Dead Lions

She started drawing up a mental list of everyone she didn’t trust, and had to stop immediately. She didn’t have all day.

all the work’s done low on the food chain. Everyone else just has meetings.

Having a cat is one small step from having two cats, and to be a single woman within a syllable of fifty in possession of two cats is tantamount to declaring life over.

We don’t like being out of the loop.” “You’re always out of the loop. The loop’s miles away. Nearest you’ll get to being in the loop is when they make a documentary about it and show it on the History Channel. I thought you were aware of that.

They say the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to make people stop believing in him,

On a rock in the middle of the lake, a pelican stretched its wings. It was like watching a golf umbrella do aerobics.

Lamb stood, gazed at the nearest tree as if in sudden awe of nature, lifted a heel from the ground and farted. "Sign of a good curry," he said, "Sometimes they just bubble about inside you for ages." "I keep meaning to ask why you have never married," River said.

Arkady Pashkin said “Why aren’t we moving?” Middle of the city, traffic in front, traffic behind, a big sign saying roadworks ahead, and a stop light clearly visible through the windscreen. So why aren’t we moving, Lousia wondered. You had to be rich to ask.

Jackson Lamb had been legend in his day, they said, but they said that about Robert de Niro.

He’d kill me. And he could do it, too. He’s killed people before.” “That’s what he wants you to think,” River said. “You’re saying he hasn’t?” “I’m saying he’s not allowed to kill staff. Health and safety.

Don’t knock cipher clerks,” Katinsky told him. “Like any other branch of the Civil Service, all the work’s done low on the food chain. Everyone else just has meetings.

Last winter, she’d walked this path with Min, heading for the Christmas Fair--there’d been a ferris wheel and skating, mulled wine, minced pies. At an air-rifle booth, Min had missed the target five times in a row. “Cover”, he’d said. “Don’t want everyone knowing I’m a trained sharpshooter.

But there was nothing, and never would be. Learning that was one thing. Living with it, another entirely. Careful

If you carried on looking like you were holding it all together, pretty soon you were holding it all together.

It was an ancient thing, a Nokia, black-and-grey, with about as many functions as a bottle opener. You could no more take a photo with it than send an e-mail with a stapler.

This isn’t an Agatha Christie.” “I don’t care if it’s a Dan Brown.

but he wasn’t fooling anyone: he was a suit, and if you cut him open he’d bleed in pinstripes.

Up to you, Nick. I haven’t fucked up anyone’s career in months. It’s fun, but the paperwork’s shocking.

Look, Roddy.” This was said kindly. “All that crap I lay on you? The name-calling? The threats?” “It’s okay,” Ho said. “I know you don’t mean it.” “I mean every bloody word, my son. But it will all seem trivial compared to what’ll happen if you don’t start making sense sharpish. Capisce?

When there’s something I don’t want to be bothered by, I like to know what it is first. So I can be sure it’s not something I’d rather be bothered by.

Hope you've had your jabs,' said Lamb. 'You're going to Gloucestershire.

I Hope you don't think I'm insulting you,' Lamb said kindly, 'I-' 'Because when that happens you'll know all about it, you slanty-eyed twat.

When he’d finished, he produced an unbranded packet of cigarettes: stubby, filterless, lethal. A health warning would have been like subtitles on a porn film. Utterly beside the point.

It’s a phrase, black swan,” she said. “Means a totally unexpected event with a big impact. But one that seems predictable afterwards, with the benefit of hindsight.

being to let sleeping spooks lie. Lying, after all, is what spooks do best.

Something off; like that gap between the use-by date, and the moment the milk turns.

You could no more take a photo with it than send an e-mail with a stapler.

but this was what happened: you turned into you mother, unless you turned into your father. That, anyway, was what happened if you let life smooth you down, plane away the edges that made you different.

He’d been said to resemble Timothy Spall, with worse teeth.