In Reading, Jackson Lamb had tracked down the station manager, for whose benefit he adopted a fussy, donnish air. It wasn’t hard to believe Lamb an academic: shoulders dusted with dandruff; green V-neck stained by misjudged mouthfuls of takeaway; frayed shirtcuffs poking from overcoat sleeves. He was overweight, from sitting around in libraries probably, and his thinning dirty-blond hair was brushed back over his head. The stubble on his cheeks sang of laziness, not cool. He’d been said to resemble Timothy Spall, with worse teeth.
The station manager directed him to the company which supplied replacement buses, and ten minutes later Lamb was doing fussy academic again; this time with a bottom note of grief. “My brother,” he said.
“Oh. Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
Lamb waved a forgiving hand.
“No, that’s awful. I’m really sorry.”
“We hadn’t spoken in years.”
“Well, that makes it worse, doesn’t it?”
Lamb, who had no opinion, gave assent. “It does. It does.” His eyes clouded as he recalled an imaginary infant episode in which two brothers enjoyed a moment of absolute fraternal loyalty, little knowing that the years to come would drive a wedge between them; that they would not speak during middle age; which would come to a halt for one of them on a bus in dark Oxfordshire, where he would succumb to …
“Heart attack, was it?”
Unable to speak, Lamb nodded.
The depot manager shook his head sadly. It was a bad business. And not much of an advert, a customer dying on a unit; though then again, it wasn’t as if liability lay with the company. Apart from anything else, the corpse hadn’t been in possession of a valid ticket.
“I wondered …”
“Yes?”
“Which bus was it? Is it here now?”
There were four coaches in the yard; another two in the sheds, and as it happened, the depot manager knew precisely which one had unintentionally doubled as a hearse, and it was parked not ten yards away.
“Only I’d like to sit in it a moment,” Lamb said. “Where he sat. You know?”
“I’m not sure what …”
“It’s not that I believe in a life force, precisely,” Lamb explained, a tremor in his voice. “But I’m not positive I don’t believe in it, do you see what I mean?”
“Of course. Of course.”
“And if I could just sit where he was sitting when he … passed, well …”
Unable to continue, he turned to gaze over the brick wall enclosing the yard, and beyond the office block opposite. A pair of Canada geese were making their way riverwards; their plaintive honking underlining Lamb’s sadness.
Or that’s how it seemed to the depot manager.
“There,” he said. “It’s that one over there.”
Abandoning his scanning of the skies, Lamb fixed him with wide and innocent gratitude.
Shirley Dander tapped a pencil uselessly against her reluctant monitor, then put it down. As it hit the desk, she made a plosive noise with her lips.
“… What?”
“What’s ‘wouldn’t dare’ supposed to mean?” she said.
“I don’t follow.”
“When I asked if you were chatting me up. You said you wouldn’t dare.”
Marcus Longridge said, “I heard the story.”
That figured, she thought. Everyone had heard the story.
Shirley Dander was five two; brown eyes, olive skin, and a full mouth she didn’t smile with much. Broad in the shoulder and wide in the hip, she favoured black: black jeans, black tops, black trainers. Once, in her hearing, it had been suggested she had the sex appeal of a traffic bollard, a comment delivered by a notorious sexual incompetent. On the day she was assigned to Slough House she’d had a buzz cut she’d refreshed every week since.
That she had inspired obsession was beyond doubt: specifically, a fourth-desk Comms operative at Regent’s Park, who had pursued her with a diligence which took no heed of the fact that she was in a relationship. He’d taken to leaving notes on her desk; to calling her lover’s flat at all hours. Given his job, he had no trouble making these calls untraceable. Given hers, she had no trouble tracing them.
There were protocols in place, of course; a grievance procedure which involved detailing “inappropriate behaviours” and evidencing “disrespectful attitudes;” guidelines which carried little weight with staff who’d spent a minimum of eight weeks on assault training as part of their probation. After a night in which he’d called six times, he’d approached her in the canteen to ask how she’d slept, and Shirley had decked him with one clean punch.
She might have got away with this if she hadn’t hauled him to his feet and decked him again with a second.
Issues, was the verdict from HR. It was clear that Shirley Dander had issues.
Marcus was talking through her thoughts: “Everybody heard the story, man. Someone told me his feet left the floor.”
“Only the first time.”
“You were lucky not to get shitcanned.”
“You reckon?”
“Point taken. But mixing it on the hub? Guys have been sacked for less.”
