What’s in a name? Harry asked himself. Specifically, what’s in the name of Lee Welch?
He’d stopped off in a café opposite Exchange Flags to study the newspaper. The office could wait. He was sure Aled Borth had been shocked by something he read. The man seemed even more startled than by his puzzling encounter with Grace in the office. His hands shook so much that Harry half-expected him to let the tabloid sheets slip from his grasp and fall to the ground.
Yet the story didn’t say much, apart from naming the woman found dead at Waterloo as Lee Welch, aged 21. The report was accompanied by a holiday snap apparently taken on the beach of some Spanish resort. She had shoulder-length bleached blonde hair and a neck tattoo. An unnamed neighbour described her as bubbly and fun-loving. The same epitaph as bestowed upon Denise Onuoha, and, it sometimes seemed to Harry, upon everyone young who met a tragic end.
The senior investigating officer kept it vague: ‘Police inquiries are continuing and we are following up a variety of leads.’
In other words, they didn’t have a clue. The SIO dead-batted suggestions of a link between Lee’s death and Denise’s, while appealing to the public for fresh information. Nothing there to set Aled Borth’s pulse racing. Could something else have spooked him? Unlikely that Liverpool FC’s latest activity in the transfer market would provoke such a reaction. There were a few small box advertisements, for sofas, digital hearing aids and Mediterranean cruises, and that was it.
It must be the name. The only explanation Harry could conjure up was that Lee Welch herself meant something to Aled Borth.
Perhaps she was a patron of the Waterloo Alhambra? Harry struggled to believe that he and the dead girl had been friends. Even allowing for mood-darkening effects of bereavement, anyone less bubbly and fun-loving than poor old Aled you wouldn’t meet in a day’s march.
He checked his watch. Time to get back. It was chilly for June, with the threat of rain, but his mood was jaunty as he strode down Chapel Street. Of course, he knew better than to expect that anything serious might develop between him and Ceri Hussain. If she was appointed as Chief Coroner, she’d leave Liverpool; chances were their paths would never cross again. She was just interested in his company, without strings; but she’d given him something to look forward to. Since he’d split up with Juliet, he’d had a few flings, but none that meant much either to him or the women. It suited him to be beholden to nobody once he retreated to Empire Dock and locked his door on the world outside. When he’d heard that his half-brother was dead, he hadn’t wept, though there was so much that the two of them had never said to each other. But the loss of the last close member of his family deepened his sense of isolation when he sat in his flat and watched the river swirl by.
By the time he reached the cut-through at the parish church, he’d persuaded himself that things were looking up. He’d rid himself of the Borth case. Tom Gunter wouldn’t cause any more trouble if he wasn’t provoked again. Maybe it was time to give his life a makeover. If Liverpool could reinvent itself, why couldn’t he?
He strolled into the gardens where he’d confronted Tom Gunter. Twenty-four hours later, everything was quiet. This was the oldest corner of Liverpool, but few guessed its bloody history. During the Black Death, it served as a burial ground for plague victims, and in the Civil War the church served as a prison for both Cavaliers and Roundheads. Two hundred years back, the old spire crashed into the nave, killing a group of girls from a charity school. The Luftwaffe’s bombs destroyed the church, but it rose again from the wreckage. Now the graveyard was a quiet oasis of shrubs and trees strong enough to withstand the salty wind. The planting had a Biblical theme: wormwood, laurel and a Judas tree.
He paused by one of the benches. It wasn’t sitting-out weather and there were few people around. A young black woman in a business suit typed with two fingers on a laptop, an elderly couple poured hot drinks from a Thermos flask. In the eighteenth century, a coffee house had stood in the corner of the churchyard. It was a place of business as well as for relaxation. Shackles were fixed for slaves who were auctioned, and the successful bidders shipped them across the Atlantic in return for cotton, sugar and rum. Before abolition, Liverpool was the centre of the slave trade. The city grew rich from the sale of human lives.
‘Harry!’
Juliet May stood at the iron gate to the gardens, swinging a bag from hand to hand. She wore a sleek grey single-breasted jacket and low-cut blouse, with spotless high-waisted white trousers. After a moment’s hesitation, he walked towards her.
‘I’ve not seen you for years, now it’s twice in two days.’
‘Now I live in the same building where you work, we’re bound to bump into each other.’
‘I suppose.’
‘I hoped you would be pleased, that the two of us are so close again.’ That familiar, tantalising smile. ‘At least in terms of geography.’
‘I hear Casper owns the building.’
‘Of course. Didn’t you know?’
‘Not until last night.’
She laughed. ‘I told you, Casper knows nothing about you and me. Just as well. He’s very proprietorial.’
‘Even now, when your marriage is over?’
She sighed. ‘We were more than husband and wife. We’ve been business partners for years. It’s a tax thing, I don’t understand the details. He still needs to keep me sweet. It’s in his financial interest.’
‘And in return, he keeps you in the style to which you’re accustomed?’
‘A sensible business arrangement. A win-win situation.’
‘So where does Jude fit in?’
Her brow clouded. ‘Who knows? He’s away in London for an audition.’
He cleared his throat. ‘I need to clear my desk for the day.’
Again she laughed. ‘You’re special, Harry, do you know that? I never met anyone quite like you.’
Probably she meant it in a good way, but it wasn’t the right time to find out. ‘Good to see you, Juliet.’
As he walked towards the path that led to the Strand and the main entrance to the offices, she called after him.
‘The penthouse is lovely. Views to die for. On a clear day, I kid myself that I can see America. Come up and have a look sometime.’
He glanced back over his shoulder. The glossy, plumped-up lips formed a smile that didn’t seem quite natural. Her eyes followed him, their expression impossible to read.
His room was in chaos.
Hands on hips, he surveyed the scene from the doorway. It was as if some demented conceptual artist had created a tableau of bureaucratic disorder as an entry for the Turner Prize. Someone had pulled all the buff folders out of the cabinets, and strewn their contents all over the floor. Court documents, legal aid forms, fliers from recruitment agencies and expert witnesses. And there were business cards, magazines, the framed certificates he kept on the wall. Nothing left untouched.
Jim wandered towards him, heading for the kitchen. He’d forsworn caffeine and kept consuming endless cups of water. Since Carmel had moved in with him, she’d persuaded him of the need to cleanse his colon and lymph glands of all impurities. She’d even lent Harry a book about extreme detox diets, but the first couple of chapters had set his bowels trembling, and he’d decided to remain impure.
‘What’s up?’
‘Someone’s trashed my room.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Very witty. Take a look.’
His partner joined him at the door and winced at the mess.
‘So much for the paperless office, eh? Couldn’t you find something? Did you have to turn the place upside down?’
‘I haven’t laid a finger on it.’
‘This isn’t your secretary’s new filing system?’
‘I know you’re not a member of Grace’s fan club, but…’
‘She’s weird, admit it.’
‘No, she’s…interesting.’
‘You think weird is interesting.’
‘She had nothing to do with this. It’s so pointless. Who would want to wreck my room?’
‘You tell me.’
‘I need to check whether anything has been stolen.’
‘You didn’t leave your wallet here?’
Harry shook his head.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, old son, but why would someone steal anything from you other than cash or credit cards?’
‘Someone may have been searching for something. Rummaging for confidential information in one of the files.’
‘It’s kids.’
‘Kids?’
‘Some little bastards who were excluded from school, and wanted a break from vandalising phone booths and spraying graffiti on garage doors. Thank your lucky stars they haven’t pissed all over your file notes.’
Harry hadn’t considered that possibility. He sniffed the air cautiously. Nothing.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that someone’s broken in? So much for the state-of-the-art security that the agents boasted about.’
‘Dead right. I’ll take it up with them. But face it, Harry. We may have a posh office, but this is still Liverpool. If you ask me, we got off lightly. Some of these kids…’
‘Why choose my office?’
‘Be honest, old son. You set a gold standard in attracting trouble. It’s a wonder we can still get insurance.’
‘This is the fifth floor. It’s not as if you can peer through the window from outside and make sure I’m not around. Breaking into my office makes no sense.’
‘Nobody broke in. You never lock up.’
‘There must be twenty rooms on this floor alone, not counting cupboards. An intruder could have been disturbed at any moment.’
‘It’s quiet at this end of the building. Most of it’s lying empty. Where’s the fun in trashing a vacant office?’
‘Maybe they aren’t far away.’ Harry took a couple of paces down the corridor. ‘Suppose they’re hiding somewhere close by?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To find whoever did this.’
‘Waste of time.’ Jim pointed to the door opposite Harry’s office. ‘That room connects with a couple of others. None of the doors are locked during the day. Fitters wander in and out every five minutes. Plumbers, electricians, you see them all the time. The prankster who messed up your room will be long gone by now.’
‘I’ll check whether Lou spotted anything out of the ordinary.’
‘You’ll be lucky. We could be subject to asteroid attack and Lou wouldn’t bat an eyelid unless it interfered with reception on his portable TV.’
‘Even so.’
Harry raced down the corridor. He gave the lift a miss, wanting to see if an intruder lurked on the stairs. The carpet muffled the sound of his pounding feet as he headed down from floor to floor, but he didn’t see another soul. By the time he reached the ground he was out of breath.
Up on the vast plasma screen, an architect, as glossy as one of the Stepford Wives, preached the glories of Liverpool redux.
‘Reinvigorated docklands…multi-faith street furniture…a cultural logarithm with conference facilities…’
Behind the welcome desk, Lou was resplendent. Casper May’s company had kitted him out in a smart navy blue uniform with extensive brass trimmings. He might have passed for a rear-admiral, but for the sign on the desk labelled Concierge and his ceaseless gum-chewing. He was conferring about prospects for the next World Cup with an asthmatic crony with a scary wheeze. Like all Lou’s friends, the crony had a characteristic smell. He reeked so strongly of boiled cabbage that, for all the lavish décor of the foyer, Harry was transported back to the school canteens of his youth.
He coughed and Lou glanced up, allowing his grizzled features to fold into an expression of concern.
‘All right, mate? You’re all flushed. Out of condition? You don’t want to overdo it, you know. We’re none of us getting any younger.’
‘Have you seen an intruder in the building?’
Lou’s bushy eyebrows wouldn’t have looked out of place in a border at Croxteth Park. They jiggled slightly, the closest that Lou came to indicating intense reflection.
‘Sorry, mate. What’s the problem?’
‘Someone has turned over my room.’
Lou chewed more slowly as he considered this.
‘Much gone missing?’
‘Not as far as I can tell.’
‘You dropped lucky, then.’ A mournful sigh. ‘It’ll be teenage scallies, bet your bottom dollar. Bring back national service, that’s what I say. Give them some backbone. Discipline.’
The asthmatic friend gave an affirmative gasp, but before he could confirm that the country was going to the dogs, Harry said, ‘So you haven’t seen anyone suspicious?’
‘You get all sorts in here at the moment. Talk about Piccadilly Circus. It’s not possible to keep track.’
‘But surely…’
Lou gave a reproachful shake of the head. ‘I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, Harry, do I now?’
‘I suppose it’s too much to expect that the CCTV…’
‘On the blink, isn’t it? I was telling Victor, they’d have done better to invest in Japanese technology.’
‘You can’t beat the Japanese,’ his aged pal croaked.
‘Not these days, anyhow,’ Lou said. ‘Makes you wonder who won the bloody war, eh?’
Harry gave up and took the lift back to his room, to discover Grace bending to pick up a couple of sheets of paper. When she heard his footfall, she gave a start and a little shriek. Her cheeks were tinted crimson.
‘Sorry. I thought I ought to help. Mr Crusoe told me what had happened.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll sort it all out before…’
His voice trailed away as he caught sight of the PC monitor on his desk. The screensaver had vanished; presumably Grace had touched the mouse by mistake in her hapless attempts to tidy the room up.
Someone had opened his calendar. Normally, he set it to view a week at a glance, but the setting had changed so as to show a single day. The whole of it was blocked out.
The date wasn’t today, but 23 June.
And to make sure the point was not missed, someone had typed in two words.
Midsummer’s Eve.
Grace offered to stay late to help him clear up, but he shooed her out, promising she could leave it to him to get the room straight. But he didn’t say when.
Through the window he watched the black hands of the clock on the Liver Building. With every minute that ticked by, Midsummer’s Eve drew closer.
‘The Big Clock,’ he muttered to himself. Another film that fascinated him, the story of a man called Stroud, hired in a race against time to find a witness to murder, so that he could be silenced. His boss didn’t realise that Stroud was the witness. He was hunting himself.
Jim was right. He’d fallen victim to a joker with a childish sense of humour and too much time on his hands. He didn’t fret about the cascade of emails from spammers cluttering his inbox, urging him to invest in Viagra or share his bank account details. He’d pay no attention to this, either. Getting on with life was the best retaliation. He deleted Midsummer’s Eve from his calendar, together with an email from the Law Society urging him to be vigilant to detect money laundering.
Or too much time on her hands? The joker could be anyone. You never knew.
Enough. He must stop dwelling on it.
He yanked the Borth file out of his briefcase and started tidying up the loose ends so that the papers could be archived. Better not think about how much time and money he’d written off through agreeing the fixed fee. Wayne Saxelby would be aghast if he knew. He was muttering into his dictaphone when he heard a gentle tap on the door. The timidity of the sound caught him by surprise. Usually people marched straight in without a second thought.
‘Come in.’
The face of the cleaner he’d met the previous evening appeared round the door. Her cheeks still had no colour, but at least they were no longer wet.
‘Can I empty your bin?’
Before he could say yes, she took in the state of his room and exclaimed in dismay.
‘What’s happened?’
He climbed to his feet and spread his arms. ‘Someone decided to reorganise my files.’
‘A burglar?’
‘I don’t think so. No one in their senses would come here to steal.’
‘But this is a solicitor’s office.’
‘Exactly. Not worth robbing. We don’t keep sacks of cash on the premises. Any thief would only get the slimmest pickings.’
‘Then why…?’
‘I must have upset someone.’
‘You, Mr Devlin?’
He wasn’t sure why she sounded so astonished. ‘It happens. And do call me Harry.’
She blushed and, as if to cover embarrassment at his familiarity, bent down and picked up a set of documents tied together by a treasury tag. ‘The supervisor asked me to look after this side of the building. Your usual girl is off sick.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’ A meaningless response. He hadn’t yet registered who the usual cleaner was.
‘Don’t be. She probably smoked one joint too many, that’s all.’
‘You needn’t worry about all this.’ He waved at the floor. ‘It’s not your job to clear up after trespassers.’
‘No problem. I like cleaning.’
‘You do?’
When she frowned, he realised his question might have offended her. He hadn’t intended to scoff, all he meant was that he couldn’t imagine anyone enjoying having to clear up after others.
‘Sorry, I didn’t…’
‘It’s all right. Even the supervisor thinks I’m off my head. But it’s true. I get a kick from sorting out. Rearranging stuff, putting things in order, making sure they are all in the right place. Does that sound strange to you?’
Harry cast his mind back to the night cleaners at the old offices, a bunch of cackling harridans whose day job was probably as warders on Walton Jail’s maximum security wing. They had once skived off early and locked him in the building after he’d had the temerity to ask them to mop up a spillage on the kitchen floor.
‘Different, yes. But I’m not complaining. By the way, I don’t know your name.’
‘OK, Gina, let me give you a hand.’
He joined her on hands and knees, scrabbling around on the floor and scooping up the sheets and trying to find the folders where they belonged. She still had a tang of cinnamon. After a couple of minutes they backed into each other and both burst out laughing. He turned to face her.
‘I’m glad you’ve recovered from whatever upset you yesterday.’
She coloured. ‘I wouldn’t say I’m over it. Thanks all the same.’
‘Do you want to talk about it? Whatever was on your mind?’
She pointed to the pile of correspondence they had amassed. ‘You didn’t want to talk about your problem.’
‘This isn’t a problem.’ When she raised her eyebrows, he realised he’d spoken too sharply. ‘I don’t know who did this. It’s a minor inconvenience, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, right. Someone picked on you for no reason?’
‘Why not? Teenagers playing truant, I expect.’
‘This is the fifth floor, Mr Devlin. Why would any teenagers wanting to cause trouble flog all the way up here?’
‘They didn’t run much risk of being caught. With so many empty offices…’
‘Why bother? It doesn’t add up.’ She pursed her lips. ‘If you ask me, someone did this deliberately to cause grief for you.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That’s cheered me up.’
‘Sorry, Mr Devlin…’
‘Harry.’
‘Sorry, Harry, but it won’t do any good telling lies to yourself, to make you feel better.’
She had located his calendar among the debris. She dusted it off and handed it to him. Today’s message wasn’t encouraging. The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.
He put it back on the desk and gazed down at her. Something impelled him to say, ‘Is that why you were crying last night? Because you refuse to lie to yourself?’
She hauled herself up off the floor and looked him in the eye. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Tell me to mind my own business, if you like.’
She closed her eyes. ‘If you must know, a friend of mine died yesterday.’
Self-loathing stabbed him. Why did he always have to keep prying? ‘Christ, I’m…’
‘You weren’t to know.’ When she opened her eyes again, to his horror he saw that tears were forming. ‘But what happened was terrible. It wasn’t an ordinary death.’
He caught his breath. ‘Is any death ordinary?’
‘Not this one, for sure. She was murdered.’
‘Not the girl they found on the beach at Waterloo? Lee Welch?’
‘How do you know her name?’
‘They printed it in the Echo. Someone has identified her.’
‘Not me, thank God.’ Gina stared at her trainers. ‘I couldn’t have gone to the morgue and seen her there, all waxy and lifeless. It would have broken my heart to see her dead.’
For a while neither of them said anything. At last Harry said, ‘If ever you do want to talk about it…’
‘I wasn’t in the mood yesterday, for sure. But you were kind to me. So, thanks.’
‘Anyone would…’
‘No, you’re wrong. I haven’t been cleaning offices for long, but I soon learnt that most people look straight through you. The moment I put on this overall, I become an invisible woman. At least you spoke to me like I was a member of the human race.’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘All right, what have I got to lose? Besides, there’s nobody else I can talk to about Lee. Nobody else who cares.’
Forty minutes later, he was trying not to spill his beer or her vodka and lime as he sidled through the crowd on his way to a booth at the back of the Stapledon Bar. After finishing work, Gina had changed out of her overall and poured her boyish figure into a sky blue tee shirt and impossibly tight jeans. She was checking out the mural behind her seat. Doctor Morbius, introducing Robby the Robot to the crew visiting the Forbidden Planet. Above their heads, Tom Cruise raced across the TV screens, this time fleeing from the pre-crime cops in Minority Report. Harry stole another look at Gina as she picked up her glass. Her face was so fresh she might have passed for sixteen. Only that wariness in her eyes was a giveaway, a clue that she’d been hurt before and was determined not to be hurt again. She was as luminous as Agatha in the film, the pre-cog with a terrible gift. Agatha foresaw murders before they were committed.
But, Harry reminded himself, he definitely wasn’t Tom Cruise.
‘Cheers.’
‘Thanks… Harry.’ She took a sip and then giggled. ‘Oh my God, the look on Victor’s face when we walked past him!’
On his way past the desk in the foyer of John Newton House, with Gina at his side, Harry had nodded at Victor. When the building manager glanced up from a chunky paperback, his straggly eyebrows almost hit the ceiling.
‘Don’t worry about it. There’s no rule against a tenant taking one of the contract cleaners for a drink.’
‘I’m not worried about him. He’s a bit of a joke. The girls are always calling him names. Victor Creepy is as nice as it gets.’
‘They don’t like him?’
‘God, no. I was warned to keep my distance, my first day on the job.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘I don’t know for sure. But they say he’s strange. He runs the building like his own personal empire. When we’re at work, he struts around like the Duke of bloody Edinburgh, inspecting the troops. And then there’s the way he goes on about murder.’
‘Murder? You mean forensics, crime scene stuff?’
‘Yeah, he’s obsessed with it. Crime scene stuff, forensics, you name it. See that book he is reading? One of the girls had a look at it last night. It’s about what happens when maggots make a breakfast out of dead bodies. Lovely.’ Her face darkened. ‘And when I think about Lee…’
‘He’s harmless, I’m sure.’
‘Last week, he told the supervisor he was reading the life story of the German cannibal killer. This bloke met someone on the internet and talked him into letting him eat his bits. I mean, can you imagine?’
‘I’d rather not.’ He savoured the bitter. ‘So tell me about yourself.’
‘Not much to tell.’
‘People always have something to tell. More than you might imagine. Let’s start with your second name.’
‘It’s Paget. Gina Paget.’
‘How long have you been cleaning?’
‘Since January. From ten in the morning, I work in a sandwich bar in Covent Garden. We finish at three and then I start cleaning. I do an hour at a travel agent’s and then I’m due at John Newton House.’
‘Busy schedule.’
‘I need to pay the bills, same as everyone else.’
‘And Lee Welch was your closest friend?’
‘It doesn’t say much for either of us, I suppose. We’ve only known each other eighteen months.’
‘So you didn’t meet at school?’
‘I’d guess Lee spent even less time at school than me. She was a Scouser born and bred too, but we met in London, would you believe? Soho, actually.’
‘Dare I ask what you were doing in Soho?’
She drank some vodka and lime. ‘Let’s just say she and I discovered we both shared the same dream. We wanted to be actresses and we met at an audition.’
‘For what?’
‘Not what we were led to believe, that’s for sure. This pervy bloke and his mates said they wanted us to star in a movie. An adult movie, as it turned out. Nothing hard core, but it was never going to lead to Hollywood. At least Lee and I hit it off. Two kids from Liverpool, trying to make it in the big bad city. We found we had a lot in common, and not just that our mothers both sold cigarettes in the Co-op. For a few months we shared a flat.’
‘And the film career didn’t work out?’
‘My starring role was as Harriet Houdini, would you believe? I was an escapologist who was tied up by a master criminal while my co-star was tortured to reveal government secrets. You’ll get the idea if I tell you he was cast as James Bondage.’
Harry laughed. ‘So you both got out alive?’
‘But stark naked, needless to say.’ She grinned. ‘Oh well, it was a life experience. But not one I wanted to repeat. Lee wasn’t so bothered, but last Christmas, I decided I wanted to get back to Liverpool and she came too. We thought there might be less competition up here. We knew we could pick up cleaning work and stuff like that to earn a few quid while we traipsed round the agencies. Waiting for a break.’
‘And you’re closer to family?’
‘Makes no difference, that wasn’t why we came back to the north. Lee’s parents were dead, her older sister works for the social services. My mum and dad split up when I was a kid and he emigrated to Australia. Mum’s dead now and the old feller might as well be for all I know or care.’
‘I suppose the sister identified Lee’s body?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Did she have boyfriends?’
‘Plenty. They couldn’t get enough of Lee, she had more touch-sensitive features than the latest mobile. But whenever anyone got too serious, she gave them the elbow. Said she was too young to settle down. What she meant was, she was looking for a man with money. Of course, blokes like that are always married and only looking for a bit on the side.’
‘Did she find a man with money?’
‘I’m not sure. Lee loved being a woman of mystery, it gave her a kick. She enjoyed having secrets, hugging them to herself.’
‘What sort of secrets?’
‘If I knew that, they wouldn’t be secrets, would they? All I can tell you is that she had a secret, there was something she wasn’t telling me.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘For the past few weeks, she kept dropping hints that things were looking up. The moment I showed any interest, she changed the subject.’
‘Was she doing it just to amuse herself? Make herself seem important?’
‘I suppose so. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeming bothered. But she did start spending money. The sort of money she’d not had before.’
‘You think this might have had something to do with her death?’
‘How can it? Sounds like she was killed by some maniac. Another woman was murdered a few weeks back, wasn’t she? So it was nothing – personal. Not that it makes things better. People are saying there’s a Liverpool serial killer. Some of the Lithuanian girls say they’d be safer going back home. Poor Lee. To think she would finish up…’
She started to sniffle. He rested his arm on her shoulder and she buried her face in his jacket.
‘I do hope you’re not causing this young lady distress, Harry?’
The words were spoken lightly, but all of a sudden the temperature had plunged to freezing. Harry disengaged himself from Gina and turned to face Juliet May. She was standing in front of the booth, accompanied by a tanned, bulky man. For all his cream suit and bling, his cold eyes reminded Harry of the soulless Borg in the mural of Star Trek. This was someone Harry hadn’t seen for a long time and had hoped not to encounter again. His new landlord, Casper May.
‘Evening, Juliet.’
‘Evening. You’ve met my former husband before, I think?’
Harry nodded. Casper didn’t react.
‘Harry’s a partner in the law firm that’s moved into John Newton House. Crusoe and Devlin, remember, there was a time when I helped with their marketing?’
A grunt. ‘I’ve used Jim Crusoe.’
Juliet’s perfume spiced the air. Although it was early, Harry realised that she’d already had a few drinks. ‘You do use rather a lot of people, don’t you, darling?’
Next to him, Gina stiffened. Harry noticed her glance from Juliet to Casper, trying to fathom what was going on. Harry wished he knew.
Juliet’s arched eyebrows said: she’s half your age, you must be out of your mind. Her voice was honey-smooth.
‘Well, Harry, aren’t you going to introduce us?’
‘Sorry. Gina Paget, this is Casper May and Juliet…’
‘May,’ Juliet said. ‘I haven’t changed my name since our divorce.
‘Gina, how lovely to meet you.’
Juliet extended a slender hand. Exquisitely manicured, as ever, but could Harry detect a hint of not-quite-concealed age spots? ‘And what do you do, exactly?’
The girl shook hands and treated the older woman to an all-innocence gaze.
‘As a matter of fact, Mrs May, I’m an executive in the premises regeneration sector.’