Joe Country

as with any mystery, you have to address the four Fs.” No one dared ask. “Who the fuck, what the fuck, where the fuck and why the fuck,” Lamb continued

The thing about somebody else's car was, it was automatically an all-terrain vehicle.

It turned out that in the governance of a nation’s security, many absurd situations had to be worked around: a toxic clown in the Foreign Office [Boris Johnson], a state visit by a narcissistic bed-wetter [Trump], the tendency of the electorate to 'jump off' the occasional cliff [Brexit].

Antibiotics’ll clear it up.’ ‘They tend not to work with drink taken.’ ‘They’re drugs, they’re not fucking Irishmen.

it’d be like choosing between Jeremy Clarkson and Piers Morgan in a bare-knuckle death match. There ought to be a way both could lose.

MARTIN KREUTZMER LIKED TO read the Guardian, because it kept him in touch with that strain of self-lacerating smugness which hoped to inherit the earth, but would have no clue what to do with it.

Her life was not what she might have wanted it to be, but that was no reason for destroying what it was.

...he couldn’t help wondering how it had felt: refugees turning up from concentration camps, from a broken Europe, to find this bleak estate; its squat huts their new homes. There’d been watch towers and barbed wire fences. It can’t have looked like freedom. But freedom was measured, he supposed, by what you were leaving behind.

This is what memory is: an abiding awareness that some things have vanished. And this is what consciousness is: the knowledge that more absences will come.

the potential for an unhappy ending being a recognised tax on female beauty.

He raised a hand to forestall her response. ‘Don’t bother denying it. We both know the PM’s a tormented creature [Theresa May]. Like one of those soft toys lorry drivers fix to their radiator grilles.That expression she wears, it’s terror at all the oncoming vehicles.

Catherine closed her eyes and saw it again: [Charles] Partner’s body in the bathtub; the contents of his head a red mess on the porcelain. A pulpy mixture, like trodden grapes. Some memories seared themselves on your mind, like a shadow on a wall after a nuclear flash.

River would suggest they [Lamb, Taverner] get a room, provided the room was soundproofed, locked, and had an alligator in it.

it’s always sad when legends die. It underlines the fact that shit like death can happen to anyone.

Perhaps it was true what they said about age: that in its darker corners lurk the monsters of our own making.

Because what we’ve got ourselves here is a mystery, and as with any mystery, you have to address the four Fs.” No one dared ask. “Who the fuck, what the fuck, where the fuck and why the fuck,

It just hid behind closed doors, like Trump in a tantrum. So

between endless examples of fat bastardy, there was the odd moment of slick trickery too.

That was what life was: you worked, sometimes you couldn't sleep, and your future was already being shaped. Until something crashed into it and knocked everything out of true.

The thought processes of a man who'd relax with his shoes off, his coat on, were foreign territory to Lech.Then again, the thought processes of Jackson Lamb, as revealed by their subsequent conversation, were probaby terra incognita to the psychiatric profession as a whole.

Deniability was next to godliness in Westminster's corridors, and godliness itself second only to an unassailable majority.

Every footfall was helping return the city's streets to their unadorned state, while yesterday's snowflakes learned the lesson London offers to all who settle there: that while all are unique, most appear identical, both before and after being trodden upon.

Lamb broke wind loudly. Nobody moved. “Did I misfart? That’s your signal to leave.

Multi-task? He couldn’t charge his phone while having a dump.

The fields all around were smooth plains, and the trees against the morning skyline looked like Christmas decorations. Snow, though. Soft and fluffy on the outside, but ruthless as a shark. It was the fucking Disney Corp by other means.

Given the run of the hub, they’d pinpoint his whereabouts in hours, but with the resources at their disposal River might as well be on Slough House’s roof, using a kitchen roll holder as a telescope.

All his life, River had heard tales from the old man’s past, the failures, the victories, the stalemates, and he had learned to read between the lines enough to tell which was which. But no longer. The scraps he heard now were remnants from a shot memory; tattered flags blown by conflicting winds.You’d need a map to know which side the old man had been on. Which might have been the last secret he needed to impart to his grandson; that in the end, all lines blurred. That no day had firm borders.

The bed the O.B. would never leave was a clinical, robust device, with upright panels to prevent him from rolling off, and various machines monitoring his progress. On one, his pulse echoed, a signal tapped out from a wavering source. A last border crossing, thought River. His grandfather was entering joe country.

Maybe they think I’m collecting the set.’ He counted off on his fingers. ‘Fuck-ups, basket-cases, druggies and drunks. Now a kiddy-porn peeper. When I’ve got a dog-botherer, I win a case of cutlery.