‘Oh, I haven’t chosen!’ she said, flipping open the menu and perusing it.
Once she’d ordered, she turned to Robin and said, rubbing her belly, ‘This one’s a boy and can’t I tell! I wasn’t this hungry with either of our girls!’
‘When are you due?’ asked Robin politely.
‘Not till June. Have you got any?’
‘No,’ said Robin with a smile.
‘To be honest, this one wasn’t planned,’ said Heather in a stage whisper. ‘But he’s only got to look at me and I’m pregnant. But who knows, I might be able to afford some help, if…’
She left the sentence unfinished. As she sipped her water, Robin wondered how much Grant and Heather stood to gain from their unexpected inheritance.
Food orders taken, the waiters left again. Once the door had closed, Yeoman said:
‘So, as I explained on the phone, we’re hoping you might agree to undertake an investigation for us. We’ – he indicated himself and Elgar – ‘would be your clients and bear the costs, but we felt it right that Grant should be here today, too, as Edie’s next of kin. Richard, would you like to—?’
‘Thanks, Allan,’ said the American. ‘To give you some background,’ he said, putting his beautifully manicured fingertips together, ‘when Edie died, she and Josh were on the verge of concluding a film deal with us. Josh had already signed and Edie was due to do so at Allan’s office the morning after she was attacked.
‘A few days ago, Josh sent us a message, via his agent, that he doesn’t want to proceed with the movie unless some way of shutting down Anomie is found.’
‘You aren’t Josh’s agent, then?’ Strike asked Yeoman. ‘Only Edie’s?’
‘Correct,’ said Yeoman. ‘Josh is represented by a woman called Katya Upcott. We, ah, should come back to her.’
‘Now, obviously Josh has already signed the contract, so he can’t legally stop the movie,’ said Elgar, ‘but naturally nobody wants to go against his wishes, given what’s just happened.’
‘We should say, it’s very much in Josh’s best interests for the film to be made,’ added Yeoman. ‘If his paralysis doesn’t resolve, he’s unlikely to be able to animate again. He doesn’t come from a wealthy family. We want to set his mind at rest about Anomie so he can focus on his recovery. He’s feeling a lot of guilt about accusing Edie of being Anomie – torturing himself, Katya says—’
‘Well, imagine accusing her of that,’ interrupted Heather indignantly. ‘As if anyone would do that to themselves, putting personal things about themselves online! We’re having a taste of what she went through right now – aren’t we, Grub?’ she said, glancing sideways at her husband. ‘As soon as Edie was dead, this Anomie started churning out private things about me and Grant on Twitter!’
‘Really?’ said Strike, pulling out a notebook. ‘Would you mind if we take notes?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Heather, who seemed rather excited at the prospect. ‘He’s got some things wrong – he said Grant was out in Saudi, not Oman, and that I was Grant’s secretary, which I wasn’t, I was PA to another guy, and he’s claimed Grub and I had an affair while he was still married, but his first marriage was—’
‘Over in all but name,’ said Grant, more loudly than was necessary.
‘He’s been going for us non-stop for a month, because Grant’s going to have a say now in what happens with the cartoon!’ continued Heather. ‘I’m keeping track of all these so-called fans coming on our Facebook page and writing terrible things. I can give you the names, if you like.’
‘Thank you, that’d be very helpful,’ said Strike, not particularly sincerely. ‘Interesting that Anomie knows private details about you as well as Edie. Could he have got them online – from your Facebook page, for instance? Or does he know things that aren’t in the public domain?’
Grant and Heather looked at each other.
‘I s’pose some of it’s on our Facebook page,’ said Heather, as though this thought had only just occurred to her. ‘But he knew Laura’s got lupus. I don’t see how he could have known that, do you, Grub?’
‘Laura’s my ex-wife,’ Grant explained. ‘No, I can’t see how he’d have known that. I was in Oman when Edie’s mother, my younger sister, died,’ he continued, and Strike suspected they were about to hear a prepared speech. ‘I was unmarried at the time and working all hours – there was no way I could’ve taken in a small child. By the time I met my first wife, Edie was settled with a good foster family. It would’ve done more harm than good, disrupting her life and her education to drag her abroad. Then, after we moved back to London, Laura got ill. It was all she could manage, looking after Rachel, our own daughter. I mean, I checked in with Edie to see how she was doing’ – he gave an aggressive upwards jerk of the chin – ‘but given my personal situation – simply not practicable to have her to live with us.’
‘And she was doing drugs and all sorts later,’ said Heather, ‘wasn’t she, Grub? We wouldn’t have wanted that around the kids.’
Elgar, who’d maintained an expression of mild interest while the conversation had entered this side route, now returned to what, for him, was clearly the main point of the meeting.
‘As Allan says, we all want to do the right thing by Josh, but we’ve got sound business reasons for closing down Anomie as well. Anomie’s very much against our movie and he’s whipping up the fandom against it. He’s got a well-established track record of creating animosity towards any change in the franchise he doesn’t approve of.’
Yeoman, whose mouth was full of bread roll, nodded and said thickly,
‘When the show moved to Netflix, Anomie orchestrated hate campaigns against the voice actors and animators. A couple of people resigned because of the harassment Anomie was inciting against them online. In terms of the overall brand, The Ink Black Heart is starting to be almost as well known for the aggression of the fandom as for the cartoon itself. Nobody wants the property to become a byword for online toxicity, but I’m afraid that’s where we’re headed, unless something changes.’
‘Which is a shame,’ said Elgar, ‘because we’ve got high hopes for the movie adaptation. We’re planning a mixture of live action and CGI. A gothic love story mixed with a dark comedy, full of funny, appealing characters.’
Robin thought the last line sounded as though it had been lifted directly from a press release.
‘Presumably,’ she said, ‘Maverick would get the rights to produce digital games, if this film deal’s concluded?’
‘Hammer hit on head, Ms Ellacott,’ said Elgar with a wry smile. ‘Anomie’s game will have a lot of competition once we get gaming rights. We think that’s the primary reason he’s determined to stop the cartoon becoming a film.’
‘Where did Blay get this idea that Edie was Anomie, do any of you know?’ asked Strike.
Yeoman sighed.
‘Somebody took him a dossier of supposed proof. I haven’t been able to talk to Josh yet, so that’s all I know, but… well, he’s quite a heavy consumer of cannabis and alcohol. Relations between him and Edie were very poor by the end; there was a lot of bitterness, paranoia and acrimony. I don’t think he’d have needed a lot of persuading that Edie was up to no good.’
‘Your agency turned Edie down because you don’t do a lot of cyber-investigation, is that right?’ Elgar asked Robin.