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‘He says there’s a new agent starting here today,’ Standish stood in the middle of the room, clutching a pile of folders.
‘Oh good-o,’ Min said. ‘Misery loves company.’
‘He says you have never ever seen her before, and anyone who thinks they have is welcome to seek other employment without needing to serve a notice period.’
Louisa frowned. ‘Did he really say that?’
A familiar voice, half-growl, half-yelp, all misanthropic exasperation, came from the doorway. ‘I said, anyone clueless enough not to pretend they haven’t could fuck off right out of my building and keep fucking off until they ran out of off to fuck off from. And then fuck off some more.’
Standish looked annoyed. ‘I can deliver a message,’ she said to him.
‘You really fucking can’t. You took out all the fucking swear words. Anyway, the useless fuckwit who’s starting here today is not Sid Baker. Have I made it really fucking clear?‘
‘Sid Baker?’ Min said.
‘I’m going to pretend that was a fucking echo,’ Lamb said, before hauling himself back upstairs.
‘But Sid Baker is…’ Whatever Min was going to say next, it didn’t get past Louisa’s hand.
‘Yes, she is.’
* * *
River was late, of course. This time, it really wasn’t his fault. He’d spent all of the previous evening pretending to get drunk in a shitty flat-roofed pub in a Birmingham suburb, watching a bunch of middle-aged men get rat-arsed on Carling. By the time he was absolutely certain that these Sons of Albion were just an unfortunately-named supporters’ club for the local football team, he’d had to sprint to catch the last train from Birmingham New Street, only to discover that rail replacement buses were operating between Milton Keynes and Watford. And, as he wasn’t desperate enough to spend a night in either of those places, he’d not arrived home until 4am.
He thought that, given he was (just about) functioning on two hours’ sleep, he could be forgiven for dropping his rucksack on his toe, and standing motionless in the middle of the office with his mouth opening and closing around empty air like a goldfish that had forgotten its lines.
‘Jo,’ Sid said, offering him her hand. ‘Jo Davison’.
‘You’re … ‘ River stuttered, eventually, once a familiar but distant voice stopped screaming ‘SID!’ from somewhere in his left hind brain.
‘A new starter, yes. And almost fully recovered from a series of serious medical procedures.’
‘I see … ‘
‘Do you?’
River shook his head. ‘Yes. Uh … I think so. … Almost recovered?’
‘Missing a few memories. They’ll come back.’ For just a second, River thought she looked lost, her gaze distant. Then she shook her head and focused back on him. ‘That’s why I’m here. A temporary posting, routine, monotonous work, just until I recuperate properly.’
‘Routine monotonous work? You’ve definitely come to the right place.’
* * *
‘Standish, send up the three shite monkeys.’ Lamb yelled from the swamp of his office.
Catherine Standish popped her head around the door frame, but declined to step inside. Both of them were happier this way. She didn’t get filth on her, he didn’t have someone too close. Standish sometimes thought he defined ‘too close’ as ‘on the same planet’.
‘Who?’ she asked.
‘See nothing useful, hear nothing useful, and say nothing useful - Cartwright, Guy and whatever Sid Baker is calling herself.’
‘Jo Davison’.
‘Jo? Can’t wait to see what’s next on the list of “top 10 tradesmen’s names of the 1950s”. Fuck it: get them up here. Well, into your office. I don’t want them in here.’
* * *
Lamb stared at the three agents in turn. River tried, largely unsuccessfully, to stop feeling like he hadn’t done his geography prep and was about to get a detention.
‘You three - Finished,’ he glared at River, ‘Foolish’ - Sid, ‘Failed’ - Louisa, ‘are going to go to the Royal London Hospital.’
Sid frowned. ‘I’ve only just got out of there,’ she protested.
‘I know,’ Lamb said, ‘you might know your way around it, if it hasn’t slipped into one of the black holes in your fucking memory. I’m sending the three of you in the hope that you’ll take it in turns to fuck up, rather than inventing some form of synchronised incompetence. You’re going to break into the office of Artyom Mikhailov - he’s a doctor in the orthopaedic facility.’
‘Why?’ River asked.
‘Because I’m your fucking boss and I’m telling you to,’ Lamb snapped. ‘You’re after the medical file on Dmitri Kovalchuk, he’s one of Mikhailov’s patients, discharged yesterday. Steal it, bring it back.’
‘Russians?’ Louisa asked.
‘Belarusians,’ Sid said, ‘at a guess.’
‘Gold fucking star,’ Lamb told her. ‘Report to the playground for your scheduled bullying. Avoid absolutely everyone. There might be Dogs around, also Russians. Be especially careful of the French.’
‘Why are the French involved?’
‘No reason to think they are, I just really fucking hate them.’
* * *
‘All right?’ River asked Sid, as he packed his rucksack. She was frowning, and looking off into the distance.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Except… I feel I should know the name Kovalchuk. There’s something familiar about it.’
‘Footballer?’
‘No, I just … gone. Completely gone.’
‘Any other symptoms?,’ River asled.
`From being shot in the head? Yes, several.` Sid shook her head and sighed. ‘Let’s get Louisa and go.’
* * *
Louisa, Sid, and River walked down the hospital corridor, trying to look like they knew where they were going, but weren’t in too much of a hurry. Given that they had, in fact, got lost, and they were in a hurry, this was proving something of a challenge. ‘I think I see a sign,’ River said.
‘In a hospital? Impossible,’ Louisa was looking at a board emblazoned with fourteen different directional signs.
‘For Orthopaedics.’
‘Oh, yeah, more useful.’
Half a floor and about four left-turns later, Sid suddenly stopped.
‘Come on!’ River said.
‘No. I remember. This … there … that was my room.’
* * *
Sid was aware she was drifting in and out of consciousness. She felt like she was standing by her bedside, observing herself. Was this what people meant by an ‘out-of-body’ experience? It seemed more clinical. Detached. She felt herself wake more, and reach to pick up her phone from the bedside table.
The door opened. Sid closed her eyes, and slid her phone under the covers.
‘What a silly thing to do,’ the visitor said. The voice was familiar - Diana Taverner, second seat at The Park. ‘Getting yourself shot. Now who is going to keep tabs on Cartwright for me?’ Sid didn’t move, concentrating on keeping her breathing long and shallow. ‘Well, they say you’re going to…’ Whatever Sid was going to do - and she was faintly interested in whether the next word was ‘live’ or ‘die’, because nobody had bothered to tell her - Taverner didn’t tell her, because at that moment, Taverner’s phone rang.
‘Yes?’ Taverner said into the phone, turning to face away from Sid’s bed. ‘You’ve shot a Russian attaché?’ Sid turned her phone beneath the covers, trying to make no noise at all. She attempted to turn the voice recorder on, trusting to her memory of where to press, and her luck, to make it work.
‘Oh, Kovalchuk. The _Belarusian_ attache. That makes all the difference.’
Pause.
‘No, I was being sarcastic. He’s dead?’ Pause. ‘You couldn’t even manage to fuck up competently. Right, get him transferred to Mikhailov at the Royal London. He’s ours. And let’s hope that Tearney never finds out that you’ve been taking potshots at foreign diplomats.’ Pause. ‘Yes, of course he’s a spy. That doesn’t mean … Oh, shut up and get him transferred. Oh, and get a lamplighter down here to sweep for bugs. … Yes, as it happens I _am_ currently at the Royal London. But I’m leaving now.’
Taverner hung up the call, then addressed Sid. ‘Live or die, it doesn’t matter to me, but just make up your fucking mind.’
* * *
‘I made a recording on my phone,’ Sid said to River and Louise. ‘Of Taverner arranging for
Kovalchuk to be transferred here, because someone who reports to Taverner shot him.’
‘Lamb’s going to want that,’ River said. ‘Why didn’t you say you had it?’
‘Because I only just remembered, and I don’t actually have it. I hid the phone in a supply cupboard as soon as I could manage to stagger down the corrider.’
‘Why?’
‘Taverner had called for a lamplighter to search for recording devices, and I didn’t think I should be found clutching one.’
Louisa shook her head. ‘We’re here for the file.’
‘It only takes one of us to get the file,’ River said, ‘You go and get it, Si… Jo and I will go and get her phone.’
* * *
‘I’m pretty sure it’s this one,’ Sid said, as they walked into the large supply cupboard.
‘You were pretty sure it was the last two, too, and we barely got out of the last one without being spotted.’ River was getting antsy.
‘Supply cupboards aren’t all that distinctive,’ Sid said, ‘and I was doped up to the hairline with morphine at the time.’ She reached behind a large box of incontinence pads. ‘Here!’
Behind them, the door slammed shut.
‘I didn’t see an automatic closer on that door,’ River said.
Sid ran to the door and jiggled the handle. ‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘We’re stuck here.’
* * *
‘Hey, Standish,’ Roddy Ho called. ‘Got something for you.’
‘What?’ Standish said, walking into the computer room.
‘You know that Russian you set me on tracking after he left hospital?’
‘ Belarusian , yes.’
‘Well, I was having trouble with it. Wasn’t much to go on, really. And then I had a idea, and I thought, yo, Rodster, what if everyone else is an idiot?’
Standish was silent.
Roddy grunted in irritation. ‘You’re supposed to say, ‘Why am I an idiot?’’, he said.
‘I was assuming you meant someone else,’ Standish said.
‘No. You’re an idiot because you set me to find someone who’d left hospital who had, in fact, not left hospital at all. He’s still there. He was scheduled to be discharged, but then they found some kind of infection.’
‘Fuck,’ Lamb said, from the corridor. ‘That hospital is going to be lousy with Russian and Belarusian agents. And I just sent the stupidest bunch of joes straight there.’ He paused. ‘Well, three of the four stupidest joes. Where’s Harper?’
‘He went out for coffee.’
‘Fuck me, I’ll go myself.’
* * *
‘Sid…’ River said.
‘Jo…’ Sid corrected. They were sitting on the floor, leaning up against a shelf containing boxes labelled ‘Inflatable Donut Cushion - for Pressure Relief’.
‘Jo,’ River said, exasperated. ‘Why did you come back to Slough House? Like, you weren’t really supposed to be there,’ River said. ‘You told me Taverner assigned you to keep tabs on me.’
‘Yeah,’ Sid said. ‘That was before …’
‘Before … ‘
‘Before I let myself get shot in the head by one of our own agents.’
‘You mean, before I got you shot in the head by Moody.’
‘I’m not blaming you.’ Sid glanced out of the window.
‘You mean you are blaming me, but you’re not willing to admit you’re blaming me, because if you were blaming me then you’d have to be angry with me.’
‘I’m not angry with you,’ Sid said.
‘I understand.’
‘Well, now I am angry with you. Stop being so …’ She waved a hand.
‘Nice?’
‘Nice is fine. Self-sacrificing is stupid.’
‘When I thought you were dead,’ River said, ‘I … well, I wasn’t entirely sure I could go on.’
Sid looked at him with incredulity.
‘Being an agent, I mean,’ he said, hastily. ‘I like you, but not enough … I just hate the idea that I could get someone killed.’
‘Get used to it,’ Sid said. ‘Because it will happen.’ She paused. ‘I like you too, Cartwright. You’re basically competent, even if you have terrible judgement and worse luck. You’d be a better agent if you stopped trying to be a great one.’
River laughed. ‘That’s what my Granddad says,’ he said.
The door swung open. They hastily scrambled to their feet. River looked around for a weapon, and grabbed an inflatable donut cushion.
‘I’m not about to fucking drown,’ Lamb said. ‘There’s no need to throw me a life belt. They got any good drugs in here?’
Sid waved at the shelves. ‘Only if you can smoke gauze.’
‘Well, come on then, Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber, let’s go and rescue Guy.’ He paused. ‘Actually, give me one of those donut things. My haemorrhoids are so large they’re trying to get registered as an archipelago.’
‘How do you know Guy needs rescuing?’ River asked.
‘Because you’re all fucking stupid and you need rescuing all the time, and because she’s not answering her phone.’
They found Louisa hazily conscious, sitting on an office floor propped up against a filing cabinet.
‘What happened to you?’ Lamb asked.
‘Someone hit me,’ Louisa said.
‘Obviously. File?’
‘Gone.’
‘Fuck. I was hoping I could link Kovalchuk to the Dogs. It looked like one of their screw-ups.’
Sid looked up. ‘Well, you could try my recording?’ she offered.
* * *
Two days later, Standish called an ‘everyone who can’t find an excuse to be somewhere else’ meeting she was terming ‘All hands’.
‘Apparently, you’re to demonstrate your selective memory by forgetting everything that happened two days ago.’
‘I’m supposed to forgive being locked in a cupboard?’ River asked.
‘I believe that’s the idea. Or, and I quote verbatim: “You can go back there and I’ll fucking lock it myself.”’
‘I saw Taverner leaving here the other day,’ Min said. ‘She looked like she’d bitten a particularly sour lemon.’ He pulled a face, just in case anyone hadn’t grasped the simile.
‘Most people look like that after talking to Lamb,’ Sid said.
Min shrugged. ‘Just saying what I saw. Don’t shoot the messenger.’
There was an awkward silence. Sid stared at him.
‘Moving on,’ Standish said finally. ‘Coffee rota. A reminder that Mellow Birds is not an acceptable brand to anyone with tastebuds…’