She was, he supposed, in her forties; a handsome, strong-featured woman with dark hair falling loosely around her shoulders, and eyes that seemed black to River. She wore jeans, a man’s blue shirt, and a thick cardigan with a belt whose ends dangled to her thighs. From her expression, he couldn’t tell if she were surprised to see him or simply resigned; as if this were an outcome long in the making.
He said, “I need to know about Les Arbres.”
“It is burned down. It is no more.”
“I know that. But the people there . . . I need to know about them.”
“Who sent you?”
“A man called Victor.”
A gust of wind pushed at his back; slunk between his legs like an unruly dog.
She said, “It is bad here. You should come in.”
So River came out of the cold and the wet, and limped into her story.
Roderick Ho was drinking from a bottle that claimed to hold “smart water,” and Shirley couldn’t work out which annoyed her more: who he was, or what he was drinking. Smart phones, okay, she could see that. Smart cars. Smart water, though, someone was taking the piss.
But she wasn’t going to let him spoil her moment of triumph.
“Old man Cartwright made a number of trips to France in the early nineties,” she announced. “Before there was a tunnel. Apparently they used something called a ferry? Anyway, he went three or four times, always to the same place. Somewhere near Poitiers, which is about in the middle. Middle of France, I mean.”
Lamb said, “You know, if I shut my eyes, it’s like listening to one of the Reith lectures.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what that means.”
“You amaze me.” Lamb paused to belch. Instead of spending the hour or so after lunch formulating department strategy, which he did with his eyes closed and his feet on his desk, he was holding court in Ho’s room. The slow horses were there, Moira Tregorian excepted—her, he’d invited to go through the stack of memos that had arrived from the Park since September, and arrange them in order of urgency—and were relaying the fruits of their research, which, until Shirley piped up, had been non-existent. “These trips, they were official?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So there’s a mission report?”
“There are expenses claims,” Shirley said, “and a series of status updates on a retired agent, codenamed Henry. But all the updates say is ‘stable,’ or ‘no action necessary.’”
Lamb sniffed suspiciously. “And Molly Doran volunteered this?”
“I dropped your name,” Shirley said.
Probably not worth going into the bet Molly lost.
“So whoever Henry was,” Marcus said, “he’s not as stable as he used to be.”
Ho lowered the bottle, and said, “Yeah, because it looks like he tried to kill the old man.”
“Such perception,” said Lamb. “No wonder I think of you as my number two.”
Ho smiled happily.
“What are you smirking at? You do know what a number two is?”
Louisa said, “But whoever came to kill David Cartwright, it wasn’t this mysterious Henry. Not unless he was about three when Cartwright was paying him visits.”
“Why was he doing that?”
As on the previous occasions when JK Coe had opened his mouth, this caused a brief silence: not so much people wondering about what he’d said as registering that he’d actually said something.
Ho said, “I think you missed the bit about the status updates,” and glanced at Lamb for approval.
Who said, “Listen and learn, grasshopper.”
Coe said, “He was First Desk in all but name. Why would he be trotting off to the continent to check up on a retired spook?”
“Maybe it was the other way round,” said Lamb. “Maybe checking up on a retired spook was the excuse he needed to go trotting off to the continent.”
“So this Henry, who we first heard of fifteen seconds ago, might just be a smokescreen?” said Marcus. “He didn’t last long.”
“Are you suggesting Cartwright invented an agent just so he’d get his travel expenses paid?” Louisa said.
“Those ferries weren’t cheap,” said Lamb. “But no. If Henry’s an invention, it was to give Cartwright the freedom to go to France in the first place. Like the mad monk said, he was First Desk in all but name. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t make trips abroad. It just meant he had to have a better reason for making them than ‘felt like it.’”
“So he had some kind of secret mission going on in France in the nineties,” said Louisa. “And whatever it was, it’s come back to bite him.”
“Have I triangulated yet?” said Shirley. “Because there’s more.”
“Did someone start an employee of the month competition?” Lamb asked. “Because I’ve got to tell you, I wish I’d thought of that myself. And I can’t believe Dander’s ahead of the pack.”
“Is there a prize?”
“Yeah, Ho will explain how he got a girlfriend. You can take notes.”
“I assume it involved cash,” Shirley said. “Anyway, when Cartwright travelled, he didn’t travel alone. On account of—”
“Being First Desk in all but name,” said Marcus.
“And thus requiring a body-watcher,” said Louisa.
“Yeah yeah yeah,” said Shirley. “So you want to hear who it was, or not?”
Lamb said, “It was Bad Sam, wasn’t it?”
