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It’s 1996, and Lamb is having a drink in David Cartwright’s study.
It’s not the most unusual occurrence in the world, this. Lamb’s known the man for years. He might even call David a friend if pressed.
Typically drinks are had in the office, though. Not at Cartwright’s family home.
This is not a typical drink.
“I’d like to remind you that you offered to do this,” the O.B. says. “You agreed with me, you were the one who convinced me: he needs to go.”
“That was nearly a decade ago.”
“And is it any less true now?”
Lamb doesn’t answer. It’s really not.
“Where is this hesitation coming from, Jackson?”
“He’s my friend.” Lamb pauses. “Or was. I don’t fucking know.”
Cartwright frowns. “He’s mine too.”
Lamb scoffs outright. He’s sure it’s true and all-- Cartwright and Partner, they trained together back in the Stone Age, have run the service tight as a ship for the past decade and a half. But a Second Desk is never truly friends with their First.
Cartwright leans forward. “You really ought to think beyond yourself. Think for the good of the service!”
Lamb laughs even harder at that one.
“You’re a nationalist’s wet dream.”
Cartwright frowns. “Lamb…”
There’s a creak somewhere of a floorboard, outside the study door, in the deep wide expanse of an empty house after dark. They both perk up to it, eyes trained to spot unwelcome shapes in the pitch black, and Lamb’s hand goes instinctively to his gun.
The O.B. holds a hand out. Steady .
"River," he says calmly, directing his voice into the void. "Come out."
A beat passes with no movement, and for a minute Lamb thinks Cartwright is off his rocker. But then, slowly, a pale round face comes into view.
The boy is still a child-- all mussed blonde hair and saucer-wide eyes-- but he clearly won't be for much longer. The pubescent pimple on his chin promises that. He's taller than Lamb would have expected, too, though he's currently hunched over as if trying to hide that fact, his eyes darting up to his grandfather guiltily.
Lamb's hand relaxes away from the pistol at his side.
"What did you hear?" Cartwright asks, his voice deceptively gentle.
"Nothing," the boy says, too quickly.
Cartwright just sighs. "...We'll talk later," he says after a moment, long-suffering as he massages his forehead. "Go back to your room."
The boy-- River-- doesn't obey. Instead, he's staring at Lamb. Something about the way the kid looks at him-- sizing him up, taking note of every detail of his face-- feels uncomfortably familiar, and it makes Lamb scowl. This, of course, only makes the boy more interested in studying him. He tilts his head, his big blue eyes strangely clear and sharp for a child.
"River," Cartwright says, his voice sterner now. "I won't ask again."
The boy disappears with a muttered "Sorry", and Cartwright waits for the footsteps in the hall to fade all the way upstairs before turning back to Lamb. He sighs again. "That child..."
"How old is he now?" Lamb finds himself asking absentmindedly, though he doesn't really care.
"Thirteen."
"He looks so much like her." Once again, Lamb's tongue moves without his knowledge or permission. He bites down on it, glancing back over to watch the O.B.’s reaction-- he doesn’t usually take well to people mentioning his daughter.
To Lamb’s surprise, though, Cartwright gives a faint smile. “I know,” he says. “Acts like her, too.”
“He’s a little terror, then?”
Cartwright chuckles. “You don’t even know the half of it.”
They fall into silence for a moment, both thinking of the boy or his mother or perhaps both. The fireplace spits up a crackle, and Cartwright’s face sobers. In the uneven flickers of light, he looks older than he is, his worry lines deepening and adding the ghost of another twenty years onto him.
“I’m sorry to ask you to do this,” the O.B. says, returning to the topic of their conversation before they were interrupted. “But you know as well as I do that it has to be done. It’s the only thing that can be done.”
In his mind, Lamb disagrees. But he bites his tongue.
Instead, he says: “I just don’t know why I have to be the one to do it.”
Cartwright levels him a look, one of those cut the bullshit looks that Lamb has become unfortunately accustomed to over the years. “You’re our best,” he says simply.
Lamb can’t find a flaw in the statement.
“I’m not entirely convinced of your motives.” Honesty is at least worth a shot. “Why now? Why not eight years ago?”
Cartwright sighs. “He has served a purpose these past years. A leak can be invaluable if you know where it’s sprung.” He sounds bored, as if he’s explained this to Lamb a hundred times before. Which, of course, he has.
“And now?” Lamb asks.
“Hm?”
“He’s, what, outlived his purpose now?” Lamb rolls his eyes. “Or you’re just tired of waiting for the fucker to retire so you can snatch up First Desk?”
“This has absolutely nothing to do with--”
“Bullshit. Come on, David. If you mean it, look me in the eyes when you say it.”
Cartwright doesn’t. Just purses his lips, straightens his tie. “Of course I can’t deny in its entirety that there is some vague connection,” he allows. “How could there not be? But the Union dissolved half a decade ago now, Jackson. Any use Partner served to us as a bug in their ear has long since dried up.”
“Mixing your fucking metaphors, old man,” Lamb mutters, a whiff of bravery seizing him in the midst of this terrible, horrible conversation. “A leak, a bug…”
Cartwright’s face hardens. He’s never had much patience for Lamb’s jokes. “I have to say, Lamb, I’m surprised.” He shits in his seat, somehow managing to look for all the world like a king on a throne while adjusting his jacket. “When you came to me after Caroline, you told me you would be happy to do it. You seemed ready to tear his throat out right there and then.”
Lamb swallows the instinctive lump that comes up in his throat at the name. Caroline Steele, or Agent Lark as Partner knew her. The one death that, however accidental from Lamb’s side of things, seemed to stain his hands with blood more than any other.
“It was fresh,” Lamb says. “I was angry.”
“And now?” Cartwright cocks an eyebrow. When Lamb doesn’t respond, he pushes harder. “Need I remind you, Jackson, what that man is capable of doing to his own agents--” he reaches for the manila file on the end table, sat deceptively plain and still next to their glasses of whisky, and Lamb cringes back despite himself, shutting his eyes.
“No-- God, no, David, Jesus Christ. I don’t need to see the photos again. Fucking hell.”
They play out as afterimages behind his eyelids anyways, defeating the point of refusing the file, but Lamb doesn’t feel like losing his lunch on the O.B.’s fancy carpet tonight. When he opens his eyes again, Cartwright’s put the file back down. Unopened.
Fury ignites, hot and painful, in Lamb’s stomach. The gore wasn’t so much what upset him in those photos-- it was the fact that he could recognize Caroline among the headless bodies, her manicured hands as pristine as ever.
God, he wants to fucking kill that man.
“Fuck,” he says. His own hands have started to shake with rage-- and not at the man in front of him, not at the one threatening to show him the file, but at the one responsible for its contents.
It’s worked. Lamb hates that it’s worked. All these years and Cartwright knows how to play him like a fiddle.
But he’s right. Timing aside, someone’s got to do right by Caroline.
“Fucking fine. Alright. How are we doing this, then?”
.
An hour and another glass of whisky later, Lamb walks out of the Cartwright house, a sinking sour feeling in his gut. He feels perceptibly like he’s just made a deal with the devil.
The devil in question shakes his hand goodbye. “You’re a good man, Jackson,” he promises, but Lamb barely hears it.
The night is quiet, but not still, full of chirping crickets nestled in the idyllic fields surrounding Cartwright’s little cottage. Lamb can’t quite bring himself to look the O.B. in the eyes, so he looks beyond his shoulder at the house-- and catches a glimpse of a little face in one of the first floor windows.
Isobel’s boy ( River Cartwright , his brain supplies against his will, and the name sounds strange and bulky even without ever reaching his tongue, the innocent round River so at odds with the sobering power implied in the Cartwright ) locks eyes with Lamb, one small hand gripping his bedroom’s curtains. When the O.B. sees Lamb looking at something, he turns to look too, and it’s only after his grandfather peers up that River disappears, the light in his room flicking off after a moment as if he can pretend he was never awake at all.
“That boy of yours,” Lamb says, not even sure what point he’s trying to make.
“I know,” Cartwright says anyway. He smiles, genuinely, fondly. “But he’s a good lad.”
Lamb nods. He’s uncomfortable here, somehow more uncomfortable with this clandestine moonlit meeting now that he’s been reminded that someone— a child under Cartwright’s thumb, easily kept quiet, but still someone— has seen it take place. He doesn’t like the way the kid’s been looking at him.
“He won’t—” Lamb stops himself. “He didn’t hear anything too…”
“Who, River?” Cartwright laughs. “No, no. Even if he had, he wouldn’t understand it.”
Lamb nods again. He’s itching for a cigarette.
“I should—” He gestures to his car.
Cartwright nods, and a half second later Lamb internally kicks himself. He doesn’t need that man’s permission to drive the fuck away. Hates that he just asked for it.
“Right.” Lamb pulls the driver’s door open.
“Thursday,” Cartwright reminds him, lightly. It’s the most terrifying fucking thing he’s said all night.
“Yeah.” Lamb swallows hard. “Thursday.”
He drives too fast on the way back into London.