Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(93)

“I jumped to a conclusion.”

This, judging by her expression, was a feeble way of kicking off a riot.

I rescued you, he wanted to say. I jumped onto a moving vehicle. Remember that part? I was an action hero.

“Can we stop somewhere?”

“What, you mean . . . a bush or something?”

“Do I look like I want to eat a bush?”

“Oh. Right. No.”

“I meant like a service station.”

“I expect there’ll be one somewhere.”

“Could do with a crap too, to be honest, but mostly I need a burger or something.”

“. . . Yes. Fine.”

“Or chocolate. Minimum.”

There was little traffic about, but a light shone way behind them: a single headlight. Motorbike, he thought.

“Why were you there?” he asked abruptly. “In the San?”

Fields crawled past. In the hedgerows, tiny lifecycles churned their way through insect millennia.

At last Shirley said, “People keep dying.”

He didn’t know how to reply to that.

“I don’t mean in general, though that too. It’s just that, every time I get close to someone . . . they die.”

She was staring out of the window on her side, though he guessed she wasn’t seeing anything.

“So don’t get paired with me. Not a good idea.”

He said, “I’m sure that’s . . .” but he wasn’t, when it came down to it, sure of much, and whatever he was going to say threatened to dissolve in the space between them. He hauled it back. “I’m sure none of it’s your fault.”

“Keeps happening. So it doesn’t really matter whose fault it is.”

This with the air of one who has reached a conclusion, and accepted that no other was viable.

A few moments later, she added, “I suppose, sooner or later, I’ll be the one drawing the short straw.”

Whelan said, “There’s some kind of service station soon. An all-night garage. They might do sandwiches.”

Shirley nodded.

The fields grew wider apart as the road morphed into a dual carriageway. Not long after he’d spoken, they passed a sign promising a garage, toilets, food, not far ahead.

When the taxi dropped Diana off, two hundred yards from the mews, she waited until its taillights had diminished to pixels before heading for the safe house. The note of grim humour in that name tolled loudly tonight—the safe house was tainted by the funds which had provided it, and if its existence were brought to the attention of the Limitations Committee, which would be pondering her career in a few hours, it would go from des res to memento mori in no time flat. But in her defence—and there was never a time when some part of her mind wasn’t working on her defence—in her defence, her job demanded compromise. It was her ability to function despite its constant presence that made her an effective First Desk.

A role she planned to continue filling for the foreseeable future, and Anthony Sparrow be damned.

The cottage was in darkness, but she sensed company even as she turned the key. That was Lamb, flat on the sofa, cigarette in mouth, one hand rummaging between the buttons on his shirt. A hollow space opened inside her, one that grew as she scanned the rest of the room, and the lightless kitchen through its open door. “Where’s de Greer?”

His gaze remained fixed on the ceiling. “What did Nash say? Apart from the obvious?”

“. . . Which is?”

“That he’s the one gave you the heavy-breath warning?”

She was long past showing surprise at Lamb’s crystal-ball readings. “The court-martial’s set for ten, the firing squad for ten past. Except I’ve a trump card which blows Sparrow’s gunboat out of the water, or I did have. Where is she?”

“Nice to hear ‘trump’ in a positive context,” Lamb offered. “I’d forgotten what that sounded like.”

“Stop arsing about. Where is she?”

Somehow, he managed to shrug without levering himself up. The sofa shifted an inch. “Must’ve dropped off. Woke up and the place was empty.” He removed his cigarette long enough to adopt a rueful expression for the ceiling’s benefit. “I blame myself.”

Approaching the sofa, she was entering the heat-fug of his body. The anger her own was generating was a match for it. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m generally a ball of fun, yes. But this time, no. She’s gone.”

“. . . You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?”

“Been waiting for what now?”

“The chance to shaft me.”

Tilting his head, he cast a critical eye. “That ship sailed.” He resumed his study of the ceiling. “And all things considered, your future prospects matter less to me than whether my next dump’s a floater or a stone.”

“Oh, they matter. You’d do anything to fuck a First Desk over, because you think it should have been you. And that’s why you’ve become a stinking useless wreck. It’s not the dead weight of your history behind the curtain or over the wall or under the carpet or whatever metaphor your fucking mythology prefers, it’s wounded pride. Because the Service used you up and shat you out.” None of this seemed to be getting through. But Diana wasn’t finished. “You thought you had it made back when you were Charles Partner’s blue-eyed boy, you thought all you had to do was serve your time and it would be handed to you on a plate. And look at you now. Burnt out doesn’t begin to cover it.”