He saw Jenny walking down New Bond Street. She was carrying a leather attache case and looking at her watch. Nightingale knew that she was expecting a call from an advertising agency that had interviewed her. She wasn’t going to get the job. The director of human resources would be calling to tell her just that.
Underneath the Evening Standard crossword were classified adverts including the one that he’d paid for: ‘Private Investigator seeks bright assistant with a good telephone manner and Microsoft Office skills for a job that will never be boring.’ Nightingale wasn’t sure whether in modern Britain he was allowed to advertise for someone bright, as that presumably discriminated against all the stupid people in the nation’s capital, but the wording had been accepted without comment by the woman who’d taken his advert over the phone.
Jenny walked into the Costa Coffee and ordered a latte. She was wearing a blue suit under a long raincoat with the collar turned up, and she had clipped up her hair at the back. He’d never seen her with her hair done that way before and it suited her. He smiled to himself. Strictly speaking, of course, he’d never laid eyes on her before. They’d never met or spoken. That was all in the future.
Nightingale took out his pen and circled the advert, then dropped the paper down on the table. He stood up just as Jenny was collecting her coffee. She smiled when she saw that there was an empty seat but Nightingale turned away so that she couldn’t see his face. As he walked by her he caught the scent of her perfume.
As he left the coffee shop she was sitting down and putting her attache case on the table, next to the newspaper. He stopped, lit a cigarette and watched through the window as she sipped her coffee. ‘Catch you later, kid,’ he whispered, and walked away.
Also by Stephen Leather