Jed Moody

Who they are

An ex-Dog — one of the Service’s enforcers — parked at Slough House and convinced he can buy his way back. Violent, late, and stupid in the specific way of a man who has always been the muscle in the room.

What they want

Reinstatement, and he will take it from whoever offers. That is the whole of him, and the book makes it his fatal flaw rather than his depth.

Book 1 — Slow Horses

• C02 — Asks Nick Duffy for a route to Diana Taverner; is told he was kept on only as a scapegoat.
• C04 — Tells Duffy that Lamb is running an operation.
• C06 — Confesses to Taverner that he planted a bug in Lamb’s office and did his own sweeping; she hands him an incoming-only phone and buys him.
• C07 — The black-clad figure at Hobden’s window; the shooting that puts Sid Baker in surgery is his.
• C08 — The balaclava’d intruder on the stairs at Slough House. Min Harper breaks his neck. Lamb finds a bug, an envelope and two mobiles on the body.

Tells

Rubber gloves, an eagerness to explain himself, the need to be seen obeying. He is the book’s example of a man who mistakes the institution’s attention for approval.

Open questions

How long he had been Taverner’s asset before Slow Horses starts, and whether he understood the operation he was protecting or only the promotion he was promised.