Lamb bent down for her hug, while Nick Duffy looked on as if witnessing an alien landing.
“Molly Doran,” Lamb said, when the woman released him. “And not looking a day older.”
“One of us has to keep in shape,” she said. “You’ve gotten fatter, Jackson. And that coat makes you look like a vagrant.”
“It’s a new coat.”
“New when?”
“Since I last saw you.”
“That’s fifteen years.” She released him and looked at Duffy. “Nicholas,” she said pleasantly. “Fuck off. I won’t have the Dogs on my floor.”
“We go wherever we—”
“Ah-ah.” She waggled a short fat finger. “I won’t. Have. The Dogs. On. My. Floor.”
“He’s just going, Molly,” Lamb assured her. He turned to Duffy. “I’ll be here.”
“It’s the middle of the—”
“Waiting.”
Duffy stared, then shook his head. “He used to warn me about you. Sam Chapman did.”
“He had a few things to say about you too,” Lamb said. “Once he’d run the numbers on Rebecca Mitchell. Here.” He produced the pill bottle he’d taken from Katinsky’s office. “Get this checked out while you’re at it.”
Whatever Duffy had to say in reply was lost as the lift doors closed.
Lamb turned to Molly Doran. “How come they’ve got you on the nightshift?”
“So I don’t frighten the youngsters. They take one look at me, see their future, and piss off to the City instead.”
“Yeah, I thought it would be something like that.”
Her wheelchair, which was cherry-red with thick velvet armrests, had the turning-circle of a doughnut. She spun it on the spot and led Lamb into a long room lined with upright cabinets which were set on tracks like tramlines, so they could be pushed together when not in use: one huge accordion structure, each row containing file after file of dusty information, some of it so ancient that the last to consult it had long since faded to dust himself. Here were Regent’s Park’s older secrets. Which could all be stored on the head of a pin, of course, if the budget were there to squeeze it into shape.
Upstairs, the queens of the database ruled their digital universe. Down here, Molly Doran was the keeper of overlooked history.
In a cubbyhole was Molly’s desk. A three-legged stool sat to one side, but the space in front was left free for Molly’s wheelchair. “So. This is where you’ve ended up.”
“As if you didn’t know.”
“Social calls. Never really been a people person.”
“I don’t think either of us were cut from that cloth, Jackson.”
She wheeled herself into her customary place. “It’s okay. It’ll take your weight.”
He lowered himself onto the stool, glaring at her upholstered chariot. “All right for some.”
She laughed a surprisingly bell-like laugh. “You haven’t changed, Jackson.”
“Never seen the need to.”
“All those years undercover, pretending to be someone you’re not. I think they drained you of pretence.” She shook her head, as if remembering something. “Fifteen years, and here you are. What do you need?”
“Nikolai Katinsky.”
“Minnow,” Molly said.
“Yes.”
“Cipher clerk. One of a shoal of the damn things, we couldn’t give them away in the nineties.”
“He came with a piece from a jigsaw,” Lamb said. “But it didn’t fit anywhere.”
“Not a side piece. Not a corner. Just a bit of the sky,” Molly’s face had altered now they’d reached the meat. Her grossly over-painted cheeks shone pinker, their natural colour showing through. “He claimed to have heard of the cicadas, that phantom network that other phantom set up.”
“Alexander Popov.”
“Alexander Popov. But it was all just one of those games Moscow Centre liked to play, before the board was tipped over.”
Lamb nodded. It was warm down here, and he was starting to feel clammy. “So what paper do we have on him?”
“It’s not on the Beast?”
The Beast was Molly Doran’s collective name for the Service’s assorted databases: she refused to differentiate between them on the grounds that when they crashed—which they were bound to, sooner or later—there’d be no telling them apart anyway. Just one dark screen after another. And she’d be the one holding the candle.
“Bare details,” Lamb said. “And the tapes of his debriefing. You know what it’s like, Molly. The young guns think a twenty-minute video’s worth a thousand words. But we know better, don’t we?”
“Are you trying to sweet-talk me, Jackson Lamb?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
She laughed again, and the sound went fluttering into the stacks like a butterfly. “I used to wonder about you, you know. Whether you’d go over to the enemy.”
Lamb looked affronted. “CIA?”
“I meant the private sector.”
“Huh.” He glanced down briefly, taking in his stained, untucked-in shirt, scuffed shoes and undone fly, and seemed to enjoy a moment’s self-awareness. “Can’t see me being welcomed with open arms.” Not that he bothered zipping up.
“Yes. Now I see you, there was nothing to worry about, was there?” Molly pulled away from the table. “I’ll see what we’ve got. Make yourself useful, and put the kettle on.”
As she rolled off, her voice floated back: “And you dare light up, and I’ll feed you to the birds.”
And here they were again.
