Service officers were red-flagged, so as soon as the name was entered on the hospital records, it was pinging its way to Regent’s Park. Hobbs had picked it up: since then he’d put out an officer-down alert; broken a few limits getting to the hospital; established the agent’s injuries; and taken instruction from Duffy:
That had been half an hour ago, and not a peep since, and even as that thought occurred to Hobbs he squinted at his phone once more, and an awkward truth hit him.
He had no signal.
A quick trip upstairs. It would take less than a minute. And the sooner he was back in touch with the Park, the less chance anyone would know he’d lost contact to start with.
Then he heard the rubbery squeaks that meant someone was coming down the stairs.
Righting the chair, Hobbs planted his feet on the floor.
This time, there was no doubting it. There’d been a noise, loud enough to distract Louisa and Min from what they were doing. Three minutes later it wouldn’t have done, but those were the edges on which outcomes balanced.
‘Hear that?’
‘I heard it.’
‘Came from upstairs.’
‘Lamb’s office?’
‘Or Christine’s.’
They waited, but heard nothing further.
‘You think it’s Lamb?’
‘If it was, there’d be a light on.’
They eased apart, zipping up, and moved for the door without noise. Anyone watching might think they’d rehearsed movements like these: stealthy progress through dark territory, with an unknown third party lurking near.
‘Weapon?’
‘Desk.’
It yielded a glass paperweight, which fitted neatly into a fist, and a stapler which would serve as a knuckleduster.
‘You sure we want to do this?’
‘I’d rather be doing what we just nearly did.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘But now we’ve got to do this instead.’
Or first, perhaps. Whatever.
And anyone watching wouldn’t have guessed either had recently succumbed to drink or lust, because both looked like sober joes as they slipped on to the landing again; Min taking the lead and Louisa watching his hands as she followed, alert for any signals he might drop into the silence that drifted behind him.
The approaching man was overweight and trod heavily, and perhaps had wandered downstairs by mistake; was actually here to get his heart sorted, or have a gastric band fitted. Hobbs ran seven miles daily, rain or shine, and thought being out-of-shape was slow suicide. It meant you’d always come off second best in a physical encounter, which wasn’t something that had happened to Hobbs yet.
He prepared himself for a brush with the public at whose service he technically served.
But the man turned out not to be public. He didn’t even ask who Hobbs was. It was as if he already knew, and already didn’t care.
‘Here’s a tip,’ he said. ‘Mobiles? RaspBerries? Gizmos like that? Not at their best underground.’
Hobbs retreated into bland civil-servantese: ‘Can I help you?’
‘Well.’ The fat man pointed to the locked door. ‘You could open that.’
‘You must be lost, sir,’ Hobbs said. ‘They’ll help you up at reception. With whatever you’re after.’
The man tilted his head to one side. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Jesus wept. Hobbs licked his teeth and prepared to unfold himself from his chair. ‘Don’t have that pleasure, sir.’
The man bent low and spoke directly into Dan’s ear.
‘Good.’
His hands moved.
The stairs seemed steeper after lights out, or maybe they were steeper after an evening in the pub, and a knee-trembler in a dark office. But that thought was broadcast from a different set of experiences. The Louisa who’d come from the pub, the Min who’d just been fumbled with, those skins had been sloughed when they’d heard the intruder. Now they were real people again; the people they’d been before calamity had struck, and exiled them to this damp building on the edge of nowhere important.
No more noises yet. Maybe it had been an unattended accident: a picture dropping off a wall. When the tube rattled past, not many yards away, unanchored objects felt gravity’s pull. Min and Louisa might be creeping upstairs, armed with stapler and paperweight, to launch an attack on a moment’s slippage.
On the other hand, whoever was up there might have frozen on realizing they weren’t alone.
Silent messages passed between the pair:
Up they went.
Whatever had just happened ended with the sound of something being lowered to the floor. This had been preceded by voices, one of which River recognized, so he wasn’t surprised when the door opened and a familiar shape appeared. ‘Jesus on a skateboard.’ Jackson Lamb was loud as a train. He flicked the light switch. ‘Get on your feet, man.’
