The previous night he’d lurked outside the journo’s past midnight, wresting what shelter he could from the slight overhang of the building opposite while rain belted down like Noah’s nightmare. Most of the neighbours had done their civic duty, black sacks lined up like sitting pigs, or council-supplied wheelie bins standing sentry by doors. But nothing outside the journo’s. Cold rain tracked down River’s neck, mapping a course to the crack of his arse, and he knew it didn’t matter how long he stood there, he was going to have no joy.
‘Don’t get caught,’ Lamb had said.
Of course I won’t get bloody caught, he’d thought. ‘I’ll try not to.’
And: ‘Residents’ parking,’ Lamb had added, as if sharing some arcane password.
Residents’ parking. So what?
So he couldn’t sit in his car, he’d belatedly realized. Couldn’t cosy down, rain bouncing off a waterproof roof, and wait for the bags to appear. The chances of a parking revenue attendant—or whatever they were called today—doing the rounds after midnight were slim, but not non-existent.
It was all he’d need—a parking ticket. On-the-spot fine. His name in a book.
So it was the slight overhang in the pouring rain. Worse than that, it was the flickering light behind the thin curtains of the journo’s street-level apartment; it was the way a shadow kept appearing behind them. As if the hack inside, dry as toast, was busting a gut at the thought of River in the rain, waiting for him to put his rubbish bag out so he could whip it away for covert study. As if the journo knew all this.
Not long after midnight, the thought occurred to River: maybe he did.
That was how it had been for the past eight months. Every so often, he’d take the bigger picture and give it a shake, like it was a loose jigsaw. Sometimes the pieces came together differently; sometimes they didn’t fit at all. Why did Jackson Lamb want this journo’s rubbish, enough to give River his first out-of-the-office job since he’d been assigned to Slough House? Maybe the point wasn’t getting the rubbish. Maybe the point was River standing in the rain for hours on end, while the hack laughed with Lamb about it over the phone.
This rain had been forecast. Hell, it had been raining when Lamb had given him the op.
Residents’ parking, he’d said.
Ten more minutes, and River decided enough was enough. There was going to be no bag of rubbish, or if there was, it wasn’t going to mean anything, other than that he’d been sent on an idiot’s errand … He’d walked back the way he’d come, collecting a random rubbish sack on the way; had flung it into the boot of the car he’d parked by the nearest meter. Had driven home. Had gone to bed.
Where he’d lain for two hours, watching the jigsaw reassemble itself. Jackson Lamb’s
Or else it was a test. A test to discover whether River was capable of going out in the rain and bringing back a bag of rubbish.
He went out again not long after, abandoning the random sack of rubbish in the first litter bin he passed. Cruising slowly past the journo’s, he could hardly believe it was there, slumped against the wall below the window: a knotted black bag …
The same bag’s contents were now strewn across the floor in front of him.
Lamb said, ‘I’ll leave you to clear that, right?’
River said, ‘What am I looking for precisely?’
But Lamb was already gone; audible on the stairs, this time—every creak and complaint echoing—and River was alone in Sid’s half of the office; still surrounded by unsweet-smelling crap, and still weighed down by the faint but unmistakable sensation of being Jackson Lamb’s punchbag.
The tables were always packed too close in Max’s, in optimistic preparation for a rush of custom that wasn’t going to happen. Max’s wasn’t popular because it wasn’t very good; they re-used the coffee beans, and the croissants were stale. Repeat trade was the exception, not the rule. But there was one regular, and the moment he stepped through the door each morning, newspapers under his arm, the body on the counter would start pouring his cup. It didn’t matter how often the staff turned over: his details were passed down along with instructions about the cappuccino machine.
This morning, the windows were a fogged-over drizzle. His raincoat dripped on to the chessboard lino. If his newspapers hadn’t been in a plastic bag, they’d have been a papier-mâché sculpture waiting to happen.
‘Good morning.’
‘It’s a lousy morning.’
‘But it’s always good to see you, sir.’
