‘Anjelica emailed all the trustees, said he’d got himself a job there.’
‘Have you heard from him since he went to New York?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Sacha, brow slightly furrowed again. He leaned forwards, lowered his voice still further, and said,
‘Listen – can I speak honestly? I think… look, I don’t like saying this, but honestly, I really do think Dessie’s – you know – a bit deluded. Val thinks it would be better for her –
‘Which are?’
‘Come on, Corm,’ said Sacha, smiling, and Strike resented hearing the abbreviation of his name used by his friends, and by Charlotte, when she wasn’t calling him ‘Bluey’, ‘Dessie’s a lot older than Rupe. I hate saying this, but I think Rupe just wised up and wanted out. Dessie’s lovely, she’s great, but I think Rupe probably fell into this thing with her while he was working at Dino’s, and she’s made it into some
Conveniently forgetting that he’d told Robin that Decima wasn’t the kind of thirty-eight-year-old he could ‘see a twenty-six-year-old going for’, and that he’d asserted that Decima’s attraction for Rupert had been her money, Strike said,
‘They were together a year, weren’t they? Hardly a one-night stand.’
‘I don’t know, because—’
‘You were in Mexico, yeah. Have you got a number for Rupert in New York?’
‘No,’ said Sacha.
‘D’you know where he’s working?’
‘You’d have to ask Anjelica.’
‘I have. She refused to give me contact details.’
‘Well – with respect,’ said Sacha, ‘she’s not obliged to, is she?’
‘So you’ve never checked that he’s actually gone to New York?’
‘He’s a grown man, he doesn’t want me hounding him.’
‘So your position is: he’s gone to New York, he’s definitely alive—’
‘What d’you mean, “alive”?’ said Sacha, no longer smiling.
Perhaps the actor, like the detective himself, now felt as though a spectral Charlotte had drawn up a seat at the table, smiling. She’d always been stimulated by tension and the possibility of rows, and she’d loved seeing members of the family she claimed to hate, but from which she could never quite pull free, clashing with the boyfriend who was impressed by neither their wealth nor their breeding. Rupert Fleetwood, towards whom Strike had felt very little sympathy until this point, seemed suddenly to have become her surrogate: a young man towards whom his blood relations seemed indifferent at best, who’d slipped out of sight, occasioning exasperation rather than concern. The night that Charlotte had so nearly been killed by a London bus felt as though it had occurred mere days previously as Strike said,
‘Don’t really know how much more simply to put it. “Not dead”, if you prefer.’
‘Why the hell would he be dead?’
‘He’d lost his job, he was broke, he had a drug dealer threatening him, the police were after him, he’d just had a ruptured love affair, no family to speak of—’
‘He’s got family,’ said Sacha.
‘I don’t mean any criticism,’ said Strike, ‘but my information is that he doesn’t get on with the aunt and uncle in Switzerland, which leaves you, and by your own admission—’
‘D’you think I wouldn’t have done something, if I thought Rupe had genuinely gone missing?’
Strike could almost see Charlotte’s wide smile. Now starting to take a vindictive pleasure in this interview, he said,
‘Where exactly did it come from, this nef thing?’
‘From Dino’s club.’
‘I mean: was it originally Fleetwood property, or Legard?’
‘How’s that relevant?’
‘Well, where did Rupert think he was going to offload it?’
There was a pause. Strike watched Sacha’s pale face colour.
‘You aren’t
‘Not suggesting anything,’ said Strike dishonestly. He didn’t for a second believe Rupert had stolen the nef on Sacha’s orders, so that it might henceforth grace the sideboard in Heberley House, but he enjoyed hinting that Sacha, so eel-like in his ability to wriggle free of responsibility and culpability, might yet be drawn into the story of the stolen nef and the drug dealer, by police or press. ‘It was a Fleetwood relic, then, was it?’
‘No,’ said Sacha, after another fractional pause, ‘it was ours. I mean, Dad’s sister’s.’
‘Ah,’ said Strike, making a further note. ‘Well, I doubt Rupert would have taken it abroad. He needed cash. He’ll have wanted to sell it. Have you had any press enquiries at all?’ he asked, the idea suggested by his own recent troubles.
‘What about?’
‘Plenty there to keep the tabloids excited, “famous actor’s cousin pursued by coke dealer, does flit with ancestral treasure”—’
‘No,’ said Sacha, ‘nobody – no, there’s been no interest.’
Strike raised his eyebrows to indicate surprise, enjoying the discomfort now apparent in Sacha’s expression.
‘You’re a member of Dino’s, right?’ Strike said. ‘You were the one who suggested Rupert went and worked there?’
‘Yes,’ said Sacha.
‘Any idea why Rupert’s aunt thinks Dino Longcaster’s a “ghastly man”?’
