Chapter 14
I don’t recognise the number. I google it (you’d be amazed how often you can find out who owns a phone number that way), but get nothing.
So this is either someone from Davy’s life, or it’s Mr Bowling Ball, or … or it’s something completely unconnected and I’m just in a whole new variety of trouble. None of the options is especially cheering.
I tap: Sorry wrong number mate this is Finn who is this?
Three little dots appear, then vanish.
I stand there for another five minutes, waiting for the typing to resume. But whoever it is has decided not to reply.
I’m first up the next morning, even though it’s heading for 10 a.m.
Downstairs, I make a cup of tea and look at the pathetic investigation we’ve pulled together so far.
We have a list of properties, all owned by different firms nobody’s heard of.
We have two appointments that Davy seems to have kept secret and that we haven’t managed to crack – the first one tomorrow.
And we have a stick-man outline of his life: arguments with his co-founder, a long-dead affair with a secretary, a secret flat in Battersea, an ex-wife.
Maybe his whole existence was pretty bare. In which case, why shoot him?
I also can’t help noticing they opened two …
no, three more bottles of Merlot after I went to bed, and am briefly haunted by the idea that I’m the kind of person who has to leave before everyone else can start enjoying their night.
No, that can’t be. They just go back ages, they’re old friends.
They only go back six months, Al. Thinking about it now, I know almost nothing about any of these people either.
For want of anything better to do, I pull up Charli Harcourt’s Instagram feed again. There’s a new post.
She’s in a walk-in wardrobe, which features in a lot of her stories – in fact, all the stories based in the UK.
She’s So excited to be heading to my beautiful friend Guggy’s newtique/rebirthing centre for its grand unveilage!
Going to treat myself to some #ultraprime #selfcare.
For a week from tomorrow EVERYTHING is at a 15% discount if you use code #GugCharl at checkout.
You can tell she’s older than the average Instagrammer, despite all the tweakments, because she’s not quite been able to let go of writing in full sentences.
I look up the venue on Google Maps. Then, in lieu of waking them all up individually, I go to the hall and shout: ‘Guys! Something relevant!’
Forty minutes later, we’re in a black cab heading to Chelsea. Jonny’s on his laptop, wearing a T-shirt that says 33 REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE above a Black Power fist. Elle is helping Em with her hair. I’m on one of the backward seats, trying not to slide into Em’s lap.
‘So everyone knows what they’re doing?’ Em asks.
Two ‘yeah’s, from Elle and Jonny. Em’s not going to get a third out of me. ‘I still don’t think I should be doing this,’ I say.
‘Nonsense,’ says Em. ‘I won’t get in unless I turn up with a gopher.’
‘I think Elle would make a better gopher.’
‘I’m not a performer,’ says Elle.
‘Have you ever tried?’
‘I was in our school play once. I had a panic attack on the opening night.’
‘Who were you playing?’
‘I was in the front row doing the prompts.’
‘Jonny, then.’
‘No way. I pretended to be a cleaner yesterday and that’s my acting for the year. I was bricking it then and all I had to do was mop.’
The three of them do kind of work together, I have to admit.
Not that I want to join their little gang.
Quite the reverse. I mean, Jonny’s very skilful, and I’m sure it took him years to teach himself all this stuff.
And Em and Elle complement each other nicely.
They seem like a proper unit, though. All of which leaves me on the outside. Again.
I sigh. ‘Any sign of our new friend?’
There’s nobody on the street as we pull over, although our killer – sorry, burden of proof, he may not have killed Davy, he’s merely the guy who wants to kill us – wouldn’t be stupid enough to wait out in the open.
There’s a novelty café across the road, but there’s nobody sitting inside.
It’s easy to tell whether anyone is lurking in there; the entire place is deserted, barring one teenage staffer who’s clearly wondering whether people will turn up for the place’s gimmick, which appears from the sign to be ‘Disrupted Yorkshire Puds’.
‘No sign of Bowling Ball.’
‘Police?’
I look again. The few people passing by are the sort of poshos you get on the King’s Road at 10.30 on a Friday morning – trim, bored women click-clacking along, the occasional traffic warden.
‘We’re good.’
‘All right.’ Em opens the door and pops out. ‘Let’s find the Widow Harcourt.’
Charli’s friend Guggy’s new place is called trust, and it’s mobbed.
I’m a bit surprised the opening is on a weekday morning – do none of these people have jobs?
That’s unfair, I suppose, as my own job isn’t exactly office-based either.
But the bar in the far corner is rammed and the volume is high. It doesn’t exactly scream ‘wellness’.
trust is … all right, I was going to say ‘ridiculous’, and that’s not fair, because I have no idea by what standards these places are judged.
But it’s certainly a lot. The door from the street opens into the shop bit, the ‘newtique’.
At the back of the room there’s a door that must lead to the rebirthing/tweakment rooms, with the words trust your self in lime neon above it.
The newtique is the sort of place where an entire table is devoted to a small black clutch bag, and if you turn over a price label it just reads ‘no’.
The whole enterprise is in a converted King’s Road townhouse which clearly has no idea what’s hit it.
We had prepared an elaborate story for how to get in, but I think Em’s a bit disappointed when we realise nobody is checking names on the door.
That would be a bit déclassé – the guests at these parties function as white blood cells, which can simply tell when someone’s not meant to be there.
I may be a born liar, but even I find myself uncomfortable around people who are this confident.
Actually, I’m wrong. There is a clipboard, the unmistakable spoor of some poor twenty-year-old intern, but it has been abandoned. Em picks it up, ticks off two random names, and we head into the party.
I’ve decided to lean back and let Em run this.
And I’m annoyed to find out she does exactly what I would have done.
She is about to ace Rule 19: Lean in to whatever you think you should avoid.
If you’re trying to get in somewhere and the neighbours have just spotted you, don’t skulk, go and introduce yourself.
Stick your head into the lion’s mouth, and if you’re holding a dental mirror it will obediently say ‘aah’.
In short: allay suspicion by courting it, and Em is doing her bit by sweeping the room for our hostess.
After a minute she murmurs to me, ‘Bingo.’
‘Guggy’ is the place’s owner. I looked her up after seeing Charli’s post, and as far as I can tell, she’s a kind of ultra-blue-blood fashionista, the kind of old-school Cruella who used to be big in the nineties and whose tribe are now clinging to shreds of their former terrain after the rest of the world realised the money was good and muscled in, armed with confidence and cocaine.
Em approaches all six foot two of her and shouts up: ‘Guggy! My God, it’s been too long.
Tiff, remember? I was on the travel desk at Snatch magazine.
Polly mentioned it, and then I heard Adrienne was coming and I just couldn’t resist. I hope you don’t mind?
’ I should have guessed after her performance at Davy’s flat yesterday, but I had no idea how good Em would be at this.
Rule 15: Don’t have one reference, have three.
‘Who’s this?’ She caresses the upper arm of Guggy’s dress.
‘It’s Alok.’
‘Love Alok. I haven’t seen him for ages.’
‘Well, he died two years ago. This is from his Posthumous collection.’
Em doesn’t flinch. ‘Mm. Too awful.’
‘And who’s this?’ Guggy is looking at me. I am suddenly aware how shabby I appear compared with most of the other men present.
‘This is Dom. Well, he’s more of a sub, actually.
’ Em gives a little musical laugh. ‘My assistant. Dom, coat.’ She gestures to her shoulders, and I take her coat, while she pays me – and this is exactly how she should behave – no attention whatsoever.
Having worked out my status here (zero), Guggy disregards me too, meaning I’m free to look around as Em continues.
‘Now. I need to know. Have you seen Charli Harcourt?’
‘She’s in there somewhere.’ Guggy sweeps a claw across the crowd.
‘So awful about her husband. Just tragic.’
‘Ex-husband. But yes. Terrible. And she hates wearing black.’
‘She’s not doing that, is she? I mean … black? For an ex?’
‘Oh, they still saw a lot of each other. That’s co-parenting for you. She was despairing of him the other week. Said he was like a wardrobe that’s too ugly to look at but too big to get out of the house.’ Interesting. ‘Still, it was bound to happen one day.’
Em leans in. ‘Really? Why’s that?’
‘Well, he was involved in all that … Ricca, you angel!’ Guggy breaks off as another guest – a woman who appears to be half puma – arrives behind us. ‘Get yourself a drink. And buy something!’
We melt into the crowd, and Em murmurs: ‘Well done, Dom. Mind that coat.’ I’m both impressed and annoyed at how impressed I am. What the hell was Davy involved in? We won’t get another chance to chat to Guggy now.
As we go, I try to take a little bit from the snatches of conversation all around me:
‘The guys in R&D keep telling us skiing as an industry is effectively defunct due to this climate nonsense, so we’re diversifying to beachwear. No, I know it’s all a hoax, but …’