Chapter 18
It’s the next morning. I spent half the night wondering if I should knock on Em’s door, the other half wondering if she was going to knock on mine. In the end, nobody knocked on anybody’s door. I look terrible. When she comes downstairs to join the rest of us, she looks completely fresh.
Jonny’s cooking again this morning, a kind of porridge-with-everything. I think he’s reversed his T-shirt since last night but I couldn’t say for sure.
‘Morning all,’ Em says. ‘What’s on the agenda today?’
‘Oh, you know, more dodging the police, avoiding thugs who want to kill us, all of that. The usual. Although Davy’s first appointment is at two fifteen and we have no idea who it’s with, where it’s supposed to be, or what’s so important about it, so I imagine we ought to spend a bit of time on that.
’ I’m trying to meet Em’s eye, to suss out what she’s thinking, but she’s acting like she didn’t kiss me, like nothing happened at all, and she’s so good at it that I almost start to doubt myself.
‘215 Feathers,’ she says. ‘Feathers.’
‘By now we’ve tried everywhere called “Feathers” in a ten-mile radius of here and a twenty-mile radius of Bridling,’ I say.
‘Nobody’s heard of Davy Harcourt, nobody took a booking from him.
So either he booked under an assumed name, in which case we’re stuffed, or Feathers is his little joke, and we can’t work it out because we didn’t know him, in which case we’re equally stuffed. ’
‘Feathers,’ Elle says. ‘Can I use your computer for Google Maps, Jonny?’
Jonny waves an oaty hand. ‘Help yourself. I’ve added you to the face recognition. Don’t use any browsers you don’t recognise. But the porridge is almost ready, I can’t keep it fluid much longer, so …’
Elle opens Jonny’s laptop up and taps away.
‘Feathers,’ says Em. ‘Maybe it’s an aviary.’
‘An aviary.’
‘London Zoo has an aviary. Maybe he’s supposed to be meeting whoever it is there.’
Elle interrupts us. ‘Guys. “Down” is another word for feathers, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I remembered because of “eiderdown”.’
‘Yes, well done. So?’
‘So if there was a street near Davy’s office called, say, Down Lane …’
Em and I scramble to the laptop. I get there first. There, opposite Davy’s cul-de-sac, is a tiny little spur of an alley, almost unnoticeable. But when you zoom right up on it, two little words appear. Down Lane. You could knock me down with 215 feathers.
‘Is there anywhere Davy might meet someone?’
‘There’s, let’s see … a shipbroker’s, probably not that. A few offices, just insurers and things. Hang on.’ Elle turns Street View on and sits back. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything here.’
‘Guys, the porridge really is—’
Em interrupts Jonny. ‘Wait. Go back.’ Elle swivels the virtual viewfinder round – God bless the Google Street View team for bothering to stop off at the shortest street in London – and Em says, ‘There. What’s that?’
‘It looks like the top of a staircase.’
‘And at the bottom?’
There’s a brass plate. You can’t read it from here, but Em’s already looking on a different screen. ‘That’s it. It’s a restaurant. Pretty well-hidden one, too. St Francis.’
‘Maybe he ate there?’ says Elle.
‘Got to be worth a try,’ I say.
‘They don’t open until noon,’ says Em.
‘Jonny can hack in, can’t he?’
‘I’ll have a crack,’ says Jonny. ‘But would it kill you to pause while I serve up the—’
‘No, love,’ Elle says. ‘You can’t book online. They don’t have a website. Gosh, they like making it difficult.’
‘Maybe when your whole clientele come from within two hundred metres, you don’t need a website,’ I say.
‘Someone must know if he ate there,’ says Em. ‘Think of who that would be, Al.’
‘Not Charli or Lulu. This looks like it’s his work restaurant. If it even is the place.’
‘So who would know, then?’
I’ve got it. ‘Give me the general number of Harcourt and Wallace.’
Thirty seconds later, Davy’s office phone is picked up by – yes – Mrs P. I try not to sound too relieved. ‘Hello? It’s Ted here, Davy’s friend from Bridling. I hope you remember me?’
‘I do,’ says Mrs P. ‘Although I know you’re not who you say you are.’
‘I … Sorry?’ Shit. Someone must have blabbed. Or did the police recognise me after we crossed paths on my way out?
‘You told Mr Wallace you were from a reputation management firm.’ Her tone is frosty.
‘I …’ The thing to do in these cases is to be honest, by which I mean, as honest as your circumstances permit you to be.
Regrettably, mine permit almost no honesty whatsoever.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs P. I had to lie to him to get into the room.
He wouldn’t have listened to a random friend of Mr Harcourt’s from Bridling. Did he find out?’
‘Almost immediately,’ she says. But she sounds a little warmer. So much for Jonny’s flawless web design. ‘He phoned his own reputation manager, who said he’d never heard of … what was it, Gillette Marx?’
‘Rillette. But yes. I wasn’t telling him the truth, Mrs P. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she says, and suddenly she’s sounding rather flirtatious. First Em last night and now her. Is imminent arrest on suspicion of murder a powerful aphrodisiac? Whatever it is, it’s working. ‘Just as long as you’re telling me the truth.’
‘I am, Mrs P. But I do need to know one or two things from you. Did Mr Harcourt ever eat at St Francis on Down Lane?’
‘Of course.’ She sounds insulted at the suggestion he might not have. ‘It was his home from home. He’d have had breakfast there if they did it.’
‘You don’t know if he had any bookings coming up, do you?’
‘He made all his bookings through me, dear. He’d just tell me when he needed to eat there and I’d make the call.
Although he was there so often they had a special table for him.
“Booth three,” they’d say, whenever I called.
“Booth three is available for Mr Harcourt whenever he needs it.” He took me for Christmas every year. It’s very chic in there.’
‘Is there a chance he’d have booked himself?’
‘He’d hardly have done that. I don’t think you realise quite how clueless David was, with computers and so on.
He never had the time. Even with his mobile phone I had to take out a contract in his name for him, the silly old bear.
They still deliver me the itemised bills each month.
Now, is there anything else I can help you with? ’
‘There is one thing, actually,’ I say, slowly, and I mouth the word ledger at Elle and Em.
It turns out that ‘ledger’ is an unbelievably difficult word to mouth clearly, so I end up havering while I get up and look around the room for it.
There it is. ‘Do you recognise any of these addresses? Were they maybe properties Mr Harcourt would have sold?’ I reel off a few of the names.
‘This would have been several years ago now.’
‘No, I don’t think I … Wait. Say them again.’
‘10 Leinster Avenue. 14 Manfred Court. 27 Jupiter Gardens …’
‘Yes. That was it. 14 Manfred Court. Beautiful mews house in Chelsea. I’ve always wanted to live in a mews, that’s why I remember it. Do you know Mews of the World? Industry magazine.’
‘Right. Yes. But … did Mr Harcourt sell it?’
‘No. It came to us for a pitch, and David went along, but we didn’t get the job.
He was furious at losing it because he knew how much it was worth.
It went to another firm in the end, I don’t know which one.
We don’t keep track of that. Leinster Avenue rings a bell for the same reason.
There was a big row with Mr Wallace over that.
’ It’s always David, I notice, but Mr Wallace.
She couldn’t be much clearer whose side she’s on.
‘So Mr Harcourt definitely didn’t sell those two?’
‘That’s right. In fact, let me check …’ Clack-clack-clack. ‘Nor any of the others. None of them are coming up on the system, dear. Which means that none of them was ever officially a Harcourt and Wallace sale.’
‘Can you think of a reason he might have written the address down?’
‘Maybe he was annoyed at missing out. Or maybe he wrote it before he got the brief.’
‘Thank you, Mrs P. Oh, one last thing.’
‘Go on.’
‘Did Mr Harcourt know anyone who was about six foot five, totally bald, and rather unpleasant-looking? Maybe someone from the firm?’
‘We tend to hire more carefully than that.’
‘Might someone like that work for Mr Wallace?’
‘I don’t think so. He’s quite unpleasant enough on his own. And as for David, there was nobody in his life like that, as far as I know. Knew.’
Oh, Mrs P. Davy clearly had a rather busier life than met the eye, hence him currently lying in a police morgue somewhere. ‘Thank you again. Really.’
‘Good luck with your project, dear. And,’ here her voice lowers, ‘be extremely cautious if you come to see Mr Wallace again.’ Then there’s a click, and the line goes dead.
I wonder why Mrs P is so willing to share the details of Davy’s life. She made that last call rather easy. Is it just because she thinks she’s the only one in that place who really knew and loved him?
She might be right about that. She certainly seems to hate Wallace, for reasons unknown.
I have a horrible feeling I’ll have to see Wallace again before the end of this, and I don’t like the prospect.
When I met him, he seemed somehow like a polite version of the bowling-ball thug. Maybe they’re cousins.
‘So what now?’ says Em.
‘We have a lunch booking,’ I say. ‘215, St Francis, on Down Lane.’
‘No,’ says Jonny, who is standing before four bowls of almost totally cemented porridge. ‘Now we have breakfast.’