4

After leaving the office in Bruton Street, Greg’s visitor paid off the taxi at a shabby hotel near Paddington station.

A large, fat man was sitting in a corner in the small foyer. He rose when she entered.

‘A waste of time,’ she said to him in French.

He put his finger to his lips. ‘We shall go out. Then you can tell me.’

The sour-looking woman at the desk called out, ‘Leave your key, please, Mr Valerian.’

He went to the desk and handed over the key with a bow.

‘If anyone should ask for me,’ he said in heavily accented English, ‘I shall be at the Polish Club in Queen’s Gate.’

At the club he steered her to a corner table and lumbered back from the bar with a brandy-and-soda and a large glass of red wine. ‘Drink, it will make you feel better. I do not like you to get over-excited. You must stay calm.’

‘I am not over-excited and I am calm.’

He took her hand. ‘When you have had a sip of wine, you can tell me about it.’

‘The actor’s a fool. He said his friend would find a lawyer but he didn’t want to. All he did was to look it up in a book.’

‘Look up what in a book?’

‘The family. He said there was no Julian.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘No.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Young, good-looking…’

He smiled and patted her hand. ‘Then that at least was agreeable. But it was worth trying. We’ll find a lawyer ourselves. And from now on, you and I must speak only in English. And you, remember, you are Fleur. Only Fleur. I, too, must remember.’

He lit a Gauloise and drank some of the brandy. ‘But when we do find a lawyer, he may not be young and good-looking.’

‘I’m very tired,’ she said.

‘I know. Tomorrow you must rest. Leave the search to me.’

But she did not rest longer than the morning. She talked to the woman at the desk who made a telephone call and in the afternoon she took a taxi to an address in Chepstow Villas. Half an hour later she was back in the street. It had been a waste of time, like the visit to Henry’s friend. Except that she’d liked the young man. She’d liked the dimple in his chin and the way his hair curled and fell on his forehead when he’d been reading from the book. The woman in the house in Chepstow Villas had been younger than most, with dyed black hair bound by a scarf; the room, as was usual, almost in darkness. It was all shoddy and cheap and after five minutes Fleur had pushed back her chair, put a ten-pound note on the table and left. The woman had looked angry.

On Saturday she stayed in bed. He came to her room in the morning and said he’d be with friends all day. ‘They have promised to help,’ he said.

On the Sunday morning he knocked on her door. ‘When you are ready, I shall be waiting for you in the hall. We go to a restaurant to celebrate. I’ve found what we were looking for.’

He led her down Praed Street to a small restaurant and handed her a newspaper, opened at the centre-spread.

‘Read,’ he said. ‘It is interesting.’

On the left-hand page was a large picture of the singer, Dukie Brown, in his prime, with his guitar and his hair down to his shoulders. Beneath – ‘Pop Star Killer Freed’.

‘I went to a concert of his once,’ she said, ‘years ago, in Budapest. He was good.’

On the opposite page was a picture of Dukie looking older, his hair short, walking between two men; one carrying a briefcase, the other smoking a cigar. ‘Dukie with his new manager, Willoughby Blake’ was the caption.

She looked up. ‘Well?’

He took the newspaper from her and read out: ‘“On Dukie’s right, Michael Stevens, lawyer to the rich and famous.” He ran Dukie’s defence when Dukie beat the murder rap. My friends spoke to me about him, and here he is in the newspaper. Isn’t that remarkable? They tell me to go to him, and now I read about him. He is the one for us.’

‘If he’ll take it on.’

‘He will. My friends say tell him we pay as they do in America, on results. He looks very clever.’ He smiled. ‘But not very handsome.’

‘If you say so.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘I don’t want to eat.’

He leaned across the table and put his hand on hers.

‘Please, my dear, do not get…’ He struggled for the right word. ‘Do not get agitated. Do not slip into one of your moods. You will if you do not eat.’

‘I am not agitated and I’m not hungry.’

‘Listen, my dear. What we have to do will take patience and courage. You must be sensible and stay calm and strong.’

She looked at him. ‘I know. But I get frightened and today I have one of my headaches.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ll see you later at the hotel. You arrange about the lawyer.’

She picked up her bag and left. When she had gone, he sighed and shook his head. It would not be easy to keep her calm and determined.

Fleur walked in the park. By the Round Pond, she sat on the grass, plucking at the clover, watching the kites flying high above her and the children playing around her.

So now it had really begun. Once it was in the hands of lawyers, there could be no turning back. Although it was warm in the sun, she felt cold.