The Brexit referendum might be over, but the subject continued to dominate the headlines. Strike scrolled down past these articles without opening them, vaping, until, with misgivings, he saw another familiar face: that of Bijou Watkins.
The picture, which had been taken as she left her flat, showed Bijou wearing a tight peacock blue dress that emphasised her figure. Her dark hair was freshly styled, she was expertly made up as usual and carried a glossy briefcase in her hand. Beside Bijou’s picture was another, of a stout, bare-faced and frizzy-haired woman in an unflattering evening dress of pink satin, who was named as Lady Matilda Honbold in the caption. Above the two photos was the headline: Andrew ‘Honey Badger’ Honbold to Divorce.
Strike skim-read the article below, and in paragraph four found what he’d feared: his own name.
A committed Catholic, high-profile donor to the Conservative party and patron of both The Campaign for Ethical Journalism and Catholic Aid to Africa, Honbold’s alleged infidelity was first reported in Private Eye. The magazine alleged that Honbold’s unnamed mistress had also enjoyed a dalliance with well-known private detective Cormoran Strike, stories that were denied by Honbold, Watkins and Strike, with Honbold threatening legal action against the magazine.
‘Shit,’ muttered Strike.
He’d thought the rumour of his involvement with Bijou had been successfully quashed. The last thing he needed was a signpost in The Times telling Patterson and Littlejohn exactly where to mine for dirt.
Promptly at eight o’clock, Shah arrived to take over surveillance on the Franks.
‘Morning,’ he said, getting into the passenger seat of the BMW. Before Strike could tell him what had happened overnight, Shah held out his own phone and said,
‘This your woman from the Connaught? I got a few.’
Strike swiped through the pictures. All showed different angles of the same dark woman, who was wearing a beanie hat and baggy jeans, and standing on the corner of Denmark Street nearest the office.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘looks like her. When did you take these?’
‘Yesterday evening. She was there when I came out of the office.’
‘Was she working for Patterson Inc when you were there?’
‘Definitely not. She’d have stuck in my mind.’
‘OK, do me a favour and forward these to Midge and Barclay.’
‘What d’you reckon she’s after?’
‘If she’s another Patterson operative, she could be checking out what clients we’ve got, to try and scare them off. Or she might be trying to identify people working for the agency, to see if she can get anything on them.’
‘I’ll hold off on starting that heroin habit, then.’
By the time Strike had briefed Shah, then driven back into central London, he was both tired and irritable, and his mood wasn’t improved when, waiting at some traffic lights, he spotted a gigantic poster he’d ordinarily have overlooked. It showed Jonathan Wace against a deep blue, star-flecked background, dressed in white robes, his arms outstretched, a smile on the handsome face that was tilted heavenwards. The legend read: ‘SUPERSERVICE 2016! Interested in the Universal Humanitarian Church? Meet PAPA J at Olympia on Friday 12th August, 2016!’
‘Charlotte Ross’s sister’s called again,’ were Pat’s first, unwelcome words when an unshaven Strike appeared at half past nine, clutching a bacon roll he’d purchased on his way to the office: diet be damned.
‘Yeah? Any message?’ asked Strike.
‘She said she’s going to the country for a month, but she’d like to meet you when she gets back.’
‘Is she expecting an answer?’ asked Strike.
‘No, that’s all she said.’
Strike grunted and headed for the kettle.
‘And you’ve had a call from a Jacob Messenger.’
‘What?’ said Strike, surprised.
‘He says his half-brother told him you were after him. Says you can call him any time this morning.’
‘Do me a favour,’ said Strike, stirring sweetener into his coffee, ‘and ring him back and ask him if he’s happy to FaceTime. I want to make sure it’s really him.’
Strike headed into the inner office, still thinking about the beautiful woman who was apparently keeping the office under surveillance. If he could only clear up the Patterson mess his life would be considerably less complicated, not to mention less expensive.
‘He’s fine to FaceTime,’ Pat announced five minutes later, entering Strike’s office carrying a Post-it note with Messenger’s number on it. Once she’d gone, Strike opened FaceTime on his computer and tapped in Jacob Messenger’s number.
The call was answered almost immediately by the same very tanned young man who beamed out of the picture on Strike’s noticeboard. With his white-toothed smile, slicked dark hair and overplucked eyebrows, he looked excited to be speaking to Strike, whereas the detective’s primary emotion was frustration. Whoever was critically ill or dying at Chapman Farm, it clearly wasn’t Jacob Messenger.
A couple of minutes later, Strike had learned that Messenger’s interest in the church had been ignited when his agent received a request for Jacob to attend one of the UHC’s charity projects, continued through a photoshoot in which Jacob had worn a UHC sweatshirt, lingered through a short press interview in which he spoke of his new interest in spirituality and charity work, only to wither away when invited on a week-long retreat at a farm, with no media presence.
‘I wan’t gonna go to no bloody farm,’ said Jacob, blindingly white teeth fully on display as he laughed. ‘What would I wanna do that for?’
‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Well, this has been very—’
‘Listen, though,’ said Jacob, ‘’ave you ever fort of doing a show?’
‘Have I what?’
‘Like, fly on the wall, follow you investigating stuff. I looked you up. Seriously, I reckon my agent would be interested. I was finking, if you and me teamed up, and you could be, like, showing me the ropes and stuff, wiv a camera crew—’
‘I don’t—’
‘Could be good publicity for ya,’ said Messenger, while a blonde in a mini-dress drifted across the screen behind him, looking vague. ‘It’d raise your profile. I in’t boasting or nuffing but I’d def’nitely get us an audience—’
‘Yeah, that wouldn’t work,’ said Strike firmly. ‘Goodbye.’
He hung up while Messenger was still talking.
‘Stupid tit,’ Strike muttered, getting to his feet again to tug Messenger’s picture off the UHC noticeboard, rip it in half and put it in the bin. He then scribbled ‘WHO’S JACOB?’ on a piece of paper and pinned it where Messenger’s photo had been.
Taking a few steps backwards, Strike contemplated yet again the various photos of the dead, untraced and unknown people connected to the church. Other than the note about Jacob, the only other recent change to the board was another piece of paper, which he’d pinned up after his trip to Cromer. It read ‘JOGGER ON BEACH?’ and it, too, was in the ‘still to be found/identified’ column.
Frowning, Strike looked from picture to picture, coming to rest on that of Jennifer Wace, with her big hair and her frosted lipstick, frozen forever in the 1980s. Since his trip to Cromer, Strike had tried to find out all he could about the ways in which somebody might induce a seizure in an epileptic and as far as he could see, the only plausible possibility would be withdrawing medication or, perhaps, substituting genuine medication with some ineffective substance. But supposing Wace had indeed tampered with his first wife’s pills, how could he have known a seizure would occur at that specific moment, while Jennifer was in the water? As a murder method it was ludicrously chancy, though admittedly no less risky than taking a child swimming, and hoping the sea would hide her body forever.