and prevented her from walking with anything resembling a normal gait, so she abandoned them for something plainer. May had provided her with a photograph of Jackson Ubeda. There was an undeniable urban elegance; darkly complexioned, his shaven head hid the effects of male pattern baldness. He looked as though he would wear cufflinks.
She felt uncomfortable entering the club premises alone, because men were here with one purpose: to behave badly around women. In her mother’s day, it had been considered a good thing for a man to place a woman on a pedestal; but this was not what had been intended. The foyer was as garish as a child’s drawing, black-light, zebra-skin and pink neon, exuding ersatz sophistication to men who were unfamiliar with the notion of restraint. I bet the blokes who come here would love to work in tall buildings and drive overpowered cars in town, she thought, smiling to herself.
Along the industrial-steel runway that protruded into the main room like a late-eighties video set, a pair of unnervingly upbeat latex-thonged girls dropped and flexed before the drinkers. The preference here was for female extremes: big hair, long legs, hard breasts, fat attitude. She had imagined that the audience would be raucous and dangerously playful, overweight schoolboys hiding their sexual discomfort with jibes and dares, but was surprised to find many groups almost ignoring the dancers. Workers huddled in urgent clusters, jacketless, arguing office politics, holding the kind of intense discussions that had been pumped up to nonsense level by chemical stimuli. Private rooms hosted the stag nights, keeping aggressive behaviour out of the main room. She couldn’t entirely blame the clientele; the work-hard, play-hard ethic had invaded everywhere.
Longbright knew at once that Ubeda would not be found near the stage. She asked a hostess to check the booking, and was sent to a private bar on the first floor. He was seated alone, drinking something with a lot of leaves sticking out of it. She required a pretext for approaching him without drawing suspicion, but after wracking her brain and failing to come up with anything original, settled on a direct approach.
‘Do you have a light?’
He withdrew a slim silver Cartier and flicked it, then looked at her in puzzlement. ‘Do you have a cigarette?’
‘No, I don’t smoke.’
Ubeda did not look happy about having his reverie interrupted. ‘Then what do you want?’
‘I’ve seen you before.’
‘That’s because I’m usually here.’ Now he appraised her. Longbright hoped that the softer lighting was working in her favour. ‘I’ve never seen you before.’
‘Well, I’ve definitely noticed you. We share something special in common. Let me buy you a drink.’ She summoned the bargirl, pointing to Ubeda’s glass. ‘Two of whatever he’s having. It looks like it has a hedge in it.’
‘Two Gold Mojitos.’ All the staff in here are women, Longbright noted. There was probably something like this on the same site three hundred years ago.
‘What’s in it?’ she asked.
‘Rum, mint, molasses, but you switch the soda water for champagne.’ Interesting accent, she thought. Possibly Alexandria. Dead eyes. They’d watch someone being hurt without flinching.
‘I do know you,’ she persisted. ‘You were at the British Museum the other day, in the Egyptian gallery.’ Another tip from Greenwood’s wife. She hoped it would work.
‘I wonder what made you single me out from so many visitors.’ His smile revealed matching gold eye teeth, like some Monte Carlo version of a pirate.
‘You stand out. Besides, it’s mostly grazing tourists. I can spot someone with a real interest in artefacts a mile off.’
‘I’ve been known to look in from time to time,’ he conceded. ‘What were you doing there?’
The drinks arrived. Longbright took a sip, then another. She was a large woman, and could drink most men under the table, but reminded herself to be careful; she was dealing with a man who carried a firearm. ‘I’ve a friend who works at the museum—Gareth Greenwood,’ she said casually. ‘I was meeting him for lunch at the Court Restaurant and saw you.’
He was watching her carefully now, choosing his words with deliberation. ‘Then it seems we do have someone in common. He is an acquaintance of mine. But I presume you already know that.’
‘Actually, no, I didn’t.’
He leaned closer, then a little too close for comfort. ‘What exactly is your interest in my affairs? I wonder if—oh, I wonder . . .’
She saw the unveiled accusation in his eyes. He knew that someone had been to his offices, and had connected her with the act