A Murder of Magpies

by Flanders, Judith

  Rosie was genuinely glad to see me. I’d always liked her, although we didn’t know each other well. Peter and Chris had done most of their socializing at work. Rosie taught French at a girls’ school nearby, and she spoke very slowly, as though constantly trying to impose herself on girls who weren’t paying any attention. If you could wait until the end of each clause, though, she was very funny. The place was packed, with lots of adults standing with drinks, and lots of children running around at waist level—his, hers, theirs, and probably a bunch of other people’s, too. I couldn’t immediately see Chris through the crowd, so I settled down happily to talk to a couple of people I knew from my Peter days.

  After a few minutes I looked up to see where I could find a drink, and discovered a man staring at me in horror, as though one of the children had bitten him in the leg. I looked behind me, but there was no one there. It was definitely me he was staring at. By the time I turned around again, he had grabbed Chris and was talking to him urgently.

  Chris looked around and, seeing me, beckoned me over. “Sam, this is Diego Alemán.”

  Diego was in his late twenties. He was good-looking in a quiet way, with lots of dark brown hair and a thin, aquiline nose. Having seen hundreds of pictures of his brother, I could just about see the resemblance, although the fact that Diego was wearing jeans and a denim jacket made him look radically different from Rodrigo, who was usually decked out in high-camp glamour, with a shaven head, or dreadlocks, or half on each side.

  In the time it had taken me to walk five feet Diego had wiped the original expression from his face. “How do you do?” was all he said. But I hadn’t been mistaken. He had recognized me. And I had never seen him before in my life.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, trying to give the impression that I hadn’t seen what I’d seen. “Are you one of Chris’s students?”

  “Yes,” he said, as though this were the least interesting conversation he’d had all year. Which, superficially, it probably was. “He’s my Ph.D. adviser.”

  We began to discuss his thesis subject, which was John Wilkes and The North Briton. This was more interesting. In theory we were discussing his course, but given that the only thing I knew about Wilkes was that he had been an eighteenth-century MP who had been prosecuted for libel, I wondered what we were really talking about.

  I moved on. “Have you been in England long?” I asked, in the way English people do, usually just as the visitor has reached the arrivals lounge at Heathrow.

  “A couple of years. Before that I was in Paris. I’ve only recently decided to finish my degree.”

  “Paris, lucky you,” I said, meaning Paris? Really?

  “Yes,” he said, without elaborating. Was I reading things into this, or was he just finding the conversation boring? If he was bored, he had dozens of ways of drifting away without it being rude—his glass needed refilling, he saw someone he wanted to catch before they left. It’s easy to shift about at a party, but he wasn’t. He was staying put. I didn’t delude myself that my views on John Wilkes were what was keeping him glued to my side. And it sure as hell wasn’t my snappy repartee.

  “What do you do?” he said, visibly coming to a decision.

  “I’m an editor at a publishing house.” There was no point in pretending. He had recognized me, after all.

  “What kind of books?”

  “Mostly women’s fiction.” That was true, if not to the point.

  “At least you don’t get John Wilkes’s kind of problem with that.”

  Which one of us was supposed to be fishing, for God’s sake? “No, you don’t. But then, criminal libel is incredibly rare. I don’t think there’s been a case of anything but civil libel in the courts here for nearly a century.”

  “No. It’s different in Europe, of course.”

  There really wasn’t anywhere to go with this. He knew, I knew, he knew I knew—but to what end?

  “What are your plans? Do you think you’ll stay here?” I might as well get a little practical information, if nothing else.

  “Well, my thesis presentation is about a year off—I’ll be here until then.”

  “Where are you living?”

  He stared at me, as though to say, I’ve got nothing to hide. “I’m sharing with some friends in Clapham. And you?”

  I stared back, as though to say, I’ve got nothing to hide, either. I didn’t. Either he’d been involved in the break-in, in which case he knew where I lived, or he hadn’t, in which case what did it matter. “I’m just around the corner, toward Camden.”

  He nodded. “I know the area.”

  I kept fishing. “What did you do when you were in Paris? Were you teaching?” That was, after all, the usual route for ABDs—All But Dissertation.

  “No, I worked for a merchant bank.”

  My ears pricked up. “Really? Do they have an office here?”

  “No, Intinvest only has two offices, in Paris and Rome, so I’ve taken temporary work with another bank. But I’ll go back to work for them in the summer.”

  I was trying very hard not to resemble a pointer dog when it flushes a grouse, but my ears were pricked up so hard I could almost feel them quiver. Diego was nonchalant, as though we were still making idle chitchat. But Intinvest was the bank Kit had identified as the source of Vernet’s funny money. Could he really be this cool? Could he really be this dumb?

  “What were you doing for them?” This sounded a bit abrupt, so I added, “I mean, do you plan to work in banking after you’ve finished at Birkbeck?”

  “I was in their IT department—nothing glamorous, or even well paid. Not what people expect when you say banking.”

  No, but exactly what you might expect when it came to hacking into a publisher’s computer system; perhaps even what you would expect if a burglar wanted to install a worm on a home computer. Kit hadn’t mentioned Diego at all. Did he not know that he was working at Intinvest, or had he not been there when Rodrigo was alive? Diego looked like he must have been ten years younger than Rodrigo, but he could have been there five years ago, at the time of the murder. My mind was in overdrive, and I nearly forgot to throw the conversational ball back, dull as it was. “Not what people expect, but useful. Had you been there long?” As I uttered this banality, a new thought hit me: Who better placed to transfer dirty money around the globe than someone in IT?

  Before I could get any further Rosie came over, no doubt worrying that I was trapped by one of Chris’s students, and longing to get away to play with the grown-ups. “Sam, I don’t know if you saw, but lunch is ready. Do go and get something before the children take it all.” I guessed that murder at a Sunday lunch was the kind of solecism people don’t forgive. Otherwise I would cheerfully have wrung her neck. I smiled with shattering insincerity. “Thanks, Rosie. I’m starved. What about you, Diego?”

  But she wasn’t going to let me be cornered. “Don’t worry. Chris asked me to introduce Diego to the Bradleys, who want someone to tutor their daughter for her Spanish A-Levels.” Damn the Bradleys, and damn their daughter. I hoped vindictively that the silly moo would fail, but I knew when I was beaten. The Golden Rule of north London: A-Levels über alles.

  I headed off, saying nonchalantly, “See you later, Diego. Nice talking to you.” I thought sobbing and holding on to his leg would get me noticed.

  I went into the kitchen, and swiftly decided to eat later. Lentil soufflé? If no one in France has thought of putting lentils and eggs together since the discovery of the secret of fire, I figure there must be a reason. Everything else on the table was equally nutritionally balanced, equally healthful, no doubt certified organic, and it looked like the stuff you scrape off the bottom of your shoe. I put two tiny dabs of unidentifiable brown things on my plate and pushed them around with a fork. If Rosie saw me, I could assure her it had been delicious. If Diego came into the kitchen, I could torture him into talking: “Tell me what you know, or it’s a second helping of lentil soufflé for you!”

  I wandered about
for another half hour, chatting idly, but keeping Diego in my sights. He stayed resolutely with the Bradleys. Either he needed the cash, he was a tutoring demon, or he really, really didn’t want to talk to me. I gave up and went home.

  When I got in I called my mother right away and told her about Diego. Jake had designated her our corporate fraud investigator, so who was I to argue? I asked if she thought I should tell Jake, but she couldn’t give it her attention. When she’s working you can practically see the information clicking into place in her mental database. I could just imagine leaving a voice-mail message, faux casual: “Hi, Jake, it’s Sam Clair. Just to let you know I was at lunch with friends, and met Diego Alemán. Did you know he worked for Intinvest? And that he plans to again?”

  Or maybe not. Jake had more or less told me to stay away from Diego. Could I help it if my dear friends the Stanleys had invited us both for lunch, totally coincidentally? No. I didn’t think I could carry it off.

  I had just put out my hand to the phone, still not decided about what I was going to do, when it rang. I jumped a mile. I guess maybe I wasn’t as confident about Jake’s good nature as I thought.

  “Sam?”

  My heartbeat dropped back to something near normal. “Nick, hi.”

  “Are you OK? You sound strange.”

  “No, I’m fine.” I moved on before I had to tell him that I was so wired up even a phone call sent my pulse rocketing. “What’s up?”

  “I went to the College yesterday, and went through the register for last year. As I thought, almost everybody’s gone, but there’s one student who graduated who is now doing some tutoring here while he uses a studio to finish a big piece he started last year.”

  “Was he a friend of Davies?”

  “No one was a friend of Davies. I told you, he wasn’t part of any group. But Ian—that’s Ian Childs, the sculptor—knew him as well as anyone. He will be in on Tuesday, when he’s got a tutorial. It finishes at four, and I’ve left a message that I want to see him then. Can you come over?”

  “Yes, of course. Do you think there’s anyone else to talk to? I understand Davies had no mates, but there must have been someone.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, but I can set up a meeting with Oliver Heywood, who was his tutor, and was also part of the investigatory committee after Kit was accused.”

  I was dubious that someone who had found Davies to be a fantasist would have kept in touch with him, but it was better than nothing. “It’s worth a shot. Thanks, Nick, I really appreciate it.”

  “Sam, I was really fond of Kit.”

  He was talking about Kit as if he were dead. I didn’t think I could even bear to point it out.

  7

  I was glad when Monday morning rolled around. I hadn’t been able to concentrate on any of my usual weekend occupations. I couldn’t read, couldn’t focus on the manuscripts I’d brought home. Instead I tried to think of ways to follow up on Davies. Nick would do his best, but it didn’t seem enough. But what could I do? Ask Jake to find out what the police had on their files from the harassment charge? Perfect, make them think that Kit was guilty of something, anything, and then there was even less likelihood they’d take the missing persons report seriously. I googled Davies, but the millions of hits that came back with that sort of name made it useless. In fact, the only thing I could do was fret, and since I’d won Olympic medals in fretting, I did lots of that. I’d cleaned the flat to within an inch of its life on Saturday, and even I, neurotic as I am, found it hard to put much enthusiasm into tidying a flat already tidied into submission. And I stopped myself from going up to see Mr. Rudiger at least half-a-dozen times. He was interested in what was going on, but even so, I was pretending to be an adult. I couldn’t stand on his doorstep and whine, “I haven’t got anything to do-o-o-o.”

  So on Monday I was at the office before eight, only to realize that there was nothing I could do there, either. No one at Selden’s had ever, in the firm’s two hundred years of existence, arrived at work before nine thirty, and the nine-thirty batch were only the juniors. Robert wouldn’t be in before ten, and I’d bet my lunch that he’d set up an afternoon appointment with the criminal law people.

  I stared at my in-tray and then, in default of anything else, plunged into Breda’s manuscript, which I hadn’t been able to face on the weekend. Miranda had been thorough. It almost began to read like a real novel. Maybe she was in the wrong job altogether, and should be writing the things, not editing them. After half an hour I left the manuscript on her desk with a note saying: Great! Can you keep this up for 250 pages without losing your mind?

  That so cheered me that I roared through all the tasks I’d set to one side throughout the week: I passed proofs with reckless abandon, signed off jackets that looked like four kinds of hell, wrote stroppy notes on marketing copy. When I got to the minutes and memos I moved them straight across from IN to FILING without missing a beat. It was the most efficient solution. I would have liked to have done the same to my e-mail, which I’d also ignored all weekend, but I lost my nerve and, after I deleted the spam asking me if I wanted a mortgage, a girl, a pony, or a bigger penis, I settled down to read the rest.

  One thing was quickly clear. Miranda had put the fear of God into Loïc at Vernet—or something had. There were five messages from him. Two sent on Friday, two on Saturday, and one yesterday. All of them were attempts to set up a meeting when I arrived in Paris. The first one offered me a drink after the show; the second invited me to the party after the show; the third suggested dinner as well; and the fourth and fifth said whatever time or place I chose would be fine. I figured if I left it another day they’d send over a chauffeur-driven limousine and a dozen couture outfits, but I wasn’t cool enough to hold out. I e-mailed back a yes to the drink, and forwarded all the messages on to Jake with a covering note: Why am I suddenly so desirable?

  The rest of the morning passed in the usual round of work. We had a meeting to go through our autumn list before the sales conference, and there were no surprises: Ben was a prat, David a jellyfish, everyone else comatose. No one said anything particularly intelligent, but no one snored, either. Word had got around on my burglary, and I discovered that the easiest way to deflect questions was to let people tell me their own burglary or mugging stories. It’s like having a bad back. Once you have one, you find that so does everybody you know, and they can’t wait to tell you about it. And if you let them talk, when they’ve finished they think they know everything about yours.

  I had asked Miranda to text me in the meeting if Selden’s wanted me before lunch, but she didn’t, and I wasn’t surprised. When I got back to my office I found her in exactly the position I’d last seen her in on Friday, hunched over Breda’s manuscript, pencil moving busily. She stopped with relief when she saw me, and came into my office and shut the door.

  “I spoke to Kath on Friday,” she said, without preamble.

  “Great. How did it go?”

  “I was so fabulous. I was just glad you weren’t there, because if I had seen you I would have laughed. She’s called you twice already this morning. She says she has a manuscript she thinks will be up your street, and wants you to see it and meet the author. If you like it, you can have it on an exclusive. It’s that new Indian novelist everyone is so crazy about—the one whose story was published in Granta last month?”

  I recognized the author, but I was sure it would be offered to Ben. He did literary fiction, and paid much more than I did.

  Miranda nodded impatiently. “Sure, but this way she can get you alone to pump you for information about your mystery man.”

  “Who is my man, by the way? And how many exclusives do you think I’ll get out of him?”

  “If you play along, I think you can build a very nice list from it—she’s gagging for news. But as to who your new guy is, well, I hope you won’t be angry.…”

  “Angry? Why? We agreed you’d wing it.”

  “I think I might have got carried away.” />
  “Spill.” I stared at her, anxious, but also ready to laugh.

  “Charles Pool.”

  “Charles Pool.” I was mystified. “Who the hell is he?”

  She wasn’t sure if she was ashamed or proud. “Ben’s new author.”

  “Ben’s—? Oh my God, not the nineteen-year-old with the non-novel?”

  She nodded guiltily.

  “Is he even our author? Last I heard, Ben hadn’t offered.”

  “He preempted for £150,000 on Friday.”

  “One hundred fifty thousand pounds? For three pages of nothing? Ben’s got to be out of his mind. It’s not worth £5,000. It’s not worth £5.” I was an editor again, totally caught up in this incredibly foolish piece of publishing.

  Miranda waved her hand in front of my face. I was off message. “I saw him at the launch, and he’s really cute.”

  I remembered that he was now my new ex-lover. “Did I take up with him because he’s nineteen, or because he’s cute, or because he just made a lot of money?”

  She shrugged. “I thought all three worked well. And everyone will be so thrilled to know that you’re cradle snatching that no one will worry about Alemán, which is what you want.”

  She was right, but even though I knew I wasn’t a cradle snatcher, it felt peculiar. “Kath must be keeping this close to her chest. Ben was still looking at me in that pitying, soon-you’ll-be-in-a-nursing-home way he has in the meeting this morning. Either that, or she didn’t believe you.”

  Miranda knew Kath better than I did. She smiled cynically. “She believed me. You wouldn’t be getting this exclusive if she thought there was nothing to the story.”

  It was sort of insulting professionally, but also true.

  * * *

  I set off for Selden’s at one. We were having a lunch meeting, which I’d had there before and had never wanted to repeat. A mummified secretary brought in fossil sandwiches to the boardroom, a gloomy, badly lit room lined with wooden panels from which stuffed shirts of the nineteenth century looked down at the stuffed shirts of the twenty-first. Such a treat. If I’d been Ben, they would have liked me: his flash Italian suits against my dull English ones, his Oxford against my déclassé American university, and his naked ambition against my—what? Ambition was acceptable in a man; in a woman it was just plain vulgar. And if I didn’t have any, I should just stay home and mind the children. I’m probably projecting, but it’s safe to say that we don’t warm to each other.