Simone was coming upstairs as I was going down. ‘I’ve been all over looking for you.’
‘Sorry, I’m not feeling well. I’ve spent most of the last hour in the bathroom.’ I gestured vaguely towards a door.
She let out a sigh and rested the palm of her hand against my brow. ‘Darling, you look terrible.’ I felt terrible but not in the way she imagined. ‘Do you want to take a lie down?’
I shook my head. ‘I think it’s better I leave.’
She fished in her clutch bag for a room card. ‘Here, take this. We are booked in up the road. Get some rest and I’ll see you later.’
‘Are you sure?’
She inclined her head, almost coquettish. ‘I am positive. Don’t worry, I’ll be good,’ she added with a sudden fabulous smile. Then she looked anxious again. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I had to be.
In the heart of Belgravia, the hotel was a short walk away in Ebury Street and close to Victoria Underground station. As ever, I admired Simone’s choice. Boutique style, it exuded class and luxury. Our room on the second floor was a picture of calm and elegance.
Simone’s laptop sat on a small desk underneath the only window. It was still plugged in. I flipped it open. One touch and it sprang into life. I took off my jacket, loosened my tie and sat down. Without thinking, I punched in ‘Bagatelle’ as the password. Immediately, I was launched into another world, Simone’s universe. I scrolled through files on lifestyle, fashion and design, dipped into emails, mostly to and from women seeking Simone’s services in one form or another. Some in French, most in English. There were screeds of stuff that I could collectively classify as female. Eager not to miss my opportunity, I opened the ‘Party’ file and ran through hundreds of names in random order, and then a separate folder marked ‘Venues’. Finding a sub-file marked ‘Berlin’, I opened it, hoping either Pallenberg or Benz would appear, only to remember that Bagatelle had a women-only membership. I ran through names and locations and flipped to another file marked ‘Guest Lists’. Sure enough, Benz appeared, although his name stood alone and it was impossible to match him with whoever he’d accompanied. Not one to give up, I returned to the female membership. I had at least four hours before Simone returned. An hour later, I stumbled across something that spun me out.
Shaken, I poured myself a glass of water and wondered why Mathilde Brommer, Lars’s former girlfriend, had lied to me and why her name was in the file. I looked at my watch. It was two in the morning. She’d be asleep. If I spoke to her now, she’d be confused. I smiled. Disorientated people make mistakes and say things they shouldn’t. I called.
She picked up with what sounded like a full-throttle curse.
‘You didn’t tell me about the sex parties.’ My tone was blatantly accusing.
There was a long silence. When she eventually spoke she was cold, controlled and exceptionally angry. ‘You phone me at this time in the morning to lecture me about my private life?’
‘You don’t deny it?’
‘What is there to deny, Mr Porter? Are you looking for an invite?’
‘You know Simone Fabron?’
‘Not intimately.’
‘You told me that you’d never heard of her.’
‘I told you that I’d never heard of her in connection with Lars.’
I wasn’t going to get into an argument with her over semantics because I never fight battles I can’t win. ‘How do you know her?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? Through her website and services. It’s a professional relationship,’ she said smartly.
I rubbed my eyes. I was going wrong somewhere. Things were shifting in ways I couldn’t pin down. It was akin to walking through a wild Arabian desert riddled with quicksand.
‘Did you ever take Dieter Benz with you?’
She swore in German. I got the message.
‘Did you ever take Lars with you?’
‘Never. He was already with your Miss Spencer by then. How is she, by the way?’
Her nasty question broke over me like a huge wave running at high tide. ‘What the hell is it to you?’ I said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘What do you know about her disappearance?’
‘She has disappeared?’ She sounded triumphant. I repeated the question.
‘I know nothing. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘You’ll have to do better than that, Mathilde. You had the motive. I’ve already caught you in one lie. How many more?’
‘You think I am responsible?’ Her voice roared down the line.
‘Why not?’
She gave a short, incredulous laugh. ‘Because it is ridiculous. I wouldn’t have the first clue how to go about it.’
‘You don’t need to. You could have given the order to someone else.’
‘Sure, of course,’ she said, the tone as dramatic as it was ugly. ‘Send in the cops. They can check my passport. I have only one thing to say about your lovely Miss Spencer.’ I waited for the punchline. ‘She was a bitch.’ The line went dead.
Mathilde’s denial weighed heavy. Dispirited, I resumed checking the laptop but nothing leapt out at me. It was all business stuff; there was no link to China, no link to either Pallenberg or Benz. Again, I was stalked by a memory from the previous job – people often operated from more than one computer.
Opening a personal file, I unearthed more email correspondence written in French to people I assumed were friends, with names like Anaïs, Guillaume, Nicole, Jacques and Davide. Details of hotel bookings in all parts of Europe revealed no startling surprises. Using the camera on my phone, I captured as much varied and random data as I could so that I could study it at a later date, match it to other information or, if necessary, send it to Jat.
Next, I checked out the room, opened drawers – mostly empty aside from a set of expensive underwear and a hotel hairdryer – and ran my hand over the few clothes hanging in the wardrobe. Simone had one pair of boots and a tan brown leather shoulder bag, tear-shaped. I picked up and shook out the contents, which included a large purse with a hundred pounds in cash, credit cards in her name, a passport, a travel toothbrush and toothpaste, moisturiser, tampons and a blister pack of contraceptive pills with twelve days’ use. Pushing everything back inside, I returned the bag to the bottom of the wardrobe, took off my clothes, crawled into bed and lay there, too wired to sleep.
China Hayes had colluded in the murder of his rivals, but now he had disappeared. He’d had a connection with a German – maybe Pallenberg, maybe Benz. Why would a London crime lord be doing business with a neo-Nazi? Mathilde Brommer had attended the same parties as Benz, either at the same time, or on a separate occasion. Too much of a coincidence? Mathilde had the motive for murder and yet her outrage down the line had been strong and convincing. Titus was dead. McCallen was missing. Billy Squeeze lay at the heart of it, or at least, someone was using his name to invoke terror. However I tried to assemble the pieces, I couldn’t make the picture fit, couldn’t make it work. I seriously hoped that where I’d failed to locate McCallen the security services or the police would succeed. After that I drifted off. Clear, dreamless unconsciousness eluded me.
When Simone returned a little after five, I pretended to be out for the count. Shoes slipped off, a rustle of clothing and then the mattress yielding as Simone’s cool, naked body climbed in beside mine. She fell asleep instantly and, some time later, I must have dozed off. Around eight, the light in the room leaden, she hooked one leg over my body and rolled me underneath her. Skin on skin.
‘Morning,’ she said, languidly.
‘Nice wake-up call.’
She smiled, studying my arms, her brow creased. Blood had seeped through one of the bandages. ‘What happened?’
‘Someone came at me with a knife.’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘No, it’s fine.’ I didn’t want her fussing over me.
‘I worry about you.’
‘You shouldn’t.’
She ran an index finger over my lips and pressed it into my mouth. ‘I don’t expect you to tell me about your work.’
‘Good.’
‘But you can trust me. Sometimes it helps to talk, not about specific details but –’
‘You know Mathilde Brommer.’
Simone frowned at my sudden, serious tone.
‘She attended one of your parties in Berlin.’
Her face lit up and she threw her head back and laughed. ‘Joe, have you any idea the number of women on my mailing list?’ As it happened, I did. She had a point, but I wasn’t smiling. All her mirth vanished. She slipped off me and grabbed a robe. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘So you get to ask the questions but I am not allowed?’ Her small nostrils flared. The pretty features instantly became a collection of sharp edges.
‘What about Dieter Benz?’
At once, her face darkened. She rounded on me. ‘Dieter Benz?’
‘You remember him?’ I propped myself up on one elbow, felt the tingle of excitement that accompanies the thrill of the chase.
‘For all the wrong reasons. He’s a vile anti-Semitic thug who practically raped one of our guests.’
She crossed the room in a theatrical fashion, swiped at her handbag and produced a pack of expensive-looking cigarettes. I didn’t know she smoked and I bet the hotel wouldn’t like it. Not that I was going to stand in the way of an angry, highly strung woman and her chosen drug. Immediately, my mind flipped back to the graveyard, the discarded pack I’d found in the grass.
She shook out a cigarette, placed it between her lips and lit up. Plumes of thin grey smoke seeped into the atmosphere and curled up towards the ceiling. She stood erect and taut, arms crossed as though she were holding herself together in case she might shatter and fall. ‘He is blacklisted,’ she added, as if that concluded the conversation.
‘Who invited him?’
‘I don’t remember.’
I looked her straight in the eye. If Benz had behaved so badly, why didn’t she remember who’d invited him? Zara had said that he ‘fucked like a bull’. She had not said that he’d almost raped a guest.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Things don’t add up.’ I slipped out of bed, reached for my clothes.
‘The guy in the gold mask.’
She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and let out a terse sigh. ‘We have already been over this.’
‘I want to go over it again.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s dead.’
She looked astonished. ‘And you think this is connected to –’
‘You.’
She stared at me as if I’d punched her hard in the stomach and winded her. When she finally composed herself, her eyes were black with rage. ‘I am not one of your spies,’ she spat, ‘or informers.’
‘I don’t understand why you are so defensive.’
‘Because you are accusing me of things I haven’t done. You are using me – first my body and now my mind.’ She glanced sideways, her gaze alighting on the laptop, making the connection. Her mouth fell open. She turned back, took several paces at speed and slapped my face so hard my fillings shifted. I reached out and grabbed her. The robe slipped off her shoulders.
‘You vile shit, let go of me.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Calm down.’
‘I will not calm down,’she bellowed. ‘You’ve been snooping. You have no right.’
‘I have every right,’ I shouted over her. ‘A friend of mine is missing and I’m busting my guts to find her.’
I stood, utterly shaken by my lack of discretion. Seconds rolled by like days. To my surprise, a tear rolled down her cheek. I let her go. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and drew me towards her, kissed my forehead, my cheeks, like a mother kissing a child better, then she kissed my mouth, softly at first, the rest a blur of desire, angry sex and passion.