'OK,' said Eloise. 'And her?'
She looked toward Butcher, who was watching them with an air of tight-stretched patience.
'She's a lawyer,' said Joe. 'She doesn't talk unless you insert gold sovereigns into her mouth.'
This dreadful slander seemed to convince the young woman.
'OK,' she said. 'Now I'll go and take the weight off Chip's mind. Thanks, Joe.'
She leaned forward. She's going to kiss me again! he thought in amazement. She did, and it was even better than before. This time she leaned right into it and he felt the soft warmth of that scantily dressed body mold itself around him like a wheatgerm poultice as her soft full lips pressed against his. Then she pulled away and vanished back into the depths of the Hole.
'Sixsmith, can we go now?' said Butcher. 'Only watch how you walk or you'll trip over your tongue.'
13
Legal Advice
Butcher sat with Joe in the Morris and listened as he described his audience with King Rat. He showed her the contents of the green folder. She looked at the photo of Brian Tomlin, his target, and said, 'I know him.' 'And?' 'He's the kind of wheeler-dealer you wear belt and braces with, and you can still end up bare-ass.' 'So this could be a genuine job, not just a way of getting me out of the way?' said Joe. Butcher sighed. 'I've got a problem with both parts of that question, Sixsmith.' 'Sorry?' 'What I mean is, why would someone like King give you a genuine job? On the other hand, why would he be worried enough about you to want to get you out of the way?'
There was an insult in here somewhere, maybe two, in which case could be they canceled each other out.
He binned it and said, 'If this guy Tomlin's such a chancer, why would King dream of trusting him anyway?'
She opened her mouth to reply, closed it, opened it again and said, 'Never thought I'd have to say this, but that's a good point. Tomlin's the kind of pond-life King might use to do something dodgy; he's certainly not the kind he's ever going to get close to doing a deal with. All right, let's see how this runs. King wants you out of the way, he knows Tomlin's in Spain, holiday, whatever, so he uses him as an excuse to hire you for a surveillance job.'
'Yeah, but it's only for three days. I'd be back well before the committee meeting,' said Joe, finding himself surprisingly reluctant to admit that the job was just a ruse. 'Also he's sending his PA to help me and he wouldn't do that if he just wanted to get me out of the way, would he?'
As so often in arguments with Butcher, all his get-round-that clincher won him was a long sigh full of intellectual pain.
'She's there to watch you, stupid,' said Butcher. 'He needs to be sure you've really gone.'
Joe shook his head.
'No,' he said. 'She's OK, I don't see her being in on anything dodgy. And she was so lit up at the thought of doing some detective work.'
Butcher laughed.
'What is it with you and nubile young women, Joe? Doesn't matter if she's in on it or not anyway. You do something weird like not turning up at the airport, or heading back home from Spain, and she'll report straight back to King, won't she? She's his PA, after all. But you're right about the time thing. If he wanted you out of the way till after the committee pinned the Scarlet Letter or whatever they do on Porphyry, why not hire you for a fortnight?'
'I'd definitely not have agreed to that much,' said Joe stoutly.
'Not even with all that big money being wafted under your nose?' Butcher laughed. 'Pull the other one. Now, this fellow Waring you mentioned. What's all that about?'
Joe told her.
'So, what's become of Waring?' she said in that amused tone the educated classes use when they're saying something clever they reckon you probably won't understand. 'You say Porphyry seemed particularly interested in him. That why you felt his disappearance might be relevant?'
'Yeah, that's it,' said Joe, reasoning that anything was better than admitting his only reason for bringing up the vanishing greensman was because Butcher had asked all the obvious questions. 'But it looks like a red herring.'
'Don't undersell yourself,' said Butcher. 'You might in your inimitable way have stumbled on something. You see, I think I mentioned to you earlier I once acted in a case for an ex-employee of the Porphyry estate. Her name was Sally Waring. She had a teenage son.'
'So that could explain Chris's interest. Son of an old employee, give him a hand-up.'
'Your belief in the philanthropic impulses of the ruling classes is touching, Sixsmith. In my experience, the nearest they get to giving anyone a hand-up is their hands up their maids' skirts. Good Lord, I wonder-could this lad Steve be Porphyry's child?'
'Shoot, Butcher, you do get carried away on them socialist principles of yours,' said Joe angrily. 'Chris would only have been a kid himself when this Waring boy was born.'
'Very precocious, the upper classes,' said Butcher. 'OK, how about his father? Steve could be his half brother.'
'Talking through your wig, Butcher,' said Joe. 'Anyway, don't matter whose brother this guy Waring is, can't see how him taking off has any connection with my case.'
Butcher might at this point have justly pointed out that it was Joe who'd started the speculation flowing in the first place. Instead she said, 'All right, Joe. But relationship apart, there is one very obvious reason why Porphyry might not want anyone to show too much interest in looking for Waring.'
Joe said, 'What reason?'
Butcher shook her head sorrowfully and said, 'I don't know how it is with detectives, Joe, but a good lawyer never discounts any possibility. It's the only way you can be prepared for whatever the opposition may throw at you.'
'Meaning?'
'Meaning it could be that Waring, going about his business near the sixteenth fairway, observed Mr. Porphyry take a ball out of his pocket and set it down in a good lie at the edge of the wood. When Porphyry realized he'd been observed, he suggested to Waring that he might care to take a long, well-paid holiday far, far away. Of course, at that moment he would not realize that even as he spoke his Nemesis, Jimmy Postgate, was fishing his ball out of the pool.'
It took Joe a few seconds to pick the meaning out of this verbiage.
'You mean, Chris really did cheat? No way! No way!'
'Your belief is touching,' said Butcher. 'Reminds me of all the times I've heard devoted mothers stand up in court and assure the jury that there is no way their beloved sons would commit assault or burglary or murder.'
'I'm not his mother,' said Joe. 'Anyway, if he's guilty, why would he hire me? And why would King Rat try to get me out of the way?'
'I'm working on that,' said Butcher. 'I've been trying to find out more about the set-up at the Royal Hoo. If they'd gone public, it would be easy, but as it's a private company, there's a problem with getting hold of the details.'
'Why don't I ask Chris Porphyry?' said Joe.
Butcher looked at him for a moment then said in wonderment, 'There you go again. Just when I'm starting to feel that perhaps I've got it all wrong and that looking at you as an investigator, what we see is in fact what we get, out pops an idea so obvious that a fine-tuned legal intellect like mine has overlooked it. Yes, why don't you ask him. Now, I've got work to do, Sixsmith. Enjoy Spain.'
Joe had put Spain to the back of his mind, which was an area of the Sixsmith intellect so crowded that a Health and Safety inspector would have condemned it out of hand. All kinds of stuff got dumped there and much of it was never reclaimed. But some decision times were not permanently postponable.
