He didn’t know how tall it would be exactly, but there were dark mutterings among the officers at the Yard who cared about London’s architecture. This was the city of Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor. Its skyline was defined by the dome of St Paul’s and a familiar scattering of church spires. Now, where the bombs had fallen heavily, buildings were starting to go up that were higher than the tallest churches. Big, concrete things that looked as if they belonged in New York. They made him nervous. Woolgar was a fan, needless to say.
It’s progress, sir, isn’t it? Houses? Offices? We need them.
Darbishire needed open sky. He was not quite forty, but he was starting to feel old.
He sat back down and focused on a different kind of progress: his own.
The reason he was here, not at his desk at the Chelsea police station in Lucan Place, was that his reports now went all the way to Her Majesty the Queen, God help him, which meant they got vetted by every goddam senior pen-pusher in between. Every single thing about them had been altered, from the paper he used, to the secretary who typed them up, to the structure of his sentences. The only thing they couldn’t change was what he had to say.
Did Her Majesty care about escort agencies and cleaning contracts? Darbishire doubted it. However, if she wanted to know the intricacies of arranging discreet meeting places in central London, she was welcome to fill her boots.
Under further questioning, the charlady at Cresswell Place had confirmed exactly what he suspected about the mews house, which was that it was one of several posh locations used for the assignations of some Raffles VIPs who didn’t want to risk being spotted in a hotel. These locations used to be kept empty, she said, but the landlords started getting greedy and looked for tenants who might want the place on a Monday-to-Friday basis. One room would always be set aside and kept pristine for Saturdays and Sundays, without the renter’s knowledge. The rent for the rest was cheap and high-quality cleaning services were thrown in. ‘The churchman seemed just the right type,’ she’d added, ‘because he’s always busy of a weekend, isn’t he?’
Darbishire judged this a particularly stupid plan, because people don’t always do what you expect them to do, do they? When asked, the receptionist at the letting agency said that tenants were supposed to call and check if they could stay over on a weekend, because it was written into their contracts that they couldn’t, and technically they weren’t paying for it. The receptionist swore blind that this wasn’t a ruse to warn the Raffles agency in advance, but obviously it was.
The dean had in fact made such a call. But the office girl at Raffles said that it wasn’t a problem, because they had nobody booked that night. Beryl White and Perez were not supposed to go there. Which raised, once again, the question of the keys.
Darbishire had another question, too. The Raffles agency and the letting agency needed to talk to each other to make this precarious arrangement work. It followed that the greedy landlords must be intimately connected with the owners or managers of the escort agency, but Darbishire hadn’t had any luck yet establishing who they were, behind the convoluted front of Liechtenstein-based companies they’d set up. He was working on it.
Chapter 21
As the days of May sped by, the deputy private secretary huddled behind his desk in the North Wing corridor and buried himself in the preparations for Denmark.
The stress of the visit was getting to Miles Urquhart for some reason. Twice, he had broken his vow of silence to shout at Joan in front of all the typists. It was hard not to look hurt, but Joan just about managed it. She was used to the secretaries not offering her any solidarity, but she was surprised when the press secretary, of all people, invited her into his office and offered her a chair.
‘I apologise for Miles. That was unpardonable. He can be a brute sometimes, but he doesn’t mean it. He’ll come round eventually, when he sees how indispensable you are.’
‘Thank you, Jeremy.’
Radnor-Milne smiled, and his thin, chiselled face looked almost attractive. ‘HM doesn’t make mistakes about people. She’s really quite brilliant that way, like her father.’ He saw Joan frowning at this new-found friendliness. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you. Up to my eyes. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t noticed how hard you’ve worked on these trips. I’m sorry you don’t get to come to Denmark with us.’
‘It’s alright. There’s a lot to do.’
‘Minding the fort and so on, like last month. Mmm.’ He nodded. ‘But I’d hate to think of you as Cinderella, busy filing all the time, with your nose covered in ash smuts from the fire . . .’
Joan grinned. ‘I don’t think Cinderella filed.’
‘She would have, if Miles had been involved. Anyway, Fiona used to come out with us for cocktails and so on, and we had a grand time. I suddenly realised that you haven’t done anything with us socially yet, have you?’
‘No,’ Joan agreed. She had been pointedly left out of any plans.
‘It’s simply not good enough,’ Jeremy said. ‘My wife and I are going out with some people a couple of nights before we head off to Copenhagen. A little dinner at the Ritz. Will you come? I’m afraid I can’t provide you with any eligible bachelors, but my brother will look after you. It’s the least you deserve.’
‘I’d love to. Oh, what should I wear?’
‘Anything you like.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, we’re all very relaxed.’
Joan did worry. There was no such thing as ‘anything you like’ in London society. She spent a couple of days anxiously scouring magazines and talking it through with her aunt and some of her old friends from the Wrens. As she had suspected, a trip to the Ritz required a proper cocktail dress, which she didn’t possess, and some form of glamorous wrap.
Auntie Eva was delighted to help, but she was a perfectionist. The dress was finally delivered to Dolphin Square two hours before Joan was due to wear it. She changed into it nervously, checking her profile for gaps or bulges. As far as she could tell, it fitted as well as her aunt promised it would.
‘Bloody hell! Excuse my language.’
Hector Ross looked up in shock from his newspaper when she emerged from her bedroom.
‘Do I look all right?’
‘You know you do.’ He seemed flustered. ‘It’s just . . .’
‘What?’
‘It’s not very you.’
‘What does that mean?’ Joan asked, exasperated. If that’s all he had to say, he might as well keep his thoughts to himself. ‘There’s more to me than serge suits, you know.’
‘I can see that.’
She resented being criticised in her own flat – so to speak – when she was trying to build her own confidence. ‘Why are you here anyway?’ she asked. ‘This is the third night this week.’
‘Building work at the club,’ he muttered. ‘Not that it’s any of your business. Where are you going?’
She explained about the Ritz, and the press secretary’s invitation.
‘Did he get that dress for you?’
‘No! Of course not! My aunt made it.’
Joan did a little twirl. The finely pleated bodice of this black silk dress was engineered to fit her like a second skin. Below the waist, its skirts fell in clever layers, fluidly outlining her every move. She had new nylons, and shoes borrowed from one of the few girls in the typing pool who was still friends with her, and had left work early for a shampoo and set at the hairdresser’s. Her normally wayward hair was now glued to her head in a complicated design, held in place by a multitude of hidden pins. She hardly recognised herself.