Judd nodded, as if appreciating a chess move. ‘It’s risky, though. Could backfire. You’re sure that’s how you want to play it?’
‘A full admission that I dabbled in alternative sources of backing for an operation which ultimately plays to his credit. Yes, I think it’ll work. He’s been known to display a certain impatience with tradition himself.’
‘If by that you mean he’s been known to wipe his arse on the constitution, I’d have to agree.’
‘So our arrangement has ended. I know you’d planned it as a long-term thing, and I’m not ungrateful for the assistance. But you won’t be using me as a way of steering the Service, Peter. Not now, not ever again.’
Another nod. ‘There’s nothing I like more than seeing you in control, Diana. Gives me quite the rush of blood.’ He raised his glass, but instead of a toast said, ‘I have to correct you on one small matter, though. You used the words “full admission”. That’s not quite accurate.’
Taverner said, ‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m simply pointing out that you can’t give the PM all the facts about our arrangement because you’re not yet in possession of them. And once you are, well.’ He smiled, or at any rate revealed his teeth. ‘Once you are, I expect the PM is the last person you’ll be making full admissions to.’
He replaced his glass on the table.
‘I’ll order you a proper drink now, shall I? I think you’re about to need it.’
Sid woke alone, late morning, and spoke his name. No reply. She was about to call louder, but thought better of it. All was quiet, and as broken memories of yesterday assembled themselves in her mind – driving a knife into the man’s chin; drowning the woman in the lake – it seemed better to leave it that way. He was upstairs. Or had gone to the village for food. She was ravenous, she noticed. Food would be good.
But he wasn’t in the bathroom, as she ascertained quite swiftly; nor did he reappear in the study during her absence. Next thing she did was draw the curtains, and let the day in. It was like charging a battery – rooms left dark become crabbed and pokey. They need light to remember what they are. This was a simple formula to apply to herself, and hard not to touch a hand to the groove in her head while doing so. Her muttering bullet was gone; no Hercule Poirot voice in her head. It might return, but for now she was on her own.
On her own, back in the world, and with decisions to make.
She’d already made some. She would not be returning to Cumbria, for a start; nor resuming the identity she’d been assigned during her recovery. That had been a non-person; a shell she’d never filled. Nor had she been Sid Baker, or not so anyone would notice. She’d been a character absent from the stage, her dialogue mere gaps in the conversation. Action had been elsewhere. After yesterday, she didn’t want to see action again. But she thought she was ready to be Sid Baker once more.
Last night, she’d talked with Shirley Dander while River and Lech Wicinski had returned to the scene of the slaughter.
‘You’ve been living here?’
‘Staying here.’
‘But it’s full of
Said as if this precluded anything Shirley might think of as living. Or perhaps even just staying.
‘Think of it as being well insulated,’ Sid suggested.
‘Did you kill them both?’
‘No.’
‘Did River?’
‘We got lucky.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ said Shirley. ‘Except they were professionals, know what I mean? The number of people who got lucky before you is zero.’
Which, as far as Sid was concerned, made her very lucky indeed. Though Shirley had seemed impressed.
Jane and Jim had been dispatched on a vengeance tour, titting the Park’s tat, as Shirley had put it with a Lamb-like leer; the Park’s crime having been to assassinate one of those responsible for last year’s outrage, a ham-fisted episode Sid had followed in the press during her Cumbrian interlude. The target then had been a pair of Russian ex-pats, but two British civilians had wandered into the line of fire, one of whom had died. The murder method had created headlines worldwide: the smearing of a toxic substance – Novichok – on a doorknob.
Well, if she was back in the world, this was the world she was in.
Shirley Dander had been jittery, and possibly high. Lech Wicinski’s scars were plain to see, but he was hiding behind them all the same. Min Harper was dead, as were others who’d come along after, but Louisa Guy was still a slow horse; Roderick Ho remained Roddy Ho, and Catherine Standish still carried the keys. As for Lamb, Sid could only assume he was unchanged, self-damage notwithstanding, because without Jackson Lamb there’d be no Slough House. Slough House was the stage and those were the actors, and all the time she’d been emerging from her head wound River had been living among them, mostly bound to the same old beat – the paperwork, the pointless chores, the soul-killing drudgery – but occasionally, just occasionally, finding himself on the sharp end too.
