Because River was lying on the floor. Cardboard boxes were piled against the walls, their labels indicating that they held rubber gloves; fitted sheets; plastic cups; disposable cutlery; other stuff: he’d lost interest and turned the light out. It was clear, though, that Hobbs had locked him in a store cupboard.
‘How long have you been in here?’
River shook his head. Ten minutes? Twenty? Three? Time had happened differently once the key had turned in the lock.
He’d put up no resistance. Getting here had left him drained; had been a nightmare ride through zombiestrewn streets, following a racing ambulance. There was blood all over him.
He’d watched her strapped to a gurney and rushed along a corridor by medical staff, and hadn’t even attempted to come up with a fake identity. A bullet wound meant police, of course, but say what you like about the Service Dogs, their response time was sharp. Hobbs had got here first, and had secured River, pending debriefing.
River suspected that any debriefing that followed the shooting of an agent would be a lengthy and unpleasant process.
‘Well, how long were you planning on staying?’ Lamb asked. ‘Get a move on.’
Maybe this would be lengthy and unpleasant too.
River got to his feet and followed his boss into the light.
At the top of the stairs, nobody lurked. The paperweight felt comfortable in Min’s hand by now; a round smooth heavy presence, not entirely dissimilar to—but he thrust that thought away; stepped into Jackson Lamb’s office. The blinds were down. Pinpricks of light poked in from London’s night sky; the neon glow that settled on the city like a bubble.
Shapes took on slow substance. Desk, coatstand, filing cabinet, bookshelf. No human form. No waiting stranger.
Behind him, Louisa checked out the cubicle-sized kitchen. Unless whoever had made the noise could fit in a fridge, it was danger-free.
‘Catherine’s room.’
Similar story: desk, shelves, cabinets. But there was a skylight, and a ghostly grey light hovered over Catherine’s absence. She’d left her keyboard balanced on top of her monitor, and aligned her folders with the edge of the desk. There were shadows here too, but most of them seemed empty.
‘I’m going to turn the light on.’
‘Okay.’
It hurt both their eyes for a second, as their drunkenness re-bloomed.
‘There’s nobody here.’
‘Doesn’t seem to be.’
In the light, both looked washed out.
They turned back to the other office, where they could now see something leaning against the wall. It was Lamb’s corkboard, the one on which he pinned his money-off tokens.
‘Do you think—?’
Did they think it had fallen off the wall?
Movement behind them broadcast itself a moment before Min was struck.
Only a moment, but long enough for him to move, so the punch scraped his ear only, throwing him off balance but not to the floor—their assailant was clad in black; wore a balaclava; carried a small gun he wasn’t using. He’d sprung from the shadows in Catherine’s room; must have been hiding in her cupboard. His second blow caught Louisa in the chest and she gasped in pain.
Min launched himself at the stranger’s legs, and the pair of them went crashing down the stairs.
Hobbs was asleep in the plastic chair, or looked asleep. A faint smear of dribble glistened on his chin. River paused to retrieve Service card and car keys from his pocket, then followed.
Upstairs, two policemen were talking to the charge nurse, who was examining a clipboard. Lamb led River past them without a sideways glance as the nurse shook his head and pointed the cops towards the reception desk.
Outside it was dark, and starting to rain again. River’s car, which he’d left slantwise in an ambulance space, was gone. He wondered if Sid was gone too. There’d been urgency about the way those doctors, those nurses, had trolleyed her off. Perhaps they’d not heard the same factoid he had. They certainly hadn’t said
‘Stay with the programme, Cartwright.’
‘Where now?’
The words were cotton wool, sucking moisture from his mouth and leaving him tired and sick.
‘Anywhere but here.’
‘My car’s gone.’
‘Shut up.’
So now he was tracking Lamb across the short-stay car park; all those vehicles that hadn’t expected to be here tonight, and whose owners were inside the building behind him. He shut out the possible injuries that had brought them here, knife fights, random muggings, dicks stuck in vacuum hoses; blanked out too the picture of Sid on an operating table, her head invaded by a bullet. Or had it only plucked at her on its way past? He hadn’t been able to tell. There’d been so much blood.
‘For fuck’s sake, Cartwright.’
