And then … there’s a knock at the door.
Elle’s up first. ‘Thank God.’
‘Wait.’ I run to the bay window that overlooks the front door. It’s her. ‘OK, open up.’
She’s wearing a grubby jumper and jeans instead of the dress I saw her in last, her hair’s a mess, and she’s got a bruise on one cheek. She’s trembling with cold.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Getting away. Took a while.’
‘Are you OK?’
She looks down at her shaking hand, then up. ‘Is anyone going to make me a cup of tea?’
Half an hour later, things are a bit clearer.
Em kept Kate talking until there was a disturbance in the restaurant – that was me leaving. When that happened, Kate and the remaining officer got up for a moment and took their eye off her. Em made the most of their distraction by walking swiftly to the front of the room and urgently pleading with Gustave to help a friend of Davy’s. Rather than just steering her out of the building, he turned off the three remaining lights in the place, then hustled her into the nearby cloakroom and left her there. She banged into a shelf – hence the bruise – but couldn’t even cry out. She had to stand in the dark for an hour, wondering what the hell was going on.
Eventually Gustave opened the door again. He’d told the remaining police – Kate and the officer who hadn’t chased after me – that when the lights had gone out, someone had run past him up the stairwell, someone of about Em’s build. They’d asked him a few more questions, and he had listened, and answered in his impossibly grave manner, and they’d believed him. Kate had left her phone number, and they’d departed. But they’d stationed a plain-clothes officer on the street corner outside for an hour, so Em was trapped.
As she left, Em thanked Gustave, and asked why he’d been so willing to help her. Turns out Davy had helped Gustave onto the property ladder when he’d arrived in London in 1989 – got him his first little flat in Streatham, despite him having no deposit whatsoever – and Gustave remained forever in his debt. It’s feeling more and more like Davy’s an actual work contact of ours.
Then, as Em left St Francis, she thought she saw someone else following her, so she ran for it, and spent even longer than I did changing her clothes and her route.
‘So who’s this Kate McAdams then?’ Elle asks.
‘She told us she works for the … what was it, Al?
‘National Crime Agency.’
‘Sounds made up,’ says Elle. ‘Bit on the nose, isn’t it?’
‘It is, a bit. Any further details about her?’ asks Em.
‘They don’t do extensive personal biographies on the NCA website,’ says Jonny.
‘How annoying,’ says Em. ‘Would it kill them to write “Kate rounded up the Fulham Forgers” or whatever? Anyway,doesn’t matter. Davy contacted her and wanted to confess. Or to grass someone else up.’
‘Someone like his co-founder at the firm?’ says Elle. ‘What was he called again?’
‘Rob Wallace?’ I say. ‘Yeah, possibly. But the main thing is that whoever knew about the appointment must be the one who killed him. They must have found out both that Davy wasn’t actually in Dubai, and that he was going to meet the police.’
‘And they were willing to kill him just to protect themselves.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Could that be Mr Bowling Ball?’
‘Yes, but it still doesn’t answer why, unless he was in business with Davy and was going to be grassed up,’ I say.
‘You know who we should ring about this?’ Em says.
‘Who?’
She holds up a card with a phone number written on it in Gustave’s stern Austrian script. ‘Kate McAdams.’
‘Em,no.’
