I’d seen earlier that afternoon, but there was something haunted about her expression, and her smile, as she nodded at something Lars was saying, was strained.
“Pondering our hostess?” said a low voice from across the table, and I turned to see Alexander sipping at a glass. “She’s quite the enigma, isn’t she? Looks so fragile, and yet they say she’s the power behind Richard’s throne. The iron fist in the silk glove, you could say. I suppose that having that kind of money from the age when most children are still drooling into their cornflakes has a steeling effect on one’s character.”
“Do you know her well?” I asked. Alexander shook his head.
“Never met her. Richard spends half his life on a plane, but she almost never leaves Norway. It’s totally alien to me—as you know, I live for travel; I can’t imagine confining yourself to a petty little country like Norway when the restaurants and capitals of the world await. Never to taste sucking pig at elBulli, or sample the glorious fusion of cultures that is Gaggan in Bangkok! But I suppose it’s a reaction against her upbringing—I believe she lost her parents in a plane crash at the age of eight or nine, and spent the rest of her life being shuttled around the boarding schools of Europe by her grandparents. I imagine you might choose to go the other way as an adult.”
He picked up his fork, and we were just starting to eat when there was a noise at the door, and I looked up to see Cole walking unsteadily across to the table.
“Mr. Lederer!” A stewardess hurried to take an extra chair from the ones at the side of the room. “Miss Blacklock, might I ask you to just . . .”
I moved my plate and chair slightly and she put a seat at the head of the table for Cole, who slumped heavily down. His hand was bandaged, and he looked as if he’d been drinking.
“No, I won’t have champagne,” he said in answer to Hanni gliding up with a tray. “I’ll have a Scotch.”
Hanni nodded and hurried away, and Cole sat back in his chair and passed a hand over his unshaven face.
“Sorry about your camera,” I said cautiously. He scowled, and I saw that he was very drunk already.
“It’s a fucking nightmare,” he said. “And the worst of it is, it’s my own bloody fault. I should have backed it up.”
“Are all the shots gone?” I asked. Cole shrugged.
“No idea, but probably, yes. Got a guy back in London who might be able to get some of the data off, but it’s showing fuck all when I put it in my computer, it’s not even reading the card.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. My heart was beating fast. I wasn’t sure if this was sensible, but I figured I had nothing to lose now. “Was it just stuff from the voyage? I thought I saw one shot from somewhere else . . . ?”
“Oh, yeah, I was swapping the cards over, it had a few shots from a shoot I did a couple of weeks back at the Magellan.”
I knew the Magellan—it was a very exclusive all-male members club in Piccadilly, founded as a meeting place for diplomats and what the club described as “gentlemen travelers.” No women were allowed as members, but female guests were permitted, and I had attended functions there once or twice in Rowan’s stead.
“Are you a member?” I asked. He gave a snort.
“Not bloody likely. Not my style, even if they’d let me in, which is doubtful. Too crusty for my taste—anywhere that won’t let you wear jeans isn’t for me. The Frontline is more my cup of tea. Alexander’s a member, though. So is Bullmer, I think. You know the drill, you have to be either too posh to function or rich as shit, and fortunately I’m not either.”
His last remark fell into a lull in conversation from the rest of the table, the words painfully loud and noticeably slurred in the silence, and I saw a few heads turn, and Anne glance at the steward with a nod that I interpreted as Get his food over there before the whiskey.
“What were you doing there, then?” I said, keeping my voice low, as if I could persuade him to moderate his tone by osmosis.
“Pictures for Harper’s.” His plate arrived and he began spearing foodstuffs at random, shoving the fragile architectural morsels into his mouth seemingly without even tasting