The silence in the room, now knowledgeable rather than ignorant, wasn’t any more comfortable than it had been.
“So,” said Diana at last. “How worried should we be, do you think?”
No one dared answer.
“Let me put it another way,” she said. “Vassily Rasnokov, First Desk of the Russian secret service, has been in town since yesterday morning, and it’s only just come to our attention. Gosh, do you think he’s been up to anything we should know about?”
Mostly, Catherine Standish viewed her history as scenes from a flickery, black-and-white world, and knew that her current sober colours were the real thing: a little muted, several rinses short of dazzling, but true nonetheless. She moved among washed-out reds and faded blues, the greys and browns of city streets, but this was better than the monochrome existence of the drunk, who is always only one thing or the other. But there were moments, still, when she suspected that she had this the wrong way round, and that her alcoholic years were brighter, more Technicolor, than anything she knew today. Once, her daily palette had included deep dark reds and crystal whites, smokey ambers and velvety golds, each the colour of a curtain waiting to be drawn. Together, they made today’s rainbows watery and thin. Made the noises from bars and public houses, the lights of off-licence windows, a welcome mat.
When she had such thoughts, she was careful not to chase them away too quickly—that would be to underline their attraction—but subject them to a quietly rigorous examination. These were the colours of blood and vomit, of false friendship and foul laughter. Blackouts were called blackouts for a reason. White nights were mental blizzards in which travellers got lost. Catherine might not be in Kansas anymore—or perhaps she was not in Oz—but wherever it was she wasn’t, she was at least home. And when she wasn’t home she was in Slough House, or, as now, moving from one to the other, picking her way past the noises from bars and public houses, between the lights of off-licence windows. There were other premises too, innocent ones, but they never called out to her as she passed.
Though someone did.
“Ms. Standish?”
She turned.
It was a middle-aged man, a little shorter than Catherine, with receding hair and glasses; pleasant looking—mild was the word that came to mind—wearing a fawn-coloured raincoat. There was an odd disconnect: she knew him, she did not know him. Then the name arrived. This was Claude Whelan, one-time First Desk at Regent’s Park. She had once watched him descend a flight of stairs. But they’d never stood face-to-face, had never exchanged words. If he was interrupting her journey home, accosting her on a pavement, it wasn’t because she was an old acquaintance glimpsed in passing.
He confirmed his name. Then said, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“But you did mean to follow me.”
“I’m sorry. No harm was intended. But I need to talk to you, outside your office.”
“Is this a work issue, Mr. Whelan?”
“It’s connected.”
“Because I’ve finished for the day. And unless I missed something, you’ve finished for your career.”
He acknowledged this with a nod. “It’s something I’ve been asked to look into. Unofficial, but . . .”
“But official all the same.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t want to encounter Jackson Lamb while pursuing it.”
He paused, and then said, “Not quite yet, no.”
She wondered if this were where it began, the inevitable unravelling. Not her own, but Lamb’s—sooner or later, it was bound to happen; there’d be a panel of inquiry, or a lynch mob. But it didn’t seem likely that Claude Whelan would be first in line with a pitchfork. It had been said of him, she remembered, that he was too meek to hang onto First Desk long; that the alligators were circling before his feet were on the floor.
“I’m on my way home,” she told him.
“It won’t take long.”
“And it’s turning cold.”
“There’s a place up ahead. Please. It won’t take long, and it is important.”
“And if I’d rather not?”
But he simply smiled, and said again, “Please.”
The place up ahead, which she’d already known about, was a bar. Big glass windows; socially distanced tables. The sign on the door declared a thirty-patron maximum, but that was wishful thinking; the room was all but empty. Whelan held the door, and she walked in. How long since she had been in a bar? If she put her mind to it, she could perform the mathematics. All those years and months, all those days. They stretched a huge distance in one direction; in the other, they might crash into a wall any moment.