Kidd Orpington Ltd
J. Besley
T. Grantham
About half these properties are owned by companies – none of which I’ve ever heard of, although that’s hardly surprising. Looking at the ones that aren’t, the dates of saledon’t match the handwritten dates in Davy’s ledger. But the properties that do come up on the Registry as being company-owned correspond exactly with the dates Davy wrote.
‘These ones’ – Em points to the properties that don’t match Davy’s dates – ‘must have been resold. But these company ones are the sales he was responsible for.’
‘Does his laptop have any more information, Jonny?’
Jonny sucks some sauce off a finger. ‘Dunno. It’s locked, properly. Going to take a few days to get into that one. First difficult job I’ve had for months.’
‘Suspicious?’
He shrugs. ‘Maybe just careful. Lot of money sliding around here, clearly.’
‘So what are we saying?’ says Elle. ‘Davy represented companies that were buying property?’
‘Looks like it. Nothing automatically dodgy there. Might have been his speciality.’
‘All right. I guess the next step is to look at the companies.’
‘Yeah.’ Em frowns. ‘Maybe we ask that friend of yours at the firm, Al.’
‘Mrs P.’
‘Exactly. Try your superficial charm on her.’
‘Thank you.’ I look at the lists Elle wrote in the pub at lunch. ‘What about these appointments from the diary you nicked off his desk?’
I’m worried about these. The first engagement,215 Feathers, is in thirty-six hours. 2.15 is clearly the time, but as for the location, we’re nowhere. Before supper we spent an hourlooking up feather merchants, pubs called the Feathers, chicken farmers … but none of it seemed to have any connection to Davy. We even did some cold-calling of everywhere in London with ‘feathers’ in the name, and various places in the Bridling area. Nobody had even heard the name David Harcourt.
‘Still nada,’ says Jonny. ‘I’m up to a five-mile radius around the three known locations we have for Mr Harcourt.’
‘Damn.’
‘Yes. Finding out what this meeting is – assuming it’s meaningful – would be by far the easiest way of working out Davy’s business interests, but at the moment there’s no indication whatsoever where it would have taken place.’ Jonny has a knack for delivering the worst possible news in the poshest possible way.
‘How about the wife? What was her name again?
‘Ex-wife. Charli. And nothing doing,’ says Elle. ‘I’ve been on her Instagram account all afternoon trying to map where she might be. There’s no pattern. Seems like she lives in the UK – somewhere in west London, I think, but she’s private about that. No job, as far as I can tell.’
‘And right now she could be halfway around the world. Where do rich people go in April?’
‘I’m not sure there’s a particular place. Maybe there’s a horse race or something? It’s too early for tennis.’
‘Coachella’s on,’ says Elle.
I look over her shoulder at Charli Harcourt’s Instagram feed. Not many followers, but it’s full of the stuff influencers like posting. A few shots of her holding a doughnut or a steaknear her mouth, beaches, heavily filtered close-ups. It looks silly enough when teenagers post this stuff. ‘She’s a bit old for Coachella, surely?’
Elle shrugs. ‘Looks like she’s been everywhere else.’
In my pocket, my phone buzzes. I ignore it, and a few seconds later, it buzzes again. That’s odd. I don’t normally message anyone from this phone, and the photographic agency I work for never texts me, let alone after hours. I look at my watch: it’s almost 10 p.m.
Out in the corridor, I look down at the screen: two new messages.
The first one reads:
