A Murder of Magpies (13 page)

She shrugged. “I thought all three worked well. And everyone will be so thrilled to know that you're cradle snatching that no one will worry about Alemán, which is what you want.”

She was right, but even though I knew I wasn't a cradle snatcher, it felt peculiar. “Kath must be keeping this close to her chest. Ben was still looking at me in that pitying, soon-you'll-be-in-a-nursing-home way he has in the meeting this morning. Either that, or she didn't believe you.”

Miranda knew Kath better than I did. She smiled cynically. “She believed me. You wouldn't be getting this exclusive if she thought there was nothing to the story.”

It was sort of insulting professionally, but also true.

*   *   *

I set off for Selden's at one. We were having a lunch meeting, which I'd had there before and had never wanted to repeat. A mummified secretary brought in fossil sandwiches to the boardroom, a gloomy, badly lit room lined with wooden panels from which stuffed shirts of the nineteenth century looked down at the stuffed shirts of the twenty-first. Such a treat. If I'd been Ben, they would have liked me: his flash Italian suits against my dull English ones, his Oxford against my déclassé American university, and his naked ambition against my—what? Ambition was acceptable in a man; in a woman it was just plain vulgar. And if I didn't have any, I should just stay home and mind the children. I'm probably projecting, but it's safe to say that we don't warm to each other.

The meeting ran much as I expected. Robert came down to their reception room to collect me. If you had to paint a storybook picture of a solicitor, it would be Robert. He is, objectively, and though it hurt me to admit, good-looking, tall, with well-cut features, well-cut hair, well-cut suits. But he was also red-cheeked (red-nosed, too, if the truth be told) and so supremely satisfied with himself and his place in the world that I always thought he had to be putting it on. He shook hands with me with the air of a bishop conferring a blessing on a very humble sinner, and took me upstairs. We waited in uncomfortable silence for nearly ten minutes until their criminal law partner, Hugo Littlewood, finally appeared. Except that he was thinner, he was a mirror image of Robert: expensively groomed, expensively dressed, red-faced, red-nosed, and thrilled with himself. His first question was the one I always get from solicitors: “Any relation of Helena Clair?” When I said she was my mother, he smiled thinly. If she'd been no relation, I don't think I would have got a smile at all.

We ran through the details. I'd been through them so many times, I could decide what to keep in and what to leave out without even thinking. Basically, I gave them everything regarding the book. I left out my burglary, and my weekend sleuthing. None of their damn business. Littlewood flinched when I told him that the Fraud Squad had the manuscript, but he could hardly blame me.

This need to be fair irritated him, and he snapped at me, “Who is Lovell's solicitor? And who was Alemán's British solicitor?”

I had no idea who Kit's solicitor was, or why it was any of his business, although I only shared the first part of that thought. As to Alemán's, what did he mean? Vernet's solicitor? Alemán's personally? I assumed they'd all be different and once more, wondered not only why he thought I'd know, but why he would want to know. When I asked he shrugged, “Just wondering.”

Probably fussing about whether someone he golfed with was going to get arrested. Then he threw out, as though it was loaded with meaning, “I've had a call from Kenneth Wright.”

I looked blank. “Who is Kenneth Wright?”

Littlewood got that why-oh-Lord-do-I have-to-deal-with-morons? look on his face. “Wright. Kenneth Wright,” he repeated, as though that explained everything.

I couldn't resist. “Of course! Kenneth
Wright
.”

He nodded, pleased. I was finally there.

“I've never heard of him,” I said flatly.

“You must have.”

“Well, if I must, I must. But I haven't,” I said, seriously pissed off now. “If you want me to talk about him, you're going to have to give me some clues. Why not start with who he is.” I spoke slowly and clearly, and didn't try to hide my contempt.

Littlewood flushed angrily. This is where I always ended up with Selden's. They thought I was an idiot, I thought they were. It was not a meeting of minds.

“Wright is a solicitor in the City. He handled Vernet's UK property deals. Surprising, for a solicitor in single practice, but he was with Cooper's before—very prestigious.”

Wright must be all right. He had a pedigree: Best-in-Show at the solicitors' Kennel Club. But if this Wright looked after part of Vernet's legal work, why was Littlewood asking me about the rest? There was no point in asking. I tried a more neutral, “What did he want?”

“He didn't
want
anything,” said Littlewood, stung—someone who had been at Cooper's, wanting something. What a ridiculous notion. “He offered to help us.”

“Really,” I said, in my most bored tone. “How was he planning to do that?”

“He offered to give us any assistance—professional courtesy.” Littlewood was now so puffed up with pomposity that a single breath more would probably make him explode.

“How very civil of him. What do we think he can do for us?”

“That, surely, is for you to decide,” he said in a voice dripping with contempt. “You and your
client
.” He referred to Kit as though he were a derelict sleeping in a doorway.

I could feel my temper rising, which wasn't productive. I stood up, choosing the nuclear option for my exit line.

“Well, good to see you, gentlemen. Thank you for your time. If you've got anything, do give me or David Snaith a ring. Or Helena. The police have asked her to keep an eye on things.”

It would have spoiled the effect to look back, so I didn't, but that didn't mean I didn't enjoy the horrified silence that followed me out the door and, I liked to imagine, all the way to the street.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in routine work, making an offer for a promising new novel, turning down half-a-dozen more, arguing about royalties with a particularly obtuse agent, and, most often, fending off Kath, who wanted to sell me this book so badly she practically crawled into my lap down the phone. Finally I went home. When I got in, there was a message on my voice mail, no name, no number. Just a man saying, “What makes you think it's sudden?”

It was definitely Jake Field, but it was hours before I remembered the e-mail I'd sent him that morning.

*   *   *

By the time I got to the LSD on Tuesday, I had little expectation that there would be anything to learn. Jonathan Davies had been a nuisance, and an unpleasant one at that, but I couldn't make any link between him and Alemán. Still, it was better than sitting in my office waiting for something to happen, pretending to work.

After my rip-roaring success with Atworth, I'd brooded on asking Jake if he'd give me Kit's sister's phone number. At least, I'd brooded on it until his phone message. Not now. And what would I have asked her? Atworth may have been a bully and a thug, but I couldn't really summon any enthusiasm for the idea that Kit's disappearance had anything to do with his journalistic life. I was sure plenty of people disliked him, or were jealous—he was successful, and he didn't suffer fools gladly. Although who did? Were there fool sufferers who lined up, panicked there might not be enough fools to go around?
Focus!
I shouted at myself. Kit. Professional jealousies. No, I couldn't see it. Anyone who hated him for work reasons wouldn't arrange his disappearance. They'd plant a nasty squib about him in the
Daily Mail,
or—I cast my mind about for a suitable fashionista villainy—or they'd send him Botox vouchers anonymously in the post. Maybe not, but violence seemed just as unlikely. Davies' weird behavior seemed the most important thing to follow, therefore.

I'd never been inside the LSD before. Nick and I saw each other at parties fairly often, but we had no work connection. Kit had enjoyed lecturing there, but although I went to his talks when they were related to the books we did together, the LSD was entirely off my patch. Like all schools, though, it had a sink-or-swim mentality, and there was no one to ask the way near the entrance. There were endless corridors shooting off into the distance, with nothing so designer unfriendly as a sign or a notice board. The whole place was quite un-designer-ly, in fact. It was like an overgrown primary school, filled with the sound of muffled voices, the smell of long-dead meals, and a faint but unmistakeable scent of eau-de-wet student. I chose at random, setting off down a corridor that looked as anonymous as any other, figuring I'd find someone to guide-dog me in the right direction sooner or later.

An extremely thin man in his early twenties was reading a notice board with such ferocious absorption that he jumped when I spoke to him. He looked as if he was thin from lack of food, not naturally. His clothes had a slight tang of mildew to them, his hair was unwashed, his spectacles held together with a bent paper clip. He also had some sort of skin problem, with great raw patches across one cheek and his neck. However, he knew the way to Nick's office, which was all I needed. When I didn't grasp his rather convoluted directions at once he said impatiently, “Here, I'll show you.” We walked down half-a-dozen identical corridors. I asked him what he was studying, but he appeared not to know—his personality was no more prepossessing than his appearance. And apparently he thought the same about me, because he stopped dead and pointed. “Down there. First left. Third door on your right.” Then he vanished.

Nick's office was a vast improvement on the dreary halls I'd just come through. It was a white cube: white floors, white walls, white wooden table acting as a desk. The four blond wood Alvar Aalto chairs were shocking in their lack of whiteness. There was nothing on display. No papers on the table, no shelves, no nothing. Instead a small drawer unit stood tidily beside the table, and white Japanese screens sheltered what I imagined to be filing cabinets and bookshelves. In the midst of this vast arctic waste Nick's big fuzzy redness was even more endearing.

Nick had rounded up both Jonathan Davies' tutor and his friend—or, as he was quick to point out—not-so-very-close friend. It was immediately obvious that they had been discussing the matter before I arrived, and had planned what they were willing to say. Ian Childs led off. He and Davies had both come down from Glasgow the same year, and for a few months at the beginning that had been enough for them to share a place to live, with two other students. “But it didn't last long. We were all involved with what we were doing, and we were also set on having a good time. Jonathan didn't like the LSD, he didn't go out, he didn't have friends back. He just didn't do anything. When we moved on, it really just never occurred to us to include him in our new plans. We moved out of that place two years ago, and I don't know where he's been living since.”

Nick interrupted. “We do. At least, we have his address until last year. It's in Shepherd's Bush—Roxfield Road.”

Ian said, “Number 9? That's where we were. But he left with us—he couldn't have afforded to stay on his own. We rented from Gloria Ramsay, the woman who lived downstairs. She had
JESUS SAVES
posters in her windows—but if Jesus saved, Gloria believed in more straightforward profit.” It was a joke he must have made often, and he did it now almost automatically. “I can ring her if you like—see if she has a room for a friend of mine.”

Nick said, “Great. Do it now.”

While he was phoning, Oliver Heywood, Jonathan Davies' tutor, told me what he knew, which was nothing. Davies had made his accusation, Oliver and a hastily formed committee had looked into it, talking to Davies' classmates to see what they had witnessed (nothing); to the landlady to see if Kit had ever been seen at Davies' flat (he hadn't); and to Kit. Davies had said Kit kept phoning, and leaving sexually explicit messages. The calls had continued, he said, even when Kit was away, but no telephone records showed them. Kit had given the school permission to look at his mobile bills, and asked all the hotels he had stayed in to cooperate by passing their records over to the LSD. Nothing. Davies said he hadn't thought to keep the messages. No one could be found who had ever seen the two of them together, Davies couldn't produce a single witness. It boiled down to his word against Kit's, with the weight tilting toward Kit, because Davies had made accusations that records should have backed up, and they didn't. Kit's private life was as convoluted as anyone else's, but there had never been the slightest sniff of interest in a student. Davies had then upped the ante and made a formal police complaint. The police, after an agonizing wait, came to the same conclusion. So eventually Kit had said he would leave, rather than put the college in a difficult position. He'd only given a single series of lectures each year, so it didn't much matter to him.

Had it had mattered more to the LSD? Maybe that was worth thinking about. I did, for a nanosecond. Then I gave a mental
tsk
. Even if they had been distraught that Kit had created a problem and then just abandoned them, like the idea of a crazed journo wreaking vengeance, I kept coming back to People Like This Don't Do Things Like That. An academic leaves you short-staffed for a term, so you kidnap him? Come on. In the real world, no one kidnaps academics or journalists because no one wants them. It's hard enough to get rid of them after dinner. Having them around all the time, drinking you out of house and home? Please.

Leaving aside “People Like This,” if I looked at what was in front of me, while Nick and his colleagues had obviously presented the story from their side, and they weren't thrilled that this whole thing was coming up again, could I see them covering up something criminal? If it had been only about Kit being a stalker, maybe, but his disappearance, maybe worse? I couldn't see it. I didn't know Nick well, but I'd known him a long time. Was the reputation of the LSD so all-encompassing for him that he'd do that? I didn't think so.