Joe Country полностью

“This might just be me being harsh, but if your mission in life is to indiscriminately massacre your neighbours, you’re probably not that bothered about paying your TV licence. Right?”

Shirley had said, “Yeah, but don’t they get taught to blend in? At terrorist school?”

“Oh, good. A volunteer.”

“No, I was just—”

“See, what I’m suggesting, by which I mean what you will henceforth dedicate your life to until I say stop, is what I’m going to call . . . Operation Scofflaw.”

Meaning Shirley’s daylight hours were now taken up by cross-referencing a register of TV licence defaulters against lists of those who’d failed to pay parking fines, child support and a million other minor offences . . .

(“Wouldn’t it be quicker to just take the population of Liverpool and start from there?”

“And they say I teach you nothing.”)

. . . the whole shebang then, for want of a less inflammatory description, ethnically profiled. It was, essentially, classic Lamb: pointless, time-wasting and tit-blisteringly boring, with a dash of offensiveness chucked in. If it was happening to anyone else, it would be funny.

She wondered what task Lamb would find for the new guy.

And she wondered what the new guy had done to wind up in Slough House.

And then she wondered how come River was nowhere to be seen, the jammy skiver.

Good job some of us have a work ethic, she decided, making sure her office door was shut before she closed her eyes.

His grandfather was fading with the day.

River had been at his bedside since the early hours, summoned by a kind voice on his mobile: It would be wise to get here soon. For minutes afterwards he’d lain unhearing the words, running back the clock. He was twelve, and helping in the garden; watching worms at their incomprehensible work. On his head, the O.B.’s hat. Don’t want you catching sunstroke. Your grandmother’d have my guts. Or twice that age and sitting in the study, rain lashing the windows, the O.B. talking him through the dark days of the Cold War. Over the years, the old man’s chair had moulded itself to hold him like a hammock. River’s chair was a work in progress . . . On their own darkest day, none colder, they’d buried his grandmother, Rose, and it had been the first and only time he’d seen the O.B. cry.

You built a life the way you’d build a wall, one brick on top of the other, but sooner or later, those first bricks were taken away.

He had thought about calling his mother, but for no longer than it took to shake his head. Then he’d willed himself up and into yesterday’s clothes, arriving at Skylarks, the nursing home, before the sun. His grandfather had been moved into a room that was purpose-built to die in, though nobody actually said so. The lighting was gentle, and the view through the window of winter hills, their treeline a skeleton chorus. The bed the O.B. would never leave was a clinical, robust device, with upright panels to prevent him from rolling off, and various machines monitoring his progress. On one, his pulse echoed, a signal tapped out from a wavering source. A last border crossing, thought River. His grandfather was entering joe country.

Twice he took his phone out, to ring his mother. Twice he didn’t. He texted Louisa, though; let her know where he was. She texted back: So sorry. He’d have called Catherine, but Catherine had changed lately, reverting to how she’d been in his early days at Slough House: a pale ghost, who moved through the rooms leaving no trace behind her. The previous day, alone with her in the kitchen, he’d stood close by her, reaching for milk from the fridge, and breathed in deeply: could he smell alcohol? But he caught only the herbal mix of the soap she favoured, the scent she wore.

Besides, if she’d fallen off the wagon, they’d all know about it, surely? A crash like that. Unless Catherine had done what Catherine would do, which was fall so slowly, fall so deep, that no one would notice and no one would hear.

From the bed, calm breathing.

He stood and paced the room, to keep his blood flowing. That’s the kind of thought you have in a hospital room. The O.B.’s gentle exhalations, his secret murmuring, didn’t waver, and seemed no different from anyone else asleep. But those familiar with death had picked up on signs River couldn’t decrypt. When life was entering the final straight there were signals to read, codes to break. It was a language he didn’t know yet. All the deaths he’d witnessed had happened suddenly, to healthy people.