by T. M. Logan
‘He drives a black Audi, a nineteen plate. Nice car.’
‘Seen a lot of nice cars here.’
I bet you have, I thought. It struck me again how close in age this girl was to Abbie, how close in many respects – except all those that made a difference. If this was Abbie, what would I want a stranger to do? What would I hope for?
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘There must be people who can help you get off the street. Let me help you.’
‘Said I don’t know him.’ She glanced quickly across the road, then back into my car. ‘You looking for business, or not? It’s twenty-five quid.’
Across the road, in the shadows beneath the trees, I caught a hint of movement.
‘How old are you?’
‘Are you CID, or what?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I have a daughter about the same age as—’
I jumped at a heavy thump against the side of my car. A bald man in an Adidas sweatshirt, his face thick with stubble, was at the driver’s side window. The man banged again, rings rat-a-tat-tatting against the glass, gesturing for me to wind down the window.
I did as instructed. The bald man had a small hoop earring in one ear, his face lit by a street light on one side, dark with shadow on the other. He leaned down into the car, one hand clamped around the Peugeot’s door frame as if he might try to wrench it open at any moment. I smelt him before he spoke: pungent, musky aftershave on top of sweat and weed and fried onions.
‘Looking for something, pal?’
‘I was just asking whether she’d seen my friend.’
I turned to gesture to the woman but she was moving away, her shape already disappearing back into the darkness. When I turned back there was a burst of pain in my jaw, a dizzying moment of confusion before I saw the bald man withdrawing his fist.
‘Time for you to get lost before you cost me more business, pal.’
I cursed, blinking away the pain. It was years, decades, since I’d last taken a punch and my head rang with the impact.
I took a ragged breath. ‘No need for that, mate. I’m just asking if anyone has seen my friend in the last few days.’
I held up the picture of Ryan but the bald man slapped the phone out of my hand, sending it spinning into the passenger footwell.
‘You looking for a proper hiding, or what?’ He leaned further into the car, nostrils flaring. ‘I said. Get. Lost.’
He kicked the car door for emphasis, a flat crump of metal buckling under his boot.
I started the car and moved off, buzzing both windows up and watching as the man’s bulky frame shrank in my rearview mirror. I still felt dizzy from the punch, stars still flickering at the edges of my vision, the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. I pulled over 200 yards further up the road, trying to steady my breathing, flicking the dome light on so I could check for any damage that I might have to explain to Claire. Another lie. I fingered the skin along my jawline where the guy had hit me – it was tender now and there would probably be a bruise in the morning. But it was just a cut in the gum, a bit of blood, nothing too bad.
I picked my phone up and took the little black notebook out of my jacket pocket. Opened to the page at the back and wrote: Forest Road West – Radford – Tuesday eve – red-light area. Prostitute recognised him? The entries above read:
98 Neilson Road, Bestwood – visits x2 – why? Security camera. Dealer?
Edale, Derbyshire Peak District – visit x1 – not Manchester?
There was definitely something in the way the thin woman had looked at the picture. Something in the way she had dismissed it. Recognition? Would she even have admitted if she—
There was a tapping on the passenger side window.
Shit, I thought. He’s back.
But it wasn’t the bald pimp. It was another young woman, shoulder length blonde hair and bright red lipstick, handbag strap across her chest, leaning down to look into the car. This one didn’t look like an addict.
‘Looking for business?’ she said as I buzzed the window down.
They must all work from the same script, I thought.
‘I’m actually looking for a friend of mine, drives a black Audi with a 19 plate.’ I called up Ryan’s Facebook profile on my phone again, held it up to her. ‘I was wondering if you’d seen this guy a few days ago?’
She glanced at it, frowned, shook her head.
‘Can’t say I have, love.’ She leaned further down into the window, cleavage on display. ‘Is there anything else you’re looking for?’
‘You sure? Were you here Tuesday night, about 9 p.m.?’
‘Do you want me to get in?’
‘No.’ My jaw was starting to throb.
‘It’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Shall I get in so we can be more comfortable?’
‘Look, I’m just going to go, OK? Sorry to waste your time.’
I was aware of a figure emerging from a parked car across the street. A man, advancing on me. Two men.
Christ, not again.
The woman at my window reached quickly into her handbag, pulled out something black. Dark edges. Held it up with her right hand, pointing it at me—
My hands instinctively went up to defend against another attack.
She opened up the wallet. A photo ID on one side, coat of arms on the other.
‘Nottinghamshire Police. Step out of the car please, sir.’
27
As I took my coat off, Claire called to me from the lounge.
‘You were a long time,’ she said. ‘How was squash?’
‘Really close match,’ I said, reciting the lie I had practiced on the drive home, feeling the familiar dull ache of guilt. ‘Went for a pint with him afterwards at the Maiden Over.’
I went into the kitchen, filled the kettle and braced myself with both hands against the worktop. You’re OK. It’s OK. You didn’t get arrested, you didn’t commit an arrestable offence. You didn’t do anything wrong. There’s no way that your boss can find out. Is there? The police had taken my name and address – I’d been too stunned to lie – and given me a stern warning about the penalties for soliciting prostitution on the streets of the city.
I’d given them Ryan’s name too.
Shit. It suddenly occurred to me that Ryan was a special constable with the police. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? What if the detectives running tonight’s sting operation knew him? What if the woman recognised him from the picture on my phone? What if they mentioned it to him? It was too late now to do anything about that, apart from hope they’d never seen him before. He’d only transferred here from Manchester a few months ago, how likely was it that his name had got around? It was impossible to say.
The car needed to be fixed too. There was a big ugly dent in the driver’s side door, where the bald pimp had tried to put his boot through it. I would need to leave the house early tomorrow morning, drop it at the garage for a repair before Claire spotted it.
I went to the lounge doorway, keeping my face turned towards the right so she wouldn’t see the bruise already starting to darken my jawline.
Claire was on the sofa wrapped in her dark towelling dressing gown, feet tucked under her, watching tennis on TV with a magazine and mobile in her lap.
‘How’s Jason?’ she said. ‘Haven’t seen him in ages.’
‘Still the same, you know. Still likes a pint, still a bit of a character.’
‘His boys all right?’
‘Yeah, they’re all good. Tom’s doing his A levels, wants to go to Keele Uni.’
‘Is Jason still dating?’
‘We didn’t really talk about that,’ I turned to go. ‘Just going to check my emails before I head up.’
‘Ed?’ Claire said, frowning. ‘What happened to your face?’
She beckoned me over, cupping my chin between her thumb and forefinger and turning my head to the side, studying the pale yellow bruise along my jawline.
‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a real mark there, what happened?’
‘It’s nothing,’ I shrugged. ‘Jason caught me with the squash ball.’
‘You want to be careful playing him, he belts it so hard. Doesn’t know his own strength.’
‘I just need to be quicker at getting out of the way.’
She frowned, squeezing my arm. ‘Do you want ibuprofen? I think there’s some in my handbag.’
‘It’s fine, really.’
‘Who won, anyway?’
‘Won what?’
She threw me a quizzical look. ‘Squash?’
‘Oh, that.’ I said. ‘Yeah, Jason won, as usual.’
I backed out of the room. In the kitchen I flicked the kettle on and rubbed at my aching jaw.
The days were slipping away from me, the wedding date approaching fast. I was trying to do my best for Abbie – but it wasn’t enough. If I was going to protect her, shield her, to do my job as a parent, I needed more. I needed help.
It was time to call in a professional.
28
THURSDAY
Eighteen days until the wedding
The number ten bus into town was crowded and I stood all the way, strap-hanging and shuffling further down the aisle as more people got onboard. Past County Hall, its entrance flanked by statues of coalminers carved from Portland stone, through city-bound traffic on Trent Bridge and on through the tightly-packed modern housing in the Meadows. Across the aisle from me was a small boy with curly blond hair, perhaps two or three years old, sitting on his father’s lap. I gave the boy a little smile but he buried his face in his father’s chest, thumb going to his mouth. I felt the old stab of grief, still sharp enough to pierce my heart.
I had failed one child. I wouldn’t fail the other.
The morning’s meetings dragged on forever but I had to wait until lunchtime before I could legitimately leave the office. At the stroke of noon I grabbed my jacket and headed out into Market Square, turning left through crowds of shoppers. Ten minutes later I was standing in front of a four-storey redbrick in the city’s Lace Market district, an old Victorian warehouse converted into ultra-modern office space popular with design agencies, architects and law firms. An innocuous-looking steel plate announced the names of the businesses operating from number 1 Broadway. Midland Investigations Limited was on the top floor.
I sat in a smart beige armchair in a waiting area beneath a skylight that bathed the room in morning sunshine. The room was light, clean and tidy, the furniture was new and the whole place smelt of new carpets and fresh flowers. Through a ceiling-high glass partition I could see a long double-row of desks, computers manned by young men and women – mostly in their twenties – wearing headsets, typing, smiling, talking. A couple of smaller office spaces off to the side.
Business must be good.
I had expected a dingy basement, maybe a cluttered office filled with clouds of cigarette smoke, something which fit a little closer with my idea of a private investigator. I hadn’t expected this.
Joel Farmer was a slim man in his early forties, skin the colour of milky coffee and dark salt-and-pepper hair cropped close to his head. He greeted me with a warm handshake, ushering me into the larger of the two offices and asking me to take a seat. As he sat back behind his desk, Farmer gestured over his shoulder with a thumb.
‘Are you OK with dogs, Mr Collier?’
A black Labrador lay flat out in a basket in the corner, tail beating a slow welcome against her blanket.
‘I love dogs,’ I smiled. ‘But my wife and I both work full time and I didn’t like the idea of leaving one home alone all day.’
‘Me neither,’ Farmer said.
As if on cue the grey-whiskered Labrador got slowly to her feet, tottered up to my chair, circled me, sniffed, and laid her chin on my thigh, gazing up at me with big soft amber eyes. I scratched the silky black hair between her ears for a moment, before she returned to the basket in the corner and flopped down on her side with a contented sigh.
‘Rosie approves of you,’ Farmer said with an easy smile. He was softly-spoken, as if he was considering each word, but there was a wiry self-confidence about the way he held himself. A muscular grace emphasised by the tiny pale scars that crisscrossed the ridges of his knuckles.
‘She’s gorgeous,’ I said. ‘Is she on the payroll?’
‘Best nose in the business,’ Farmer said. ‘So what can I do for you today, Mr Collier?’
I had thought about how to phrase my problem, how to explain it, but in the end I just came straight out with it.
‘It’s my daughter’s fiancé. I need to find out about him, before the marriage happens.’
‘OK.’ Farmer opened his hands. ‘Because . . . ?’
‘Because I think he’s hiding something. I don’t trust him, I get a really bad vibe from him.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s hard to explain. I suppose it’s not that common, wanting to find out about your potential son-in-law, I mean.’
‘It’s a lot more common than you think, although we normally do pre-nuptial investigations for a future spouse rather than the parents-in-law.’ He plucked a pen from a pot on his desk. ‘Is there anything in particular you’d like us to pay close attention to? Any alarm bells that are ringing the loudest? We offer the full range of investigative options, which includes tracing services, background checks, fraud and injury claims, infidelity checks, proof of cohabitation and catfish tracing. We also offer lie detector tests, surveillance, and debugging.’
‘Debugging as in . . . ?’
‘Electronic sweeps of your house or office to detect any kind of surveillance device that might be there without your knowledge. Probably not necessary for you. In your case, I’d suggest a full background check including identity, employment history, credit history, education and any criminal record information. Whatever is within the bounds of the law, Mr Collier.’
‘There’s so much with him that doesn’t quite ring true.’
‘We can certainly run a full background check, take a good look at him.’ He made a note on his pad. ‘Have you considered vehicle tracking too?’
I swallowed. ‘Is that legal?’
‘One hundred and ten per cent legal.’ Farmer leaned forward on his desk. ‘And it allows us to build up a picture of the subject’s movements without having to do days or weeks of on-site surveillance. I’d normally suggest an initial period of two weeks – that means you can compare the first week against the second to see if there is a pattern of movement or visits to an address which is outside the pattern. We give you a code to access the tracking data online, and you’ll be able to see a vehicle’s location, speed, direction of movement and full travel history. It’s a lot more cost-effective than in-person surveillance with photography, which we can do for you as a follow-up service but is obviously a lot more labour-intensive.’
‘Actually I . . . tried using a GPS tracker already.’
‘Right.’ Farmer didn’t seem the least bit surprised. ‘Are you still using it now?’
‘It came off his car, not sure how.’
The tracker had stopped working this morning. At first I’d thought the battery must have given out, even though the unit was guaranteed to carry a charge that would last at least fourteen days. But it had been cheap, and since most purchases were probably made by people using the trackers in a way that was less than completely legal, I guessed they didn’t get many complaints.
The last place it had transmitted from was about halfway along Derby Road, which was one of the main routes into the city from where Ryan lived in Beeston. I hoped that it had simply fallen off his car – perhaps shaken loose when he drove over a pothole. Maybe the wheel arch had been the wrong place to put it. I didn’t want to think about the other possibility: that Ryan had found it somehow.
Relax. There’s no way he can connect it to you. No reason why he should think it’s you.
‘Bet you bought it on Amazon, right?’ Farmer said. ‘Not surprised it came off – you can’t get the quality there. We use a commercial grad
e tracking package that’s smaller, more discreet and more powerful than anything you can buy on the consumer market. Deployed on the underside of the chassis, no chance of it being discovered, no chance of accidental loss. Real data, proper results.’
He reached into his desk drawer and took out a small metallic device, about half the size of a mobile phone, and handed it across the desk.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s do the tracking as well.’ I weighed the device in my hand. ‘When you’re doing the background checks and everything else, will the . . . subject of the enquiries be aware you’re doing it?’
‘Absolutely not. Complete confidentiality and discretion is guaranteed. All we need is his full name, plus his date of birth or last known address.’
‘I’ve got that.’
Farmer typed on his keyboard and a moment later a sheet chugged out of the printer. He reversed it and slid it across the table to me.
‘Here’s a quote with a summary of services and our terms of engagement. I’ll need a sixty-five per cent retainer now if you want to proceed, payment of the balance due on delivery of your report.’
I looked at the figure and swallowed hard. Claire will kill me if she finds out. Not to mention the restructure at work, what if I come out on the wrong end of that? What then?
I would worry about all that later.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘It’s quite a lot more than I thought it would be.’
‘Peace of mind is worth the investment, in my experience.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘I should be able to get an initial verbal report to you in ten to fourteen days, depending on what we find.’
‘Ten to fourteen days will be cutting it very fine. Can you put a rush on it?’
‘In my business, unless you’re absolutely thorough and completely meticulous there’s little point getting started in the first place.’
‘I suppose thorough is exactly what I need.’ I nodded and reached for my wallet. ‘Do you take credit cards?’