13
It is reported, you possess a book
Wherein you have quoted by intelligence
The names of all notorious offenders,
Lurking about the city.
John Webster, The White Devil
Experience had taught Strike that there was a certain type of woman to whom he was unusually attractive. Their common characteristics were intelligence and the flickering intensity of badly wired lamps. They were often attractive and usually, as his very oldest friend Dave Polworth liked to put it, ‘total fucking flakes’. Precisely what it was about him that attracted the type, Strike had never taken the time to consider, although Polworth, a man of many pithy theories, took the view that such women (‘nervy, overbred’) were subconsciously looking for what he called ‘carthorse blood’.
Strike’s ex-fiancée, Charlotte, might have been said to be queen of the species. Beautiful, clever, volatile and damaged, she had returned again and again to Strike in the face of familial opposition and her friends’ barely veiled disgust. He had finally put an end to sixteen years of their on-again, off-again relationship in March and she had become engaged almost immediately to the ex-boyfriend from whom Strike, so many years ago in Oxford, had won her. Barring one exceptional night since, Strike’s love life had been voluntarily barren. Work had filled virtually every waking hour and he had successfully resisted advances, subtle or overt, from the likes of his glamorous brunette client, soon-to-be divorcées with time to kill and loneliness to assuage.
But there was always the dangerous urge to submit, to brave complications for a night or two of consolation, and now Nina Lascelles was hurrying along beside him in the dark Strand, taking two strides to his one, and informing him of her exact address in St John’s Wood ‘so it looks like you’ve been there’. She barely came up to his shoulder and Strike had never found very small women attractive. Her torrent of chat about Roper Chard was laden with more laughter than was strictly necessary and once or twice she touched his arm to emphasise a point.
‘Here we are,’ she said at last, as they approached a tall modern building with a revolving glass door and the words ‘Roper Chard’ picked out in shining orange Perspex across the stonework.
A wide lobby dotted with people in evening dress faced a line of metal sliding doors. Nina pulled an invitation out of her bag and showed it to what looked like hired help in a badly fitting tuxedo, then she and Strike joined twenty others in a large mirrored lift.
‘This floor’s for meetings,’ Nina shouted up to him as they debouched into a crowded open-plan area where a band was playing to a sparsely populated dance floor. ‘It’s usually partitioned. So – who do you want to meet?’
‘Anyone who knew Quine well and might have an idea where he is.’
‘That’s only Jerry, really…’
They were buffeted by a fresh consignment of guests from the lift behind them and moved into the crowd. Strike thought he felt Nina grab the back of his coat, like a child, but he did not reciprocate by taking her hand or in any way reinforce the impression that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Once or twice he heard her greet people in passing. They eventually won through to the far wall, where tables manned by white-coated waiters groaned with party food and it was possible to make conversation without shouting. Strike took a couple of dainty crab cakes and ate them, deploring their minuscule size, while Nina looked around.
‘Can’t see Jerry anywhere, but he’s probably up on the roof, smoking. Shall we try up there? Oooh, look there – Daniel Chard, mingling with the herd!’
‘Which one?’
‘The bald one.’
A respectful little distance had been left around the head of the company, like the flattened circle of corn that surrounds a rising helicopter, as he talked to a curvaceous young woman in a tight black dress.
Phallus Impudicus; Strike could not repress a grin of amusement, yet Chard’s baldness suited him. He was younger and fitter-looking than Strike had expected and handsome in his way, with thick dark eyebrows over deep-set eyes, a hawkish nose and a thin-lipped mouth. His charcoal suit was unexceptional but his tie, which was pale mauve, was much wider than the average and bore drawings of human noses. Strike, whose dress sense had always been conventional, an instinct honed by the sergeants’ mess, could not help but be intrigued by this small but forceful statement of non-conformity in a CEO, especially as it was drawing the occasional glance of surprise or amusement.
‘Where’s the drink?’ Nina said, standing pointlessly on tiptoe.
‘Over there,’ said Strike, who could see a bar in front of the windows that showed a view of the dark Thames. ‘Stay here, I’ll get them. White wine?’
‘Champers, if Daniel’s pushed the boat out.’
He took a route through the crowd so that he could, without ostentation, bring himself in close proximity to Chard, who was letting his companion do all the talking. She had that air of slight desperation of the conversationalist who knows that they are failing. The back of Chard’s hand, which was clutching a glass of water, Strike noticed, was covered in shiny red eczema. Strike paused immediately behind Chard, ostensibly to allow a party of young women to pass in the opposite direction.
‘… and it really was awfully funny,’ the girl in the black dress was saying nervously.
‘Yes,’ said Chard, who sounded deeply bored, ‘it must have been.’
‘And was New York wonderful? I mean – not wonderful – was it useful? Fun?’ asked his companion.
‘Busy,’ said Chard and Strike, though he could not see the CEO, thought he actually yawned. ‘Lots of digital talk.’
A portly man in a three-piece suit who appeared drunk already, though it was barely eight thirty, stopped in front of Strike and invited him, with overdone courtesy, to proceed. Strike had no choice but to accept the elaborately mimed invitation and so passed out of range of Daniel Chard’s voice.
‘Thanks,’ said Nina a few minutes later, taking her champagne from Strike. ‘Shall we go up to the roof garden, then?’
‘Great,’ said Strike. He had taken champagne too, not because he liked it, but because there had been nothing else there he cared to drink. ‘Who’s that woman Daniel Chard’s talking to?’
Nina craned to see as she led Strike towards a helical metal staircase.
‘Joanna Waldegrave, Jerry’s daughter. She’s just written her first novel. Why? Is that your type?’ she asked, with a breathy little laugh.
‘No,’ said Strike.