‘We think we should ascertain who you are first,’ I say. ‘If you don’t mind.’
‘Certainly,’ she says, and flips her wallet open onto the table. ‘My name is Kate McAdams, I’m with the National Crime Agency, and I’m here to see Mr Harcourt for a personal chat. But he’s dead, of course. As I suspect you both know.’ She does not smile.
So now we really are in trouble.
20
‘Keep your seats,’ Kate continues. ‘You’re not under arrest, yet.’
‘But—’
‘I’m just curious how you knew about his appointment. How you knew about him at all, in fact. You were two of the crew at his house, I take it?’
I’m going through my list of rules, but absolutely nothing I can find applies here. Rule 23 isTake more care with new places than you thought necessary. Didn’t manage that. Rule 6 isPrep your exits as soon as you’re in, which I have done, but which won’t do me much good while I’m sitting here. Ah, wait, Rule 7, as previously mentioned:Talk, talk, talk.Keep talking.
‘Are we having lunch, or what?’ Em has clearly intuited the same rule.
‘Here? Not on my department’s budget.’
‘Ah,’ says Em. ‘Yes, of course, this should have been on Mr Harcourt. Well, I’m sure we can cover it. Al?’
‘Absolutely.’ I’ve got about £200 in my wallet – in notes, thank goodness. Use a traceable credit card in front of a police officer at a meeting this incriminating, and I may as well just drop myself off at Wormwood Scrubs and ask if they have any rooms going. ‘What sort of crime do you specialise in, by the way?’
‘Financial.’
Well, that’s useful to know, at least. ‘Shall we have a drink before we start?’
‘This is a work meeting.’
‘A non-alcoholic beer?’ I gesture into the abyss, and within a few seconds a waiter has beached by our table. We place our order (two glasses of Soave, one lemonade for Kate). I’ve now spent about thirty quid and bought us precisely sixty seconds. At my current budget, I can afford for us to kill time for just over five more minutes. It’s not sustainable.
‘Financial crime,’ says Em. ‘And you wanted to see Mr Harcourt about that.’
Kate frowns. ‘No. He wanted to see me.’
‘Sorry?’
‘He made the appointment. I was coming here as a favour to him. Except that he was killed a few days ago. As you know.’
Davy made the appointment. Davy was the one wanting to speak to the police about whatever he was up to. That makes no sense. I had thought he might be in enough trouble for thepolice to be after him, hence the detectives getting to his place so fast, but … what?
Em speaks again. ‘Sorry, if you know he’s dead, why are you here to have lunch with him?’
‘Because I thought someone he was associated with might come along. Or the people who killed him.’ Kate smiles, and I blench.
Em isn’t fazed in the slightest. ‘Did he tell you what it was about?’
Kate purses her lips. ‘I’m not going to discuss private police business with two people who’ve just turned up claiming a vague personal connection with a murdered man.’
‘All right,’ says Em. ‘That’s fair enough. Let’s order, and then we’ll talk.’
I look down at the menu. It’s one of the ones where every dish contains one ingredient you’re comfortable with (lamb), two you’ve vaguely heard of (brassica,pommes à la Chantal), a few totally unfamiliar ones (aliguelles,smadellas,beresali), and a number of terms that seem entirely out of place in a culinary environment (wet-shaved,caressed,Alsatian). At the end of each two-line description is a frighteningly large two-digit number.
We order, between us, a number of dishes we are destined never to eat. I still wonder what became of my foamed scallop with slacklinedcrontili. I hope someone in the kitchen got to enjoy it at least. The waiter glides off.
‘So?’ Kate says. She’s very demanding.
‘We were working with Mr Harcourt,’ I say. ‘He told us about the appointment. That’s why we’re here.’
