Slough House

Spook Street / C03

Chapter 3

Book 4 Part One 6404 words POV: Jackson Lamb, Narrator, Diana Taverner

Summary

Just after two in the morning a phone call wakes Jackson Lamb, and after a second obscenity he dresses and drives out of London to David Cartwright’s house in Kent, where a police car and two unmarked vehicles are already parked. Emma Flyte, the Service’s newly appointed Head Dog, gives him paper boots and leads him up a staircase marked with bloody handprints to a bathroom where a body lies with its face shot away; the dead man was carrying a Service card bearing River Cartwright’s hologram. Lamb matches the hair and the absence of jewellery to River, supplies a mole on the upper lip, and confirms the identification before leaving the room. In the garden Flyte gives him the rest: two shots, both to the face; the panic button pressed at 21:03 and the first responder arriving at 21:49; David Cartwright gone, his button traced to the kitchen table, the gun gone with him. Lamb spends the conversation insulting her and trading Service gossip, then goes back inside. In London a COBRA meeting is fixed for 7:30, and Claude Whelan, the new First Desk, rehearses the Westacres flash-mob bombing for his staff until Diana Taverner takes a call in the corridor from Flyte and returns to brief him on the Cartwright shooting.

Beats

  • C03S01 · Jackson Lamb — A phone vibrating on the floor wakes Lamb in the small hours; he answers with one obscenity, listens for twenty seconds, says it again and disconnects. He lies in the dark wearing boxers, one sock and a tie knotted past the point of removal, then hauls himself out of bed.
  • C03S02 · Jackson Lamb — Lamb breakfasts on two pints of tapwater and four Nurofen, cuts yesterday’s tie off with kitchen scissors and finds a suit in his wardrobe. One shoe is outside his front door with a sock still inside it; he removes the sock, leaves the shoes unlaced, wipes mouse droppings off the driver’s seat and sets off for Kent.
  • C03S03 · Jackson Lamb — It is a little after two and the streets are thin enough for Lamb to drive on autopilot, smoking with the window down and flicking butts into the night. He runs over a rabbit and his expression does not change.
  • C03S04 · Jackson Lamb — Lamb parks on a verge outside David Cartwright’s house, where a police car and two unmarked vehicles stand and a uniformed officer demands something laminated. Emma Flyte, the new Head Dog and an ex-police officer, introduces herself, hands him paper boots and tells him the scene is upstairs; blood is smeared on a framed pencil study of an outstretched hand and on the landing wall.
  • C03S05 · Jackson Lamb — The body lies on the bathroom floor with its face reduced to a pulped absence, some of it washed over the bathtub. Flyte hands Lamb a Service card whose hologram resolves into River Cartwright’s face, and Lamb matches the fair-brown cropped hair and the absence of rings and jewellery to River. Asked for identifying marks, he names a mole on the upper lip and remarks that recovering it will take tweezers and a sieve, then confirms that it is River Cartwright and leaves the room.
  • C03S06 · Jackson Lamb — In the garden Flyte supplies the forensics and the timeline: two shots, both in the face, the panic button pressed at 21:03 and the first responder there at 21:49. David Cartwright has disappeared, his button was traced to the kitchen table, and the gun has gone with him. Lamb spends the rest of the conversation insulting Flyte and trading Service history, calls the old man a bastard, and walks back into the house.
  • C03S07 · Narrator — Dawn comes to a wet London as commuters emerge from the tube stations, and a COBRA meeting is called for 7:30 with pre-meetings from six. The narration lists the recent changes at the top of the Service and the government, then observes that most things remain the same.
  • C03S08 · Narrator — Claude Whelan, the new First Desk, briefs his audience on Westacres: the hijacked tweet, the recruited schoolboys, the pay-as-you-go stranger who called himself Dwight Passenger. He establishes that the attack was planned, that the three sixteen-year-olds thought they were supplying music for a flash mob, and that the bomber appeared two and a half minutes after the dancing began. Diana Taverner’s phone rings and she leaves the room.
  • C03S09 · Diana Taverner — In the corridor Taverner tells Flyte to put the local police onto the search for David Cartwright while letting them believe the incident is connected to Westacres. Back inside she gives Whelan the outline, then criticises his briefing and warns him about GCHQ; Whelan signs three copies of papers he has not read. Taverner immediately redials Flyte to arrange a meeting.

People

  • Jackson Lamb — head of Slough House, woken by the call and drives to Kent to identify the body
  • Emma Flyte — new Head Dog running the crime scene; ex-Met, two months in the job
  • David Cartwright — former senior officer, absent from his house and suspected of the shooting
  • River Cartwright — Slough House joe whose body Lamb identifies
  • Ingrid Tearney — former head of the Service, cited as having abused the Dogs’ offices
  • Claude Whelan — newly appointed First Desk, briefing on Westacres in his first week
  • Diana Taverner — Second Desk Ops, who takes Flyte’s call and coaches Whelan
  • Peter Judd — former Home Secretary and leadership contender, retired into private life
  • Samit Chatterjee — Westacres security guard who suspected something and was killed
  • Sam Chapman — earlier Top Dog said to have lost a quarter of a billion pounds

Places

  • Regent’s Park — Service headquarters, where Whelan briefs and COBRA business is prepared
  • Westacres — the shopping mall where the flash-mob bombing killed the three boys
  • Slough House — Lamb’s office, named as where the Service keeps its rejects

Lines worth keeping

“A former senior spook—I mean, seriously, this guy knows more secrets than the Queen’s had chicken dinners—blows his grandson’s face clean off then disappears into the night, armed.” — Jackson Lamb, summarising the case for Emma Flyte in the garden

“These kids were invited.” — Claude Whelan, opening his Westacres briefing on the use of a flash mob as the lure

“You had me at ‘fuck.’” — Emma Flyte, murmured to Lamb’s back after he goes inside

“Anyone not for me is against me.” — Claude Whelan, setting out the terms of his relationship with Taverner

Threads

  • Plants: The identification rests on hair, the absence of rings and a supposed mole — no face and no fingerprints, leaving room for the blood work to overturn it.; Whelan signs three copies of papers he has not read — ‘Everything in triplicate’ — with the third sheet unaccounted for.; Taverner tells Flyte to present the Cartwright shooting to the police as unrelated to Westacres, deliberately linking the two in the police’s mind.; Lamb calls the old man ’the old bastard’, the name River used for his grandfather.; Grapevine gossip that River wielded the iron bar on the last Top Dog is left unattributed and unproven.; Taverner’s coaching of Whelan, and his ignorance that she and Tearney were enemies, sets up her hold over him.
  • Payoffs: The Westacres bombing, treated as already known (‘we’ve seen it often enough already’), is filled in here with the timeline, the three boys and the 3:04 man.; Ingrid Tearney’s misuse of the Dogs, which left them in the doghouse, is stated as the reason for Flyte’s appointment.
  • Continuity: Lamb is woken a little after two in the morning; COBRA is set for 7:30 with pre-meetings from 6:00.; David Cartwright pressed his panic button at 21:03; the first responder arrived at 21:49, a gap of forty-six minutes; it was his third call in three weeks.; The shooting happened in the bathroom of David Cartwright’s house in Kent; the gun is missing and so is he.; Flyte has been a Dog for two months and spent eleven years in the Met.; Taverner is Second Desk, Ops; Whelan is First Desk and this is his first week; Tearney has retired.; Westacres: the tweet went out at 8:47 a.m. on Monday the first, the event was the next day, the bomber appeared at 3:04 p.m.

Characters

Places

← Chapter 4 Chapter 2 →