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The office manager is young, blonde, petite, and dressed from head to toe in Prada pink. Any goodwill this might have brought her – and let’s face it, goodwill is in short supply down at Slough House – is somewhat expunged by the blatant disgust with which she regards the office, as if the entire building is some mange-ridden stray who’s just pissed on her designer heels. The horses glare at her.
Well, most of them. Roddy just leers.
“Christ,” Shirley mutters beneath her breath, “I’ll bet Lamb loves this, the perve.”
“You know, I don’t think Lamb even has a sex drive. He’s not that type,” River shakes his head to dislodge any horrific visions this statement might conjure.
“He’s dirty, and he’s old, he’s a man. Wouldn’t surprise me if he turned out to be a dirty old man and all.”
Louisa saves the taxpayer a bundle on therapy sessions by cutting this discussion off at its head. “Hello,” she calls, “can we help you?”
The woman, or Not Catherine as the other horses file her in their mental inbox – or Not Catherine Number One in later weeks, for reasons that will soon become abundantly clear – breaks off from looking around the office as if she’s been consigned to one of the inner circles of hell, which isn’t too far from the truth. “I’m Becci,” she says, ignoring Louisa’s outstretched hand. “I’ve been assigned as your new office manager taking over from Catherine Standish. The job was getting too much for the old girl, was it?”
Marcus, without looking down, manages to wrestle the stapler out of Shirley’s hand.
“Of course, I don’t expect to stay here for very long. My transfer was something of a misunderstanding.” The horses exchange Looks, of the pull the other one it’s got bells on variety. “But just long enough to bring Slough House into the twenty-first century.”
“Well.” Louisa’s tone could cut through diamond. “Isn’t that nice.”
When Lamb enters the office the horses are continuing to glare at the interloper (all save Roddy, whose neck has been caught in a vice-like grip from River to prevent him committing some dire act of sexual harassment). He passes a cursory glance around the room and snorts. “So this is the day that’ll go down in history as when every security threat in the wider British Isles area was mysteriously disarmed overnight, has it? That’s the only reason I can think of for you lot standing around with your hands on your dicks like spare wotsits at a wedding.”
“We’ve got a new member,” Marcus says.
“Who, this one?” Lamb turns to the interloper. “Fuck me, Cartwright, are you bringing your therapists to work? Not that it wouldn’t do you good to have someone permanently on call.”
“Rebecca Stanley, sir,” Not Catherine says over the sound of River’s grinding teeth. “I’m your new office manager. Catherine Standish’s replacement.”
When Lamb stares at her you can practically hear a pin drop.
“…Get the fuck out of my office.”
-
Shirley clears her throat as they’re all having lunch. Not Catherine doesn’t tend to eat with them: possibly due to the fact that since her arrival Lamb’s not said a word to her but still expects her to understand whatever bizarre form of communication he flings her way, usually a combination of sign language and Morse Code. Such things are enough to leave anyone short of community spirit. “So, you think Standish and Lamb ever shagged?”
Roddy promptly sprays Red Bull over them all.
There comes a series of hackings and groanings as River, having just finished his Tesco Meal Deal, now attempts to prevent it from coming back up again at speed. “What? Urgh. I – God, Jesus Christ. Don’t spring that on me just after eating. Fuck.”
“What in God’s name,” demands Marcus, “made you even consider that?”
“I dunno. Old people, inn’t it? They still fuck: you can’t say they don’t, that’s age discrimination.”
“Old people is one thing,” Louisa says. “Not Lamb.”
“He might’ve known how to shower at one point.”
The horses stop momentarily to consider this new and horrifying possibility.
“I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“Anyway,” Shirley gestures with a half-eaten sausage roll, “they knew each other, back in the day. Catherine knew all the agents going on when she was Partner’s Miss Moneypenny, and Lamb was s’posed to be the best back then. And, and, sometimes when they argue, there’s a Thing there. Sexual wotsit, tension.”
“I think that’s called hatred, actually,” Louisa says.
The sausage roll is thrown at her.
“Nah. Definitely a Thing. He could have been giving her one back during the Cold War.”
“Okay.” River is now very, very green. “You’re going to have to pay for my therapy, because I don’t think this sort of thing is covered by expenses.”
“He was ready to commit cold-blooded murder when she got snatched,” Shirley says firmly.
“Lamb might be a prick, but everyone knows if you hurt someone on his team, you’re in trouble,” says Marcus.
“Trouble, yeah, but look, from the way he was talking, those kidnappers were one bad day away from being turned into dogfood. And he doesn’t want MI5 Barbie in here, you can tell. He’s gotten emotionally attached to Catherine.”
“You need to have emotions to develop an emotional attachment to someone.”
“And,” Marcus says, “he doesn’t like Becci, but then he doesn’t like anyone. I’m not sure it’s fair to say he’s deliberately trying to drive her out.”
There comes a shriek Not Catherine, who’s been tapping at her emails with furious abandon in the next room. “...He’s sending me instructions in fucking Urdu now?!”
“...Although I’m prepared to admit when I’m wrong.”
-
The sound of Roddy Ho’s heart shattering into approximately a million pieces can be heard as far away as Bermondsey when he comes into work three days later to see Not Catherine (Mk 1) packing up her belongs. She’s swearing beneath her breath. Sign language she could handle, Urdu she could handle, but apparently emails sent wholly in ancient hieroglyphics was a step too far.
This, Roddy decides, is worthy of a complaint to the civil service union. He settles for phoning up Lamb and lambasting him for twenty minutes.
“– you’re ignoring my needs,” he says, over the sound of Lamb belching into the other end. “Someone like me needs suitable eye candy in the office to boost his mental health. They’ve probably done studies on it at Oxford. You’re depriving me of my human rights.” A thought occurs to Roddy – and, moreover, a thought concerning another human being, which is rare. “Hang on, why aren't you in the office?”
“Sick day.”
“You never take sick days.”
“Well, I’m sick now. Sick of you wasting my time, you useless little pillock.”
“Alan Turing never had to put up with this level of abuse,” Roddy grumbles. Fortunately, no-one else hears him.
-
One week later, Mark Two arrives. To River's disgust it's some prim little twerp called Jimmy formerly from the Park's HR who used to give River's travel expenses a thorough colonoscopy whenever he so much as entered Zone 6. He fusses and huffs and repeats the phrase this has to be a mistake no less than five times before he’s even removed his anorak. “I mean it. This isn’t where I’m meant to be. I have a First from Oxford and everything, I was top in all of my PPE classes. I’m not supposed to be here, I have a bright future at MI5.” Seeing River’s expression, he musters his last resort. “I’ve read every John Le Carre novel twice, you know.”
“Oh, a big Le Carre fan, eh? Well, meet George Smiley.” River grins maliciously at the young man’s expression as Lamb comes down the stairs. “I know, Jimmy. The years without Karla have not been kind.”
“Fuck you,” Lamb says casually. When he turns to Jimmy it’s wearing a big, dangerous, hungry-dingo smile. As one the horses all lean back. “New office manager, yeah? You’d better get yourself up those stairs, old son. I think you’ll find we’re all one big, happy family at Slough House.”
“I think that’s what Brando says in The Godfather just before the horse’s head gets cut off,” Roddy whispers.
“Oh, the poor bastard,” Louisa says as Jimmy trots up the stairs. “It’s like watching a baby lamb cuddling up to a crocodile.”
For five days the new office manager is in close cahoots with his new boss while Slough House’s inmates watch suspiciously, trying to reconcile Lamb with concepts such as ‘friendliness’ and ‘welcoming’. Finally on the fifth day Two breaks down on Lamb’s sofa and admits through gulping sobs just how he ended up exiled to Elba - ‘I didn’t think sharing that spreadsheet could to do any harm; how did I know that girl on Tinder was a journo?’ - while Lamb nods in silent sympathy. It takes the work of a conversation for Two to realise he’s not actually suited to the glamourous world of national espionage, and the work of an afternoon to get his CV over to McKinsey.
Jimmy buys Lamb an enormous bottle of Glenfiddich on his way out. It turns out Lamb wrote him such a sterling reference that McKinsey offered him a private office with a view of the Thames, a travel allowance, and a seventy per cent pay rise – a fact that makes River punch the wall when Roddy gleefully reports it.
"I don’t remember you offering me such a bloody good reference when I tried to leave.”
“Suffering builds character, Cartwright,” Lamb says, strolling up the stairs and whistling.
“Getting out of Slough House builds character too!" River yells up after him.
-
In McKinsey and the glamorous world of private consultancy, River wonders the next day, is it normal for your boss to throw paper aeroplanes at your head? Possibly in a more relaxed office – although probably not while the projectile is literally on fire.
“Oi! Jesus fucking Christ, what the actual fuck?” He howls and swears, scraping at his hair and convinced of the very real possibility that something has caught on fire, and then begins beating out the flames that are already beginning to smoulder on his desk. From the doorway Shirley is laughing herself sick. “There is something wrong with you,” he tells Lamb. “Something deeply and fundamentally - hang on, is this a resignation letter from Catherine?”
“Oh, is it?” Lamb asks. “I didn’t notice.”
-
Three is a plain-dressed, sombre-eyed, middle-class woman who might as well be Catherine Standish placed face down on the photocopier. She barely says three words for her entire first day. You’d think this would be Lamb’s dream – rebound, right? as Shirley points out – but when he comes into Slough House on her fourth day he takes one look at her, grunts, and slams the door to his office shut behind him. He doesn’t show his face for the rest of the day.
Three barely blinks – it looks like it would take an entire earthquake to phase her – but after a fortnight she’s transferred back out of Slough House, supposedly for talking too much on the job.
“This is mental,” Shirley says. “We might as well install a revolving door. And all because Lamb can’t get over his fucking crush.”
“You’re reading too much into it.”
“He set Catherine’s resignation letter on fire.”
“He’s not like that,” Louisa insists. “This is just an old man’s inability to adapt to change, on the basis that Lamb is, fundamentally, a psychopath.”
Shirley arches an eyebrow and glances to make sure Marcus isn’t listening. “A tenner says the next one doesn’t last a week.”
“...You’re on.”
-
Four, a rather short West Country sort with prematurely thinning hair, lasts all of five minutes into his first day when upon reaching the top floor of Slough House he is greeted by Lamb throwing an empty beer bottle at his head. He flees the scene, yelling about workplace harassment; the door slams shut. From above the horses hear the sounds of Lamb punching the air.
“New record!”
-
“Pay up.”
“No. That one was just overly sensitive; I want double or nothing on number five.”
“Oi,” Roddy calls up the stairs, “this a private pillow fight, or can anyone get in on the action?”
“Never mention me or Shirley in the same context as pillow fight again and you’re in.”
-
It’s a slow day, so Roddy taps into the phone lines when Diana Taverner calls and broadcasts it to the entire office as they’re eating lunch.
“…make this clear.” Taverner’s voice comes, not wholly inaccurately, as if she’s pushing it through gritted teeth. “Slough House needs just one grown up to make sure all that endless paperwork ends up in the right file, and that rather necessitates you keeping a new office administrator for over a week.”
“Well, that’s not my fault, Diana. You’re sending me lightweights. Service life is difficult at the best of times: danger, isolation, a slow and ugly descent into alcoholism. If these poor kids can’t deal with the hardship that being a member of MI5 requires, I can’t be held responsible.”
“You threw a beer bottle at Simmonds’ head.”
“It didn’t make contact.”
“He was bleeding.”
“Ok, so it barely made contact.”
“And why in God’s name am I still paying Catherine Standish’s salary a month after I hear she resigned?”
“Oh, you’re filing pay slips now, Diana? That’s humiliating. I at least would have thought Whelan would have you on something more interesting than that – like filling out paperclip requisitions. You know. After he beat you for the top job.”
This time they can all hear the sound of Taverner grinding her teeth.
“Answer. The Goddamn. Question.”
“I’ve no idea.” Another yawn. “I'm sure I saw the final paperwork somewhere on my desk. Maybe under a library card request from the early seventies. I'd look but honestly, you know how busy my days get."
“Lamb. I neither know, nor care, what bizarre guilt-ridden psychological warfare you’re inflicting on that woman. All I can do is envy her that she never has to look at your mould-encrusted face again –”
“Bit harsh –”
“- but you are getting a new office manager. Catherine Standish is being replaced; I don’t care if I have to escort the new hire to the building myself.”
“I’m going into a tunnel now, Diana.”
“You’re on the Slough House landline.”
“I – pssh psshh – can’t hear you – psshhhh – ‘s all going crackly – pssssshhhhh –”
As the sound of their boss attempting to ape the sound of static by blowing air through a discarded crisp packet continues, Shirley looks round at her colleagues. “He just snapped like a twig, didn't he.”
“Well, yes," River says. "But we can't definitively attribute that to Catherine."
-
The next week passes calmly. Louisa takes on managing most of the paperwork if it means not drawing the Park’s attention to the fact that they still don’t have an office manager: an act that seems rather dangerous, given the current circumstances. The calmness of the passing week has nothing to do with the absence of an office manager, however, and everything to do with the absence of Lamb.
(Sick or holiday? Louisa texts. Lose this number is the only response she gets, and it’s a lot more polite than she was expecting.)
“Fuck me,” Marcus realises, “he has only stopped coming in since Catherine resigned.”
“This must be what it was like to discover the Grinch actually had a heart,” River says in a tone of awe.
“Oh, I think that’s taking it a bit too far.”
-
When Five finally arrives Marcus takes one look and books it up the stairs three at a time.
“I want in on the pool.”
Louisa doesn’t even look up from her monitor. “Nope. You’re still in rehab. And you promised Shirley you’d stay away from this shit.”
“Just a quick flutter. You can impose a weekly limit on me, but I want fifty pounds on this next one not lasting a full day, and I want to put my money down before Ho gets in on the action.”
Shirley almost looks convinced when she hears. “I’ll take that. Taverner’s losing it with him now, she’s not going to send over some wuss who can’t even manage a day.”
The transaction is done by the time Five makes it up the stairs. She’s suited and booted, with shoulders that have probably come from a lifetime of wrestling paramilitaries into submission and a severely scraped back bun which would put a prison guard to shame. Her expression practically screams take no prisoners. And she’s whistling, of all things, Taylor Swift.
Shirley glares at Marcus. “You fucker.”
-
“I’ll admit, I’m a bit worried about this,” Six, a kid with his spots still scrubbed fresh out of Oxbridge, confides upon his arrival. “No offence, but you hear things about Slough House. The idea of being stuck here for a matter of weeks, let alone years –”
“Don’t worry, mate,” Roddy says, not even bothering to look up from his monitors. “You won’t be.”
-
“Here’s an idea, and maybe it’s, like, completely out there,” River says as he barges into Lamb’s office, “but you could consider talking to Catherine.”
“Why the fuck would I want to do that?”
River rolls his eyes. For a self-professed Luddite, Lamb is hunched over his computer with the look of a man who knows precisely what he’s doing. There’s a malicious little gleam in his eye that is never a good sign, and suddenly River is fairly certain he doesn’t want to stay in the room for too long, at least not without backup. “Because even for you, five office managers driven out in as many weeks seems a little extreme –” He leans closer. “…Hang on, are you signing up Catherine’s email to marketing spam lists?”
Lamb shrugs. “If she still wants a Security service spam filter on her inbox, maybe she shouldn’t have quit.”
“Christ, tell me that’s not a fucking alcohol site.”
“Vanilla vodka.” For a moment even Lamb wears an expression that could, on someone else, approximate guilt. “Relax, she couldn’t actually relapse with it. I think you actually get more sober when drinking that piss.”
(River, watching carefully, notices that the mouse hovers a moment longer before Lamb closes the site, all without adding Catherine’s address. For a moment it’s rather nice to realise the man has some standards.
He doesn’t mention this though, because he rather likes his kneecaps remaining where they are, thanks.)
“For God’s sake,” Louisa mutters when River retreats downstairs. “Why doesn’t he just go the whole hog and stake out her flat with a boombox?”
“Hey, there’s an idea!” Lamb yells down the stairs. “Anyone know where I can download Tubthumping by Chumbawamba?”
“We’re creating a monster,” River says.
-
By the time Seven arrives, no-one’s bothered to mention that the recycling bin is now papered with Catherine’s latest three resignation letters, or that Lamb has told Roddy to set up his inbox such that the daily messages from HR now go straight to spam. Lamb himself hasn’t shown his face for weeks, which is perfectly fine with the Slough House inmates; aside from anything, he’s not likely to smile on the enormous odds board erected in the kitchen to keep track of the ‘How Long Until This Next Office Manager Bites The Dust’ pool.
No-one ends up remembering much about Seven. It’s like hamburgers, Roddy says later: you don’t worry about what the pig looked like when you know what the outcome’s going to be. When Lamb stomps in one day he pauses, blinking with bemusement not at poor, luckless Seven, but the unspeaking figure propped into the corner of the room. “Who the fuck is that?”
“His name’s Coe. Well, we think. He’s not said a word since he got here,” River says.
“My kind of man. New?”
Shirley just looks at him. “He’s been here for a week. Which you’d know, if you hadn’t been off for a fortnight.”
“Two whole weeks? My, my, time flies when you’re having fun, which is any time spent away from you lot. Run him through the paperwork, it’ll be in Standish’s office.”
The silence hovering through the office is suddenly deafening. Every member of the team – with the exception of Coe – slowly swivels their chair to look at Lamb. To his credit he doesn’t even blush.
“That why you’ve been off sulking?” Louisa asks with a smirk.
“Oh, I’ve got some wonderfully dull council tax receipts with your name on them, Guy,” Lamb growls as he stomps up the stairs. From above there comes the sound of a slamming door, and something which sounds very much like the kind of language one would not repeat in front of one’s mother.
“That’s Lamb,” River explains to Coe, “but don’t worry, he’s not always so touchy feely.”
-
“Oi!” Roddy calls up the stairs three days, and one hysterical breakdown courtesy of the anonymous Seven, later. “Number Eight’s here!”
“Excuse me? My name’s Roger.”
“Up you go, Number Eight,” Roddy says, already turning back to Call of Duty.
(“It’s so weird,” Roger-Eight says to his wife that night. “I mean, you hear things about Slough House: you know no-one’s there as a reward. But they just look at you like you’re a ghost over there…”)
Credit to Eight’s perseverance, he manages to make the running as one of the better contenders in this race – eighteen days, twelve personalised insults, and three separate bomb scares called into his car; name calling didn’t work; silence didn’t work; the demand to file everything in triplicate didn’t work; but, it turns out, the dead rat appearing under his desk worked like a charm – and the inmates of Slough House raise their coffee mugs in respect of a job well done when he finally leaves. Marcus smacks a hand against his desk when he’s gone. “Alright, who had it?”
The others turn to the board, but too late: Coe has already left the corner of the office he customarily haunts and snatches the pile of cash on the table. It’s all up there in black and white: JK Coe, eighteen days and six hours.
“How the fuck did you –” River demands, but already Coe has switched on another episode of his podcast.
-
After the resignation of Nine two days later – an easy cull and barely worth the effort taken to place a bet; Lamb simply called the HR hiring manager and told her that if this latest hire wasn't gone by the morning he'd drive over to her flat and stick a ferret through her letter box - River volunteers to talk to Lamb. It turns out no-one wants to fight him for the honour.
“Just a phone call?” River asks as he enters the office. “What, no name calling? No gobbing in his morning coffee? No farting on his desk?”
“So sue me, I’m having an off-day.”
You’ve been having an off-day since I’ve known you, River thinks, but in a rare moment of circumspection decides to keep this to himself.
Instead he sits down opposite Lamb and adopts a gleaming, butter-wouldn’t-melt smile that creases at the edges. “So,” River says, “is there anything you want to talk about?”
“With you? Never.”
“I mean, something in the,” he makes a vague gesture, “emotional department.”
Lamb eyes him with disgust. “Fucking hell. I must have done something really bad to be getting this shit from you.”
“Look, I’m not going to pretend that getting to watch you spiralling out like a kid with his first crush – and all because Catherine’s gone – isn’t heaven to me,” River says. His youth-pastor smile dissolves into something far more evil. “But genuinely, I do care about…well, not you, actually. But certainly Catherine. And clearly there are some feelings here that aren’t being addressed.”
“Feelings bollocks.”
“You know, when people ask me why you never married I just don’t know what to tell them.”
Lamb’s eyes narrow. “You’d better be going somewhere with this, Cartwright.”
“Well, yeah,” River says. He leans forward and fixes his boss with a glare. “When are you going to grow a pair and ask Catherine back already?”
(When River arrives back in their office, rather breathless and somewhat rumpled, Louisa doesn’t even trouble to hide her grin. “He threw you down the stairs, didn’t he?”
“Two flights.”
“You mentioned Catherine, didn’t you?”
“I did.” River shrugs, and winces at the movement probes a very recent bruise. “But I like to think we’re getting through to him.”)
EPILOGUE
Catherine is just getting in the door with her shopping one evening when her phone bleeps with a text. It’s not as if she has many friends these days, or even casual acquaintances, so it’s not wholly surprising to see the messages are from Shirley.
LAMB TOTALLY OFF THE RAILS.
HAS HIRED AND FIRED NINE SEPARATE OFFICE MANAGERS IN AROUND TWO MONTHS.
BOTH HILARIOUS AND PATHETIC.
PLEASE DON’T COME BACK UNTIL THE TENTH IS GONE; I HAVE A HUNDRED ON HER GOING BEFORE WE HIT FEBRUARY.
A pause. And then another resentful little beep:
BUT THEN COME BACK PLEASE.
Catherine just shakes her head. Of all the things she might have expected, this is actually among the less deranged.
EPILOGUE PART TWO
“So,” Jackson remarks as they drag the last of the furniture into place, “coming back home then, are you?”
Catherine can’t tell if home is an attempt at needling her or a genuine slip. After the night they’ve all had, best not to push it. Internal security has only just removed Marcus’ body.
“Are you asking?”
“Are you drying out again or what? That was me asking.”
“No,” she says, “that was you asking if I’m coming back. Not asking me back.” Catherine pauses. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
She hesitates. Refuses to look back at him. She’s also just a little bit certain that Jackson’s also refusing to look at her.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Catherine says quietly. In response Jackson only gives a grunt - she would have expected some customary retort, but maybe it’s been a rough night for him too. “I need to review my options.”
“Oh, you have options, do you?”
That is delivered with just enough acid to spur her on. “I was talking to Moira,” she adds, seemingly casual. “She mentioned that she’s only been in this post for a few days, but of course I resigned months ago. Did it really take you that long to find a replacement?”
“Oh, pushing around files and making the tea, well, it’s not really vital work, is it? I held off from making a new hire for a while. Save wasting the tax payer’s money.”
“Ah. I see.”
“Although now you mention it,” as if it’s only just occurred to him, and if you really, really didn’t know him you wouldn’t even be able to tell when he’s bullshitting, “we did try a couple of other people out first before Moira came along.”
She nods very seriously. “How many?”
“Oh. One or two, you know.”
“Ah.”
She at least does him the courtesy of leaving the room before smirking. She owes him that much at least.