In the office at the top of the tall, thin house in Down Street, Victoria Clifford waited by the window with arms folded. She looked down through slowly descending sleet at the disused Tube station. It had closed in 1932. The mystery, for Quinn, had been why they’d built it in the first place. ‘Nobody in Mayfair ever needed the Tube,’ he would muse. They preferred chauffeur-driven cars, then as now.
You wouldn’t have thought residents of Mayfair – even at this scruffier western end of it – would need a newsagent-cum-sweetshop any more than they’d need a Tube station, but one of those now occupied part of the facade of the closed-down station. Mini-Mart, it called itself. There was an appealing dowdiness about Down Street, a forgotten quality. Up at the north end, there was a tapas bar that kept itself to itself, and opposite that was that blackened church that didn’t appear to have an entrance. The church stood on the corner of Brick Street, which harboured an outpost of Justerini & Brooks, Wine Merchants, just to remind you this was Mayfair.
She had set Quinn’s desk up at right angles to the window. The idea had been that he could watch the door, or look down into the street. His desk, like hers, was a tacky, veneered job brought over from the Yard by one of these white-van men who seemed to do so much back-up for the Met, and who, she wouldn’t have been very surprised to learn, was actually some sort of detective.
The sleet, or whatever it was, had stopped. The sky was now straightforwardly purple. Somebody had written a song about Down Street Tube station, oddly enough. Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel. She and Quinn liked Cockney Rebel. Come Up and See Me. In her mind’s eye, she saw Quinn dancing at Tramp in about 1979. He had a subtle, shuffling style, always with fag in hand, and sometimes with a suspicion of eyeliner. She began thinking of the half-dozen times she’d slept with Quinn. While doing paperwork at the Yard, on days very much like this, they would both be overcome with the urge to behave badly. So Quinn might buy a bottle of wine, and they’d check into one of the many dowdy little hotels near Victoria. Quinn would climb into the bed, and she might sit on a chair with no clothes on, and she’d accept one of his cigarettes, and they’d talk, both before and after the sex. Why had that stopped happening? She supposed that she and Quinn had become more respectable, like those little hotels near Victoria. And in both their cases, those afternoons had represented a divergence from the norm – that being homosexuality for Quinn and celibacy for her.
Victoria Clifford looked away from the window. She’d hung a couple of decent coats on the back of the door. They were old ones of Quinn’s, but might be considered unisex. She’d placed Quinn’s Lalique ashtray on what was to have been his desk. He’d want it there if he ever came back. She’d taken the ashtray from Quinn’s flat, right under the nose of the man Chamberlain – also the notebook, and … a couple of other items besides. If Quinn died, then Chamberlain would execute the will. That was a bad look-out, since he was an idiot. Big computer terminals sat on each desk, and each was like a ball and chain, by which she and Quinn were to have been kept connected to the Yard, via email and intranet. The white-van man had installed these, and the telephones … and he’d obviously made the old-fashioned entryphone work because it was buzzing now. She picked up the receiver, pressed the button.
‘Victoria?’ she heard. ‘It’s Blake Reynolds.’
Blake. Ridiculous name – a little flash of romanticism from the suburban parents. They must have been thinking of Sexton Blake.
‘Top floor,’ she said, and she pressed the button to admit him. He’d sounded a bit nervous, which was all to the good. She waited a moment before replacing the receiver, in case he should mutter to himself, or clear his throat, or show some other sign of weakness. He did not, but a few seconds had passed before she heard the door slam behind him. Perhaps his eye had been caught by the brass plaques announcing the other tenants, and he’d read the names: Al Hasan Risk Modelling; Fincham Acquisitions; some estate-management firm and D’Arblay Fine Art. In spite of all the money implied by those names, the lift didn’t work. So Reynolds wouldn’t appear for a while.
There was a small mirror on the mantelpiece; it had mainly been put there for Quinn’s benefit, but she walked over to it now and straightened her hair. She’d walked through the rain to get here, and she wanted to look her best for Reynolds, who did bear a slight resemblance to Jude Law, after all. She then walked over to the desk she had designated for herself. On it lay the notebook, on top of that the two memory sticks, and the invitation to the drinks given by Plyushkin’s Gardeners. She heard footsteps on the stairs, and then in the corridor. Reynolds, in his Marks & Spencer shoes. He was a decent man, so he would knock. She heard the knock. ‘Enter,’ she called out, and there was Reynolds in the doorway. He hadn’t slept much the night before. He wore a mac that didn’t suit him and he carried an unforgivably telescoped umbrella and a fairly reprehensible laptop bag. But his hair was wavy and grey in just the way she liked. It was actually better hair than Jude Law’s. He looked around the room, then at her, blushing slightly. He smiled.
‘The good news is: this unit’s not closing down,’ he said. ‘The bad news is: I’m your new boss.’
He’d rehearsed that speech.
‘I know,’ said Victoria Clifford.
Silence in the headquarters of the Super-Rich Unit.
‘The lift’s not working,’ said Reynolds.
‘I know,’ said Victoria Clifford, and feeling somehow like a little girl, she handed him the notebook and the two memory sticks. He blushed again; was palpably grateful, which he ought not to have been, not least because she’d taken the precaution of carefully slicing two of the pages from the notebook. He set down the laptop bag, and took out his laptop, which was no better than her own. He then found the kettle on the filing cabinet, but saw that it was just that: a kettle. No ‘tea and coffee making facilities’ as the Victoria hotels daintily had it. He began looking about. He wanted a coffee. It was very important to her that he should ask for one.
‘Since you’re now my personal assistant …’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t suppose you’d fancy getting us both a coffee, would you?’
She smiled at him, and he smiled too – laughed a bit, in fact. She walked over to the window. They sold takeaway teas and coffees in the Mini-Mart. Tea was seventy pence; coffee ninety. She would go over in a minute.
‘They do them in the place across the road,’ she said, ‘I’ll go over.’
‘You really don’t mind?’ he said, blushing again. He must learn not to be so pleased about his little victories. ‘No sugar, just milk please.’
‘I know,’ she said, and as she left the office, she saw that Reynolds was opening the notebook.