River Cartwright

Who they are

A probationer who was on the fast track until eight minutes at King’s Cross ended it. His grandfather is David Cartwright, once senior enough in the Service to have a word put in afterwards — which is the only reason River is still employed at all, and the reason he is at Slough House rather than out of it.

He is the book’s engine: young, literal-minded, convinced that the answer is a piece of evidence somebody is hiding. He is usually half right.

What they want

To be back in the game, and to be proved right about Robert Hobden. Those are not the same thing, and the book is careful about which one he actually gets.

Book 1 — Slow Horses

• C00 — Tailing a man at King’s Cross on his upgrading assessment, he is handed a reversed description by James Webb (“Spider”) and gives the order on the wrong man. The real courier detonates a vest on the platform. Sixteen errors in eight minutes; a stroke, a broken leg, three panic attacks.
• C01 — Sorts Hobden’s rubbish, is sent to deliver a flash-box to Spider, opens it wrong, burns his hand, and keeps what he finds: a laptop and a memory stick.
• C03 — Takes the stolen stick to Tonbridge and asks the O.B. about Hobden. Learns that the company Hobden kept before his fall was worse than what followed.
• C05 — Opens the stick in the pub: fifteen files, all pi to a million places. Concludes he has been played.
• C07 — Staking out Hobden’s flat with Sid Baker, he is told she was posted to Slough House to watch him. The night ends with a gun going off and Sid on the ground.
• C08 — Locked in a hospital store cupboard, freed by Jackson Lamb, names Jed Moody as the shooter.
• C10 — Rides with Lamb to Roupell Street, works out the envelope was a flight fund, and finds what is on the kitchen table.
• C12 — Hotwires a car, fails to stop Kay White being collected, and starts to see the frame closing.
• C16 — Rides into Regent’s Park in the boot of the hijacked SUV, beats the Fiasco file out of Spider, and walks onto the hub wearing Spider’s suit.

Book 2 — Dead Lions

• C02 — Pushes past Catherine and Ho until the file has a name, and picks the bald man off the CCTV.
• C03 — Brings the poison theory to Tonbridge, gets Popov and ZT/53235 from his grandfather, and hears the recital slip.
• C07 — Three weeks as Jonathan Walker yield Kelly Tropper and no trace of Mr. B; Lamb’s confidence looks like neglect.
• C09 — Follows Griff Yates onto the MoD range and finds the way in was a trap laid for him, and a barrage to prove it.
• C12 — Bound to a trolley and gagged, he works out that the fertiliser has gone onto Kelly’s aeroplane.
• C13 — Freed by Yates and half-conscious, he turns the pieces into Code September — the warning that changes the day.
• C15 — Names Moult as Katinsky in the churchyard and learns what his own Service did to ZT/53235, then is Tasered for asking.
• C16 — Phones St Mary’s about Webb, then sits with the possibility that the O.B. framed a town in 1951.

Book 3 — Real Tigers

• C01 — Sits with the comatose James Webb and talks through his passport-backlog theory. Nobody answers, which is the point.
• C02–C03 — Answers a text from Standish’s phone, sees the photograph, and takes a stranger’s errand with eighty minutes on it.
• C04 — Bluffs into Regent’s Park by asking for Taverner, then fakes an armed man outside; Molly Doran catches him with the Prime Minister’s file number.
• C05 — Reviews his mistakes under Duffy’s questioning and gets them right: he should have gone up the line to Lamb.
• C07–C08 — Returns to Slough House released without charge, is sick in the gutter, and shows the others the photograph.
• C09–C11 — Traces Sean Donovan through Black Arrow, then goes down a drain cover into the dark on Donovan’s terms.
• C13–C15 — Is Tasered at the breach, carries out the folder Donovan was shot for, and knocks Duffy down to save Marcus.
• C16 — Visits Webb’s emptied bed, then his grandfather. The two men he has spent the book talking to cannot answer.

He wanted to be the officer who works it out, and he is — always late, always at somebody else’s expense. What he gets instead is the courier’s part.

Book 4 — Spook Street

• C01 — Brooding in the kitchen while Louisa Guy talks about her new flat, then asking her for a drink because he is worried about his grandfather.
• C02 — Tells Louisa he never knew his father, then takes the train to Kent, where David Cartwright refuses to believe he is River, tests him with his grandmother’s name, and lets the “impostor” in.
• C05 — On a train through France on Adam Lockhead’s passport, having fired a second bullet into the dead man’s face, left his own ID and phone in the corpse’s pocket and deposited his grandfather with Catherine Standish at four in the morning.
• C06 — Comes to in a French wood beside a dead rabbit and a man with a shotgun, then follows Victor’s directions to a cottage with a blue door and a woman who nearly calls him Bertrand.
• C07 — Hears Natasha Reverde’s account of Les Arbres and the American everyone obeyed, pockets a photograph, lies to her about Patrice, then uses his credit card and puts himself back on the map.
• C10 — Flagged at border control and detained at St Pancras by Emma Flyte, then rammed, disarmed and taken by Patrice after telling him the house has burned down.
• C11 — Moved by taxi and tube to the Embankment with a hand on his shoulder, staying because he wants answers, and asked what the dazzle ship is.
• C12 — Walked to HMS President, where Frank Harkness tells him Bertrand was his brother and that he is River’s father, and that the old man’s silence was part of a deal.
• C14 — Refuses Frank’s offer, names Westacres as the trigger, is embraced and thrown into the Thames, and comes round on the Embankment to Louisa telling him to pick up a phone in future.

Tells

Reads people as puzzles; repeats the O.B.’s aphorisms to himself as if checking them; cannot leave a discrepancy alone, which is both his virtue and the reason he was set up.

Open questions

Who arranged his fall, and why Sid was posted to watch him — the book answers the first and leaves the second as a hook. Whether his grandfather’s protection is affection or management.