A Cast of Vultures (14 page)

He stood. ‘It’s been a slightly more exciting Sunday than usual. Do you want to cancel the pub?’

Bugger. I’d forgotten we were supposed to meet his friends for a drink and lunch. ‘Absolutely not,’ I lied shamelessly. I looked down at my clothes. If I were a better person, I’d change, to give the illusion that I was looking forward to this outing, and I cared what these strangers thought of me. I wasn’t a better person, I wasn’t looking forward to it, and I would care what they thought, but only in retrospect, when it was too late. ‘Just let me put on a nicer shirt, and I’ll be ready. Where are we meeting? What time is kick-off?’

Jake looked at his phone. ‘In an hour, in Richmond, so we need to get a move on. If there’s traffic, we’ll be late.’

An hour there, probably more stuck in the Sunday-return-to-London congestion on the way home. Or— ‘Or
we could take the overground. It will be slightly faster, and on the way back we could walk along the river, or go to Kew.’ I don’t know what made me think of Kew Gardens. If I lived in south London I’d probably go there a lot, but as I’ve always been a resolute north-sider, I doubt I’ve been there three times in my whole life. ‘It’ll help to walk the jitters out.’ I was surprised to find I’d said that out loud.

So was Jake, but he smiled sweetly. ‘Jitters from the break-in, or jitters from socialising?’

‘I was thinking about this morning, but now you mention it …’ I smiled to show I was joking, but we both knew I wasn’t. So we went by overground.

The pub where Jake and his friends met looked like a Hollywood designer had received a stock request for a setting in Ye Olde Englishe Pubbe. Richmond raises the bar high, by already resembling a stage set, filled with big houses set back behind gardens primped within an inch of their lives. Even the wildflower, cottage-style gardens were regimented wildernesses. The pub faced the village green (first tick in any Olde Worlde Checkliste), a small, whitewashed, eighteenth-century building (second tick). Inside, it had wood-panelled walls and, even in this heat, an open fire (ticks three and four). The customers ranged from a few tourists to families who came to the same pub for a drink before lunch every Sunday of their lives.

Which made Jake’s friends noticeable. There were five of them around a table at the back when we arrived. Jake and I aren’t much for PDAs, but he put his arm around me as we stood in the doorway, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the low light coming in the diamond-paned casement windows (yes, another tick). I suspect he did it because I’d
unconsciously moved closer as five faces swung towards us. They weren’t unfriendly faces, but they weren’t friendly, either. Assessing cop faces, even the ones who weren’t cops.

I straightened my shoulders as we walked over and Jake made introductions. His friend and colleague Chris, whom I’d met once before, and his wife Jan. Paula, the DS from their team, and her boyfriend Joe, with, behind them in a carrycot, their baby, asleep. And a man named Andrew Reilly, whose job was not specified. I smiled around vaguely, and then gave myself an immediate breather by following Jake when he went to get a round.

When we returned, I took the chair next to Paula. I could do baby-convo more easily than I could do police talk. So I did that for a while: the baby was eight weeks old, Paula was still on maternity leave, she wasn’t sure how much more leave she was going to take, dee-dah, dee-dah. If you worked in publishing, which was ninety per cent female, and ninety per cent of that female was
young
female, you learnt very quickly how the chorus went. But Paula’s mind wasn’t on what we were discussing. More than half her attention was on the conversation Chris and Jake were having about a case. As she made no pretence of being interested in talking to me, I let it die away and turned to Joe, on my other side. I remembered the cheat-sheet bullet points I’d listed for Victor. I didn’t have to ask Joe how he knew these people, so I moved on to Item 2. ‘What do you do?’ I asked. ‘Are you a detective too?’

‘God, no.’ He looked conspiratorial. ‘I’m the enemy. I’m a social worker.’

‘Social workers are the enemy?’

‘Definitely. We’re the ones who tell the police why they
shouldn’t arrest the people they want to arrest. I mostly work with boys who have been in gangs, so the police are particularly interested in arresting my boys.’

I liked that he thought of the boys he worked with as ‘his’. And the gang thing was interesting.

He looked at me mistrustfully. ‘What?’ he demanded.

‘What what?’

‘When I said “gangs”, you got a calculating look on your face.’

I didn’t know what a calculating look looked like, but I attempted to replace it with an apologetic one. I wasn’t going to talk to him about Sam, though. ‘It’s true,’ I said instead. ‘I was calculating, because your job suddenly intersects with mine. I work for a publisher, and we’re doing a memoir, supposedly by an ex-gang member. Some of it seems implausible, but I can’t say my gang experience is extensive.’

He was interested. ‘What sounds odd to you?’

I tried to remember Miranda’s points. The only one that came to mind was that someone in a young offenders unit had been denoted a category C prisoner. ‘Could that happen?’

Joe shook his head once, firmly. ‘Never. Next?’

I laughed. ‘This is fun. Like a vending machine. I put the coin in, out pops a reply. No choices, no substitutions.’ Then I was forced to admit, ‘I can’t remember any of the other details that were worrying the editor. But maybe—’ I hesitated, trying to ensure that my face didn’t look calculating again. ‘Maybe you, or one of your colleagues, could look at the manuscript? See what you think?’

I didn’t have to worry about looking calculating.
Instead I blushed. I’d just asked a man who I’d known for five minutes, a man with an eight-week-old baby and a demanding job, to put in several hours’ work for a friend of his partner’s colleague. Classy move, Clair. ‘Or not. It was a silly idea. Sorry.’

‘Where is the book set?’

‘At least partly in East London. Hackney.’

He looked relieved. ‘It’s not my district, and the circumstances would be different. But I mentor a few students who are doing practical work as part of their degrees. They always need—’ He didn’t blush, but he looked embarrassed too.

I leapt in. ‘They need cash? I have to warn you, we don’t pay a lot – it’s publishing, and the money is always crap.’ It was. I paid outside readers a measly £75 for up to 400 pages. I was ashamed even to mention that sum, and I heard myself saying, ‘I could pay about £150.’ I couldn’t, not only because that was double the going rate, but because it wasn’t my book. But I’d got myself into this mess, I’d work out how to fiddle the money if he found me a reader. I handed Joe my card. ‘If one of them has the time, great; if not, no pressure.’

I looked up to find Jake shaking his head at me across the table.
Hypocrite
, I telegraphed back. He used social opportunities to question people, and he couldn’t deny it, because I’d been there when he was doing it. But I also knew that it would be more appropriate if I now made small talk rather than trying to hire his friends to vet T&R’s manuscripts. Paula was still deep in conversation with Chris, having both turned her back on me and plonked her elbow on the table so that I was cut out entirely.
Not
interested
in your input, Sunshine
, the elbow said.

I looked past Joe, where Andrew Reilly was sitting, and smiled. ‘Hello again,’ I said. Not hugely original, and it probably deserved no more than the tight little smile he sent back. No teeth. He appeared to be as thrilled to see me as Paula had been. Was this how all outsiders got treated? Or maybe I’d forgotten to put on deodorant. Whatever, I wasn’t feeling the love. I tried again. ‘Have you known Jake long?’

‘A while.’

Big fake smile. ‘That clears that up.’

Joe snorted. Someone was on my side, and wasn’t it lovely that I was sitting having a drink with people who were taking sides for a reason no one had shared with me.

Reilly finally, grudgingly, threw me a conversational bone. ‘Do you do a lot of gang-related books?’ He’d been listening, if not speaking.

‘None.’ I was crisp. ‘This isn’t my book, it’s a colleague’s.’

‘You’re just mixing in, then?’

I remained civil, but by the skin of my teeth. ‘Not mixing in. Asking for advice from an expert.’ No smile now, fake or otherwise, at least from me. Joe grinned widely at my reply.

Reilly matched my lack. ‘So you weren’t mixing in with Harefield, either?’

I blinked. ‘How do you know about him?’

He was tight-lipped. ‘I’ve seen the file.’

‘Are you an arson specialist?’

He looked disgusted. Perhaps being an arson specialist was the lowest form of police life. ‘Drugs. And I hear your expert opinion is that we don’t know what we’re doing.’

‘I’m sorry?’ I looked from him to Jake, who was sitting silently now, but, from his tense posture, wasn’t going to stay silent for long.

‘Field tells me you think Harefield was a saint, and we’ve fitted him up.’

I purposely didn’t look at Jake again, and I kept my voice level. ‘I’m sure that’s not what “Field” told you, because “Field” knows I don’t think anything of the kind. I do wonder that Harefield’s neighbours, his colleagues, his boys, all of whom have known him for years, have been so thoroughly hoodwinked, while the people who came across him after his death have uncovered the unsavoury reality so easily, but that’s another story.’

‘Like I said, you think we’ve fitted him up.’ I don’t think even he believed that. He was trying to provoke me, so there was only one response. ‘Another round?’ I asked brightly. No one was ready for their next one, and since Jake had got the last one, it wasn’t our turn, but I had a choice: buy another round of drinks, or beat Andrew Reilly’s nasty, self-satisfied face in with the fireplace poker. And I wasn’t sure Martha Stewart had directions on how to get bloodstains out of eighteenth-century wall panelling.

Jake started to stand, but Chris put his hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s my round. Sam, will you help me carry?’

By the time we got back to the table, the small groups that had been talking one-to-one had broken up and everyone was discussing holiday plans. I contributed a few sentences, mostly so Jake wouldn’t feel worse than he already did, but I wasn’t exactly pulled away from the world’s most gripping conversation when my phone rang. Another ‘number withheld’.

I answered, and when I heard the voice, excused myself, mouthing ‘Connie’ at Jake as I walked to the door. It didn’t take long. She and Helena between them had moved mountains. Sam had been arrested, but not charged. He’d be released by the end of the day.

‘He’s a minor, isn’t he?’ I asked.

‘Officially he lives with his mother; she’s the adult on record for the paperwork. But since he’ll be eighteen in a few months, they’re not making her come down to collect him. Which is fortunate, because no one has been able to find her.’

Poor Sam.

‘Was it just him? He said “we’ve” been arrested, but I didn’t think to ask who, or how many.’

Connie snorted. ‘It was five of them. I did them as a job lot – it’s more paperwork, but it doesn’t take much more time.’

‘Apart from being unable to say where they were on specific dates a few months back, was there any reason for the arrest?’

She hesitated. ‘That’s why I’m ringing you, rather than just texting to say it’s done and they’ll be home soon. Sam trusts you, and you might be able to get something out of him. None of them will say where they were, and their neighbours have told the police the five of them are routinely out at nights.’

‘They’re boys,’ I said. ‘They were probably out drinking, or spraying graffiti, or groping girls, whatever it is that adolescent hormones make you think is fun.’

‘Probably. But since they won’t say, it’s a problem. So far we’ve had no indication why these five in particular have
been connected to the fires, but at this stage the police have no obligation to tell us what information they’ve received. It might be that they have good reasons, although if they did, they would most likely have charged the boys.’ She became brisk. ‘I’ve told the boys I’ll continue to represent them, and they have my number if there’s a problem. Meanwhile, if you can get anything out of them, it would be wise to try.’

‘Understood.’ I did understand, I just wasn’t sure Sam would.

I didn’t think Sam’s arrest was something Jake’s friends and I would see eye to eye on, so when I rejoined the group I just said, ‘Connie’s sorted it out for the moment,’ to Jake as I passed behind him. He stopped me, snagging a chair from the table behind us and setting it down between him and Chris. ‘Sit,’ he said. The chair was half in the walkway between our booth and the crowd propping up the bar, but if it kept me away from Reilly, it was worth getting knocked about by people heading to the loo.

Jake gave Chris enough to be included: ‘This is the arsonist. The dead drug dealer.’ Chris nodded in recognition. Jake turned back to me. ‘Were the boys charged?’ I shook my head. ‘Good.’

‘Good? Scheming lawyer snatches profiled suspects out of the hands of the stalwart coppers is “good”? I’ve corrupted you beyond all hope of redemption.’

Given I was sitting surrounded by a handful of his colleagues, this was not the brightest thing I’ve ever said. Jake must have thought the same, because he dropped the subject and joined in the group discussion, which had moved on to schools. I knew from experience that house prices would be next. It was like going to the hairdresser.

Soon there was a general murmur of is-that-the-times and must-get-ons. We said goodbye on the pavement outside the pub, and then began to walk towards Kew. At least, I did. Jake stayed where he was, so when I’d reached an arm’s length away, I rebounded like an elastic band.

‘Are you hungry?’ he said, pulling me close.

As I said, we’re not demonstrative in public. Something was up. ‘I’m not, but it’s long past lunchtime. Do you want to eat? We could have something here.’ I pulled back. ‘Come to that, why didn’t we? Didn’t you say you usually have lunch at these get-togethers?’