A Murder of Magpies (19 page)

“Ah,” I said, neutrally. Lambert-Lorraine's solicitors were the same people who had employed the man who now looked after Vernet's property deals? He had probably looked after Vernet at Cooper's, and they went with him when he set up on his own. It made sense, I supposed. But none of this was a reason for Conway to be discussing me with his solicitor. I didn't know how to phrase that without sounding as though I were accusing them of something, so I said nothing.

Gascoigne was extremely tall—probably over six foot three, a blond elegantly turning silver, in a suit that must have cost two months' salary. Even I, with no eye at all, could tell that. He nodded now, as if my response had been what he was expecting. “He said you listened more than you talked. He was impressed.”

There was no point in pretending to be what I wasn't. “I didn't have anything to say.”

Gascoigne took my arm and drew me apart from the rest of the group, stooping over me like a distinguished stork. “That doesn't usually stop people.” I took a sip of my drink. “He was right. You're not saying anything now.”

I shrugged again. “I'm not fencing. I'm just not sure what we should be talking about. When I spoke to Mr. Conway he had a message for me to deliver. I delivered it. Where we go from here is up to him, surely.”

“We want the same thing. Pat wants to find out what has been going on in his company; you want to find out who has been doing it so you can publish your book without fear of libel. It's in both our interests to work together.”

I waited.

“We're happy to cooperate with the police—of course,” he added hastily.

“Of course,” I echoed, trying not to sound bitchy.

He looked at me as if I'd said something clever. “But they may be forced to act before it suits us to do so. There's no mileage for us in simply exposing the operation without ensuring that all of those who have been running it are eliminated. If that happens, we will get the drones, but not necessarily the queen bee. In fact, almost assuredly not the queen bee. That is not what we want at all.”

“I don't see how I can help.”

Either Gascoigne was tired of bending down to my level so he could talk without shouting, or he was getting to the point. He steered me into the ballroom where the dinner would be held later. More gilt, more flourishes, more rococo swirls. I was mildly surprised not to find a stray cherub tootling a horn from the ceiling. The room appeared bare without. Instead, sixty round white tables, with sixty round white flower arrangements tortured into low-key fashionability dotted the floor. Gascoigne pulled out a chair at the nearest table and held it for me. We looked like two black-cloaked co-conspirators planning a raid in the vast white-on-white elegance.

“Diego Alemán came to see me yesterday.” That made me sit up. “He said he'd had an interesting conversation with you, that you thought he was involved.”

“Interesting. How did he know about you? How did he know there was something to be involved in?”

Gascoigne nodded. “I wondered, too. What did you talk about?”

I looked bland. “Seditious libel.”

“
Seditious
libel? Is there such a thing anymore? I do corporate law, but I would have thought…” His voice trailed away.

I waved it away. “It's not important. It was a way of talking about what we didn't want to talk about openly.” I stared at the tablecloth, thinking. “What I'm saying is that we were talking about this book I'm publishing—about a dead fashion designer and his company, not about, shall we say, creative accounting methods. Diego worked for Intinvest, which we both know—” I slid my eyes to him, and when he nodded, I continued—“which we both know may or may not have had some involvement with” and now I mimicked his phrase, “with what has been going on in
one
of Lambert-Lorraine's companies. Vernet is high profile, but if Diego Alemán is clean, how did he know to come to you? And about what? As far as I can see, as a member of the Alemán family, he's concerned about his brother's death, about his brother's memory, and therefore me, as the publisher of a book that may damage that. But Vernet's business practices? He should know nothing about them.”

“We don't know that he does.”

“He knows that there's something to know. Otherwise why come to you? If there's a problem, he should be going to his boss at Intinvest. Unless he can't.”

I sat and watched Gascoigne process the information. He came to a decision. “Pat will be here in the morning. Can you come to a meeting at seven?”

Seven. Jesus. “I can. But what for?”

“I think we'll have Alemán back. We're liaising with NCIS and Revenue and Customs, and they'll give us some rope, but not much. What we need is to pool everything we've got and make some decisions.”

“Yes, I understand why you're going ahead. But what do you want me for? I'm a publisher. I know about books. I don't know about corporate fraud—” he winced at the word—“and I don't know about the business world. I don't see what I can bring to this.”

“You've read the manuscript. You know the players.”

I shrugged. Whatever Conway had said, I didn't believe they couldn't get their hands on a manuscript if they wanted one. According to Helena, Kit had only spelled out one aspect of the fraud—they would have to do their own digging for the rest, although that shouldn't be difficult. Once you know what you are looking for, and where, it is never hard to find. They wanted me for something else, and I couldn't figure out what. But as long as they wanted me, I could make my own demands.

“I need to catch a ten-fifteen flight to Galway. I'm due there for a lunch meeting. Will the meeting be finished for me to get to Gatwick in time?”

Gascoigne looked dubious. “It would be better if we didn't have to rush. Let me speak to the office.” He pulled out his phone and moved away from the table.

While I had no idea why they wanted me there, I wanted to be there. Maybe some information about Kit might surface. Even so, I couldn't cancel Breda—playing Nancy Drew was a pastime, but I had to earn a living, and too much hung on what now looked to be a bestseller. Yet I wanted to use Lambert-Lorraine as much as they wanted to use me. My concern was still Kit, and it looked like finding the route for the money meant finding out what had happened to him.

I sat quietly, staring into space, pleased to have a breathing space. Between the office, a potential new relationship, and Kit's disappearance, I was just reeling from crisis to crisis without any fixed purpose. I allowed my thoughts to drift, and jumped when Gascoigne touched me on the shoulder. He looked pleased with himself. “It's not a problem. Pat is flying in tomorrow morning. His plane will wait for you and take you to Galway. I've arranged a car to drive you to Luton after our meeting. That way we can talk as long as we want, and you'll still get to your appointment by lunchtime.”

I tried to look as if I was offered the use of private jets every day, sometimes twice a day before breakfast. I obviously failed, because Gascoigne touched me on the shoulder again, and said, “I told you you'd impressed him.”

If not talking had got me this far, it would be a shame to blow it, so I just smiled, hooked my arm through his, and drew him back toward the party.

As we walked back into the heaving mass of solicitors enjoying themselves, my mother wormed her way through to me and said crossly, “What did you say to him?”

I was startled. “Gascoigne? Nothing, we just—”

“Not Gascoigne.” Helena was impatient. “Wright.”

Wright?
I craned my neck to scan the crowd. Not really very intelligent, since I didn't know what he looked like. Helena realized I was clueless. Again. Or maybe still. “Over there,” she said, jutting her chin. “Medium height, brown hair, five o'clock shadow.”

I looked where she was looking. “Red tie with horses? Got him.”

He'd got me, too. He saw me watching him, and nodded and smiled as if we were old acquaintances. “Shit,” I muttered. “Heading this way.”

My mother was dismissive. “A horrible man with sweaty palms. Came up and introduced himself. He said he thought we should talk. I suggested that a dinner was neither the time nor the place.” The look she gave me at this point froze my blood. I hated to think what it would do to a stranger. “He melted away again, but if you haven't spoken to him, it's odd that he came to me, not you.” She was curiously cheered by this.

Before she could say more, Wright had made his way over. “Miss Clair,” he announced, in case I hadn't been sure. “And the lovely Mrs. Clair once more.” Not the way to my mother's heart, being patronized. Or mine, come to that.

We made noises that an optimist might have interpreted as welcoming. Any sane person would have turned tail and fled.

That clarified Wright's status. He beamed at both of us impartially. “I hear,” he announced portentously to me, “that you had a useful meeting with my friend Hugo.”

I stared blankly, not able to summon the social skills to pretend I knew what, or rather, who he was talking about.

“Hugo,” he repeated, a testy edge entering his voice. “Hugo Littlewood, at Selden's.”

So much had happened, and my life was suddenly teeming with law firms, that I'd forgotten all about Selden's original gambit.

I tried to look as though it had never been far from my thoughts, but the most I could manage, after an embarrassing pause, was, “I'm pleased he thought so.”

“Always good to get these things out on the table.”

Was the man an idiot? He was mixing in to an affair he should, by right, have no interest in. I couldn't imagine what possessed him, what he thought he could get from us that would be more valuable than keeping a low profile and staying away from the whole thing.

“Isn't it.” I said, with no attempt at charm.

Wright acted as if this was the most delightful sentiment he'd heard all week. “We should get together and discuss this. I might be able to help you.”

Helena muttered an excuse and slipped away. I didn't turn, but I marked it down on the slate. She owed me for leaving me like this.

“You may be able to help me,” I repeated woodenly. Again, I was careful to phrase it as a statement.

“With my time at Cooper's…” he said, in a manner that might have been enticing if I had been a solicitor, but I wasn't. His smile began to falter. He'd given me opening after opening, and I wasn't biting. He hadn't planned on being direct, but now didn't have any choice. “As Vernet's UK solicitor, I feel we should discuss the possibilities of publishing your book.”

“Possibilities? There are no possibilities.” He smiled. “It's a certainty.” It wasn't, anymore, but it was fun lying to this man. Now Wright was beginning to sweat, and in a pulling-the-wings-off-flies kind of way I was enjoying myself.

Wright began to bluster. “Young lady, I don't think you understand the legal situation.”

One of the things that most endears people to me is being called “young lady”; second is trying to frighten me with the law. I smiled my best middle-class well-brought-up-girl smile. I may even have fluttered my eyelashes at him. I'm not prepared to swear that I didn't. “Thank you so much, Mr. Wright. It would never have occurred to me that there were legal problems.
So
good of you to point it out. Is there anything else you feel the need to instruct me in?”

Wright's bonhomous, man-of-the-people beam, which hadn't dipped below 100 watts for our entire conversation, was by now entirely extinguished. “Your solicitors will hear from me.”

I smiled even more sweetly. “I'm sure they will be looking forward to it.”

 

10

I staggered out of bed the next morning at five thirty and stared at my sleep-sodden face in the mirror. My mother did this every day of her life. Was she crazy? It was still dark when I set off for Cooper's offices in the City. Public transport at that hour was eerie: a scattering of people going home from night shifts, another scattering who cleaned the offices and shops of those thousands who would follow in a couple of hours. And a third group, the City workers, who got to work by seven to deal with the Japanese market, and stayed until late to deal with San Francisco. Everyone sat silently, huddled in their own little worlds. It wasn't particularly cold for March, but it felt cold all the same. The day hadn't really started yet, and the dream of warm beds hovered over us all.

By the time I reached Fenchurch Street, the coffee shops were beginning to open. The dead-eyed people I had watched on the Tube joined their dead-eyed colleagues in the queues, hoping to inject enough caffeine into their systems to get them through the day. I followed their example, more so that I could have a quiet place to call Jake than because I wanted the foul Starbucks coffee. I bought the smallest cup possible, refusing to use those ridiculous fake Italian sizes the minimum-wage employees from Eastern Europe were supposed to find second nature. What a protest. I'm sure it made the folks in Seattle quake in their eco-friendly sandals.

“Hey,” I said into the phone. “Me.”

“Good morning. Do you always start this early?”

“Nope. But I'm a City type now, and I'm off to bond with other City types.”

Jake was smarter than that. He just waited.

“I met Derek Gascoigne from Cooper's at my mother's Bar Association knees-up last night. Patrick Conway is flying in for a meeting this morning, and for reasons I can't fathom, they think I should be there.” I filled him in quickly on Alemán's visit to Gascoigne. “What do you think he's playing at?”

Jake ignored the question. “What do they want
you
for?”

It wouldn't have been a rude question—it was one I'd been asking myself—if it hadn't been for the stress on the “you.” I bit back a smart-ass remark, but filed it away in the grievance drawer. Later. Instead I said, “Just what I was wondering. Gascoigne said that they had NCIS and the Revenue and Customs rounded up. What a publisher can bring to the table is anyone's guess, but it seemed worth following up.”