“The same. It’s this summit thing tomorrow. Your old friend Spider Webb and his Russians. Except …”
“Except what?”
“Lamb came up with background on the woman who ran Min over. It looks like the Dogs might have been hasty, writing it up as an accident.”
“Jesus,” he said. “Louisa know?”
“No.”
“Keep an eye on her, Catherine. She already thinks Min was murdered. If she gets proof …”
“I will. How do you know she thinks that?”
“Because I would,” he said. “Okay. I’ll watch my step. But so far, I’ve got to tell you, Upshott appears to be what it looks like on the map. A small piece of nowhere in some pretty countryside.”
“Roddy’s still digging. I’ll get back to you.”
River stood a while longer in the dark. Kelly, he thought. Kelly Tropper—maybe her father, yes, former big-shot lawyer in the capital; maybe he was the kind of long-term burrower the old-style Kremlin might have put in play. But his daughter had barely been born when the Wall came down. There was no reason to suspect she might be part of the network. What were the chances that this little nowhere was nurturing a new generation of Cold War warriors, and what would they be fighting for if it did? The resurrection of the Soviet Union?
Through the window, he watched Tommy Moult pour more vodka, then take something from his pocket and put it in his mouth. He used the alcohol to wash it down. He still wore his red cap, and the hair that poked from it seemed comical. His skin was tight across his jaw, and bristled with white stubble. The gleam in his eyes was lively enough, but there was an air of weariness about him. The cap struck a jaunty note at odds with everything else.
Turning, River faced the hangar. The big doors giving onto the landing strip were padlocked, but there was an unsecured side entrance. He stepped inside, listening hard, but the only sounds were those of an empty structure, and when he swept the interior with his pocket torch’s beam, nothing scuttled from its reach. The plane loomed in the shadows. A Cessna Skyhawk—he’d not been this close to it before, but had seen it ploughing the skies above Upshott, where it seemed a child’s toy. It wasn’t that much more substantial now: about half as tall as River himself, and maybe three times that long. It was single-engined, with space for four passengers; white with blue piping. When he laid a hand on its wing it was cold to the touch, but promised warmth; the warmth of coiled potential. He hadn’t really registered until now that Kelly flew. Had known it as a fact, but not felt it. Now he did.
The rest of the structure was mostly clear floorspace, everything else being stacked against the walls. A flatbed trolley’s handle reared up like a hobbyhorse. Whatever it held was draped in canvas. This was secured to the trolley with clothesline, and River had to fiddle with a knot, torch in mouth, before he could peel it free. Having done that, it took him a moment to work out what it was that was stacked there, three sacks deep. He put a hand to it. Like the plane it was cold, but warm with the same coiled potential.
What felt like a pair of darts struck him on the neck.
A flash of light ignited River’s brain, and the world turned to smoke.
The Wentworth Academy of the English Language was quiet, no lights showing from its third-floor offices above the stationer’s off High Holborn. This suited Lamb. He’d prefer to find Nikolai Katinsky asleep. Being woken at this hour would stir memories, and render him amenable to questioning.
The door, like Slough House’s, was black and heavy and weathered, but where the latter hadn’t been opened in years, this saw daily use. No groaning from the tumblers as Lamb slipped a pick into its keyhole; no squealing from the hinges as he eased it open. Once inside he waited a full minute, accustoming himself to the dark and the building’s breathing before tackling the staircase.
It was often observed of Lamb that he could move quietly when he wanted. Min Harper had suggested that this was only true on his home ground, because Lamb knew every creak and wobble of Slough House, having doctored the noisier stairs himself. But Harper was dead, so what did he know? Lamb went up without a sound, and paused at the Academy’s door barely long enough to squint through its frosted window, or so it appeared, though the pause proved long enough for him to gain entry. He closed the door behind him as silently as he’d opened it.
Again, he stood a moment, waiting for the atmospheric disturbance his entrance had made to settle, but it was wasted caution. There was nobody there. The door to the next office hung ajar, and there’d be nobody in there either. The only living thing was Lamb himself. Slivers of streetlight broke through blinds, and as his eyes adjusted he could make out the shape, under the desk, of the still-folded camp bed; its thin mattress folded round its metal frame like a diagram of an unlikely yoga position.
