It was possible he was being used. Sparrow’s ambition to open his umbrella over every aspect of the state machinery was well known, and de Greer’s disappearance could be a ruse to allow him access to the Park. Letting Whelan run the investigation was a slap in the face to Taverner—having her predecessor investigate her actions presupposed a guilty finding. If that were all true, where did Whelan’s loyalties lie? Not with either side. Not with any bad actor, whether in the Service he’d led or the government he’d served. So why not with himself, this once? It still rankled, his fall from grace, and why shouldn’t he take some measure of revenge? It wasn’t really him, he knew that. He was nobody’s idea of an avenging knight. But wasn’t it time for a change, and Christ, he was havering like bloody Hamlet. Enough. He had said he would do it. So enough.
Whelan read through the file once more, but learned nothing new. That done, he rang the Park and informed Diana Taverner that he was on his way to see her.
With her office door ajar, an inch-wide view of the landing was available to Ashley. If anyone entered the kitchen, she’d know. No matter how quiet they were, they’d darken her door.
A slim thing to concentrate on, but she had nothing else to do. Literally: nothing. It was like being an extra in a crowd scene—she was dressed the part, she took up space, she had no lines to deliver.
A week ago, she’d followed Lamb home, or that had been her plan—she’d wanted to see where he lived, how he lived. A mental picture was easy: a pigsty with a car on bricks out front. The possibility that he shared this dwelling she briefly entertained, but when she tried to bring a cohabitee into focus, the image seared and melted. Who would share their life with Lamb? Apart from the slow horses, obviously. Slow horses don’t count. She’d learned that much.
But in the end, her plan fell apart. For two hours she’d waited on the Barbican terrace, roosting on a flowerbed’s brick border. Her healed arm ached, a dull reminder of why she sought revenge, as—hood up, mask on—she stared across a meagre flow of traffic at Slough House. By this time in her career, her training completed, her hand-in assessed—and she’d done a good job on that—she should have been assigned to a Park department. She’d been hoping for Ops. Instead she’d had six months of administrative nightmare, fighting her reassignment to Slough House, which happened anyway. So here she was, and the evening had grown smeary and grey long before Lamb appeared, an unkempt figure spilling out of the alleyway. He paused to light a cigarette then stepped off down Aldersgate Street, weaving slightly as if drunk. Unpeeling herself from her perch, she flitted over the footbridge to follow him, maintaining that safe distance drummed into her at the Park: far enough away that you can fade; near enough that there’s no gap he can slip through. Hood up, mask on. Everything was disguise.
The Old Street junction was busy, queues of traffic bidding for dominance, and the cold made Ashley’s eyes water, adding lens-flare to the reds and greens and ambers, the yellows and whites. Lamb was a blurry solid amidst this flashing circus, crossing the road with no apparent regard for moving vehicles. A bus blocked her view but he was still there once it had passed, on the opposite pavement, hobbling north. There was a pub on that corner whose curved windows suggested a bygone era; behind it lay a patch of wasteground enclosed by hoardings. There’d been shops or houses there, but it was now a barely curated absence, a temporary space where you could park all day for twenty pounds. She was crossing the road when Lamb slipped past the horizontal pole guarding its single point of entrance. Did Lamb have a car? One not propped up on bricks? It seemed too normal. But if he did, and this was where he parked it, that was it. He’d soon be gone.
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.