It was almost pathetically easy to wind up the ex-public schoolboy, who ordered tea with an air of defiance, calling the indifferent waiter (as Strike noted with amusement) ‘mate’.
‘Well?’ demanded Culpepper, with the hot mug in his long pale hands.
Strike fished in his overcoat pocket, brought out an envelope and slid it across the table. Culpepper pulled out the contents and began to read.
‘Fucking hell,’ he said quietly, after a while. He shuffled feverishly through the bits of paper, some of which were covered in Strike’s own writing. ‘Where the hell did you get this?’
Strike, whose mouth was full of sausage, jabbed a finger at one of the bits of paper, on which an office address was scribbled.
‘His very fucked-off PA,’ he said, when he had finally swallowed. ‘He’s been shagging her, as well as the two you know about. She’s only just realised she’s not going to be the next Lady Parker.’
‘How the hell did you find that out?’ asked Culpepper, staring up at Strike over the papers trembling in his excited hands.
‘Detective work,’ said Strike thickly, through another bit of sausage. ‘Didn’t your lot used to do this, before you started outsourcing to the likes of me? But she’s got to think about her future employment prospects, Culpepper, so she doesn’t want to appear in the story, all right?’
Culpepper snorted.
‘She should’ve thought about that before she nicked—’
With a deft movement, Strike tweaked the papers out of the journalist’s fingers.
‘She didn’t nick them. He got her to print this lot off for him this afternoon. The only thing she’s done wrong is show it to me. But if you’re going to splash her private life all over the papers, Culpepper, I’ll take ’em back.’
‘Piss off,’ said Culpepper, making a grab for the evidence of wholesale tax evasion clutched in Strike’s hairy hand. ‘All right, we’ll leave her out of it. But he’ll know where we got it. He’s not a complete tit.’
‘What’s he going to do, drag her into court where she can spill the beans about every other dodgy thing she’s witnessed over the last five years?’
‘Yeah, all right,’ sighed Culpepper after a moment’s reflection. ‘Give ’em back. I’ll leave her out of the story, but I’ll need to speak to her, won’t I? Check she’s kosher.’
‘Those are kosher. You don’t need to speak to her,’ said Strike firmly.
The shaking, besotted, bitterly betrayed woman whom he had just left would not be safe left alone with Culpepper. In her savage desire for retribution against a man who had promised her marriage and children she would damage herself and her prospects beyond repair. It had not taken Strike long to gain her trust. She was nearly forty-two; she had thought that she was going to have Lord Parker’s children; now a kind of bloodlust had her in its grip. Strike had sat with her for several hours, listening to the story of her infatuation, watching her pace her sitting room in tears, rock backwards and forwards on her sofa, knuckles to her forehead. Finally she had agreed to this: a betrayal that represented the funeral of all her hopes.
‘You’re going to leave her out of it,’ said Strike, holding the papers firmly in a fist that was nearly twice the size of Culpepper’s. ‘Right? This is still a fucking massive story without her.’
After a moment’s hesitation and with a grimace, Culpepper caved in.
‘Yeah, all right. Give me them.’
The journalist shoved the statements into an inside pocket and gulped his tea, and his momentary disgruntlement at Strike seemed to fade in the glorious prospect of dismantling the reputation of a British peer.
‘Lord Parker of Pennywell,’ he said happily under his breath, ‘you are well and truly screwed, mate.’
‘I take it your proprietor’ll get this?’ Strike asked, as the bill landed between them.
‘Yeah, yeah…’
Culpepper threw a ten-pound note down onto the table and the two men left the café together. Strike lit up a cigarette as soon as the door had swung closed behind them.
‘How did you get her to talk?’ Culpepper asked as they set off together through the cold, past the motorbikes and lorries still arriving at and departing the market.
‘I listened,’ said Strike.
Culpepper shot him a sideways glance.
‘All the other private dicks I use spend their time hacking phone messages.’
‘Illegal,’ said Strike, blowing smoke into the thinning darkness.
‘So how—?’
‘You protect your sources and I’ll protect mine.’
They walked fifty yards in silence, Strike’s limp more marked with every step.
‘This is going to be massive. Massive,’ said Culpepper gleefully. ‘That hypocritical old shit’s been bleating on about corporate greed and he’s had twenty mill’ stashed in the Cayman Islands…’
‘Glad to give satisfaction,’ said Strike. ‘I’ll email you my invoice.’
Culpepper threw him another sideways look.
‘See Tom Jones’s son in the paper last week?’ he asked.
‘Tom Jones?’
‘Welsh singer,’ said Culpepper.
‘Oh, him,’ said Strike, without enthusiasm. ‘I knew a Tom Jones in the army.’
‘Did you see the story?’
‘No.’
‘Nice long interview he gave. He says he’s never met his father, never had a word from him. I bet he got more than your bill is going to be.’
‘You haven’t seen my invoice yet,’ said Strike.
‘Just saying. One nice little interview and you could take a few nights off from interviewing secretaries.’
‘You’re going to have to stop suggesting this,’ said Strike, ‘or I’m going to have to stop working for you, Culpepper.’
‘Course,’ said Culpepper, ‘I could run the story anyway. Rock star’s estranged son is a war hero, never knew his father, working as a private—’
‘Instructing people to hack phones is illegal as well, I’ve heard.’
At the top of Long Lane they slowed and turned to face each other. Culpepper’s laugh was uneasy.
‘I’ll wait for your invoice, then.’
‘Suits me.’
They set off in different directions, Strike heading towards the Tube station.
‘Strike!’ Culpepper’s voice echoed through the darkness behind him. ‘Did you fuck her?’
‘Looking forward to reading it, Culpepper,’ Strike shouted wearily, without turning his head.
He limped into the shadowy entrance of the station and was lost to Culpepper’s sight.