There was a draught, because the board that had been wedged over the broken pane didn’t fit properly. River prised it aside, and let dark air waft across his face. If he’d had the sense to have parents like Ho’s, perhaps they’d have kitted him out with a property too, with a front door of his own, and neighbours who were occasionally visible during daylight hours. But the thought of his mother gifting him a deposit on an ordinary house in an ordinary street almost made him smile. No, his family support came in the shape of the O.B., support that was rotting away now,
He came away from the window. There wasn’t much here, now Roddy’s toys had been carted away. A brisk, efficient job the Dogs had made of it; nice to know, given they’d soon be doing the same for him. Well, good luck with that. You could pile most of what he owned into a skip without anyone deeming it a waste. No, the real waste was his career, which had turned out to have a damp fuse attached; so much so that the thoughts he’d had earlier, about walking away, themselves seemed a pipe dream now. Once the Park had taken stock of the day’s events, he’d either be offered up as a sacrifice or swept under a carpet. And again it gripped him, behind his ribs: cold panic. He didn’t dare check his phone to see what the news was saying; at the same time, he wanted to hear somebody’s voice, someone on his side. His mother? Hardly. His grandfather? He’d need a stronger signal than his phone was capable of. So who else – his father? But Frank was a renegade with blood on his hands, and River might kill him if the opportunity arose.
So there was only the here and the now; there was only this moment. Until it all fell apart, and the Dogs came and dragged him away, he’d keep on with the matter in hand, searching for someone who might be dead, which felt like the story of his life. He dropped to one knee and checked under the sofa, which was far too low to be a hiding place, but allowed him to feel he was doing something. And then rose at a crash from across the landing, and a startled shout:
Ho’s room was heavy with an acrid, non-specific odour which, caught and bottled, would probably kill rodents, or old people. Louisa was breathing carefully. On any list of rooms she was never likely to find herself in, this one was right behind Benedict Cumberbatch’s, though for diametrically opposite reasons. Still, at least Ho wasn’t here. Just the evidence of his being: the Anime posters on the walls; the clutch of dirty mugs on the floor, rimed with chocolatey sludge.
She didn’t want to think about the used tissues blossoming between them, like failed, discarded attempts at origami.
The bed was wide, its sheets dark blue, its duvet cover brown. Seriously, thought Louisa. She dropped to her knees, checked under the bed. More discarded Kleenex roses; enough dust bunnies to dehydrate Watership Down. There’d been a bedside lamp, but it was gone – you’d think the Dogs were running a boot sale on the sly – but there were drawers in the table it had sat upon, and Louisa looked through these. Okay, so Kim wasn’t likely to be hiding in one, but how often did chances like this crop up? Not that Ho would conceal anything interesting by putting it in a drawer: his life would be parcelled into bite-sized data chunks, and distributed among the laptops and drives that were now visible only by the marks they’d left behind; the dusty outlines of removed hardware. It would all be back at the Park now; like Ho, in the process of being dismantled. Chances were, it would never be put back together again. Whether this went for Ho too was a thought Louisa didn’t dwell on, though she was conscious of a rare flash of empathy for her colleague, who had been useful on occasions, if likeable on fewer. But who was she to talk? She’d not gone out of her way to make Slough House a happier place. She’d made efforts with River, true, but Jesus: after today, the one-time Most Likely To Succeed was well and truly holed below the waterline. What they were doing here, a pointless search for a probably dead witness, was basically marking time: River and Coe were fucked, and it would take a miracle for the rest of them to survive the morning-after recriminations.
So thinking, she opened the wardrobe drawer, and a demon burst out, its right fist a thin metal spike it jabbed straight at Louisa’s face.
