“Until I know where it is, hard to say.”
“What you up to, River?”
“Just tracking down someone who knew my grandfather.”
“Is this for Taverner?”
“No.” There was a moment’s interest when a passer-by paused at Stamoran’s door, but whoever it was was posting junk mail, and moved on swiftly. “I’m on medical leave, remember? From which, according to you, I’m not coming back. So I’m hardly doing anything for Taverner. Has Lech accessed that file yet?”
Lech had not done so.
“Have him call me back,” River said, and disconnected.
Rude bastard.
River, in his car, stiff from lack of movement, wouldn’t have disagreed. He knew he was blaming Louisa for delivering bad news earlier, even if it were bad news he hadn’t wasted a moment disbelieving—had he known all along he was kidding himself; that his nine-day time-out wasn’t something to be shaken off after a few months’ convalescence? It was hard now to see such wishful thinking as anything else. But that was what life could do: turn you upside down, shake your pockets empty, in the time it took to bite your tongue. One moment everything’s fine. The next, your mouth’s full of blood.
Stamoran’s door opened.
River turned his head lazily, careful to avoid sudden movement, but the young woman emerging from the house couldn’t have cared less, pulling the door shut behind her and setting off without a glance in his direction. There were three doorbells, and nothing about Stam suggested he might be playing house with a young woman, so this must be one of the other tenants. He turned back to his phone. Try Sid again? And say what? He didn’t want to tell her where he was; there was too much backstory involved. He hadn’t told her about the box-safe, about Stam’s saying it held porn, and would have to explain why he hadn’t mentioned that before going on to mention why he’d decided Stam was lying. Simpler to leave it until they were together again. There was a lot about being in a relationship that was easier to control when you weren’t actually having a conversation. It was possible that this attitude needed work, but he was busy. His phone chirruped but it was a text, spam. Did he want to change energy supplier? No, he wanted Lech to call back with the safe house address. Lech, though, was still having trouble with his PC, and had pretty clearly pissed on his picnic when it came to seeking help from Ho. He looked at Louisa, who pretended not to notice, but he didn’t dare call her on it because she was annoyed about something. Then Catherine came in, distributing worksheets, and noticed the atmosphere.
She said, “Please don’t say you need mother-henning too. It’s bad enough dealing with Ashley’s protracted adolescence and Shirley’s . . . being Shirley.”
“Relax,” Louisa said. “No one’s asking you to interfere.”
Catherine might have responded—should have done—but settled for giving Louisa a look which Louisa, on a roll now, also pretended not to notice. Lech thanked Catherine for the worksheet with his eyebrows, then thanked God or whoever when the PC accepted his password and blinked back into blankness, a possible precursor of emerging into life. Catherine, meanwhile, crossed into Ash’s room and laid the paperwork on her desk with a quiet, “Here’s your worksheet,” ignoring Ash’s muttered “What is a fucking worksheet, anyway?” but failing to quash a mental response as she carried on up the stairs: It’s a record of tasks completed in hourly time slots,
Lamb was in his office, unshod feet on his desk, his socks looking like someone had glued the contents of a puncture repair kit onto a dish-rag. One of his eyes was closed, but the other tracked her movements as she entered the room, giving her the feeling of having wandered into a reptile enclosure. The smell, too, was perhaps not dissimilar. He didn’t speak as she laid several days’ worth of emails in his in-tray—he preferred them printed out: you can’t rip up a screen—but before she was safely through the door again he said, “What’s pissing you off now?”
“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Yeah, stroll on. I can read you like a . . .”
“Book?”
“Election flyer.”
“Nobody reads election flyers.”
“My point exactly. So save me the bother and say what’s drunk your lunch.”
She said, “This place is a war zone. They’re all at one another’s throats. And I’m sick of trying to keep the peace.”
“So let ’em tear each other apart. Slough House, it’s pretty much our mission statement.”
“They’re people, not lab mice. Damaged people. We can’t just let them bite chunks out of each other.”
Lamb rolled his eyes, both open now, heavenwards. “Are you there, God? It’s me, Jackson. Got one of your do-gooder types here, meaning well and causing trouble.”
“I’m not the one—”
