Dead Lions Read Online Free PDF Page B

its neck. They waited until she’d passed before continuing.
    “Explain?”
    So Louisa did. It was to do with Leonard Bradley. Until recently Bradley had been Chair of the Limitations Committee, which effectively controlled the Service purse strings. Every op planned by Ingrid Tearney, First Desk at Regent’s Park, had to be cleared by Limitations if she didn’t want budgeting issues, which was what running out of money was now called. Except Bradley—Sir Leonard, if the title hadn’t been repossessed yet—had lately been caught with his fingers in the till: a Shropshire “safe house,” fully staffed for the recuperation of officers suffering Service-related stress, had turned out to be a beachfront property on the Maldives, though to be fair, it was fully staffed. And the result of Bradley’s peccadilloes—
    “How do you know all this?” Harper interrupted. “I thought he’d just retired.”
    “Ah, that’s sweet. But you’ve got to keep an ear to the ground in this business.”
    “Don’t tell me. Catherine.”
    She nodded.
    “Girls’ talk? Quick confab in the ladies’?”
    He kept it light, but there was an edge. Something he was excluded from.
    She said, “Catherine’s hardly likely to call a press conference. When I told her we’d been summoned, she told me this was going on. She called it an audit.”
    “How does she know about it?”
    Louisa said, “She’s got a connection. One of the Queens.”
    The Queens of the Database were who you went to when you needed information, which made them useful friends, and even more useful connections.
    “So what’s this audit?”
    —and the result of Bradley’s peccadilloes was what was being termed an audit, but might more accurately be called an Inquisition. Limitations’s new Chair, Roger Barrowby, was taking the opportunity to clean the stables: this involved in-depth interviews with all staff, covering their financial, operational, emotional, psychological, sexual and medical histories; just to make sure everything was squeaky clean. Nobody wanted further embarrassments.
    “Bit of a cheek,” Min said. “I mean, Bradley was the one stealing cookies. Any embarrassment should be the Committee’s, not the Park’s.”
    “Welcome to the world, baby boy,” Louisa explained.
    There was a bright side, though. “I bet Taverner’s going spare,” he mused.
    But there wasn’t time to explore what Taverner might be going, because here came James Webb, who’d summoned them to this al fresco meeting.
    Webb was a suit. He wasn’t actually wearing a suit today—he wore fawn chinos and a dark blue roll-neck under a black raincoat—but he wasn’t fooling anyone: he was a suit, and if you cut him open he’d bleed in pinstripes. Today’s outfit he probably thought was tradecraft: what you wore for a leafy stroll. But the impression he gave was that he’d popped along to his man in Jermyn Street, explained he was going for a walk in the park, and wanted to dress accordingly. He was as much a man in casuals as the pink lady was a jogger.
    Still, he was Regent’s Park to their Slough House. Getting the call at all was a jawdropper. When he nodded they nodded back, and fell into step either side of him. “Any trouble getting away?”
    He might have been asking how traffic had been.
    Louisa said, “The back door jams. You have to kick it and lean on the handle at the same time. Once we were through that, it was a breeze.”
    Webb said, “I meant with Lamb.”
    “Lamb wasn’t around,” Min told him. “Is he not supposed to know about this?”
    “Oh, he’ll find out eventually. It’s no big deal anyway. I’m seconding you, that’s all. Not for long. Three weeks or so.”
    I’m seconding you. Like he was a big wheel. Over at the Park, when Ingrid Tearney was in DC, which was about half the time, Lady Di Taverner took the hot seat: she was one of several Second Desks, but top of most people’s list whenever there were rumours of a palace coup.