Playing James

by Sarah Mason

  “Damn. Damn and bugger,” says James furiously once we are out on the pavement and striding toward the car. We both get in.

  “He didn’t seem very guilty.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  James sits behind the steering wheel and stares into space. I don’t like to say anything just in case he’s about to solve the whole case. You know, like when Miss Marple is talking about knitting and then suddenly, voilà!, she knows who the murderer is! The minutes tick by and I start to worry that maybe he’s thinking about how to achieve that ribbed effect on his latest sweater.

  “Er, James?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Anything wrong?”

  “Something,” he murmurs. I leave him to his contemplation of the moss stitch for a little longer. After a few more minutes I can bear it no longer. “What? What’s wrong?”

  He shifts in his seat and turns his body toward me. “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all on the face of it. There’s just something . . . Did you notice all the clocks?” he says suddenly.

  “The clocks?”

  “Yeah.” He looks at me intently.

  “Well, there were a couple . . .”

  “There were five in his office alone.”

  “Were there? Maybe he’s late a lot.”

  James looks at me impatiently and sighs.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Well? What do you want to do?” I add after a bit longer. I’m getting a little impatient of this sponsored silence stuff.

  “I want to see where he goes on his appointment.”

  “Fine. So, er, what does that entail?”

  “Sitting here and watching where he goes.”

  “I knew that.”

  James starts the car and drives off, just in case the secretary is watching us from the window. We go once around the block and then park further up the street where we can’t be seen from the windows of the office but we can see who comes out of the door.

  “How do you know there isn’t a back door?”

  “I counted the number of doors in each room,” he explains patiently with a glimmer of a smile. “It’s something I learned at detecting school.”

  “So could you call this a sort of stakeout?” I ask excitedly.

  “If it makes you happy. The term ‘stakeout’ imparts a sort of glamour though. And I don’t think you could describe a ten-minute session sitting in a Vauxhall as glamorous.”

  “We could be here for hours though!”

  An hour and a half later I have called the paper, called Lizzie, called Vince and made a start on today’s diary installment on my laptop (and if we sit here much longer, boy am I going to be pushed for subject matter). James also has called his office, Fleur and his office again. Once the mobiles have fallen silent for a couple of minutes, I say, “Do you want some coffee? I can go and see if I can find some.”

  “That would be great.”

  “Do you want something to eat as well?”

  “I’m starving. Didn’t have a chance to have breakfast this morning.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Surprise me.” He gets out his wallet and shoves a ten-pound note toward me. “Hurry up, because I’ll have to go without you if Makin leaves, and don’t walk past his offices.”

  “I may not have been to detecting school, but I am not stupid,” I say haughtily. I wander off down the road and find a little corner shop about three hundred yards away. After loading myself up with goodies, I make my way back to the car.

  “No coffee,” I say as I drop my purchases into the foot well, “but I do have . . . a banana milkshake!” I triumphantly produce it from my carrier bag.

  “Thanks.” He takes it from me and shakes it vigorously in the manner of someone completely au fait with banana milkshakes, his eyes still trained on Mr. Makin’s front door. “Got any crisps?”

  I chuck a packet of salt and vinegar and another one of cheesy puffs at him. “No Monster Munch?” he asks, aghast.

  “You are not going to stink out our stakeout with Monster Munch.”

  I curl my feet up under me and we munch in silence.

  “Fleur tells me your folks are coming to the wedding.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. They always seem to turn up where you least expect it.”

  “I’ll look forward to . . .” James never finishes his sentence because a figure suddenly looms up outside my window, waving some black hardware around. I almost literally jump out of my skin and in a reflex action grasp my handbag to me (you can always count on me in a crisis). James leaps out of the car, runs around to my side and before I know it has thrust the figure into the back of the car. The figure is giggling to itself and wearing a particularly fetching pair of leather trousers and a pink shirt.

  Vince leans between the two front seats. “What’s going on?” he whispers theatrically.

  “Vince!” I say hotly, smacking him with my handbag, “you complete parsnip. You scared me. We’re on a stakeout.”

  “How exciting! Can I be on it too?”

  James gets back in the driver’s side. “Vince, what the hell are you doing? We’re trying to keep a low profile.”

  “I can keep a low profile,” Vince says indignantly.

  “No, you bloody can’t. The only profiles you know are loud and conspicuous.”

  “Oooh, you cad.”

  “How did you know where we were?”

  “Holly called half an hour ago and happened to mention it.”

  “I didn’t mean for you to come down. Anyway, where did you get your leather trousers from?” I interject, more weightier matters pressing on my mind.

  “Do you like them? There’s this little shop on the Bath Road and . . .”

  “Holly! Vince!” says James heatedly. We both look at him in surprise. “Do you mind?”

  “He is a cad, isn’t he?” I say to Vince.

  “I should say so. Can I have a crisp?”

  Once James has forcibly ejected Vince from the car and forbidden him to come back, we continue with the important business of watching the offices.

  “Flapjack?” I proffer.

  “Thanks.”

  I fight with the wrapper and remark, “Flapjacks always remind me of my childhood. My mother used to give them to us after school. She can’t cook to save her life though; used to take us half an hour to clean our teeth afterward.”

  “Do you have any brothers and sisters?” he asks without taking his eyes from Mr. Makin’s building.

  “Yeah, I’ve got three brothers and one sister.”

  “Blimey. Your mother probably gave them to you to shut you all up.”

  “Meal times did get a bit noisy.”

  James takes a bite of his flapjack, his eyes still firmly fixed on his quarry. “Tell me about them.”

  So I tell him a bit about my childhood, and how we used to move around with my mother’s career because she insisted on having us with her when she was on tour. I tell him what fun we all used to have as we moved from town to town and how the rest of the actors and actresses in the tour group became our surrogate aunts and uncles. I explain how my father was a consultant, so his posts only lasted for a year or two before we moved on, which suited my parents’ wanderlust perfectly. But I also mention how miserable it was to keep on moving from one school to another, constantly leaving friends behind and having to make new ones. I tell him how we finally settled permanently in Cornwall when my father retired and I was able to go to the same school for a number of years. In turn, I ask him about his childhood. He tells me about an existence that is completely alien to me, generally due to the fact that it all took place in one spot. We laugh at his tales of woe concerning an unrequited crush on the barmaid at the local pub and he even tells me a little about Rob, his brother who was killed last year.

  “I suppose you see a lot of horrible stuff?” I say randomly.

  “Yeah, I suppose I do.”

  “So why do you do it? Why did you want to join the police force?” I ask, suddenly
curious.

  He glances over at me, probably suspicious of my question and my motive for asking it. After a second, his face relaxes and he says, “I’ve always wanted to join the police force.”

  “Why?”

  “Something happened when I was a kid.”

  “Tell me?”

  He hesitates for a second. “Well, I grew up in Gloucestershire. My folks had a farm in a village where absolutely nothing ever, ever happened. In fact, Rob and I used to daily berate the fact that nothing ever happened. Imagine it—two spotty, hormonal teenagers moping around, chucking themselves on to the sofa like the archetypal Kevin, griping about how bored they were. Not that we didn’t have plenty to do; there is always loads to be done on a farm. But then one day this little girl from the village just vanished, just disappeared. The manhunt was enormous; everyone turned out and we searched with the police day and night for about twelve days until they called the search off. Then the people from the village searched by themselves for another five days until one by one we all went home. But we all grieved for this little girl and the community was never the same again. This village, where nothing ever happened, had been violated. The parents of the little girl were so traumatized and harassed that they moved away. I just felt so helpless throughout the whole thing. There was nothing I could possibly do to alleviate any of the pain. So I joined the force as soon as I could, thinking I might perhaps be able to help somebody in the future.” He shrugs and looks a little embarrassed.

  “You said the parents of the little girl were harassed?”

  “Yeah. By the press.” He glances over to me. “They camped on their doorstep, waiting to catch their pain on camera and in words. It was horrible.”

  “So that’s why you don’t like the press very much.”

  “Correct.”

  “Did they ever find out what happened to the little girl?”

  “Yeah, they found her body a month later. Raped and strangled.”

  We sit in silence for a few seconds and now, at last, I can understand why he hated this diary idea so much and why he was so antagonistic toward me. And I don’t blame him at all.

  “So, have you ever regretted your decision? To go into the police force?”

  “Never. I love it,” he says with a warmth that surprises me. “I like the fact that I meet people, you know, normal people, and although we can’t solve every single case, it’s really satisfying when we do.”

  “You said your folks had a farm. What do they do now?”

  “They sold it last year and retired early.”

  There are a dozen more questions I would like to ask him. But not for the diary, for me. I would like to know. But I don’t want to look as though I am being the delving reporter, the “I’m your best friend so bare your soul to me and then you’ll see our intimate conversation splashed all over the news tomorrow” type. So instead we fall into a companionable silence and both stare ahead, lost in our own thoughts. My head is full of images of his childhood and I wish I could see pictures of him back then.

  A thought occurs to me and I feel that with our newly found air of intimacy I can ask him this. “You know that scooping business by the Journal?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Was it anything to do with you?”

  James frowns and glances over at me. “No, why do you think that?”

  “I went up to the IT department.”

  “I know you did. You told me,” he says patiently.

  “Well, they said no one had been up to report the incident.”

  “I reported it. Why wouldn’t I? I reported it to, er, what’s his name, Paul. I reported it to Paul. Who did you see?”

  “A woman.”

  “Well, there you are. Bloody IT department, they’ve always got their minds on other things.”

  “But the scooping suddenly stopped after that.”

  “That was me. I found out who it was.”

  “You found out who it was?” I say, sitting up suddenly.

  He glances over at me. “Yeah.”

  “Well, who was it?” I ask impatiently.

  “You know Bill?”

  “Bill? Nice Bill? Meek, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth Bill?” I say disbelievingly.

  “I found him at my terminal one evening, when I came back to the office to collect some files. He said he was just looking something up. So a couple of nights later, I took a case we had just started that day, the drugs arrest one, off the main computer and put it on a floppy disk. When you were scooped the next morning, I knew someone had accessed that disk to get the information because it wasn’t on the mainframe computer. So I confronted Bill and he confessed.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to make trouble for Bill. He’s got a lot of problems at the moment, financial ones. And it wasn’t as if he was doing something awful. It was just unethical.”

  “Well, it was pretty awful for me!” I reply hotly.

  “It must have been. I seem to remember your editor reacted by asking you to try and get on with me a bit better. And you told him it was like trying to get on with Hannibal Lecter,” he observes dryly.

  I feel myself going a little pink. I start fiddling with the hem of my skirt. “Well, it’s not as though you were terribly easy to get on with when we first met.”

  “Yeah, I know.” There’s a small silence and then he says, “But Hannibal Lecter?”

  I grin. To change the subject I say, “Actually, I remember you having a row with Bill now!”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “I thought you were just being bad-tempered!”

  “OK, enough of the bad temper/Hannibal Lecter thing.”

  We fall into a convivial silence, staring at Mr. Makin’s door. With his eyes still fixed there, James says, “Did Robin tell you what is going on?”

  I jump uncomfortably at the subject matter. “What? With you two?” I ask awkwardly.

  “Yes.”

  “Sort of.”

  “It’s over. That’s why she’s so upset.”

  “So, there’s nothing going on?”

  “No.” There’s a pause until he adds, “It really wasn’t . . .” and then stops abruptly and leans forward. I follow his line of vision and spot Mr. Makin carrying a briefcase and about to get into a car. James starts the engine and we both click our seat belts on. I glance at my watch. We had been here for more than three and a half hours.

  We travel in silence, distanced a few cars behind Mr. Makin. The office buildings start to drop away as we move into residential areas and it becomes more difficult to maintain an unsuspicious distance behind him as the traffic becomes sparser. About a quarter of an hour later we have traveled right into the suburbs of Bristol.

  “He’s not going home,” James says suddenly as Mr. Makin takes a right turn.

  “How do you know where he lives?” I ask.

  “Looked it up on the computer yesterday.”

  Mr. Makin takes a swift left, followed by another one, and we follow him. He finally comes to a standstill outside a semi-detached house and we pull into the curb about five cars away from him. We watch as he climbs out of the car and walks up the path to the semi.

  “What number is that?” I whisper.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  James reads the number of the house we are parked in front of and then counts down to the house Mr. Makin has disappeared into. “Number sixteen.” He then peers around, looking for the name of the road. “Maple Tree Drive,” he says, getting out a notebook and writing it down.

  “James!” I nudge him and point to something ahead of me.

  A large ginger cat pads up the semi’s pathway and disappears through a cat flap.

  “The cat hair,” I breathe.

  We turn around and head back toward the station. Once we have collected more fan mail from Dave-the-not-quite-so-grumpy-desk-sergeant (“I’m surprised we haven’t had more for you after your recent TV interview, Holly,” he says,
which raises a smile from James and a, “Ha, ha. Very droll,” from me), we make our way up to the offices. James sits down at his desk and, after briefly leafing through his messages, logs on to the computer to check out the address of Mr. Makin’s rendezvous. I lean against his desk, watching the computer screen. We wait for a few minutes as we access the appropriate records and then James types in the address to check if the resident has a police record. We wait again. The computer bumps and grinds and then finally coughs up something. NO KNOWN RECORD.

  James leans back in his chair and links his hands behind his head, absentmindedly staring into space.

  “We should have waited for the cat to come out of the cat flap again and then wrestled it to the ground for one of its hairs. We could have sent it off for DNA testing to see if it matched the one Roger found,” I comment.

  “The ridiculousness of that idea aside, it would take weeks for the results to come back from the lab.”

  “Well, could we just go up and knock on the door?”

  “They could refuse us access without a warrant and then move all the stuff out if it’s there.”

  “What if he’s just visiting his sister or something? Loads of people have ginger cats. Are you sure Mr. Makin is anything to do with this? I mean, you could arrest my Aunt Annie. She owns clocks and a ginger tabby.”

  “It’s just a hunch.”

  “A detecting thing?” I ask sarcastically. Please don’t do the hunch thing. I was in the room when we spoke to Mr. Makin and he seemed innocent to me. Journalists have hunches too.

  “It’s not just some clocks and a ginger cat. It all makes sense.” He frowns to himself. “I’ll get uniform to ask some questions. Also put surveillance on the house before we get a warrant. I need permission from the Chief.” And with that he disappears off in the direction of the Chief Inspector’s office.

  I really ought to be getting on with the diary, but instead I stare pensively into space, my mind full of the events of the last hour or so. I wander over to see Callum for a chat while I impatiently wait for James to return.

  “So . . .” I sit on his desk and pick up his paperweight. “You and Robin not getting on?” I ask ultra-casually. OK, it isn’t the most innocuous of beginnings, but the eternal triangle of Robin, James and Fleur seems to be playing on my mind a lot lately. And it’s not very often that Callum and I are alone together nowadays.