I saw Oliver Cartwright immediately, though.
He was wearing a dark, loose suit and sitting with his back to me. Sophie was opposite him, wearing the jacket I’d returned to her, like she might get up and leave any second. She looked pale and couldn’t meet his eyes. Neither of them noticed me, and I ordered a beer, watching them in the mirror behind the bar. Cartwright looked as though he was concluding some prepared speech and he sat back with a satisfied, curious look on his face. It was a look I associated with people who came from power and money. They conducted experiments on the rest of us, simply curious to see how we’d react. Alicia allowing me inside was no different, and I saw her emerging into the bar, taking a seat in the far corner for the best possible view of the action.
Cartwright swirled his drink and regarded Sophie, his girl zero. I could see his mind working. Thinking that perhaps she’d go home with him, perhaps she wouldn’t, but that his findings would just go into refining the process for next time. For the Ollie Cartwrights of the world there was always a next time.
When Sophie didn’t reply to whatever he’d said, his hand crawled slowly across the table like a fat, pink tarantula, enveloping hers. She blanched. I turned from the bar, crossed the room and sat down beside her. She drew her hand back when she saw me, looking to Cartwright like he’d set this up.
‘Detective Waits,’ he said, smiling. He was red-faced from too much drink and too little exercise, and I could see the gin blossoms, blooming in his cheeks.
I smiled back. ‘Pretend I’m not here, Ollie.’
‘With pleasure. Although a part of me wonders why you are …’
‘Yeah, well, don’t tell me which part.’ He didn’t say anything. ‘Anyway, I hope you don’t mind sharing the table but there’s nowhere else to sit.’
He looked around the half-empty room, snorted, and spread his arms across the back of the booth. ‘You’re welcome to it. Sophie and I were just leaving.’ She didn’t move and Cartwright went on. ‘It’s our second date. Early days, but I think she might be the one.’
‘That’s not why I came here,’ said Sophie. It was the first time she’d spoken since I’d sat at the table, and I was glad to hear some anger in her voice. Cartwright’s smile slipped a little and he took a drink to cover it. ‘I came here to say that what happened between us will never happen again. Whatever you do, I’m not going with you.’
‘Whatever I do …’
I looked at him. ‘And you’re not going to do anything. Are you, Ollie?’
‘Oh, Sophie,’ he said, talking to her but looking at me. His lips were dripping wet with drink and there was naked hate in his eyes. ‘I know you’re feeling brave all of a sudden, sweetheart, but your friend here’s only a part-time hero. I could tell you stories about him that’d curl your hair.’ He looked at her. ‘The hairs that aren’t curled already. Did you ever hear of—’
‘I don’t care about him,’ she said, raising her voice. ‘I didn’t ask him to come here for moral support. I didn’t ask him to come here at all. Get it? I came here on my own to look you in the eye and tell you that you’re a fucking animal. Nothing you do to me could be worse than another night in your company.’
‘Animal, eh?’ he said, swirling his glass around as his face grew redder. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought we had a good thing going. It’s not every girl who’s into what you are …’
‘You’re disgusting,’ she said quietly.
‘As I recall, you were the disgusting one. Oh well, good job there’s no video evidence, eh?’ He drank up and started to slide out of the booth. ‘I’m out of the country for a few days from tomorrow night. Dubai. Hope no one steals my laptop while I’m out there.’ He looked at me. ‘S’pose, legally, any fallout wouldn’t be my fault …’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘The law wouldn’t have anything to do with what happened to you afterwards.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘Threats are more your style than mine, Ollie.’
He nodded, got up and crossed the room to the exit. He paused when he saw Alicia watching our conversation, and laughed to himself. Then he descended the stairs without looking back. She raised her drink to me, took a sip and followed him outside.
Sophie sighed and lowered her head. She was shaking.
‘You did well …’
‘Do you think he’ll do it?’ she said quietly.
I know he will, I thought.
‘No,’ I said.
‘I don’t know how I could be so stupid …’
‘All you did was trust someone. The rest of it’s on him.’
‘The rest of it’s online as of tomorrow night,’ she said, rubbing her face. ‘Lads watching it in class, people I work with in five years finding it …’
‘The only part of this that reflects on you is that you stood up to him.’
She thought about it. Swallowed. ‘He looked surprised, didn’t he?’
‘He looked like you’d kicked him in the balls. You know, you could still make an official complaint …’
She shook her head. ‘But thank you for coming. Was it Earl?’
I tried to think of a convincing white lie but came up short. ‘Don’t blame him …’
‘I don’t,’ she said, smiling, in spite of herself, at the thought of him. I could see she was realizing something about her friend that perhaps she hadn’t before. It was a nice moment and I looked away for a second to let her have it.
‘Shall we get out of here?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’
I walked Sophie to Piccadilly, where she began unlocking her bike. I was impressed that she’d stood up to Cartwright but I worried about what would happen next. He’d taken a blow to his ego, no doubt his most vulnerable spot, and with his impending foreign trip he might feel like he had nothing left to lose. Worse than that, he was right. If he went abroad and reported his laptop as stolen it would be almost impossible to prove that he’d leaked the tape. Perhaps I should remind him that things could be worse.
I pushed the thought out of my head.
Following those instincts had almost ruined my life, perhaps even cost other people theirs.
I looked at Sophie and thought of something else. ‘Can I ask about your helmet …’
‘Course. Do you cycle?’
‘Too unbalanced, but is that a camera?’
‘GoPro,’ she said. ‘Sort of puts drivers on their best behaviour, and if anything bad happens you’ve got it on file.’
As I watched her cycle out of the park, I remembered the note that had fallen from her jacket pocket. A physical description of Oliver Cartwright, along with a time and a place to meet him at. It hadn’t been the right moment to ask, but I was still wondering what it meant when another thought struck me. Alicia had used Sophie’s name when I was entering Incognito. She’d already known who she was.
4
I went back to the office, to the CCTV again, but this time with purpose. Sophie’s helmet had given me a flash of inspiration. I clicked through to the time-stamp of the most recent dustbin burn. I could tell when the fire had started because a passing cyclist looked sharply in its direction as the light began to change. He must have seen the flamer.
The moment a case starts to break, even petty street arson, can be its own reward.
The cyclist had a camera mounted on his helmet.
I requested the footage from his likely route down Oxford Road, hoping to trace him to a destination. If he’d stopped inside a shop and paid with his card, it wouldn’t be impossible to find him. Then I checked the time and bought a sandwich before heading out to meet Sutty for the remainder of our shift. I moved along Oxford Road, thinking about our case. Ali said he’d heard two people arguing. As much as I wanted those voices to belong to Natasha Reeve and Freddie Coyle, he’d been clear that they were two men. Freddie and the smiling man? Marcus Collier and the smiling man? I looked, idly, up at the Palace as I passed it.