Then Bradley did that thing with his hand again, and said, ‘Let me say on all our behalf—behalves?—that we’re grateful to Diana for a remarkably full picture drawn in a remarkably short time. And that we’ll be equally grateful for hourly updates, leading to a swift and happy conclusion.’
There was a knock on the door, and Tom entered, a folded sheet of paper in his hand. Without a word, he handed it to Diana Taverner, and left.
Taverner unfolded it, and read it in silence. Her expression betrayed not the slightest clue as to whether the information it contained was new to her, confirmation of something already suspected, or an out-of date report on weather happening elsewhere. But when she looked up, the atmosphere shifted.
‘This is fresh. There’ll be copies in a moment.’
Bradley said, ‘Perhaps you might …’
She might. She did.
‘People, it would appear this isn’t the random snatch we’d thought.’
New information demanded at least as much action as discussion. It was Diana Taverner’s role to leave to see about the action, and everybody else’s to get the discussion under way. Or almost everybody’s. She was halfway to the lift when the Barrowboy caught her—almost literally: she turned to find him reaching for her arm. The look she bestowed upon him would have stuck six inches out the back of a more sensitive man.
‘Not a good time, Roger.’
‘When is it ever? Diana, this new information.’
‘You know as much as I do.’
‘I doubt that. But either way, it doesn’t change anything, does it?’
‘You think? Not even a little?’
‘What I meant was, you seemed confident enough before this apparent bombshell went off. Who he is doesn’t make your job harder.’
‘“Apparent”?’
Each vowel was its own icicle.
‘Poor choice of word. All I meant was, you’ve an asset in place, yes? You don’t get Mozart-grade info from random phone-grabs or lists of dodgy loan applications.’
‘It’s nice to hear from an expert, Roger. Remind me, where was your finest hour? Beirut? Baghdad? Or the bar at the Frontline Club?’
But it washed off him. ‘I only meant, that’s the stuff they do over at Slough House.’ He barked a self-appreciative laugh. ‘Hoping to bore the deadweights into jumping ship. This is higher grade. So. You have an asset.’
She jabbed the lift button with an index finger. ‘Yes, Roger. We have an asset. That’s how intelligence gathering works.’
‘But he didn’t know this latest twist?’
‘If he knew everything he wouldn’t just be an asset, Roger. He’d be Wikipedia.’
‘So how close to the action is he?’
‘Pretty close.’
‘Handy.’
‘Some might say so. Others call it foresight.’
‘Well, there’s foresight and foresight, isn’t there? Not much credit in reading the runes if you laid them out in the first place.’
‘That’s right up there with
The lift arrived. Before its doors were fully open she was inside; pressing the button for floor level. Pressing it three times, in fact. Someday they’d invent a button which made things happen faster the more you pressed it.
‘Nothing really, Diana. Just that it might be an idea to be careful.’
The doors didn’t quite cut off his coda:
‘Swimming with sharks, that kind of thing.’
Swimming with sharks, she thought now, crushing her cigarette underheel. She checked her watch. It was fifteen seconds short of one o’clock.
He approached from the east, and even if she hadn’t pulled up his records earlier, before making the call, she’d have recognized him. At Regent’s Park they called them slow horses, and half the fun had been letting the slow horses know it. So it became self-fulfilling: when Slough House met Regent’s Park, it was always clear who was wearing the boots. And here he came, approaching her with a slow horse’s determination, as if reaching the finishing line meant the battle was won. When, as anyone with breeding knows, coming first is the only result that matters.
At the bench, he treated her to a look half aggressive, half defensive, like a wronged lover, and then curled his lip at the bench itself.
She said, ‘It’s not real and it’s quite dry.’
He seemed dubious.
‘For God’s sake. This is a useful bench. You think we’d let a gull crap on it?’
Jed Moody sat.
Out on the water the shag was halfway through another circuit, while near Bankside Pier a street-preacher had staked out an imaginary pulpit, and was haranguing passers-by. Everything normal, in other words.
Taverner said, ‘I’m told you reached out last night.’
‘Nick’s an old friend,’ Moody said.
‘Shut up. You told him Jackson Lamb was running an op, that he’d sent one of your junior colleagues on a data-snatch. That this wasn’t anything Slough House does, and that if it was, it should be you doing it.’
‘It’s true. I spent six years—’
‘Shut up. What I want to know is, how did you find out about it?’
‘About what, ma’am?’
