“Couldn’t read it. My decoder ring’s broken. So where is he, anyway?”
“Where’s who?”
“David Cartwright, who do you think?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” said Emma Flyte after a pause. “We have no idea.”
“I thought you said he had a button. Did nobody mention they’re traceable?”
“Thanks, I’ll make a note. But I’ve already traced his particular button to the kitchen table.”
“Did you look underneath it?”
“He’s not in the house, he’s not out here in the garden. Not with the nearest neighbours. We could do a canvass, but until we get word on how to play this, we don’t want to be flying too many flags.”
“What about the gun?”
She shook her head.
“So, to sum up,” said Lamb. “A former senior spook—I mean, seriously, this guy knows more secrets than the Queen’s had chicken dinners—blows his grandson’s face clean off then disappears into the night, armed. Oh yeah, and he’s lost his marbles.” He shook his head. “This is not gunna play well on Twitter.”
“At least we picked the right week to bury bad news.”
“What, Westacres? You’re joking. Any bomb that goes off in London is an Intelligence Service fuck-up, which ironically enough describes young Cartwright too. Trust me, there’ll be keyboard warriors joining the dots as soon as this hits the web.”
“We’ll wrap it up before it comes to that.”
“The next sound you hear will be me, expressing confidence.” He farted, and reached for the cigarette behind his ear.
Something rustled down the far end of the garden, but it was just the great outdoors, not a former senior spook. Lamb lit his cigarette, still staring in that direction. The clouds overhead healed themselves, and what little moonlight there’d been shimmered out of view.
“So you’re the boss of the famous Slough House,” Flyte said. “Isn’t that where they keep the rejects?”
“They don’t like to be called that.”
“So what do you call them?”
“Rejects,” said Lamb. He broke off his study of the darkness and turned to face her. “And you’re the new broom. For some reason, I was expecting someone less . . . female.”
“Do I detect a trace of sexism?”
“Christ, not you too. Sexism, sexism, blah blah blah. It’s like you’re all constantly on the rag.” He exhaled a blue cloud. “How long have you been a Dog?”
“Two months.”
“And before that?”
“I spent eleven years in the Met.”
“Uniform?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just painting a mental picture.”
“I spent some years in uniform, naturally.”
“Have you still got it?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be shy,” he said. “A figure like yours, and a uniform handy. That’s gunna make some man very happy.”
“Maybe I’m gay.”
“Well, picturing that’s gunna make a
“This isn’t an appropriate conversation, Lamb. Apart from anything else, one of your team just died.”
“I’m working through my grief. I might need a little leeway.”
“I think what you need is to go. Thanks for your input. We’ll confirm your identification once the blood work’s through.”
“No hurry. I’d hate it to clash with my denial phase.” He dropped his cigarette and trod on it. “The last Top Dog had a run-in with an iron bar, did they tell you that? He’s upright again, but I heard they’ve pinned feeding instructions to his shirt.”
“The grapevine says it was young Cartwright wielding the bar.”
“Grapevines say a lot of things. But it’s mostly the wine talking. The guy before him, he was altogether classier.”
“Bad Sam Chapman.”
“That was just a name. He wasn’t that bad.”
“Except for the bit about losing a quarter of a billion pounds.”
“I said he wasn’t bad. I didn’t say he was perfect.” Lamb put his hands in his pockets. “Good luck with finding the old bastard. That’s what the boy used to call him.”
“Affectionately, I hope.”
“River thought so. But he was a bastard all right. I guarantee that.”
As he brushed past, she wrinkled her nose and said, “Have you showered lately?”
“Tempting offer,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s appropriate right now. Apart from anything else, one of my team just died.”
He walked through the open French windows and into the house.
“No, really,” Emma Flyte murmured to his back. “You had me at ‘fuck.’”
In London, dawn broke along the familiar fault-lines, grey light seeping through cracks, drawing round the edges of the tallest buildings. The forecast was for more dull weather, a promise kept by the rain rolling in to dampen the capital’s streets: taxis were already on the prowl as the first wave of commuters came crashing out of the tube stations, wondering where its umbrellas were. Where once there’d have been newspaper vendors on corners, now there were kagoule-clad youngsters, mostly Asian, handing out the free-sheets to passers-by, many of whom were using them as makeshift rain-protection. The warning lights at pedestrian crossings counted down to zero, buses came lumbering out of the gloom, and another day dragged itself from sleep, inviting miserable winter to do its worst, again.
