‘There’s a place up there we can sit for a bit,’ said Kim, pointing up the long marble-floored lobby. ‘And I’ve recced the bathroom the women at the event will be using, so I’ll make sure I’m in and out of it regularly, in case she lets anything slip during girl talk. God, I could use a drink. I’ve had a very weird couple of hours.’
‘Yeah?’ said Strike, as they reached the seating area. ‘Why’s that?’
‘First of all, get this – I got a call from Farah Navabi.’
Strike was immediately interested. Farah Navabi was an extremely good-looking, though not particularly competent, detective who’d been employed by his sometime nemesis Mitch Patterson.
‘What did she want?’
‘To hire me. She’s starting her own agency.’
‘The fuck’s she going to manage that? She planted the effing bug for Patterson. She’s going to be doing time right along with him.’
‘She’s confident she won’t,’ said Kim. ‘You don’t know Farah like I do. That woman could wriggle her way out of anything. God, I could use a drink.’
‘So what did you say?’ asked Strike.
‘Told her to get stuffed, obviously. I’m happy where I am and – oh, here she comes,’ Kim added in an undertone.
Strike glanced around. Mrs A was walking towards the ballroom doors, the same fake-fur coat she’d been wearing in Mount Street hanging open to reveal a floor-length sequinned purple gown. She was accompanied by a blonde wearing a corseted gold dress so tight Strike wasn’t sure how her internal organs could still be in their rightful places.
‘I’ll go and see if anything interesting’s being said at the coat check,’ said Kim, getting up to follow the women.
‘I’ll be in the bar,’ said Strike, getting to his feet: Mrs A ought not to see him sitting there alone. They weren’t going to be able to follow her into the gala dinner, of course, but Strike knew from similar jobs that once food had been consumed, and as long as you were appropriately attired and carried yourself with the right degree of casual entitlement, these events were very easy to gatecrash.
After years of tailing the well-heeled, Strike was familiar with the layout of most of London’s five-star hotels, so turned left at the end of the lobby. The Dorchester’s bar was decorated in gold and green with Art Deco touches, and was bestrewn with more Christmas foliage and fairy lights. He was informed by the man at the door, who emphasised Strike’s good fortune, that they could squeeze him in at the bar itself. Having ordered a double whisky, Strike had just pulled out his phone to kill time, when it rang in his hand.
‘Strike.’
‘Yeah,’ said a female voice so loud that Strike winced and held the phone away from his ear, ‘i’s Jade Semple.’ Her Estuary accent was so strong she pronounced her surname ‘Sempaw’. ‘Niall’s wife. You’ve wrote to me, on Facebook.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Strike, ‘thanks for getting—’
‘’Ow do I know you’re ’oo you say you are?’
She was throwing her voice as though speaking to him from the bottom of a well, and Strike was reminded of Bijou Watkins, who’d been similarly loud.
‘We can switch to FaceTime if you’d like. I could screenshot my driving licence?’
He heard a male voice speak in the background, and knew he was on speakerphone.
‘Not hard to fake a driving licence,’ the man said.
‘Or we could meet face to face?’ said Strike.
The phone now seemed to change hands, because the man spoke next at full volume.
‘Who’s hired ye?’
‘I can’t disclose that, I’m afr—’
‘Newspaper,’ said the man confidently. ‘Told you, babe.’
The line went dead.
Strike immediately saved Jade Semple’s mobile number, which she’d incautiously failed to hide.
‘Nothing interesting at the coat check,’ said a voice in Strike’s ear. ‘Oh good, we’re drinking. Vodka tonic, please,’ Kim told the barman. ‘They’re all sitting down for dinner,’ she informed Strike.
Kim’s drink arrived at the same time as the man beside Strike got up off his bar stool, and she got onto it instead.
‘Whoops,’ she said, with yet another laugh, as her dress snagged on her heel, tugging it down at the back, leaving Strike with good reason to suppose she wasn’t wearing anything at all underneath it. She downed several gulps of her drink before saying,
‘God, I needed that… anyway, get this. Right after Navabi called me, I had my ex turn up at my front door. I was wearing this,’ she said, gesturing down at the dress, ‘so obviously he thought I was off meeting someone new… nice big row, obviously. He’s such a fool. We split up,’ she went on, although Strike hadn’t asked, ‘because he got made redundant and that became his entire personality, being jobless. I’m not even kidding! “Hi, I’m Ray, I don’t work.”’
She laughed again. Strike didn’t think she was drunk, but there was a slightly frenetic air about her that recalled Kenneth Ramsay, jabbering desperately in an effort to sell what wasn’t wanted. Strike had no desire whatsoever to hear about Kim’s private life, but protracted silence might provoke questions about his mood he didn’t want, so he asked,
‘What did he do?’
‘Worked for a hospital trust,’ said Kim, ‘and now it’s all “you left me when I was at my lowest”. I mean, there are other jobs, Ray. Just grow a pair and send out your bloody CV, hahaha. Oh dear God, look at her…’
Kim’s eyes were following the reflection in the mirror over the bar of a tall, willowy woman who’d clearly had a lot of cosmetic work done to her face. Strike was reminded of Charlotte’s mother, Tara, whose picture, the last time he’d seen one, had shown extensive overuse of fillers.
‘Why do they do it?’ Kim asked. ‘What’s the point? Look at her neck and her hands… you’re not fooling anyone… would you?’ she asked Strike, smirking.
‘What, have plastic surgery?’ asked Strike, knowing full well what she meant.
‘No,’ said Kim, laughing as she nudged him, ‘you know…’
All he had to do, Strike thought grimly, was get through the next couple of hours. He ordered another drink, so Kim did, too. She gabbled on and on, and though Strike paid as little attention as he could, and his responses were perfunctory, he unwillingly learned far more than he’d ever wanted to about his newest subcontractor. Ray, she told him, had been the husband of a friend also on the force (‘well, ex-friend now, obviously, hahaha’); their relationship had been the main trigger for Kim leaving the Met (‘it’s all politics, anyway, I’d had enough’); she’d also had two long, complicated affairs in her twenties, both with married policemen. Strike found it strange, to put it mildly, that she was telling him all these things unbidden, although she seemed to assume that he took her tales as sophisticated and exciting, rather than tawdry.
‘… wanted kids, which I don’t, so that was the end of that…’
Judy Garland was singing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ over hidden speakers. Strike’s thoughts drifted back to Robin. A good long road trip to Scotland to interview Jade Semple would mean an overnight stay four hundred miles away from Murphy, which was exactly the kind of situation he’d been hoping this case would provide. He had to put pressure on Jade Semple. Robin and Murphy might be viewing the house he’d seen on Robin’s phone at this very moment. What if there was a ring-shaped Christmas present in Murphy’s gym bag?