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.”
“Done yet?”
“Yes. No. You’re a fucking arsehole. Now I’m done.”
Lamb removed his cigarette and studied the glowing tip while it faded to grey. “Last time I saw Charles Partner, he was using the contents of his head as bubble bath. Being his blue-eyed-boy didn’t look so clever then, I can tell you. As for you, I’ve pulled your dick out of more slamming drawers than I can count. Any time you want me to stand back and watch, just say the word.”
“Where is she?”
“Like I said. Gone.”
“I need her, Jackson. I need her singing before that Committee. What if she goes back to Sparrow? Because right now, he’s got to be thinking about making her a better offer, and if that happens—and she takes it—what then? She’ll deny being a plant, I’m a lame duck, and the PM’s string-puller’s still in place, with a hard-on for the Service.” She was staring down at Lamb’s upturned face. “And once it looks like I’m on the skids, Judd’ll drop his China bomb, and that’s when they’ll send the carpet cleaners into Regent’s Park. Every decision made for a decade, every operation I’ve ever had a hand in, it’ll all be under a spotlight. And tell me this, how long do you think Slough House will last then? How long before questions are asked about your own career?”
Lamb was quiet for a moment. Then he squinted at his dying cigarette, and flicked it towards the nearest takeaway carton.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “If that happens, we might have a problem.”
It wasn’t much of a service station—a garage with a four-pump forecourt, and a car wash shrouded in darkness—but it had a shop which, alongside its array of pasties and sandwiches, had a mini rotisserie, and even more importantly was open. Shirley wouldn’t have been averse to a spot of ramraiding had it been otherwise, but Whelan might have objected. He’d been through enough trauma this evening, and even her aversion to vehicles travelling any less than slightly more than the prevailing speed limit had to be modified in face of this. Another triumph for her self-imposed programme of dignified silence; she’d barely mentioned their lamentable speed more than two or three times before they pulled up by the pumps.