It's dark by the time a black cab drops me at Ali's parents' place. She opens the door quickly and closes it again. A dustpan and brush rest on the floor amid broken pieces of pottery.
“I had a visitor,” she explains.
“Keebal.”
“How did you know?”
“I can smell his aftershave—Eau de Clan. Where are your parents?”
“At my Aunt Meena's house—they'll be home soon.”
Ali gets the vacuum cleaner, while I dump the broken pottery in the trash can. She's wearing a sari, which seems to own her as much as she owns it. Scents of cumin, sandalwood and jasmine escape from the folds.
“What did Keebal want?”
“I'm being charged with breaching protocols. Police officers on leave are not allowed to undertake private investigations or carry a firearm. There's going to be a hearing.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Don't worry about it.”
“No, this is my fault. I should never have asked you.”
She reacts angrily. “Listen. I'm a big girl now. I make my own decisions.”
“I think I should leave.”
“No! This is not some glorious career I'm risking. I take care of ambassadors and diplomats, driving their spoiled children to school and their wives on shopping trips to Harrods. There's more to life.”
“What else would you do?”
“I could do lots of things. I could set up a business. Maybe I'll get married . . .”
“To ‘New Boy' Dave?”
She ignores me. “It's the politics that piss me off most—and guys like Keebal who should have been weeded out years ago, but instead they get promoted. He's a racist, chauvinist prick!”
I look at the broken vase. “Did you hit him?”
“I missed.”
“Shame.”
She laughs and I want to hug her. The moment passes.
Ali puts the kettle on and opens a packet of chocolate biscuits.
“I found out some interesting stuff today,” she says, dipping a biscuit into her coffee and licking her fingers. “Aleksei Kuznet has a motor cruiser. He keeps it moored at Chelsea Harbour and uses it mainly for corporate hospitality. The skipper is Serbian. He lives on board. I could ask him some questions but I thought maybe we should tread softly.”
“Good idea.”
“There's something else. Aleksei has been selling a lot of stocks and shares in his companies. His house in Hampstead is also on the market.”
“Why?”
“A friend of mine works for the Financial Times. She says Aleksei is liquidating assets but nobody knows exactly why. He's rumored to be highly leveraged and might need to pay off debts; or he could be getting ready to take over something big.”
“Selling his house.”
“It's been listed for the past month. Maybe we can dig up the basement and see where he buried his brother.”
“I heard Sacha got disemboweled.”
“That must have been before he went in the acid bath.”
We laugh wryly, each aware of how apocryphal stories have just enough truth to keep them alive.
Ali has something else but she pauses, holding me in suspense. “I did some checking on Kirsten Fitzroy. Remember she told us she ran an employment agency in the West End? It operated from a building in Mayfair, leased by a company registered in Bermuda. The lease expired eight months ago and all the bills were paid. Since then any correspondence has been directed to a serviced office in Soho and then redirected to a Swiss law firm, which represents the beneficial owners, a Nevada-based company.”
Corporate structures like this stand out like a dog's bollocks to everyone except DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) watchdogs. The only reason for them is to hide something or avoid paying taxes or escape liability.
“According to the neighbors the agency sometimes hosted private functions but mostly they hired staff out to short-term positions. The time sheets refer to cocktail waitresses, hostesses and waiters but there are no security numbers or tax records. Most were women and most had foreign-sounding names. Could be illegals.”
It smells like something else to me—cleft cheeks, dewy thighs and hollows between elastic and skin. Sex and money! No wonder Kirsten could afford the antique armor and medieval swords.
Ali retrieves her notes and sits on the sofa, massaging her feet as she reads. “I did a property search on Kirsten's flat. She bought that place for only £500,000—half the market value—from a private company called Dalmatian Investments. The major shareholder of Dalmatian Investments is Sir Douglas Carlyle.”
A frisson runs through me. “How do Kirsten and Sir Douglas know each other? And why was he so generous to her?”
“Maybe he was using her services,” suggests Ali.
“Or she did him some other favor.”
I might have misjudged Kirsten. It always struck me as odd her friendship with Rachel. They had very little in common. Rachel seemed determined to escape from her family's money and her privileged childhood, while Kirsten was equally devoted to moving up in the world and mixing in the right circles. She moved into Dolphin Mansions only weeks after Rachel did and the two became friends. They lived in each other's pockets, shopping, socializing and sharing meals.
Sir Douglas knew about Rachel collapsing drunk on the bathroom floor and Mickey spending the night lying next to her. He had a spy, a rat in the ranks, Kirsten. Half a million pounds is a lot of money for simply keeping watch on a neighbor. It's enough to make kidnapping a possibility and could also explain why someone wants to find Kirsten.
Ali collects my coffee cup. “I know you don't agree, Sir, but I still think it's a hoax.”
“Motive?”
“Greed, revenge, getting Howard out of prison—could be any of them.”
“Where does Kirsten come into it?”
“You said yourself she had the opportunity. She knew enough about the case and was close enough to Rachel to set up a hoax.”
“But would she do it to her friend?”
“You mean the one she was spying on?”
We could argue all night and still not find an answer that fits the known facts.
“There's one more thing,” says Ali, handing me a bundle of papers. “I managed to get hold of the incident logs for the night you were shot. It can be your bedtime reading.”
The photocopied pages cover four square miles of north London between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m.
“I can tell you now there were five drug overdoses, three stolen cars, six burglaries, a carjacking, five hoax calls, a brawl at a bachelor party, a house fire, eleven complaints about ringing burglar alarms, a burst water main, minor flooding, a nurse attacked on her way home from work and an unexploded teargas shell found in a trash can.”
“How many burglar alarms?”
“Eleven.”
“In the one street?”
“Yes. Priory Road.”
“Where was the burst water main?”
She consults the map and narrows her eyes. “On Priory Road. A row of shops got flooded.”
“Can you find me the crew who repaired the water main?”
“You want to tell me why?”
“A man's allowed to have his secrets. What if I'm wrong? I don't want to destroy your delusions of my grandeur.”
She doesn't even bother rolling her eyes. Instead she reaches past me and takes the phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“My boyfriend.”