. . Being in Regent’s Park always gave River a hollow feeling; the same you might get on stepping inside the marital home once the divorce had come through. Well, he said “always.” There’d been a time when that might have been the right word, early in his career, when it was still a “career”; before he’d become persona non grata, which was Latin for slow horse. Since then, he’d been inside its precincts, what, twice? On one of those occasions, summoned by Spider Webb. That had been Spider rubbing it in; letting River know he might as well be in Siberia. Well, Siberia might as well be where Spider was now: all those endless white spaces, bare of life. Was that what being in a coma was like? River hoped never to find out. At the desk he showed his Service card, and said he was there to see Diana Taverner. An all-or-nothing play; one she’d go for, he hoped, if only to find out what he thought he was doing, turning up at head office—she might let him in just to have him beaten up.
