“No, this was a serial offender. Must have arrested him a dozen times, mostly for punching out strangers. But he never copped on that he was the one with the problem.”
“I’m going to miss our little chats,” said Diana Taverner. “I don’t often get across that end of town. It’s not that the journey’s tricky, it’s just that it’s awfully shitty over there. Unless you’ve a thing for street food?”
Emma Flyte smiled. “I’ve eaten enough of it in my time to learn one thing. That I’ll decide where I buy it.”
“That sounds like you’re rejecting my proposal. But would you like to make it clearer?”
“Of course,” said Emma. “With the greatest lack of respect, ma’am, fuck you. And fuck your job.”
And as there didn’t seem much point prolonging the interview, she left.
So the day passes, as most days do, and the city sinks nightwards once more. On the guttering of Slough House, on its window panes, on the frame of the black front door which never opens, never closes, thin ice forms, and the building’s only contribution to the lights that guide the city through the small hours is a laterally sliced yellow square on its upmost storey, tilted to the sky. But even as this catches the attention it winks off, and some minutes later—just enough time to allow a whisky-impaired navigation of six half-staircases, with an interval to make use of what appears from a damaged perspective to be a mobile lavatory—a heavy-coated shape emerges from the adjacent alleyway, crosses the road and disappears into the Barbican shadows, which was not the route it took the night before, and will not be its route tomorrow.
And now the building subsides, the effect of shadows cast by a passing bus. Memories stir, the residue of long brooding—the stains people leave on the spaces they’ve occupied—but these will be gone by morning, leaving in their place the usual vacancies, into which new sorrows and frustrations will be poured. Soon winter will shake its big stick again, not only at London but at everything in its path, and great swathes of the country will be swallowed by snow. By the time it melts, Slough House will have new ghosts.
Until then, it will do its best to forget those it already has.
On Saturday morning Lech Wicinski left the basement flat in Crouch End that he shared with his fiancée, intending to buy a pint of milk. There was a corner shop not two hundred yards away, but for some reason he fished his car keys from their hook in passing, and about the time he should have been sitting down to scrambled eggs he was leaving the city, heading westward, though it was some while before his destination revealed itself. For that first half hour he was driving blind, trying to reverse the clock, as if in an as-yet unknown direction he’d find the misstep he’d made and untake it; return home to find everything as it ought to be, his career on track, a fresh pint of milk in the fridge. He was way too much the rationalist to think that might happen. But a human being, so, you know:
Traffic was sluggish: the usual weekend exodus. London’s pull was a weekday force. It evened out after an hour, though, and he found himself at a stable seventy-five. It was cold and dry, the motorway verges, the fields beyond, brittle and uncared for. The cows in the fields were motionless; placeholders for actual cattle.
The previous evening he’d called Josie, one of the Hub crew, and asked if she fancied a quick drink. There’d been forced cheer in his voice, a Lech Wicinski neither recognised. But it didn’t matter, because all she’d said was, “Sorry, Lech. I can’t.”
He felt his teeth grinding. Forced himself to stop.
Lech had torn that letter up, dumped it in his office bin, where the prick whose office he now shared had found it. A swift lesson: life in Slough House. In the mean little shopping arcade opposite was a hardware store that sold mousetraps.
And just to keep things rolling along, he’d snapped the handle off Ho’s Clint Eastwood mug and dumped the parts on the kitchen counter.
After skirting Oxford he left the motorway. The road narrowed, and would be leafy in summertime, but at the moment the overhead branches resembled old scars. It was potholed too, and speedbumped where it wound through villages. The cottages here enjoyed valley views and well-kept gardens, as if those who chose to live in the countryside liked to tame those parts they could. But then, who wouldn’t? It was when things slipped out of control that everything went crazy.
They had found pornography on his Service laptop—child pornography.
“It wasn’t me.”
