‘Not much up that particular avenue,’ she said. ‘It seems that Sizewell has shares in a dozen companies apart from those of which he’s a director, but there’s nothing to suggest that he has been involved in the maneuvering of contracts toward any of those companies.’
‘You’re telling me he’s clean. What about his personal life?’
‘What do you want me to do? Sleep with him?’
‘Not a bad idea,’ Stevens said, regretting it immediately as Janine threw him a ferocious look.
‘This case needs some dirty work if it’s to uncover any dirt on the Right Dishonorable Gentleman.’
‘Well, count me out,’ said Janine, smiling a superior smile. No fillings in her mouth.
The Sizewell investigation seemed to be leading nowhere. How could he ever have imagined it would, based as it was on crank phone calls and one sighting of the MP entering an exclusive gay club? It was never going to be front page, not unless he started beating up old queens or hiring rent boys. But the caller’s voice wasn’t the voice of a hoaxer. It was calm and articulate, and very sure of itself. It had told Stevens that Sizewell visited that club, the Last Peacock, now and again, and that ‘he has been a very naughty boy.’
He’d give it just a little longer, just a week or so more.
‘Hello, you’re a nice girl.’
It had been Janine’s idea, all Janine’s idea. They had left the Tilting Room, and ignoring the call of fast food to Stevens’s nostrils, had taken a cab (expenses! expenses!) to some new wine bar, the Lustra. This was well out of Jim Stevens’s territory, but seemed to please Janine with its wall-to-wall Porsche key rings and inherited fox stoles.
‘You are a very attractive girl.’
The voice was new money, and there was money in the smile and money in the clothes: tasteful no, but moneyed yes. The man, blond, half permed, slid into the seat beside Janine. She smiled, enjoying the attention.
‘Yes, far too nice for the likes of him. Your uncle, is he? Or a friend of your grandfather’s perhaps?’ Janine giggled at this, and Stevens felt betrayed. ‘Well,’ continued the oil monkey, ‘say good-bye to the nice old man and hello to your sugar daddy, babe.’
‘Butt out, pal.’ Stevens was only mildly surprised to find his voice becoming ridiculously Scottish all of a sudden.
‘No offense, Jock old boy.’ The man looked across to Stevens for the first time, his grin full of good teeth. That was almost the final straw. ‘You don’t mind, though, if I have a chat with your niece, do you?’
‘If you don’t butt out, pal, I’m going to butt in — your teeth.’ Oh yes, Jim, the macho act. This won’t help your position with Janine. Wit perhaps, some cutting riposte which would leave the opponent reduced to rubble. He was a journalist, after all, he should know a few comebacks. He racked his brain: none. His fists began to squeeze themselves into little bon mots beneath the table, and his temporary filling throbbed with a whole glucose-drip’s worth of adrenaline.
‘It’s OK, Jim,’ said Janine, trying to reason with the incoming tide. Stevens knew that if he used force, he would lose her, lose any kind of chance that he might ever have with her. But then what chance did he have anyway?
When golden boy put his hand on her knee, three things happened rather quickly. One was that Janine swiped the hand away expertly, with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of contempt. The second was that Jim Stevens leaned across the table, pulled golden boy across it by his skinny leather tie, and chopped him on the back of the neck as he fell, hoping that he had laid some kind of rabbit punch upon his opponent’s pale flesh.
The man crawled a little way across the room, then got to his knees, and finally, rubbing his neck, to his feet. His friends were there beside him, and money began changing hands, as though after a bet. The bar was quiet: some kind of ‘happening’ had just occurred, and everyone was humble with awe before the participants.
It was only then that the third thing registered upon Jim Stevens: someone had taken a flash photograph as he had tugged at the man. He stared at the crew before him. Although he did not recognize the blond, the others were definitely reporters. Reporters. Of course they were, or he was Bruce Lee.
‘Thanks, people,’ said golden boy, still rubbing his neck. ‘Let’s go.’ And with that the entourage left the bar, one of them packing away his camera and lenses as he went.
‘What was all that—’ began Janine, reddening as the clientele continued to stare at her. A bouncer of professional wrestler proportions was striding toward their table.
‘Don’t ask,’ growled Stevens, ‘and don’t, for Christ’s sake, buy a tabloid tomorrow.’
‘So you know about it then?’
‘Cynegetics?’ Billy Monmouth laughed. ‘Of course.’
‘Why am I always the last to hear about everything?’
For once, it was Miles who had insisted on lunch, and he had insisted, too, that he should pay. Billy had shrugged, smiling, briskly alive to the beginning of October, autumn seeming to bring out the hunter in him.
‘Well, it’s not the sort of thing I would gossip about normally. How did you find out about it?’
‘Luck, really,’ said Miles. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
They had eaten at a restaurant close to Holborn.
‘How many are there working on Harvest?’ Billy had asked.
‘Seven altogether,’ Miles had lied.
‘Seven, eh? A sort of combine Harvester, would you say?’ Billy had laughed at his joke.
‘Yes,’ Miles had said, his mouth dry despite the Pomerol, ‘and I for one don’t want to come a cropper this time.’
‘A cropper, that’s very good, Miles.’ But Billy had stopped laughing, faced with the steel in Miles’s voice and in his eyes.
‘What do you know about Cynegetics?’ Miles asked now, waiting for the coffee and Billy’s brandy.
‘Oh, not very much. Rumors mostly. Nobody’s really sure who’s in it, you see, but the whole thing is probably run under Partridge’s direction.’
‘Partridge?’
Billy nodded. He was being cagier than usual.
‘It was set up under his directive, apparently. It’s Partridge’s pear tree.’
‘But why?’
‘Paranoia, Miles. You know the firm.’
During lunch, a litany of facts about beetles had played in Miles’s head. He thought of the death watch beetle, ticking like a time bomb, and of the whirligig beetle, skating across the surfaces of ponds. Miles felt like a whirligig beetle, dizzy yet exhilarated. But he felt like a death watch beetle, too.
‘What was that, Billy? I was miles away.’
‘I said that Jeff Phillips is rumored to have been transferred to Cynegetics as from last week. Lateral promotion.’
‘Good God. But Phillips is in on Richard Mowbray’s little scheme.’
‘Then maybe the gossip is wrong. It sometimes happens.’
‘But not often.’
Billy smiled again, swirling the brandy around in his mouth before swallowing. He cleared his throat to speak.
‘There’s an exhibition on around the corner from here. I was thinking of paying a visit. The gallery’s run by one of our old girls. Do you fancy it, or are you in a hurry?’
Miles was in no hurry whatsoever.
It was a small gallery, brightly lit. The exhibition was of ‘Vorticist Painting, 1912–1916.’ Both Billy and Miles bought the catalog, Miles hoping to surprise Sheila with this evidence of culture, but then pulling himself up sharply when he remembered why he was here.
While Billy hung back to have a few words with the overdressed old lady by the door, Miles entered the Vorticist world. He found the paintings forbidding, and waited for Billy to catch up.