She took a bite, thinking him finished and was surprised to find him actually continuing to discuss personal topics.
‘When you lose someone you love unexpectedly like that, you get confused by your grief. When it doesn’t go away, you start to look for something, anything that’ll ease the pain. For a while the second marriage did that for me, especially having Kitty around, but …’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Travis. You’re too young — and you don’t know any of this. My first wife died of a brain tumour. One night she goes to bed with a bad headache. Next morning, it’s still there, but she goes to work. Anyway, she collapsed the next morning. Two hours later, she died.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said, gently.
He smiled, painfully. ‘So am I.’
When the first course arrived, the conversation ended. She’d never seen anyone eat so fast. She’d only had a few mouthfuls by the time his plate was empty.
‘Do you have a train to catch?’ she teased. He looked puzzled and just refilled their glasses.
‘My mother used to say that to me, when I ate too fast.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ he grinned. ‘Tell me about your mother.’ He tore off some bread and smothered butter over it. ‘Isabelle, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was she a good cook?’
Anna laughed. ‘No. She was good at other things, but she was not a good cook.’
He leaned back, allowing the waiter to remove the dishes. ‘So who cooked?’
‘My father. He was brilliant.’
‘Really?’ he said, surprised.
‘Yes, really good. We had home-baked breads and pies …’ She paused as her salmon and Langton’s monkfish were served.
He actually chewed slowly this time, savouring the taste. Then he went for it at his usual rate of knots. By the time Anna had finished her main course, his hands hadn’t stopped flying; he seemed to have eaten the entire bread basket and he had refilled their glasses several times. Then as the dessert trolley was wheeled to their table and Anna was looking on it with interest, he checked his watch. ‘No time; we’ve got to go.’
They arrived back at the hotel at a quarter to ten. If Langton had driven, it would have taken another half hour. As Anna got out of the car, he slid over to the driver’s seat.
‘Are you all right to drive?’ she asked, worried.
‘No, Travis, I’m paralytic. Just go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning. Eight o’clock, in reception.’
She watched him drive away, hoping she hadn’t been too boring. Perhaps the gymkhana conversation had gone on a tad too long. She had enjoyed being with him, though she doubted he felt the same way. As Anna entered her room, the phone started to ring. Alan Daniels’s dentist was downstairs. Anna hurried down to meet him.
Arthur Klein was small and tanned. He wore dark glasses and smiled briefly as she shook his hand and thanked him for coming. He carried a large brown envelope and seemed ill at ease. ‘I had arranged to meet, erm, Detective Langton here in the morning, but now I can’t, I have a seven o’clock.’
‘You schedule dental appointments at seven in the morning?’ she said, surprised.
‘It’s an emergency. Lady bit on a nut and cracked a front cap — one, I hasten to add, I didn’t fit, but when you work on movie stars’ teeth, the hour is immaterial.’
He had an air of wealth about him: neatly pressed trousers, cashmere jacket and a top of the range Rolex which he glanced at constantly. She remembered that the cost of Alan Daniels’s new teeth was more than any of them earned in a year.
‘Is there somewhere we could talk? I only have ten minutes.’
The small annexe was full of cactus plants and the wicker chairs had seen better days, but it was empty. Klein refused a drink and sat, pinching at his trousers, looking around distastefully at the stained chair cushions. He tapped his thigh with the envelope.
‘I have never been to this hotel.’
From his expression, Anna was pretty certain he wouldn’t be back if he could help it.
‘You’re aware, I think, that I am no longer in possession of Daniels’s X-rays, nor the sets of teeth I made up for assessment purposes.’
‘Yes. My superior explained.’
‘The work turned out to be quite extensive: three implants and a bridge, plus every tooth visible on what I call “the smile”.’ To illustrate, he ran a finger along his own top teeth and the bottom row. ‘Now, I have to tell you these X-rays confused me.’ He withdrew from the envelope the photocopies of the dental X-ray removed from Daniels’s Queen’s Gate flat.
‘Confused you? Why?’
‘Well, if these are indeed Mr Daniels’s teeth, then this would have to be an X-ray of work done before I was brought in. I’m speaking from memory, since I no longer possess the X-rays I took of Mr Daniels’s teeth. I did bridgework on both sides, you see, which is not shown here. But when I first examined him, Mr Daniels showed extensive work on the back molar teeth, in fact two gold caps. So, if this is his X-ray, it couldn’t be recent.’
Anna leaned forward. ‘But it could be an X-ray of Daniels’s teeth, just from some time ago?’
‘I would say this is not and never was, Mr Daniels’s X-ray. Whoever these X-rays belong to had quite a distinctive cross bite.’
‘Thank you very much.’
Klein nodded, passing her the envelope. ‘I’m not surprised he’s in trouble with the law. He was exceptionally rude and tried to defraud me. He refused to pay me when I had done the work. It was all very unpleasant.’
‘Was your account eventually settled?’
‘Only after I threatened a lawsuit. And then only on the condition I sent him everything: records, X-rays and teeth impressions.’
He checked his watch. ‘I have to go. I am sorry if I haven’t been very helpful.’ He stood up. ‘Perhaps if Daniels hadn’t been in such a hurry’
‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘He was in a hurry. I had to move a whole block of appointments to fit him in. He said the operation was necessary for filming. I only obliged because he was recommended by a very high-powered agent here who sends me a lot of clients.’
In the car park, Anna walked with Klein towards a Bentley convertible, which he bleeped to unlock.
‘When exactly was the appointment made by Daniels?’
Klein opened the driver’s door. ‘Mid-September, initially. It was a long course of treatment. His final appointment was just a couple of months back.’
‘Would you say that Daniels really needed the dental work? Or was it purely cosmetic?’
Klein was fastening his seatbelt. Now he settled back into the leather seat. ‘Well, the back teeth were not in good shape. He said he used to grind them. But the front teeth were not that bad.’
‘So, he didn’t really need “the smile”?’
Klein placed his hands into leather driving gloves and held the wheel. ‘It was a better look. Truthfully, though, he could probably have gotten away with just bleaching them.’