After he’d dried himself on a paper towel, he checked on Cartwright through the two-way. He’d have expected the kid—not entirely a kid, but Duffy felt entitled—to have parked himself on the chair, which Duffy had left for that specific purpose, to make taking it away from him the next gambit. Cartwright, though, had remained upright. He was leaning against the wall, and if he didn’t look happy—looked pale as a fish with stomach pains—he hadn’t, Duffy noted, positioned himself out of view of the mirror. In fact, he raised a middle finger towards it at that moment, as if he knew Duffy was watching.
Could have been a lucky guess.
He moved away and released the phone from its hook on the wall. A three-digit extension got him Diana Taverner.
“He’s not changing his story.”
“Remind me what his story was.”
Duffy ran through it: the photograph of Standish, the brief instruction. The man on the bridge who’d worn a suit and had a toff’s accent.
“Sounded like he got up Cartwright’s nose.”
“You believe him then?” Taverner asked.
Duffy looked at his free hand. Nothing about it suggested he’d done anything rougher that morning than carrying a hot coffee.
“I think he’d have changed his story if it wasn’t true,” he said.
He was used to Lady Di’s silences, which generally meant she was assimilating information, dividing it into pros and cons. This one, though, felt different, as if she already had a handle on what was going on.
In the room next door, Cartwright made the middle-finger gesture again. He was on a loop, Duffy decided. A cycle of defiance, because despite all that had happened to him in the past twenty minutes, he hadn’t yet grasped the nature or the depth of the shit into which he’d stepped.
Taverner said, “Have you sent anyone looking for this man? The one on the bridge?”
“There was a man, in London, on a bridge, two hours ago,” Duffy said. “We could cordon the city off, I suppose.”
“Talk to me like that again,” Taverner said, without altering her tone, “and you’d happily swap places with Cartwright. What about the woman—Standish?”
“The photo’s on his phone. Like he said.”
“And it came from where?”
“Her phone.”
“Of course it did . . . Any trace?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“How badly have you hurt him?”
“Hardly at all.”
“By your standards, or anyone’s?”
“He might be a slow horse, but he’s not a civilian. He’ll live.”
“Just as well. Lamb can get . . . tetchy when his crew get damaged.”
“I thought he despised his crew.”
“That doesn’t mean he likes other people messing with them. Okay, let Cartwright sweat for the moment. We’ll get word from on high sooner or later.”
“On high?”
“Oh yes. Dame Ingrid’s been summoned to the Home Office And you know how jolly that makes her.”
Cartwright was doing the thing with the finger again. He couldn’t know Duffy was there, obviously, but it was still starting to get on his wick.
He said, “Look. That crack about cordoning off the city. I—”
“You’d just finished putting the leather to someone. It made you feel cocky. Made you feel invulnerable.”
“I guess . . . ”
“Trust me. You’re not.”
Taverner hung up.
Duffy replaced the receiver and stood by the two-way a while longer. Every so often, River Cartwright repeated the finger gesture, but to Duffy’s eye, it looked a little less convincing each time. What was it they used knackered horses for again?—oh yeah: dog food and glue. Give it a while, he’d pop next door and remind Cartwright of that. Meanwhile, he deserved a cup of coffee.
He left the room quietly so the kid wouldn’t hear. The thought of him standing there, repeatedly offering the finger to an empty room, wasn’t quite enough to wipe away the memory of Lady Di’s parting shot, but it didn’t hurt.
There were many thorns in Ingrid Tearney’s garden—the constant need for vigilance; the ever-present threat of terrorism; Diana Taverner—and here was another: a summons from the Home Secretary. Until recently, such phone calls had been a minor nuisance, requiring her to attend the minister’s office and deliver platitudes while maintaining eye contact, as if soothing a worried puppy. But Peter Judd didn’t look to her for reassurance, he sized her up for weaknesses. In company he claimed they got on like a house on fire, but it was clear which of them provided the petrol.
It was Dame Ingrid’s habit to catch the tube into work, but she used her official ride for everything else. It took her now through streets that were wilting in the heat. When the freak weather had started it had splashed the capital in colour, but as hot days turned into baking weeks, brightness had faded like old paint. Greenery died, turning parks brown and lifeless. People scurried now from shadow to shadow, wearing the caved-in expressions of trauma survivors, and greeted rumours of rain like news of a lottery win. That the weather was
