For a while, a few months back, it had looked like things were changing. After years of squatting upstairs, happily dumping on the poor saps below, Lamb had appeared to be taking an interest; at the very least, had enjoyed putting the screws on Lady Di Taverner at Regent’s Park. But the mould was showing through again: Lamb had grown bored with excitement, preferring the comfortably unchanging days, so River was still here, and Slough House was still Slough House. And the work was the same grunt-work it had always been.
Today was a case in point. Today, he was a typist. Yesterday he’d been a scanner-operator; today the scanner wouldn’t work, so today he was a typist, entering pre-digital death records onto a database. The deceased had all been six months old or younger, and had died while rationing was still enforced: prime targets for identity theft. Back then, you worked this by taking names from gravestones; a less innocent form of brass-rubbing. Birth certificates were then claimed lost and copies sought; after that, you simply traced the life the infant might have led, with all its attendant paperwork: national insurance number, bank account, driving licence … All of the details that built up a person could be faked. The only thing real was the person. But anyone who’d actually done this would be collecting a pension by now. Any sleepers using the names River had found could have called themselves Rip van Winkle instead. So it was just makework for the slow horses, plugging gaps in a history book, nothing more. And where was Jackson Lamb?
Sitting here wouldn’t answer that. Having risen without consciously deciding to, River went with the flow: out of his office, up the stairs. The top floor was always dark. Even when Lamb’s door was open, his blinds were drawn, and Catherine’s office, at the back of the building, sat in the shadow of a nearby office block. Catherine preferred lamps to overhead lighting—the only trait she shared with Lamb—and these didn’t so much dispel the gloom as accentuate it, casting twin pools of yellow light between which murkiness swarmed. Her monitor gave a grey glow, and in its wash, as River entered her room, she seemed a figment from a fairy tale: a pale lady, hoarding wisdom.
River plonked himself on a chair next to a pile of vari-coloured folders. While the rest of the world pursued a digital agenda, Lamb insisted on hard copy. He’d once toyed with instigating an employee-of-the-month award, based solely on weight of output. If he’d had a pair of scales, and an attention span, River didn’t doubt he’d have done so.
“Let me guess,” Catherine said. “You’ve finished what you were doing, and want some more work.”
“Ho ho. What’s he up to, Catherine?”
“He doesn’t tell me.” She seemed amused that River thought he might. “He does what he does. He doesn’t ask my permission.”
“But you’re closest to him.”
Her expression wavered not one inch.
“Geographically, I mean. You take his calls. You manage his diary.”
“His diary’s empty, River. Mostly he stares at the ceiling and farts.”
“It’s a captivating picture.”
“He smokes in there too. And it’s a government office.”
“We could make a citizen’s arrest.”
“We might want to practise on someone smaller.”
“I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Oh, I offer it up.” Fear flashed in River’s eyes. “Joke? He’d drive a saint to suicide, anyway. Frankly, whatever he’s up to, I’m just relieved he’s somewhere else.”
“He’s not at the Park,” River said. When Lamb was at the Park, he made sure everyone knew it. Probably hoping someone would break, and ask if they could come too. “But something’s up. He’s been weird. Even for Lamb.”
Lamb’s weirdness would pass for normality in other people. His phone had rung, and he’d answered it. He’d had Ho unfreeze his browser, which meant he’d been online. In fact, he’d given the impression of having a job to do.
“And he hasn’t said a word,” River said.
“Not one.”
“So you’ve no idea what’s lured him onto the streets.”
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” Catherine said.
River studied her, an old-fashioned creature whose pale colouring spoke of an indoor life. Her clothes covered her wrist to ankle. She wore hats, for god’s sake. He guessed she was fiftyish, and until the business last year he hadn’t paid her much attention; there was little in a wall-hugging woman her age to interest an uptight man of his. But when things had turned nasty she hadn’t panicked. She’d even pointed a gun at Spider Webb—as had River. This shared experience made them fellow-members of a select club.
She was waiting for him to respond. He said, “Tell?”
“Who’s Lamb send for when he needs something?”
“Ho,” River said.
“Exactly. And you know how sound travels here.”
“You heard them talking?”
“No,” Catherine said. “That’s what was interesting.”
Interesting because Lamb was not in the habit of modulating his tones. “So whatever it is, it’s not for the likes of us.”
“But Roddy knows.”
