‘Yes. That one.’
‘Oligarch.’
‘As you say.’
‘Rumours about …’
‘Yes, quite.’
I took a deep, deep breath. Really, if there was one man I would choose not to get mixed up with in any way whatsoever, he would probably be it.
‘The thing is, Joss …’
‘He’s a dangerous man, but he has an impeccable public façade.’
‘Well, yes, he is, and he has, but that isn’t what I was going to say.’
‘What, then?’
‘No newspaper would print a sex-scandal story about him. And if they did, I certainly wouldn’t want my byline on it.’
‘Well, I suppose I knew that, deep down. That’s why I held off telling you his name for so long. But couldn’t you file anonymously? And surely some editor somewhere would be brave enough?’
‘Not brave – stupid. Really, really stupid. For fuck’s sake, Joss. I thought this was going to be some lame celebrity or politician. Not the prince of fucking darkness.’
He drew his knees up to his chin and gave me the most wretched of hopeless looks.
‘It’s all over, then?’ he said. ‘You’re pulling out?’
I shook my head.
‘I have to think about this. You see, the other thing I should mention is that we’ve met before.’
‘Oh, God, really?’
‘In Budapest, years ago, the year I started out there. I can’t guarantee he’d remember me, but he might.’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Joss. ‘This really is all over with. How did you meet him?’
‘I wanted to interview him about a project he was funding. He was going to turn a block of slum buildings into a shopping mall and entertainment complex. He circumvented about a thousand planning regulations and I wanted to ask him about it.’
Joss sucked in a breath, his mouth stretching downwards.
‘Brave of you.’
‘Well, it would have been. But in the end, the questions were never asked because the interview was nixed by the powers that be. So I went down to the site the next day to try and find out some more.’
‘Proper newshound, you, aren’t you?’
‘Well, I used to be, apparently. I stood and watched the building work from a safe distance, then this man in a hard hat came over. I thought he was the site manager or something. Starts warning me in terrible Hungarian that the place is dangerous and I shouldn’t hang around. I make some smart alecky comment about some bad grammatical construction he’s just come out with and he looks at me properly, really hard. I thought he might hit me. But instead he said he was due a break and did I want to get a coffee with him.’
‘This was our Arkady, I take it.’
‘Well, yes – I wasn’t sure straightaway because of all the building gear and the dust, but once he washed up and took it off and we were in a café, it was clearly him. He’d guessed I was British or American from my accent and wanted to ask me about my homeland because he was thinking of acquiring some business interests in those places. So we chatted about Britain and Britishness in quite a general way, then he asked me out to dinner.’
‘He fancied you.’
‘I suppose. Obviously I accepted. I wanted my interview. But he was slippery as an eel, I couldn’t get a damn thing out of him. He was far more interested in the full-on seduction. But I told him I had a boyfriend and he didn’t pursue it, let me leave without anything heavy. Though he did give me his number.’