‘If de Leon had talked when I told him to, you’d already have published your scoop and I wouldn’t be sitting opposite the fucker at a dinner table,’ said Strike angrily. ‘I’m doing you a favour here: if you want to salvage your exposé, get someone out to Black Prince Road. I’ve got to go, I’m expecting a phone call.’
He hung up and continued to pace, watched by the Goring’s bowler-hatted doorman, but after a further five minutes Wardle still hadn’t called back. Deciding he couldn’t leave Robin alone with Branfoot and Kim any longer, Strike climbed the steps back into the hotel.
‘Ah, here he is!’ said Branfoot, as he spotted Strike heading for their table. ‘Shall we order before we get down to business? Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle!’
‘Catullus wanted Fabullus to provide the food and drink, though,’ said Strike, sitting down. ‘I thought you were paying?’
This surprised a laugh out of Branfoot.
‘He also wanted Fabullus to pwovide a girl, “pwetty and willing”, don’t forget, but yes, Mr Stwike, I’m paying. So you know Catullus?’
‘Some,’ said Strike.
‘Lucky our gwisly little woke fwiends haven’t ever wead him, isn’t it? They’d be burning down our libwawies.’
Branfoot kept up a volley of cheery talk while the four consulted their menus.
‘I can heartily wecommend the twuffle-stuffed chicken. Don’t stint yourselves, I shall be starting with the caviar myself, the oysters are wather wonderful here, too…’
Once food had been ordered, and the wine waiter had been dispatched after a fairly lengthy discussion with Branfoot, the latter said,
‘You speak Latin too, Miss Ellacott?’
‘No,’ said Robin.
‘Pedicabo ego uos et iwumabo, Auweli pathice et cinaede Fuwi… those are the opening lines of Poem Sixteen, in which Catullus thweatens to sodomise Auwelius and owally wape Fuwius, because they’d jeered at his soppier poems,’ said Branfoot. ‘Only pwoper way to deal with cwitics, eh?’
‘I’d run that past a focus group before you make it your election platform,’ said Strike, and Branfoot laughed again.
‘Where have we got to, so far?’ Strike asked the table at large.
‘We’ve barely scwatched the surface,’ said Branfoot, with the slight smirk that Robin had noticed never quite left his face. ‘I was congwatulating Miss Ellacott on the important wole your agency played in closing down the UHC and adumbwating some of my concerns wegarding the pwivate detective business. Miss Ellacott has been playing her cards vewy close to her chest.’
‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Well, I’m sure you’re a man who appreciates plain talking, so shall we get right down to it? You became very interested in us shortly after we started investigating the body found at Ramsay Silver last summer.’
‘This is the case in which you were hired by Decima Mullins?’ said Branfoot.
Robin felt a sudden dread that had nothing to do with her own affairs.
‘Told him everything, have you?’ Strike said to Kim, on whose face a faint pussycat smile now appeared. ‘Broken your NDA?’
‘Farah and I decided we ought to look into Decima Mullins after I left the agency,’ said Kim. ‘You never told me she had a baby she’s trying to hide. I wasn’t sworn to secrecy on that.’
‘You total bitch,’ said Robin, taking Strike by surprise. Kim smiled more widely and Branfoot laughed.
‘A baby’s a matter faw celebwation, shawly?’ he said.
‘Except that she’s losing her mind as well as her restaurant,’ said Kim, ‘and you two have been milking her for every penny while you go on jaunts and do pointless surveillance, pretending to find out who that body was. She was at casualty two days ago, convinced the baby’s ill because it won’t stop crying. That’s who you’re exploiting. And you’ve been colluding in hushing up the kid. I suppose if you’d alerted a social worker you might’ve been letting someone in on the situation who’d have stopped you milking her for cash.’
‘Nice angle,’ said Strike appreciatively. ‘Yeah, I can see how the press could spin that. Well-to-do restaurateur with her secret baby, got a delusion about her ex-boyfriend, newsworthy detectives stringing her along… not bad at all.’
The wine arrived. When Robin refused any, Branfoot chortled.
‘My word, I’ve never met anyone who’d turn down a Montwachet ’92. Still, all the more faw us, eh, Mr Stwike – or may I call you Cormowan?’
‘Feel free,’ said Strike.
Once the wine waiter had departed, Strike said,
‘So, what’s the deal? We stop investigating the body in the vault, and you don’t talk about Decima and her baby to the press?’
‘I have no personal intewest in the matter, you understand,’ said Branfoot, ‘but this is pwecisely the kind of thing I feel should be maw stwictly wegulated. Financial exploitation of vulnewable people, exowbitant fees faw vewy little gain, a notably lax attitude to child pwotection – now, I don’t deny you two have done some pwaiseworthy things, but – to speak completely fwankly – I have excellent police contacts thwough my chawitable twust and – cowect me if I’m wong – you were questioned wecently about cowupting witnesses. Dangling money in fwont of them, which of cawse wenders their evidence suspect in court.’
‘Well, it sounds like you’ve got us properly stitched up,’ said Strike. ‘Is that everything?’
‘Not quite,’ said the smiling Branfoot. ‘Miss Ellacott’s boyfwiend – I apologise for bwinging him up again—’
Three amuse-bouches now arrived for each of them. The waiter gave loving descriptions of each, but Robin didn’t hear a word of it. She felt slightly sick. If Murphy’s career was ruined through association with her…
‘Where was I?’ said Branfoot, when the waiter had left again. ‘Oh, yes: DCI Murphy. Yes, I’m sowwy to have to mention this, but he’s welevant. In wather a lot of twouble at work, isn’t he? Between the dwinking and the wongful awest? And he’s been passing you infawmation beneath the counter, to boot.’
‘No,’ said Robin, ‘he hasn’t. The only person who’s passed us confidential information she shouldn’t have is sitting right opposite me.’
Branfoot laughed.
‘I can tell yaw not in politics, Miss Ellacott. Does DCI Murphy pass the smell test? The public don’t like law enforcement officers who make wongful awests, and wough up suspects, and leak information on murder cases to whichever pwetty young woman they happen to be sleeping with – and that’s befaw we get to the daytime dwinking. So if you’ll forgive me faw saying so, I think the pwess will find your pawamour smells wather whiffy.’
‘Well, you certainly seem to have got the goods on us,’ said Strike. He turned to Kim. ‘Picked up anyone good in Lambeth lately?’
‘What?’ said Kim.
‘Anyone been chatting you up in the vicinity of Lord Branfoot’s office? Anyone who owns a flat on Black Prince Road?’
Kim’s expression became strangely blank. She stared at Strike, and Robin, though she knew she should deplore such a thing, found herself hoping that Kim had indeed allowed herself to be talked into going back to that flat. Then she looked at Branfoot.
The mask of the genial buffoon had melted away. His eyes burned dark in the usually comic, gnome-like face, and suddenly it was easy to imagine him handing over an envelope of cash to a dangerous young criminal, and telling him that he wanted a second young man murdered. Yet she thought she read calculation rather than panic in Branfoot’s expression. Perhaps he was reminding himself of the panoply of lawyers, politicians, police, masons and press contacts available to him, should the danger he’d just glimpsed become acute, just as Robin herself had found reassurance in the feel of the pepper spray in her bag.