Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(20)

“. . . I’m with you.”

She patted his cheek softly. “Smart boy.”

“. . . Uh, Louisa?”

“What?”

He nodded at the nearest monitor. “Black car.”

Louisa looked at the screen, looked at Roddy, looked back at the screen, and then looked at Roddy again. “Keep up the good work,” she told him, and left the office, followed by Lech.

Home again, Whelan found the landline handset winking at him, but when he checked it was a cold caller, concerned about his financial arrangements. It was nice that someone cared. He pressed delete anyway.

After a protracted vigil in Briefing Two—an antiseptic chamber whose chief feature was the number of available sockets: they studded the walls, and lurked beneath little trapdoors in the floor—he’d been startled by the almost noiseless appearance of, inevitably, Josie-from-the-hub. I tried not to have favourites. It didn’t make for a comfortable working environment. He knew all the horror stories about male bosses and their PAs but it hadn’t been like that; he’d been aware Josie had a soft spot for him, but he’d never acted upon it. He was old enough to be her . . . Not that that mattered. He’d been, still was, married.

“Lord, Josie, my dear, how are you—”

And then that excruciating moment when he’d leaned for a hug, and she’d pulled back to the same degree.

“Of course, no, sorry sorry sorry—”

It would have been better without the apology. That way, they could both have pretended the moment had never happened.

Recovery was achieved in a politely brittle manner: It was good to see him, how had he been, how was retirement? He’d attempted refutation—not retirement, he wasn’t that old, thanks, Josie, not quite yet—but was merely compounding his error. She smiled efficiently and handed him a love token. No she didn’t: she handed him an oddly fun-coloured thing, bright pink. A thumb drive.

“The phone records? A bit raw, I’m afraid, but Diana said you were in a hurry?”

“Oh yes, very much, thanks. I’m sure I’ll make sense of them.”

Whether he would or wouldn’t being beside the point by then. All he wanted was to get out of the building.

He signed for the thumb drive while Josie recited some boilerplate about not copying or transferring the enclosed material, and swore on his neverborn children that it would be returned upon completion of his investigation: a “standard security measure,” though he wondered whether it wasn’t also budget-driven. His visitor’s lanyard, too, she needed back. She walked him up the stairs, and he felt like an inconvenient neighbour, or barely tolerated uncle. One you’d not seat next to your daughter, if you all ended up in the same taxi.

Old, yes, god. Replacing the receiver he said, aloud, “I’m sorry, Claire,” and his wife’s name made itself at home; busied itself in plumping up cushions and straightening the magazines on the coffee table before disappearing into the airy stillness of the house.

He made a pot of tea and a butterless sandwich—he’d forgotten to take a new packet from the fridge. One of a hundred small hurdles to trip over, daily. But the tea was fine. Semi-refreshed, he reached for his laptop and plugged the new drive in to discover that it contained two hundred and seventeen files, a number of them very large. It was impossible not to sigh. Had he really promised Nash he would see this through? Or had he simply agreed to poke around a little, and see if anything stirred?

Nothing was stirring on his laptop, that was for sure. When he opened the largest file, it unrolled a huge column of numbers, dates, times: the length of calls made to separate numbers at the Park, and the numbers from which they had originated. Did he really think studying this was going to provide any solutions? He felt like a patsy in a fairy tale, one who’s just been tasked with matching up a cellarful of odd buttons, and closed the file before the numbers sucked him in. Then poured more tea, and leaned back and closed his eyes.

He thought: Diana thinks, or wants me to think she thinks, that I’m really looking into Waterproof and not de Greer. Which means she either wants me to do that, because she doesn’t want me looking into de Greer, or she doesn’t want me to do that and is only letting me think she thinks that’s what I’m doing in order to make me think she doesn’t care if it is. So she either wants me not to look into Waterproof, or wants me not to look into de Greer.

It was good to have clarity.

He pondered for some moments, and then checked the material Nash had forwarded. The details included Dr. Sophie de Greer’s mobile number; the phone she hadn’t used since she’d disappeared, and from which she’d removed the battery, or otherwise rendered untraceable. This he keyed into a search box he then applied to the fun-coloured memory stick. It took little more than two seconds.

One result.

Whelan hadn’t been expecting this. Taverner’s lack of resistance to his having these records had strongly suggested they would contain nothing of interest; did that mean she had a particular desire that he see the one hit they contained? She must know it was there; she’d never have approved handover of the files without first ascertaining what they’d tell him. Unless—and here was a novel idea—unless she’d been telling the truth, and had no interest in de Greer and no involvement in her disappearance. Whelan could feel his skull tightening. This was what Spook Street did to you. You stepped onto its pavements and the world instantly became unsure of itself; its depths an illusion, its shallows treacherous. All of it set dressing, apart from the bits that weren’t, designed to make you think yourself in circles and never stand straight again.