He tailed off. Something from home. But home was dangerous territory, a subject best avoided. The old man had never been a joe; always a desk man. It had been his job to send agents into the unknown, and run them from what others might think a safe distance. But here he was now, alone in joe country, his cover blown, his home untenable. There was no safe ground. Only this mansion house in a quiet landscape, where the nurses had enough discretion to know that some tales were best ignored.
On the train heading back into London, River shifted in his seat and scrolled down the page of search results. Nice to know that a spook career granted him this privilege: if he wanted to know what was going on, he could surf the web, like any other bastard. And the internet was screaming. The hunt for the Abbotsfield killers continued with no concrete results, though the attack had been claimed by so-called Islamic State. At a late-night session in Parliament the previous evening, Dennis Gimball had lambasted the security services, proclaiming Claude Whelan, Regent’s Park’s First Desk, unfit for purpose; had sailed this close to suggesting that he was, in fact, an IS sympathiser. That this was barking mad was a side issue: recent years had seen a recalibration of political lunacy, and even the mainstream media had to pretend to take Gimball seriously, just in case. Meanwhile, there were twelve dead in Abbotsfield, and a tiny village had become a geopolitical byword. There’d be a lot more debate, a lot more hand-wringing, before this slipped away from the front pages. Unless something else happened soon, of course.
Nearly there. River closed his laptop. The O.B. would be dozing again by now; enjoying a cat’s afternoon in the sun. Time had rolled round on him, that was all. River was his grandfather’s handler now.
Sooner or later, all the sins of the past fell into the keeping of the present.
‘You stupid cow!’
He’d been thrown sideways and the noise in his head had exploded: manic guitars cut off mid-wail; locomotive drums killed mid-beat. The sudden silence was deafening. It was like he’d been unplugged.
And his prey was nowhere to be seen, obviously. His smartphone was in pieces, its casing a hop-skip-jump away.
It was Shirley Dander who’d leaped on him, evidently unable to control her passion.
She crawled off and pretended to be watching a car disappear along the road. Roddy sat up and brushed at the sleeves of his still new leather jacket. He’d had to deal with workplace harassment before: first Louisa Guy, now this. But at least Louisa remained the right side of her last shaggable day, while Shirley Dander, far as the Rodster was concerned, hadn’t seen her first yet.
‘What the hell was that for?’
‘That was me saving your arse,’ she said, without looking round.
His arse. One-track mind.
‘I nearly had it, you know!’ Pointless explaining the intricacies of a quest to her: the nearest she’d come to appreciating the complexities of gaming was being mistaken for a troll. Still, though, she ought to be made to realise just what a prize she’d cost him, all for the sake of a quick grope. ‘A bulbasaur! You know how rare that is?’
It was plain she didn’t.
‘The fuck,’ she asked, ‘are you talking about?’
He scrambled to his feet.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s pretend you just wanted to sabotage my hunt. That’s all Kim needs to know, anyway.’
‘… Huh?’
‘My girlfriend,’ he explained, so she’d know where she stood.
‘Did you get a plate for that car?’
‘What car?’
‘The one that just tried to run you over.’
‘That’s a good story too,’ Roddy said. ‘But let’s stick with mine. It’s less complicated. Fewer follow-up questions.’
And having delivered this lesson in tradecraft, he collected the pieces of his phone and headed back to Slough House.
Where the day is well established now, and dawn a forgotten intruder. When River returns to take up post at his desk – his current task being so mind-crushingly dull, so balls-achingly unlikely to result in useful data, that he can barely remember what it is even while doing it – all the slow horses are back in the stable, and the hum of collective ennui is almost audible. Up in his attic room, Jackson Lamb scrapes the last sporkful of chicken fried rice from a foil dish, then tosses the container into a corner dark enough that it need never trouble his conscience again, should such a creature come calling, while two floors below Shirley Dander’s face is scrunched into a thoughtful scowl as she replays in her mind the sequence of events that led to her flattening Roderick Ho: always a happy outcome, of course, but had she really prevented a car doing the same? Or had it just been another of London’s penis-propelled drivers, whose every excursion onto the capital’s roads morphs into a demolition derby? Maybe she should share the question with someone. Catherine Standish, she decides. Louisa Guy too, perhaps. Louisa might be an iron-clad bitch at times, but at least she doesn’t think with a dick. Some days, you take what you can.
