Slow Horses (11 page)

Glenmorangie in hand, firelight dancing in the corners, River had asked, ‘Do you know Robert Hobden?’

‘That toad? What’s your interest?’

He’d tried to sound bored, but a glint in his eye betrayed him.

River said, ‘Casual. My interest in him’s casual.’

‘He’s a spent force.’

‘We specialize in them. At Slough House.’

His grandfather studied him over the top of his spectacles. The ability to do this was a fine argument for wearing glasses. ‘They won’t keep you there forever, you know.’

‘I was given the impression they might,’ River said.

‘That’s the point. If you knew it was only for six months, it wouldn’t hurt.’

It had already been more than six months, but they both knew that, so River said nothing.

‘You do your time. Whatever grunt work Jackson Lamb throws your way. Then you head back to Regent’s Park, sins forgiven. Fresh start.’

‘What was Lamb’s sin?’

The O.B. pretended not to hear. ‘Hobden was a star in his day. His time on the
Telegraph
especially. He was their crime reporter, and did a series on the drug trade in Manchester which opened a lot of eyes. Up until then drugs were an American problem, most people thought. He was the real deal all right.’

‘I didn’t know he’d been a reporter. I thought he was a columnist.’

‘Eventually. Back then, most of them had been reporters. These days, all you need is a media studies degree and an uncle on staff. But don’t get me started on how degraded that profession’s become.’

‘Good idea,’ River said. ‘I’m only here for the evening.’

‘You’re welcome to stay.’

‘Better not. Wasn’t he a member of the Communist Party?’

‘Probably.’

‘That didn’t raise eyebrows?’

‘Things aren’t always black and white, River. A wise man once said he wouldn’t trust anyone who hadn’t been a radical in his youth, and Communism was the radicalism of choice back then. What’s wrong with your hand?’

‘Kitchen mishap.’

‘Playing with fire.’ His expression changed. ‘A hand up?’

River helped him to his feet. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Damn waterworks,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever get old, River.’

He shuffled out. A moment later, the door to the downstairs bathroom closed.

River sat, his chair’s leather soft as a diary’s binding. The study ticked pleasantly as he swirled the liquid in his glass.

The O.B. had spent his working life in the service of his country, at a time when the battle lines were drawn less crookedly than now, but the first time River had seen him he’d been on his knees at a flowerbed, and couldn’t have looked less like a fighter in secret wars. He wore an umpire’s hat not broad enough to keep the sweat from trickling down his brow, and his face shone like a cheese. At River’s approach, he rocked back on his haunches, trowel in hand, speechless. River, seven years old, had arrived a quarter of an hour earlier, deposited by his mother and the man currently keeping his mother company. They’d left him on the doorstep with careless kisses and a curt nod respectively. Until that morning, he hadn’t known he’d had grandparents.

‘They’ll be delighted to have you,’ his mother had told him, throwing random articles of his clothing into a suitcase.

‘Why? They don’t even know who I am!’

‘Don’t be silly. I’ve sent them photographs.’

‘When? When did you ever—?’

‘River. I’ve told you. Mummy has to go away. It’s important. You want Mummy to be happy, don’t you?’

He didn’t answer. He didn’t want Mummy to be happy. He wanted Mummy to be there.
That
was important.

‘Well then. It won’t be for long. And when I come back—well.’ She dropped a badly folded shirt into the case and turned to him. ‘Maybe I’ll have a surprise for you.’

‘I don’t want a surprise!’

‘Not even a new daddy?’

‘I hate him,’ River said, ‘and I hate you too.’

They were the last words he’d say to her for two years.

His grandmother had been first shocked, then kind, and fussed over him in the kitchen. As soon as her back was turned, he’d slipped out the back door to flee, but here was this man on his knees by a flowerbed; who for the longest time said nothing, but whose silence held River rooted. And in his memory, they at length had the following conversation, though in truth it might have happened at a different time, or possibly never, and was simply one of those episodes the mind constructs to retrospectively explain events that would otherwise remain haphazard.

His grandfather said, ‘You must be River.’

River didn’t reply.

‘Damned silly name. Still. Could have been worse.’

River’s experiences at a number of schools suggested that the old man was wrong about this.

‘You mustn’t think badly of her.’

Not knowing whether
yes
or
no
was required, River didn’t answer that either.

‘Blame myself. Don’t blame her. Least of all blame her mother. That would be your grandmother. The lady in the kitchen. She’s never spoken about us, has she?’

That definitely didn’t need a reply.

After a while his grandfather pursed his lips, and examined the patch of earth he was tending. River didn’t know what he was doing: planting flowers or digging up weeds—River had spent his life in flats. Flowers arrived in colourful wrapping, or sprouted in parks. If he could magic himself back to one of those flats now he’d do so, but magic was unavailable. The grandparents he’d encountered in stories were sometimes, not always, benign. There remained the possibility of murderous intent.

‘It’s easier with dogs,’ his grandfather continued.

River didn’t like dogs, but decided to keep this information to himself, until he knew which way the wind was blowing.

‘You look at their paws. Did you know that?’

This time, it seemed an answer was required.

‘No,’ River had said, after a gap of maybe three minutes.

‘No what?’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Didn’t know what?’

‘What you said. About dogs.’

‘You look at their paws. If you want to know how big they’re going to get.’ He began trowelling again, satisfied with River’s contribution. ‘Dogs grow into their feet. Children don’t. Their feet grow with them.’

River watched soil dribble down the trowel’s edge. Something red and grey and squirming happened, briefly. A flick of the tool, and it was gone.

‘I don’t mean your mother grew bigger than we’d expected.’

It had been a worm. It had been a worm, and now—if what River had heard was true—it was two worms, in two separate places. He wondered if the worm remembered being just one worm, and if that had been twice as good, or only half. There was no way you could answer such questions. You could learn biology, but that was all.

‘I meant we couldn’t know she was a bolter.’

More trowelling.

‘Made a lot of bad decisions, your mother. Your name was the least of them. And you know what the worst thing is?’

This too required a response, but the best River could manage was a shake of the head.

‘She hasn’t noticed yet.’ He was trowelling harder, as if there were something in the soil to be brought into the light. ‘We all make mistakes, River. Made a couple myself, and some have hurt other people. They’re the ones you shouldn’t get over. The ones you’re meant to learn from. But that’s not your mother’s way. She seems intent on making the same mistake over and over again, and that doesn’t help anyone. Least of all you.’ He gazed up at River. ‘But you mustn’t think badly of her. What I’m saying is, it’s in her nature.’

It was in her nature, River thought now, as he waited for his grandfather to return from the bathroom. That was undeniable, at this point in time. She’d been making the same mistakes ever since, and showed little sign of slowing down.

As for the old man: when River thought back on scenes like that—on the umpire’s hat and the jumper holed at the elbow; at the trowel and the rivulets of sweat creasing his round country face—it was hard not to see it as an act. The props were certainly to hand: big house with wrap-around garden; horses within spitting distance. English country gentleman down to the vocabulary: ‘bolter ’ was a word from early twentieth-century novels; from a world where Waughs and Mitfords played card games on tables designed for the purpose.

Except that acts could shade into reality. When River remembered his childhood in this house, it was always bright summer, and never a cloud in the sky. So perhaps it had worked, the game the O.B. played; and all the clichés he espoused, or pretended to espouse, had left their mark on River. Sunshine in England, and fields stretching into the distance. When he’d become old enough to learn what his grandfather had really done with his life, and determined to do the same himself, those were the scenes he was thinking about, real or not. And the O.B. would have had an answer for that, too:
Doesn’t matter if it’s not real. It’s the idea you have to defend.

‘Am I going to live here now?’ he had asked that morning.

‘Yes. Can’t think what else to do with you.’

And now he came back into the room, more sprightly than the way he’d left it. It was on the tip of River’s tongue to ask if he was all right, but he put that tongue to better use, and sipped whisky instead.

His grandfather settled back in his armchair. ‘If Hobden’s on your radar, it’s political.’

‘I heard his name. Can’t remember the context. It rang a bell, that’s all.’

‘In your line of work, lying can be a matter of life and death. You’re going to have to practise, River. Speaking of which, what did you really do to your hand?’

‘Opened a flash-box without the code.’

‘Idiot activity. What was that about?’

‘I wanted to see if I could do it without getting burnt.’

‘Got your answer, didn’t you? Had it seen to?’

It was River’s left hand. If he’d used his right he’d have been quicker and perhaps not burnt himself at all, but he’d taken the pragmatic approach: if the box went off like a grenade, he’d rather lose the hand he didn’t favour. As it was, he’d doused the brief flame with bottled water. The box’s contents got wet, but were undamaged. He’d copied the computer’s files on to a new memory stick, then slid the laptop into the jiffy bag which, like the stick, he’d bought at the stationer’s near Slough House. All this on a bench by a children’s playground.

The hand wasn’t too bad; a bit red, a bit raw. If you wanted to carry a moral from the exercise, it would be that flash-boxes weren’t much cop. Though Spider had been only too happy to believe that Slough House lacked even that degree of technology.

If you wanted another moral, it would be to work out what you’re doing before you do it. The whole episode had been generated by his own slow-burning resentment: at having been sent on an idiot’s errand while Sid went out on an actual op; most of all, at being made Spider Webb’s errand boy … He hadn’t examined the stick’s contents yet. Just having the damn thing was an imprisonable offence.

‘It’s okay,’ he said to his grandfather. ‘A bit scorched. Nothing to worry about.’

‘There’s something on your mind, though.’

‘You know what I’ve been doing for the past month?’

‘Whatever it is, I doubt you’re supposed to tell me about it.’

‘I think you can be trusted. I’ve been reading mobile phone conversations.’

‘And this is beneath your talents.’

‘It’s a waste of time. They’re hoovered up from high-interest areas, mostly from near the more radical mosques, and the transcripts are generated by voice-recognition software. I’ve only been given those in English, but still, there are thousands of them. The software renders a lot of them gibberish but they’ve all got to be read, and graded as to levels of suspicion. One to ten. Ten being very suspicious. As of this afternoon, I’ve read eight hundred and forty-two of them. You know how many I’ve graded above one?’

His grandfather reached for the bottle.

River made a zero sign with finger and thumb.

His grandfather said, ‘I hope you’re not planning anything foolish, River.’

‘It’s beneath my abilities.’

‘It’s a hoop they’re making you jump through.’

‘I’ve jumped. I’ve jumped over and over again.’

‘They won’t keep you there forever.’

‘You think? What about, I don’t know, Catherine Standish? You think she’s a temporary assignment? Or Min Harper? He left a disk on a train. They’ve a whole club at the MoD of Hooray Henries who’ve left classified disks in taxis without having their lunch privileges revoked. But Harper’s never going back to Regent’s Park, is he? And neither am I.’

‘I don’t know these people, River.’

‘No. No.’ He brushed his brow with his hand, and the smell of ointment stung his nostrils. ‘Sorry. Frustrated, that’s all.’

The O.B. refilled his glass. More whisky was the last thing River needed, but he didn’t demur. He was aware that none of this was easy for his grandfather; suspected that what Jackson Lamb had told him months ago was true: that River would have been out on his ear if not for the O.B. Without this connection, River wouldn’t have been a slow horse, he’d have been melted down for glue. And maybe Lamb was right, too, that this dull, grinding scut-work was intended to make him give up and walk away—and would that be such a bad thing? He wasn’t yet thirty. Time enough to pick up the pieces and have a career that might even, who knows, earn some money.

Except even while that thought was forming, it was packing its bags and heading west. If River had inherited anything from the man sitting with him, it was this obstinate sense that you should see the course you’d chosen to its end.

His grandfather now said, ‘Hobden. You’re not running a game on him, are you?’

‘No,’ River said. ‘His name came up, that’s all.’

‘He used to have pull. He was never an asset, nothing like that—too damn fond of blowing his trumpet—but he had the ear of some important people.’

River said something forgettable about the mighty having fallen.

‘There’s a reason that got to be a cliché. When a Robert Hobden pisses on his chips in public, it doesn’t get forgotten.’ The O.B. didn’t often descend to crudity. He meant River to pay attention. ‘The kind of club he belonged to can’t be seen to change its mind about kicking you out. But remember this, River. Hobden wasn’t excommunicated because of his beliefs. It was because there are certain beliefs you’re supposed to keep under wraps if you want to dine at High Table.’