Slow Horses полностью

Currently, he was virtually crawling through Home Office personnel files. Not looking for anything in particular. Just looking because he could.

Ho’s parents had left Hong Kong ten years before handover, and Ho—who obsessed about what-ifs; who’d devoured you-make-the-decisions books as a teenager, when not playing Dungeons and Dragons relentlessly, unsleepingly—often wondered how he’d have turned out if they’d stayed. Odds on he’d have been a webhead in a more commercial area, software design or SFX, or lackeying for some vast faceless corporation whose tendrils touched every corner of the known world. Odds on he’d be pulling down more money than he was now. But he wouldn’t have these opportunities.

The previous evening he’d been on a date with a woman he’d met on the tube that morning. They hadn’t spoken. First dates were like that.

She’d been mousy blonde, and wore a regulation City outfit—charcoal jacket and skirt, white blouse—but what attracted Ho was her building pass, which dangled on a chain round her neck. Strap-hanging eight inches away, he had no trouble reading her name; ten minutes after reaching Slough House, he’d established her address and marital status (single); her credit history (pretty good); her medical records (usual female stuff); and was wandering through her e-mails. Work. Spam. A bit of flirting with a colleague, which was going nowhere. Plus, she was looking to buy a second-hand car, and had responded to an ad in her local free press. The owner hadn’t replied.

So Ho gave him a call, and established that he’d already sold the car but hadn’t bothered informing the unlucky enquirers. That was fine Ho assured him before calling the woman himself, to see if she was still interested in a six-year-old Saab. She was, so they arranged to meet that evening in a wine bar. Ho, established in a corner before she turned up, had watched her grow visibly more frustrated over the following hour; had even thought of approaching her; sitting her down and explaining that you couldn’t be too careful—that you could not. Be. Too. Careful. A security pass on a chain round her neck? Why not sport a badge reading Rape My Life? Financial details, favourite websites, numbers dialled, calls received. All it took was a name, and one other bite: place of work did fine. Tax codes, criminal records, loyalty cards, travel passes. It wasn’t simply that these things could be found, along with everything else. It was that they could be changed. So you leave home one morning, security pass like a cowbell round your neck, and by the time you reach work your life’s not your own any more.

Roderick Ho was here to tell this woman that.

But hadn’t, of course. He’d watched until she’d given up and left in a storm of silent fury, and then finished his alcohol-free lager, and walked home satisfied that he’d had her in the palm of his hand.

His secret.

One among many.

So now he sat in front of his screen, not hearing the music blasting through his room; not even blinking. A Home Office flunkey might as well be standing by his monitor, ushering him in; leading him to the filing cabinets. Offering him a key. Would sir like an alcohol-free lager while he prowled? Why, yes. Sir would.

Ho plucked the can from the holder screwed to his desk.

Thank you, flunkey.

He contemplated swapping the birth dates of some of the higher-ranking apparatchiks, which would mess up a pension plan or two, but was distracted by a link to an external site, which led him to another, and then another. It was surprising how quickly time passed: next time he looked up it was midnight, and he was miles from the Home Office; was navigating his way round a small-time plastics factory with deep-cover links to the MoD. More secrets. This was the playground he’d been born to run around in: didn’t matter where his parents ended up. This was his element, and he’d dig in it until time healed over; like a miser sifting heaps of dust, in search of the nugget of gold.

And all of it was practice, nothing more. None of his trawling had brought him anywhere near uncovering the mystery that really tormented him.

Roderick Ho knew exactly what sins had brought his colleagues to Slough House; the precise nature of the gaffes and blunders that had condemned them to the twilight of the second-rate. He had calibrated their wrongdoings to the minutest detail, knew the dates and places where they’d fallen, and understood the consequences of their screw-ups better than they did themselves, because he’d read the arse-covering e-mails their superiors had subsequently penned. He knew exactly whose hand had given the thumbs-down in every instance. He could quote chapter and verse, chapter and verse.

For every sin but two.

One was Sid Baker’s, and he was starting to have his suspicions about that.

As for the other, it remained as elusive as that hidden nugget.