Diana stepped aside, and Molly executed a neat little three-point turn which left her precisely in her alcove.
‘You registered a complaint,’ Diana said, once Molly was stationary.
‘I most certainly bloody did.’
‘About Doyle.’
‘I don’t care what his name is. One of your security gorillas. I’ve told them before, and I’ll tell them again, I won’t have Dogs on my floor. Not even guide ones.’
Diana suppressed irritation. ‘Might I ask why?’
‘You might. I don’t have any tea leaves to hand, so I’ve no idea what’ll happen next.’
‘If I don’t get your cooperation pretty soon, I can sketch a fair idea of what your future will entail. If that helps.’
Molly thrust her jaw out. This was not an especially attractive look for her, though compiling a list of such looks would be a challenge: some time ago – Diana was guessing it was subsequent to the event that saw Molly consigned to a wheelchair – she had taken to making her face up in a manner only a little way short of being eligible for a clown’s patent, if such things existed, and weren’t an internet myth. Red cheeks, pale face, almost as thick as Kevlar. Her hair in tufts. A challenge to the world in general, though Diana was the wrong person to lay a challenge down in front of, unless you were prepared to see it bent in half and thrust into the nearest bin.
‘They tend to be uncivil,’ said Molly.
‘And what form of incivility did this particular example display?’
‘Trespass.’
‘Any detail you want to add?’
‘I found him poking around when I arrived one morning. Which meant he’d opened up and entered without my permission. Which would not, in any case, have been forthcoming.’
‘The Dogs have access rights on all floors,’ said Diana. ‘Regardless of your personal antipathy. What was he doing?’
‘Just checking things out,’ Molly said. ‘That was his story.’
‘You didn’t believe him?’
She said, ‘He called me a crip.’
‘He called you
‘I asked him to leave. He said he didn’t take instructions from a crip.’
‘And so you reported him.’
Molly nodded.
Diana looked around. They were the only people there, which would probably have been true at most times. The secrets Molly kept didn’t burn with urgency; they lay like mantraps in overgrown patches of woodland. Long forgotten, most of them, but not yet rusted shut. When she looked back at Molly, the other woman’s expression was a familiar one; it spoke of an extra layer of knowledge you hadn’t drilled down to yet. Slappable, really, though that wouldn’t be politic. Better to probe a little deeper. There weren’t many options.
She said, ‘You think he was blowing smoke.’
‘Not at the time,’ said Molly. ‘At the time, I saw red. Big man, seen some action by the look of him. Could have thrown me, chair and all, from one side of the room to the other.’
‘And strong men aren’t bullies. Weak ones are.’
They both knew an exception to that rule, of course, but he was a study all to himself.
‘But later, when I thought about it,’ Molly said, ‘after that moron from HR came to pacify me, it occurred to me, that’s why he’d rolled the insults out. To stop me wondering what he’d really been doing.’
‘You’ve checked for missing files?’
Molly didn’t bother to laugh. ‘I’ll do that, when I have a decade to spare.’
‘And all he’d need was a phone,’ Diana finished. Ten minutes on his own in here, he could walk away with a hundred years of history in his pocket.
It was her own fault, or could be made to look like it was, which came to the same thing. Until a few months back, Head Dog had been one Emma Flyte, whose departure Diana had much enjoyed arranging once she’d come into her kingdom. Following this, there’d been a minor exodus from the ranks, three or four of Flyte’s colleagues feeling the need to move on too. It wasn’t a huge issue. Replacements were found. And as the Dogs were frequently recruited from ex-forces personnel, a former SAS officer with private security experience would have been seen as a good fit.
She left Molly and took the lift back to the hub, her mind simmering. Josie was at her office door, the overnights in her hand: reports of incidents that had come in during the dark hours. ‘Bullet points?’
‘Nothing too troublesome. Surveillance updates on the Manchester lot, mostly.’
‘I don’t need to see them. I do need some coffee.’
‘Ma’am.’ Josie was about to head off, but remembered something. ‘Oh, and a suspicious death. Horrible really. A fire in a shipping container.’
‘Christ. Immigrants?’
‘No. Just the one victim.’
‘We’re not the police force.’
‘He used to be Park,’ said Josie.
Catherine Standish refilled Lamb’s bucket several times that morning: he didn’t always drink tea, but when he did, it was an Olympic performance. Her first few visits he was occupied, which is to say, in one of his waking trances: unshod feet on his desk, hands clasped across his belly, open eyes directed at the ceiling. She knew better than to attempt communication. The fourth occasion, he glared at her as if reading her mind. This being so, she spoke it.
‘You might have backed them up a bit.’
