Lamb said, “Well, he bounced Cartwright off his car, but let’s face it, that doesn’t necessarily speak to evil motives. But he was hanging around while what passes for the great and the good were all in a bunch, so who’s to say he didn’t have designs on mass slaughter?” He fumbled at his crotch to general alarm, but he’d merely found a sliver of red pepper. “Nah, just kidding. Cartwright took after him with all the grace of a septic iguana. If he’d been there to toss a bomb, he had time to toss it. Trust me on that. I know a tosser when I see one.”
River all but lip-synched that last line, thinking:
Earlier, Louisa had grabbed five minutes with him: still in his funeral blacks, trousers gaping at the knee. “You okay?” she’d asked. And then amended herself: “I mean, given you’re not okay, are you okay?”
“Had better days.”
“Why’d you think he was there?”
“God knows.” Though River had a shortlist of reasons: so Frank could lay eyes on his son, and his son’s mother; so Frank could see the old man put in the ground—that one rang true. Sentiment wasn’t Frank’s style, but keeping score was in character. So yeah, that, or else this: Frank had some other reason all of his own. In which case, they’d have to just wait and see.
“What about your mother?”
“. . . What about her?”
Louisa said, “You know, did she have much to say on the subject?”
Like: goodness gracious me, there’s the man who pretended he loved me, and got me pregnant, and all so my father would bankroll his mad-spook scheme, hatched in a French chateau.
No, none of that came up.
Instead, River and his mother had stood by the grave, River’s knees pulsing where they’d scraped along the road, his heartbeat back to normal, but heavy with grief and a confusion of other emotions. He should have been boiling with rage, but wasn’t quite. Rather, he felt as if a fuse had been lit, and that his father’s reappearance heralded some major shift, the way the grey vault of sky promised snow. When it came, it would cover everything. Nothing would be missed.
He said, “She’s spent so long pretending he doesn’t exist that she didn’t even see him. That’s how she acted, anyway.” Acted with her silent posture; with her frozen refusal to notice his escapade. Right up until she was getting into her taxi, when she’d hugged him tighter than normal.
“Your grandfather was proud of you.”
River looked up, down, all around. Slough House. Words weren’t necessary.
“Yeah, okay. But you haven’t given up, have you?”
“I’ve given it some thought.”
He was giving it more now, by the look of him. Louisa would be worried, if she didn’t have troubles of her own. And didn’t have to pay attention to what Lamb was saying, because he tended to notice when you wandered, and that was never fun.
“Apparently he had CIA ID,” he was saying now. “Which must be harder to say than to fake, because our Frank soiled his pants with the so-called Cousins about the same time he soiled Cartwright’s mother’s sheets. No way is he holding legitimate paper.” He tossed the fragment of red pepper into the air, and snapped like a pike taking a fly. “Now, maybe he turned up at the funeral for old times’ sake, but my feeling is, he doesn’t scratch his arse without a hidden agenda. And given that his last appearance involved redecorating our walls, I’m not inclined to shrug him off. Which is why I’m looking at you, Scissorhands.”
Roddy Ho said, “What?”
Ho had his fingers bandaged, Louisa noticed, though she didn’t care why. True, he’d been less of a dick this last little while, but that might have been because being more of one was a stretch even for him.
“You’re awake. Good. Because what we’ve got ourselves here is a mystery, and as with any mystery, you have to address the four Fs.”
No one dared ask.
“Who the fuck, what the fuck, where the fuck and why the fuck,” Lamb continued. “Fake paper or not, Harkness must be leaving a trail. What’s he calling himself, what’s he up to, where’s he gone, and why now? I’m reliably told you can’t use a public pissoir these days without showing up on You-Bend or whatever it’s called, and if I want someone to follow digital breadcrumbs, who better to ask than our own little digital detective? Whose digits, I notice, are looking mangled. Stick them somewhere you shouldn’t?”
“Accident,” said Ho.
“Sorry to hear it,” said Lamb. “So. River’s daddy. Where do you start looking?”
“Car,” said Louisa, River and Shirley as one.
