Chapter 21
I don’t know much about CCTV, but I expect every station has it.
Or every carriage? Either way, I feel distinctly observed.
I get off at the next stop, then spend an hour or so walking the quietest streets I can find.
I cross a few parks, which are great for shaking cameras, and head into a couple of department stores I know, which will a) sell me clothes to change into, and which b) have more than one exit, also handy.
(If your local department store is closing down, fight to keep it open. Think of the fugitives.)
I can’t help noticing I’m running short on cash, though. The wedge I took out a few days ago is crumbling. At least I didn’t pay at the restaurant.
After two and a half hours of walking, I’m back at Balfour Villas. It’s an unhappy Al who trudges through the decaying front garden and up the steps.
Elle answers at my knock, and looks worried sick.
‘Oh, at last. How did it go?’
‘Poorly.’ I walk past her into the hall, and she shuts the door behind me.
‘Wait. Where’s Em?’
I turn. ‘She’s not back yet?’
Elle shakes her head.
You see, this is why you shouldn’t get involved with people. The sheer terror when they don’t show up is more trouble than it’s worth.
We’ve made about twelve cups of tea since I got back, and watched them cool, and then Elle has thrown away the old teas and asked if anyone would like a new one, and Jonny’s forcibly sat her down and gone and made new ones for us all to sit and watch cool. Nobody’s eaten anything.
It’s close to 8 p.m. now. Elle and Jonny had already waited three hours when I got back – initially in the café, then they realised something must have gone awry and came home to Balfour Villas.
Elle’s spent the rest of the day obsessively sorting the house out as a displacement activity, and Jonny has been re-categorising and listing every house in Davy’s ledger.
The weather has turned grim. I hope Em’s not out in it.
As for me, I’m wondering how we could have been so stupid as just to turn up somewhere again. It worked for days in a row – just turning up at Davy’s office, at Guggy’s boutique, to see Lulu – but our luck was bound to run out eventually.
And then … there’s a knock at the door.
Elle’s up first. ‘Thank God.’
‘Wait.’ I run to the bay window that overlooks the front door. It’s her. ‘OK, open up.’
She’s wearing a grubby jumper and jeans instead of the dress I saw her in last, her hair’s a mess, and she’s got a bruise on one cheek. She’s trembling with cold.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Getting away. Took a while.’
‘Are you OK?’
She looks down at her shaking hand, then up. ‘Is anyone going to make me a cup of tea?’
Half an hour later, things are a bit clearer.
Em kept Kate talking until there was a disturbance in the restaurant – that was me leaving.
When that happened, Kate and the remaining officer got up for a moment and took their eye off her.
Em made the most of their distraction by walking swiftly to the front of the room and urgently pleading with Gustave to help a friend of Davy’s.
Rather than just steering her out of the building, he turned off the three remaining lights in the place, then hustled her into the nearby cloakroom and left her there.
She banged into a shelf – hence the bruise – but couldn’t even cry out.
She had to stand in the dark for an hour, wondering what the hell was going on.
Eventually Gustave opened the door again.
He’d told the remaining police – Kate and the officer who hadn’t chased after me – that when the lights had gone out, someone had run past him up the stairwell, someone of about Em’s build.
They’d asked him a few more questions, and he had listened, and answered in his impossibly grave manner, and they’d believed him.
Kate had left her phone number, and they’d departed.
But they’d stationed a plain-clothes officer on the street corner outside for an hour, so Em was trapped.
As she left, Em thanked Gustave, and asked why he’d been so willing to help her.
Turns out Davy had helped Gustave onto the property ladder when he’d arrived in London in 1989 – got him his first little flat in Streatham, despite him having no deposit whatsoever – and Gustave remained forever in his debt.
It’s feeling more and more like Davy’s an actual work contact of ours.
Then, as Em left St Francis, she thought she saw someone else following her, so she ran for it, and spent even longer than I did changing her clothes and her route.
‘So who’s this Kate McAdams then?’ Elle asks.
‘She told us she works for the … what was it, Al?
‘National Crime Agency.’
‘Sounds made up,’ says Elle. ‘Bit on the nose, isn’t it?’
‘It is, a bit. Any further details about her?’ asks Em.
‘They don’t do extensive personal biographies on the NCA website,’ says Jonny.
‘How annoying,’ says Em. ‘Would it kill them to write “Kate rounded up the Fulham Forgers” or whatever? Anyway, doesn’t matter. Davy contacted her and wanted to confess. Or to grass someone else up.’
‘Someone like his co-founder at the firm?’ says Elle. ‘What was he called again?’
‘Rob Wallace?’ I say. ‘Yeah, possibly. But the main thing is that whoever knew about the appointment must be the one who killed him. They must have found out both that Davy wasn’t actually in Dubai, and that he was going to meet the police.’
‘And they were willing to kill him just to protect themselves.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Could that be Mr Bowling Ball?’
‘Yes, but it still doesn’t answer why, unless he was in business with Davy and was going to be grassed up,’ I say.
‘You know who we should ring about this?’ Em says.
‘Who?’
She holds up a card with a phone number written on it in Gustave’s stern Austrian script. ‘Kate McAdams.’
‘Em, no.’
So five minutes later, Jonny’s rigged up what he assures us is a ‘double-plus-good’ phone connection that can’t possibly be hacked, and the four of us are WhatsApping Kate.
She picks up. She’s at home; TV noises, and a baby gurgling in the background. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Kate! It’s Josephine from earlier,’ says Em. ‘Good moment? I can call back if not.’
There is a gasp, some footsteps interrupted by Kate saying, ‘Keep feeding him,’ and a door slamming. ‘How did you get this number?’
‘It’s your work number, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘OK, great. First of all, don’t bother tracing the call. If you do, the computer will swear blind we’re ringing from central French Guiana, which we’re obviously not. Secondly, can you tell us who knew about your appointment with Mr Harcourt, please?’
‘I’m not telling you anything. I should—’
‘Kate, Kate, I know, love, but we’re all trying to get to the bottom of this one, and we think whoever you told at the police might be involved somehow, or might have given the game away, which is why Mr Harcourt wound up dead. You know?’
‘I’m sorry, I found out this afternoon that you two are wanted for questioning in relation to Mr Harcourt’s death as a matter of priority. I shouldn’t be on the phone to you at all. You have to come in. Where are you?’
‘Absolutely, Kate, but we just have a couple more questions, because whoever you told that you were off to meet Mr Harcourt is much more involved than we are, right? And we know that person is the one you need to be questioning.’ Em has a good telephone manner, brisk but friendly too, and I can see why Kate makes her mistake here.
‘Listen,’ she snaps. ‘Nobody knew. Harcourt came directly to me, and I didn’t even record his name in our system. OK? Which is why you two are persons of interest. Are you and your friends the people who were spotted near his house the next day?’
Em carries on. ‘And did he want anything from you? Protection, that sort of thing?’
‘Of course he did. Protection for three was what he said. Everyone wants protection when they make this sort of appointment. Look, you need to come in, we can sort all this out …’ She’s sounding increasingly Scottish.
‘Yeah, completely, totally totally, thanks for your help on this one, Kate, but I’m afraid we won’t be able to do that, thank you so much, that’s really helpful, and if you didn’t tell anyone Mr Harcourt’s name then you’re looking for someone else he told, unless it was you who killed him – no, only joking – all right, thank you, bye, love, bye, take care now’ – and as Kate threatens to explode at the other end of the line, Em hangs up.
‘Strange,’ she says, as Jonny takes the laptop and continues the work of making it look like we’re in French Guiana. ‘If she’s telling the truth, then Davy must have told someone else he was meeting the police. And that’s the person who killed him, or got him killed.’
‘If she’s telling the truth. Coppers are allowed to lie.’
‘Encouraged,’ says Jonny. ‘Ministry of Truth.’
‘So, what next?’ says Elle.
‘Well, his other appointment is the day after tomorrow,’ Em says.
‘BB AGM,’ murmurs Jonny. ‘If we take as long to solve it as we did Feathers, we won’t get there until next year’s AGM.’
It keeps nagging my brain. BB. Where did I see it? In Davy’s house, in an obituary? Ugh. I’m too tired to rifle through my mind.
‘What else is there?’
‘We need to keep on at Davy’s work contacts,’ says Em. ‘Find out anything more about Rob Wallace, see what’s going on with him. What did they argue about? Is he violent? All that stuff.’
To be honest, the idea of setting foot back in the Harcourt and Wallace office fills me with dread. But I think I might have another way of finding out more – the photography agency I work for. I wonder if a colleague there might be able to help.
I keep a second phone for my photography work.
It’s off most of the time, but I turn it on twice a day to pick up messages when I’m not on a job.
Even turning it on that infrequently still probably leaves a yeti-sized digital footprint that could be used to trace me to any number of homes I’ve interloped, but I need a work number.
I also turn it off because it’s nice being a bit less contactable, you know?
You’ve got to be mindful about your screen time these days.
Anyway, it’s been several days since I switched it on, so there are bound to be lots of emails from the firm, offers of jobs, that kind of thing.
On the principle that a hungry dog stays loyal, the agency contacts a whole mailing list of photographers about each gig and then they scramble to secure the booking.
So I go to my room and grab the phone, then come back and sit with the other three and turn it on.
Along with all the GDPR updates and mandatory courses and other HR crud, there’s something unusual – three voicemails from Jasmine, our office manager.
The first came in yesterday afternoon, when we were all in Brighton:
‘Hello, Al! You got a minute? We’ve got a job that’s come in and I think you’d be perfect for it.
Basically, bit of a weird one, the client wants to interview a few selected photographers for it, ask you about your shooting style, that sort of thing.
I know it all sounds a bit mad, but guess we’ve just got a fusspot on our hands!
Give me a ring when you get this and I’ll see if we can hook you up. Should be a nice earner, though.’
The next one arrived this morning:
‘Hey, Al! Jasmine again. Just to let you know, thought you ought to be aware, this one is huge. The guy owns some estate in Scotland and he’s offering up to ten grand for you to head up and spend a couple of days snapping.
Sounds good, right? Anyway, give me a bell today and we’ll see if we can get you in the same room together. ’
And this afternoon:
‘Hey, Al! Jasmine here. Can you ring when you get this? You’ve probably seen my other messages but I really don’t want you to miss out on this one.
Between you and me, this one is as good as yours.
Apparently he saw your portfolio and just thinks it’s got to be you.
But he still wants a face-to-face, so I need to set it up. OK, bye, give me a ring!’
Now. Jasmine and I could have been great friends.
We’re the same age, the same class, the same background (not that she knows anything about my background).
But we fumbled it, and our relationship is now best described as ‘mutual lifelong enmity’.
We took against each other on day one, when we had a disagreement about Ed Sheeran as I was waiting by her desk before my interview, and it only got worse from there.
She’s declined to acknowledge me at office get-togethers, she’s given me cold stares throughout business Zooms, she once cut me dead for an entire Christmas lunch when we were sitting next to each other.
So there is no way, no way in hell, Jasmine would sound that nice when offering me a lucrative job for an eccentric millionaire.
She’d do her best to sabotage me getting the gig, and if she did have to notify me about the offer, she’d put it in small print at the bottom of an eighteen-paragraph email about a new JPEG protocol.
All of which means that my workplace are on to me.
And that, in turn, means the police know my real name.