He’d meant if they hung on too long. Old spies outgrow their covers; their sleeves become tattered and worn. They forget which lies they’re meant to tell, which truths they ought to conceal, and that was without the added pain of dementia, of cells fraying and losing their connections, of neural networks decaying into leaderless chaos. Once, his grandfather had haunted Molly Doran’s archive, secretly adding conclusions to the unfinished stories collected there. In the end, conclusions were beyond him . . . Best to tune out gracefully, and accept retirement’s package of slip-ons and slacks and slow movements. Better the boredom of the afternoon nap than to stay on the road too long and end up a laughing stock. Old spies can grow ridiculous. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns.
River wondered what the O.B. had hidden in his box-safe; wondered what Stam, another superannuated spook, might be up to, and wondered what Sid was doing, and this time called her, but after three rings went to voicemail again. Then he thought about trying Louisa and apologising for being a bastard, which brought to mind what she’d asked earlier, about whether he was on a job for Taverner. What had that been about? If old spies grow ridiculous it was because young spies wove their lives into knots, forever making cat’s-cradles out of straightforward lengths of string. No wonder there was so much pent-up rage in Slough House, an observation which summoned images of Shirley, who right then was rousing herself from a post-lunch torpor and pondering a raid on the kettle. Given her long-standing and devout refusal to contribute to the kitty, out of which teabags, milk and coffee were purchased, such expeditions were fraught with the possibility of conflict. Good. She paused for a moment, wondering how a worksheet had appeared on her desk, then headed for the kitchen, hoping for an unattended teabag, and found Ash boiling water in her usual manner of addressing such tasks: as if it were below her pay grade, and God only knew how it had fallen to her.
On seeing Shirley, she said, “What do you think Louisa’s up to?”
“What makes you think she’s up to anything?”
“Duh, because Lamb said she was? That she’s a big decision to make?”
“Lamb,” said Shirley, “likes to fuck with our heads. It’s what gets him out of bed in the mornings.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to think about Lamb in bed. But do you know what I do think? I think she’s leaving.”
Shirley had paid little attention to what Lamb had said, feeling only the usual relief that a meeting was over. Meetings were not among the things she was best at, and there were some things she’d never done—skateboarding came to mind—that she’d probably be better at than meetings if she did try them. But Ash had a point: Maybe Lamb hadn’t simply been sowing discontent. Maybe Louisa had something going on.
Ash said, “And if she’s leaving, it’s because she’s got somewhere to go. And I don’t mean some bank or estate agents’ or shoe shop. I mean a proper job.”
Shirley couldn’t see Louisa working in a shoe shop. “You reckon she’s going back to the Park? Because I hate to break it to you—”
“That wouldn’t be a big decision, would it? She’d do that in a heartbeat. We all would.”
Shirley said, “But none of us are going to. And Louisa won’t get a reference from the Service that’ll get her into security work.”
“Yeah, but really, she’ll need one? I mean think about it. This might not be what we signed up for, but it’s still intelligence work, isn’t it? We’re still—you know—spies. For anyone working the night shift on an industrial estate, watching the vans don’t get nicked, this’d be a career highlight.”
(“Career highlights are for other people,” had been a recent Lamb observation. “You lot have career landfills. And not the sort some idiot’s buried an old laptop in, with a fortune in bitcoin, but the stinking horrible kind, swarming with gulls.”)
“More fool them,” said Shirley.
The kettle boiled and Ash poured water into a mug, saying, “You’re hundy missing the point. Your average security company’d shit themselves to get a real-life former spy on the books. Reference or no reference.”
“Except the Park’d deny we ever worked for the Service. If we claimed we had, I mean. And . . .”
“Uh, not yours,” said Ash.
“Yeah, I gave Catherine a fiver this morning?” She fished out a bag, dropped it into the cleanest mug within eyeshot, and reached for the kettle. “So if Louisa’s actually been offered a job worth having . . .”
“It’s with someone who knows her. Probably ex-Service themselves, but not Slough House. And anyway, a fiver? I gave her a tenner last week. We all did.”
