SILK WICKEDNESS 3

‘No, but I’ve watched that chap on the telly who exposes posh crooks. They all sound like old Etonians and keep racehorses and stuff and their kids belong to the Pony Club.’

Claudia barely heard her. ‘Mmm.’

‘Where’s that photo?’ Kate demanded. ‘I’ll be able to tell if he’s dodgy. I can spot dodgy men at fifty paces with my eyes closed.’

‘I keep telling you, he doesn’t look dodgy.’

‘Show me anyway. I’m dying to see what he looks like.’

‘I must have left it in the taxi. Can’t find it anywhere.’ This was a big fat lie. The photo was safely tucked in the zip pocket of her bag, along with might-have-to-take-it- back receipts and dry-cleaning tickets. She had not shown it to Kate for the simple reason that Kate’s eyes would spark instantly like a faulty fuse-box. She’d say things like, ‘Wow! I wouldn’t mind playing sardines-in-the-dark with him,’ and the fluttery feelings Claudia had felt in the office would return, redoubled. And Kate would know, and then there would be no peace.

‘You’re hopeless,’ Kate sighed. ‘Give me all the details. What category, for a start?’

Unable to lie completely, Claudia shrugged and lied in moderation. ‘Two and a bit. Fortyish. Darkish. Six-foot- two-ish. Good-looking in a stuffy, poker-up-his backside sort of way. No sense of humour.’

‘I suppose not,’ Kate sighed, ‘if he went berserk just at a

kissogram.’

‘He didn’t quite go berserk. Chillingly unamused was more like it.’

‘Boring, in other words.’

Portly stirred, yawned, stretched himself and began a vigorous claw-sharpening on the loose covers. They were by no means new, but would last a good bit longer if Portly would just manicure his weapons elsewhere. Detaching his claws, Claudia lifted him on to her lap.

Portly gave a mildly indignant squeak, decided it was too much effort to argue, and curled into a squidgy marmalade ball.

‘If he’s boring, it won’t be drugs,’ Kate pronounced. ‘Criminals aren’t boring.’ Her face brightened. ‘Maybe he’s a politician. All respectable family values on the outside but a real sleaze-bag underneath. Maybe he thought there was a photographer waiting to catch you draped all over him and plaster it all over the Sunday papers. With a headline like “junior minister snogs love-child stripper”.’

‘Don’t be daft. If he’d thought that, he wouldn’t have come out on the street with me. Never mind kissing me in public!’

‘Ah, yes. He can’t be that stuffy, then. Was he a good kisser?’

Claudia’s internal video went into rewind once more and her stomach gave a tiny, involuntary lurch. ‘For

heaven’s sake, I was too shell-shocked to be giving scores!’

‘Oh, come on. Roughly. Slobbery and disgusting?’

‘Well, no. I suppose not.’

‘Not disgusting but no shivers either? Or a real, woozy toe-curler?’

‘Kate, for heaven’s sake! It was over in about two seconds!’

‘OK, OK,’ Kate soothed, but an instant later her mouth did its she-devil curve again. ‘Tongues?’

‘Shut upV Half laughing, Claudia chucked a cushion at her, but even that didn’t stop Kate’s idle speculations.

‘Probably just getting his money’s worth,’ she mused. ‘Maybe he really has got a love-child. That would account for him not seeing the joke. I bet he’s a family values sleaze-bag anyway. Probably wants you to go and “entertain” foreign businessmen on a private island somewhere.’

‘What?'

‘Only kidding,’ Kate giggled. ‘But there’s only one way to find out.’

Claudia glanced at her watch. It was twenty to eight. ‘I’m not ringing yet. I’ll wait a bit longer. Let him think I’m not going to.’

‘In that case, I’ll ring for a pizza. There’s nothing in the fridge, in case you didn’t know.’

Claudia knew. She had meant to go to the shops on her way home, but salad and cold meat from the deli had been the last things on her mind.

While Kate was ordering a medium pizza f m hell, with jalapeno peppers and garlic bread, she had a stem and silent conversation with herself.

Why are you even contemplating ringing a man you don't know from Fred Flintstone, who has just offeredyou a lot of money to perform some unknown and possibly dodgy service ?

I don't know.

Liar.

All right, then. Because he's dishy.

Go on.

And for a second or two he made me go all fluttery and I haven't felt fluttery in ages.

What else?

And if I don't ring him, I'll -

‘Twenty minutes,’ said Kate, replacing the receiver. ‘I’ll go and open some vino plonko.’

While she was gone Claudia stroked Portly mechanically. A ‘talking lunch’. Talking of what, pray?

Three-quarters of her brain was on Guy Hamilton and what he was going to say; the rest was on draught- exclusion measures. The curtains were billowing like ocean-going spinnakers, just to let you know there was a gale blowing outside. The rain sounded like vandals throwing gravel at the windows.

The house had started life in the 1890s, probably as home to the kind of family that employed a live-in servant and a nursemaid to push the perambulator along tree- lined streets.

The area had since come down in the world; the houses had been converted to flats and bedsits. It was now coming up again. Several had been converted back into spacious, elegant homes, with swagged curtains at every window.

Claudia’s flat was on the ground floor. The plumbing was erratic, the floorboards creaky, but it was her own - or

would be when she was about ninety-three and had paid the mortgage off. She’d had two tenants before Kate. One had been silent and odd, the other had done a flit owing two months’ rent.

It had been a colossal relief to bump into her old college friend at a party. Kate had spent a full twenty minutes relating horror stories of her landlord; a hybrid of Scrooge and Peeping Tom. She had moved in three days later.

Kate reappeared with two glasses of special offer Cha- blis, and handed her the phone. A certain wickedness gleamed in her round brown eyes. ‘Maybe he’s playing games. Maybe it was just a tortured way of getting you on a lunch-date.’

‘Then why didn’t he just ask me?’

‘How could he, when you’d just been shooting verbal arrows at him? You know what you’re like when you’re snappy. Maybe he thought you’d bite his head off.’

Claudia pushed back the growing-out fringe that constantly drove her mad and shook her head emphatically. ‘Believe me, if he’d just wanted a date, he’d have asked.’

The torn-off sheet with his number lay on the little gateleg table beside her. She glanced at it and pushed buttons rapidly.

‘Hamilton residence.’ The voice was female, elderly, and a mite sniffy.

Suddenly, Kate’s game-playing remark didn’t seem quite so ludicrous after all. But if he was playing elaborate games, what was the reason?

Elementary, my dear Kate.

‘May I speak to Mrs Hamilton, please?’ she asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said, may I speak to Mrs Hamilton?’

There was a brief silence, then, ‘There is no Mrs Hamilton.*

That was one suspicion out of the way. ‘Then I’ll speak to Mr Hamilton, please.*

During the pause that followed, Claudia could almost hear the pursing of lips. ‘I hope you’re not selling double- glazing or fancy kitchens, because I can assure you we’re not interested.’

‘I’m not selling anything. Is he there?’

‘May I ask who is calling?’

‘Claudia Maitland.’

‘I’ll see if he’s free to speak to you.’ Her tone said, I can't imagine he'll want to.

With her hand over the mouthpiece, Claudia looked up. ‘Sounds like a housekeeper,’ she whispered to Kate. ‘Of the snobby, old-school variety.*

Kate giggled. ‘Maybe he’s got a Jeeves as well, to tidy his sock suspenders and - ’

‘Shh!’ Kate’s giggles were infectious, and she didn’t want to be erupting like Volcano Bimbo when he finally came to the phone.

When he did, his voice held an edge of very dry amusement. ‘Claudia, you have a nasty, suspicious mind.'

She was unrepentant. ‘I had to check. I know absolutely nothing about you.’

‘If I were married, which I’m not, and up to no good, which I’m not, I’d hardly give you my home number.’

‘I don’t see why not. She might have been away.’

‘And the big bad mouse playing in her absence?’

‘You said it.'

On the other end of the line there was a sigh of very controlled, very patient exasperation. ‘Claudia, even if the whole of married male London is writhing on the kitchen table right this minute with his kids’ au pair, it’s irrelevant. This is a business proposition, nothing more.’

‘Well, hallelujah. So now we’ve sorted that out, can you tell me what sort of business proposition?’

‘If you’d phoned earlier I could have. As it’s now three minutes to eight, and I have a dinner-date, I can’t. Can you meet me tomorrow, around one o’clock?’

She hesitated. It wasn’t so much alarm bells ringing in her head, as Crimewatch reconstructions.

‘Claudia has not been seen since lunchtime on the seventeenth of November, when she set off to meet a man calling himself Guy Hamilton, who had offered her a large sum of money for some unspecified service .’

Cut to a tearful Kate. ‘/ told her, but she wouldn't listen. She said he didn't look dodgy.'

‘Maybe,’ she said, trying to sound as if she were nonchalantly examining her nails. ‘Where?’

‘Paolo’s. Do you know it?’

Phew. ‘Vaguely. Near Covent Garden?’

‘That’s it. Till tomorrow, then.’

She was just about to hang up when he added, ‘It’s nothing illegal, in case you’re wondering.*

Her relief was only partial. ‘ “Legal” covers all manner of unsavoury activities. I might as well warn you that if it’s anything remotely unsavoury - more unsavoury than kissograms, anyway - you’ll be wasting your time.’

The amusement in his voice was more marked. ‘What exactly had you in mind?’

‘Nothing to do with kitchen tables, I can assure you. Sounds most unhygienic to me. Besides, I’d rather not say. I was a convent girl and old Sister Immaculata would be whizzing in her grave.’

‘She can save her energies for pushing up daisies. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Infuriated and intrigued in roughly equal proportions, she replaced the receiver. ‘He’s playing games, all right!. How am I ever going to contain myself till tomorrow?’

Kate’s face was a picture of agogness. ‘Whatever was that about kitchen tables?’

Claudia was already wishing she hadn’t referred to kitchen tables, and wondering at the same time whether he was speaking from personal experience. She recounted the conversation word for word until the pizza arrived.

‘Paolo’s is Italian, isn’t it?’ Kate asked, cutting it into wedges. ‘You like Italian. Be sure to order the most expensive things on the menu.’

Claudia picked up a wedge of pizza, its gooey strings of cheese sticking like warm elastic to the rest of it. ‘Oh, I intend to. Pity I can’t charge him a taxi fare too. If the weather’s like this tomorrow, I’ll be arriving with mud splashes all up my tights.’

She felt unaccountably miffed with Guy Hamilton, and nearly said as much to Kate. But then Kate would want to know why, and she’d have to confess that Guy Hamilton was a wildly fanciable Category Four. And when a wildly fanciable Category Four invited you out to lunch you didn’t want him saying, ‘This is a business proposition, nothing more.’ And Kate’s eyes would gleam and she’d say, ‘I knew it!’

‘Whatever he’s offering, I’m not going to do it,’ she said carelessly. ‘I can’t possibly deprive myself of the pleasure of seeing Ryan’s face when he writes that cheque. I’m only going for the free lunch. And if I smile nicely enough, he might even throw in a cheque with the coffee.’

Having told herself firmly that she was not going to dither over what to wear, Claudia proceeded to dither for England.

A dozen discarded garments lay on the bed: too sexy, too unsexy, too short, too girly, too boring. Eventually she opted for a mid-grey suit of soft wool that had cost only half a bomb in last year’s January sales.

With it she opted for a thin lambs wool sweater of palest dusty rose, pearl studs, and cream tights.

Passable , she thought, finishing her make-up. Nice green eyes, pity about the lashes, but one can't have everything. Why ever had she hated her nose so much in her teens? From the right angle it was really quite aristocratic. She applied a layer of Smoky Rose to her lips. The teenage Claudia had hated them too. Too wide, the bottom lip too fat in the middle. She liked them now; people paid thousands to have their lips plumped up like that.

Her face done, she gave the rest a critical going-over. Suitably restrained f, she thought. Neither too much leg, nor the 36Bs begging for attention.

Next she inspected her back view. The jacket was long enough to conceal the fact that her bottom was also 36B, not 34A as she would wish. Finally she dithered over the final touch. Amarige or Cabotine? Maybe the former was a bit too warm and come-into-my-boudoirish for business

lunches. She misted her hair with fresh green Cabotine, grabbed an umbrella and ran. It was still raining like the wrath of God, but Kate was giving her a lift to the tube.

She was six minutes late, but he had evidently been at least five minutes early. With a Financial Times and what looked like a Bloody Mary for company, he was seated at a corner table.

Her mother’s voice was at it again. ‘Lovely manners, dear,’ it said approvingly as he rose to his feet the instant he saw her coming.