“So you’ve got a journo with far-right sympathies on the earie for an op against the far right. Who’s already riled by having his extremist leanings exposed, and the Service had a hand in that, right? No wonder you wanted to find out how much he knew before kicking your ball into touch. What did his files show?”
“Sod all. Pi, to about half a million places. And you thought we were paranoid.”
Lamb just thought he was careful. What Hobden had done, he’d have done too, the way a tourist carries a dummy wallet: a couple of bucks for the local hoods, with the plastic and the travellers’ cheques folded into a sock.
“So you sent Moody to what, double check? Lift his hard drive?” He paused a beat. “He was carrying a gun.”
“For Christ’s sake, Lamb, you think I authorized that?”
“At this point, I’m beyond surprising.”
She said, “He was supposed to take the laptop. He was supposed to make it look like a junkie theft.”
“We’ll add that to Moody’s list of career successes, then.”
Without warning, he spat noisily. Then said, “So now Sid Baker’s on a table, having a bullet removed from her head. As for Moody, even he must have realized things were beyond screwed. So he tried to tidy up, which involved removing the bug he’d planted in my office. And trod on his dick in the dark, like you said.”
“Was he alone at the time?”
“We’re all alone in the end, don’t you think? Those final moments?” Jackson Lamb flicked the dying stub of his cigarette into the dark canal. “Either way, it’s over. For him and for you. For this whole operation.”
— Slow Horses (Mick Herron), Loc. 3495–510
‘Trod on his dick in the dark’ my ass!