‘What?’ he shouted back, unsmiling.
‘I said, Jago wants to name you in the divorce.’
‘He’ll have a job,’ Strike said loudly back. ‘I haven’t seen her in years.’
‘Not what Jago says,’ shouted Valentine. ‘He found a nude picture she sent you, on her old phone.’
Fuck.
Valentine reached out to steady himself on the Bodhisattva. His female companion with the red-gold hair was watching them from the dance floor.
‘That’s Madeline,’ Valentine shouted in Strike’s ear, following his eyeline. ‘She thinks you’re sexy.’
Valentine’s laugh was high-pitched. Strike sipped his beer in silence. At last the younger man seemed to feel no more was to be gained from proximity to Strike, so he pushed himself back upright, gave a mock salute and stumbled out of sight again, just as Legs reappeared on the edge of the dance floor and collapsed onto a velvet stool in a flutter of ostrich features and palpable misery.
‘Ladies’,’ Midge informed Strike, rejoining him a few minutes later. ‘Don’t think she could get phone reception.’
‘Good,’ said Strike brutally.
‘D’you think he told her he was coming?’
‘Looks like it.’
Strike took another mouthful of warm beer and said loudly,
‘So how many people are on this skiing trip with Robin?’
‘I think there’s just six of them,’ Midge yelled back. ‘Two couples and a spare bloke.’
‘Ah,’ said Strike, nodding as though the information were of only casual significance.
‘They’ve been trying to fix her up with him,’ said Midge. ‘She was telling me, before Christmas… Hugh Jacks, his name is.’ She looked at Strike expectantly. ‘Huge axe.’
‘Huh,’ said Strike, with a forced smile.
‘Haha, yeah. Why,’ Midge shouted in his ear, ‘don’t parents say it out loud before they choose the name?’
Strike nodded, eyes on the teenager now wiping her nose on the back of her hand.
It was a quarter to midnight. With luck, Strike thought, once the new year had been rung in, their target would be scooped up by the schoolfriend’s family and taken safely back to their house in Chelsea. As he watched, the schoolfriend arrived to drag Legs back onto the dance floor.
At ten to midnight, Legs disappeared once more in the direction of the Ladies’, Midge on her tail. Strike, whose stump was aching and who wished he could sit down, had no choice but to lean up against the gigantic Bodhisattva because most of the free seats were littered with bags and discarded jackets he didn’t want to move. His beer bottle was now empty.
‘D’you not like New Year’s Eve or something?’ said a working-class London voice beside him.
It was the woman with red-gold hair, now pink-faced and dishevelled from dancing. Her approach had been masked by an upheaval in the seats ahead of him, as nearly everyone had stood up to flood onto the too-small dance floor, excitement mounting as midnight drew closer.
‘Not my favourite,’ he shouted back at her.
She was extremely pretty and definitely high, though speaking perfectly coherently. Several fine gold necklaces hung around her slender neck, the strapless dress was tight across her breasts and the half-empty champagne flute in her hand was in danger of spilling its contents.
‘Nor mine, not this year,’ she shouted up into his ear. He liked hearing an East End accent among all these upper-class ones. ‘You’re Cormoran Strike, right? Valentine told me.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And you’re…?’
‘Madeline Courson-Miles. Not detecting tonight, are you?’
‘No,’ he lied, but he was in far less of a hurry to shoo her away than he had been with Valentine. ‘Why isn’t this New Year your favourite?’
‘Gigi Cazenove.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Gigi Cazenove,’ she said more loudly, leaning in, her breath tickling his ear. ‘The singer? She was a client of mine.’ When she saw his blank look, she said, ‘She was found hanged this morning.’
‘Shit,’ said Strike.
‘Yeah,’ said Madeline. ‘She was only twenty-three.’
She sipped her champagne, looking sombre, then shouted in his ear:
‘I’ve never met a private detective before.’
‘As far as you know,’ said Strike, and she laughed. ‘What d’you do?’
‘I’m a jeweller,’ she shouted back at him and her slight smile told Strike that most people would have recognised her name.
The dance floor was now heaving with hot bodies. Many people were wearing glittery party hats. Strike could see the portly Russian who’d been talking about Tannhäuser pouring with sweat as he bounced out of time to Clean Bandit’s ‘Rather Be’.
Strike’s thoughts flickered towards Robin, somewhere in the Alps, perhaps drunk on glühwein, dancing with the newly divorced man her friends were insistent she meet. He remembered the look on her face as he’d bent to kiss her.
It’s easy being with you, sang Jess Glynne,
Sacred simplicity,
As long as we’re together,
There’s no place I’d rather be…
‘One minute to 2015, ladies and gentlemen,’ shouted the DJ and Madeline Courson-Miles glanced up at Strike, drained her champagne flute and leaned in to shout into his ear again.
‘Is that tall girl in the tux your date?’
‘No, a friend,’ said Strike. ‘Both at a loose end tonight.’
‘So she wouldn’t mind if I kissed you at midnight?’
He looked down into her lovely, inviting face, the hazel eyes warm, her hair rippling over her bare shoulders.
‘She wouldn’t,’ said Strike, half-smiling.
‘But you would?’
‘Get ready,’ bellowed the DJ.
‘Are you married?’ Strike asked.
‘Divorced,’ said Madeline.
‘Dating anyone?’
‘No.’
‘Ten –’
‘In that case,’ said Cormoran Strike, setting down his empty beer bottle.
‘Eight –’
Madeline bent to put her glass down on a nearby table but missed the edge: it fell onto the carpeted floor and she shrugged as she straightened up.
‘Six – five –’
She wound her arms around his neck; he slid his arms around her waist. She was thinner than Robin: he could feel her ribs through the tight dress. The desire in her eyes was like a balm to him. It was New Year’s Eve. Fuck everything.
‘– three – two – one –’
She pressed herself into him, her hands now in his hair, her tongue in his mouth. The air around them was rent with screams and applause. They didn’t release each other until the first raucous bars of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ had been sung. Strike glanced around. There was no sign of either Midge or Legs.
‘I’m going to have to leave soon,’ he shouted, ‘but I want your number.’
‘Gimme your phone, then.’
She typed her number in for him, then handed the phone back. With a wink, she turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
Midge didn’t reappear for another quarter of an hour. Legs rejoined her schoolfriend’s party, her mascara smudged.
‘She kept trying to find somewhere she could get reception, but no luck,’ Midge bellowed in his ear. ‘So she went back to the bogs for a good sob.’
‘Too bad,’ said Strike.
‘Have you got lipstick on you?’ asked Midge, staring up at him.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.