‘She can afford to.’
Marcel laughed. ‘I suppose you’ve got a point. Shame. But if you change your mind...’ He handed Banks his card.
‘You’ll be the first to know. Thanks, Mr McGuigan, and goodbye.’
On several occasions during February and March, Zelda had sat by the same window of the same pub, from which she could watch the restaurant where Hawkins had met Keane and his girlfriend just before Christmas, but to no avail. She had thought they might be regulars and that was why Hawkins had met them there, but she hadn’t seen either the woman or Keane since.
While she had watched, she had puzzled over the extent of the woman’s involvement. In Zelda’s experience, very few women were involved in the criminal enterprise of sex trafficking — there were some, she knew, but not many — so what was her role? She had been with Keane, a forger, and they had gone window-shopping on Oxford Street together afterwards — so if Hawkins had met him to warn him of Zelda’s interest, then the woman would most likely have been party to that warning. Or would she? Would it have even meant anything to her? Did they just pass it off as ‘business’ and say no more about it, or wait to discuss it until she visited the ladies? And if Keane and the woman were still together, might they turn up at that same restaurant again?
This time, Zelda decided to be a little bolder and go into the restaurant rather than watch it through a pub window over the street. After all, neither Keane nor his girl had the slightest idea who she was, unless Hawkins had shown them a photograph of her.
It was a large, bustling, dimly-lit space with a separate bar area, crowded with people fresh from their day’s work grabbing a quick drink or two before heading home to face their families. Like most of the English, they seemed to prefer standing outside smoking or crushed together around the bar. The dining area was separated by a small step down, and consisted of a number of tables with white tablecloths and gleaming silver cutlery. It was just as noisy down there as it was at the bar.
Zelda took a table at the back of the dining area, which gave her a panoramic view of the whole restaurant, and settled in with her book. Just another bored businesswoman in town for meetings. She ordered a glass of Chardonnay and a clam linguine, and watched the people come and go.
When her plate and glass were empty, and Willie Garvin had saved Modesty Blaise’s bacon, still Zelda had seen nothing of Keane or his girlfriend. She was beginning to think it was a restaurant that Hawkins had chosen because it was near his place of work. But wouldn’t he have picked somewhere further away, and perhaps less public, in case he was seen, if the choice of location had been up to him? Maybe so, but perhaps she was overthinking the case. Perhaps Hawkins hadn’t been meeting Keane to mention his concerns about her interest. After all, nothing had come of it. She was still alive. Perhaps he had never even known that she was especially interested in the photograph of Tadić and Keane. Loath though she was to contemplate it, if Hawkins had succeeded in getting Keane paranoid about Zelda’s behaviour, and they were somehow involved in a criminal conspiracy to do with trafficking, then Keane and Tadić might have thought they needed to do something about her. Something permanent. But they hadn’t. And work with Hawkins had gone on as normal, with no further incident, until she had returned from Croatia to discover that he had died in a chip-pan fire.
The conversations rose and fell. Someone kept emitting a laugh like a witch’s cackle, and another a deep foghorn rumble. As usual in crowds, one voice was louder than all the others and had nothing interesting to say. It was still fairly early and the restaurant wasn’t too crowded. The later it got the more the throng at the bar thinned out and quietened down, and the more people — mostly couples — came to sit down and eat.
‘Would you care to see the dessert menu?’ said the waitress.
‘No, thanks,’ said Zelda. ‘But I’ll have another glass of wine, if that’s all right.’
‘No problem. Same again?’
‘Yes, please.’
While the waitress took orders from another table, then went off to get the wine, Zelda came to a decision. She took the best photo she had of Keane and his girlfriend from her bag and set it on the table. When the waitress returned with her glass, she said, ‘Have you been working here long?’
If the waitress was surprised by Zelda’s question, she didn’t show it. ‘Three years,’ she said.
Zelda showed her the photograph. ‘Could you please tell me if you recognise either of these people?’
The waitress frowned. Zelda was expecting to be put on the spot, asked why she wanted to know, or some such thing, and she had a weak answer prepared, but it didn’t happen. The waitress simply plonked her wine down, then bent slightly to look at the photo.
‘They used to come in here,’ she said finally. Then, ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘She’s an old friend, and we’ve lost touch,’ Zelda said. ‘This was taken a while ago, and she seems to have moved since then. I don’t have a forwarding address. I recognised the sign outside, and I was just wondering...’ Zelda held her breath, fearing the waitress was going to ask her why she had something that looked very much like a surveillance photograph.
She didn’t. ‘Sorry, but she’s not in today,’ she said. ‘She does come in from time to time. You might catch her if you come back tomorrow. Or I could give her a message to contact you next time she comes in?’
‘What time does she usually come in?’
‘Around six-ish, maybe once every week or so. She works at Foyles, just around the corner.’
So Zelda had simply had the bad luck to miss her on those times she had sat watching from the pub across the street. ‘And her boyfriend?’
‘Haven’t seen him for ages. I think they must have split up. Would you care to leave a message?’
‘No,’ said Zelda. ‘Thank you very much, but no. I’d rather surprise her.’
‘Suit yourself.’
The waitress walked off, casting a puzzled and suspicious backward glance. Zelda felt her heart beating fast. It was partly the thrill of finding the courage to play detective and partly the sweet smell of success. She had found her. Found Keane’s girlfriend. She had been about to ask the waitress if she knew the woman’s name, but realised that, having passed herself off as a friend, such a request would hardly seem necessary. At least she now knew where the woman worked.
Foyles bookshop was huge, but unless the woman worked in the back all the time, it shouldn’t be impossible to track her down. Zelda checked her watch. It was after eight. The shop remained open until nine, she knew, but she might have a better chance if she waited until the following day and took her time. Instead, she lingered over her wine and her Modesty Blaise until after nine, just in case the woman showed up. When she hadn’t turned up by a quarter past, Zelda set off back to her hotel, walking all the way in the soft May evening twilight, down Charing Cross Road and over one of the Golden Jubilee Bridges, then along the waterfront, smoking a cigarette as she walked, past the Southbank complex. She checked behind her once or twice, stopped to look in a shop window, paused on the bridge to admire the view downriver, but was aware of nobody following her.
Chapter 6
The informal meeting took place in Banks’s office on Thursday morning. The three Homicide and Major Crimes detectives sat around his low, circular table, with coffee and notepads before them: Banks, DI Annie Cabbot and DC Gerry Masterson. Banks missed Winsome; she was always a welcome voice at meetings such as this, often coming from an unexpected angle or picking out a connection others didn’t notice. But her pregnancy had been a difficult one; her blood pressure was too high, and her doctor had insisted she needed complete rest. Her husband, Terry Gilchrist, was only too happy to care for her at home. Still, Banks thought, even if the team was diminished, it was still pretty damn good.