Dame Ingrid subjected her to a long abstracted stare, as if she were trying very hard to remember something, and Diana happened to be in the way. It was a technique that could drag information from the most unwilling subordinate, but in this instance Diana maintained an expression of very slight concern mingled with willingness to help which at no point lapsed into speech. At length, Dame Ingrid shook her head. “No, my dear. His name came up, that’s all.” She waved the sheet of paper. “I’m sure this is fine. As you say, it’s a problem solved. Short-term cost, long-term benefit.”
“As per the brief.”
“Material up to Virgil level, correct?”
“Up to and including. Again, as per the brief,” said Diana. “Is there a problem, Ingrid? You look alarmed.”
“Alarmed? Of course not. I’m sorry to have kept you, Diana. Enjoy your evening.”
The corridors were quiet now. Even the clacking of her own heels sounded disjointed to her ears, as if slightly out of synch with her legs.
Back in her office she sat, not at her desk, but in the armchair in one corner, next to which was a low coffee table. It was where she sat when she took a gin and tonic of an evening: a quiet reward for a day well spent. Where she sat when preparing for her occasional public appearances, gingering up a phrase or two to be tweeted and tittered about in equal measure. And it was where she sat when she needed cover; when her desk felt too exposed.
There was a general belief among her staff, Dame Ingrid knew, that she was unaware that the current security codes were based on Thunderbirds, but it suited her to be underestimated in matters of no consequence. She was certain that the majority of her staff regarded her as pen-pusher-in-chief. She was also certain that the brief handed to Diana Taverner did not include relocating files classed Virgil, since Dame Ingrid had long determined that second-level secrets formed the perfect hiding place. Scott was where the sexy stuff hid: the cloak-and-dagger material that was any Service’s Crown Jewels. Virgil, for the most part, concealed data only of interest to a devoted number-cruncher with a fetish for budgetary matters: how much was spent on upgrading software, or subsidising the canteen, or replacing carpets. So, if Dame Ingrid had any black secrets hidden among the Service archives, Virgil was where they would be nesting.
And any keen Ingrid Tearney watcher knew that, far from being a mere pen-pusher-in-chief, she had black secrets.
After a while, she produced her mobile from her bag.
Nick Duffy answered on the first ring.
“There’s been a change of plan,” she said.
River didn’t drop more than a foot or so, landing on the cement floor with enough of a bump to remind every last bone of the debt he owed Nick Duffy. A thought filed away for later.
He called up to Louisa. “Okay.”
She followed, landed with more grace, and immediately played her torchbeam around the chamber. Up and down the walls blue and red cables ran in banded clumps, disappearing at floor and ceiling. In the middle, a wheel-shaped handle set horizontally on a concrete block looked like it would open a sewer.
“What’s that?” River asked.
“Some kind of drain?”
“No, what you’re holding.”
“A torch.”
“I can see that. Why’s it shaped like a pig?”
“. . . It just is.”
“Okay.”
“It’s the torch I keep in my glove compartment, all right? If I’d known we’d be exploring, I’d have packed more appropriately.”
“Fair enough,” said River. “Point it over here a moment.”
He’d found what looked like a fuse box on the wall, held shut by a metal clasp.
Louisa held the beam steady while River tugged at the clasp, which looked at first like it was going to defeat him. But when it gave, the box’s door swung open to reveal a remarkably pristine-looking rotary-dial phone.
“You or me?” he asked.
“You do it.”
He reached for the receiver, but before his hand got there, the phone rang.
She’d heard once of a long-distance hiker, way before the days of e-readers, who’d carried a novel over the Alps, tearing out and discarding each page as he read it, to lighten his load. There was a lot to be said for that. For a baggage-free existence, each moment of your story jettisoned as soon as done; your future pristine, undiluted by all that’s gone before. You’d always be on the first page. Never have to turn back, relive your mistakes.
Here in the hot room, Catherine had grown mildly delirious, but not so much that she couldn’t appreciate this for what it was. It was ever so slightly like being what people called “drunk.” Amateurs, that is; those who’d never really been drunk a day in their lives—and anyone who’d only been drunk a day hadn’t come close to being drunk.
