Lamb stood with his back to her, and smoke ascended to the vaulted ceiling. After a while he moved away, towards the Dead Letter Drop, the array of plaques to those who’d died in their country’s service, but whose bodies had never found passage home. It wasn’t clear whether he was reading the inscriptions—names and dates; the barest cover stories—or was lost in his own dimension, but at length he reached out and tapped one briefly, then shook his head. He looked back in what might have been guilt, but Catherine didn’t seem to be watching. Head bowed, she was leaning forward, crying silently. He slowly returned to her.
“Need a tissue?”
She didn’t reply.
“Because I haven’t got one. I mean, fucking obviously.”
Half a minute ticked by. Lamb stubbed his cigarette out on the wax-encrusted candle stand.
“Slough House is there to keep the fuck-ups off the streets,” he said. “But if we could keep them off the streets they wouldn’t be fuck-ups. They’d just be office workers.”
Her voice a smeary mess, she said, “What’s your point?”
“That they’re too fucking useless to be office workers. Of course they’re going to get themselves killed now and then.”
“Oh, that makes me feel better. Thank you for that.”
“Best not to get fond of them. Cats and spooks. They don’t live as long as you’d hope.”
“Don’t!” Her vehemence seemed to startle Catherine as much as it did Lamb. “Just don’t, okay? Just for once, keep your smart
After a while, he nodded.
She had found a tissue now, and dabbed her eyes. The church swam in and out of focus: the flickering candles, the raggedy light, the Stations of the Cross. The altar, with its stern associations of sacrifice and sacrament. There was something soothing about all this, or if not soothing, something, at least, that made it pointless to argue. You just took it, and waited for the next thing. Catherine sat back, and let a final sob rack her frame. When she allowed herself to speak once more, her voice was almost steady.
“Do you never ask yourself why, Jackson? Do you never wonder why you keep going, year in, year bloody out?”
He was next to her now, though she hadn’t noticed him sitting down.
“Does your heart never break?”
He said, “If I let that happen, I’d have to walk away. And it’s a long time since I’ve had anywhere to walk to.”
“You were happier when you were fighting a war. When you didn’t hate yourself for having come through it alive.”
He looked at her, his face impassive.
“Except you’re still there, aren’t you? In your head. In your head you’re still behind the Wall, and you’re still a joe. And you never let your guard down and you never break cover.”
“Only sometimes,” he said. “In the, what’s that phrase? The piss-poor hours of the morning.”
She couldn’t help herself. “Wee small hours.”
“I knew piss was involved.” He gestured towards the Dead Letter Drop. “If I’d been half the joe some people think, my name’d be up there. I’ve never been more than a survivor. That’s all anyone needs to be, in the long run. Last man standing.” As if illustrating his point, he stood. “But I’d never scratch someone’s name on that wall just to save my own skin. And I never handed anyone a loaded gun I wouldn’t have been prepared to use myself.”
Lamb eased out from the bench and approached the candle stand again. There were fresh candles in a box at its base, a collecting tin next to it, and after scratching around in his raincoat pocket he produced a crumpled receipt, a button still with thread attached, and a twenty pence piece. After some deliberation, he dropped the coin in the tin. Bending to collect a candle, he held its wick to a flame until it caught, whereupon his face became a shadow-show, light and dark flickering in nameless shapes across his features.
He said, “You know what the real problem is? It’s that Taverner’s right. She is the best person for the job.”
“The best? She tried to have a man assassinated!”
“That’s where she let herself down. Trying’s not good enough.” A thin ribbon of black smoke unspooled from his candle’s tip. “Nothing wrong with the intent, mind. You’ve got a monkey like Judd on your back, you don’t feed it bananas. You find a flamethrower.”
“You can’t use a flamethrower on something that’s on your own . . . Never mind.” Catherine scrumpled the tissue she was holding. Her eyes were red, her face was white. “It was my fault. I encouraged them. They’d all be at their desks now if I hadn’t egged them on.”
“Yeah, and if they’d ever known what they were doing they’d still be at Regent’s Park,” said Lamb. “Outwitting global terrorists while waiting for cocktail hour.” He was studying his candle as if it were lighting his way through a labyrinth. “If you were all it took to nudge them into another bus crash, they’re even more fucking useless than I give them credit for.”
Catherine supposed this counted as comfort.
“Would have helped if you’d kept your trap shut, though.”
