weight of braids nonchalantly as she went. Then the thunder of a pair of feet running upstairs at high speed echoed through the building, and I smiled to myself. Not as calm as she pretended to be, not by half.
Delahayes occupied three floors of a narrow, dingy office building on the corner of a busy street near Victoria Station, the kind of place you could walk past a hundred times without ever noticing it. The communal hallway outside was dirty and bleak, but the reception area had been recently redecorated and was a tasteful symphony of black and grey. The company’s name was stuck on the wall in chrome letters, and a big vase full of white flowers looked impressive until you realised they were very good fakes. I thought of the roses Seth had sent me and suppressed a shudder. I had, in the end, sent him a text to say I’d got them, and he had phoned me, and we had talked for hours. He wasn’t happy with how he’d behaved. He’d never meant to lose his temper. It had been the end of a bad day, he explained, but that was no excuse. It had been my fault as much as his, I had insisted. I had been difficult, moody, silent during dinner. High maintenance, he joked, but worth it, and I’d felt ashamed of myself.
‘If I didn’t care so much, Maeve, I wouldn’t have lost my temper.’
‘It upset me. I wasn’t expecting that anger.’
‘It’s nothing more than another kind of passion.’
‘Not the kind I like.’
‘So what kind do you like?’ There’d been a smile in his voice again, and a lazy kind of anticipation that turned my icy reserve to meltwater. And since then, a barrage of messages and jokes and an email confirming a reservation on the Eurostar and two nights at a hotel in Paris in July.
So I could forget all about it, I told myself, even as I caught myself easing my knee where it still ached.
‘Miss Gould will see you now.’ The receptionist tiptapped into the room, smiling nervously. ‘You can go straight up. Top of the stairs, on your left.’
I hadn’t formed much of an image of Miss Gould in my mind, but she was a surprise all the same: fiftyish, short fair hair, an engaging smile, an armoury of rings across her knuckles and enough chains slung around her neck to act as a fairly effective breastplate. She stood up as I entered and held out a hand.
‘Edina Gould.’ Her voice rang with money and good breeding. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Detective Sergeant Maeve Kerrigan. I’m investigating a murder.’
The smile evaporated. ‘What murder? What do you mean? If it was one of my girls—’
‘I don’t think she was one of your girls officially.’ I sat down and took out my notebook, settling in, and after a moment’s hesitation Edina Gould sat too. ‘I’m here because of Paige Hargreaves.’
‘Who?’
‘Come on, Miss Gould. You can do better than that. Paige Hargreaves. She was a journalist. She came to see you a couple of months ago. She wanted to work for you because she had a story she was investigating, about young women being hurt for fun at the Chiron Club.’
Her face was mottled under the veneer of expensive foundation. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘I think you do. I think Paige came and asked if you would take her on and you turned her down, so she explained who she was. She told you if you cooperated she wouldn’t name this agency in her report. She wouldn’t blame you for putting vulnerable young women in harm’s way.’
‘First of all, they’re not vulnerable. That’s why we have such a long and careful screening process. I only supply girls who have a reasonable amount of spirit and can keep their head in any circumstances. Secondly, I never put anyone in harm’s way. I offer them an opportunity to work in a very high-end environment, among this country’s leading business people and most powerful men. It’s up to them how they take advantage of that opportunity. What you will find is that many of these girls embark on impressive careers having started out here. They make contacts, they listen, they learn. They’re ambitious and they know their worth. No one is being victimised. Nothing illegal is taking place at the Chiron Club. If there was illegal activity, I would know about it.’
‘You’re supplying young women knowing that they’ll be sexually harassed at best while they try to