The third block looked to be in the process of being reclaimed, though how far advanced this was was open to question. Its paintwork, if not fresh, hadn’t yet succumbed to distemper, and glass shimmered in its windows, but a distressed air hung over it, as if it had fallen into bad company, and knew things wouldn’t end well. The fourth side of the more-or-less square was a disused factory—paint or vinyl, River thought—which had a squat, rectangular tower at one end, next to which a tall whitewashed chimney reached up to about the height of the nearby blocks. An extension had been added, long ago; a slant-roofed corrugated-iron and sheet-plastic construction, from whose guttering barbed wire dangled like an ill-fitting crown of thorns. Pictures of Alsatians were studded at intervals, indicating that trespassers would be eaten, or worse. A jagged hole in its wall at ground level suggested that this threat hadn’t been taken entirely seriously.
Three fridges and a mattress formed a nearby cairn, next to which ten-foot lengths of metal fencing were stacked in a pile, chained to each other by their end-poles, and secured to the earth by an iron hoop. An orange skip lay on its side, like a Tonka toy cast off by a giant.
Louisa’s car ticked, as if counting down to something ominous.
“I think I saw this place in a film once,” River said. “It involved zombies.”
“West of Ealing,” Louisa said. “It might have been a documentary.”
River’s phone rang. It was Lamb.
“Why’s your phone on?”
“It’s on vibrate,” River lied. “We’ve just arrived. Place seems quiet.”
“Well, it was until your phone rang.”
River waited, Lamb’s breathing rusty in his ear.
At length Lamb said, “These soldiers, Donovan and . . . ”
“Traynor.”
“Traynor. Once they’ve got what they want, back off. Don’t try to follow them. Let them leave.”
“What about Catherine?”
“Just focus on your end,” said Lamb. “Remember, Ingrid Tearney’s pulling the strings here. And when it suits her, she’ll cut them.”
“We’ll beware of falling puppets,” said River.
“Don’t get cocky. You’re desk drones, not the Dynamic Duo.”
“And we should know that by now,” River finished for him.
Lamb hung up.
Louisa said, “What’s he want?”
“For us to be careful, believe it or not.” River tucked his phone away. “But he’s run out of Enid Blyton analogies.”
Another train rumbled past, picking up speed out of Paddington, and sounded its whistle; an old-fashioned, reliably forlorn noise. A crow, picking at something near one of the abandoned fridges, looked up, emitted a sullen cough, and went back to its meal.
“There was definitely a car,” she said. “But I didn’t get the make or colour.”
“Okay,” River said again.
He was saved saying anything more by the sight of two shadows emerging from behind a pillar in the nearest of the wrecked buildings.
Roderick Ho was finding it quiet in Slough House, now the others had gone. This didn’t usually bother him. Most days, he saw as little of anyone as he could manage, except for the moments he engineered in the kitchen with Louisa, who had given him a look before she left—an amused glance, telling him she’d rather stay behind than set off on a ludicrous exercise: babysitting a pair of ex-soldiers while they stole the X-Files. He’d mirrored this with a look of his own, a slight raising of an eyebrow meaning
He powered his computers down, and cast a goodbye look around his kingdom. Now that Longridge and Dander were history, he ought to check out their office, see if they’d forgotten anything worth having. Longridge had a nice silk scarf; he wasn’t likely to be wearing it in this heat, so might have left it on a hook. Ho got as far as the door before this plan underwent sudden revision.
“And where do we think we’re going?”
“Uh . . . home?”
Lamb placed a paw in the centre of Ho’s chest and kept walking. Ho shuffled backwards until the backs of his thighs met the edge of his desk. Then Lamb let his hand drop and went and stood by the window, his back to Ho.
The street outside was starting to droop. Traffic was heavy still, but tinged with exhaustion: poor sodding workers heading home from battle, rather than the go-getting warriors of the morning. Across the road, a woman stepped out of the dental laboratory, which had an industrial aspect, as if large-scale experiments took place within, rather than individual acts of dentistry. She shook her head, dispelling an unpleasant memory, and walked off towards the tube.
“High Wycombe,” Lamb said.
The farmhouse Ho had found. The one Sylvester Monteith had rented.
“Uh, yeah. A little way past it on the motorway. Satnav’ll find it no problem.”
“I prefer natsav,” Lamb said.
“Huh?”
“Natural savvy. It allows me to avoid demeaning tasks when there are others to perform them for me.”
“Uh . . . Cup of tea?”
“Where’s your car?” said Lamb.
