‘Let’s talk somewhere.’ Charli gestures, still holding her canapé. We go and stand by one of the unoccupied paintings, which is titled1200 black squares on a black background, or: mother.
With her free hand, she hooks a loose strand of hair back where it belongs, and looks at us. She smiles, brief and coy, and for a moment I think she’s about to confide in us. Then just as suddenly as it appeared, the smile drops off her face, replaced by iron, and she opens the batting.
‘All right. Who are you really?’
Em crinkles her brow. ‘I’m Tiff, remember?’
‘No you’re not. Come on, I don’t have time for this bollocks.’
‘No, I am. We met at Guggy’s, and … before that, it was the hotel opening in Mustique, remember? We were on the roof for the fireworks and then the lifts broke.’ Well done for remembering that, Em.
‘I checked my records once I got home. That hotel’s opening party was entirely sub-aquatic. Therewereno fireworks.’ She holds Em’s gaze. ‘So we’ve never met.’
More crinkles. ‘Oh. Really? I must have got confused …’
‘Knock it off. You two went to see my daughter. Why?’Shit. ‘You told her you’re private investigators.’
‘We are,’ Em concedes. ‘But—’
‘Who hired you?’
‘We can’t say.’
‘Are you police?’
‘No.’
‘Then I should have you arrested now.’ She looks to one side of the room, as if ascertaining that someone’s there. Oh God. In response to Charli’s glance, a man is walking towards us. He’s not Mr Bowling Ball, but he’s in a similar suit and shares the same ‘prison gym’ build.
‘For what, Charli?’
‘For approaching my daughter. She’s been through averytraumatic relationship recently and she’s lost her father within the last week. Are you out of your minds? Do you know the laws on harassment? Who evenareyou?’
‘We – I – apologise, Mrs Harcourt. I know this must have been an unbelievably difficult time for you. I don’t know how you’re still standing.’
At that, a bit of Charli’s reserve breaks down. For a second her polished exterior cracks, and I think I get a glimpse past the carefully constructed life – the parties, the glamour – to the woman within. Her voice catches faintly.
‘You don’t know. You haveno ideawhat it’s been like.’ And there’s venom there, but there’s vulnerability too. She had a husband, a child, everything she had learned to want, then the marriage fell apart, and the child is grown, and she’s facing aworld where people are murdered, and where all the questions she carefully never asked about her husband’s prosperity are drifting to the surface like alligators through a swamp. She didn’t want anything especially wrong from this life, I think. Only what most of us are looking for. Just a bit of stability.
Her thug is lingering by her shoulder, and she notices his presence. ‘Never mind, Grigor. False alarm.’ After a little bonus scowl at us, he recedes.
I pipe up for the first time. ‘Mrs Harcourt, we do understand. We know you just want the best for your daughter. But we think there was something going on between your ex-husband and Rob Wallace – they fell out badly and we don’t know why – and we’re just trying to work out whether it has any bearing on his death.’
‘But whohiredyou?’ For a moment she looks desperate enough to eat her blini.
‘We can’t tell you any more than we told your daughter. But we can tell you we’re going to find the truth. We will work out who killed David.’
‘Do you have any ideas yet?’
‘Not really. We know he urgently wanted to see his friends.’
‘Ugh. The Balham lot. They were awful.’ Charli turns to Em, but nods at me. ‘And that stupid pointless game of theirs. Honestly, love, if this one ever gets into Fantasy Football, dump his arse.’
‘We’re not actually—’
‘Andthey were a bunch of wasters. You might want to check out Ben Westcott. I’m sure he’s got a conviction forsomething or other. Bought his way out of it, but it was something to do with a dodgy shotgun licence.’
‘Shotgun?’ Charli nods, and Em and I file that away.
