As they crunch to a halt, Joyce sees there is no Henderson, so there goes that little dream. Lord Townes himself has come out to greet them. Of course there could be a fantasy in which Joyce marries a lord, but that is a lot less likely than a butler, and probably a lot less fun. Joyce resolves to make do. Meeting a lord is quite exciting in itself.
‘You must be Elizabeth Best and Joyce Meadowcroft,’ says Lord Townes. ‘What an enormous pleasure.’
‘Lord Townes,’ says Elizabeth, and shakes his hand. Joyce curtsies.
‘No need for any nonsense,’ says Lord Townes, grasping Joyce’s hand. ‘Come on in the both of you. I’m Robert to friends, and I can tell we’re going to be friends, so I’m Robert to you. Does your driver need anything?’
‘Bogdan?’ says Elizabeth, looking back at the car. ‘No, he’s going to listen to a podcast about the fall of Carthage.’
Lord Townes escorts them through an immense oak front door into a hallway lit with one small bulb. Joyce sees portraits and rugs and vases scattered around, but she also sees a lot of dust and peeling wallpaper, and, on this summer’s day, feels an instant chill. Lord Townes – apologies, Robert – shows them into a drawing room, and Joyce sits in the cleanest chair she can find.
‘I would offer you tea,’ says Lord Townes, ‘but the kitchen is a very long way away. You say this is about Nick Silver?’
‘Yes,’ says Elizabeth.
‘He was my son-in-law’s best man,’ says Joyce. ‘My son-in-law, Paul, he’s a professor.’
‘Well, I know Holly Lewis better than I know Nick Silver,’ says Lord Townes, ‘but do fire away.’
Through an open double doorway to her right Joyce can see a snooker table with a stained cover on it, and a stag’s head sticking out of an oak-panelled wall. The stag is missing an eye.
‘They asked to see you,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Last week. May I ask what about?’
‘May I ask why you want to know?’ Lord Townes says. ‘It was a private conversation.’
‘Somebody killed Holly Lewis,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And Nick Silver has disappeared.’
‘Holly has been killed?’ Lord Townes looks like the victim of a prank.
‘I thought you might already know,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Car bomb.’
‘No,’ says Lord Townes. ‘Impossible, no.’
Joyce doesn’t believe him. Lord Townes already knew this information.
‘What did you speak about?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘You are quite serious?’ Lord Townes asks.
‘Robert, you know who I am,’ says Elizabeth. ‘You know my background.’
Lord Townes had rung someone ‘very high up’ before agreeing to meet them. That person had immediately rung Elizabeth.
Lord Townes nods.
‘We would very much like to find Nick Silver, and find the person who killed Holly,’ says Elizabeth.
Joyce keeps getting distracted by the stag with one eye. Poor thing.
‘What do you know?’ asks Lord Townes. ‘I will fill in whatever else I can.’
‘Holly and Nick run The Compound,’ says Elizabeth. ‘They came to you for advice about a financial matter, a very large sum of money in cryptocurrency, which they had been holding for many years, and had finally decided to cash out.’
‘That’s the long and short of it,’ agrees Lord Townes.
‘Why did they come and see you?’ Joyce asks.
‘My whole career,’ says Lord Townes, ‘such as it was, was banking. City banking, you know, the blue-chip stuff. I understand they also had advice from people who might know more about the modern side of things. Davey Noakes? He is on your radar, I hope?’
‘He is,’ says Elizabeth.
‘But I think they also wanted to talk to someone who could connect them with a few old hands they could trust.There is a lot of trickery in the world of cryptocurrency, and I think that, at some point, they wanted to talk to someone in a suit.’
‘And they told you how much was at stake?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘Somewhere north of quarter of a billion,’ says Lord Townes. ‘That was my understanding? To a banker, not an immense amount of money, but to two individuals, certainly enough to focus the mind.’
Looking out of a huge bay window, Joyce sees that a light fog has settled across the garden.
‘And what advice did you give them?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘I promised I would arrange some meetings for them, once the money had become liquid,’ says Lord Townes.
‘And did you speak to anyone?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘I spoke to a few old friends in the City,’ says Lord Townes. ‘But I gave no names, no pack-drill, just said a couple of friends have had an unexpected windfall, how do you fancy it?’
‘So no mention of The Compound,’ says Elizabeth. ‘And no mention of Holly and Nick and the amount at stake?’
‘I told them it would be worth their while,’ says Lord Townes. ‘But nothing else.’
‘And did you hear from Nick or Holly again after your meeting?’
‘Only a note of thanks from Holly, and let’s catch up next week,’ says Lord Townes. ‘I was preparing a document for her, a few runners and riders and what have you.’
‘You’re very kind to help us, Robert,’ says Elizabeth. She will have noticed everything that Joyce has noticed. A man with a big house, and not enough money to keep it, suddenly informed of a large fortune. ‘What is your take on the thing?’
‘Oh, we didn’t discuss a fee,’ says Lord Townes. ‘But the usual –’
‘No, sorry,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Your take on the matter at hand. On Holly’s murder?’
‘Well, it’s a conundrum, isn’t it?’ says Lord Townes. ‘Games are being played.’
‘But the coincidence?’ Elizabeth says.
‘The coincidence?’
‘That Holly and Nick decide to cash out after so many years, and a matter of days after first telling people of their decision one of them is killed and the other disappears?’ Elizabeth gives him a terrifyingly neutral look. ‘That coincidence?’
Lord Townes sits back, and Joyce can see he is considering Elizabeth through new eyes. He smiles and looks down.
‘Your supposition, I suppose,’ he says, motioning to his shabby surroundings, ‘is that a man running low on money and luck suddenly finds a mine full of the stuff right under his feet?’
‘It’s certainly one way of looking at it,’ says Elizabeth. ‘To a suspicious mind.’
Lord Townes nods. ‘How do bankers make their money?’
Joyce has often wondered. Ron once told her, but he becomes quite hard to follow the angrier he gets.
‘Money sloshes around,’ says Lord Townes. ‘Great globs of it haring here and there. Peter paying Paul, Paul paying Mary, Mary leveraging a buyout of Harry’s company, Harry converting his debt into equity. Around it all swirls. And at the heart of it are bankers, shaking hands, introducing Peter to Paul, and Mary to Harry, and every time that money moves or transforms or grows, they take a tiny piece. A tiny piece from Paul, a tiny piece from Peter, all day, every day, until they can ski down their very own mountain of money.’
This was different to how Ron explained it, Joyce is certain of that.
‘So here’s the way to look at the thing,’ says Lord Townes. ‘Holly Lewis and I had developed a relationship of trust over a number of years. Enough trust that when she had a big decision to make, she knew she could come to me. Did you meet Holly?’
‘We did,’ says Elizabeth.
‘Did you take her for a fool?’
‘We did not,’ says Elizabeth.
‘And Holly presents me with an opportunity. To broker a deal worth more than a quarter of a billion pounds. On which I would earn, and you can ask people familiar with deals such as this, a fee of around three per cent. So you see’ – Lord Townes sits forward now – ‘a deal which fell straight into my lap, in which all I would have to do is pick up a phone, put on a suit and get on a train to London, would net me somewhere around ten point five million. And that deal, it seems, might be about to go up in smoke. If you will pardon the expression.’