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“The men holding her have . . . poor impulse control.”
“Impulse control,” River repeated.
“Poor impulse control, yes. I’d say about eighty minutes short of going critical, in fact. If you wanted to put a figure on it.”
River reached out and smoothed down the man’s lapels where his two-fisted grip had crumpled them. “You might want to remember this later,” he said. “That you once found all this funny.”
“Can’t wait. Meanwhile, you have an errand to run. And,” and he looked at his watch, “seventy-nine minutes before those men I mentioned start loosening their belts. Do you want to waste any more of them threatening me?” No, River did not.
River himself had that problem, poor impulse control, and he broke into Regent's Park, lying via improv the way he had in training, under torture, trying to avoid thinking about Catherine Standish at all. This was just an op, River told himself, his own belt tight around the waist as he ran, until River was in plastic cuffs and taken from Molly's domain to an interrogation room.
The minutes he’d been counting down were long gone, and their deadline history. These men have poor impulse control... Soon they’ll be loosening their belts. He watched his reflected hands curl into fists. He’d made more than one poor choice this morning. Principally, he should have stayed on the bridge and dropped the man off it. Whatever happened to Catherine would have happened anyway, but at least he’d have wiped the smirk off that chancer’s face. River half hoped lessening their belts was euphemistic for murder rather than the other option, as Catherine would be mourned by all of Slough Hoise in death, even Ho, but she wouldn't be greeted with much other than pity if the loosened belts were literal. If she was an old woman condemned to what many kidnapped women discover their kidnappers want from them, when the blackmail promised failed to materialize. The Prime Minister's schoolboy nickname, what had River been thinking? Jackson Lamb in a playful mood? Had he wanted to end up here?
Nick Duffy had loosened his belt. Taken it off. Used it against River Cartwright as the man tried to explain why he had been where he had been, what he had been trying to do, why he - River Cartwright had a high pain tolerance, as most Service did, but he still struggled to have words exit his mouth while simultaneously being beaten by a leather belt. River hoped, unable to know, as a current captive to another system, Catherine was physically safer than he was. Then again, a loosened belt as an attack against an elderly woman was an entirely different form of violence than what River was enduring. River hoped. Then again, the kidnappers could have beaten Catherine to death for all River knew. He should have shown Lamb his phone. River's vision wavered again, eyes tearing from pain. He had no more thoughts of other suffering elsewhere, his world confined again to this one interrogation room.