The coach was in his rearview. If he slammed on his brakes it would plough right into him, finishing off the job those Russian berks had screwed up. Instead, he accelerated, finding space on the inside lane while rescrambling Louisa’s words into something he could make sense of. “Lamb told you Taverner’s fired me?”
“You’re not coming back, she says. No clean bill of health. I’m sorry.”
He carried out a mini-medical on himself: brain, internal organs, limbs. He was fine; he was fucking brilliant. More to the point, Taverner wasn’t trying to squeeze him, so what was going on? “And you got this from Lamb?”
“Who got it from Taverner. Shit, you didn’t know? I thought . . . Ah, fuck it. I could have been more tactful.”
A drunk monkey with a water pistol could have been more tactful. River wondered if this was what working for Lamb did to you: wore away your gentler instincts, leaving you pumice rough when breaking bad news. “He might have been . . . Shit.”
He might have been anything: lying his eyes out, having a laugh. Laying the first breadcrumb in a trail that would lead off a cliff. With Lamb, you never knew. And even when you did, it didn’t help.
“River?”
“I’m fine. Driving.”
“Look, I’m sorry, I—”
“Talk later.”
The coach was history.
The sun was still climbing the sky, which was still blue. Yesterday, driving this way, all had been fine and all had been dandy. He’d been planning his comeback, the degree to which he’d impress Taverner and have her waxing the tiled floors at Regent’s Park, the better to host his reflection on his triumphant re-entry. By the time he’d been heading home his mind had been full of the O.B., and the dirty pictures hidden on his bookshelves. And now, third time of passage, he’d just learned that his career had flatlined; was so dead his best friend assumed he already knew about it. Maybe he should find another route home, in case bad shit started happening.
His phone rang again, Erin, with Stamoran’s address and phone number. He fed the former into his satnav while Erin not so subtly probed for an explanation. When she rang off, clearly not thrilled, he dialled Stam, but got no reply. Then he contemplated calling Lamb, seeing if he could find out precisely what Taverner had said, but concluded he’d sooner French kiss a wet dog. If Taverner planned to squeeze him, so be it: He’d suffer being squeezed—squoze?—if it would settle his future. Talking to Lamb would hardly help, “Cry me a you” being his standard consolation for River’s woes. And meanwhile, River had his grandfather to worry about: what crap Stamoran was pulling that required the O.B.’s name to be tarnished, and what it was that had really been hidden in the box-safe. Enough to be getting on with.
Not going back—his career over—the Park a fantasy—that could wait.
Meanwhile, the satnav took him what felt like all the way round Oxford, largely because that’s what it was, then dumped him in a tailback heading towards the centre, along a road lined with hoardings advertising mattresses, warehouse-sized electrical stores and too many traffic lights. Somewhere in the distance, a train was crossing a bridge. He called Sid but it went to voicemail so he fiddled with his radio instead, and finding nothing he wanted to listen to sat and fumed, the traffic nudging forward, his temperature rising, the morning crawling by.
It was the train before the one River noticed, or even the one before that, that Sid had arrived on. An otherwise admirable TV series had recently suggested that London/Oxford rail travel was a complicated business, but Sid simply caught the tube to Paddington and hopped on a direct service. While the train did its job, she read the notes Taverner had included in the envelope: Charles Cornell Stamoran’s home address, which was off the Botley Road—a short walk from the station—plus a reminder of where the Spooks’ College was, where he mostly spent his days, and the safe house on Woodstock Road he had nominal care of, tidying up between periods of usage, replenishing stocks, binning junk mail. If she hadn’t been on medical leave she could have accessed Park files and found out more, but the list of places he might be had to suffice. The envelope also held a thousand pounds in box-fresh twenties and a burner phone. She resealed it, and spent the rest of the journey gazing through the window at the sun-flattened landscape, noting the absence where Didcot Power Station’s chimneys once stood. The train carrying her forward was also taking her back: She’d studied at Oxford, and this scenery was familiar. The cows were probably different, though.
