The main courses have arrived.
52
Hanif is staying at a hotel called Claridge’s. It’s in the very heart of London, and he has a room on the top floor. And there is only one room on the top floor. It has a private butler, a swimming pool and a grand piano. Hanif can neither swim nor play piano, but they look great on his Instagram.
It is his favourite hotel, for many, many reasons. The location can’t be bettered, close to the shops of Bond Street and Savile Row, and the art galleries of Cork Street. The bar and restaurant are quintessential London, relaxed yet elegant and robustly expensive. But best of all is the absolute discretion of the staff. Hanif, who is forgetful at the best of times, had left a revolver and eighty thousand pounds in cash on his bed when he’d gone downstairs for breakfast, and had come back up to discover that the cleaner had neatly tidied both into a bedside drawer. You just didn’t get that sort of service at the chain hotels.
He has made contact with Mitch Maxwell and presented him with the ultimatum. Find the shipment by the end of the month, or be executed. And he has made sure that the same message has been passed on to Luca Buttaci. The deadline should be sooner, but Hanif is eager to enjoy a couple of weeks in London; he hasn’t been here since university, and also he really wants to see Coldplay at Wembley. If he kills Mitch and Luca, he’ll have to leave straight away, and it won’t do them any harm to have a bit of extra time. Hanif has never met Luca Buttaci, but he and Mitch had met in a FIFA corporate box at the Qatar World Cup and got along famously. Mitch assures him that all is under control, however, so Hanif is optimistic that he won’t have to kill him.
This whole thing, the shipment, was Hanif’s idea, and Sayed is very unhappy with how it is going. If the shipment isn’t found, then, sure, Hanif will kill Mitch and Luca, but on his return to Afghanistan there is no guarantee that Sayed won’t kill him. That’s the game though, that’s why he gets paid. He is going to have a massage this afternoon and try to forget about it for an hour or so.
Tonight there is a party in Mayfair. A Sunday-evening soirée. One of his old friends from Eton is throwing it, and was delighted to see on Instagram that Hanif was in London, if a little surprised to see him playing the piano.
It will be nice to see a few old friends, hear what they are up to, lie about what he’s up to, see if anyone fancies a swim.
Hanif rolls his shoulders – there’s a knot he can’t get rid of. He hopes the masseur will work some magic.
He really wants this plan to succeed. Hanif really doesn’t want to have to kill anyone else. And certainly doesn’t want to be killed. He has until the end of the month.
All in all it would be welcome news if someone could just find that box.
It would be nice to be able to enjoy the Coldplay gig without having to bury any bodies beforehand.
53
The case has been discussed and dissected over the main course and dessert. While coffees were being served, there was a debate over whether they should hire a marquee, or trust in the August English weather.
‘I didn’t know who Kuldesh was until he was dead,’ says Mitch Maxwell.
‘Same,’ says Luca Buttaci. ‘He was just a guy with a shop.’
‘You’ve got rivals though?’ says Ron. ‘You can’t be the only people selling heroin on the South Coast?’
‘Honest answer,’ says Mitch. ‘If anyone else around here suddenly had heroin to sell, we’d hear about it. You can check that with your mate Connie Johnson.’
‘She’s not my mate,’ says Ron.
Elizabeth asks, ‘And you still deny that Kuldesh contacted you, Samantha? Garth?’
‘I wish he had,’ says Samantha. ‘That would have been a nice easy deal. And I wouldn’t have killed him.’
‘Garth?’
‘I probably would have killed him. Just to keep things neat. But I didn’t.’
‘I have a thought,’ says Samantha. ‘If it might be helpful?’
‘Please,’ says Elizabeth.
‘What does the box the heroin was smuggled in look like?’ asks Samantha. ‘I don’t imagine that the heroin stayed in it for very long, so it’s probably somewhere. Perhaps the box will show up one day in someone’s shop? And there’s your killer?’
‘That’s a very long shot,’ says Nina.
Mitch laughs. ‘You’re telling me. I’ll show you it, wait a minute. I don’t think anyone’s going to be selling it in an antiques shop.’
Ibrahim takes the reins. ‘We still haven’t addressed the murder of Dominic Holt. The who and the why.’
Mitch has scrolled through his phone and found the photo he’s looking for. He slides it across to Samantha. She takes off her glasses and holds the screen up close. ‘You really put a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of heroin in a thing like that? No class.’
She passes it to Garth, who pulls a face. ‘Junk shop maybe. But good idea, babe. Keep an eye out for it.’ He slides the phone back to Mitch.
‘It certainly wasn’t in his lock-up,’ says Nina. This is a line that Elizabeth has dictated to her.
‘In his what?’ says Mitch.
‘That’s just what he called the back of his shop,’ says Elizabeth. ‘We had a root around.’
‘No one calls that a lock-up,’ says Luca. ‘You’re saying Kuldesh had a lock-up?’
‘Sorry,’ says Nina to Elizabeth. Again, note perfect.
‘All right,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Yes, Kuldesh had a council lock-up, no, I’m not going to tell you where it is –’
Garth raises his hand.
‘No, Garth, not even if you threaten to kill me.’
No one looks happy with this situation. Which is perfect.
‘All in all though,’ says Elizabeth, ‘I would like to find this heroin before SIO Ronson finds it.’
‘Regan,’ says Luca.
‘My mistake,’ says Elizabeth. ‘It goes without saying that if everyone here is telling the truth, there will be no problems. Because we all have a common goal. We can join forces to find the heroin and the person, or people, behind the murders.’
‘But if everyone here isn’t telling the truth –’ starts Ibrahim.
‘Then, sooner or later, there’s going to be a bloodbath,’ says Ron. ‘And maybe donkey rides, can you still do donkey rides or are they banned?’
The waitresses have come in to clear away the coffee cups, and lunch draws to a close.
Off they all go to their plots and their schemes – Elizabeth would put good money on that – and, as Nina Mishra gets up to leave, she asks, ‘What now?’
‘Now we see who survives the week,’ says Elizabeth.
54: Joyce
We had a lunch yesterday with some very unsavoury characters, and it was a lot of fun. We hired the private room, and you could tell that put some people’s noses out of joint. I heard someone whisper, ‘Who does she think she is?’ as I went to the loo.
There was Mitch Maxwell, the heroin dealer, Luca Buttaci, also a heroin dealer, who sounds like he should be Italian but isn’t. Then Samantha and Garth, who we met in Petworth. Samantha gave me a peck on the cheek, but Garth just said, ‘Where’s Alan?’ and then ‘That’s not what I had hoped for,’ when I told him he was snoozing in front of one of my radiators. Nina Mishra came too and cooed over Coopers Chase. The winter sun was out, and I have to admit the whole place did look rather lovely. She is already planning to move in in thirty-five years’ time.
We learned nothing, but learning nothing was the whole point of the lunch. Elizabeth just wanted to get everybody together, to shake the tree.