‘I know Tony,’ he said, simply. ‘And I’d like to think I know you a little bit. I wasn’t sure you’d get on.’
‘He seemed to think we would.’
‘Ah. Well, that’s the point.’
She jutted out her chin. ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’
Hector looked aggrieved. ‘I saw the looks you were giving me. You didn’t exactly invite my opinion. So, what happened?’
‘He invited me to a jazz club.’ Hector raised an eyebrow. ‘And he spent the meal telling me all about his ancestral home and his boys at Eton and his bloody shooting weekends.’
‘Mmm, yes,’ he said. ‘He would. He was like that at Oxford. Although back then I seem to remember that it was other people’s ancestral homes that he invited one to.’
‘Does he do this to every woman he meets?’
‘Only the ones he finds attractive.’
He tipped another generous slug of brandy into her near-empty mug, and she took a good glug.
‘It’s not Tony,’ she said, dabbing at another infuriating tear. ‘It’s just . . . getting used to the new job, really. Not that I’m not good at it – I’m very good. But . . . it’s hard to know where to fit in.’ Now she’d started talking she couldn’t stop. ‘I’m not related to half of them, like Fiona. One of the men treats me like a speck of dust, another makes no secret of how much he’d love to be rid of me, even though I do half his typing, on top of my own work. I thought the third was all right . . . But, ha!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Obviously not. I’m nice as hell to the secretaries, but they cold-shoulder me too. They were lovely before I got promoted and I’d swear I haven’t changed.’ She realised how much she was gabbling and was horrified. It was the brandy talking, and the shock. ‘This is all hush-hush, do you understand?’ she said, glaring at Hector across the table.
He shrugged and said nothing.
Joan looked down at her mug, which was inexplicably empty, reached for the decanter and poured herself some more. She waited for him to tell her off for blabbing secrets, or patronise her in some way for whining like a baby, which she had undoubtedly done, or drinking too much, which she was.
Instead, he asked, ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
She didn’t. He offered her one of his cigarettes and she took it gratefully. It reminded her of Bletchley, standing outside the huts, looking up at the sky and praying for the citizens of Coventry and the East End, the submariners in the Atlantic, the fighter pilots heading out to France. That’s where she’d learned to smoke, not that she did it often as it made her wheeze. The taste of tobacco in her mouth brought back the camaraderie and terror, the intense pressure and a never-to-be-repeated lust for life that they had shared in the midst of it all. It was strangely uplifting.
‘Well done for getting home safely,’ Hector said quietly.
She was glad he’d changed the subject from her little rant. He seemed deeply relieved.
‘Tony was never going to harm me,’ she assured him.
But he was, and he had. Not only by what he did, but by what she didn’t do. How hard was it to stab a man with a fork? Why couldn’t she?
‘He’s a very successful man,’ Hector said. ‘If I could afford to put money in one of his companies I’d probably make a fortune. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t an outright bloody blackguard.’
Perhaps he hadn’t judged her harshly as she’d left the flat this evening, after all, Joan thought. She had the impression that, sweetly, he would have liked to have ridden in on his charger and rescued her from Tony’s evil clutches. Instead, he’d made her cocoa.
Then she thought of something else.
‘You said you knew Tony at university. Was he the person who told you I was looking for somewhere to live?’
‘Yes, that’s right. I’d mentioned at the club that I was thinking of getting rid of the flat. A few days later he rang me up and told me about Sir Hugh’s predicament, and you.’
‘Mmm.’
But he hadn’t told Hector about Joan McGraw – he’d mentioned John. And ‘John’ was somebody that Hector would be happy to share a flat with, occasionally. He might have said no to a ‘Joan’, but now that she was here . . . and given the kind of low-class girl she was . . . who knew what might ensue?
Joan was either very paranoid about Tony Radnor-Milne, or she was right.
Chapter 24
Darbishire put his empty glass down on the gingham-covered table.
‘Another one?’
The inspector definitely didn’t want a top-up of whatever gloopy green liqueur he was being offered. The first had been bad enough.
‘Yeah, thanks,’ he said. ‘That’d be nice.’
‘I thought you’d like it,’ Jimmy Broad said with a grin. ‘Got a bit of an edge. Unusual.’
Darbishire couldn’t tell if the other man was teasing him or telling it straight. Either way, it didn’t matter. One of Billy Hill’s most trusted henchmen was talking to him face to face, and right now, he’d down a pint glass of that foul liquid if it helped.
Jimmy was solicitous. ‘I ’ear you’ve been ’aving some trouble,’ he said, filling his own tumbler with water from a rustic jug. ‘With this little strangling case of yours. ’Ow can I ’elp?’
‘It’s kind of you to offer.’
‘Anytime. You only ’ave to ask.’
Jimmy sat back and smiled from across the table. The besuited man sitting beside him in the dingy Notting Hill restaurant smiled too. So did the gorilla at the door, who made sure nobody else was getting in or out.
Darbishire did not only have to ask. The men of the Billy Hill gang didn’t normally try to assist the police in any way – except by providing work for them to do. Everything about this situation was unusual, including the fact that the inspector was not tucked up in bed at this very late hour. His wife would be worrying about him. He was worried about himself.
‘It’s about Dino Perez,’ he said, knowing Jimmy already knew this part. ‘Or Nico Rodriguez, as I should call him. Known to the police in Argentina. Arms dealer. Fixer. International man of mystery, you might say.’
It had taken a while to find out Perez’s real identity. He had no known friends and family either here or in Argentina, his forged papers were designed to be confusing, and the bloating and discolouration of his face when he was found hadn’t helped at all. However, Buenos Aires eventually came up with a match, and now the information was flooding in. Rodriguez was of interest to police forces in four continents.
Jimmy nodded and said nothing.
‘Quite the globe-trotter,’ Darbishire went on. ‘Contacts in the Middle East, North Africa. The man who could get you whatever you wanted. He liked to dabble in cocaine.’
At this, Jimmy raised a hand. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’
Darbishire took this little denial on board. ‘He had a taste for the high life, let’s say. Gambling in Monaco and Morocco. Putting a packet on the horses over here. He was seen in the company of one or two of your associates, Jimmy, before he died. So, perhaps that’s what you can help me with.’ God help me, he added, privately. These encounters always looked so smooth in the movies, but he was sweating in his shoes.
‘I’m not sure I can, entirely,’ Jimmy answered. ‘Not with what Rodriguez was up to in London, at any rate. What a man does with his leisure time is up to ’im, isn’t it? It’s a free country.’
Darbishire didn’t bother to argue. ‘Then why am I here?’
‘It’s what ’e didn’t do,’ Jimmy said.
‘OK.’
‘And what ’e didn’t do, is rattle the boss. In fact, they were friends.’