A clap of thunder rumbled overhead as Carmichael drove out of the city, turning her wipers up a notch so as not to miss the turning.
Three miles further on, she reached the residential heart of upmarket Gosforth and the Victorian splendour of the Weston Hotel, set back off the A1. Though she’d never been inside, Carmichael knew it catered for the discerning business and tourist traveller alike – as long as they had deep pockets, from the look of the cars outside. Beneath a covered portico, a smart limousine was dropping someone off. There were no free parking spaces close to the entrance, so she drove round the back, pulling between some recycling bins and a stack of empty crates.
In the hotel’s plush foyer, five businessmen were huddled together at a table near the window. Talking in low whispers, they looked more like a gang of thieves plotting their next big job than a group of corporate lawyers holding a business meeting. They looked up as an elegant woman swept in like a summer breeze, gliding to reception leaving the scent of her perfume drifting subtly in her wake. She was exquisitely dressed, might just have stepped off the cover of Vogue. The concierge jumped to attention, handed her a key, and accompanied her to an elevator that only went to the penthouse suite.
As the lift doors closed in front of her, she smiled briefly at the lawyers and then at the young woman who had just walked through the door. Carmichael was soaked to the skin, water dripping off her clothes and on to the floor, strands of bedraggled hair clinging to her red face. The contrast between the two women could not have been more obvious. Embarrassed by her appearance, Carmichael hurried to the desk where a member of staff checked her ID and took her in the service lift to a less salubrious part of the hotel, a small room in the warm basement far away from the eyes of paying guests. She was offered a towel to dry her hair and advised that the security guards she’d come to see would be along very shortly.
By the time they arrived, Carmichael looked a bit more like a detective and a little less like a drowned rat. She spent the next hour poring over Fitzgerald’s list, checking the seating plan against invitations handed in at the door. One of the guards told her that security had been a major consideration at the prestigious event.
‘No invitation meant strictly no admittance,’ he said. ‘Company policy, on account of the high-profile guests.’
Unconvinced, Carmichael threw a spanner in to test them out. ‘But if someone turned up without an invitation – for argument’s sake, someone really important – for a few quid you’d let them in, right?’
A fleeting look from one guard to another provided a truthful answer.
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ Carmichael said.