On the first landing she stopped at Ho’s office. Ho was at his desk, four flat screens angled in front of him as if he were catching a tan. He was nodding in time to something, which the well-padded earphones dwarfing his head suggested might be music, but could as easily be the binary rhythms of whatever code was conjuring the images swarming on his screens. More than once she’d come into this room and he hadn’t even noticed, though he’d configured his workstation for a view of the door: when he was in the zone, if the webheads still said that, it was like he’d relocated to the moon. Because while Roderick Ho was a dick, that was only the most obvious thing about him, not the most important. Most important was, he knew his way round the cybersphere. This was arguably the only thing keeping him alive. If he weren’t occasionally useful, Marcus or Shirley would have battered him into a porridge by now.
But today he wasn’t on the moon because he was watching her as she stepped into his office. He even pulled his earphones off. That put him in Jane Austen territory, etiquette-wise: Louisa had known him to hold a palm up, as if warding off traffic, if he suspected somebody was about to speak when he was doing something more interesting, like popping a cola can, or preparing to exhale.
He said, “Hello.”
. . . That was weird.
“You feeling all right?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why?”
“No reason. Can you trace Catherine’s phone?”
“No.”
“I thought you could do that. GPS. Whatever.”
“I can, but only if it’s on. And it’s not on.”
“You already tried? Was that your idea?”
He shrugged.
Marcus was standing behind her now; Shirley too. Marcus said, “You didn’t find her, then.”
Shirley said, “We didn’t find Cartwright either.”
“I can tell,” Louisa said. “Here, you missed a bit.”
She touched her upper lip, and Shirley rubbed her own, obliterating a smudge of ice cream. She scowled at Marcus. “You could have said.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Ho was watching all this as if it were taking place behind bars. Louisa said to him, “How about River’s phone?”
He shrugged again, sulkily this time. “I’d need his number.”
Louisa read it out to him off her own.
Ho said, “Have you got everyone’s number in there?”
“No.”
Shirley nudged Marcus.
Ho’s fingers started salsa-ing across his keyboard.
Louisa walked to the window. Same view as from hers, but lower down. She thought: when I joined the Service, this was not what I was expecting. The same view every day, with minor variations.
For a while last year that had seemed less important, but like everything else, this had turned out a false reprieve. Life’s cruellest trick was letting the light in, just enough so you knew where everything was, then shutting it off without warning. She’d been bumping into the furniture ever since.
Back in her flat, replastered into a section of wall behind her fridge, was a fingernail-sized uncut diamond, booty from a heist she’d helped derail. She had no idea how much it was worth, but couldn’t see that it mattered much.
Min, you stupid bastard, why did you have to die?
And then she shut that thought off because there was nowhere it could lead her that would do anyone any good.
Ho finished tapping. “Cartwright’s blocked,” he said.
“What do you mean, blocked?”
“His phone’s on, but he’s somewhere that’s scrambling the signal.”
“Like somewhere with thick walls?”
Marcus said, “No, like somewhere with the ability to fuck with GPS.”
“Golly,” said Shirley, who’d been Comms in her pre-Slough House life. “Wonder where that might be?”
The room he’d been locked in was underground; its only window one-way, and that from the other side. From where River stood it was a mirror. About a metre square, it threw back at him the room’s blankness and his own oddly calm exterior. Inside his chest his heart thumped like a little drummer boy: all beat and no tune.
The minutes he’d been counting down were long gone, and their deadline history.
And why didn’t I do that? he asked himself.
He’d have sat, but there was nowhere to sit. The room was bare; a cube, near enough. There was no handle on the door. There was no visible light fitting either, though the ceiling emitted a steady bluish glow, which lent his reflection an alien cast. Alien, except he belonged here. It was where he’d willed himself, as much as if he’d offered his wrists to Lady Di half an hour ago.
