On the pavements now were unmistakable signs of recent disturbance: people shaking heads, bewildered, laughing. Some damage had been done to a gatepost. A policeman was talking to a group of those selfsame little folk whose career path it was to either smooth Judd’s way in life or applaud him from a distance, and then they turned the corner and it was all forgotten. Cartwright said something indistinct, but he was talking to his satnav, and then he was pulling to a halt. Judd had only been here once before—some half-remembered social event; Diana hosted them about as often as pandas mated—but he recognised it well enough: the door an anonymous black, the frontage severe.
He said, “I just go in, do I?”
“Door’s open,” Cartwright said.
He could see that from where he was sitting: a sliver of liminal light around its frame.
Judd undid his seatbelt. “If you’re expecting a tip—”
“Don’t take sweeties from strangers?” River suggested.
“There’s a boy.”
He got out, slipped between two parked cars and stepped onto the pavement. Before he’d got that far, Cartwright was moving on.
The door swung open at his touch, though it felt heavy—reinforced, he guessed. There’d be metal sheeting under the wood. Inside, on the wall to the left, was an alarm panel; a keypad with an LED screen above. It was dead, by the look of it; an inert, lightless box. He closed the door behind him and crossed to what he remembered was the sitting room, whose own door was open, light spilling from it across the hallway floor. It was a comfortable, spacious room of contrasting gold and red tones, one half dominated by an L-shaped sofa; the other half by Jackson Lamb, slouching in an armchair like King Frog.
Who acknowledged Judd’s arrival by uncrossing then recrossing his legs.
“Took your bloody time,” he said.
And that would be good riddance, thought River.
He waited at the next junction and rang Sid, but she didn’t pick up. He hoped this meant she was in a dead zone, not that their relationship was. She hadn’t been happy when he’d told her he’d been summoned by Lamb, telling him
Face it. He was a slow horse. An increasingly rare breed.
His vision swam, and he had to blink it clear.
Then he called Lech, and could tell from the background noise he was in a pub.
“Yeah, and?”
“And nothing. Just, I’ve delivered Judd.”
“Great.” Lech sounded flat. “You were given something to do, you did it. The rest of us applaud you.”
There was a moment’s pause while he drained whatever he was drinking.
“Roddy there?”
There was another moment’s pause while Lech digested this. “You want
“Yeah, well, no, but—”
“I’ve got Shirley, I’ve even got Catherine. Shirley’s talking to a girl at the bar, we haven’t been introduced yet, but you could talk to her too if you like. But
“Jesus, I just want to know he did what he was supposed to do, and I’m not starring in thirty-nine CCTV shows.”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Whatever.”
“Yeah, and why did Lamb want the cameras killed, you given thought to that? Could it be his diplomatic mission wasn’t as—”
“So you haven’t spoken to Roddy and you don’t know whether he did his bit.”
“He said he did.”
“Roddy says a lot of things,” said River, ending the call.
He felt vulnerable of a sudden, here in Notting Hill, along the road from Taverner’s house. Killing the local cameras was a mind game; a way of keeping Lamb’s three-way summit off the books. Except, of course, it might be more than that. He might have been more than a delivery boy just now.
“I fucking knew that already,” he said out loud. “Of course I fucking did.”
He’d call the hospital, he thought. Make sure he hadn’t missed any news. But even as he had the thought, his phone rang: Good, he thought. Sid. But it wasn’t.
“It’s me, it’s Roddy.”
“Yeah, did you—”
“Help me.”
Apparently, when the door is opened on a long-haul flight, anyone standing outside waiting to greet a passenger gets two tons of fart in their face—several hundred people’s worth of body odour, bad breath and bellyaches. And if you’re a greeter, you have to keep smiling. It’s reckoned you need to do this at least twelve times. The first eleven, you’re less a greeter than aghast; someone who’s just answered the door to their worst nightmare.
Judd thought of making this his opening pleasantry, but decided the subtlety would be lost on Lamb, who didn’t attempt to lever himself upright. He did, though, say, “I’d offer you a drink, but all I can find is white wine.”
“Where is she?” Judd said.
“At the Park. She didn’t let you know?” Raising his eyes to a pitiless heaven, Lamb shook his head at God’s ill-mannered creation. “I’d have thought she’d have had someone pick up the phone,” he said, in a grieving tone, “but you know Diana. She goes through PAs like a centre forward through a hen party. But she’s stuck at work. So it’s just us.”
