‘Not that they’d tell us, anyway.’
‘Slough House. For the simple things in life.’
Like combing Twitter for coded messages. Like compiling lists of overseas students who missed more than six lectures a term.
They finished their drinks and got another round in.
‘Ho’s probably up to speed.’
‘Ho knows everything.’
‘Thinks he does.’
‘Did you see his expression when he caught the loop?’
‘Like he’d cracked the Enigma code.’
‘Like that was the important thing, that the film was on a loop.’
‘And the kid was just pixels.’
Then, for the first time, they looked at each other without pretending not to. Drinking had done neither any favours. Louisa had a tendency to flush, which might have been okay if it had meant an even pinkness; but instead she grew mottled and patchy, her skin acquiring the topography of a badly folded map. As for Min, his face had sagged, flaps of skin developing along his jawline, and his ears glowed red to match his irises. All over the city—all over the world—this happened; co-workers ruined their chances in the pub, and forged ahead anyway.
‘Lamb must know more.’
‘More what?’
‘More than we do.’
‘You think he’s in the loop?’
‘More than the rest of us.’
‘Not saying much.’
‘I know his password.’
‘… Really?’
‘Think so. I think he never—’
‘Don’t tell me!’
‘… reset it from the default.’
‘Classic!’
‘His password is “Password”!’
‘You sure?’
‘It’s what Ho reckons.’
‘And he told you?’
‘He needed to tell someone. To prove how clever he is.’
For a moment, both examined their glasses. Then their eyes met again.
‘Another round?’
‘Yeah. Maybe. Or …’
‘Or?’
‘Or maybe back to the office?’
‘It’s late. There’ll be nobody there.’
‘My point exactly.’
‘You think we should …’
‘Check Ho’s info?’
‘If Lamb knows anything, it’ll be on his e-mail.’
Both considered this for flaws, and found plenty. Both decided not to raise them.
‘If we get caught looking at Lamb’s e-mail …’
‘We won’t.’
If there was anyone there, there’d be lights in the windows, visible from the road. It wasn’t like Slough House was high security.
‘You sure there’s a point to this?’
‘More point than sitting here getting pissed. That’s not helping anyone.’
‘True.’
Each waited for the other to make the first move.
In the end, though, they had another drink first.
There had been hospitals before, but not since childhood. One bad year had seen River incarcerated twice; first for a tonsillectomy, then for a broken arm, sustained in a fall from a large oak two fields from his grandparents’ house. It hadn’t been the first time he’d scaled it, though he’d had trouble getting down on the previous occasions. This time there’d been no trouble. Only gravity. Back home he’d tried not to mention the injury, on account of having promised not to damage himself climbing trees, but at length had been forced to admit that yes, he was struggling to hold his fork. The O.B. told him later that it was only after having made the admission that River had turned white, then whiter, then dropped to the floor.
Lying in the dark now, what he remembered that occasion for was that his mother had come as he lay in hospital. It had been the first time he’d seen her in two years, and she claimed to have arrived back on English soil only that afternoon. ‘Perhaps at the same moment you had your fall, darling. Don’t you think that’s what happened? That you sensed my arrival, all those miles away?’ Even at nine River had difficulty with this scenario, and hadn’t been especially surprised when he later learned that Isobel had been in the country for several months. Be that as it may, she was with him now, unaccompanied by his ‘new father’, and unfazed by River’s having told his nurse he was an orphan. In fact, the only thing that galvanized her was her parents’ negligence.
‘Climbing
But evasion of blame was so ingrained to her character, even those around her colluded. River himself wasn’t immune. Of the injuries she’d bestowed upon him few had caused as much grief as his name, but even at nine he knew a narrow escape when he saw one. Isobel Cartwright’s hippy phase had been superseded by an equally short-lived Teutonic one, and had River been a year younger, he might have been a Wolfgang. He suspected that his grandfather would have balked at that. The O.B. was as adept at destroying true identities as he was at creating false ones.
