‘Lucinda,’ said Nathan, taking her coat, ‘are you all right?’
‘As a man,’ she replied, ‘you cannot possibly understand how fraught with stress and complication the simplest of tasks can be. On the bus over here I had to ward off the persistent attentions of a man who was sitting with his legs splayed — you know the type? — and kept saying, “Do you want this seat, babes?” Babes! I ask you …’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘He was your usual, casual labourer type. Paint stains all over his jeans.’ She shuddered. ‘The brazen cheek of these people! The arrogance!’
‘You poor thing. Have a drink.’
He handed her a glass of rosé and went to fetch some dips and bread sticks from the kitchen. When he returned, Lucinda was standing at the window. She explained that she liked to watch the autumn leaves spiralling down from the trees in the encroaching dusk. Nathan’s gaze, by contrast, had been fixed on Lucinda herself. He was impressed, in particular, by her dress. It was made of some thick bottle-green material and was positively heroic in its shapelessness. For a mere arrangement of cloth to be so accomplished at not just hiding the contours of somebody’s body, but even giving the impression that these contours didn’t exist and must be the product of the spectator’s lurid imagination was, he thought, quite a triumph of the dressmaker’s art. How was it done? The more time he spent with Lucinda, the more he realized that — whatever professional heights he might go on to scale in the future — there would always be some questions that could never be answered, or mysteries solved.
Over dinner, they discussed her day at school. The calm of her lunch break had been disrupted, it seemed, by the tactless overtures of the French assistant, Monsieur Guignery, who had insisted on sitting next to her. For some weeks now he had been conducting a campaign of low-level flirtation.
‘He’s your usual, self-confident, French type,’ she explained, nibbling uncertainly on her pasta. (Nathan had put a little too much chilli in the sauce.) ‘If it goes on much longer I shall have to complain to the headmaster.’
‘You do seem to be unlucky,’ said Nathan, ‘in the amount of hassle you get. And yet, I suppose it’s only to be expected. After all …’
The compliment trailed away into nothingness, as he realized that he could not find the words to complete it. Lucinda, in any case, allowed a half-smile to tremor at the ends of her exquisite mouth.
‘In my opinion,’ she answered, composing herself, ‘the trouble with all of these louche, sexually driven types is that they have too much time on their hands. Too much time to devote themselves to these … disturbing thoughts. It’s a lack of occupation, a lack of industry. It’s far more healthy for a man to be busy — like you are. That’s why you’re able to keep these things in proportion.’
‘It’s true,’ said Nathan. ‘I do love my work. Never more so than at the moment.’
‘Why? Are you working on another of your fascinating cases?’
‘It’s early days yet, but I may be on to something. Two people have met with sudden deaths in different parts of London in the last few weeks, and I think the deaths might be connected. Both were comedians.’
‘Comedians?’ Lucinda wrinkled her adorable nose. ‘I don’t like — I mean, I would never murder one, or anything — but I’ve never understood the appeal of comedians.’
‘Well, you know, there’s an old Yorkshire saying: “Jokes is all right for them as likes laughing.”’
‘But I do like laughing,’ Lucinda insisted, and to prove it, she let out a bright, tinkling, musical laugh, like a joyful glissando played on some distant glockenspiel. ‘It’s just that … the world is so sad, and nothing much amuses me, I’m afraid, and the idea of paying money in order to get something that should be spontaneous … It’s always seemed a bit desperate, to me. It’s almost like paying for sex.’
‘Very true,’ said Nathan, who at that moment would have offered her £5,000 cash on the spot if he’d thought she would have accepted it. ‘But comedians are everywhere. They sell out stadiums. They pop up all the time on television. No matter what the subject — even if it’s asylum seekers or global warming — every kind of public discussion has to have a veneer of comedy. Politics especially.’
‘I would have thought people listened to comedians to get away from politics.’
‘They listen to comedians to relax and escape from having to think about things too hard. Which is why it’s all right to talk about politics as long as you don’t say anything too disturbing. The important thing is to pick on a safe target. And when I watched their DVDs this afternoon, I realized this is what both of these unfortunate guys did. The same safe target, as it happens.’
‘And this,’ said Lucinda, leaning forward now that her interest was piqued, ‘is why you think their deaths might be connected?’
‘Exactly. One factor — indeed, one name in particular — links their material, and therefore, in all probability, links their murders. It’s the name of a journalist, whom they both attacked in the most aggressive and personal tones.’
‘And the name of this journalist?’
Nathan paused for effect, and looked directly into the measureless blue depths of her eyes.
‘Her name is Josephine Winshaw-Eaves.’
2
Josephine Winshaw-Eaves. Not surprisingly, Lucinda had never heard of her. She was not a great reader of newspapers, after alclass="underline" especially not their online editions, where most of Josephine’s rantings were to be found.
She was the daughter of Sir Peter Eaves, one of the longest-serving national newspaper editors in the country, and the late Hilary Winshaw, who had been famous, in her day, as both a newspaper columnist and a television executive. Hilary had died in 1991, when Josephine was only one year old, so she was not even a distant memory to her daughter. And yet Josephine had grown up fascinated by her mother’s legacy. Her father, on the rare occasions when they had had a real conversation, was forever telling her that Hilary had been a genius among columnists, a superstar, a woman capable of taking the most minor event in public life and spinning from it 1,000 words of pure energizing vitriol. Not only that, but she had belonged to one of the most influential British families of the postwar era, of which Josephine, now, was the only direct descendant. No wonder that, from a very early age, she had carried with her a burdensome sense of her own importance.
The teenage Josephine had struggled to reconcile this sense of importance with a contradictory awareness that, as far as her father was concerned, she barely mattered at all. With the violent and premature death of his wife, Sir Peter had lost all interest in family life — if indeed he had ever had any. Increasingly, he lived at the offices of his newspaper (in which he had installed a comfortable bedroom right next to his own office) and rarely visited his Kensington home, in the spacious confines of which Josephine grew up, alone, under the desultory supervision of a series of nannies. A fiercely intelligent, articulate girl, she made smooth progress through London’s private education system — Glendower, followed by Godolphin and Latimer — before proceeding to Cambridge, where she graduated with first-class honours in art history.
Along the way, however, she made few friends. Those who tried to get close to her found her both conceited and needy. She had a tendency to make snap judgements about people, and developed a reputation for wounding and gratuitous put-downs. In this respect, at least, she was following in the footsteps of her father, who was well known for his bruising economy with words (and occasionally, after one too many brandies at the Garrick, his fists). One memory stood out in particular, for Josephine. During the school holidays, aged about thirteen or fourteen, she once had to spend a few hours with him at the newspaper, childcare arrangements for that day having fallen through at the last minute. She sat in on one of the editorial meetings and could remember vividly, for years afterwards, the way that each of the section editors, ranged around Sir Peter in a circle, had been obliged to pitch their story ideas to him. To each one, in turn — often before they had even finished speaking — Sir Peter had spat out his instant verdict: ‘Crap.’ ‘Bollocks.’ ‘Fucking awful.’ ‘Shit.’ ‘Bollocks — nobody’s interested in that fuckwit.’ ‘Great — we need an excuse to shaft that cunt.’ And so on. It had been an awe-inspiring lesson in editorial procedure which had increased her respect for her father a hundredfold, and made her more desperate than ever to gain his attention.