I managed to fit on the next train and by the time we got to Hyde Park Corner I’d even managed to get myself a seat. From there it was standard underground operating procedure—you keep facing straight ahead, you on no account talk to anybody in case they turn out to be an axe murderer or think you’re an axe murderer. You may look at your phone, a newspaper, or at the nothing outside. I went with the nothing.
As we chickety-canned past Knightsbridge and South Kensington, I found myself surreptitiously examining the reflections of other passengers in the windows. This was kind of the only socially acceptable way of paying any attention to other passengers at all, and I was sure that at least some of them were doing the same. Every time we went through a station they’d get all transparent and ghostly, and then once we hit the tunnels everything would be a mirror again.
Just as we left Baron’s Court, I caught sight of an older man in a Transport for London jacket staring back at me—I recognised him at once as Jacob, the magician who had once been Nimue’s agent in the west, and more generally on the underground. Like a depressing number of other people, he’d been sort-of-not-exactly-killed in the battle for the soul of the city, sealing himself up beneath British Museum to stop an evil Satan granny unleashing an army of demons onto the tube. And now he was watching me from a window. From the position of his reflection, he should have been sitting right beside me, but he definitely wasn’t—that honour was held by a skinny hipster reading a Kindle—and from his expression something portentous was going down.
Not that he had any way of telling me what exactly. Hell, from where I was sitting I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. Maybe I should have made more of an effort to reach out to him but what was I going to do, wave at his reflection? Of the people whose fates I’d been beating myself up for he’d been squarely in the middle of the list—not completely my fault, not completely not—but he was definitely on it. His image vanished around South Ealing, and I got off soon afterwards feeling five kinds of shitty for six different reasons.
4
Poems & Clues
The pub I was heading to turned out to be this cute little building with green enamel on the brickwork and a blue plaque that said some artist had apparently stayed there back in the 1780s. I swung open the front door and looked for somebody who might have been an unexpectedly flirtatious estate agent. Probably not the couple by the window, or the guy with the kid. C’mon, Kate, you’re a professional thing investigator, investigate a thing.
A blonde woman in a tasteful but understated suit jacket waved at me from one corner. She wore dark-rimmed glasses and had her hair loose to a little below shoulder length. I’d have put her at somewhere between forty and fifty. “Are you Kate Kane?” she asked when I sidled over to her.
“That’s me.”
“When I said wear something PI-like I didn’t realise you’d take it quite so seriously.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to explain to her that this was just how I dressed. “This is just how I dress,” I said. Oh yeah, like that.
She gave me a minx-ish look from behind her glasses. “Go on then,” she said with a half-smile. “Seduce me.”
“I maybe thought we’d eat first?” Food was starting to feel like a really good idea. I’d had half a squashed croissant all day. And there was me thinking that gnawing feeling was the guilt and self-loathing.
I gave my new companion the once over. No ring, so probably not married, not that it meant much in this day and age. “And so you know,” I added, “if you’re a random straight woman having some kind of mid-life thing then … then I’m completely okay with that.”
She plucked a slice of bread from one of those baskets that restaurants put out without you asking and I’m always too paranoid to touch in case they charge you a million pounds for the privilege. “What if I stay mysterious and inscrutable for now?”
“Could I get a name at least, or do you want to be the alluring Madam X?”
“Penelope.”
“Like the Thunderbird?” Classy, Kate. Classy. There was probably a classical allusion you could have made there that would make you sound totally sophisticated and erudite instead of like the sixth-form dropout you are.
“Oh yes, my parents were enormous Gerry Anderson fans. They nearly called me Virgil.”
“Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been Brains.”
“True. I recommend the moules mariniere, by the way. They specialise in seafood, I hope that’s okay.”
It took me a moment to get my head back in the game. “We’re talking dinner again, right?”
“Unless you’ve changed your mind and want to cut straight to the seduction.”
I glanced at the menu. “Well we could always split the difference and go straight for the oysters.” Once, long ago, there was an oysterer’s daughter. Fucking Julian—she needed to stay out of my head while I was working-slash-on-the-pull.
“So what did you want to know about Edward?” The look in Penelope’s eyes was almost shy, and despite my finely honed detective’s instincts I couldn’t quite work out whether she was messing around with this whole come seduce me thing or if she actually meant it.
“Whatever you can tell me would help. Mostly I just want to know where he is.”
“I’m not sure there’s a lot to say. He was … ordinary.” A waiter came by and we ordered drinks and a couple of plates of moules. When in doubt get the same as your date, that way you’ll both look equally stupid eating it. “Nice enough. Worked well and made good commissions. He never came in stinking of weed or alcohol if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“And never had any strange people showing up asking questions about him.”
“Only you.” She smiled at me. Fuck, I really, really hoped she didn’t turn out to be straight. When this was over I was going into a garage and getting my gaydar checked.
“Guess I walked into that one. Did you ever meet his wife?”
“No. I knew he was married, but only from the usual wife talk you get in the office. You know—got to get going or the Mrs will kill me—that kind of thing. We weren’t close.”
“Kids?” While I was ninety-nine percent sure Elise and her sisters couldn’t have children, it was always good to rule out the secret second family as quickly as possible. It saved a lot of trouble in the long run.
“I don’t think so. He might have said they were trying at one point.”
Okay, still turning up a big pile of nothing. I’d have felt frustrated except the job was about ninety percent big piles of nothing, ten percent people trying to kill you. Besides, if you were going to get nowhere, you could at least get nowhere over moules mariniere with a hot estate agent. “All right,” I tried. “Sixty-four thousand dollar question: do you know where he went.”
She nodded. “Maidenhead. I remember because of the poem.”
“The poem?” There was an ever increasing chance that this broad was too classy for me even if she actually was into girls.
“Slough?” To my surprise and tentative delight, I thought I recognised her expression. It was the expression that said have I fucked this up by saying something weird. I knew it well. “By Sir John Betjeman? Ricky Gervais famously recites a bit of it in The Office? There’s a bit about going to Maidenhead in it.”