I couldn’t believe she was so blatant. “Is that what you say to yourself so you can sleep at night?”
Her brow furrowed. “A tax break is not a crime. Rich clients are always looking for deductibles—and why not something that means you get to go to a fabulous party in a grand location?”
I took in Diana and her immaculate ensemble. She was a successful lawyer. She cared about her appearance, her son, and her money. Fun parties, exotic holidays, beautiful interior design. Nothing as complicated and seedy as gangsters and assassins and The Corporation.
It was suddenly very clear to me that she would never dirty herself with all that. Why would she? Reputation was everything to someone like her. She wouldn’t risk putting little Ted through the humiliation of his mother being arrested for being involved with criminal gangs.
She wouldn’t take such a risk—but we were happy to, apparently. I shook off the thought.
If I believed what Diana was saying, that meant that Unique Events was just a tax dodge. But we were so sure it was The Corporation. It all fit. What could it mean?
“You’ll have to try harder to find something to pin on me, Hazel.” She swept off, waving at a handsome bearded man on the other side of the room.
A woman with cropped pink hair was weaving a little as she made her way through the crowd, clutching a glass of champagne. Her mask was pushed up onto her head. She looked familiar. Where did I…?
Razia. Danny’s PA. Danny still hadn’t been reported missing yet. Clearly, no one cared about him enough to notice he’d been off-grid for nearly two weeks.
I stopped her. “Hi! Razia, isn’t it?”
I lifted my mask a little. She looked at me and tilted her head. “Oh, the pretty one. You were at my office.”
“Is Danny here tonight?”
She frowned. “Who’s that?”
Danny had lied. No surprise there. But why? Was he pretending to have a PA to seem like a bigger deal? Or was it something else?
“Danny. The man I was in a meeting with when you came in.”
“Oh, him. I’ve no idea.”
“He doesn’t…he doesn’t work for Unique Events?”
“We let out those meeting rooms to local creatives. I thought you guys worked together.” She spotted a waiter brandishing a bottle of champagne and headed for him. “Oh, here, please!”
I tried to make it make sense. Danny did not work for Unique Events. He’d had no part in organizing this party.
Danny was here at Balgray Hall that first day because he knew we were coming. That chance meeting had not been chance at all. The Chameleon wanted us to think we were getting one step ahead of him. But we weren’t. He knew about my history with Danny. As soon as Danny told me about the party, he knew I’d use Danny to find out more.
Everything we’d seen, The Chameleon wanted us to see.
Fox crackled in. “I’m at the seating plan. Something’s not right. All the names from the guest list are different to the names up here.”
The guest list. That had come from the booklet I took from Danny. They could’ve written anything they wanted in it. Therewere no elderly clients who only liked printouts. If something was too easy, there was usually a reason for it.
Those booklets had just been sitting on a desk, waiting for me to take one.
The guest list was fake. Criminal names had been put in to make us think something big was happening. And the Joe Jones name was planted to make us go to the Airbnb.
Unique Events wasn’t The Corporation. It was just an events company Backhouse Dunne had set up as a tax break.
Diana Morgan was just a vicious school mum.
This wasn’t a great criminal get-together of all the big players. This was…just a party.
Blood was pounding in my ears. Every instinct was telling me this was a trap.
Just like Ivrea.
