“You know what I’ve spent the past few months overseeing? Reshelving paperwork. I’m serious. Off-site storage for the whackjob files, for black-ribboned folders, for anything deemed no longer necessary for, and I quote, quotidian objectives. That’s daily business, in case you were wondering.”
“I can’t stress how much I wasn’t.”
“Carry on finding it funny. But I’m Second Desk Ops, Jackson, and I’m doing an intern’s job. They won’t just close down Slough House. They’ll turn the Service into a work experience factory for Foreign Office wannabes.” She paused for effect. “If you’re asked to choose sides, I hope you pick the right one.”
“For your sake or mine?” Lamb asked, and rang off.
Ho said, “His name’s Sylvester Monteith. He ran a security outfit, Black Arrow?”
“Never heard of it,” Louisa said.
Marcus said, “They’re not top level, but they’ve picked up a couple of government contracts . . . ”
He tailed off, trying to dredge up a detail.
“And now he’s a stiff,” said Shirley. “Who whacked him?”
Ho said, “You know what? His CV doesn’t say.”
It was ten minutes since the blow-up in Marcus and Shirley’s office, and now, without arrangement, they’d gathered in Ho’s room to find out what he’d discovered. Sometimes, it happened like this. It didn’t always augur well.
“Whoever it was,” Louisa said, “they weren’t trying to keep it a secret. Dumping a body from the back of a van, the middle of London. That’s gang behaviour.”
“The van didn’t get far,” Ho said. “It was abandoned three streets away.”
“Any CCTV?”
“Middle of London? Let me think.”
“Thank you, smartarse. Have you got the feed?”
“Not yet,” Ho admitted.
“Peter Judd,” Marcus said.
“What about him?”
“Monteith’s firm picked up government contracts because he had a handy mate somewhere. That’s how the story went.”
“And the mate was Peter Judd?”
“Be interesting if it was, wouldn’t it? Given he was a bystander.”
Ho’s upper lip had curled. It was the face he usually wore when he was wading into the web, and accounted for a large proportion, though not the whole, of his unpopularity.
Not many keystrokes later he said, “They were at school together.”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t the local comp,” Shirley said.
“God bless the Establishment,” said Marcus. “But what’s any of this got to do with Catherine’s disappearance?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Louisa, tension in her voice. Marcus made a mental note to stand well back. The recoil from a woman’s stress could have a finger off, you weren’t careful. “Let’s find out more about Black Arrow.”
“You mean, you want me to,” said Ho.
“There’s no
“But there’s a
Ho rubbed his bruised cheek with one finger.
Marcus opened a window, and for a brief moment enjoyed the fantasy that a cool breeze would rush in, dispersing the general funk of sweat and stale energy that hung around Ho’s office. Then a blast of air and hot noise put him right. He closed it again, and made a mental note to badger Catherine about getting fans that worked. Except Catherine wasn’t here . . . A figure peeled out of the bookies a few doors down the road, paused by a bin, and dropped something into it, or nearly did. The bundle of paper slips bounced off the rim and fell into the gutter. Someone having a bad day, thought Marcus. He’d had a few himself, but one lucky afternoon was all he needed. And then he’d walk away from it all: the cards, the horses, the damn roulette machines.
“Did you say something?”
“We need some working fans,” Marcus said.
Ho recited what he could find on Black Arrow. Founded twenty years previously, it wasn’t what you’d call a blinding success, except that anything that hadn’t actually gone tits up in the last five years was a hymn of praise to the free market. Currently employing just over two hundred ‘officers,’ it held a few smallish government contracts, and provided security to a second-tier supermarket chain. This probably involved ferrying takings and salaries around more than keeping an eye on stock, though it might mean that too.
“Employee records?” Louisa asked.
“Why?” said Shirley.
“Intelligence gathering. I haven’t time to explain the concept, but—”
“Oh, any time you want start explaining
Marcus said, “That was the door. Lamb’s back.”
So all four of them set about looking idle, because looking busy, they’d learned to their cost, meant that as far as Lamb was concerned, they were up to no good.
But it wasn’t Lamb who appeared a minute later, it was River.
The Thames looked low. Years gone by, there were stories of the river freezing; of ice fairs thrown in the shadows of the bridges, and skaters weaving past long-lived landmarks, but Sean Donovan didn’t remember hearing it had ever dried up. When that day came, the stink would surely drive the capital out of its mind.
If that hadn’t already happened. The fury of the pace, the anger of the traffic, had a sociopathic buzz.
