Her words hung in the air. Poe could almost see them.
For several moments neither of them spoke. Poe could hear the television in the apartment below.
‘I didn’t tell you the Curator’s fee was three million pounds,’ he said quietly.
‘I … I assumed, what with you saying all those things you said he’d been asked to do, that’s about what his fee would be.’
Poe said nothing. Just stared at her.
‘Makes no difference, though,’ she said. ‘The facts remain the same. I can’t be the person who hired him because I don’t have three million pounds.’
Poe reached into his inside pocket. He withdrew a sheaf of documents. He put on his reading glasses and read from the top one.
‘Thing is, Tilly tells me that a lot of people who invested in bitcoin in the early days made staggering amounts of money. Money that was never declared and is almost untraceable.’
‘Is that all you have? A theory about bitcoin?’
Poe shook his head.
‘I researched your bank,’ he said. ‘You’re not quite the put-upon corporate drone, are you, Jessica? Far from occupying the relatively junior position you claimed on Boxing Day – you’re actually a senior vice president. Something to do with mergers and acquisitions, whatever that is. It also says here that although your bank did own this apartment, they sold it three years ago when they moved their property investments out of the UK and into mainland Europe. Part of their Brexit preparations apparently. It was bought for cash by an offshore company. That’s who you rent it from.’
He turned the page.
‘And about your Tenzing Norgay axe,’ he said, gesturing towards the mountaineering display in the corner of the room, ‘the one you claim is a replica. According to this, Christie’s in New York sold the original at auction last year. It went for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have a friend in the FBI now and she did some digging. Guess what she found?’
Jessica shrugged.
‘It was bought by the same offshore company that owns this apartment.’
Poe looked at her over his reading glasses.
‘Is this all a coincidence as well, Jessica?’
She held his gaze for a few seconds then smiled.
‘Busted,’ she said. She pouted, put on a squeaky, cute voice. ‘Jessica’s been a very naughty girl.’
‘Yes, you have,’ Poe said.
‘So what happens next?’
‘You’re going to tell me why. You’re going to tell me why you paid to have your own nephew killed.’
‘You seem to know everything, why don’t you tell me?’
‘OK, I will,’ he said. ‘I think this started with you being told you had Addison’s disease.’
‘Does it now?’
‘Because, although you told me you had been diagnosed with it, you didn’t tell me how you were diagnosed with it. But I think I can guess. You’re a mountaineer. A very good one by the looks of it. You’ve climbed all over the world but the one climb you haven’t done is Everest. And until you have it’s like a pebble in your shoe. Even if it isn’t hurting you know you’ll have to take it out at some point.’
Jessica scowled.
‘You decide to go for it. You start planning. You don’t want to be part of an organised tour so you assemble a team to go with. How am I doing?’
Jessica shrugged again and spilled more of her wine. She got up and refilled her glass.
Poe continued.