Slough House

London Rules / C10

Chapter 10

Book 5 Part Two 9035 words POV: Kim Park, River Cartwright, Claude Whelan

Summary

River Cartwright, Louisa Guy, Shirley Dander and J.K. Coe drive to Roderick Ho’s house in the same two cars and the same pairings as the night before. Shirley opens the door with keys that were Marcus’s, and inside they find the Dogs have already stripped Ho’s equipment. They split up to search, most of them expecting to find Kim dead. Kim is in the house, hiding in a wardrobe with a straightened wire coat hanger. River takes the sitting room, Shirley the kitchen, Louisa Ho’s bedroom. Louisa pulls open a drawer and Kim bursts out, jabbing with the hanger; Louisa falls over a broken mug. Kim butts River down the stairs, slashes Shirley and Coe, and reaches the street, where a car door swung open in front of her knocks her down. Dodie Gimball, travelling home under police escort, is joined in her car by Diana Taverner, who tells her to publish her story on Zafar Jaffrey and leave the Service out of it. Claude Whelan reads Ho’s interrogation transcript and learns that the stolen document was the Watering Hole Paper, and that Kim is of North Korean descent. Molly Doran begins searching old files for Lamb. Kim is brought to Slough House, where Lamb questions her and hands her over to Emma Flyte.

Beats

  • C10S01 · River Cartwright — River Cartwright returned to Roderick Ho’s house in the same two cars and the same pairings as before, and watched Shirley Dander open the front door with keys that had been Marcus’s. Inside, drawers hung open and Ho’s equipment was gone: the Dogs had already been through. Louisa Guy split the search, sending Shirley over the ground floor, Coe to the front door and River upstairs to the sitting room with its cardboarded window.
  • C10S02 · Kim Park — Kim Park made herself smaller than herself inside the wardrobe, a coat on a hanger, and held still while a floorboard creaked and something opened and closed nearby. She counted the seconds left to her as they leaked away under the door, and decided that hiding in Ho’s house had been an unwise choice; the streets would have been safer. She wrapped her fist around a straightened wire coat hanger and waited.
  • C10S03 · Shirley Dander — Shirley Dander worked through Roderick Ho’s kitchen, past towers of pizza boxes, bottles of energy drinks and a cupboard full of tins of beans, and found no sign of Kim in any of the people-sized hiding places. Marcus’s keyring sat heavy in her pocket: the first time she had used the universal keys she took from his desk drawer. Lamb, she reflected, had beaten her to Marcus’s gun, and probably had keys of his own.
  • C10S04 · Kim Park — Kim Park replayed the moment Shin came through her door holding a gun, and the calculation that had saved her: there were two kinds of men, and she had always played both ends where she could. Shin’s crew had known who she was and what she did, and their information came from somewhere higher; photographs of cousins and infants in North Korea had done the rest. She had made Ho steal the file, then reached for Shin and thanked God it was him.
  • C10S05 · J.K. Coe — J.K. Coe stood watch outside Ho’s house with a blade in his pouch while a car crawled past and its driver studied him. He thought about how quickly he had moved after the paint can struck Gimball, about London Rules and the order in which the Service pitched its people over the wall, and about his own Psych Eval files: how a killing left him buoyed and in control. Then something clattered inside the house and someone shrieked.
  • C10S06 · Kim Park — Kim Park remembered walking past the black van, letting herself in with the key Roddy had given her and lying on his bed to plan. She had worked on Shin from the start — you’re in charge, you’re not like them — and he had watched her drop through the bedroom window and let her go. Crouched in the wardrobe with the hanger’s hook straightened to a point, she doubted the same trick would work twice, and did not think it was Shin outside.
  • C10S07 · River Cartwright — River Cartwright peeled the cardboard from the broken window and let the cold air in, thinking about the house his mother would never have bought him and about his grandfather’s mind rotting away, which at least spared the old man today’s fuck-up. He considered his career, the Dogs who would soon clear his own flat, and who he could bear to telephone, and found nobody. He was on one knee under the sofa when a crash and Louisa’s shout came from across the landing.
  • C10S08 · Louisa Guy — Louisa Guy searched Roderick Ho’s bedroom through an acrid smell, past anime posters, dirty mugs and used tissues, and found no sign of Kim under the bed. Going through the bedside drawers, she thought about Ho being dismantled along with his equipment, and about River being holed below the waterline after today, and how this search was only marking time. Then she pulled open the wardrobe drawer and something inside jabbed a metal spike at her face.
  • C10S09 · Louisa Guy — Louisa Guy jerked her head aside as the wire spike jabbed at her eye, then stepped backwards onto one of Ho’s discarded mugs, which broke beneath her heel and pitched her to the floor. She shouted as she fell, and saw from the floor, at a crazy angle, River Cartwright appear in the bedroom doorway.
  • C10S10 · Kim Park — Kim Park butted River Cartwright in the stomach, ducked under his arm and went down the stairs four at a time, until a figure caught her collar and she slashed backwards with the hanger, catching flesh and breaking free. She got the front door open, cut the chin of the man in the hoodie outside, kneed him when he grabbed her and ran, shedding the hanger. Then a car door swung open in her path and she went down hard.
  • C10S11 · Claude Whelan — Claude Whelan made his phone calls from his glass office, keeping an eye on a young woman on the hub who resembled a young Claire, and keeping the blank space in his memory where a long-ago night belonged. Lamb had ferreted out that night and used it only to buy silence. Whelan rang the editor of Gimball’s paper, its lawyer, a Service lawyer and the editor again, then spoke to Barrett, the paper’s investigator. The PM, he concluded, would not be happy.
  • C10S12 · Molly Doran — Molly Doran worked the late shift in her windowless archive, talking to her files and telling herself the Secret Service kept secrets for good reasons. She had six weeks before they ejected her, and she was hunting on Lamb’s behalf through late-fifties contingency plans for something called the watering hole: a sacking offence, possibly worse. The certainty that helping Lamb would infuriate Diana Taverner was reason enough. She reached for the first file of the night.
  • C10S13 · Dodie Gimball — Dodie Gimball rode through the blue wash of her police escort, rehearsing what grief meant — being alone in the car — and drafting better last words than the joke about her Manolos. Nobody would tell her anything about Dennis beyond under investigation, and for once she felt powerless to punish anyone for it. The procession slowed on the Western Avenue by the Hoover Building, and her driver, having been asked to pull over, told her she had a visitor and left.
  • C10S14 · Jackson Lamb — Jackson Lamb stood over Kim Park on the office floor at Slough House and took credit for the timing, reminding the bruised team that they had handled her without panache. In the car beforehand he had told Emma Flyte and Devon Welles that they were in it up to their necks, and that whoever came for the blueprint had inside information. Now he told Kim she would talk or lose her freedom, then handed the questioning to Flyte.
  • C10S15 · Diana Taverner — Diana Taverner took a call at the edge of the lay-by and learned that facial recognition had put Tyson Bowman, an aide to Zafar Jaffrey, in Slough town centre minutes after Gimball’s death was reported. Jaffrey himself had been addressing a meeting in Birmingham. She ordered a pickup arranged quietly, without the locals getting into a tizzy, then paused when the caller mentioned a pair of agents who had also flagged in Slough.
  • C10S16 · Claude Whelan — Claude Whelan summoned Josie to his office and asked her to check whether a fixer called Dancer Blaine, who ran a stationer’s near St Paul’s, was on the Service’s books. When she went to find out, a transcript of Roderick Ho’s interrogation was delivered. Ho’s exile had no blot behind it, the honeytrap was textbook, the girl was a UK citizen of North Korean descent, and the document she took mattered enough to kill for. Josie returned and found him dazed.
  • C10S17 · Emma Flyte — Emma Flyte told Kim Park what they already knew — her name, her relationship with Ho, the documents she had sold — and warned that the next crew to question her would be rougher, and that her excuses would not save her. Kim answered fuck you, repeatedly, though Flyte could hear the fear beneath it and did not enjoy pressing on a fracture. She gave her five minutes and let the clock run.
  • C10S18 · Diana Taverner — Diana Taverner climbed into Dodie Gimball’s car, introduced herself and offered condolences before warning that rumours about her husband’s death would benefit nobody. She produced Dodie’s own Twitter feed as evidence, then set out the deal: publish the Zafar Jaffrey story, say Dennis had meant to reveal it, and omit any mention of the Service. When Dodie protested that Whelan had warned them off Jaffrey, Taverner said alliances shift, and left.

People

  • River Cartwright — Slow horse; searches Ho’s upstairs rooms and is butted down the stairs by Kim.
  • Louisa Guy — Slow horse; searches Ho’s bedroom and nearly takes a coat hanger in the eye.
  • Shirley Dander — Slow horse; opens Ho’s front door with Marcus’s keys and works through the kitchen.
  • JK Coe — Slow horse; guards the front door and has his chin slashed by Kim.
  • Roderick Ho — Slow horse whose house is being searched; Kim’s mark and the source of the stolen document.
  • Marcus Longridge — Dead slow horse; the universal keys Shirley carries were his.
  • Kim Park — Ho’s girlfriend and honeytrap; hides in the wardrobe and fights her way out of the house.
  • Shin — Leader of the crew that came for Ho; let Kim live after she played him.
  • Danny — One of Shin’s crew, whose dangerous look Kim was frightened of.
  • Frank Harkness — River’s father, described as a renegade with blood on his hands.
  • Claude Whelan — First Desk; works the phones over Gimball’s death and reads Ho’s interrogation transcript.
  • Claire — Whelan’s wife, whose younger likeness he sees in a subordinate on the hub.
  • Jackson Lamb — Runs Slough House; reaches Ho’s house in time to stop Kim, then questions her.
  • Dodie Gimball — Columnist and Dennis Gimball’s widow, told by Taverner what to publish.
  • Molly Doran — Service archivist; hunts old files for Lamb at the risk of her job.
  • Diana Taverner — Park officer; runs down the Slough lead and briefs Dodie Gimball in her car.
  • Dennis Gimball — The murdered columnist, dead before the chapter opens.
  • Emma Flyte — Park officer travelling with Lamb; interrogates Kim at Slough House.
  • Devon Welles — Flyte’s colleague, who drives the car and is told he is still off duty.
  • Catherine Standish — Slough House’s office manager; kneels to tend Kim’s nose.
  • Tyson Bowman — Jaffrey’s aide, identified on CCTV in Slough town centre.
  • Zafar Jaffrey — Politician; was addressing a meeting in Birmingham while Bowman was in Slough.
  • Josie — Whelan’s subordinate on the hub; researches Dancer Blaine for him.

Places

  • Slough House — MI5’s dumping ground, where Kim is brought and questioned.
  • Regent’s Park — Service headquarters, where Whelan and Taverner work.
  • The archive — Windowless records kingdom some floors below Whelan.
  • Birmingham — Where Jaffrey addressed a meeting the night Gimball died.

Lines worth keeping

“The trick was to occupy a space just slightly smaller than yourself, and then to keep doing that, over and over.” — Narrator, Kim Park, hiding in Ho’s wardrobe, on how to disappear.

“London Rules meant build your walls high, and the order in which you chucked your people over them was in inverse proportion to their usefulness.” — Narrator, Coe, watching the street, works out where he stands with the Service.

“It was called the Secret Service for a reason.” — Narrator, Molly Doran, in the archive, on why the records stay hidden.

“We know what you’ve done, and we know what happened as a result. You’ll tell us everything we want to know, or your life as a free woman is over as of tonight.” — Jackson Lamb, Lamb, kneeling beside Kim on the floor at Slough House.

“There’s only one slant a newspaper like yours is going to take on it, and that’s to splash it as a sordid little secret.” — Diana Taverner, Taverner, in Dodie Gimball’s car, on what will be printed about Dennis.

“If someone else’s eye was the cost of her freedom, that was fine by her.” — Narrator, Kim in the wardrobe, the straightened coat hanger wrapped in her fist.

Threads

  • Plants: Kim Park’s straightened wire coat hanger, kept in the wardrobe as a weapon.; Shin told the others he killed Kim; only he knows he let her go.; Taverner instructs Dodie Gimball to publish the Jaffrey story and omit any mention of the Service.; Whelan learns the stolen document was the Watering Hole Paper and that Kim is a UK citizen of North Korean descent.; Lamb says the crew had inside information, so someone in the Service is a bad apple.; Dancer Blaine, a fixer running a stationer’s near St Paul’s, has been on the Service’s books for years.; Tyson Bowman is picked up on CCTV in Slough minutes after Gimball’s death is reported.; Molly Doran is searching late-fifties files for something called the watering hole.
  • Payoffs: The spare keys taped beneath Ho’s desk are matched by Marcus’s universal set, which lets Shirley walk straight in.; Kim’s escape through Ho’s bedroom window is explained: she talked Shin into letting her drop.; The reason Ho was targeted is given: Kim had him steal one specific file for Shin’s crew.
  • Continuity: Shirley’s earlobe is torn and Coe’s chin slashed during Kim’s escape; Kim’s nose is broken and her eyes blackened.; Kim’s looks are revised down from a nine to three-and-a-half, maybe four.; It is past midnight when the team reaches Slough House; Louisa notes it is a new day.; Molly Doran has six weeks before the Service ejects her.; Lamb’s bottle is nearly empty and Catherine does not drink.

Characters

Places