Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(16)

Her heart sinking—already sunk—she picked a shop doorway in which to huddle, waiting for the telltale glow of headlights, but none came, and no car hauled into view. Five minutes. Ten. She’d approached the pole at last and stood peering into the dark. There were only half a dozen vehicles on the cracked, sloping ground, which looked like a sinkhole waiting to happen, its only redeeming feature the absence of Lamb, and even this a drawback in the circumstances. The sheet-metal hoarding reached around three sides of the rough square; the fourth was a four-storey wall from which the vanished building had been sheared off, the ghostly outline of a stairwell visible on its battered surface. She’d been monitoring the only exit, which Lamb hadn’t used. At the same time, she couldn’t lose the feeling that he remained close by, watching her.

At length she’d turned and walked away, back up Aldersgate Street, past Slough House, down into the tube. She felt wrung out by the time she got home to her cramped room in her noisy house; wrung out but simultaneously seething. An hour later, cross-legged on her bed with her laptop, she’d found and ordered the Dorset Naga, and like a spy had tweaked her name when providing an address.

Her view of the landing broke and mended itself. She held her breath: in the kitchen, the fridge door creaked open, then closed. There was a moment’s silence, an unusual blessing in Slough House, whose floorboards sigh when they’re not in use and groan when they are, and then the figure moved past her doorway again, heading upstairs.

With no sign of glee on her face, in her eyes, Ashley carried on doing nothing, but in her heart there swelled the knowledge that her shark had taken the bait.

“You’re looking tired, Claude. All well at home?”

Fifteen love, thought Whelan. And he’d not sat down yet.

“Fine, thanks, Diana. And you?”

“Oh, you know this job. Turn your back five minutes, there’s another dagger sticking out of it.”

“Don’t remind me.” The memory of Diana’s own dagger still itched between Claude’s shoulder blades. Long-term effects included the fact that he needed a visitor’s badge to be here in the Park.

Where little had changed. The hub was still the hub, that hive of activity where the boys and girls—as they continued to be known—fiddled about on the margins of the right to privacy, and the air was still one degree too cold, and the season-specific lighting flickered now and then, as it always had done. Though elevated to First Desk status, Diana Taverner still occupied the same office: the one with the glass wall that frosted to opacity at the touch of a button, an effect, he’d once daydreamed, that replicated what you’d get if a bullet passed through it. Back then, he’d imagined a bullet might do Diana harm. These days, he doubted a stake in the heart would dismay her.

She invited him to sit; he sat. They discussed coffee, but briefly: she was busy, and he clearly wasn’t worth the time. He made a comment about her recent appearance on Question Time; she took it as a compliment. They got down to business.

“Oliver tells me he’s reactivated you.”

She sounded amused.

“Hardly. I’m simply doing a favour.”

“I would have thought all those committees kept you busy enough.”

The committees—Whelan sat on several, notably the Pandemic Response body, also known as the Stable Doormen—were largely decorative; inquiries whose findings had been determined before their instigation, but whose existence had been deemed necessary to deflect attention from the issues they considered. The row over the lack of disabled BAME women on the panel examining the suicide rate among those denied Universal Credit, for example, had been raging for six months. But none of that was on his agenda right now, so he simply said, “Be that as it may. Oliver asked, I answered.”

“He points, you march. Always the good soldier.”

“I’m not sure duty is to be scoffed at. Or that this is the place to do that.”

She inclined her head ever so slightly. “As you say. I don’t mean to make light of your sense of responsibility. I’m just wondering why it’s brought you to me. As I understand it, you’re investigating a non-occurrence.”

“If nothing’s occurred, it shouldn’t take long to clear up,” said Whelan. “Is your confidence based on knowledge or magical thinking?”

“It’s based on, I don’t actually know where everybody is at any given time. But that doesn’t mean everybody’s missing. It just means they’re somewhere else.”

“Very neat, Diana. Shall we call in one of the philosophy graduates you have out there?” He gestured through the glass wall. “See how long it takes them to demolish your position?”

She sighed. “All right, all right. Sophie de Greer. You mentioned magical thinking, that seems to be her speciality. Lady Macbeth to Number Ten’s would-be king hereafter. I get it that Sparrow doesn’t want her wandering free as a cloud, but she’s only been out of sight a few days. I really don’t see what the fuss is about.”

“But you’ve given it some thought.”

She dismissed that notion without so much as a gesture. “Obviously, after your call, I had someone do background. You’ll remember Josie? I think she was one of your favourites.”

“I tried not to have favourites. It didn’t make for a comfortable working environment.” He shifted in his seat. “As for fuss, well. De Greer’s involved in discussions, in policy talks, with very senior—”