Slow Horses (4 page)

Steam billowed from the kettle’s lip. The kitchen was poorly ventilated, and plaster frequently flaked from the ceiling. Give it a while, the whole lot would come down. Ho poured water into a teabagged mug. The days were diced and sliced into segments like this; divided into moments spent pouring cups of tea or fetching sandwiches, and further mentally subdivided by rehearsing Slough House’s secrets, all but two …The rest of the time Ho would be at his monitor; ostensibly inputting data from long-closed incidents, but most of the time searching for the second secret, the one that ate away at him, and never slept.

With a spoon he fished the teabag out, and dropped it into the sink; a thought striking him as he did so: I know who’s upstairs. It’s River Cartwright. Has to be.

There wasn’t a single reason he could think of why Cartwright might be here this time of the morning, but still: place your bets. Ho bet Cartwright. That’s who was upstairs right now.

That figured. Ho
really
didn’t like River Cartwright.

He carried his mug back to his desk, where his monitor had swum into life.

Hobden put the
Telegraph
aside, its front-page photo a gurning Peter Judd. He’d made a few notes on the upcoming by-election—the Shadow Culture Minister had handed his cards in, last January’s strokes wrapping up his career—but nothing more. When politicians voluntarily shrugged off the mantle it was worth a closer look, but Robert Hobden was a veteran at parsing a story. He still read copy as if it were Braille; bumps in the language letting him know when D-notices were an issue; when the Regent’s Park mob had left their fingerprints on the facts. This was most likely what it seemed to be: a politician heading back to the sticks after a health scare. And Robert Hobden trusted his instincts. You didn’t stop being a journalist just because you were no longer in print. Especially when you knew you had a story, and were waiting for its fin to show above the waves of the everyday news. It would break surface sooner or later. And when it did, he would recognize it for what it was.

Meanwhile, he’d continue his daily trawl through this sea of print. It wasn’t as if much else troubled his time. Hobden wasn’t as connected as he used to be.

Face it, Hobden was a pariah.

And this, too, was down to Regent’s Park: at one time or another, he’d written for all these newspapers, but the spooks had put paid to that. So now he spent his mornings in Max’s, hunting down his scoop … This was what happened when you were close to a story: you worried everyone else was on it too. That your scoop was under threat. Which went double when spooks were involved. Hobden wasn’t an idiot. His notebook contained nothing that wasn’t public domain; when he typed his notes up, with added speculations, he saved them to his memory stick to keep his hard drive clean. And he kept a dummy, in case anyone tried to get clever. He wasn’t paranoid, but he wasn’t an idiot. Last night, prowling his flat, unsettled by the sense of something left undone, he’d run through unexpected encounters he’d had recently, strangers who had started conversations, but couldn’t come up with any. Then he’d run through other recent encounters, with his ex-wife, with his children, with former colleagues and friends, and couldn’t come up with any of them either. Outside of Max’s, no one wished him good morning … The thing left undone had been putting the rubbish out, but he’d remembered eventually.

‘Excuse me?’

It was the pretty redhead at the next table.

‘I said, excuse me?’

It turned out she was talking to him.

* * *

Fish bits. The last of the
Searchlight
parcels contained fish bits: not the bones and heads that would indicate that the journo fancied himself in the kitchen, but the hardened edges of batter and skin, and lumps of charcoaled chip that suggested his local takeaway wasn’t the best.

River had graded most of the crap, and none of it amounted to a clue. Even the Post-its, carefully uncrumpled, yielded nothing more than shopping lists: eggs, teabags, juice, toothpaste—the original ideas on which this mess was based. And the cardboard backing of the spiral-notepad was just that; no pages survived. He’d brushed a fingertip across the board, in case any scrawling was embedded there, but found nothing.

From the ceiling above came a thump. Lamb’s favourite summons.

They were no longer the only ones here. It was coming on for eight; the door had opened twice, and the stairs creaked their usual greeting. The noises that had ended on the floor below belonged to Roderick Ho. Ho was usually first in, often last out, and how he spent the hours between was a mystery to River. Though the cola cans and pizza boxes surrounding his desk suggested he was building a fort.

The other footsteps had passed River’s floor, so must have belonged to Catherine. He had to delve for her surname: Catherine Standish. Havisham would have suited her better. River didn’t know about wedding gowns, but she might as well have walked round draped in cobweb.

Another thump from the ceiling. If he’d had a broom handy, he’d have thumped back.

The mess had migrated. It had started off contained within the newspaper island he’d laid out; now it had spread, covering much of Sid’s half of the floor. The smell, more democratic, occupied the whole room.

A twist of orange peel, unreadable as a doctor’s signature, lay curled under the desk.

Another thump.

Without removing his rubber gloves, River stood and headed for the door.

He was fifty-six years old. Pretty young redheads didn’t speak to him. But when Robert Hobden sent an enquiring glance her way she was smiling, nodding; signalling all the openness one animal offers another when something is wanted or needed.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m supposed to be working? On this assignment?’

He hated that upward inflection. How did the young let each other know when an answer was required? But she had a light dusting of freckles, and her shirt was unbuttoned enough that he could see they reached as far as her breasts. A locket on a thin silver chain hung there. Her ring finger was bare. He continued to notice such details long after they’d ceased to have relevance.

‘Yes?’

‘Only I couldn’t help noticing the headline? On your paper? One of your papers …’

She reached across to tap his copy of the
Guardian
, offering a better view of those freckles, that locket. It wasn’t a headline she meant, though. It was a teaser above the masthead: an interview with Russell T. Davies in the supplement.

‘My dissertation is on media heroes?’

‘Of course it is.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Be my guest.’

He slid
G2
from its mother-paper, and handed it to her.

She smiled prettily and thanked him, and he noticed her pretty blue-green eyes, and a slight swelling on her pretty lower lip.

But sitting back, she must have misjudged her pretty limbs, because next moment there was cappuccino everywhere, and her language had become unladylike—

‘Oh shit I’m so sorry—’

‘Max!’

‘I must have—’

‘Can we have a cloth over here?’

For Catherine Standish, Slough House was Pincher Martin’s rock: damp, unlovely, achingly familiar, and something to cling to when the waves began to crash. But opening the door was a struggle. This should have been an easy fix, but Slough House being what it was, you couldn’t have a carpenter drop round: you had to fill out a property maintenance form; make a revenue disbursement request; arrange a clearance pass for an approved handyman—outsourcing was ‘fiscally appropriate’, standing instructions explained, but the sums spent on background vetting put the lie to that. And once you’d filled out the forms, you had to dispatch them to Regent’s Park, where they’d be read, initialled, rubber-stamped and ignored. So every morning she had to go through this, pushing against the door, umbrella in one hand, key in the other, shoulder hunched to keep her bag from slipping to the ground. All the while hoping she’d maintain balance when the door deigned to open. Pincher Martin had it easy. No doors on his Atlantic rock. Though it rained there too.

The door gave at last with its usual groan. She paused to shake excess water from her umbrella. Glanced up at the sky. Still grey, still heavy. One last shake, then she tucked the umbrella under her arm. There was a rack in the hall, but that was a good way of never seeing an umbrella again. On the first landing, through a half-open door, she glimpsed Ho at his desk. He didn’t look up, though she knew he’d seen her. She in her turn pretended she hadn’t seen him, or that’s what it must have looked like. Actually, she was pretending he was a piece of furniture, which required less effort.

Next landing up, both office doors were closed, but there was a light under River and Sid’s. A rank smell tainted the air: old fish and rotting vegetation.

In her own office, on the top floor, she hung her raincoat on a hanger, opened her umbrella so it would dry properly, and asked Jackson Lamb’s shut door if it wanted tea. There was no answer. She rinsed the kettle, filled it with fresh water, and left it to boil. Back in her office she booted up, then fixed her lipstick and brushed her hair.

The Catherine in her compact was always ten years older than the one she was expecting. But that was her fault and nobody else’s.

Her hair was still blonde, but only when you got close, and nobody got close. From a distance it was grey, though still full, still wavy; her eyes were the same colour, giving the impression that she was fading to monochrome. She moved quietly, and dressed like an illustration in a pre-war children’s novel; usually a hat; never jeans or trousers—nor even skirts, but always dresses, their sleeves lacy at the cuff. When she held the compact closer to her face, she could trace damage under the skin; see the lines through which her youth had leaked. A process accelerated by unwise choices, though it was striking how often, in retrospect, choices seemed not to have been choices at all, but simply a matter of taking one step after the other. She’d be fifty next year. That was quite a lot of steps, one after the other.

The kettle boiled. She poured a cup of tea. Back at her desk—in a space she shared with no one, thank God; not since Kay White had been banished downstairs on Lamb’s orders—she picked up where she’d left off yesterday, a report on real estate purchases for the past three years in the Leeds/Bradford area, cross-referenced against immigration records for the same period. Names appearing under both headings were checked against Regent’s Park’s watch-list. Catherine had yet to find a name to set alarms ringing, but ran searches on each anyway, then listed the results by country of origin, Pakistan at the top. Depending on how you viewed the results, they were either evidence of random population movement and property investment, or a graph from which a pattern would eventually arise, readable only by those higher up the intelligence-gathering chain than Catherine. Last month, she’d produced a similar report for Greater Manchester. Next would be Birmingham, or Nottingham. Her reports would be couriered over to Regent’s Park, where she hoped the Queens of the Database would pay it more attention than they paid her maintenance requests.

After half an hour she paused, and brushed her hair again.

Five minutes later River Cartwright came upstairs, and entered Lamb’s room without knocking.

The girl was on her feet, using the newspaper as a sort of funnel to direct cappuccino away from her laptop, and for a second Hobden felt a twinge of proprietorial annoyance—that was his paper she was rendering unreadable—but it didn’t last, and anyway, they needed a cloth.

‘Max!’

Hobden hated scenes. Why were people so clumsy?

He stood and headed for the counter, only to be met by Max, cloth in hand, saving his smile for the redhead, who was still ineffectually applying the
Guardian
. ‘It’s no problem, no problem,’ he told her.

Well, it was a bit of a problem actually, Robert Hobden thought. It was a bit of a problem that there was all this fuss going on, and coffee everywhere, when all he wanted was to be left in peace to trawl through the morning’s press.

‘I’m so sorry about this,’ the girl said.

‘It’s quite all right,’ he lied.

Max said, ‘There. All done.’

‘Thank you,’ the girl said.

‘I’ll bring you a refill.’

‘No, I can pay—’

But this too was no problem. The redhead settled back at the table, gesturing apologetically at the coffee-sodden newspaper. ‘Shall I fetch you another—’

‘No.’

‘But I—’

‘No. It’s of no importance.’

Hobden knew he didn’t handle such moments with grace or ease. Maybe he should take lessons from Max, who was back again, bearing fresh cups for both of them.

He grunted a thanks. The redhead trilled sweetness, but that was an act. She was deadly embarrassed; would rather have packed up her laptop and hit the road.

He finished his first cup; put it to one side. Took a sip from the second.

Bent to
The Times
.

River said, ‘You thumped?’

Looking at Lamb, sprawled at his desk, it was hard to imagine him getting work done; hard to imagine him standing up even, or opening a window.

‘Nice Marigolds,’ Lamb replied.

The ceiling sloped with the camber of the roof. A dormer window was cut into this, over which a blind was permanently drawn. And Lamb didn’t like overhead lighting, so it was dim; a lamp on a pile of telephone directories was the main light-source. It looked less like an office than a lair. A heavy clock ticked smugly on a corner of the desk. A corkboard on the wall was smothered with what appeared to be money-off coupons; some so yellow and curling, they couldn’t possibly be valid.

He thought about peeling the rubber gloves off, but that would be a sticky business, involving pinching each finger end then tugging, so decided not. ‘Dirty work,’ he said instead.

Unexpectedly, Lamb blew a raspberry.

The desk hid Lamb’s paunch, though hiding it wasn’t enough. Lamb could be behind a closed door, and his paunch would remain evident. Because it was there in his voice, let alone his face or his eyes. It was there in the way he blew a raspberry. He resembled, someone had once remarked, Timothy Spall gone to seed, which left open the question of what Timothy Spall not gone to seed might look like, but painted an accurate picture nevertheless. Spall aside, that stomach, the unshaved jowls, the hair—a dirty blond slick combed back from a high forehead, which broke into a curl as it touched his collar—made him a ringer, River thought, for Jack Falstaff. A role Timothy Spall should consider.