He remembered. The phone had rung in his office, and nobody spoke when he picked up: he’d been sure it was Sid, though he didn’t believe in any of that woo-woo nonsense. There must have been something in the quality of her breath. The short time they’d known each other, they’d spent most of it in that office, not talking. He’d grown used to her silent presence. Had known what it was like to hear her not speak.
‘But I didn’t know what to say.’
‘… That you were alive?’
‘But you must have known that. Didn’t you know that?’
He said, ‘They told us you were dead.’
‘Oh …’
She’d disappeared from the hospital; vanished as if she’d never been there. That, in fact, was the official truth: she had never been there. And when River had tried to find out what had happened, he’d been closed down. Sidonie Baker was dead: that was all he needed to know. Sid Baker was dead, and River Cartwright was Slough House, which meant he should fuck off back to his desk and stop asking questions.
The surface she’d slid under had been a murky one, and Diana Taverner had been responsible for much of the dirt. So naturally, it wasn’t a pool she wanted anyone stirring a stick in.
The news that she’d been dead didn’t appear to startle Sid. But then, her face was less lively now. In her long absence, she’d acquired a degree of stillness. There must have been a lot of waiting involved, and she’d clearly grown used to it.
‘You could have …’
But it wasn’t a thought worth finishing. She could have let him know, could have been in touch. But what did River know about being vanished? At least in Slough House he could open a window if he felt like it, and scream his frustration to the street below. Nobody would pay attention, but he could do that. Presumably Sid’s situation had been different.
‘I wasn’t well for a long time.’ She raised a hand to the white flash in her hair. ‘I lost a couple of years.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
It had been, or that was the way River remembered it. A confused moment on a rainy street, and a single gunshot. A number of people had been involved, and the rest of them were all dead too.
‘How did you find me? The house, I mean? How did you know to come here?’
‘It was in your file. I read your file.’
Of course she had.
Because while Sid had been a slow horse, she’d also been something else; had been put in Slough House to keep an eye on him, River Cartwright. This would have been Taverner’s work, but he never did hear the exact details, because Sid had been shot minutes after she’d confessed this to him.
She said, ‘I lost a lot of things.’
Well, moving hospital to hospital, he could see that some of her stuff might have gone astray.
‘But I remembered you.’
He wasn’t sure he made any response to that. Or that any was required.
She said, ‘Once I was better, they put me in Cumbria. Have you been there?’
He either had or hadn’t, he was sure one of the two was true, and after a moment, he recalled which. ‘Once. Long time ago.’
On a short holiday with Rose. He didn’t know where the O.B. had been. Supposedly retired, there were still gaps in his family life. River recollected that much.
‘It’s beautiful. Hills and lakes and meadows. There’s a farmhouse there, it’s run like a holiday home …’
But would be a Service resource, thought River. There were still one or two. You could cut back here and cut back there, bow to the demands of an age of austerity, but you had to look after your joes when they’d been shot in the head. If only to ensure that future recruitment didn’t get difficult.
‘And you’re better now? You’re fully recovered?’
‘I get headaches. But I’m mostly okay.’
But something had been subtracted, he was sure of that. There was a vitality missing. But how could it be otherwise? She’d been dead. Even with the demonstrable evidence in front of him that this wasn’t so, it was a difficult piece of knowledge to cast away. It was as if his past had just been rewritten. This might be what religion felt like; a thunderball, a stroke.
‘So you knew where I lived,’ he said. ‘Where I used to live. But what made you come here? Why now?’
‘I needed somewhere to hide.’
That was easy to believe. She looked like she might bolt somewhere at any moment, and cover herself with leaves.
He was still holding her hand. They’d never had this much contact back when they’d shared an office.
‘Here’s good then,’ he said. ‘You’re safe here.’ Which wasn’t necessarily true, but felt like the right thing to say regardless.
‘Maybe for the moment.’
‘What are you hiding from?’
She said, ‘Someone’s trying to kill me.’
This seemed a suitably dramatic moment at which to pause the narrative.
