Most of their conversation was thankfully a blur, a mishmash of italicised outrage and grief. He hadn’t packed a bag; hadn’t been offered the chance. But he’d walked out at last, through a door that had been standing open half an hour, its cold warning blowing right through him. And then the streets again, and the weight of his angry thoughts, and nowhere to go except here. Slough House.
This time of night, it ached like a rheumatic joint. Lech could hear its floorboards wheeze, its pipework bang. It was a warehouse of memories, all of them bad, and now it was having dreams. And he was caught up in them; every time sleep came near, one limb or other thrashed out in alarm. It was as if he were standing on a flight of stairs, his balance fragile as an egg. He mustn’t fall. But staying where he was filled him with terror.
Weak light, lamppost light, swam through the window. On the street something clattered to the ground. On the staircase, a shadow broke loose and entered the room.
Lamb.
He moved without a sound, though that was hard to fathom given his bulk, and for a while hovered in front of the desk, his gaze unblinking, unreadable, until at last he shook his head and reached for the landline. He lifted the receiver, punched some numbers, waited a while, then spoke. “Yeah, customer for you.” He held the receiver out to Lech. “Samaritans,” he said. “Quid a minute in the kitty when you’re done.”
Lech stared.
Lamb shrugged. “Or just leave it in your will. Up to you.”
He dropped the receiver, left the room and headed upstairs.
Lech looked at the phone, still live, still softly crooning.
Then he ripped it from its socket and hurled it at the wall.
It was snowing by the time Louisa crossed into Wales.
She had set out early; had virtuously breakfasted on muesli and apricots, and packed a bag with nut-based energy bars, carrots, and a pack of what claimed to be yoghurt-covered raisins, though could easily be mouse-shit past its best. All of which was more than enough to counterbalance the pair of breakfast McMuffins she picked up later. Roddy Ho had traced Lucas Harper’s Fitbit to Pegsea; the map coordinates Emma had pinged her would match, she guessed, Bryn-y-Wharg, or that was how she’d heard it over the phone—the cottage Clare and her boys used twice a year. That being established, she might have easily spent the rest of her sudden holiday hunkered in her flat, working her way through
If Lucas wasn’t at the cottage, she’d get an update on the Fitbit’s whereabouts via Emma—might cost her another spa day, but now that Emma had established comms with Roddy Ho, she might as well keep ploughing that furrow. Last thing Louisa wanted was to owe Roddy a favour herself, especially one involving the name Harper. All pennies dropped eventually, even down wells like Roddy Ho, and she didn’t want Min’s ghost raised among the slow horses. Questions asked. Memories stirred.
Not that there was a shortage of ghosts round Slough House.
A little while back, River had thought he’d received a call from Sidonie Baker. This was fine, as far as it went; Sid had been a slow horse, and what was wrong with a former colleague getting in touch? Except that Sid Baker was dead: shot in the head, carted away in an ambulance, and that was the last anyone saw of her. She’d been a slow horse, yes—except, somehow, not quite; there was a rumour she’d been planted in Slough House; a rumour which, if true, made her Park, and if she were Park, she might not be dead after all. Because Park couldn’t bring you back to life, but it could cover up the fact that you’d never actually died, and what it really really liked to bury was the notion that a mistake had been made, ever. Having an agent go down on a London street with a bullet in her head definitely fell under “mistake.” So when no record of Sid Baker ever having been admitted to that hospital, in that ambulance, came to light: well, that could mean she’d been whisked away, couldn’t it, River wanted to know. Could mean she was still among the living.
Or it could just mean that the Park had found something better to do with the body: for instance, not have it appear in a headline, anywhere, ever.
