It was a smart block. The type you might find in St John’s Wood or Knightsbridge and where the residences inside were called apartments by their owners rather than flats. It was situated on a leafy lane just off Park Street, glinting so bright in the afternoon sun that it might have been painted the week before. I climbed the steps to the columned entrance and introduced myself to a concierge who, short of a visiting maharajah, was possibly the finest dressed Indian in the city.
‘Captain Wyndham to see Miss Grant.’
The man looked up from behind a large desk and a pair of thick spectacles and eyed me warily.
I didn’t blame him. I’d been up for over thirty-six hours straight, and hadn’t had a shave or change of clothes in that time. Still, I did have a bunch of flowers. Ne’er-do-wells didn’t often turn up with a bouquet when they’re out casing a joint.
‘Memsahib is expecting you?’ he asked.
I gave him a smile.
‘Absolutely.’
He picked up the telephone receiver from the desk in front of him and dialled. ‘One moment, sir.’
I waited, strumming my fingers on his desk while he waited for a connection to Annie’s apartment. There came a click from the receiver and the concierge sat straighter. From the sudden change in his posture I guessed Annie herself had answered.
‘A Captain Wyndham here to see you, Miss Grant.’
I held my breath.
The concierge replaced the receiver and looked up.
‘Please follow me.’
It was only one flight of stairs but the concierge insisted we take the lift, and who was I to argue with a man with so much gold braid on his uniform?
He opened the grate and I followed him into an elevator car bedecked in walnut. Pulling the cage closed, he pressed a polished brass button and the contraption jerked to life. Annie hadn’t been here long. Having found the suburbs too dull, she’d moved back to the city just over six months earlier and I’d only visited her here once before, though visited was probably not the right word. I’d been invited essentially for a dressing-down. A chap she’d been out with by the name of Hobbs, had been stopped outside the Great Eastern by a copper for being drunk and disorderly. He tried to deal with the issue in the time-honoured fashion by giving the chap a little donation to go away and was promptly arrested on a charge of attempting to bribe an officer of the Crown and thrown in a cell for twenty-four hours. Somehow, Annie had got it into her head that the whole thing had been my doing. Granted I had bought him several drinks earlier that evening, and agreed, it was a freak occurrence that Suren should be the police officer passing when the drunken fool had stumbled out of the hotel, and yes, as a detective sergeant, cautioning drunkards was outside of his usual purview – but as I pointed out to Miss Grant, Suren was a dedicated officer, ready to uphold the law wherever and in whatever capacity the situation called for, and to accuse either him or me of some form of vendetta was both ludicrous and insulting.
Annie was waiting at the door to her apartment. She didn’t seem exactly thrilled to see me, but she’d told the concierge to bring me up so how furious could she really be?
‘Sam Wyndham, as I live and breathe. To what do I owe the pleasure?’
I held out the flowers, and she stared at them as though I were presenting her with my laundry. I remembered another man who’d once bought her flowers. He’d been a prince and had sent her two bouquets a day. He was murdered soon afterwards. There was probably a lesson in there somewhere.
‘Flowers?’ she said suspiciously. ‘What do you want?’
I considered giving her some flannel, something about contrition and an apology for past sins, but she deserved better than that.
‘I need to borrow your car.’
‘Just like that? You turn up here for the first time in months and it’s not to say sorry for what you did to poor Reggie Hobbs but to ask for my car? That’s brazen, even by your standards.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, palms raised in surrender, ‘and this is hardly the sort of conversation I wish to be having, but there’s no time for a proper explanation. You know what’s going on out there. What’s more, Suren’s disappeared and he’s mixed up in it all.’
Annie sighed. ‘It’s never straightforward with you, is it, Sam?’
She had a point.
I puffed out my cheeks. ‘Where’s the fun in straightforward?’
She went into one of the rooms, leaving me standing in the hallway, before returning, holding up a set of keys.
‘Here you go,’ she said, throwing them over. I caught them and was about to say something, then thought better of it. Annie, however, read the expression on my face.
‘Don’t tell me you want my chauffeur too?’
‘Would you mind?’
She shook her head, then reached for the telephone on the sideboard. I waited as she put the call in to the concierge.
‘Ram, tell my driver to be ready. Captain Wyndham will be borrowing him and the car.
She replaced the receiver. ‘Anything else?’
I felt her tone to be needlessly sarcastic.
‘Just one last thing. Are you seeing anyone at the moment?’
She stared at me. ‘Why? Do you want to know who else to throw in jail?’
‘I just thought I might take you to dinner sometime.’
She shook her head in that exasperated manner of hers.
‘Get out, Sam. Go and do whatever it is you need to do. And when you find Suren, tell him I’ll be having words with him.’