Still talking, she set off down the towpath, and pretty soon was swallowed by the shadows.
It was late, it was late, but the dinner party was still going strong. The odd line of coke was helping. PJ had resolved to let this pass, but would be having words with the guilty parties, strong words, before the week was out. There were jinks you could enjoy in opposition, and higher jinks you could get away with in government, but once inside the cabinet, there were guidelines to be observed. None of the puppies partaking were at PJ’s exalted level, of course, but it showed him deep disrespect to imagine that he hadn’t noticed.
But they could wait. In the half-hour since Hobden’s departure, PJ had been assessing the deeps and shallows of his story, and had decided it was probably true. Even in the webbed-up world, where conspiracy theories spread faster than a blogger’s acne, PJ had no difficulty believing that elements within MI5 might have concocted this piece of Grand Guignol, and it even impressed him, a bit. A little less cloak-and-dagger and a bit more reality TV: that was the way to catch the public imagination. And you couldn’t get more real than spilling blood.
What he hadn’t decided was what his reaction should be. For all Hobden’s doom-mongering, PJ felt that the electorate could distinguish between the establishment version of right-wing and the kind cooked up on sink estates. Besides, follow Hobden’s reasoning and it made no difference whether the plot succeeded or failed: either way, the far-right came out as murderous bastards. And given that PJ didn’t care if one, at best, second-generation citizen lived or died, and that he intended one day to be in a position where the strength of the intelligence services was of immediate personal concern to him, the deck was weighted against his lifting a finger.
But then there was the photo. If it existed. Here in the privacy of PJ’s head, there was little point pretending it had never done so, but whether it could still be described in such terms was a different matter, one which a serious amount of money, a fair few promises, and one act of violence had theoretically resolved. At this distance there was little chance that a copy survived, but allowing for the possibility that it did, there were few more likely candidates for finding it than Robert Hobden. Even leaving aside his far-right connections, Hobden’s career had been as remarkable for its uncovering of political sins as it had been for its smug pomposity, and before his fall from grace, those in power trod round him with care. And the fact that he obviously didn’t know everything made it more likely that he wasn’t bluffing—if he’d had even an inkling that Nicholas Frost’s death at a National Front rally had been other than it seemed, he’d have raised the matter. So assume, PJ thought, that the photo existed; assume Hobden had a copy. Where did that leave matters? Matters meaning PJ?
It left him plastering the cracks. He pushed his chair back, waved an apologetic hand in his wife’s direction; mouthed ‘Telephone’ at her. She’d think this was to do with the hostage situation, and it was, of course. It was.
He found Sebastian on the upstairs landing, where he sat looking out at the quiet street.
If the photo existed: well. There were guidelines to be observed at cabinet level, of course, but one of those was the bottom line itself, which simply stated that you did not allow others to hold a blade at your throat.
Those in power had once trod round Robert Hobden with care. These days, rolling right over him was an option. But first, he’d plaster those cracks; get the word out, as Hobden had wanted. PJ did not maintain personal relations with those who dwelt so far beyond the pale, but then, he didn’t need to. What’s a batman for?
‘Seb,’ he said. ‘I need you to make some calls.’
Jed Moody’s body was still on the landing, bleakly lit by a naked bulb. Lamb paid little attention to it on his way up to his office, where he lifted the corkboard from the floor and rehung it on the wall. Then he unlocked a desk drawer and drew out a shoebox. Inside, swaddled in cloth, was a Heckler & Koch. After examining it briefly by the light of the Anglepoise, he slipped it into his overcoat pocket, causing the coat to hang awkwardly. Leaving the shoebox on the desk, and the low lamp burning, he returned downstairs.
‘What happened to the gun?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got it,’ River told him.
Lamb held out a meaty hand, and River surrendered the weapon, which promptly disappeared inside Lamb’s pocket. Curiously, to River’s eye, it seemed to even him up a little.
Lamb glanced down at Moody. ‘Keep an eye on the place, eh?’
The dead man didn’t answer.
