Lost Summer. Stuart Harrison
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and wait for them to change before she crossed. She looked over and when she saw him she waved. She was tall, her short, dark hair framing fine, even features. He lost her when a bus thundered past spewing out diesel fumes into the already polluted London air, and then the lights changed and a swarm of people stepped into the road.
When she arrived he pulled out a chair and signalled to a waiter. ‘I ordered you a cappuccino. Do you want something to eat?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t, Nigel’s picking me up to go to dinner. Some business thing. You go ahead though if you want.’
‘Maybe later.’
Nigel. Tall, good-looking Nigel, who was an investment banker and whose family owned half of Shropshire. Old money, old school tie. He tried to imagine Karen being the perfect hostess on one of those country weekends, hanging out with the polo and horsey set and dressing for dinners in some great baronial hall. Somehow he couldn’t see it.
‘So, how is Nigel?’ he asked.
‘Fine. He’s very busy.’
He stirred his coffee, saying nothing.
‘You don’t like him do you?’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘That’s right, you don’t,’ she said, a trace of defensiveness in her tone.
‘Maybe I just don’t like the idea of him taking my best friend off to live in the country.’
‘Flatterer,’ she said, though she smiled. ‘Anyway, Nigel knows my career is here.’
Does he? Adam wondered. Nigel struck him as the type who, when he married, would expect his wife to give up her amusing hobbies, like her career for instance, and settle down to produce lots of little well-bred Nigels to continue the family line.
‘Besides, it isn’t as if we’re engaged or anything,’ she said.
Yet, Adam silently added. The waiter brought Karen’s coffee and Adam changed the subject. ‘I’ve been thinking about your friend Helen.’ She looked at him over the rim of her cappuccino. ‘I can’t help, Karen. I’m sorry.’
She looked surprised. ‘Is that because you don’t want the commission, or because you don’t believe her?’
‘It isn’t because I don’t believe her.’
‘Then you don’t want the commission?’
‘I wasn’t aware there was a commission. I thought you were helping a friend.’
‘I am.’
‘But you think there might be a story in it for Landmark, is that it?’
‘I’m not sure I like the way you said that,’ she replied in clipped tones.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound the way it came out.’
‘Apology accepted.’
‘But you do want to commission me professionally I take it?’
‘Yes. But I don’t know if I would run the story, even if it turned out there was one. It would depend on the story. If for example it turned out to be a case of police bungling I might not be interested. But if it was more than that
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. That’s your part isn’t it, to ferret out the truth? But whatever the case I wouldn’t run anything without Helen’s agreement.’
‘Fair enough. But as I said, I can’t help. Sorry.’
‘But you still haven’t told me why.’
‘I’m busy at the moment.’
‘I thought you’d finished the book you were working on.’
‘I have.’
She waited, saying nothing, levelling her intelligent gaze on him, and he knew he’d have to do better than that.
‘Alright. The truth is I’m not sure this is the direction I want to take.’
‘Oh. So it’s that again. Sorry, I must have mistaken you for somebody I knew who had a mission in life.’
‘I wouldn’t say it was a mission.’
‘Wouldn’t you? Righting wrongs. Helping people like Helen who don’t know where else to turn. That girl you wrote about in Suffolk, the one who was pushed off a train, she’d never have been found if it wasn’t for you.’
‘Liz Mount. That was her name. Perhaps it would be better if she hadn’t been. At least her parents could have clung to the hope that she was alive and well somewhere.’
‘I don’t think you believe that,’ Karen said.
‘Well, maybe not.’
Karen sipped her coffee thoughtfully. ‘So, what’s the real reason you don’t want to do this? I get the feeling you’re not telling me something.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘Then at least promise you’ll think about it.’
She had pricked his conscience, as of course she had intended. She gave no quarter, Karen, which was probably why he liked her so much. ‘Alright. I’ll think about it.’
‘Thank you, Adam.’ She reached across the table and briefly put her hand over his.
Just then a taxi drew up by the kerb. The rear door opened and Nigel poked his head out. He was wearing a dark pinstriped suit with a red handkerchief in the breast pocket. His dark hair was smoothed back over his aristocratic forehead. ‘Come on, darling, we’ll be late.’
Karen withdrew her hand. ‘Sorry, I have to go. Will you call me tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
She bent to kiss his cheek as Nigel looked impatiently at his watch. ‘Hurry up, Karen. You know what the traffic’s like at this time of day.’ He held the door for her, and then belatedly remembered Adam. ‘Sorry to drag her off like this. You weren’t discussing anything important were you?’
‘No, not really,’ Adam answered, but it was a rhetorical question and Nigel was already turning away.
He watched the taxi pull away from the kerb, and for a moment he experienced a faint regret.
Karen sat back as the taxi negotiated rush hour traffic. Nigel was telling her about the people they were having dinner with, giving her tips on whom she ought to be especially nice to. Or perhaps instructions would be a better term. Like when he’d taken her home to meet his parents and he’d lectured her on etiquette for the entire journey, as if he was afraid she’d embarrass him by using the wrong cutlery at dinner. She tuned him out, turning her thoughts instead to Adam.
She wondered why he was reluctant to take on this commission. If Helen was right about her brother here was a possibly innocent victim whose death might not be what it appeared to be, a police force who wouldn’t listen, and apparent discord between a bunch of protesters and locals. It was exactly the sort of thing that would normally interest him. She sensed there was something he wasn’t telling her. She remembered a year ago, shortly after they’d met when Condor had put on a launch bash and she’d invited him to go along with her. Sort of a date. The truth is she had been interested in him. He was intelligent, and quite good-looking, and there was something else about him that appealed to her. He was a loner, slightly mysterious in some fashion. Maybe that was it. The lure of mystery.
Somebody had organized a karaoke machine and Adam, quite drunk, had got up to do a rendition of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, spoofing Freddie Mercury’s camp antics. To her surprise he was funny, hilarious in fact, and when he finished it was to loud applause and calls for an encore, which he’d declined. At two in the morning they’d found themselves sitting together outside, watching the lights reflected on the Thames