I don’t actually have any ideas; the Land Registry was all I had. If we’d only looked at some post, or had time to hunt around the house a bit more …
‘We could contact Claudia,’ says Elle.
‘Absolutely not,’ Em replies.
‘But—’
‘No. Sorry. Not doing it. Just shut that down.’
‘I know you don’t like her, Em, but she’s still our—’
‘No,’ Em interrupts. ‘We’re not talking to that woman. Move on.’
‘Er, guys?’ That’s Jonny, but I’m so tangled in a new thread of searchingLand Registry property not thereandunregistered propertiesandsecret homes UKthat I don’t pay attention. Em and Elle are glaring at each other in a stand-off I don’t understand, so they don’t notice either. Eventually Jonny has to say it again: ‘Guys.’
We follow his gaze to the screen, where a local news reporter is standing outside Larksfoot, in front of some police tape, and fielding questions from the studio about the Cotswolds gang murder that has shocked this once-peaceful village to its core.
Five minutes later – no thanks to any of us – we know the dead man’s name, age and occupation.
David Harcourt was, and now will ever remain, fifty-seven years old. He was a ‘beloved part of village life’ – fundraiser, church volunteer, a stout pillar of civil society. A series of photos running backwards in time show him gradually becoming less red and portly, until eventually he’s quite a handsome young businessman in the late eighties.
More unsettling, he was in my line of work. Davy – I wouldcall him by his surname ordinarily, but being threatened with a gun puts you on first-name terms in my book, no matter where your relationship goes from there – had been an estate agent at a Mayfair firm. The newsreader, practically salivating at the ratings-winning combo of murder and high-end property, announced that the company he had worked at was one of the UK’s most exclusive estate agencies, established in 1987 by a then-buccaneering Davy and his co-founder. A camera crew had been sent to the firm’s office – dubious taste, I thought – and a junior reporter was breathlessly relating from the scene that there wasn’t anyone there yet, due to it only being 7.34 a.m., and that the police had announced the death was being treated as murder. Nothing gets past those guys.
Eventually, after the ritual declaration that anyone who knows anything at all should blah blah, the anchor lets go of the juicy murder and moves on to the busting of an Iranian spy ring operating on the south coast, and we switch off.
‘Who would want to kill a luxury estate agent?’
We all sit and ponder Elle’s question for a bit.
‘All right, who wouldnotwant to kill a luxury estate agent?’
Em stands. ‘Well, the first thing we have to do is get into his firm somehow. Find out what was going on there. Maybe a rival agent shot him.’
‘What, over a five-bed semi in Walthamstow? Be real, Em.’
She shrugs. ‘Doesn’t matter. Worth checking anyway. Al, have you heard of this firm before, Harcourt and Wallace?’
‘Never. They must be tiny.’
‘Office in Mayfair,’ says Jonny. ‘Somewhere called KennelRow. They can’t be unsuccessful. In fact’ – more tap-dancing fingers – ‘oh, yeah, they’re doing all right for themselves. Look at these figures.’
‘Can you summarise?’ I’ve never been much good with balance sheets.
‘Pretty decent profits at the end of the last two years. Big increases in pay to the directors. Yeah, they’re doing great.’
‘I hope for their sake it’s above board,’ says Em. ‘Although if one of their senior people has just turned up dead, I suspect it won’t be. We’d better find out.’
‘How?’
‘One of us will have to go along and make a few enquiries.’ She’s looking at the ceiling, speaking as if to herself. ‘If only we had someone who knew anything about estate agents, or would know the right questions to ask. And someone who was brilliant at coming up with cover stories.’ Her gaze lands on me.
‘You’rejoking.’
She grins. ‘You wish.’
10
Three hours later, Em and I are in a Pret round the corner from Kennel Row, in the West End.
