‘I couldn’t get hold of her. I tried several times. Maybe she’s not at that number any more, I don’t know.’
‘Could I take her details?’ Strike asked.
‘Ralph’s got her card. I asked him to keep ringing her for me. Ralph!’ she bellowed.
‘He’s still out with Beau!’ came the girl’s frightened squeak from beyond the door. Elizabeth Tassel rolled her eyes and got heavily to her feet.
‘There’s no point asking her to find it.’
When the door had swung shut behind the agent, Strike got at once to his feet, moved behind the desk and bent down to examine a photograph on the wall that had caught his eye, which necessitated the removal of a double portrait on the bookcase, featuring a pair of Dobermanns.
The picture in which he was interested was A4-sized, in colour but very faded. Judging by the fashions of the four people it featured, it had been taken at least twenty-five years previously, outside this very building.
Elizabeth herself was clearly recognisable, the only woman in the group, big and plain with long, windswept dark hair and wearing an unflattering drop-waisted dress of dark pink and turquoise. On one side of her stood a slim, fair-haired young man of extreme beauty; on the other was a short, sallow-skinned, sour-looking man whose head was too large for his body. He looked faintly familiar. Strike thought he might have seen him in the papers or on TV.
Beside the unidentified but possibly well-known man stood a much younger Owen Quine. The tallest of the four, he was wearing a crumpled white suit and a hairstyle best described as a spiky mullet. He reminded Strike irresistibly of a fat David Bowie.
The door swished open on its well-oiled hinges. Strike did not attempt to cover up what he was doing, but turned to face the agent, who was holding a sheet of paper.
‘That’s Fletcher,’ she said, her eyes on the picture of the dogs in his hand. ‘He died last year.’
He replaced the portrait of her dogs on the bookcase.
‘Oh,’ she said, catching on. ‘You were looking at the other one.’
She approached the faded picture; shoulder to shoulder with Strike, he noted that she was nearly six feet tall. She smelled of John Player Specials and Arpège.
‘That’s the day I started my agency. Those are my first three clients.’
‘Who’s he?’ asked Strike of the beautiful blond youth.
‘Joseph North. The most talented of them, by far. Unfortunately, he died young.’
‘And who’s—?’
‘Michael Fancourt, of course,’ she said, sounding surprised.
‘I thought he looked familiar. D’you still represent him?’
‘No! I thought…’
He heard the rest of the sentence, even though she did not say it: I thought everyone knew that. Worlds within worlds: perhaps all of literary London did know why the famous Fancourt was no longer her client, but he did not.
‘Why don’t you represent him any more?’ he asked, resuming his seat.
She passed the paper in her hand across the desk to him; it was a photocopy of what looked like a flimsy and grubby business card.
‘I had to choose between Michael and Owen, years ago,’ she said. ‘And like a b-bloody fool’ – she had begun to cough again; her voice was disintegrating into a guttural croak – ‘I chose Owen.
‘Those are the only contact details I’ve got for Kathryn Kent,’ she added firmly, closing down further discussion of Fancourt.
‘Thank you,’ he said, folding the paper and tucking it inside his wallet. ‘How long has Quine been seeing her, do you know?’
‘A while. He brings her to parties while Leonora’s stuck at home with Orlando. Utterly shameless.’
‘No idea where he might be hiding? Leonora says you’ve found him, the other times he’s—’
‘I don’t “find” Owen,’ she snapped. ‘He rings me up after a week or so in a hotel and asks for an advance – which is what he calls a gift of money – to pay the minibar bill.’
‘And you pay, do you?’ asked Strike. She seemed very far from a pushover.
Her grimace seemed to acknowledge a weakness of which she was ashamed, but her response was unexpected.
‘Have you met Orlando?’
‘No.’