Agency

88 Denmark Street

Denmark Street wasn’t a cosplay zone. Less so even than Carnaby, but Netherton always got a sense of it being doubly a reproduction. Lowbeer had volunteered nothing, as to why she wanted him here now, but had been preoccupied with getting the motorcycle through seemingly endless frozen traffic, and he’d tired of the view from the rear of it.

“Am I meeting someone?” he asked now, her sigil between him and the antique guitars in this shop window he’d paused to look into.

“Bevan Westmarch,” she said.

“Wetmark?” he asked, surprised.

“Pardon me?”

“Rainey calls him that.”

“That was an interesting conversation you had with him, after meeting with Lev.”

“It was?”

“You frightened him,” she said. “Threatened him. With me.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“Not at all,” she said. “It’s produced an interesting result. He’s attempted to contact me. He believes, apparently, that he has information that will put him in our better books. Or is pretending to believe he does.”

“You’re meeting with him?”

“Best you do,” she said. “I’ll observe, though you needn’t tell him that.”

He’d be a fool to assume you weren’t, Netherton thought.

“He’s in the café with the Essex green façade,” she said, “just before the corner, to your left.”

“When?”

“Now.”

This place proving not dissimilar to the one in Chenies Street, though the décor was considerably more stylized. Black, red, chrome, archaic advertising.

Westmarch was seated in the rear, half a glass of orange juice before him on the small round table. “I thought it might be you,” he said, as Netherton pulled out the chair opposite and sat. “Sorry for my tone earlier, at the Embassy. That was still very much the night before, for me.”

Netherton said nothing, something he’d only recently been learning to deliberately do.

“I realized,” Westmarch continued, “that I only brought Lowbeer up at all because of something I recently heard. One does, as a publicist, as I’m sure you know.” He seemed entirely sober now, though not hungover. Both of which, Netherton well knew, could be afforded chemically, though only at some later and often greater cost.

“Bring you something?” inquired a cadaverous young man in grubby violet shirtsleeves and a black string tie, a wooden pencil tucked behind his ear.

“Espresso,” said Netherton, “thank you.” Then, to Westmarch, “She doesn’t employ me in her official capacity.”

“Not as the Metropolitan Police,” Westmarch said, “but we both know what it is she actually does.”

“Nor in that capacity either.”

“Yet here you are,” Westmarch said, “responding to a call I made to her, one in which I never mentioned you.”

“Nor should that surprise you, given you know so much about her.”

“Hardly,” said Westmarch. “As it happens, though, I’ve something I think she should be apprised of. Had I heard it on the frothy seas of gossip we’ve both sailed, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“No?”

“Someone substantial alluded to it privately. Obliquely, but unmistakably.”

“But you shan’t say who,” Netherton said, “or at least not initially?”

The waiter returned just then with Netherton’s espresso, looking at once shambolic and preternaturally alert. When he had gone, Westmarch continued. “Lev’s brother, Anton, who seems so much more traditionally klepty. Know him?”

“To say hello,” said Netherton.

“They aren’t close, he and Lev,” Westmarch said. “Lev prefers to be seen to regard the klept as something of an embarrassment. There’s previously been no question as to which brother would inherit their father’s business mantle. Not Lev. Am I correct?”

Netherton knew this to not always have been the case, though he assumed it to be now. “Lev doesn’t discuss family with me,” Netherton lied, “but yes. As the oldest, Anton’s in line to inherit the klepty bits, with Radomir next in line.” Radomir, between Lev and Anton in age, quite thuggish in his own right, fancied himself an art historian.

“Allowing Lev,” Westmarch said, “to continue to play the dilettante, while his more traditional, less ironically inclined older brothers oversee the various activities that the family business comprises.”

“I suppose so.”

“Lev’s father,” Westmarch said, lowering his voice, “no longer feels that Anton would be the best choice to run the family businesses.”

“Why?” asked Netherton, surprised. There had, he knew, been question, prior to Anton’s own clinic stay in Putney, as to whether their father might disown him. On having taken what the clinic’s technicians strongly advised against calling the cure, Anton had been welcomed back into his previous position. This had led to Lev’s having been familiar with the clinic, which he’d eventually recommended, in no uncertain terms, to Netherton himself. Without which, Netherton now supposed, he wouldn’t be sitting here, and wouldn’t have a wife or son.

“That’s my informant’s story to tell,” Westmarch said. “Not mine.”

“They’re an informant now, are they?” Netherton tried a sip of espresso, finding it excellent. “And who might they be?” Not really expecting an answer.

“Lev’s estranged wife,” Westmarch said, watching him.

Netherton, midway through a second sip, was surprised. “More than estranged, I’ve assumed.”

“Papers haven’t gone through,” said Westmarch.

“And why would you suppose that Lowbeer would find this of interest?”

“Because Anton, since the split, has become involved with Lev’s wife.”

“Does Lev know this?”

“Apparently not.”

“Do their children?” Not a question he would have asked, prior to Thomas.

“No.”

“Was it a factor in her wanting Lev to leave?”

“No,” said Westmarch. “That was triggered by her discovery of Lev’s affair. Recently, however, she’s learned that the girl Lev was involved with was put up to it by Anton.”

Netherton considered this. “It’s certainly nasty, whether true or not, but I don’t see why this should be of any particular interest to Inspector Lowbeer.”

“Dominika, I can tell you, knows all this because Anton’s been using drugs. Chinese ones, apparently, designed to be quite impossible to detect. They do, however, disinhibit him, which he enjoys, and which leads him to tell her things he otherwise wouldn’t. His father, meanwhile, has come to suspect him of drug use, and needless to say is reconsidering his fitness as business heir.”

Lowbeer’s sigil, the coronet, appeared in Netherton’s field of vision. He tapped his left front tooth with his tongue.

“Ask him,” Lowbeer said, “how Dominika knows this about the father.”

“But how does Dominika know this?” he asked. “Is she in the father’s confidence?”

“No,” said Westmarch. “It’s all from Anton, in his cups so to speak.”

“But how does he know?” Netherton asked.

“Because,” Westmarch said, “he’s being advised by someone who’s penetrated the father’s most secure communications. And that person, according to Dominika, is someone with an agenda involving the dissolution of Lowbeer’s position.”

At this last, the golden coronet pulsed again. “Tell him I’ll speak with him now,” Lowbeer said. “Best if you aren’t present.”

“She going to speak with you now,” Netherton said. “I’ll be going, in order that your conversation be private.” He stood.

Westmarch looked up at him. “What?” His eyes widened. “The coronet? That’s her?”

“Yes. Best take it.” Netherton turned and made for the door.

“Hello?” he heard Westmarch say, behind him. “Yes, yes it is. Bevan. A pleasure. Thank you—”