Real Tigers полностью

Then she reached for her pager, recognised Security’s number, and called the front desk on her mobile.

“Ma’am? We have a walk-in, an off-site agent. He says you’re expecting him. But there’s nothing on the time sheet.”

“I’m not expecting anyone. Who is it?”

“One River Cartwright.” Security reeled off Cartwright’s Service number.

“Sign him in,” Diana said. “I’ll be on the stairs.”

Thirty-nine minutes . . .

Being in Regent’s Park always gave River a hollow feeling; the same you might get on stepping inside the marital home once the divorce had come through. Well, he said “always.” There’d been a time when that might have been the right word, early in his career, when it was still a “career”; before he’d become persona non grata, which was Latin for slow horse. Since then, he’d been inside its precincts, what, twice? On one of those occasions, summoned by Spider Webb. That had been Spider rubbing it in; letting River know he might as well be in Siberia. Well, Siberia might as well be where Spider was now: all those endless white spaces, bare of life. Was that what being in a coma was like? River hoped never to find out.

At the desk he showed his Service card, and said he was there to see Diana Taverner. An all-or-nothing play; one she’d go for, he hoped, if only to find out what he thought he was doing, turning up at head office—she might let him in just to have him beaten up.

While the security woman paged Taverner, he looked around.

Thirty-eight minutes.

What struck River, as ever, was the dual nature of the building; the Oxbridge kerb-flash a nod to the best traditions of the Service—its history of civilised thuggery—while the modern aspects were sunk below pavement level, safe from dirty bomb and prying eyes alike. On one of its upper corridors hung a portrait of his grandfather. He’d never been that high. You had to be some sort of mandarin.

His attention was being sought.

“. . . Yes?”

“Ms. Taverner will meet you on the staircase.”

This being handy in case she wanted him thrown down it, he surmised.

The woman handed him a laminate on a lanyard, visitor, and pointed him in the right direction.

They’d settled on an Italian place near Smithfield, and were upstairs eating ice cream out of tin bowls: Marcus strawberry and pistachio, Shirley peach and stracciatella. Cutlery scraping against tin was as much conversation as they made until both were about finished, then Shirley nodded towards Marcus’s bowl and plucked her spoon from her mouth with an audible pop.

“That’s a stupid combination. Strawberry and pistachio don’t go.”

“Go well enough for me.”

“Then your taste buds are wrong. Strawberry needs chocolate or else vanilla. Pistachio’s not even a real flavour. They only invented it in like 1997.”

“You’ve been dumped, haven’t you?”

“What do you mean, dumped? What kind of question’s that? We’re talking about ice cream.”

“Right.”

“And no, I haven’t.”

“Right.”

“And even if I had been, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

“Right.”

“And anyway, how can you tell?”

“Christ, I don’t know,” Marcus said. “Maybe it’s the way you’re such a bundle of fun.”

“Piss off.”

“What happened, she meet someone else?”

“Piss off. Why do you assume I’m gay?”

“You’re saying you’re not?”

“I’m saying how would you know? Do I bring my private life into work?”

“Shirley, sharing an office with you lately’s like having my own personal thundercloud, so yes, on balance, you bring your private life into work. Which gives me the right to hear the dirt. Did she meet someone else?”

“And again with the ‘she’ . . . ”

Marcus laid his spoon on a napkin and licked away the hint of a strawberry moustache. “It’s like in books,” he said. “Thrillers, whodunnits, you know? You read much?”

“You got a point to make?”

“In thrillers, when the writer says the killer this, the killer that, and never says if it’s a he or a she, it’s always because it’s a she. And you’re like that with your girlfriend. You never say if it’s a he or a she. Which means it’s a she.”

Shirley sneered. “Maybe I’m just messing with your head.”

“You might be, except you’re not. So what happened? She meet someone else?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough. But that means you have to drop the angry victim act. Deal?”

“You really are a hardass, you know that?”

“Yeah, that used to be my job description.”

“Well not any more it’s not,” Shirley said. “Now you’re a desk jockey, like the rest of us. Get used to it.”

“That’s what I was told months back,” Marcus said, picking up his spoon again. “Still got to shoot someone, didn’t I?”

“I doubt you’ll get that lucky twice.”

“Well just in case I do,” Marcus said, “you know what I don’t need? I don’t need a partner pissing and moaning behind me. That shit throws your aim off.”