Reaching her table, he gave her a long, appraising look, then a broad smile. “You must be Genevieve Hunter, yes?” he said. “We meet at last. Sorry I’m late. So tell me—what have I done? Why the sudden interest from the News?”
Gini’s first impression of the man was that he was—or intended to be—disarming. He seemed very relaxed; he ordered himself a Mexican beer, which he drank in a modish way, from the bottle with a twist of lime. He lit a cigarette, chatted away about nothing in particular, complained in a rueful way that he’d been at a party the night before, and was nursing the mother of all hangovers. He must have been in his forties but looked younger. He had a soft, freckled, almost girlish face. His manner was mildly flirtatious, but he had alert greenish-blue eyes, and she suspected that beneath all his badinage, he was no fool.
That impression was rapidly confirmed the second she mentioned James McMullen’s name. Kent was not ingenuous, as his employees Hazel and Bernie had been; she was scarcely into her preamble before he stopped her with a little lift of the hand.
“Hey, slow down just a second. Let me get this straight. That’s why it was so urgent to see me? You want to ask about James? Why?”
Gini had anticipated this. “Can this be confidential?” she asked.
“Sure. Sure. What fun. Go on.”
“Well, I can only give you an outline. James McMullen had been helping me with a story I’m working on, and—”
“What story would that be exactly?”
“It’s an investigation. I’d prefer not to go into the details. …”
“Oh, dear.” He gave a small smile. “I think you’re going to have to. After all, James is a friend.”
“Very well. It’s a story on British mercenary organizations. There are a number of them in existence. Their fortunes fluctuate. They’ve been especially active recently in Bosnia.”
“Sure. I’ve read that in the papers….”
“Most of them are run by ex-army personnel. It’s a secretive world, and it’s not easy to get leads. James McMullen was one of my best sources. Then he disappeared, just before Christmas.”
“James did? Well, well, well.” He gave her an appraising look. “Go on.”
“I want to find him again. Fast. His former regiment is no help at all. I’ve tried his sister and a number of friends—no luck. I thought you might know where I could track him down.”
“Is that all?” He smiled. “And I thought it was me you were interested in. What a shame.” He took another swallow of beer. “Can’t help, I’m afraid. I haven’t seen James in ages—not since last summer. James does take off, you know, for months at a time. He’s done it before.”
“But you did see him last summer?”
“Sometime then. July, August—I can’t remember. He rang up out of the blue. We had dinner together, a rather drunken dinner—on my side anyway. James doesn’t drink much, as you may know. We went back to that flat of his, down by the river—you’ve been there?”
“Yes, I have. It’s a great apartment.”
“Isn’t it just? Anyway, we went back there, talked for a while, I toddled off, late, around three in the morning, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Were you surprised to hear from him? Like that—out of the blue?”
He shrugged. “Not really. James and I aren’t that close anymore. We see each other from time to time. Catch up on the news, what we’ve both been up to workwise, womanwise, that sort of thing.”
There was a pause. Gini considered the date of this meeting, which must have taken place around the time McMullen had been staying in Oxfordshire with the Hawthornes. She would have liked to date it more precisely, to know whether it took place before or after McMullen had heard the story of her marriage from Lise.
“So tell me,” she went on. “When you had that meeting, did McMullen seemed changed in any way? Did he discuss with you any major event that had happened to him recently?”
Kent considered, then shrugged. “A major event? Nothing I can remember. But then, James doesn’t really go in for confessionals—it’s not his style. He’d thrown up that dreary banking job his father had foisted on him, but that was much earlier that year.” He gave her another of those rueful, engaging smiles. “I probably did most of the talking. Banged on about the films I was making, that kind of thing. Two drinks and I become a monomaniac.”
He glanced away toward the bar. Catching the eye of the voice-over king, he gave a little gesture of greeting. He took another long swallow of the Mexican beer. Gini hesitated. Prior-Kent was not the type of man she would expect to be behind an escort agency, or sex education videos, and she could foresee this interview dwindling away into amiable anecdotes that were no use to her at all. Thanks to his lateness, she was now running out of time. What she needed, she decided, was some leverage.
“So,” she began carefully, raising her eyes to his. “When you had that conversation with James McMullen, and you were telling him about your work, did you mention your other activities, or just the ads you make for TV?”
There was a small silence. Kent put down his beer. “Other activities?”
“Your less public activities. The ones you don’t list for Salamander Films in the trade directories. The sex education videos you make, for instance. Or the escort agency your company runs from the same address. Or your telephone sex line operations. Did you tell James McMullen about those?”
The question had been risky, and the silence following it was long. Gini would not have been surprised had Kent ended the interview there and then, but, instead, he gave her a long, considering look. She saw amusement begin in his eyes; he smiled, and then he laughed.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, bloody hell.” He sighed. “Mistake, Jeremy, my old son. Rule number one, never talk to reporters. Rule number two, be especially wary if they have blond hair and beautiful eyes and a sweet smile. I suppose I should have known. Ah, well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later. What am I facing now, a full-scale exposé in the News? The porn king revealed?”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “I suppose there’s no way to head you off? Think of my poor old white-haired mother, Genevieve, explaining this one to the neighbors. Think of my rather rich accountant trying to cope when the Revenue investigators start knocking on his door.” He smiled. “Are you sure you have it in your heart to do this, Genevieve? It’s all legal and above board, you know.”
He put his hand on his heart as he said this. He wrinkled his freckled nose and gave her a look of mock pleading. “Come on, Genevieve. Do you really want to leave me a broken man? Bloody hell—I don’t think I can take this. On top of a screaming hangover too. Meeting my nemesis at The Groucho. It’s too much. Maybe I’ll have a gigantic gin and tonic. How about you?”
He rose to his feet as he said this, and ambled his way across to the bar. He returned with two very large gins and one small bottle of tonic. He slid into the seat opposite her, still with an air of contained amusement. He lit another cigarette, took a large swallow of neat gin, and shuddered.
“Fine. I feel much stronger now. Maybe I’ll enjoy being notorious, you never know. I expect I’ll learn to live with it. So tell me, where do we go from here?”
Despite herself, Gini was amused. She looked at Kent carefully. He gave her a nonchalant smile.
“Well,” she began. “It may surprise you to hear this, but I do genuinely want information on James McMullen.”
“You do?” He raised his eyebrows. “But not for the reasons stated?”
“No. For other reasons. I need background. I need information. Now, I could write a pretty good story about your business empire, but as you say, it is legal—just about. And it’s not at the top of my list of priorities right now.”
“Ah, I begin to see.” His smile broadened. He began to look relieved. “So you thought, to get that information, you’d pressure me just a little? Bad, Genevieve. Bad…” He shook a reproving finger at her. Gini smiled.
“Listen, I’d pressure yo
u any way I can. Whatever it takes. I need this information, and I need it fast. If the only way to get it from you involves upsetting your poor white-haired old mother—”
“—And my accountant. Let’s not forget him.”
“And your accountant. If that’s what it takes to get your assistance, then too bad. On the other hand, if you were to cooperate…”
“Oh, I’ll cooperate.” He leaned forward. “Have dinner with me tonight, and I’ll cooperate a whole lot more. …No? Shame…” He stretched, added a little tonic to the gin in his glass, and sipped it. “You needn’t have gone to these lengths, you know,” he went on. “I’ll answer any questions you have about James. Why not? I don’t know anything about him that reflects on him badly. James is terribly upright, you know. Not like me at all.”
“So you will answer my questions?”
“Can’t wait.” He stretched. “Give me the third degree. What a thrill.”
Gini took out her notebook.
“No tape recorder?” Kent smiled.
“It’s too noisy in here. And I don’t need it. I take shorthand.”
“You do? What a marvelous girl you are. Has anyone ever told you that your eyes—” He broke off and laughed. “Okay. Okay. Sorry. Go on.”
“Can we start with the meeting you had with James McMullen last summer? Can you date it more precisely? Was it July or August?”
“Now I think about it, it must have been August. Yes, that’s right. James had just come back from some shooting party in Yorkshire—he’s a very good shot, you know. Loves that kind of thing. Blasting birds out of the sky. The grouse season doesn’t begin until August twelfth, so it must have been later that month. Yes.”
After the meeting with Lise, Gini thought. She tapped her notebook. “At the meeting, did McMullen ask you specifically about your escort agency?”
“Let me think.” Kent frowned. “He knew about it anyway, most of my friends do. I’m not it’s sole owner by the way—it’s more of a sideline from my point of view. It’s the films that make the really big money. I know we discussed those. The escort agency…you know, we did discuss it, I remember now, because James was asking me questions—what kind of men used it, that sort of thing. And I was rather surprised. James is a pretty straitlaced kind of guy, doesn’t approve of that kind of thing.”
“So he knew about the agency, and questioned you about it. Did he know its name and location?”
“Oh, yes. Sure.”
“He didn’t suggest he might ever make use of its services?”
“James? Good God, not even as a joke. No way.”
“He didn’t imply he knew of someone who might like to make use of its services?”
“No. Definitely not. I told you, James disapproves of anything like that. He has a very strict moral code.”
“Did he talk about his own personal life at all? He didn’t mention any emotional entanglement, any involvement with a woman, for instance?”
“No.” He grinned. “I banged on quite a lot about my lovelife, which tends to be a bit operatic. In James’s case”—he frowned—“I guess I’ve always rather assumed there wasn’t anyone. There never seemed to be. He’s not terribly good at dealing with women—can’t talk to them. A legacy from the army, maybe, or school. Except it didn’t affect me that way—school, I mean. All those years in a single-sex boarding school. The minute I left, I made up for lost time.”
“All right,” Gini looked at him thoughtfully. “Fill me in just a little. You were at school with James McMullen, and you went up to Oxford, the same college, the same year—fall 1968, is that right?”
“That’s right. Sixty-eight” He smiled. “That glorious year. I wasn’t in James’s league academically, needless to say. He had a scholarship, I just scraped in. But I’d known James for a very long time by then. We first met when we were sent away to prep school. We boarded together aged eight onward, you know. One of those English barbarities. All that regimentation. All that manly propaganda.”
“So can you tell me what happened once you went up to Oxford? If James McMullen was such a high flyer, how come he left?”
“Oh, that. You didn’t know?” He gave her a glance. “Well, James was ill. He was whisked back home by that dire mother of his. Everyone thought it was just temporary. But it wasn’t. He left, and he never returned.”
“So it was a serious illness? What kind of illness. Physical? Mental?”
“I’m not too sure.” He shrugged. “James never discusses it. None of his family ever does, not even that sister of his.” He gave her a glance. “The sister from hell. Have you met her?” He paused. “No, the official line was James had one of those vague lingering things. Hepatitis? No. Rheumatic fever? I think that was it I can’t really remember the details. It was a long time ago.”
“If that was the official version, what was the true reason? Do you know?”
“No. Not for sure. I always suspected he had a breakdown of some kind. But if he did, they kept it very quiet. James was swept off to the depths of Shropshire. He wrote to me occasionally, but I didn’t see him after he left Oxford. Not for two or three years.” He shook his head. “If it was a breakdown, then it’s all a bit odd. On the one hand, it was serious enough to end his time at Oxford. On the other hand, it can’t have been that serious. He was accepted by the army at the end of 1972. And the British Army isn’t too keen on officer recruits who’ve put in time in a funny farm.”
“So what’s your personal opinion?”
“I think he was badly stressed out. I think the parents coped, somehow, and presumably he got better. When the army came to check his medical records, they must have been satisfied. And if they had any doubts, well, half James’s family have heavy army connections. Grandfather, uncles, cousins: generals to the right of him, lieutenant-colonels to the left of him. They could always have pulled strings.”
“I see. That’s interesting.” Gini looked at him thoughtfully. “So, as a friend, how did you find him? Then and later. Would you have said he had a tendency to mental instability? Did you ever find him obsessional, say? Would you ever have described him as a fantasist, or a bit paranoid—anything like that?”
“No.” Kent did not even hesitate before he replied. “No, not at all. Quite the reverse. James is frighteningly rational—he always was. I mean, we can all get a bit paranoid, can’t we? I certainly do. But James isn’t like that. In fact, if he has a weakness, it’s that he doesn’t understand gray areas. He likes everything to be clear, cut and dried, desperately factual. He does have an imagination, but I think he suppresses it. It alarms him. He was always like that, even at school. There’s a wild side to James, a kind of passionate, romantic, crusading side to him. But he keeps it under very strict control.”
“So he is the kind of man who might be directed toward causes, for instance?”
“Oh, sure. It’s why he joined the army. The army gave him a sense of purpose. Something very simple with very definite, honorable objectives. Defending his country. He clung to that idea.” He gave a smile. “I was always rather touched by that. It seemed so old-fashioned. But by the time James was claiming to enjoy Sandhurst training, I was pounding the King’s Road in sandals and Indian beads. Peace and love. Turn on, tune in, and drop out. Flower power, Genevieve.” His smile broadened. “Then time passed, of course. I discovered capitalism and commerce had some advantages after all.”
Kent gave her a little glance. He sighed. “You don’t remember, and why would you? You’re far too young. And you’re making me feel desperately old. But that’s how it was, Genevieve. The wonderful world of the late sixties and early seventies. One long, glorious trip. I took that voyage, but James didn’t. Not at all.”
There was a silence. Gini scribbled a few notes. She looked at some of the paradoxes here: Kent, an ex-hippie now transformed into an Armani-clad high-earner, boosting his income and staying just inside of the law; and McMullen, a rationalist, a self-disciplinarian, who saw joining the army as
a cause. She turned a page of her notebook and looked back at Kent, who was now checking his watch.
“You’re making me late for my lunch,” he said. “And I really don’t care. What the hell. It’s fun, remembering. You’d have really liked me then, Genevieve. I had a Che Guevara beard, and hair down to here….” He gestured somewhere mid-chest.
Gini returned his smile. “Okay,” she said. “Can we take a closer look at that period—1968, the year you and McMullen went up to Oxford. He left the following year. You think he could have had some kind of nervous breakdown. Were there any signs of that prior to his leaving Oxford? Did he seem under strain?”
“Not exactly. He was miserable, unhappy—that was obvious. He tried to throw himself into things—he worked desperately hard. He became a bit solitary, actually. You know—never went to parties, never took girls out, never got drunk. I should probably have made more effort to talk to him, but you know how it is. I was too busy having a good time. Then, next thing I knew, he’d gone.”
“Right. Then can we look a little further back? If he seemed miserable at Oxford, was he before? Did he have moods, depressions, at school for instance?”
“At school? God no. Not at all.”
“So he changed, in other words? Try to remember—when did that change begin? Did you see him at all between school and Oxford, for example? There’s a nine-month period there, when he was in Paris, taking courses at the Sorbonne.”
“Oh, we were both in Paris then,” Kent said. “Didn’t you realize? We spent that time together. I went under protest, under persuasion from James, but it was really all his parents’ idea. They were both culture-mad. Totally determined that James wouldn’t fritter away the months before Oxford. So they fixed up for us to stay with this family in Paris, the Gravelliers. Marc Gravellier ran an art gallery on the Left Bank, so James’s mother thought we’d be perfectly placed to soak up high culture, improve our French, et cetera. I went along because James talked me into it. And because I thought Paris was bound to be full of pretty girls.”