“You said ‘for one thing.’ What else are you worried about?”
Robin could hear the woman who’d answered the phone talking in the background. Her voice sounded irate.
“Della, I’d rather not go into it all on the phone,” said Sir Kevin, sounding embarrassed.
“Well, this is disappointing,” said Robin, with what she hoped was a touch of Della’s mellifluous grandeur. “I hoped you’d at least tell me why, Kevin.”
“Well, there’s the Mo Farah business—”
“Mo Farah?” repeated Robin, in unaffected surprise.
“What was that?”
“Mo—Farah?”
“You didn’t know?” said Sir Kevin. “Oh dear. Oh dear…”
Robin heard footsteps and then the woman came back on the line, first muffled, then clear.
“Let me speak to her—Kevin, let go—look, Della, Kevin’s very upset about all this. He suspected you didn’t know what’s been going on and, well, here we are, he was right. Nobody ever wants to worry you, Della,” she said, sounding as though she thought this a mistaken protectiveness, “but the fact of the matter is—no, she’s got to know, Kevin—Geraint’s been promising people things he can’t deliver. Disabled children and their families have been told they’re getting visits from David Beckham and Mo Farah and I don’t know who else. It’s all going to come out, Della, now the Charity Commission’s involved, and I’m not having Kevin’s name dragged through the mud. He’s a conscientious man and he’s done his best. He’s been urging Geraint to sort out the accounts for months now, and then there’s what Elspeth… no, Kevin, I’m not, I’m just telling her… well, it could get very nasty, Della. It might yet come to the police as well as the press, and I’m sorry, but I’m thinking of Kevin’s health.”
“What’s Elspeth’s story?” said Robin, still writing fast.
Sir Kevin said something plaintive in the background.
“I’m not going into that on the phone,” said Lady Rodgers repressively. “You’ll have to ask Elspeth.”
There was more shuffling and Sir Kevin took the receiver again. He sounded almost tearful.
“Della, you know how much I admire you. I wish it could have been otherwise.”
“Yes,” said Robin, “well, I’ll have to call Elspeth, then.”
“What was that?”
“I’ll—call—Elspeth.”
“Oh dear,” said Sir Kevin. “But you know, there might be nothing in it.”
Robin wondered whether she dared ask for Elspeth’s number, but decided not. Della would surely have it.
“I wish you’d tell me what Elspeth’s story is,” she said, her pen poised over her notebook.
“I don’t like to,” said Sir Kevin wheezily. “The damage these kinds of rumors do to a man’s reputation—”
Lady Rodgers came back on the line.
“That’s all we’ve got to say. This whole business has been very hard on Kevin, very stressful. I’m sorry, but that’s our final word on the matter, Della. Goodbye.”
Robin set her mobile down on the table beside her and checked that nobody was looking her way. She picked up her mobile again and scrolled down the list of The Level Playing Field’s trustees. One of them was called Dr. Elspeth Curtis-Lacey, but her personal number was not listed on the charity’s website and appeared, from a search of directory inquiries, to be unlisted.
Robin phoned Strike. The call went straight to voicemail. She waited a couple of minutes and tried again, with the same result. After her third failed attempt to reach him, she texted:
Got some stuff on GW. Call me.
The dank shadow that had lain on the terrace when she had first arrived was moving incrementally backwards. The warm sun slid over Robin’s table as she eked out her coffee, waiting for Strike to call back. At last her phone vibrated to show that she had a text: heart leaping, she picked it up, but it was only Matthew.
Fancy a drink with Tom and Sarah tonight after work?
Robin contemplated the message with a mixture of lassitude and dread. Tomorrow was the charity cricket match about which Matthew was so excited. After-work drinks with Tom and Sarah would doubtless mean plenty of banter on the subject. She could already picture the four of them at the bar: Sarah, with her perennially flirtatious attitude towards Matthew, Tom fending off Matthew’s jokes about his lousy bowling with increasingly clumsy, angry ripostes, and Robin, as was increasingly the case these days, pretending to be amused and interested, because that was the cost of not being harangued by Matthew for seeming bored, or feeling superior to her company or (as happened during their worst rows) wishing that she were drinking with Strike instead. At least, she consoled herself, it couldn’t be a late or drunken night, because Matthew, who took all sporting fixtures seriously, would want a decent sleep before the match. So she texted back:
OK, where?
and continued to wait for Strike to ring her.
After forty minutes, Robin began to wonder whether Strike was somewhere he couldn’t call, which left open the question of whether she ought to inform Chiswell of what she had just found out. Would Strike consider that a liberty, or would he be more annoyed if she failed to give Chiswell his bargaining chip, given the time pressure?
After debating the matter inwardly for a while longer, she called Izzy, the upper half of whose office window she could see from where she sat.
“Izzy, it’s me. Venetia. I’m calling because I can’t say this in front of Raphael. I think I’ve got some information on Winn for your father—”
“Oh, fabulous!” said Izzy loudly, and Robin heard Raphael in the background saying, “Is that Venetia? Where is she?” and the clicking of computer keys.
“Checking the diary, Venetia… He’ll be at DCMS until eleven, but then he’s in meetings all afternoon. Do you want me to call him? He could probably see you straight away if you hurry.”
So Robin replaced her mobile, notebook and pen in her bag, gulped down the last of her coffee and hurried off to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Chiswell was pacing up and down his office, speaking on the phone, when Robin arrived outside the glass partition. He beckoned her inside, pointed to a low leather sofa at a short distance from his desk, and continued to talk to somebody who appeared to have displeased him.
“It was a gift,” he was saying distinctly into the receiver, “from my eldest son. Twenty-four-karat gold, inscribed Nec Aspera Terrent. Bloody hell’s bells!” he roared suddenly, and Robin saw the heads of the bright young people just outside the office turning towards Chiswell. “It’s Latin! Pass me to somebody who can speak English! Jasper Chiswell. I’m the Minister for Culture. I’ve given you the date… no, you can’t… I haven’t got all bloody day—”
Robin gathered, from the side of the conversation that she could hear, that Chiswell had lost a money clip of sentimental value, which he thought he might have left at a hotel where he and Kinvara had spent the night of her birthday. As far as she could hear, the hotel staff had not only failed to find the clip, they were showing insufficient deference to Chiswell for having deigned to stay at one of their hotels.
“I want somebody to call me back. Bloody useless,” muttered Chiswell, hanging up and peering at Robin as though he had forgotten who she was. Still breathing heavily, he dropped down on the sofa opposite her. “I’ve got ten minutes, so this had better be worthwhile.”
“I’ve got some information on Mr. Winn,” said Robin, taking out her notebook. Without waiting for his response, she gave him a succinct summary of the information she had gleaned from Sir Kevin.