I take a look at the other Café Royal gigs on the calendar. ‘So you did the same gig for the same charity at the same venue another three times after that in the space of – what – seven weeks? Were you performing for nothing?’
She smiles and looks down at her lap. ‘No. It doesn’t work like that. It’s a PR thing, really. It looks as if we’re caring people, giving our services for free for a good cause. It’s good for our image and it’s good exposure. Actually, the charity pays us the usual rate to perform and we still get our cut of the ticket money. It’s just that these events are for the rather well-heeled, so the tickets are insanely expensive. That’s how the charity makes its money, from the ticket price mark-up. The ticket price includes dinner and a certain amount of free alcohol.’
‘Did you find it strange that you were asked to do the same thing another three times?’
‘I didn’t give it any thought, to be honest. It was a nice venue. Lots of yummy champagne afterwards. That’s it. It was slightly odd that the subsequent gigs were organised so quickly considering that the first was planned quite a bit in advance, but…’
‘Did you change your act?’
‘Not at all. I lip-synched to Chaque Bouton Lâche, just as you saw the other night. I’d only just introduced it into my act. I felt like a change from big feathery headdresses and sparkling corsets. I’d never water down what I did just because it was a charity. They get what they get.’
‘When you were rebooked, did they ask for the same performers?’
‘Yes they did. In fact, they were quite emphatic about that, according to Kelly. They said it was because they wanted to create the same atmosphere as the first gig.’
‘Have they asked you to do any more for them? Any more gigs, I mean?’
‘Not as far as I know. But even if they had, I for one would have been too busy. All you’ve got to do is look at my gig list here. It always gets hectic from the middle of May onwards, particularly with the European shows.’
‘Can I take a look at this charity on your computer?’
‘Sure. Come on.’
We go into a small room full of bookshelves. She has a lot of books. I remember I saw Les Fleurs du Mal in her changing room and a quick glance confirms that she’s into French literature of all types, many of the books in the original French. I spot Thérèse Raquin and Germinal by Zola, On Wine and Hashish by Baudelaire, Cruel Tales by De l’Isle-Adam and L’immoraliste by André Gide. I recall Rikki having La Rabouilleuse in French in his Ebury Street flat. Did he and Paige talk about this type of reading matter when they were together?
Beneath the books is a shelf full of DVDs. Many of them are French and Italian cinema (plus one Icelandic), but there’s also a smattering of hardcore porn. Paige McBride gets more interesting all of the time. She sits down in front of a large computer screen and starts typing. I pull a chair over and sit next to her.
The Fly a Kite site is upbeat and colourful. There are photographs of children enjoying various outdoor activities and it’s thankfully easy to navigate around. There’s a section called ‘Events’. Paige clicks on it and a page opens with details of how they raise awareness and raise their money.
They do a lot of stuff: half marathons, clay shoots, golf days, skydiving, high ropes and zip wire challenges. Nothing even remotely like burlesque evenings. There isn’t anything particularly suspicious about that, though. Perhaps they’re image conscious and don’t want casual browsers to see that they use, in effect, strippers to help them with their fundraising, although the burlesque evening was a first. Still, there might have been something a little showbizzy on here, perhaps comedy nights or musical events.
There’s a name to contact if you have any enquiries: The Honourable Cordelia Chudwell. I keep it in mind and memorise the address and telephone number.
‘Any use?’ asks Paige, smiling. She’s an intelligent woman. I’m going to have to share my theories with her.
‘I might have a word with them at some point. Can I ask you not to mention to anybody that I’m a private investigator? I’ve got a weird feeling about all of this. I think a lot of people around you are being played, but I’ve no idea who by, or why they’re doing it.’
‘Played? What do you mean?’
‘It may be nothing to do with this charity. Not directly, anyway. When did the requests for the subsequent Café Royal gigs come in?’
‘I can’t remember the exact date, but it was pretty soon after the first one. That was on the eleventh of March. It could have been within three or four days.’
‘So we might be talking about the fourteenth or fifteenth of March?’
‘Possibly. I’d have to check with Kelly.’
‘Can you check with her now? Make it sound casual.’
While she’s making the casual call, I take another look at the Fly a Kite site. It looks perfectly respectable to me. It’s a registered charity, complete with official number. It has a history. There have been celebrities involved with it in the past and many of them have appeared in advertisements for the various fundraising events. There’s a group of trustees who look genuine enough: a bunch of doctors, businessmen, retired nurses, retired corporate financiers and a couple of minor aristocrats. Paige clicks off her mobile.
‘She said the charity got in touch with her on the fourteenth. Late morning. They said they’d like to do more burlesque evenings and those three dates were all she could do with the same line-up as before. Apparently the girl from the charity said that it was a lovely atmosphere and they’d like the same performers if at all possible.’
‘The fourteenth was a Monday,’ I say, checking the calendar. ‘So the first Café Royal gig was on the Friday before that. That means they got back in touch as soon as they could, which was quick work. I’m assuming that the charity isn’t open at weekends.’
‘Damn!’ she says. ‘I could have asked her about the security companies that Tom and Declan came from.’
‘Don’t worry about that for now. What about social media? If the idea of you having an infatuated affluent fan at the Café Royal comes to nothing…’
‘I’ve got Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter accounts. A girl at my agent’s maintains them and posts stuff. I just pop in every now and again to see what’s going on. I made a little announcement that I was in a relationship with Jamie, but nothing ostentatious.’
‘How many followers. Any idea?’
‘Phew. Well over fourteen thousand on Twitter the last time I looked and God knows how many on Facebook. Loads. Is it important?’
‘Does anyone contact you directly on any of these?’
‘Oh, there are always people trying to have chats. The girl who deals with it all – her name is Sofie – never engages unless it’s a straight request for gig information. There have been loads of attempts over the last five years or so to have a friendly talk. You know how it is. Anything really weird and Sofie dumps them. Let me show you something, though.’
She signs into her Facebook page, clicks on the ‘photos’ section and then we’re in an album entitled ‘The Electric Carousel London July 30’. And there he is: Rikki Tuan, Triad enforcer, burlesque aficionado and face-scraper extraordinaire.
There are three photographs. In two of them he has his arm around Paige’s shoulders and in the third he’s clinking champagne flutes with an extremely, extremely well-endowed girl in an amazing black lace hat who almost looks like she belongs in a 1950s Norman Parkinson Vogue shoot.
I wonder if Mr X saw these? I wonder if Mr X is hidden amongst all of Paige’s social media followers, almost certainly under an assumed name. There’s a chance that a detailed trawl through all her followers might bear fruit, but I suspect it would be a waste of time.
It’s quite odd to see Rikki laughing and having fun. It’s almost as if he’s a mythological creature now. He’s wearing a well-cut black velvet waistcoat over a flashy red, blue and yellow shirt which is covered in prints of macaws and palm trees. His hair is different from
the photographs that Mr Sheng gave me. It’s longer now, but still looks like it’s been cut in some expensive salon. He looks more relaxed, too. Probably a little drunk. There is nothing to indicate a relationship of any type with Rikki in these photos, but he and the girl are name-checked on one of them. The girl’s name is Giselle Laprise.
‘Tell me about the girl.’
Paige rolls her eyes. ‘Giselle? I thought she’d catch your attention. She’s a good friend of mine. She’s a retro glamour model. One of the best.’
‘Do you have her number?’
She turns and looks straight at me. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Later will do. Let’s go back in the kitchen.’
I sit down at the table again. Paige sits by my side. I write ‘charity get in touch’ on the calendar. I bring my finger down on the first Café Royal gig.
‘This is where is started, whatever it is. You play this charity gig at the Café Royal, the regular magnums of Perrier Jouët start turning up, the charity is after you to do more, your security guy leaves, your new security guy starts and two weeks later you’re at the Café Royal again. A month after that, your boyfriend gets warned off, four days later a ten grand fur jacket turns up at The Wam Bam Club, your boyfriend gets assaulted and now we have the Rikki business. And that’s just the short version.’
‘What do you think’s going on?’
‘I think someone saw you at the Café Royal and got obsessed. I don’t think we’ll find them on your social media. If they’re following you, it’ll be done anonymously. You said it was a well-heeled crowd. I think whoever it was wanted to see you again, but they were not habitués of the kind of venues you usually played in. Perhaps they felt out of place, or felt uncomfortable, or felt they’d be too conspicuous for one reason or another. I’ve no idea what it was. They could, however, send you bottles of champagne, so at least they were there in spirit. Plus, they found out when your birthday was and thought nothing of blowing all that money on an anonymous gift. I’m assuming it was them, though I could be wrong.’
‘My birthday would have been on Facebook.’ She taps her front teeth with her finger. ‘So if they wanted to see me perform…’
‘…it’d have to be a venue that they felt comfortable going to.’
‘Like the Café Royal.’
‘Exactly. So somehow, they got the charity to arrange further gigs there. But it’s more than that. After that first gig, your relationships with any type of male started to turn sour. I know there were only two, and one of them wasn’t a real relationship, but they weren’t to know that.
‘As far as their intelligence was concerned, which was faulty intelligence, Rikki was a boyfriend. I said earlier that their motivation was stopping you having a relationship with anyone. The two guys who assaulted Jamie are unknown quantities and have vanished into thin air. What I have to do now is flush them out of the woodwork.’
‘How are you going to do that?’
I turn around, smile and look her straight in the eye. ‘We’re going to have a relationship.’
‘My prayers have been answered.’
‘That’s what they all say.’
26
THE CUSP OF A RELATIONSHIP
We decide to find a pub to have some lunch in. The nearest one is The Lord’s Tavern, right next to the cricket ground, so Paige gets ready and we go out, me with my wall calendar under my arm and Paige’s gig sheets rolled up inside. I’m going to have to prep her up on what to do, what to say and how to act. She doesn’t speak as we walk down the road and neither do I. As we left her flat and she closed the door, I noticed a curved scratch by the lock, which I didn’t mention as I thought she’d been alarmed enough for one day. It looked like the result of a slip of the hand by a clumsy burglar. The scratch was too thin for it to have been done by a Yale or mortice key.
I’m pretty sure about two things: whoever is behind this, they’re getting their information about Paige’s social life from somewhere and I strongly suspect it’s her chauffeur/minder, Declan Sharpe. I can’t think who else it could be at the moment. However, I have no intention of confronting him; I want to keep him in place.
The second thing is that Rikki’s disappearance is unquestionably the work of Friendly Face and Big Bastard, unless there’s another creepy perv team taking on some of the work. Perhaps Friendly Face and Big Bastard are outsourcing.
Whoever is behind this (and I’m still thinking of them/him/her/it as Mr X), they have confidence, they have risk-taking, willing personnel and they have money. I think confronting any of them directly would be a mistake; it would just frighten them off and then I’d never discover what was going on.
There’s always the option of grabbing one of them, taking them somewhere discreet and torturing the information I need out of them, but if I decided to do that, I’d have to be damn sure I lifted the guy with all the info, and I’m not sure who that might be. Not at the moment, anyway. If I chose the wrong sucker, the others might make themselves scarce while I was busy with the pliers and that would also defeat the object: finding out what the hell happened to Rikki Tuan.
The other thing that’s making me reluctantly cautious is an uneasy feeling that there’s a network of these people, and I’m not yet sure how far it spreads, how big it is, how influential it is or how dangerous it is. In other words, I can’t trust anyone and have to be careful what I say and who I say it to.
Another factor which, amazingly, I keep forgetting about, is the dead girl in Rikki’s Belgravia flat. Who she was, where she came from and why she was there is still a mystery. But it gives me a gut feeling about these people: under the right circumstances, other people’s lives are of no importance to them whatsoever. They are manipulative, dangerous, sadistic and ruthless.
I try to think about all the little threads in this case and attempt to pull them together. The first thing I think about is Jamie Baldwin’s story about his doping. As soon as Mr X decided that Jamie had to be got out of the way, he was able to get quick and easy access to Jamie’s biggest and darkest secret.
Just over a week into Jamie and Paige’s relationship, Friendly Face’s initial threats hinted that he knew about the doping; that Jamie was a bad lot. Now under any circumstances, that was damn quick work. And that makes the blood test fixer Mr Henry Parsons a person of interest.
Friendly Face also said that the people who wanted Jamie out of the way could do a lot of damage to his career and business. Now how could they do that? Do they have people in The British Boxing Board of Control? Do they own the lease to his gym? What?
Now on to the dead girl at Rikki’s flat. Someone got her in there without arousing any suspicion at the reception desk and presumably nobody noticed that she didn’t come out again, or weren’t bothered whether she came out or not. This is where the Day Manager Mr Oliver Gallagher and the Reception Supervisor Mr Thomas Wade come into their own. I have yet to speak to either of them, and it may be that I’ll never have to, but those two are also on my naughty list.
I’ve yet to acquire the security company information from Paige’s agent, but wherever he came from I’ll bet anything that Tom Nyström was pressured to make up that story about his marriage and ailing parent to give him an excuse to leave Paige ASAP and get replaced with Declan Sharpe, The Spy in the House of Burlesque. Whoever organised that had some clout and, once again, was capable of speedy work. Too bad that Declan had such an obnoxious personality, otherwise it might have taken me longer to make the link.
And another thing: according to Paige, Declan used to be a policeman. If Jamie’s gut feeling was correct, and I think it was, Friendly Face and Big Bastard were ex-police, too. It may be nothing, but it’s still worth thinking about.
Then of course there are the gigs at the Café Royal. There’s a definite feeling of Mr X the puppet master doing some subtle manoeuvring behind the scenes here. So Fly a Kite is under suspicion and so is The Honourable Cordelia Chudwell, despite her charming and aristocratic name.
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There’s also my feeling about the convenience of Footitt working in the exactly the right hospital. What if Jamie Baldwin had lived somewhere else and hadn’t been taken to the Chelsea and Westminster? It occurred to me before and it occurs to me again: do they, whoever they are, have a Footitt in every hospital?
I’m starting to feel responsible for Paige’s safety.
We go to the bar, get some drinks and order food. I really don’t feel that hungry after the waffles, but get something anyway. Paige orders one of the pub beefburgers with a glass of Shiraz and I have tempura prawns with a cheeky little double vodka and soda.
We sit down at a window table with our drinks. I can’t stop myself from glancing at her. She really is extraordinarily pretty. I wonder what The Central School of Ballet think of her and her exotic career.
‘You don’t have to keep looking at me out of the corner of your eye, you know,’ she says, laughing to herself. ‘After all, we’re on the cusp of having a relationship.’
‘I was just checking that you were good enough for me.’
‘I see. How did I measure up?’
‘Not bad. Almost there.’
‘Now I’m anxious.’
Two girls who look like office workers come in and go straight to the bar and order. While they’re waiting, they turn around, stare at me and start whispering to each other.
‘Friends of yours?’ asks Paige.
‘Never seen them before.’
‘They’re checking you out. Does this happen to you a lot?’
Femme Fatale Page 26