Chapter 19
The rest of the morning is a blur of inactivity.
There’s little to do for four hours, and I’m a bit cagey about going out onto the street without good reason.
As we clear up the breakfast things, I spend a little while attempting to flirt with Em, but I’m clearly out of practice, because everything I think of saying would come out either too boring or arrestably lecherous.
This is my punishment for being single for eight years, barring the odd drunken clinch.
The others revert to type. Jonny plots all the properties in Davy’s book on a home-built web map, which he’s assured us is ‘operationally secure’, and creates a complicated spreadsheet with all their details to see if any patterns sing out.
Elle does a bit of background reading about Davy’s life, once Jonny’s boosted her over all the newspaper paywalls, because she thinks the psychological angle is bound to yield results and because she wants to ‘get to know him a bit better’.
Em ostentatiously lies back, puts her copy of Emma on her chest and her hand behinds her head, and naps.
And me? I stare at my phone, trying to work out every possible angle of approach to St Francis, every possible risk, and every way this late lunch could end up with me being arrested, captured or knocked off.
This is the sort of preparatory work that distinguishes a merely good interloper from a great one.
From time to time, I look at Em, sleeping without a care in the world, and feel faintly annoyed that she seems to be just as good at this stuff as me without putting in half the effort.
Eventually, I snap and suggest a walk in the garden to the room at large.
‘No,’ says Jonny. ‘Spring pollen is worse than white asbestos.’
‘That would be lovely,’ says Elle. ‘Just let me finish these few articles.’
‘Yeah, OK.’ I didn’t think Em was awake, but she was clearly just resting her eyes, because she’s already sitting upright and stretching.
The garden at Balfour Villas is how you can tell the owners are properly posh.
Down the green-slimed steps from the house there’s a broad but shallow lawn, and then a few paths lead off into the scrubby undergrowth.
Somewhere in there is a fountain with a naked bronze statuette, which contains such stagnant water that even London’s birds – not hygiene sticklers – don’t wash in it any more.
In other words, it’s the garden equivalent of the genuine aristos who go everywhere in the same twenty-year-old coat and the same battered Land Rover, and who would treat the suggestion of home renovation as an appalling breach of etiquette.
Anyone even slightly middle class would never dream of letting such a beautiful garden get this bad.
But that’s how you can tell people of true quality.
They let things go to the dogs and everyone else still tells them they’re marvellous.
My pet theory is that that’s why some people like rewilding so much: they can pretend to be scruffy poshos.
Em and I walk gingerly down the deathtrap steps, holding the rusted rail, and then take one of the wooded paths.
‘So …’
‘So.’ Em’s not giving me anything here.
‘Who do you think killed Davy?’
‘Obviously, Bowling Ball is the prime suspect. But even if it was him, we don’t know why. Or who ordered him to pull the trigger.’
‘Would you open your front door to a man who looked that threatening?’
‘No. But Davy had a gun. Maybe he didn’t realise Bowling Ball was armed too. Or maybe they knew each other. Or maybe it wasn’t him at the door at all. Maybe the person at the door was the business partner he’d fallen out with.’
I remember something. ‘Or his chief solicitor.’
‘Who?’
I describe the solicitor at Davy’s firm, the one who looked so nervous when I was sitting next to his mentee, Sami. Tench, was that his name?
‘It’s to do with the properties in that ledger of his,’ Em says. ‘You’ll have to go back to his office sometime, you know.’
‘I suppose so.’ I kick moodily at a bramble which is getting ideas above its station.
‘You still thinking of leaving us for Zeebrugge or wherever?’ She says it casually, without looking at me.
‘Not imminently.’
‘What changed your mind?’
‘It wasn’t … whatever this is, I’d like to make that clear.’
‘Of course.’ She stops walking, so I do too, and swing round to face her.
This would be a terrible place for anything romantic.
There are brambles and roots underfoot and a heavy aroma of vegetable decay in the air.
But in that moment I can think of nothing else but her.
Ridiculous. It’s not the way she looks, or not just that.
It’s everything about her. My main thought is of the look on her face when we were in Davy’s city flat, and Bowling Ball had just caught up with us.
She was in total, absolute control of the situation.
She still is, says a little voice, and I turn and keep walking. She follows.
‘I’m not leaving because you guys are clearly going to keep investigating this, and the more you’re left to muff it up, the likelier it is I’ll get caught. OK?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to tread on your toes,’ she says. ‘Not the best infiltrator in the business.’
‘Interloper.’
‘Sure.’
And with me more frustrated than before, and Em more amused, we swing back round to the house and start preparing for a late, expensive lunch.
At ten past two, the four of us are in the same branch of Pret we visited before I went to Davy’s office, and Em and I are about to head to St Francis. I do wonder what amazing, passionate, criminal, life-saving schemes are planned and executed from Prets all over the country each day.
Em has procured a silky dress from somewhere; I’ve just gone for a smart shirt, casual jacket and jeans, plus a pair of discreet dark trainers in case we have to run.
‘Ready?’ asks Elle.
‘Think so,’ I say.
‘Don’t put your arms above your head,’ Jonny tells Em. ‘It’ll pull the wire out of place and I won’t hear anything.’
‘What if someone has me at gunpoint?’
‘Try to surrender verbally. Ideally don’t move anything above your elbows.’
As we approach the restaurant, I see the sign – a stained, worn picture of St Francis himself, his outstretched arms covered in birds.
He looks like one of those tourists in St James’s Park who take genuine pleasure in feeding the pigeons and who are clearly either very unwell or soon will be.
But now I see why Davy wrote Feathers as his private code for this place.
‘Ready?’
‘Can’t wait,’ Em says. ‘Which table are we heading for again?’
‘Booth three.’
As we head down the stairs, it does feel uncomfortably like we’re walking into a trap. You could block the steep iron stairwell with one medium-sized special constable. And although I’ve done my homework on the exits, it was on an old map. Hope they haven’t moved things around.
The place itself is not just chichi, it’s old-money posh.
I’ve eaten in some nice places in my time – when you save so much money on rent, you do find yourself splashing out in other ways – but this place feels generationally expensive.
It’s not old-fashioned, though; it’s definitely had some discreet work done over the decades.
It’s also incredibly dark. You can hardly see the clientele, and the staff are moving between faint pools of light as if they’ve memorised all the routes. Even at the front, in the relative light from the stairwell, I can’t tell the sex of the person standing behind the mahogany lectern.
‘Good afternoon, sir, madam,’ says a fruity Mitteleuropean baritone voice. ‘Welcome to St Francis. Your reservation?’
I can see him a little clearer now. He must be nearly seventy, and what remains of his dark hair is slicked austerely back.
There are deep grooves running from his nose to the corners of his mouth.
He sounds Swiss, Austrian maybe, and it only takes one look to know he is a restaurant-industry lifer, the kind of pro from somewhere they take hospitality seriously.
I would be willing to bet he’s been working here as long as I’ve been alive, scrambling up the truffle-oiled pole all the way from the potboy’s kennel to the ma?tre d’s eyrie.
‘We’re joining an existing table,’ says Em. ‘Mr Harcourt’s party.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he says, unruffled. ‘You are honouring his appointment, I assume?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So sad,’ he murmurs. ‘Thirty years I have known Mr Harcourt.’
‘How awful,’ Em says. ‘Our condolences … Gustave.’ She leans forward and gently brushes her fingers over the brass name-plate on his desk.
He bows his head. ‘You are family?’
‘Business associates,’ she explains. ‘We are representing his interests today.’
Gustave nods. ‘Your dining companion is here already. I will have another place laid at table.’ And then he moves closer and murmurs something in Em’s ear, while I stand there, lemon-ish.
‘That’s fine,’ she replies. She takes one of the restaurant’s cards from the little stand on Gustave’s booth, and grabs the biro there too.
‘This way.’ He picks up two menus and glides into the gloom of the restaurant. Em begins to follow him.
‘What did he say to you?’
‘Tell you later.’ She loves to tease, Em.
Gustave pauses to let a waiter glide across his path, moving like a barracuda through the darkness. Then he leads us on to the third booth on the left, where a figure is sitting. The figure stands as we approach.
‘Sir. Madam,’ Gustave says, and withdraws.
The woman standing in the booth is a few years older than I am, maybe mid-thirties.
She’s plainly dressed considering how fancy this place is, in a simple pearl shirt and high-waisted black trousers.
Her hair is blonde and her expression illegible.
She could be about to pull out a bazooka or tell us we’ve won the lottery, and I wouldn’t be surprised by either.
‘Have a seat.’
Normal voice. She’s not from London – she sounds a bit Scottish, but if so, she’s been down south a long time.
We sit. There’s room for all three of us on the round banquette. I let Em in first, partly from manners and partly because I might need easy access to the exit. Em, in turn, gives me a look to communicate that she’s well aware why I’m doing it.
There is a temporary pause while a young waiter – most austere, he could be Gustave’s son – arrives and lays a third place.
There is a bit of a rigmarole with water glasses, wine glasses, the ceremonial folding of a new napkin.
Everyone keeps quiet for this bit. Meanwhile, I’m looking around in the gloom, trying to see who else is here.
I can’t see light reflecting off a shiny domed head, so I’m going to assume we haven’t kept an appointment with Mr Bowling Ball by mistake.
Eventually the waiter leaves, and the woman opposite us speaks.
‘My name’s Kate. Who are you?’
‘I’m Josephine,’ says Em, ‘and this is Al.’ So annoying. I know it’s not my real name, but I wish she’d make an effort.
‘Hello, Josephine and Al,’ says Kate. ‘Neither of you is David Harcourt.’
‘Sorry about that,’ says Em. ‘But we’re friends of his.’
‘I see. Do you want to explain what’s going on?’
‘We think we should ascertain who you are first,’ I say. ‘If you don’t mind.’
‘Certainly,’ she says, and flips her wallet open onto the table. ‘My name is Kate McAdams, I’m with the National Crime Agency, and I’m here to see Mr Harcourt for a personal chat. But he’s dead, of course. As I suspect you both know.’ She does not smile.
So now we really are in trouble.