Julia shivered. “Don’t talk like that, William. You scare me. Do your American. It suits you. That’s who you are.”
“Okay, okay,” he said easily. “Come on! Let’s think about this. They’ve gone somewhere there’s a change of clothes available.”
“I bet he’s taken him home with him? Where is Sandilands’s home?”
“He had a flat in Chelsea and he’s still there after all these years, he tells me. By the river. Right where they dowsed the body. I’ve got his number.”
“Garn!” The Cockney expletive rocketed across the table, conveying utter derision in four letters. “Why would he give you his private phone number?”
Armitage’s hackles had been raised by the playground challenge. “From the last case we worked together,” he said stiffly. “We were in close collaboration in that one all right. Politically sensitive. Top Secret stuff. ‘Ring me any time day or night, Bill …’ Still got his card.” He produced it from his wallet.
She snatched it from him, raising her eyebrows in surprise and read out: “Flaxman five-two-zero-four, and a Lot’s Road address. That’s right opposite the power station, isn’t it? Not very posh for a man like him. I’d have expected rooms in Piccadilly—Albany perhaps.”
“He’s not like that. It’s not a good idea to try to predict anything about Sandilands, Julia.”
Julia smiled, understanding that no one was allowed to criticise or question his boss but Armiger. There was mischief in her eyes as she suggested, “It’d shake him up a bit if you gave him a bell when we get back to the hotel.”
“Perhaps I will. Offer to drop round with a toothbrush or two.”
“You can try. But prepare for disappointment—I bet they’re not there. What would they do to pass the time in Chelsea? They’d drive each other nuts, cooped up together.” Then, more soberly: “If they have taken off, William, have you thought—it’s a desperate thing to do. It won’t have been easy to get Kingstone away when he’s still hoping Natalia might come breezing back. Or fearing her body might turn up. Either way—he’d want to be on the spot. It must mean Sandilands thinks he’s in immediate danger from someone close to him. At the hotel? Kingstone had already come to that conclusion—we all heard him say so. Who’s he got in mind? There’s only us. You? Me? Which of us is it, William?”
Her teasing smile faded and they stared at each other in sudden dismay.
“Don’t forget Natalia, wherever she is,” Bill offered. “I can’t believe she’s a goner. She wouldn’t let us off the hook that easily. Not her. Now she’s really got it in for him, if I’m to trust the evidence of my ears. The last thing I heard her shriek at him involved doing something unspeakable to his crown jewels. I’d call that dangerous, immediate and very close,” he said to relieve the tension. “But you know them as a couple, Julia. I don’t. They surely don’t carry on like that all the time, do they? Funny sort of love affair, I’d say.”
“It’s not a sun-lit pool and it wouldn’t suit me either. But it works for them, I suppose. Most of the time.”
“When were they last together?” Armitage asked, following up the slight uncertainty he detected in her words.
“Their paths crossed for a couple of days in Vienna at Easter—he was over there for a conference. She was dancing and didn’t have much time to spare for him. For any length of time it would be Paris, last Christmas. She was performing the Nutcracker. It was a bit stormy.”
Armitage censored the rude comment he was about to make. Her pure profile, so at odds with her own relaxed way of talking, confused and intimidated him. He didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot and spoil their evening.
“She did the same thing in Paris. Bunked off after a week. Shouting and yelling. She came back after two days, bold as brass, as though nothing had happened and just carried on. She wasn’t there to see the state she’d left him in. Poor bloke. Why, Bill? Why does an intelligent, strong man like Kingstone put up with it?”
“Do you ever feel tempted to give him a few words of advice, Julia?”
She looked at him strangely. “Of course. Wouldn’t you? Problem is—I couldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. What can you do to help pick up the pieces? I’m in the other camp and in a servile position as well. He’s not going to take much notice of me. I offer such comfort as I can when it’s required. But, really, the only thing that makes him happy is the sight of Natalia coming through the door, hat box on her arm and a smile on her face.”
“What about all those Americans staying at the hotel? There’s about thirty of them. He must know some of them. Any familiar faces there, Julia?”
She shook her head. But picked up his point. “Right. You say you used to be a detective? Go on, then, do a bit of detecting. Who’s threatening him? If Sandilands has worked it out, we can. Think—did he get to know anyone on the boat over?”
Armitage gave her an edited list of the senator’s sea-board connexions, leaving out the chorus girls and reducing it to two economists and one diplomat, adding, “He’s made no attempt to continue the acquaintance since we arrived here. He’s an odd one. Friendly enough but he doesn’t have the glossy charm of a career politician.”
“That’s one of the reasons I like him. I’d say politics for him is a means to an end, not a goal in itself. It’s a game of power for most men in the countries I’ve visited—and that’s a dozen or more. It’s a chessboard they set up for themselves but one with millions of pawns who’ve never asked to be in the game. I thought Kingstone was different.”
“He is. Cheer up, Julia. You’re not his maid. You’re not paid to worry about him. What’s it to you if he’s gone off into the blue yonder without a clean pair of underpants? He’ll be all right with Sandilands. Another odd fish who makes his own rules. They’re two for a pair.”
“Probably sitting down watching a roulette wheel spinning, brandy glass in one hand, blonde floozy in the other, as we speak,” Julia said with a grimace.
“You’ve got it! Look, Julia, they’re out of our hair. The night’s young. London’s just warming up. Where shall we go? I’ve still got contacts in this town—I can get us in anywhere, and you’re dressed for anything,” he said with eager confidence. “There’s Ciro’s just off the Haymarket … The Ambassador’s closer, just across Regent’s Street and they’ve got Joe Loss and his Harlem Band tonight. Or if you fancy something more exotic and classy there’s always the Blue Lagoon in Beak Street, all countesses and cocktails. You’ll blend right in! Gargle a bit of that Russian in the back of your throat like you do and they’ll think you’re an émigrée duchess with her gigolo in tow.”
She was laughing at him and warming to the idea, he could tell, until he made his big mistake.
“They don’t close until four-thirty in the morning, when they start serving breakfast. They’ve got a good jazz band. What about it? How do you fancy cutting a rug?”
The careless slang had slipped out before he realised what damage it could do.
Julia rose to her feet and picked up her bag, resigned and sad. “Now there was I, thinking you’d noticed. I don’t go in for rug-cutting these days. I’ll trouble you to whistle up a taxi for me—they tend not to want to stop for women who look like me. Odd and difficult.” She slipped a half crown onto the table. “There’s my share. I enjoyed the supper. I’m going back to the hotel now for that cocoa and I’ll leave you to do whatever single young men do on a Friday night in London. I’ll be tucked up in my own room when you get back and I don’t expect to be fetched out to look at any more corpses before at least ten o’clock.”