Louisa powered her computer down and checked she had keys and wallet. Turned the light off. The office across the landing was where Ashley Khan had been put, and Louisa looked in before heading downstairs. Ashley had been allotted the desk furthest from the door, though she’d shifted to River’s desk instead. This might have been because it was better lit, or less susceptible to scrutiny from the doorway, or simply because it wasn’t the desk she’d been assigned, and this was her two-fingered response. Fair enough. Louisa remembered her own early days, wrapped in a fog of misery, and she didn’t have Ashley’s excuse of having had her arm broken by Lamb before she’d even started. Talk about a tough interview.
Truth was, Louisa hadn’t made an effort with Ashley, because you didn’t. That was the rule. There was no knowing how long a slow horse would survive, even leaving aside the grim mathematics of the bigger picture. You didn’t have to expect a colleague would take a bullet in the head—or a knife in the gut—or put their hand to a toxin-smeared doorknob—to know they weren’t necessarily going to be around forever. Lamb’s usual method of inducting a newby was to not give them anything to do for the first few months, which, if they took as an invitation to turn up late or knock off at lunchtime, would also be their last few months. So far Ashley had stood the course, but “so far” was still in single figures, if you were counting weeks. That wasn’t bad going—Louisa recalled counting days; hell, hours—but it was still all uphill, and wouldn’t get easier.
“Hey,” she said to Ashley, who was slumped across the desk, her dark hair pooled around her.
The young woman started. “I wasn’t asleep.”
“Didn’t think you were,” Louisa lied.
“Is he still around?”
No need to ask who “he” was.
“Yes. But dormant,” Louisa said, stepping inside and keeping her voice low. Sound followed peculiar waves in Slough House; syllables that couldn’t be heard a social distance away might yet reach Jackson Lamb’s ear. “Are you on anything yet?”
“Like her downstairs, you mean? No, not so far.”
“I meant work.” Not pharmaceuticals. “Has he given you an . . . assignment?”
There must be a better word than that for a slow-horse task. ‘Assignment’ sounded like it might have meaning somewhere down the line.
Ashley Khan said, “I’m to adjust myself to the realities of performing within attenuated parameters,” and Louisa couldn’t tell whether she was quoting, or had retreated behind irony.
“Yeah, that sounds about right. But, you know. It gets . . .”
“Better?”
“Not really.”
“That’s what I thought.”
There was a plastic box on her desk containing a mixture of nuts and dried berries. Ashley reached into it without looking and collected a palmful, then sat back and regarded Louisa with unnerving frankness. “How long have you been here?”
“It’s best not to think in terms of time.”
“Not the most inspiring response. I was told I should just quit.”
“Who by?”
“Friends. Others on the hub.” Her gaze shifted from Louisa. “I mean, that was back on day one. Day two. They haven’t been in touch since. None of them have.”
“They’re worried it’s catching, being a slow horse,” said Louisa. “They’re shielding.”
“They can screw themselves,” Ashley said, her flat tone suggesting she was describing an uncanny ability rather than indicating a course of action.
Louisa didn’t feel like offering an alternative point of view. The number of people she was still in touch with at Regent’s Park was zero. Less than, if you counted unanswered voicemails.
She looked round the office, which hadn’t changed in any essential since Ashley’s arrival. It wasn’t the kind of workspace you’d try to personalise, because if you were someone who liked to personalise your workspace you’d be somewhere else, and also because it was the kind of workspace that would actively resist such attempts. Pot plants would wilt before your eyes, and photographs of loved ones fade in their frames, familiar shapes becoming ghostly presences, then absences, then blanks. A bit like your friends on the hub, on hearing the news of your exile.
What Ashley’s personal space might look like, Louisa didn’t know. She was young, and had barely cut her teeth at the Park before running foul of Lamb, so hadn’t specialised yet; was what the Park called wet material, ready to be moulded into whatever form it chose. As things had fallen that would be down to Lamb now, so the odds were good she’d end up a shapeless mess. That aside, all Louisa knew was that Ashley had grown up in Stirling: this nugget from her personnel file, via Catherine. And, Louisa suspected, there was a little money in the background. That or some badly hammered plastic. Because Ashley dressed well, and trainee spooks enjoyed a starting salary apprentice chimney sweeps wouldn’t envy.
Ashley, meanwhile, appeared to be waiting for her to justify her presence, so she said, “You’ve swapped desks.”
“Yes, well. It’s not like it’s in use.”
