"All journalists are shits," Pellegrin declared confidently, still from inside his menu. "Know what I'm going to do one day? Doorstep the buggers. Do what they did to you, but do it back to 'em. Rent a mob, picket the editor of the Grauniad and the Screws of the World while they're having it away with their floozies. Photograph their kids going to school. Ask their wives what their old men are like in bed. Show the shits what it feels like to be at the receiving end. Did you want to take a machine gun to the lot of 'em?"
"Not really."
"Me too. Illiterate bunch of hypocrites. Herring fillet's all right. Smoked eel makes me fart. Sole meuniere's good if you like sole. If you don't, have it grilled." He was writing on a printed pad. It had SIR BERNARD P printed in electronic capitals at the top, and the food options listed on the left side, and boxes to tick on the right, and space for the member's signature at the bottom.
"A sole would be fine."
Pellegrin doesn't listen, Justin remembered. It's what got him his reputation as a negotiator.
"Grilled?"
"Meuniere."
"Landsbury in form?"
"Fighting fit."
"She tell you she was a Madeira cake?"
"I'm afraid she did."
"She wants to watch that one. She talk to you about your future?"
"I'm in trauma and on indefinite sick leave."
"Shrimps do you?"
"I think I'd prefer the avocado, thank you," Justin said, and watched Pellegrin tick shrimp cocktail twice.
"The Foreign Office formally disapproves of drinking at lunchtime these days, you'll be relieved to hear," Pellegrin said, surprising Justin with a full-beam smile. Then, in case the first application hadn't taken, a second one. And Justin remembered that the smiles were always the same: the same length, the same duration, the same degree of spontaneous warmth. "However, you're a compassionate case and it's my painful duty to keep you company. They do a passable sub-Meursault. You good for your half?" His silver propelling pencil ticked the appropriate box. "You're cleared, by the by. Off the hook. Sprung. Congratulations." He tore off the chit and weighed it down with the saltcellar to prevent it from blowing away.
"Cleared of what?"
"Murder, what else? You didn't kill Tessa or her driver, you didn't hire contract killers in a den of vice, and you haven't got Bluhm swinging by his balls in your attic. You can leave the courtroom without a stain on your escutcheon. Courtesy of the coppers." The order form had disappeared from underneath the saltcellar. The waiter must have taken it, but Justin in his out-of-body state had failed to spot the maneuver. "What sort of gardening you get up to out there by the by? Promised Celly I'd ask you." Celly short for Celine, Pellegrin's terrifying wife. "Exotics? Succulents? Not my scene, I'm afraid."
"Pretty well everything really," Justin heard himself say. "The Kenyan climate is extremely benign. I didn't know there was a stain on my escutcheon, Bernard. There was a theory, I suppose. But it was only a remote hypothesis."
"Had all sorts of theories, poor darlings. Theories far above their station, frankly. You must come down to Dorchester sometime. Talk to Celly about it. Do a weekend. Play tennis?"
"I'm afraid I don't."
They had all sorts of theories, he was surreptitiously repeating to himself. Poor darlings. Pellegrin speaks about Rob and Lesley the way Landsbury spoke about Porter Coleridge. That turd Tom Somebody was about to get Belgrade, Pellegrin was saying, largely because the Secretary of State couldn't stand the sight of his beastly face in London, and who could? Dick Somebody Else was getting his K in the next Honors, then with any luck he'd be kicked upstairs to Treasury — God help the national economy, joke — but of course old Dick's been kissing New Labor arse for the last five years. Otherwise, it was business as usual. The Office continued to fill up with the same redbrick achievers from Croydon with offcolor accents and Fair Isle pullovers that Justin would remember from his pre-Africa days; in ten years' time there wouldn't be One of Us left. The waiter brought two shrimp cocktails. Justin watched their arrival in slow motion.
"But then they were young, weren't they?" Pellegrin said indulgently, resuming his requiem mode.
"The new entrants? Of course they were."
"Your little policemen people in Nairobi. Young and hungry, bless 'em. As we all were once."
"I thought they were rather clever."
Pellegrin frowned and chewed. "David Quayle any relation of yours?"
"My nephew."
"We signed him up last week. Only twenty-one, but how else d'you beat the City to the draw these days? Godchild o' mine started up at Barclays last week on forty-five grand a year plus treats. Thick as two planks and still wet behind the ears."
"Good for David. I didn't know."
"Extraordinary choice for Gridley to have made, be honest, sending out a woman like that to Africa. Frank's worked diplomats. Knows the scene. Who's going to take a female copper seriously over there? Not Moi's Boys, that's for sure."
"Gridley?" Justin repeated, as the mists in his head cleared. "That's not Frank Arthur Gridley? The fellow who was in charge of diplomatic security?"
"The same, God help us."
"But he's an absolute ninny. We dealt with him when I was in Protocol Department." Justin heard his voice rising above the club's approved decibel level, and hastened to bring it down.
"Wood from the neck," Pellegrin agreed cheerfully.
"So what on earth's he doing investigating Tessa's murder?"
"Limoge to Serious Crime. Specialist in overseas cases. You know what coppers are like," said Pellegrin, stacking his mouth with shrimps and bread and butter.
"I know what Gridley's like."
Masticating shrimp, Pellegrin lapsed into High Tory telegramese. "Two young police officers, one of 'em a woman. T'other thinks he's Robin Hood. High-profile case, eyes of the world on 'em. Start to see their names going up in lights." He adjusted the napkin at his throat. "So they cook up theories. Nothing like a good theory to impress a half-educated superior." He drank, then hammered his mouth with a corner of his napkin. "Contract killers — bent African governments — multinational conglomerates — fabulous stuff! May even get a part in the movie, if they're lucky."
"What multinational did they have in mind?" Justin asked, contriving to ignore the disgusting notion of a film about Tessa's death.
Pellegrin caught his eye, measured it a moment, smiled, then smiled again. "Turn of phrase," he explained dismissively. "Not to be taken literally. Those young coppers were looking the wrong way from day one," he resumed, diverting himself while the waiter refilled their glasses. "Deplorable, actually. De-fucking-plorable. Not you, Matthew, old chap — " this to the waiter, in a spirit of good fellowship toward ethnic minorities — "and not a member of this club either, I'm pleased to say." The waiter fled. "Tried to pin it on Sandy for five minutes, if you can believe it. Some fatuous theory that he was in love with her, and had 'em both killed out of jealousy. When they couldn't get anywhere with that one, they hit the conspiracy button. Easiest thing in the world. Cherry-pick a few facts, cobble 'em together, listen to a couple of disgruntled alarmists with an axe to grind, throw in a household name or two, you can put together any bloody story you want. What Tessa did, if you don't mind my saying so. Well, you know all about that."