At lunchtime, on her way out, Catherine Standish heard Jackson Lamb torturing a warthog in his room. Best thing would be to keep walking: down the stairs, through the door which jammed rain or shine, then through the alley and onto Aldersgate Street, whose traffic-choked mundanity felt a spring meadow after a morning in Slough House. But something made her peer into Lamb’s office, to check no actual animals were being harmed, and she interrupted him mid-snore. His office, as always, seemed subtly different when he was its only occupant, as if enfolding him in a mouldy embrace, though the familiar medley of odours – stale alcohol, cigarettes, sweat – remained present and true. Lamb’s eyes opened before she’d finished these thoughts. ‘What?’
‘I thought you were having one of your fits.’
‘Fits? I don’t have fits.’
‘Pardon me. One of those coughing extravaganzas where it seems likely you’ll heave your lungs up.’
‘I’m allergic to interfering spinsters,’ said Lamb. ‘That’s probably what it is.’ He scratched the back of his head, and when his hand appeared again, it was holding a cigarette.
Catherine had long given up being amazed by such tricks. She was perturbed, though, by the industrial appearance of the cigarette in question. ‘Wouldn’t it be quicker to burn a tyre and breathe it in?’
‘Possibly,’ said Lamb. ‘But you know what Health and Safety’s like.’ He slotted the cigarette into his mouth, but made no move to light it. This was just as well, as he had it in backwards. ‘What is it you’re not telling me?’
She paused. ‘Now, that’s a list I try to keep as long as possible.’ But it was a forlorn defence: Lamb was growing rosily benign, the way witches in fairy tales do. She stepped further into the room and said, ‘I spoke to Molly Doran last night.’
Lamb’s expression didn’t alter.
‘Ambushed her on her way home.’
‘There are those who might think that’s taking unfair advantage of a cripple,’ said Lamb.
‘I only—’
‘But that’s Molly for you. And as she obviously didn’t flay and hang you from the nearest branch, she must have been in a happy mood.’
‘Her records are pre-digitised,’ said Catherine. Sometimes, if you kept on track, you could drag Lamb’s attention after you. ‘I wanted to know if the paper versions of our records had been purged as well.’
Lamb looked at his watch.
‘… What?’
‘It’s five past April,’ he said. ‘Congratulations. That little brainwave only took you, what? Three months?’
She suppressed a sigh. ‘You’d already done that.’
‘But Molly didn’t let on. Like I said. Happy mood.’ He removed the cigarette, then reinserted it the right way round. ‘Nobody’s looked at our folder in years. Gives you a nice tingly feeling, doesn’t it? Being forgotten. Or is that just me?’
‘But the paperwork’s still in place,’ said Catherine. ‘So even when they’re forgetting us, they’re forgetting to forget us properly.’
‘If you’re getting philosophical, I need a drink.’ He opened a drawer and thrust his hand into it like a bear exploring a hollow trunk. ‘Anyway, it’s all a tub of shit. Not what you just said, though that too. But our status as untouchables. We’ve not been forgotten. We’ve been
An audible sneer accompanied the word, like a sommelier offering an alcopop.
She stepped to one side and tipped the visitor’s chair so its cargo of takeaway receptacles slid to the floor. Then she produced a tissue from the sleeve of her dress and wiped the seat down. Once more or less satisfied, she sat. ‘You said you didn’t know what Taverner was up to.’
He said, ‘That’s what I said, yes. But a funny thing about me, and this is what sets me apart from the rest of you clowns, my brain stays switched on. So while I didn’t know before, I do now. Do you need me to say that again?’
‘I just about followed. What’s happening?’
‘It’s like I said to Guy. She spotted him, so he must have been a beginner.’ Lamb had found a bottle in his drawer: Talisker. ‘Light dawning yet?’
‘It’s a training exercise,’ she said.
‘Give that woman a goldfish.’
‘That’s why we’ve been wiped.’
‘Yeah, so Lady Di can paint targets on our backs and let her junior agents off the leash,’ Lamb said. He leaned back, and his chair complained angrily. ‘I suppose she might have hoped that, somewhere in the dim recesses of whatever passes for you lot’s mental processes, you might still remember some tradecraft. Like making sure you’re not being tailed when you go about your daily business. Or even just paying some fucking attention, the way normal people do. Which might have made it a slightly more taxing exercise for the early learners.’ He unscrewed the cap off the bottle. ‘Fancy a drink?’
She said, ‘So the Park have been using us for practice. And they wiped us first so the newbies won’t know we’re spooks too.’
‘To be fair,’ said Lamb, ‘thinking of you lot as spooks requires a mental leap. Like calling Farage a statesman.’
‘And now Kay White is dead.’
