“Well if you want to make it to nineteen years and a day, start playing nice. Because I’ve spent nineteen years and then some finding things out people don’t want me to know, so a bit of publicly available information from a turd in a uniform really shouldn’t be this hard to acquire. Don’t you think?”
The weasel looked round for the policeman, who was now ambling towards a coffee booth.
“Oh, seriously,” Lamb said. “Can he get here before I break your nose?”
Nothing in his physical appearance suggested Lamb could move quickly, but something about his presence suggested you’d be unwise to dismiss the possibility. He watched this calculation crawl across the weasel’s face, and, while it was struggling to its conclusion, yawned ferociously. When lions yawn, it doesn’t mean they’re tired. It means they’re waking up.
The weasel said, “Platform two.”
“Lead the way,” Lamb said. “I’m looking for a hat.”
In St. James’s Park, Webb had handed over a pink cardboard folder, its flap sealed with a sticky label, and taken his leave. Louisa and Min were now heading for the City, but were walking round the lake first, in case this turned out to be a short cut.
“If he’d said HMG once more, I’d have had to LOL,” Louisa said.
“Mmm. What? Oh, right. Good one.”
He sounded miles away.
“The wheel is turning,” she noted. “But the hamster’s dead.”
Min proved her point by grunting in reply.
She took his arm because they could always pretend this was cover. On a rock in the middle of the lake, a pelican stretched its wings. It was like watching a golf umbrella do aerobics.
She said, “You’ve been eating your wheaties, haven’t you?”
“Meaning what?”
“I thought you were gunna challenge him to a wrestling match.”
This earned a sheepish grin. “Yeah. Well. He got on my tits.”
Louisa smiled, but kept it on the inside. Min had changed these past few months, and she was aware that she was the cause of it. On the other hand, she was equally aware that any woman would have done: Min was having sex again, and that would put a spring in anyone’s step. Like her own, his life had gone down the pan a few years back: in Min’s case, the pivotal moment had been leaving a classified disk on a tube train. His marriage had been collateral damage. As for Louisa, she’d screwed up a tail-job, an error which had put guns on the street. But a few months ago they’d stirred themselves out of their individual torpors enough to start an affair, at the same time Slough House had gone briefly live. Things had settled since, but optimism hadn’t entirely died. They suspected Jackson Lamb now had serious dope on Diana Taverner; enough that, if she wasn’t his sock puppet, she was at least in his debt.
And debt meant power.
Louisa said, “Webb’s the one River put on the floor, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m surprised he got up again.”
Min said, “You think River’s that tough?”
“Don’t you?”
“Not especially.”
She barked a little laugh.
“What?”
“You. That shoulder roll you gave when you said that.” She gave an exaggerated imitation. “Like, not as tough as me.”
“I did not.”
“Yes you did.” She gave the roll again. “Like that. Like you were on
“I did not. And all I meant was, sure, River can probably handle himself. But he’s hardly likely to dismantle Lady Di’s lapdog, is he?”
“Depends what the lapdog did to him.”
They rounded the lake. Padding about on the grass, on feet too big for their legs, were two annoying birds neither could identify, while a short distance away a black swan glided. It looked cross.
“You okay with this?”
She shrugged. “Babysitting. Hardly high excitement.”
“Gets us out of the office.”
“When it’s not keeping us there. There’ll be paperwork. Wonder what Lamb’ll say.”
Min stopped so Louisa, her arm still through his, came to a halt too. Together they watched the swan patrol the choppy fringe of the lake, and jab without warning at something below the surface; its neck momentarily becoming a bar of black light beneath the water.
She said, “Black swans. I was reading about them the other day.”
“What, they’re on a takeaway menu? That’s kind of sick.”
“Behave. It was in one of the Sundays. It’s a phrase, black swan,” she said. “Means a totally unexpected event with a big impact. But one that seems predictable afterwards, with the benefit of hindsight.”
“Mmm.”
They walked on. After a while, Louisa said, “So what were you thinking back then? When you were so far away?”
He said, “I was thinking last time we got dragged into a Regent’s Park op, someone was looking to screw us over.”
The black swan dipped its neck once more, and buried its head in the water.
Shirley Dander lifted her take-out coffee cup, found it cold, and drank from it anyway. Then said, “Standish?”
“The Lady Catherine …” Marcus made a swigging gesture with his right hand. “She likes the bottle.”
