Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(10)

“But why me? I mean . . . You’re in daily contact with Diana, surely. Can’t you just ask her about it?”

“Well, I could and I can’t. You know how political things get. And I rather have to stay on Diana’s good side, if you know what I mean. Like I say, it wasn’t my idea. It was Sparrow’s.”

“Well, what does he think I can do about it? I’m not a police officer.”

“No, quite. Though I’m not sure that would carry weight at the Park, the way things are. Diana does rather seem to have pulled the drawbridge up.”

“What makes you think she’ll lower it for me? I’ve no authority there. You know that.”

Arguably less than none. Because while there were many things about Diana that Whelan had failed to recognise while she was nominally his subordinate, this much had become clear since: that she practised a scorched-earth policy towards anyone not entirely committed to her advancement. In this, he realised, she was in keeping with the political zeitgeist, and he was self-aware enough to know that, had he recognised this at the time, it wouldn’t have significantly altered the outcome. Even Nash, technically one of Regent’s Park string-pullers, knew to tread carefully around Diana. String-pullers carry weight, but Diana carried scissors.

“Besides,” he went on, “an official inquiry is a shallow grave. Anyone approaching it with a shovel is likely to find bones. That’s how Diana will see it. That I’m trying to resurrect an old scandal, and hang it round her neck.”

“Diana’s not going to worry about bones that were buried by one or other of her predecessors.” Nash’s face was a bland mask. “More coffee?”

“‘One or other’?”

“A turn of phrase.” He wiped crumbs from his tie. “There’s no need to look at me like that. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

“That if you need something done ask a scapegoat?”

“You’re being melodramatic. If Diana needs to paint a target anywhere—which she won’t—it’s not your back she’ll be looking at. It’s Ingrid Tearney’s.” He lowered his voice. “There was a whisper at the time that Tearney, ah, waterproofed someone entirely for her own benefit while First Desk.” He shook his head saying this: the evil that women do. “And then there’s her predecessor, Charles Partner, who’s been safely dead these many years. With that pair to choose from, Diana won’t feel unduly paranoid if questions are asked about an ancient protocol that officially never existed in the first place.” He paused. “Unless, of course, she is responsible for Dr. de Greer’s disappearance. But that doesn’t strike me as especially likely.”

Even Whelan could hear the weariness in his tone when he said, “The whole reason I was appointed First Desk was that I wasn’t tainted by anything Ingrid Tearney got up to. A clean pair of hands. Remember?”

“Of course. Anyway, we’re losing sight of the wood for the trees. All Sparrow’s interested in is the whereabouts of Dr. de Greer, and all you have to do is confirm that wherever she is, the Service didn’t put her there.” He still wasn’t happy with his tie. It was possible, thought Whelan, he was trying to brush away some of its pattern. “A few questions, a few answers, and it’s done with.”

“It doesn’t seem as if that’ll get Sparrow any closer to finding out what’s happened to his associate.”

“But it’ll close down a line of enquiry. Besides . . . Between us, I’m not entirely sure that’s what he’s really after. No, chances are, he’s using the situation to let the Park know who’s top dog. It’s no secret he’d prefer the set-up there was less . . . independent.” Nash had taken his phone out while saying this, and was playing with its buttons like a jazz pianist looking for a tune. Whelan’s own phone pinged: incoming. “There. Now you know what I know.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket. “A few questions, Claude. A plausible denial from the Park. Just so I can let Mr. Sparrow know there’s nothing to his suspicions.”

“In my day, which wasn’t that long ago, it was the prime minister called the tune. Not his poodle.”

“The poodles are running the bloody show, that’s the problem. I expect to see the PM in a collar and leash any day now.”

For a moment Nash looked old and tired, which rather shook Whelan. He’d always thought of Nash as one of Westminster’s groupies, living for the gossip and the lunches, and generally unbothered by the moral dimension. It was possible he’d been wrong about that.

The waitress came and collected their crockery. Whelan found his gaze drifting in her direction, admiring the way her uniform adhered to her shape, and slapped his own mental wrist.

“I don’t know, Oliver,” he said, which was a lie. He did know. This shouldn’t be touched with a hazmat suit on. It had politics scribbled all over it, and there was no way you could wander into that kind of firefight without getting bits of you shot off: your reputation, your career, your pension. It was politics that had proved his undoing at the Park. Well, and also the connection between a working-paper he’d written years ago, a massacre in Derbyshire and a bloodbath involving penguins, but that could have happened to anyone; it was politics had sharpened the knife. So yes, he knew: shake an apologetic head and walk away.