After leaving Romero, Max wanted a word with Margot’s companion, Jake Larsson. He decided to ring him rather than turn up at his door. As it was nearing the noon hour, Max hoped he might interview the young actor over a meal. There was no answer at his room, so Max called down to the front desk.
The helpful clerk seemed to be under the impression that Max had an arrangement to meet Jake for lunch, because he began to provide a rundown of the possible places he might have gone for a meal, ending with, “Of course, we’re serving lunch now in the Green Room. You could try him there.”
Which was where Max found Jake a few minutes later, sitting alone at a table for two by a large picture window overlooking the water. The room had been designed to provide as many ways as possible for as many guests as possible to enjoy the sight of sea and sky—a half-oval space jutted out from the building in a large glass-enclosed balcony. But instead of taking in the view, Jake was staring at the screen of his mobile phone.
Max knew a buffet breakfast was served in this room each day—the traditional British “fry” and more were included in the price of the hotel stay. Right now the room was nearly empty, but in season it would no doubt be crowded, providing a feast for people watchers: A woman buttering her bread with German efficiency. A baby demanding immediate release from its high chair. A teenager plotting escape from its parents.
Max recalled with something like nostalgia what solo diners had done so many years ago, before the invention of the personal phone. There of course had been books if you remembered to carry one with you. Or, if on vacation, postcards to write to send back home. And there had been simply staring at the view.
Max walked over and introduced himself, asking Jake if he could join him. Jake was taken aback at first, having no idea who Max was, but he recovered quickly when Max explained his mission: at the request of DCI Cotton, he wanted to talk to Jake in an unofficial capacity about Margot. Jake lacked the imagination to wonder what “unofficial capacity” meant. Or perhaps he was just eager to talk to anyone willing to listen to his story. Max wasn’t certain such a direct approach would have worked with the average British citizen, so famously reticent. In any event, Jake tucked the phone in his jacket pocket and gave every appearance of cooperation, saying, “I can’t get over it. It’s like a frigging nightmare.”
“I can imagine.”
“I was just looking at the news online. This was what Margot most wanted in life, this kind of attention, however fleeting it will be. Most people under a certain age won’t even know who she was. But that’s not fair, is it? I mean, she used to be someone.”
An elderly waitress came over to their table, handed them menus, and described the specials, all of which involved fresh seafood: scallops, mackerel, Dover sole, and crab. She offered that samphire was on offer, even though it was early in the season—samphire being a sort of salty sea asparagus—and suggested they share it as a side dish. Jake declined but Max said he’d try it. This was apparently the right answer, for she brightened considerably, explaining that it was a favorite of hers from when she was a girl. “Now it’s gone all trendy.”
She wore a starched apron tied round her thin frame and a cap like a maid from a wayside smuggler’s inn; she looked as if she might have been serving food since the hotel was built at the turn of the nineteenth century. Her white lace-up shoes had thick soles such as a hospital ward nurse might wear, the better to sneak up on sleeping patients to administer a three a.m. dose of medicine. A name tag announced her name was Hazel.
She left to get their drink orders—bottled water for Max, white wine for Jake.
“She’s still someone, Margot is,” said Max. “But may she rest in peace after what seems to have been a rather hectic life. How did you two meet?”
Jake played with the knife of his place setting, turning it over and over on the table. “Oh, you know. The usual. Actually, my agent introduced me to her. She seemed to think it would lead to something, the agent. God knows what. I think she just wanted me out of the country for a while and out of her hair. It led to a murder investigation, but I don’t suppose that’s the kind of publicity Kara had in mind.”
“You know the saying about all publicity being good.”
“Do you know, I’ve never found that to be true? It’s the sort of thing Tina Calvert would say but I don’t think ‘Out of the mouth of babes’ applies in this case. She is only a babe in the sense she is just unbelievable in a bikini. Romero bought her those, count on it. The implants, I mean. Anyway, Max—may I call you Max?—anyway, with Margot I soon found myself taken up with more drama than I could handle, but precious little publicity of a useful sort. She drank, you know. Prodigious amounts. My father drank so I thought I could handle it; I thought I knew all about alcoholics. My mother also drank but she wasn’t a patch on my father. I went to Al-Anon meetings for years. But this was one for the books. My dad looked as sober as a judge in comparison with Margot. I suppose that’s what killed her. The booze, I mean.”
Was it possible he didn’t know? Max wondered. Jake had said “murder investigation,” but even so, it seemed as well to clear up any misapprehensions.
“Her drinking did not cause her death,” Max told him. “At least, not directly. The police say she was dead before she—before her body—hit the water.”
“You don’t say? You mean somebody choked her or something?”
Was that just a lucky guess?
“It is possible she was strangled, yes.” And possibly by someone left-handed like you, thought Max, although he didn’t add this tidbit of information. “What is certain is she didn’t jump. Judging by the height of the safety railing and her own height, she must somehow have been lifted up and sent overboard. A dead weight.”
The waitress arrived with their drinks. She was a good waitress with almost preternatural hearing who pretended not to have overheard what she’d just heard. Her shock would be saved for when she was safely back in the hotel kitchen sharing the news, and swearing the staff to secrecy. Remarkably, they were all so well trained in discretion they would abide by their promise until the circumstances of Margot’s death were made public.
The waitress took the men’s orders—baked cod for Max, shrimp casserole for Jake—and treaded silently away, her narrow legs as they emerged from the big white shoes making her look like a character in a children’s cartoon.
“So the murderer was someone strong,” said Jake. “I did a few CSI shows—Crime Scene Investigation. You get that here?”
“Certainly.” Max was a fan of the show, which came on in the wee hours in Nether Monkslip. Quite often he had rocked Owen back to sleep to the show’s soundtrack of eerie electronic instrumentals, which his son seemed to enjoy.
“They were walk-on parts, sure, but hanging around the sound stage waiting your turn you pick up a lot of good forensic tips. I remember one time I was in this crowd of punks that discovered a body, and it turned out the body had been moved from where it had been killed. Stuff like that.”
“Useful knowledge for the future, I’m sure,” murmured Max. But the suggestion spurred a thought—after a body had tumbled around the ocean for a bit, wouldn’t the normal pooling of blood, had there been any, be affected? Had she lain on the deck for some time before being sent overboard, or was she immediately deposited in the ocean? Could the experts even tell? He wasn’t sure it was important but he’d ask Cotton to ask the coroner. He looked at Jake with something approaching, if not a new respect, some gratitude for the bits of potentially useful information that could come from the unlikeliest sources.
Jake seemed to capture the prevailing spirit, for he grinned at Max and said, “I do want to help here. The thing with Margot that nobody got was how endearing she could be. If she liked you, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for you, or try to do.” That tracked what Maurice had been telling him, only Maurice had put a somewhat darker spin on it: Margot, in his telling, was simply being used by one loser boyfriend after another. Did Jake fall into that camp? The age difference suggested it was so but wasn’t it true that people found the missing pieces of their personal puzzles in the most improbable places?
Max saw the waitress approaching with their meal and paused the conversation as she set their plates before them. She had handled the heavy tray with the ease born of years of practice. He had been well aware of her earlier quickening of interest, but that was all the news of the investigation he was willing to leak for now. It was important at this point that the staff realize if they had any information—if they heard or noticed something odd going on among the guests—it was important that they let the authorities in on it. That this was not just a routine investigation of an accident, as the papers had led people to believe.
She trundled off with the tray stand in one hand and the now-empty tray tucked under one arm. Max returned his attention to Jake, asking: “And what exactly was she planning to do for you? Before she was killed, that is.”
Jake stabbed a fork about his casserole, taking his time before answering. “Margot knew all the studio heads, the directors, the agents—everybody. These connections went back years but they still held. Let me speak plainly—I suspected she might be holding information over the heads of some of these people. If you follow.”
“If you’re talking blackmail, I think I do,” said Max. He sampled the buttery cod, which was delicious. It came with a side of early spring salad seasoned with olive oil and an unusual combination of herbs that reminded him of meals at home. He wondered if the chef had got hold of Awena’s cookbook. It wouldn’t surprise him at all. Her book had quickly become the go-to vegetarian bible for the back-to-nature foodie movement. Her homemade yogurt alone was legendary, and it was said the chef at Buckingham Palace was serving her recipe for roasted brussels sprouts with honey-mustard sauce.
“I don’t think money changed hands in some arm-twisting way, not really,” said Jake, pausing for a sip of wine. Setting down his glass, he added, “At worst, it might have been a matter of, ‘Can you spare a dime for an old friend?’—that sort of thing. Keep in mind, all these people we’re talking about are loaded. It would have meant little to them to write her a check that might keep her afloat for a month.” He paused and, catching himself up, he added, “Oh, God. Sorry, bad choice of word.”
“No worries—these old phrases do creep into one’s speech, don’t they? But I gather the implied threat was that she had some kind of sordid information she might share with the world or the authorities, unless she was given, as you say, enough money to keep her afloat.” Max stated the case baldly. It wasn’t going to help Margot if he gilded her actions with fairytale interpretations of those actions. Much more likely it was—and helpful—to realize she may have come to the well too often to suit one of her soft touches. The thought led him to: “How was her relationship with Romero?”
Jake put down his fork and took another thoughtful sip of his wine. He shook his head, saying, “I never would have thought the English could get a decent wine to grow in this climate, but they’ve managed it. Anyway, you’ve honed in on a perfect example of Margot’s technique. If she was putting the squeeze on Romero for money, it was so subtly done as to be unnoticeable, at least from where I stood. But she was really more interested in getting a part in his new upcoming extravaganza epic bio-spectacle. They were—still are, I guess—going to do what was essentially some amped-up redo of Troy. The new film was complete nonsense, of course, but the people in the bleachers were sure to love it. And I was in the running for a part. Margot may even have put in a word for me—I’ll never be sure now. I just know Romero said I was in.”
All this was conveyed with what appeared to be a disarming honesty. Jake was neither Margot’s apologist nor was he really her companion in crime, if what she was doing rose to that level, which Max doubted. After all, what actress had not angled for a part in a play or a movie? He imagined that was the norm and not the exception. If she had spared a thought for helping Jake get ahead, that was to her credit.
This was all-in-all a different shading on what he had expected to learn of Jake’s relationship with Margot. Pragmatic and self-serving it was, yes. And Jake was clearly ambitious. But none of it came across as particularly sleazy, not by the standards he’d heard were the norm in Hollywood.
“So she may have put in a word for you?” said Max. “That was nice of her.”
Jake nodded. “She was a good old girl, she really was that. But Romero didn’t want her in the film, you see, so he wanted me to, you know, soft-pedal my good news. It made life a bit awkward.”
“Did you think of the relationship as long-term?” Max pretended an intense interest in buttering his bread as he asked this, not wanting the skepticism in his eyes to guide Jake’s answer. But Jake seemed unfazed and not in need of visual cues.
“Lord, no,” he said. “She was ages too old for me. I think she knew that, too. Sort of.”
“Did you ever talk about it?”
“No. Of course not.”
Of course not. The golden goose might go away and lay her eggs elsewhere, to apply what Max acknowledged was an outlandish bit of imagery. But from what he knew of Margot, she would need the illusion this was a forever romance in order to stay. Otherwise, as Maurice had hinted, she was more than capable of folding up her tent and heading off yet again to greener pastures.
“Not to insist,” said Max, “but why do you think she may have been aware of the age difference?”
“The references were constant,” said Jake. He was rootling through the bread basket, which held an assortment of rolls and slices of fresh-baked bread, looking for the most tempting. “Some song would come on the car radio, and she’d hum along and then say, ‘Oh, of course, you’re too young to remember this.’ Or something would come on TV and she’d go on about the actor, and then say, ‘Of course, this was all before your day.’”
“Why do you think she did that?”
“Why? I think it was my cue to rush in and say something along the lines of, ‘Oh, darling, don’t be silly. You can’t be that old—you don’t look a day over thirty.’ But I wasn’t playing that game. She looked her age, a bit older if truth be told. And I wasn’t going to gush at her in some gigolo sort of way. We had the relationship we had and I think it worked for both of us, even though it was never destined to last forever. Well, that possibility’s gone now, anyway, so why belabor the point? As these things go, it was an honest relationship—possibly the most honest relationship I’ve ever had.” He inspected a slice of bread, its crust golden and embedded with seeds, and reached for the plate of soft butter rosettes.
“Fine,” said Max. “Now, on the night she died…”
“I was snug asleep. I heard nothing. I did wake up once briefly and she wasn’t there. I realize now she may never have returned to the room—I undressed in the light from the porthole and sort of collapsed into my own bed; I didn’t notice if she was in the other. I told the police this.”
“What time was it?”
“No real idea,” said Jake with a shrug. “After midnight.”
“One-fifteen? I believe that’s what you told the investigators.”
Another shrug. The inconsistency didn’t seem to concern him. “I tend to wake up about two a.m., sometimes three—a maddening form of insomnia. But that’s not proof of the time. In fact, I avoid looking at the clock as it makes me nuts to verify that it’s the middle of the goddamn night and here I am yet again, wide awake.”
“So, wide awake as you were, you didn’t get up for a stroll around the deck? To use the bathroom, to get a drink of water?”
“No. It’s a rarity that I fall right back to sleep, but that’s what I did. I completely conked out—that is such a novelty I remember that sort of thing for days.”
Max wondered if there was a reason for this. Had he been drugged? Either by Margot herself, to keep him quiet so she could keep a rendezvous, or by the killer?
“I awoke the next morning, late,” Jake continued, “and she was still gone. I thought nothing of it. With Margot, you never quite knew what was up.”
“But you weren’t worried about her.”
“Not in the least.”