Free Fedora by John Harvey Page A

coat that swayed around her as she walked; black trousers, a white shirt, soft leather bag slung over one shoulder. Her dark hair was cut short, shorter than he remembered, taking an extra shine from the lighting overhead. As she approached the table her face broke into a smile. She looked Kiley thought, allowing himself the odd ageist indiscretion, lovelier that any forty-four year old woman had the right.
    ‘Jack, you could at least have worn the hat.’
    ‘Saving it for a special occasion.’
    ‘You mean this isn’t one?’
    ‘We’ll see.’
    She kissed him on the mouth.
    ‘I’m famished,’ she said. ‘You going to eat?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘The food’s good. Very good.’
    There was an omelette on the menu, the cost, Kiley reckoned, of a meal at McDonald’s or Subway for a family of five. When it came it was fat and delicious, stuffed with spinach, shallots and red pepper and bright with the taste of fresh chillis. Kate had poached eggs on sourdough toast with portobello mushrooms. She’d scarcely punctured the first egg when she got down to it.
    ‘Jack, a favour.’
    He paused with his fork half-way to his mouth.
    ‘Graeme Fisher, mean anything to you?’
    ‘Vaguely.’ He didn’t know how or in what connection.
    ‘Photographer, big in the sixties. Bailey, Duffy, Fisher. The big three, according to some. Fashion, that was his thing. Everyone’s thing.
Biba
.
Vogue
. You couldn’t open a magazine, look at a hoarding without one of his pictures staring back at you.’ She took a sip from her espresso. ‘He disappeared for a while in the eighties – early seventies, eighties. Australia, maybe, I’m not sure. Resurfaced with a show at Victoria Miro, new work, quite a bit different. Cooler, more detached: buildings, interiors, mostly empty. Very few people.’
    Skip the art history, Kiley thought, this is leading where?
    ‘I did a profile of him for the
Independent on Sunday
,’ Kate said. ‘Liked him. Self-deprecating, almost humble. Genuine.’
    ‘What’s he done?’ Kiley asked.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘But he is in some kind of trouble?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Shenanigans.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Someone else’s wife; someone else’s son, daughter. What used to be called indiscretions. Now it’s something more serious.’
    Following the high-profile arrests of several prominent media personalities, accused of a variety of sexual offences dating back up to forty years, reports to the police of historic rape and serious sexual abuse had increased four-fold. Men – it was mostly men – who had enjoyed both the spotlight and the supposed sexual liberation of the sixties and later were contacting their lawyers, setting up damage limitation exercises, quaking in their shoes.
    ‘You’ve still got contacts in the Met, haven’t you, Jack?’
    ‘A few.’
    ‘I thought if there was anyone you knew – Operation Yewtree, is that what it’s called? – I thought you might be able to have a word on the quiet, find out if Fisher was one of the people they were taking an interest in.’
    ‘Should they be?’
    ‘No. No.’
    ‘Because if they’re not, the minute I mention his name, they’re going to be all over him like flies.’
    Kate cut away a small piece of toast, added mushroom, a smidgeon of egg. ‘Maybe there’s another way.’
    Kiley said nothing.
    As if forgetting she’d changed the style, Kate smoothed a hand across her forehead to brush away a strand of hair. ‘When he was what? Twenty-nine? Thirty? He had this relationship with a girl, a model.’
    Kiley nodded, sensing where this was going.
    ‘She was young,’ Kate said. ‘Fifteen. Fifteen when it started.’
    ‘Fifteen,’ Kiley said quietly.
    ‘It wasn’t aggressive, wasn’t in any sense against her will, it was … like I say, it was a relationship, a proper relationship. It wasn’t even secret. People knew.’
    ‘People?’
    ‘In the business. Friends. They were an item.’
    ‘And that made it okay? An