“Nah,” Joe disagreed. “The mark of a true friend is one who doesn’t ask you to dip into your wallet when he’s broke.”
Brenda tutted at the ceiling. “Didn’t take you long to get back on form, either, did it?” she swallowed a generous helping of Campari and soda. “So come on, Sherlock, we’ve solved one of your problems tonight, how are we going to find the slimeball who killed Letty and those other poor women?”
“Slimeball?” Sheila’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve been watching American films again, haven’t you?”
Brenda smacked her lips. “Oh yes. I’ll tell you what, that Mel Gibson could—”
“Let’s stick to the Valentine Strangler, eh?” Joe interrupted. “This is a different matter to the kinda thing we normally deal with. We’re not in a hotel, we’re at home, it’s been going on for four years and there are no suspects… Correction, there are thousands of suspects. Almost every man in Sanford.”
“With the exception of you.”
“With the exception of me.” Joe rolled a cigarette. “The chances of us finding him are remote.”
“So you’re just going to let it go?” Brenda asked.
“When have you ever known me to do that? Of course I’m not going to let it go. Not while Vickers has me marked down as prime suspect. I’m just saying it’ll not be as easy as other cases we’ve cracked, and much of the trail will be cold. Even that leading from Letty’s place. To evade the plod this long, the guy must be ultra-careful. You think about all the other cases we’ve handled. Amateurs, the lot of ’em. This guy is a pro. He must be or the cops would have something on him by now.” He tucked the cigarette in his shirt pocket and reached for his topcoat. “And why else would Vickers be in a hurry to pin it on me?”
Brenda considered this for a moment. “Because he doesn’t like you.”
Sheila tittered. “There is that, but to be fair, Brenda, the police don’t usually let their personal feelings clutter up an investigation.”
“I’ll think about it while I’m having a smoke,” Joe promised and put his coat on. “Back in ten minutes.”
Leaving the room, Joe made his way downstairs and out through the lounge bar to the smoke shelter on the car park, where he found Stewart Dalmer puffing contentedly on his pipe.
“It was nothing personal up there, Joe.” Dalmer greeted him.
Joe joined him at a wooden table under the single, overhead heater, which glowed a dull red against the black backdrop of the chilly night. “No. Course not, Stewart.”
“I had the best interests of the club at heart.”
Joe lit his cigarette. “You’re happy with the compromise?”
Dalmer nodded and took the pipe from between his lips. “It’s what we English are best at,” he said with a broad smile. “Compromise.”
“Take one Englishman and you have an idiot. Two Englishmen, you have a committee.”
Dalmer laughed. “Three Englishmen and you have an empire. It’s an old quote, attributed to Hermann Göring, but I believe he said two Englishmen formed a club, not a committee.”
Joe shrugged. “Same difference.” He drew on his cigarette and blew out a thin cloud of smoke. “You knew Letty Hill, didn’t you?”
Dalmer examined the bowl of his pipe, put it back into his mouth and lit it. When it was satisfactorily smoking again, he put his lighter away. “I had a few dinner dates with her, that’s all. Nothing serious. And that’s… oh… over a year ago, now.”
“How did you meet her?” Joe asked. “Was it through the Sanford Dating Agency?”
Dalmer laughed again. “Good heavens, no. I met her at the college.”
“College?” Joe puffed on his cigarette.”I didn’t know she was a teacher. She told me—”
“She enrolled in an adult leisure class, Joe,” Dalmer interrupted. “Literary appreciation. We were reading Thackeray’s Vanity Fair that term… er, have you read it?”
Joe shook his head.”No. sorry. Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, even Mickey Spillane, but not Thackeray.”
“Pulp fiction,” Dalmer muttered with a sight air of disdain. “Not the kind of literature we discuss at the Artesian Well.”
“The where?”
“My favourite pub. It’s in Wakefield.” Dalmer gestured at the building around them. “Much better class of patron than this place. More educated; all of them. Anyway, back to Letty and the leisure classes. The idea of the class was we all read the same book across a period of one term, and each week we would meet to discuss it; the way it reflects society at the time of writing, what set it apart from other, similar novels. You know the kind of thing. It was a different book each term. We’d done Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath the term before, but Letty wasn’t with us, then. She preferred English novels to American, and she was particularly enthusiastic about Vanity Fair.”
“You make it sound as if most of the class weren’t.”
Dalmer nodded slowly. “That is so, and you can include me amongst that number. Thackeray was never one of my favourites, but the Local Education Authority set the reading, not me.”
Joe was surprised once again. “What? Even for a leisure class?”
“Even for a leisure class. There was a good deal of, shall we say, snobbery about the members of the committee. I always felt we could have encouraged more people by reading A Clockwork Orange, but…” He trailed off and shrugged.
“So you met Letty there.”
“Hmm, yes. I invited her out for dinner, she accepted. I think we met two or three times, but it was obvious, at least to me, that the woman was more interested in Thackeray than me, so I allowed things to die their natural death. We remained fairly good friends, of course, but it was never more than that.”
“Interesting. She told me you made her an offer for some antique spoons.”
Dalmer nodded. “I buy and sell antiques. A hobby more than anything.” He grinned. “No sale. Those spoons had a sentimental value far greater than their cash equivalent.”
“She told me so.” Joe’s cigarette had gone out. Relighting it, he fiddled with his brass Zippo lighter. “You won’t know if she was seeing anyone else, then?”
“Dear me, no. Nothing to do with me, anyway, was it? And we were never, er, intimate.” Dalmer puffed on his pipe again. “You’re seeking her killer in an attempt to clear your name obviously?”
“What?” Joe frowned. His thoughts had been far away. “Oh, yes. See, there was no sign of a struggle, no sign of a forced entry. That means she knew her killer. The only hint we have is a dating agency in Sanford.”
“Have you spoken to them?”
Joe took a final drag on his cigarette and crushed it out in the ashtray as he stood up. “Not yet. And I don’t know if they’ll talk to me anyway.” He smiled gruffly. “That won’t stop me asking, mind. I’ll catch you later, Stewart.”
Chapter Six
With Lee busy in the kitchens, Joe opened up the Lazy Luncheonette at six, as usual, and cast a mean Monday morning eye out on the world at large.
Despite his victory at the Miner’s Arms on Friday evening, he had had a bad weekend. A visit to Sanford Dating Agency on Saturday afternoon had proven fruitless for the simple reason that the place was closed. The police would not let him anywhere near Letty’s home, and lacking any other investigative direction, he had been reduced to sitting in his flat above the café, brooding on all that had happened. He was in no better mood on Sunday, when he joined Lee and his wife, Cheryl and young son, Danny, for lunch. He had spoken to both Sheila and Brenda on the telephone, but other than that, he chose to hide away from the world.
By the time the two women joined him at the café on Monday morning, his temper was practically explosive, and he vented it on the Sanford Brewery dray men when they began to troop in for breakfast. Sheila, Brenda and Lee did not rise to his venom, and he guessed they were indulging his frustration, and when he finally left the café at 9.30am, he felt their relief.
Stepping out of the café, glancing a
cross the dual carriageway to the access road of Doncaster Road Industrial Estate, he could see a dark blue Peugeot parked outside Broadbent’s Auto Repairs. It had been there all weekend, its occupant a thirty-something woman, with a shower of flaming red hair. Joe did not know her, but he guessed she was from the press.
Shoving two fingers up at her, he made his way to the rear of Britannia Parade, climbed into his car and made for the town centre.
The Sanford Dating Agency was located in a row of rundown shops and offices near the market. Not only a dating agency, Joe learned, but a secretarial service, too. Finding the place still closed and locked up, he wandered onto the market.
Temperatures had risen a degree or two, taking away most of the ice which had covered the pavements for the last week, and yet the day remained sunny, but bitterly cold.
As a boy he recalled some two to three hundred stalls on Sanford market, selling everything from toys to clothing to shoes, to household goods, as well as the staple fruit, veg and bread. The passing of the years, ever-increasing stall rents, tighter trading rules and stiff competition from High Street discount shops like Poundland, had seen the market reduced to perhaps a hundred stalls, many of them dealing in second hand goods.
One such belonged to Mort Norris. He had rented the stall in the southeast corner of Sanford market for as long as Joe could remember, his merchandise a mishmash of china ornaments, household bric-a-brac, record players, video recorders, out of date computers, books and magazines.
“No money about, mate,” he complained when Joe paused to pass the time with him.
Rolling a cigarette and lighting it, Joe did his best to sympathise. “It’s the same all over, Mort. Lotta my customers are taking a butty for breakfast instead of the full monty.” He blew a cloud of smoke into the sparkling air. “I thought you do better when money is tight. Second hand stuff, and that.”
“Normally, yeah, but this time…” Mort shrugged. “Everyone’s hanging on to every last penny.” Mort too, lit a cigarette. “Cops dropped the charges yet, have they?”
“There are no charges. That’s what I was telling you all on Friday night. They questioned me cos I was one of the last people to see Letty alive. Hey, talking of her, what time does that dating agency open?” Joe pointed across the market square to the parade where Sanford Dating Agency stood.
“When she feels like it, Joe. Seen her come rolling in at one in the afternoon sometimes. Times are hard, buddy, and I reckon a business like hers could go under easy as anything. I meanersay, who’s gonna pay twenty-five nicker to register with her, and then ten nicker for an intro when you can go down the pub and meet some bird for nothing?”
Joe smiled and puffed on his cigarette. “You get to meet a better class of woman for your twenty-five sovs.”
Mort laughed harshly. “Better class of woman? Do me a favour. Not if she’s taking on easy pickings like Letty Hill.”
Joe was surprised. “You knew her? You said you didn’t on Friday night.”
A woman stopped at the stall and studied a second hand vacuum cleaner on sale at £20.
“Won’t get a better deal than that on a Monday morning, luv,” Mort told her.
With a sour glance at him, she moved on.
“Miserable cow.” Mort shrugged himself deeper into his quilted topcoat and turned back to Joe. “Did I know Letty? Not well, and not in that way. I mean, jeez, Joe, I’m a married man. But she’d been round the block a few times. She was going out with Stewart Dalmer sometime last year, and George Robson was sniffing round it at one bit.” He nodded in the direction of the dating agency. “Shouldna thought she was signed up with them. Shouldna thought she’d need to be.”
“She had their card on her mantelpiece,” Joe replied. “And you just said she was with them.”
Mort shrugged again. “No, it was you who said it. You were talking about Letty and you asked when the dating shop was open.”
“Did I?” Joe paused to wonder at the complex path Mort’s mind had followed. “Yeah, but… Oh, never mind. I could go nuts talking to someone like you.”
Mort was not listening. He was concentrating on a customer studying a china shepherd boy. “Meissen that, missus. Won’t get better for a fiver.”
“Isn’t it a bit cheap for Meissen?” she asked.
“Tiny chip on the base, luv. It’s at the back so no one’ll notice. You having it, are you?”
The woman passed him the ornament and he wrapped it in tissue, handed it over and took her five-pound note.
While this was going on, Joe glanced around in time to see a head of red hair disappear behind a carpet stall on the end of the aisle. He felt his gorge rising again.
“Another satisfied customer.”
Mort’s announcement brought Joe back from the mystery reporter. “Meissen? Come off it, Mort. I don’t pass a bacon sandwich off as fillet steak.”
“Did I say Meissen? I meant Mason. Wholesalers in Stoke-on-Trent. Went bust about three years ago and I got a job lot of their bankrupt stock.” Mort grinned after the woman’s departing back. “She’ll stick it in a cabinet at home, then the next time The Antiques Roadshow is in town, she’ll have it valued and find out it’s worth about thirty bob. By then, it’ll be too late to come back to me and complain.”
Joe laughed. “You’re a bloody conman, Mort.”
“A businessman, Joe. Flannel gets you anywhere.”
A familiar head of red hair, softer, shorter this time, made its way along the square of streets surrounding the market, and caught Joe’s eye.
“There’s my niece. I’ll see y’around, Mort.”
Joe made his way through the maze of stalls and came out opposite the dating agency, where Gemma was trying the door.
“No one home,” he said. “I tried once.”
Gemma greeted him with a cold smile. “Morning, Uncle Joe. I figured you’d be here sometime today. I spoke to the woman on the phone last Friday and she promised she’d be here for ten o’clock.”
Joe checked his watch. “Only five to.” He glanced around and his eyes lighted on a large supermarket on the southwest corner. “What say we grab a cup of tea and come back in ten minutes?”
Gemma nodded.
The supermarket suffered from the Monday morning vacuum as much as the rest of town. Staff busied themselves filling shelves and freezers, managers strode self-importantly around the food hall, talking with their crew, pointing out empty shelves in need of filling, pinning up notices of special offers here and there. But customers were in short supply. There was no queue in the café either, where Joe asked for two teas while Gemma took a table by the windows.
“It’s self-service, sir,” the assistant told Joe.
“Yes, I know. So I’m forming a one-man queue, waiting for service.”
The young man shook his head. “No, sir. You take a teapot and fill it yourself from the hot water machine.” He gestured at a machine bearing a range of buttons which dispensed several kinds of coffee and boiling water for tea.
Grumbling to himself, Joe took two individual metal teapots, put one of them under the outlet, and pressed the button for hot water. When the pot was filled, he stared into clear, boiling water.
“There’s no teabag in here,” he said.
The assistant, his frustration rising, too, explained, “Some people prefer speciality teas, so you have to check whether you have a teabag in the pot.”
His temper rising again, Joe put the pot to one side and while the second filled, he checked other teapots for contents. “You know the word service, as in self-service? Did they skip that bit when they thought of this place?”
“I’m only doing my job, sir,” the lad replied. “As I was taught on my training course.”
Joe moved along to the checkout. “You had training?”
“Two days.” The assistant took Joe’s money and rang it up. “You’ve obviously never been here before.”
“Why would I? I run a café on Doncaster Road. When I do
eat elsewhere, it’s usually in pubs or proper restaurants, not alleged fast food places. You want to get on in catering, lad, this is not the place to learn.”
“I don’t want to get on in catering. I took this job because it was the only one I could get with my degree.”
Joe’s eyebrows rose. “You have a degree?
“Astrophysics.”
With a shake of the head, Joe took his teapots away. “A degree in astrophysics and you end up serving in a dump like this? What a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
“I agree,” the youngster said, “but there aren’t that many vacancies for astrophysicists in Sanford.”
Joe moved to the cutlery rack, collected tiny portions of milk and sachets of sugar, and then frowned again.
“Hey, Einstein, there are no teaspoons here.”
The young man, his features as flushed as his smart, mauve uniform, came over, and pulled out a wooden stirrer. “We don’t use teaspoons, sir. These are cheaper, they cut down on washing up, and people don’t steal them.”
Joe’s face crumpled to a familiar scowl. “You know, son, I had the misfortune to be married once. The missus dragged me all over Europe. It was sheer hell, but I’ll say this for it: everywhere I went, when I ordered tea or coffee, it was served by a waiter or waitress, and I got a spoon with it.” He reached into one of the other drawers and took out a knife. “I refuse to stir my tea with a wooden stick.”
The youngster scowled back. “I don’t suppose there’s any point reminding you to please clear the table, either.”
“Am I the customer or an employee?”
“We ask that customers clear away after them.”
“And then what? You want me to mop the floors?” Joe picked up his tray. “If I asked the truckers in my place to clean up after them, do you know what they’d say? Trust me, lad, the kind of language they would use doesn’t come into your debates on galaxies… or your two day training course.”
He crossed the café and sat opposite his niece.
“Sorry I took so long. Apparently they don’t understand the principles of serving customers.”
My Deadly Valentine Page 7