‘The actual bad guys,’ said Shirley. ‘Whatever happened in Slough, that was just a cosmic fuck-up. The actual bad guys were in Brum. And I chased them away.’
‘Yes, great, thanks for that,’ said Louisa. ‘Meanwhile, what do we do about having accidentally assassinated someone who might have been our next PM? And when I say “we”, incidentally, I mean Coe. I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Nor me,’ said Shirley.
‘That’s right,’ said Catherine. ‘You were busy assaulting somebody else somewhere else.’
‘Gimball’s dead because the guy with the tattoo attacked him,’ River said. ‘And we’ve already established he’s Zafar Jaffrey’s man. That’s what’s going on here. In addition to, you know. The country being under attack and all.’
‘So the fact that it was you and our resident psycho here—’
‘Louisa …’
‘—who whacked him, that’s just a detail, is it?’
Something hit her in the chest, and she caught it reflexively.
A phone.
Coe said, ‘You want to call the police?’
Louisa looked at the phone, then at Coe.
Who repeated himself: ‘That’s what you want to do? Go right ahead. You weren’t there. Uninvolved, like you said. You’ve all made that very clear.’
After a moment, Catherine said, ‘Protocol would say we report to the Park, not the police.’
‘And it’s pretty clear that’s not happening, isn’t it? Unless you think that’s what Lamb’s doing.’
‘Lamb doesn’t know about this yet.’
‘Yeah, ’cause he’s notoriously slow on the uptake, isn’t he?’
Catherine seemed about to reply, but changed her mind.
Louisa said, ‘If we don’t report this, we could all end up in deep shit.’
‘It was an op,’ said Coe. ‘Authorised by our team leader. We report back to him and him alone. Anything else and we’re in breach of the Secrets Act. Which is equally deep shit.’
Shirley said, addressing the others, ‘He got away with it last time.’
They stared.
‘Just saying.’
‘Let’s wait until Lamb gets back before deciding our next move, shall we?’ said Catherine at last. ‘And it might be an idea to keep an eye on the news.’
‘Might also be an idea to pretend this conversation never took place,’ said Louisa, and tossed Coe’s phone back at him.
Welles checked in via the car park, showing his pass to the guard on duty but signing Lamb in using the standard visitor soubriquet ‘Lindsay Lohan’, a hangover from a few years back, when Lohan was turning up everywhere unannounced. The guard didn’t bat an eye. Jackson Lamb’s own name might cause ripples even among the young and unblooded, but his public appearances were as rare – and as welcome – as a fin on a bank holiday beach, so his physical presence rang no bells. The guard probably had him down as a local joe, working undercover in a food bank queue.
This side of the Park was for trade and passing talent: little chance of bumping into your Diana Taverners, your Claude Whelans. Waiting for the lift to take them down into the bowels, Welles said to Lamb, ‘Remind me why I’m doing this.’
‘If we want to know what this killing crew plan next, we need to know who’s pulling their strings. They knew exactly what they were after when they trapped Ho in their honeypot. Which means they had inside knowledge, if not an actual insider.’
‘You think there’s a mole?’
‘It’s happened before. But no, honest answer, I think somebody fucked up. That’s usually what turns out to have happened.’
‘We should kick it upstairs,’ Welles said. ‘We should
‘Yeah, but before committing Hare Krishna, let’s see if we’ve got wiggle room when it comes to assigning blame.’
‘Hara-kiri.’
‘You’re welcome.’
When the lift doors opened, they were on Molly Doran’s floor.
She was already rolling out to meet them because, as she later explained to Lamb, she had a sixth sense for impending unpleasantness. ‘When you’re in the area, it’s like everything grows darker.’ He would simply blink at this assertion, as if the obvious had been stated once too often for his liking. Meanwhile, in the here and now, Molly was a short woman, and would be shorter were she standing, as both her legs were missing below the knee. This lack contributed to the impression of spherity she radiated, as did – somehow – her overabundance of make-up, a quantity which would have drawn comment had anyone else indulged in it, but with Molly Doran seemed to be a challenge. Her cheeks were white; her lips scarlet. Her wheelchair cherry-red, with thick velvet armrests.
