River said, “I’m guessing you’re not actually a full member of the club?”
“It’s not a club as such,” Tommy said. “Not with rules and membership lists.”
“So that would be a no.”
He shrugged. “If they wanted their door locked, they’d keep the key where it couldn’t be found.”
There were photos magneted to the fridge. One was of Kelly in flying gear: jumpsuit, helmet, broad smile. Others, alongside bills and newspaper clippings, showed Kelly’s friends: Damian Butterfield, Jez Bradley, Celia and Dave Morden; others River couldn’t put names to. An older man standing by the neat aircraft that was the flying club’s pride and joy looked very much the pilot in pressed trousers and silver-buttoned blazer. His white hair was immaculately tended; his shoes shined to perfection.
“That’s Ray Hadley, is it?”
“Aye,” Tommy said.
“How’d he afford his own plane?”
“Maybe he won the lottery.”
Hadley was the club’s founder, if a club that wasn’t a club could have a founder. Through his encouragement Kelly and Co had taken flying lessons; because of him, their lives had come to centre around this garage and the hangar next door.
In one of their first conversations River had asked Kelly how they managed to afford it all, and slight puzzlement had flitted across her face as she’d explained that their parents had paid. “It’s not much more expensive than riding lessons,” she’d said.
Above the desk was a calendar, the month’s days marked off in small square boxes. Several had been X’ed out with thick red marker pen. Last Saturday, River noted, and the Tuesday before that. And tomorrow. Underneath it, holiday postcards had been blu-tacked to the wall: beaches and sunsets. All a long way away.
His mobile vibrated in his pocket.
“I’ll be outside,” he told Tommy, which was where he checked the incoming number before answering.
It was Catherine Standish, not Lamb.
“This is going to sound odd,” she promised.
Catherine gone, Lamb closed his window, pulled down his blind and poured a glass from the Talisker kept, true to cliché, in his desk drawer. As he drank, his gaze slipped out of focus. Anyone watching might have thought he was slipping into a booze-fuelled nap, but Lamb asleep was more restless than this—Lamb asleep made sudden panicky movements, and sometimes swore in tongues. This Lamb was still and silent, though his lips shone. This Lamb was impersonating a boulder.
At length, this Lamb spoke aloud: “Why Upshott?”
If Catherine had been there, she’d have said, Why not? It had to be somewhere.
“And if it was anywhere else, I’d be asking why there?” Lamb replied. But it wasn’t anywhere else. It was Upshott.
And whoever had decided that that’s where it should be had Kremlin brains in a Kremlin head. Which meant they didn’t choose breakfast without weighing up the consequences. Which meant there was a reason for it being Upshott which didn’t involve a map and a pin.
Eyes closed, Lamb summoned up the Ordnance Survey map he’d studied once a day since River Cartwright had become an agent in place. Upshott was a small village among larger towns, none of which had any strategic significance; they simply nestled in the heart of the British countryside, attracting tourists and photographers. They were towns where you bought antiques and expensive sweaters. Places to go to when you were sick of cities. And if you wanted an image of England, they were the places you thought of, once you’d used up Buck House and Big Ben and the Mother of Parliaments.
Or at least, he amended, they were the places a Kremlin brain in a Kremlin head might think of when thinking of England.
Now Lamb stirred, and sat up. He poured another scotch and drank it; the two actions twin halves of a single seamless gesture. Then he pawed at his collar with a meaty hand, to confirm he already wore his coat.
It was late, but he was still up. And in Lamb’s world, if he was still up, there was small reason why any other bugger should be sleeping.
Needing a Russian brain to pick, he left Slough House and headed west.
River said, “You
Catherine repeated herself. “Half the names you’ve mentioned, Butterfield, Hadley, Tropper, Mor—”
“
Catherine paused. “Any special reason for singling him out?”
“… No. Who else?”
She read them out; Butterfield, Hadley, Tropper, Morden, Barnett, Salmon, Wingfield, James: the rest … seventeen names, most of which River had encountered. Wingfield—he’d met a Wingfield at St Johnno’s. She was in her eighties; one of those old ladies who seem half bird: bright of eye and sharp of beak. Used to be something at the Beeb.
“River?”
“Still here.”
“We thought Mr. B was in Upshott to meet a contact. It could have been any one of them, River. It looks like the cicada network exists, all right. And is right there, right now.”
“There a Tommy Moult on that list? M – O – U – L – T.”
He could hear the printout shimmy in her hands. “No,” she said. “No Moult.”
“No, I didn’t think there would be,” River said. “Okay. How’s Louisa?”
