Forty-One
Carol and Margaretleft Westminster tube station and took a stroll past Big Ben. Carol was tired after spending half the night on her computer, tying leads together, getting in touch with some old friends, doing a little online snooping. Today’s sleuthing came in the form of a field trip and—if everything went to plan—this would be the last day of the investigation.
Before departing, Carol had taken a walk in the Sheldon Oaks gardens on her own. First, she had some measuring to do. The results were as she suspected.
How lucky she was to live there. She’d tried to remember the names of the flowers Margaret had told her. Lupines, monkshood, pink dahlias. Looking at the flower bed closely, she noticed that a clump of flowers was missing. Not everything was perfect.
Margaret met her by the building’s entrance, and they’d taken the short walk to Hampstead tube station, Carol’s first trip on the underground this century. On the tube she remembered, people’sfaces were hidden behind giant newspapers. Now they all stared at their phones. The upholstery hadn’t changed, exactly the same patterns. She asked Margaret, who told her that, yes, the Bakerloo line did still smell a bit eggy.
Aboveground, everywhere they looked were Pret A Mangers and cyclists. This wasn’t their London anymore. Red phone boxes with prostitutes’ cards in them, IRA bomb warnings, every room filled with a fog of cigarette smoke, clothes that always smelled of tobacco—that was their era. Things had moved on. Whether that was for the better was not for them to say.
They made their way past College Green. There was a small collection of media tents, TV lighting rigs, young people in suits looking at their phones, some politician being interviewed on camera.
“Do you miss it?”
“That?” said Margaret. “Not in the slightest. This is much more fun.”
Margaret hadn’t been in the neighborhood for a few months. The last time, she’d popped into the House of Lords to show her face, listened to a debate, and had lunch in one of Parliament’s dining rooms. Everyone had seemed so old. The lords, all nearing death, decades past their last cogent thought as they sat in the chamber, blankets on their laps, bellies full of state-subsidized sponge and custard, having a little nap before casting their votes on important legislation. That place was the real retirement home. Sheldon Oaks was where the action was.
It’s a ten-minute walk from Westminster station to Thames House, but it took them twenty-five. Their minds were still quickbut their bodies weren’t. Carol had butterflies in her tummy. She was about to enter the home of MI5.
“Is there a level above yours?” she asked Margaret.
“If there is, I don’t know of it.”
“Top secret?”
“The very tippity top. I was home secretary. That counts for something.”
“But that was so long ago.”
“Clearance is clearance. They don’t take it back. Not unless you do something very naughty and, unlike you, Carol, I’ve always been a bit of a goody-goody.”
“Do you still read the reports?”
Margaret laughed. “No.”
“But there must be so many secrets. Don’t you want to know everything?”
“Most of the secrets are very, very boring, and the ones that aren’t boring, well, I prefer not to know. I like my sleep.”
Carol raised her eyebrows, pondering that there must be a world out there even darker than the one in which she used to operate. And then something occurred to her…“Didn’t you used to read up on all your colleagues? You said something about the foreign secretary and leather. Aren’t there lots of juicy sex scandals and perverts to read about?”
Margaret shook her head wistfully. “Not these days. I’m afraid the politicians of today are an incredibly boring bunch.”
—
If the facadeof Thames House was neoclassical, the lobby was very much not. All glass and security barriers, TVs showingBBC News, police holding semiautomatic weapons, their fingers resting close to the triggers.
“Can I help?”
“Yes, we’re looking for some…What are they called?Videogames? I’m buying my grandson a present.”
The lady behind the desk gave them both a sickly smile. “I think you might be lost.”
“This isn’t HMV?”
“No, this is…I think where you need—”
