Lamb was watching the liquid rope he’d made by pouring whisky very slowly from the bottle into the glass. So she couldn’t see his expression as he said, ‘Did Molly tell you that?’
‘She didn’t have to.’
When he looked up, there was nothing to suggest the news had come as a surprise.
Kay White had been a slow horse, some years back. Lamb had fired her when she’d betrayed them all – his view – to the Park, presumably on the understanding that she’d be reinstated over there. That didn’t happen. It never did.
Catherine said, ‘She kept in touch with a few former colleagues. And they keep in touch with me.’
‘A fishwives’ network,’ said Lamb. ‘How jolly.’
‘She fell off a stepladder while clearing out her attic.’
‘They say most accidents happen in people’s homes,’ said Lamb. ‘That’s why I never visit anyone.’
‘No, it’s why you’re never invited anywhere.’
He tipped his glass in her direction, then drank from it.
‘That’s not like you.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘To have one of your crew die without batting an eyelid.’
Lamb put the glass down. His unlit cigarette was between his fingers now. ‘One of mine? She’s a distant memory. Wasn’t even that until you brought her name up.’
‘All right, so she wasn’t current. But she used to be one of us. That ought to matter.’
‘Might of, if I hadn’t fired her for dumping us all in the shit. I mean, it was a long time ago, and it’s not like I carry grudges.’ He put the cigarette back in his mouth. ‘But she deserved to die. Even Gandhi would admit that.’
‘Did it never occur to you that for a supposed backwater of the Security Service, we suffer a lot of fatalities?’
‘I’ve always assumed that was down to public demand.’
‘So it doesn’t worry you, this … accidental death? Now, of all times?’
‘Seriously? You’re seriously asking me that?’ He threw his head back and barked at the ceiling. Some might call it laughter. ‘Look, I trust Taverner about as far as I can fly. But she’s not gunna take out a contract on Slough House just to give her learner spooks something to do. Don’t get me wrong, she’d do it if she had a reason. But this isn’t that.’
Catherine pursed her lips, and didn’t answer.
‘Christ, Standish, they’ve never needed to kill us. I mean, fucking look at us. What would be the point?’
‘The timing worries me.’
‘It’s spring. When else do you clear out your attic?’
She stood. ‘What did that crack mean, earlier? About international assassins?’
‘Nothing to get your ovaries in a twist. Assuming yours aren’t already knotted.’
She waited, but he wouldn’t elucidate further.
‘So now you’ve worked out what’s going on,’ she said, ‘are you planning on taking it up with Taverner?’
‘Is Notre Dame flammable? Speaking of which.’
He sparked a flame from a lighter he was suddenly holding, and applied it to his cigarette.
Catherine shuddered. ‘You really need to get a grip on some health issues.’
‘What I don’t know about healthy living,’ said Lamb, ‘you could write on the back of a fag packet.’ He breathed out smoke. ‘And tell Cartwright and Guy that the next time they sneak out without permission, I’ll hang her by his testicles. Or vice versa.’
He reached for his glass again, and Catherine left him to it.
PREPARING TO LEAVE, OLIVER Nash said, ‘I saw something rather extraordinary on the way in.’
Nash being Nash, this would probably be one of those pop-up tourist experiences London pulls from its sleeve occasionally: a wondrous mechanical elephant, or a herd of fibreglass cows.
It had been a successful meeting, from both points of view; Diana’s because she had got what she wanted, and Nash’s because he hadn’t noticed. The venue was Diana’s office, down on the hub. Previous First Desks had chosen to occupy one of the upper-storey rooms, whose expensive windows afforded leafy views, but Diana preferred to be where the action was. Most of her career had been spent here, almost all of it as Second Desk (Ops), her initial meteoric rise having been followed by a hard stop. Since then, it sometimes felt she’d done little but bide her time, paying obeisance to one First Desk after another; watching mistakes made and successes forged, and knowing that if she’d been in charge, there’d have been fewer of the former, more of the latter. And now she was where she’d long wanted to be, and much of it involved taking meetings with Oliver Nash and similar examples of Whitehall mandarin: decent human beings in themselves, but lacking the sense of urgency that the times required.
Take the business of cybersecurity.
