Then he sat on his sofa, which was also his bed, though if dull technicality were to intrude neither were his; they came with the room. Which was L-shaped, the foot of the L being the kitchen area (a sink; a microwave atop a fridge; a kettle on a shelf), and the longest wall boasting two windows, the view from both being of the houses opposite. Since moving into a bedsit, Min had taken up smoking again; he didn’t do it in public, but in the evening he’d hang out of a window and puff away. In one of those houses opposite a boy was often doing the same thing, and they’d give each other a wave. He looked about thirteen, the same as Min’s eldest, and the thought of Lucas smoking gave Min a pang in his left lung, but he didn’t feel anything about this kid doing it. He supposed if he’d still been living at home a sense of responsibility would have kicked in and he’d have had a word with the kid’s parents. But then, if he’d been living at home he wouldn’t have been hanging out of the window smoking, so the situation wouldn’t have arisen. In the time it took him to think this he finished his drink, so he poured another then hung out of the window and smoked a cigarette. The night was cold, with a hint of rain later. The kid wasn’t there.
When he was done, he returned to the sofa. It wasn’t a particularly comfortable sofa, but the bed it unfolded into wasn’t comfortable either, so at least it was consistent. And its lumpy narrowness was only one reason Min wasn’t in the habit of bringing Louisa back here; others being the way cooking smells hung around all night, and the peeling floor in the bathroom down the hall, and the borderline psycho in the room below … Min should move; get his life back on a proper footing. It had been a couple of years since everything went down the pan, a process that had begun when he’d left a classified disk on the tube, and woken next morning to find its contents being discussed on Radio 4. He’d been at Slough House within the month. His domestic life collapsed shortly afterwards. If his marriage had been strong to begin with, he sometimes lectured himself, it would have survived his professional humiliation, but the truth, he’d come to understand, held a tighter focus. If he himself had been strong, he would have ensured that his marriage survived. As it was, his marriage was definitely a thing of the past, what with Louisa being on the scene. He was pretty sure Clare wouldn’t tolerate that particular development, and while he hadn’t told her about it, he wasn’t convinced she didn’t know. Women were born spooks, and could smell betrayal before it happened.
His glass was empty again. Reaching to refill it he had a sudden glimpse of a future in which this never changed; one in which he was always in this soul-destroying room, and never released from the career-ending Slough House. And he knew he couldn’t let that happen. The failures of his past had been atoned for: everyone was allowed one mistake, surely? This olive branch from Regent’s Park, in the shape of Spider Webb’s summit; all he had to do was grab hold of it, and be pulled ashore. If this was a test, he intended to pass it. Nothing at face value, that had to be his mantra. He’d assume everything held a hidden meaning, and keep digging until he found what it was.
And trust nobody. That was the most important thing. Trust nobody.
Except Louisa, of course. He trusted Louisa completely.
Which didn’t necessarily mean keeping her in the loop.
Once River had left, the house grew quiet enough for David Cartwright to replay their conversation.
Fiery damn!
ZT/53235, he’d said, and River had been sharp enough to repeat it back to him. And it wasn’t a name he’d forget, because River had always been able to recite phone numbers, car registrations, Test match scores, months after reading them. It was a gift, Cartwright liked to think, the boy had inherited from him; certainly one he’d encouraged River to cultivate. So sooner or later he’d wonder how come his grandfather had got this particular name digit-perfect, when he’d been making a bit of a performance of losing details here and there.
But you didn’t grow old without becoming accustomed to there being things beyond your capacity to change. So David Cartwright filed that one in a memory drawer and resolved not to let it vex him.
The fire was dying. That woodlouse: it had scuttered about in evident fear, and at the last second had thrown itself into the flames below, as if death were preferable to the moments spent waiting for it. And this was a woodlouse. That human beings in similar straits had reached the same conclusion was a matter of televised fact, and not one David Cartwright cared to dwell upon. His memory was full of drawers he kept shut.
