“Whatever happened to Min, we’ll sort it. But there’s no point in revenge if it costs you everything, and believe me, what you’d planned last night would have cost just that. Anything Pashkin’s goons didn’t do to you, the Service would have done instead.”
A sudden outburst of chanting from across the road splintered into gales of laughter.
“Louisa?”
“Why are you with us?” She hadn’t known she was going to ask until she heard herself speak. “At Slough House?”
“That’s important?”
“You’re appointing yourself my handler, yes, it’s important. Because what I heard is, you lost your nerve. Couldn’t take the pressure. So maybe this concern for my well-being is just you making sure your life stays quiet, and I don’t rock your boat.”
Marcus stared for a moment over the top of his shades. Then he pushed the glasses into place. When he spoke, his tone was milder than his look had promised. “Well, that sounds plausible. Bullshit, but plausible.”
“So you didn’t lose your nerve.”
“Shit, no. I gamble, that’s all.”
Someone called his name.
It sounded like his name. It wasn’t, but it sounded like it—it hauled River out of the darkness, and when he opened his eyes, daylight spackled through the branches overhead. The sky was wide-open, and he had to close his eyes again, scrunch them shut, as protection against its bright blueness.
“Walker? Jonny?”
Hands were on him and suddenly the tightness loosened and he could move properly, which brought fresh pain coursing through his limbs.
“Fuck, man. You’re a mess.”
His saviour was a blurry creature, fuzzy patches held together like a walking Rorschach test.
“Get you out of this shit.”
Arms pulled River upright and his body screamed, but felt good at the same time—aching its way out of cramp.
“Here.”
A bottle was pressed to his lips, and water poured into his mouth. River coughed and bent forward; spat; threw up almost. Then blindly reached for the bottle, grabbed it, and greedily gulped down the rest of its contents.
“Shit, man,” Griff Yates said. “You really are a fucking mess.”
“I gamble, that’s all,” Marcus Longridge said.
“You what?”
“Gamble. Cards. Horses. You name it.”
Louisa stared. “That’s it?”
“Quite a big it, actually. Incompatible with efficient operational mode, apparently. Which is a joke. Ops can be the biggest gamble of all.”
“So why didn’t they just boot you out?”
“Tactical error. See, one of the HR bods decided I was suffering a form of addiction, and sat me down with a counsellor.”
“And?”
“He counselled.”
“And?”
Marcus said, “Well, I wouldn’t say it took, exactly. Not a hundred percent. That was a bookie just now, for instance.” He paused for a barrage of car-horns; an impromptu symphony likely to become the day’s soundtrack, as traffic found itself relegated to second-class status on the city’s streets. “But anyway, it turned out that once they’d given me a shrink, they couldn’t fire me. In case of legal hassle. So instead …”
So instead, he’d joined the slow horses.
Louisa glanced at the hotel, through whose big glass doors they’d be walking any moment. “Are you Taverner’s line into Slough House?”
“Nope. Why would she want one?”
“Catherine says she does.”
“Can’t see why,” Marcus said. “We’re basically the Park’s outside lav. If she wants to know anything, can’t she just ask Lamb?”
“Maybe she’d rather not.”
“Fair enough. But I’m nobody’s snitch, Louisa.”
“Okay.”
“That mean you believe me?”
“It means okay. And the gambling’s not a problem?”
“We had a fortnight in Rome last year, me and Cassie and the kids. Paid for by my, ah,
It was the first time he’d mentioned his family in her hearing. She wondered if that was intended to win her confidence.
He looked at his watch.
“Okay,” Louisa said again, which this time meant he had a point: time was getting on. She led the way into the hotel lobby.
Since they were partnered, it was probably as well he was in full possession of his nerve, she thought.
But today was a babysit. It wasn’t like his ops experience would be needed.
Catherine called River, got Number Unavailable; then Lamb, with the same result. Then studied paperwork. “All shoe and no footprint.” The more weight you carried, the deeper marks you made. But the early lives of these Upshott folk wouldn’t have left tracks in icing sugar.
Stephen Butterfield had owned a publishing company, and a quick dip online showed him numbered among the chattering class’s great and good: always ready to weigh in on the issues of the day, on Radio 4, in
