Chapter 2

Summary

Catherine Standish comes home to her flat, puts coffee in a cupboard and salad in the fridge, and catches herself in the bathroom mirror; she recalls finding her boss Charles Partner dead in his bath, shot with a gun, and the Dogs’ questioning about the key she had to his house. She counts ten years sober and wonders whether Slough House is a deferred sentence for not seeing his suicide coming. Min Harper phones his sons, nine and eleven, gets monosyllables, then rows with his ex-wife about visiting once a week; alone, he replays leaving a classified disk on a tube train and hearing his career dismantled on Radio 4. Louisa Guy microwaves a lasagne in her rented studio and remembers her first field op, when she lost a gun-drop target in a clothes shop and the hijacked handguns reached the streets. Jed Moody meets Nick Duffy in a pub and asks for a route to Diana Taverner; Duffy tells him he was kept on only as a scapegoat and that Slough House is nowhere. Roderick Ho trawls Home Office files for pleasure and remembers engineering a date by surveilling a woman from her building pass. Jackson Lamb, walking home, rolls his Standard into a baton and takes down a teenager lurking outside his house. In Leeds a nineteen-year-old comedian is jumped in a back lane by masked men and wakes bound and hooded in a cellar.

Beats

• C02S01 · Catherine Standish — Catherine moves from private grief to a settled suspicion that Slough House is punishment for Charles Partner’s death; she confirms ten years’ sobriety, turns off the bathroom light and goes to make supper.
• C02S02 · Min Harper — The call with his sons and ex-wife leaves Min rehearsing a version of the tube-train disaster in which he goes back for the disk; he turns off his phone because there is nobody else to call.
• C02S03 · Louisa Guy — Louisa’s memory supplies the reason she is at Slough House: she lost the gun-drop target, the handguns surfaced in shootings, and her career went with them. She goes to bed wondering what Min is doing.
• C02S04 · Jed Moody — Moody asks Duffy for access to Taverner and learns he was kept on as the scapegoat, not reinstated; his only consolation is that Duffy, who knows everything, believes Sid Baker is a man.
• C02S05 · Roderick Ho — Ho spends the night inside Home Office files and recalls standing up a woman he had already surveilled; he admits two Slough House sins still defeat him, one of them Sid Baker’s.
• C02S06 · Jackson Lamb — Lamb rolls his Standard into a baton and knocks down a teenager loitering by his house, then waits until the boy is gone so he cannot learn which door Lamb goes in.
• C02S07 · Unnamed hostage — A nineteen-year-old comedian, unnamed, is jumped by three stocking-masked men in a Leeds back lane, drugged and driven off in a van; he wakes with a foul taste and no idea where he is.
• C02S08 · Unnamed hostage — Hooded, half-naked and locked in a cellar, the hostage works his sack off, learns the room holds only a bucket and a chair, and shouts defiance at captors he has decided are pranksters.

People

• Catherine Standish — Slough House administrator; ten years sober; found Charles Partner’s body
• Charles Partner — Catherine’s dead boss; shot himself in the bath; the reason she is here
• Min Harper — Left a classified disk on a tube train; divorced, sees his sons weekly
• Louisa Guy — Screen-watcher; lost a gun-drop target on her first field op
• Jed Moody — Ex-Dog who wants back in; rebuffed by Duffy
• Nick Duffy — Dog; tells Moody Slough House is nowhere
• Diana Taverner — The ‘atrocious’ figure at Regent’s Park Moody wants access to
• Sam Chapman — ‘Bad Sam’, the Dog who interrogated Catherine after Partner’s death
• Roderick Ho — Hacks Home Office files for fun; engineered a date by surveillance
• Jackson Lamb — Knocks down a teenager outside his house; sent Sid Baker out
• Sid Baker — On a job Duffy calls an errand; Duffy thinks she is a man
• Hassan Ahmed — Unnamed Leeds stand-up kidnapped and held in a cellar

Places

• Slough House — The exile office; Duffy calls it ’not in’
• Regent’s Park — Service headquarters; ’the centre of the world’
• The cellar — Where the hostage is held: bucket, chair, one bulb

Lines worth keeping

“My name is Catherine and I am an alcoholic.” — Catherine Standish, Said to the mirror; she has not drunk in ten years, and still counts it

“Slough House is not in, Jed. Regent’s Park, that’s the centre of the world.” — Nick Duffy, States the hierarchy the whole book turns on: exile is not a posting

“You go be nowhere, somewhere else.” — Jackson Lamb, Lamb moves a witness on rather than let him learn which house is his

Threads

• Plants: Lamb has sent Sid Baker out on a real job; Duffy insists it is only an errand; Moody believes Lamb is running something involving a journalist and wants a part in it; Ho can account for every Slough House sin but two, and one of them is Sid Baker’s; Catherine suspects her posting may be punishment for Charles Partner’s suicide; A nineteen-year-old is kidnapped in Leeds and held in a cellar
• Payoffs: Louisa’s failure is explained: she lost the gun-drop target, the handguns were retooled and used, and her career went with them; Min’s disk on a tube train is confirmed as the single moment that cost him his marriage and career; Duffy closes Moody’s hope of return: he was kept on as the scapegoat, not reinstated
• Continuity: Catherine is forty-eight and has not had a drink in ten years; Charles Partner shot himself in his bath; Catherine found him and had a key to his house; Min’s sons are nine and eleven; he sees them once a week; Min left the disk on a Piccadilly Line train at Gloucester Road and learned of it from Radio 4 the next morning; The hijacked handguns were decommissioned weapons awaiting retooling; Lamb carries the Evening Standard and uses it as a baton; The hostage is nineteen, from Leeds, a stand-up; stripped to his boxers, hooded, hands tied in front, held with a bucket and a dining chair; Ho’s house has an upstairs conservatory converted to hold electronics; Lamb’s earlier operation and Moody’s exclusion are both dated to ’last year'

Characters

• Catherine Standish
• Charles Partner
• Min Harper
• Louisa Guy
• Jed Moody
• Nick Duffy
• Diana Taverner
• Sam Chapman
• Roderick Ho
• Jackson Lamb
• Sid Baker
• Hassan Ahmed

Places

• Slough House
• Regent's Park
• The cellar