshine. What the hell was PJ going to say? Except PJ wasn’t going to say anything, or not to him, because no way was Donovan going to let him walk out of this car park.

He felt the soldier’s hand on his neck.

“This is what you’re going to do,” Donovan said. “You’re going to lie quietly in the back of the van. Nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t want to get in the van.”

His voice sounded as if it were coming from some distance away. From down the hall, the far side of the kitchen . . . From the pantry where he used to hide when he was small, and things weren’t going right.

“Doesn’t matter what you want. I’m going to tie you up, but I’m not going to hurt you. No worse than what we did to the woman.”

Monteith wasn’t thinking about the woman. He was thinking about being left in the dark of the van; tied up and gagged . . .

“What’s all this about?”

“Not your concern.”

Donovan pulled him round to the back of the van, one of whose doors hung open. The smell was the usual aroma of men and petrol and motorway miles and motorway food. The thought of being locked inside it filled Monteith with horror.

“I’m going to throw up,” he said.

He retched, bending double. Donovan swore under his breath, but relaxed his grip a fraction, and Monteith wriggled out of his jacket.

“Oh for God’s sake,” muttered Donovan, and took off after the runaway.

You didn’t have to go back far to recall a culture that said: Yes, we like a drink at lunchtime. The political culture, he meant—Peter Judd was well aware that the culture in general was chucking booze down its neck like a mental hobo. But the political culture, meaning Westminster, had cleaned up its act since the millennium, a shift in which Judd himself had played no small part. A public disavowal of some of the more famous extravagances of his youth had, near as damn it, established a party line, or at least had drawn a line across which his party didn’t dare tread. Backbenchers were like those dipping desk-toy ducks—start one off, and it would continue until forcibly stopped. Or in this instance, stop until forcibly started. Once the House’s reputation for being more or less sober during daylight hours had been salvaged, and his own status as architect of the “New Responsibility” (copyright, some broadsheet reptile) safely established, Judd was happy to revert to drinking at lunchtime when he felt like it. One of the advantages of being a Big Beast in a Parliament noted for its stunted brethren.

Pygmies, he thought, swirling the quarter inch of Chablis, breathing in the perfume, then nodding at the girl to fill the glass. Anna Livia’s chose its staff carefully. This one was a redhead, her hair tamed with a black bow matching the shoelace tie that dangled onto the table as she poured. Flesh-toned bra, so as not to show beneath her blouse. Such observations came naturally to Judd, who could no more look at a woman without assessing her bedability than he could see a microphone without minting a soundbite. She smiled—she had recognised him, of course—then replaced the bottle in its bucket and moved away. He’d leave a decent tip, and get her number. He was supposed to be behaving himself, for reasons of marital harmony, but a waitress hardly counted, for God’s sake. He glanced at his watch. Sly was late.

Sly was another pygmy, of course.

“You’ll catch yourself using that term in public,” his agent had admonished. “Then there’ll be trouble.”

Judd shrugged such wisdom off. There was always trouble, and he always rose from the resulting miasma looking a lovable scamp: lovable, anyway, to that gratifyingly large sector of the populace to whom he’d always be a figure of fun: breathing a bit of the old jolly into politics, and where’s the harm in that, eh? As for those who hated him, they were never going to change their minds, and since he was in a better position to fuck them up than they were him, they didn’t give him sleepless nights. The public, on the other hand . . . The public was like one of those huge Pacific jellyfish; one enormous, pulsating mass of indifference, drifting wherever the current carried it; an organism without a motive, ambition or original sin to call its own, but which somehow believed, in whatever passed for its brain, that it chose its own leaders and had a say in its own destiny.

And catch yourself saying any of that out loud, he thought as he lifted his glass, and you can kiss the lovable-scamp image goodnight.

But none of this was making Sly Monteith appear, damn the man. He was milking the moment, obviously; the only time in his life he’d have the Home Secretary on hold. If he had any political sense he’d bank the credit, but Monteith had always been a second-rater, with the second-rater’s habit of dropping rehearsed reflections into conversation. Ingrid Tearney had suggested he was a crony, which was a joke—Monteith would give his left bollock to be a crony—but he had at least proved useful today, his tiger team giving Judd the weapon he needed to de-fang Dame Ingrid. Cronydom, though; friendship; that was dangerous territory. How could you know someone would never turn out a liability? His glass needed refilling, and the cute waitress was nowhere in sight. Suppressing a sigh, he did the job himself.

Some kind of commotion was in progress on the street, vehicular squealing, and people hurrying past. You didn’t expect that round here. Judd sipped wine, and found pleasure in the thought that he’d bent Ingrid Tearney to his will not an hour ago. That ridiculous Slough House: in itself, an unimportant anomaly, but any victory mattered. Tearney’s reign as head of the Service would come to an abrupt end if he chose to make a stink about this morning’s incursion into the Park, and forcing a policy decision on her served to underline her necessary deference. Besides, if his party stood for anything, it was for defending the right of the strong to flourish, which meant preventing the weak from taking up unnecessary space. Slough House was an excellent example of precisely that. But what was going on outside, and where had the staff vanished to?

Diners nearer the windows were craning forward to see what was happening. Without a clear view from his booth, Judd stood abruptly and dropped his napkin. Sirens were sounding, their distant, interlooping wails a disorganised commentary on city busyness. The irritation Judd had been feeling slipped into something less comfortable. He made for the door, aware that he was drawing glances: might be something, might be nothing, but there was never any harm in showing himself prepared for an emergency. The redheaded waitress was by the door, peering outside, all pretence at professionalism history. A few yards down the road lay a lump, obscured by people crouching round it.

“What’s going on?”

“There’s been an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

The girl didn’t know.

The sirens grew closer.

The lump was wearing a grey suit.

Someone was speaking into a mobile phone: “No, I swear, he was dumped here by a van. Guy got out, opened the back door, and unloaded him like he was a sack of rubbish . . . ”

Judd looked both ways, but saw no van.

“Took off like a bat out of hell . . . ”

The first police car arrived, and its occupants jumped out and approached the body at a run.

“Okay, okay, let’s have some room here. Let’s have some room.”

“Could everyone please back off, please.”

The first officer dropped to one knee by the body and began speaking urgently into his radio.

Judd’s first thought was that this was Tearney’s work; an emphatic declaration that she wasn’t his lapdog. But that didn’t survive long. If the Service she headed was this efficient, Monteith’s tiger team would have been wrapped in chains and dumped in the Thames by coffee time.

“Did anybody see what happened? Could those of you who saw what happened give your names to my colleague here, and we’ll be taking statements just as soon as—”

Judd shook his head, and stepped back into Anna Livia’s.

“I’m ready to order,” he told the waitress.

“And your guest?”

“Won’t be joining me after all.”

It meant he had the bottle to himself, of course. But gave him plenty to think about while he waited for his lunch.