Danvers and Debs, as she had come to think of them, were already sitting outside at a table by the riverside walk, coffees in front of them and buff folders laid out on the table. Ever the gentleman, plump Danvers half-stood and nodded when she arrived. She sat down and ordered a coffee she didn’t want.
‘How are you today, Ms Melnic?’ said Danvers, pronouncing her name correctly this time. ‘Feeling better?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Enjoying your time in our capital?’
‘I’ve been here before, you know. I lived here once. Remember?’
‘Ah, yes, the pavement artist days. Well, you’ve left those behind you now, haven’t you? Found yourself a famous artist.’
‘Can we get on with the questions?’
‘By all means.’ Danvers took a sip of his coffee, making an unpleasant slurping sound. ‘What have you been up to since we last talked?’
‘Up to? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘It’s English for “been doing”.’
‘I know what it means. I also understand its nuances of connotation, that perhaps what someone has been “up to” is not necessarily wholesome, but I still don’t know what you’re getting at.’
‘Let me put it bluntly, Ms Melnic,’ said Deborah Fletcher, coming at her from the side. ‘Why did you take it into your mind to pay a visit to Mr Hawkins’s house yesterday?’
So she had been seen. There was nothing for it but to tell the truth, or part of the truth. ‘I was curious, that’s all,’ she said.
‘About what?’ Danvers asked. ‘To see the damage? Like a motorist slowing down to look at an accident? I can understand that. Do you have a yearning for the macabre, Ms Melnic?’
It had been her comparison exactly: stopping to look at a car crash. ‘No more than anyone else. I knew Mr Hawkins. Not well. But I knew him. He was a good boss. Call it a sort of homage, if you will.’
‘Homage.’ Danvers pronounced the word with great relish and a pronounced French accent. ‘Yes. Homage. That will do nicely. So it wasn’t anything to do with trying to find out if there was anything, shall we say, suspicious, about his demise?’
‘You told me there wasn’t.’
‘Indeed we did.’
‘There you are, then.’
‘And just exactly where are we? You haven’t answered Deborah’s question yet.’
‘I think I have. You told me to stay in London. I had nothing better to do, so I thought I’d like to see the damage.’
‘How did you know where Mr Hawkins lived?’ Danvers asked.
‘I told you. We were all invited to a department mixer there just over a year ago.’
‘And you remembered the address?’
‘I’m a super-recogniser, Mr Danvers.’ Unfortunately, Zelda thought, that meant she could never forget Deborah’s sour and unappealing face.
‘You also have a good memory for places?’
‘So it would seem.’
‘Why are you so interested?’
‘I told you: I was curious. Wouldn’t you be? Your boss dies in a house fire. It’s not something that happens every day.’ Zelda was beginning to believe that they hadn’t seen her go into the pub, and she prayed that she was right. That would be harder to explain, especially if they had found out from the young man behind the bar what questions she had asked him. She remembered no one else entering while she was there, except that noisy group of four towards the end. It could be a cover for an NCA spy. And if Danvers’s men had questioned the bartender, he would surely have told them about the photograph she had showed him. She kept her fingers crossed under the table. ‘You’re taking an undue amount of interest for someone who told me just the other day that there was nothing suspicious about Mr Hawkins’s death,’ she said.
‘Situations change,’ said Danvers.
‘So now you think there was something suspicious? That he was murdered?’
‘I’m not at liberty to comment on that. Mr Hawkins headed an important department involved in some very sensitive work, as you well know. We’d be remiss if we didn’t cover every angle.’
‘Including treating one of his department members as a suspect, because I doubt you’re giving the same kind of attention to any of the others. What is it? Is it my background? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m a foreigner? Because I was forced into prostitution? Because I don’t jump every time you tell me to?’
‘For God’s sake, you don’t have to play all the special pleading cards in the deck. As far as we know, nobody else from the office paid a visit to Mr Hawkins’s burned-out house.’
‘Well, if that’s all that’s bothering you, I’ve told you: I was curious. They obviously weren’t. I’ll be going now. Goodbye.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Deborah called after her, but Zelda ignored her and carried on walking back to the lifts, then up to her room. She was shaking when she got there and flopped down on the bed to take a few deep breaths. What were they after? Did they suspect Hawkins was bent? Did they suspect her of being involved? Of killing him? They already knew she had been in Croatia at the time of the fire. Were they just fishing? If so, what for?
When she had calmed down, she told herself she had nothing to worry about. Even if the truth came out, she knew that she had nothing to do with Hawkins’s death, or his corruption, if that happened to be the case. Fair enough, she was withholding evidence and could get into trouble for that, but she was willing to bet that if she told Danvers who she thought Hawkins was involved with — the Tadićs, Keane — the whole gang would disappear like smoke in the wind. She would rather the authorities didn’t find out what she had set herself to do, or she would have to alter her plans drastically. But that was the worst that could happen.
If only she could believe that. In her experience, when the police were involved, the things that happened were often much worse than people could imagine.
Marcel McGuigan was about as French as Marmite on toast and as Irish as Yorkshire pudding, but that he had been blessed with genius by the culinary gods was not in dispute. No less than Gordon Ramsay had said so. And Richard Corrigan. And Michelin, of course. His Eastvale restaurant had opened three years ago to rave reviews, and after the recent awarding of the second star, it had become a destination in itself for many gourmets all over the country. Rumour had it you had to book a month in advance. Rumour also had it that you needed a banker’s reference before dining there.
The restaurant was a listed building on a narrow cobbled alley between Market Street and York Road, just behind the market square, an area that boasted a number of bric-a-brac shops, upmarket galleries and antiquarian bookshops. Inside, it was decorated in the old style — dark wood, solid tables and padded chairs, luxuriant wall hangings dotted with a few Impressionist reproductions — rather than some of the more modern, brightly lit, chrome and glass places around these days.
The chef himself, Banks soon found out, was affable and relaxed, not at all the posturing prima donna in a poncy hat that Banks had expected. He wore jeans and an open-neck white shirt and lounged on an easy chair in his office at the back of the restaurant reviewing the evening’s menu, black-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of his aquiline nose.
‘A detective superintendent,’ he said after Banks had introduced himself. ‘I’ve never met one of those before. Do sit down.’
Banks sat in the other armchair and smiled. ‘Most people haven’t.’
‘Nothing to do with the food, I hope?’
‘No. Not at all. I’ve never tasted it myself, but I gather most of those who have agree it’s not an arrestable offence.’