‘When David Cartwright went walkabout,’ he said. ‘You didn’t exactly emerge from that one covered in glory.’
Flyte said, ‘Look who’s talking. But why would I take it to Lady Di? I already know she doesn’t like me. I’d go straight to Whelan.’
‘Claude Whelan has a lot on his plate right now,’ Catherine said. ‘If he can’t trust you to do your job efficiently, what use are you to him?’
‘However good you look in the attempt,’ Lamb said.
He tipped the bottle into his mouth again but it was empty, so he dropped it on the floor.
‘We’re gonna let you go now,’ he said. ‘But before you make your next move, consider your options. Either Coe’s right and there’s a gang of killers out there poised for a high-level hit. Or he’s wrong, and your career’s fucked anyway, because you let my crew loose when you were supposed to have ’em wrapped up. If you can’t handle a simple job like that, you’ve been promoted beyond your abilities.’
‘Let’s not forget that you’re fucked too,’ said Flyte. ‘On account of Slough House being the source of the leak. If it happened.’
Catherine produced the handcuff key from a pocket in her dress, and went round the back of Emma’s chair to uncuff her. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that’s just the usual story. If we weren’t
Freed from the handcuffs, Emma rubbed her wrists. ‘And what do you expect me to do now? Just keep my fingers crossed everything works out okay?’
‘See?’ said Lamb. ‘We are on the same page after all.’
River hadn’t asked Coe if he wanted to drive, and Coe hadn’t indicated a preference, but the way he was slumped in the passenger seat, eyes closed, suggested he was happy being driven. Except you couldn’t really use ‘happy’, River amended. Actually, a brief scroll through his mental thesaurus, and the best he could come up with for Coe was ‘alive’. Even then he’d have to keep checking every half-hour. There was no question: he’d rather have been with Louisa, who he knew he could trust, or even Shirley, who was at least a known quantity; a lit firework, but not an unfamiliar one. J. K. Coe, though – River couldn’t even remember what the initials stood for without putting work into it – had been sharing his office for the best part of a year, and River couldn’t have told you where he ate lunch. Nine to five he occupied his desk, almost constantly plugged into his iPod: quiet music, you had to give him that – none of the tinny leakage that warned you Ho was near – but you could tell he was using it as a barrier; a way of minimising contact with his fellow humans. Plus, of course, he’d murdered that guy not long ago: three bullets to the chest of an unarmed, manacled man. That was always going to weigh in the balance when you were alone in a car with him.
But for the time being, Coe was asleep, or as good as, and River had something to occupy his mind, after weeks of staring at digital wallpaper. What had he been tasked with? Oh yeah: cross-checking electoral rolls against properties on which council tax and utilities were regularly paid and up to date, to determine whether apparently occupied properties were in fact standing empty. This, Lamb had suggested – with the enthusiasm of one to whom the idea had occurred after a lunchtime which had started early, finished late, and been mostly liquid – being a foolproof method of compiling a list of possible terrorist safe houses, though River suspected that a more accurate approach might involve wandering round the British Isles knocking on random doors.
‘You want me to do this for everywhere in the country?’ he’d asked, a vision of hell yawning before him.
‘Christ, no,’ said Lamb. ‘You think I’m some kind of monster?’
‘Well …’
‘You can skip Sunderland. And also Crewe. But yeah, do everywhere else.’
So River had now been playing Spider Solitaire for a record-breaking three weeks straight. Every couple of days, a random cut-and-paste job produced a list of properties which, if they fulfilled Lamb’s criteria, did so purely by chance: he passed these on to Catherine, who, he suspected, knew damn well he was flying kites. Probably Lamb did too, and was waiting for the right moment to dump on him. Well, okay, River thought. Roll the damn dice. There was only so much punishment he could take. Rooming with Coe might turn out the last straw.
