She risked a look. Ho was several hundred yards behind, running like a drunk with a sprain, in no state to observe her. So she stopped, nursed her ribs with her left hand, steadied herself against a wall with her right. She was in a small park: trees, bushes, a playground, grass. A clutch of mothers, their offspring strapped in buggies or loaded onto swings, were drinking coffee from a breakfast stall this side of the alley onto Whitecross Street. Shirley passed through it, and at the far end looked up. There it was, the tip of the Needle; visible even here, in this built-up canyon.
Something was going on over there, and Shirley had no idea what, but at last she was involved.
A gulp of air. Another spurt of speed. No sign of Ho, but that was okay. If you couldn’t get Windows to start, Ho was your man. The rest of the time, he took up space.
Her head buzzing like her haircut, on she ran.
At the entrance to the same park, Roderick Ho gripped the railings and prayed for something. He wasn’t sure what. Just something that would make his lungs forgive him. They felt like he’d been gargling fire.
Behind him, a car rumbled to a halt. “You all right, mate?”
He turned, and here was his miracle. A black cab. A great big beautiful black cab, open for business.
Falling onto the back seat, he managed to gasp, “The Needle.”
“Right you are.”
Away he went.
River blinked.
Soldier Two swung at Griff Yates again, and in a moment so smooth it looked choreographed, Yates seized his arm, twisted his wrist, relieved him of his gun and put him on the ground. The blood masking Yates’s face painted him a demon. For a moment, River thought he was going to shoot, but instead he turned it on Soldier One. “Drop it!” he screamed. “Now.”
The soldier was just a boy—they were both boys. The gun trembled in his hands. River plucked it free.
Then said to Yates, “You too.”
“This bastard smashed my face in!”
“Griff? Give me the gun.”
Griff gave him the gun.
River said, “I’m with MI5.”
This time they listened.
The building had come to life over the past few hours, but on Molly Doran’s floor there was only the gurgling of plumbing, as hot water negotiated clumsy bends in monkey-puzzled piping. The sleek and glossy surfaces of Regent’s Park masked the elderly exoskeleton on which it had been hoisted, and like a spanking new estate erected on a burial ground, it sometimes felt the tremblings of unlaid ghosts.
Or so Molly put it.
“You’re on your own a lot, aren’t you?” said Lamb.
They had worn out the possibilities of new discovery. Everything they knew about Nikolai Katinsky, about Alexander Popov, could fit on a sheet of paper. A set of interconnecting lies, thought Lamb, like one of those visual puzzles; the outline of a vase, or two people talking. The truth lay in the line itself: it was neither. It was pencil marks on a page, designed to fool.
“What now?” Molly asked.
“I need to think,” he said. “I’m going home.”
“Home?”
“I mean Slough House.”
She raised an eyebrow. Cracks had appeared in her make-up. “If it’s quiet you want, I can find you a corner.”
“Not a corner I’m after. It’s a fresh pair of ears,” Lamb said distractedly.
“As you wish.” She smiled, but it was a bitter thing. “Someone special waiting over there?”
Lamb stood. The stool creaked its thanks. He looked down at Molly: her overpainted face, her round body; the absences below her knees. “So,” he said. “You been all right then?”
“What, these past fifteen years?”
“Yeah.” He tapped a foot against her nearest wheel. “Since ending up in that gizmo.”
“This gizmo,” she said, “has outlasted most other relationships I’ve had.”
“It’s got a vibrate setting?”
She laughed. “God, Jackson. Use that line upstairs, they’ll prosecute.” And she put her head to one side. “I don’t blame you, you know.”
“Good,” he said.
“For my legs.”
“I don’t blame me either.”
“But you stayed away.”
“Yeah, well. New set of wheels, I figured you’d want some private time.”
She said, “Go away now, Jackson. And do me one favour?”
He waited.
“Only come back when you need something. Even if it’s another fifteen years.”
“You take care, Molly.”
In the lift, he tucked cigarette in mouth in readiness for the great outdoors. He was already counting the moments.
River said to Griff, “Why’d you come looking for me?”
They sat in the back of the jeep; the soldiers up front. He’d returned both their guns. This was borderline risky—there was a chance the kids would shoot them and bury them somewhere quiet—but once they’d clocked his Service card, they’d slipped into cooperative mode. One was on his radio now. The hangar would soon be crawling with military.
Yates’s face was grim. His handkerchief was a butcher’s mess, but he’d only succeeded in smearing blood across his features. “I said, man, I’m sorry I—”
“Not what I’m asking. Why, specifically, did you come looking for me?”
Yates said, “Tommy Moult …”
“What about him?”
“I saw him up the village. He asked if you’d got back all right. Made me worried you’d been, you know. Hurt.”
Blown up, he meant.
