Playing James

by Sarah Mason

  “Great, are you two all right?” she asks.

  “We couldn’t be better!”

  “You and James are working tomorrow, aren’t you?”

  “Shhhh,” I say clumsily, putting my finger to my lips. “Don’t tell him about this. He won’t let me come.” I look around me; everything is a little blurry and I wonder if I might need to start wearing glasses. I make a mental note to book an optician’s appointment.

  “Where’sh Teresa?”

  “She got a call on her mobile and went off. Obviously a red-hot lover!”

  “Nahh. One of the choir boys hash drunk the altar wine.”

  “We need to pep everyone up a bit. People are fading fast.” I briefly look around at the surrounding hen-sters. I have to agree the party has quietened down a tad.

  “I know a game!” I say enthusiastically.

  “Holly, what the hell is going on?” James says angrily.

  I open one eye. I was just resting them for a minute, you understand. The light is a little bright. That’s the problem with the NHS today. They insist on using those awful, glaring overhead strips. I’m going to instantly pen a terse note to the government on the very same subject just as soon as they let me out of here.

  “James!” I say delightedly, with one eye squinting at him, “what are you doing here? Have you hurt your toe too?”

  “No, I haven’t. I am here because Fleur called to tell me she may be a little late home because she had to take you to the hospital,” he says angrily. I take a better look at him; his short hair is tousled and his clothes obviously hastily dragged on. He doesn’t seem too amused at having been pulled out of bed.

  I frown gravely at this. “You’re not cross, are you?”

  “I’m not cross.”

  “You seem cross.”

  “That’s because I’m bloody FURIOUS!” Those green eyes practically pin me to my pillow with the force of their gaze. My hangover is starting to kick in and now I know what it feels like to be faced with an angry Godzilla. I wonder if the alcohol is having hallucinogenic effects on me and close my eyes again, fervently hoping he is just an apparition dreamed up by my over-fertile imagination. I coax an eye open after a second to check if he is still there. Unfortunately he is.

  In a dramatic change of subject, I say, “James, this is my best friend, Lizzie.” It’s very hard to make the appropriate introductions when you’re lying on a hospital stretcher. Not to mention managing to speak in whole sentences, complete with the appropriate nouns and verbs.

  James relaxes minutely and shakes Lizzie’s hand. He mutters, “Hi, Lizzie, how are you?”

  “Nice to meet you, James,” Lizzie says wearily—all in all it has been quite a night. “I was just about to get some tea for us; would you like some?”

  “That would be great.” Lizzie wanders off, intent on her mission, and James then turns his very unwelcome attention back to yours truly.

  “You are aware that we are supposed to be involved in a raid in”—he consults his watch—“approximately three hours’ time?” His face swims in and out of focus. I blink hastily to try and clear the fog that is threatening to envelop my brain.

  “Just let them get the bottle off and I’ll be as right as rain and raring to go!”

  “You’re not coming!” he roars.

  “Then why are you here?” I ask, frowning, clearly not understanding the obvious.

  “Because my errant fiancée,” and he points to Fleur, who is lying across three chairs fast asleep, “didn’t tell me what was wrong with you on the telephone, she just hung up. For all I knew you could have been in a car accident.”

  “Oh.” I hang my head in shame, deeply sorry it wasn’t something more serious than a drinking game gone slightly askew.

  “So what did happen?” he asks pointing at the wine bottle that is hanging off the end of one of my toes.

  “Well, we were playing this game I know. You all have to perform a little trick, or perhaps make up a poem, or maybe even a . . .” I glance over at his seething face. “Yes, well, anyway. Having introduced the game, I felt I ought to kick it off myself.” I look for a glimmer of understanding and sympathy but funnily enough there isn’t any forthcoming. “So I decided to do something my brothers used to do with empty bottles. It was always really impressive when they did it.” I look miserably at my swollen foot. “The problem is, I think they used to do it with plastic bottles. I should have telephoned one of them and asked them!” I end excitedly, flushed with the success of remembering how exactly the evening had gone wrong.

  “And you thought you would try it with a bottle of . . .” He looks down at my foot. “Merlot?”

  “Well, we drank it first,” I hastily assure him, concerned he might think I’d wasted it.

  “That much is obvious,” he says dryly.

  “The problem was, the more we tried to pull it off, the more my toe started to swell up. It’s stuck,” I explain.

  “I can see it’s stuck.” He spits the last word out. “Right, well, if you will excuse me, I’m going to go back to sleep for another couple of hours and then I have to go to work.”

  “But you’re not going without me!”

  “Holly.” This is said in a dangerously quiet voice and, hangover aside, I think I prefer the burst eardrum version. “Even if I wanted to take you with me, which I can assure you I don’t, how on earth do you think I’m going to get you there with a bottle on your toe?”

  “But James! I’ve got to come with you!”

  “I’m not taking you anywhere with that on your toe.”

  “Joe will fire me if I don’t go!”

  “Then let him fire you. Since you got given this assignment four weeks ago, trouble has followed me wherever I have gone. You are famine, pestilence and plague all rolled into one.”

  “Hasn’t it been a bit more fun than usual though?” I ask in a very small voice.

  “Fun? FUN? If you think fun is . . .”

  My bottom lip starts to wobble precariously and it seems the more I try to concentrate on not letting it wobble, the more it wants to do so. Tears fill my eyes—I am not normally given to emotional outbursts and I think this lapse may have something to do with the gallon of booze I have poured down my throat this evening. Whatever biting comment is on the tip of his tongue stays there. I don’t think he can cope with the screaming heebiejeebies from me at three in the morning. He looks down at his feet for a minute and then says in a softer voice, “I’m going to take Fleur home. If they have got the bottle off by the time I get back then you can come with me.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper, bottom lip still a-wobbling.

  He turns away and gently wakes up a sleepy Fleur. He leads her by the hand out of the room, but turns back suddenly at the door.

  “Holly?”

  I turn my face toward him. “Yeah?”

  “You’re right. It has been more fun than usual.”

  I smile at him, but he has already gone, taking his future wife with him.

  twenty-one

  I sit in the car, trying to forget that my head thumps, my stomach would really like to be somewhere else and my mouth feels like the bottom of a budgie’s cage. Oh, and my swollen toe throbs too. All my own doing, of course, but I am not remorseful enough to feel anything but heartily sorry for myself. Thirty minutes ago, six burly officers surrounded sixteen Maple Tree Drive and James and Callum knocked politely at the door before uttering the chilling phrase, “OPEN UP, POLICE.” They were duly let in by a sleepy woman, whom James dashed straight past, while Callum shut the door, and that’s the last I’ve seen of them. After some hasty radio communication, the other four officers who were positioned around the house went in through the front door. What on earth are they all doing in there? Making paper dollies?

  The valiant hospital staff eventually managed to prize the bottle off my toe by applying cold compresses to my foot for over an hour to bring the swelling down. I was then carted off for an X-ray, but luckily nothing wa
s broken. A singularly unamused James Sabine returned from dropping Fleur home and took me to an all-night café where he bullied me into eating toast and drinking coffee. All of which I was convinced would reappear within a few minutes. Thankfully, for my sake, none of it did. We then drove through the beautiful breaking dawn to meet up with the other officers, one of whom was Callum, who looked at my green face, then at James’ expression, and very wisely kept his mouth shut.

  Finally James appears in the doorway of the house. He looks forlorn and my heart sinks. I watch as he walks slowly down the pathway and then wordlessly gets into the car beside me.

  “What happened?” I ask anxiously. “Did you find any of the stolen antiques?”

  He shakes his head. I instinctively put out a hand to touch his knee. “Oh James, I am so sorry.”

  He shrugs a little and then says, “Don’t be, because we did find a computer database with the details of all three houses on it and an invoice for a rented garage on the other side of town.” He looks at me sideways and relaxes his face into a smile.

  I let out a squeal of joy and then heartily wish I hadn’t as the adrenaline whooshes about my already highly stressed nervous system.

  “So we’ve caught The Fox? We’ve finally caught him?”

  “It’s not a him. It’s a her.”

  “It’s a woman?” I say incredulously, my mouth hanging open.

  “I think our Mr. Makin has been feeding the information to her and she has been performing the burglaries.”

  “But I thought it was a man.”

  “No, we presumed it was a man.”

  “All by herself, no one else?”

  He nods. “I think so; we’ll have to wait to interview her. Her uncle lives with her too and you’ll never guess what . . .”

  “What?”

  “He repairs clocks in his spare time. There’s a whole room in the house dedicated to it. From the look on his face I don’t think he knew anything about the burglaries, but we have to bring him in for questioning.”

  “What about Mr. Makin?”

  “I’ve dispatched uniform to pick him up.”

  I smile excitedly at him, but as we gaze at each other the smile slowly fades from my face. I shift awkwardly in my seat. Is this a romantic moment or is my overburdened and very confused body chemistry playing tricks on me? We stare intensely at each other for what seems a very long time. The tension of the situation seems to have gripped us. My breath feels as though it’s coming out in gasps now, and in fact I fear I am panting rather unattractively. James keeps those beautiful green eyes fixed on me.

  “Holly,” he says quietly, without moving his eyes from my face, “do you . . .” A knock on the driver’s side window makes us both jump. Callum gestures to James and, without another word, James gets out and together they make their way back into the house. What was he about to say? Do I what? Tango? Wear an anorak? Eat peanut butter? (No, no, yes.)

  While I wait, I try not to think about what might or might not just have happened between the two of us. You’re tired, I tell myself, tired and probably still a little drunk. You’re imagining stuff that just isn’t there. I think about the woman they’re about to take in for questioning and I have to say I feel a grudging respect for her. She nearly got away with hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of goods. I wonder about the uncle and hope he is going to be OK. Too soft, that’s my problem. There is no way I could be a police officer. I would worry too much about people. I have to sternly remind myself of Mrs. Stephens’ sad face when all her memories had been stolen and Mr. Williams’ bandaged head when we visited him in the hospital. People can’t go around doing that. I get out my notebook and frantically scribble an account of the last few hours for the diary.

  When all the officers finally troop out of the house, they are holding a woman by her arms, the same woman who answered the front door. She is wearing an old pair of jeans and a jumper. They are also more gently escorting an older man. Only the woman is wearing handcuffs. I watch as one of the officers guides them into an unmarked police car and then slams the doors shut. The remainder of the men are all holding things in big plastic bags and, after depositing them in the boot of our car, they all disperse.

  James chats to a couple of the other officers and then walks toward our car. I hastily look down and continue to write in my notebook. He gets in, clicks on his seat belt and we follow the other cars down the road. He asks, “Are you coming down to the station? Or do you want me to drop you home?”

  “Are you doing the interviews?”

  “Yeah, we can only hold them a short while before we have to charge them, so we need to do all the interviews today. You won’t be able to sit in on them though.”

  “That’s OK. I’ll come to the station if that’s all right and write up the diary.”

  “Sure.”

  The woman’s name is Christine Stedman. James interviews her and her uncle for hours. Now and again they have a break to discuss the situation with their solicitor, who was dragged from his bed in the early hours of this morning. On one such break, James wanders back into the office to get a coffee from the vending machine. I’m tapping away on my laptop, getting today’s story written up. I look up as he comes over and flops down in the chair opposite.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  “Fine!”

  He eyes me suspiciously. “You don’t, do you?”

  “No, I feel terrible.”

  “How’s the foot?”

  I glance at the makeshift sandal the hospital made me out of an old flip-flop. “A bit sore. How are you feeling?”

  “Tired.”

  “Ah,” I say, looking down at my laptop. I would have nothing to do with that, of course. “Charged them with anything yet?”

  “Nope.”

  I wait impatiently for further developments in the case. My deadline for the next edition of the paper is looming and although I can’t publish specific details of the case if they are charged, I would like to tell my readers that an arrest has been made.

  Finally James comes back into the office.

  “What’s happened?” I ask anxiously.

  “She confessed—going for full cooperation with a view to a reduced sentence. So she has been charged but we’ve released the uncle.”

  I hastily attach the now completed version of the diary to an e-mail and send it over to the paper. I’ve managed to hit the deadline. I lean back in my chair. “Well done! Are you pleased?”

  “Relieved, more like. At least the Chief will be happy.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “She’s taking us down to the lock-up tomorrow. Apparently most of the stuff is there.”

  “So Mrs. Stephens will get her things back?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Did she do all the jobs herself? No accomplices?”

  “Nope, she did them all on her own. Mr. Makin delivered his records of insurance to her for a fee, including details on those houses he had quoted for but didn’t get the contract. We also interviewed Mr. Makin and it seems he is retiring next month and wanted a little money to retire on. The business hasn’t been doing too well recently so he thought he would sell his database. He may get off though as according to his solicitor he had no idea what the records were being used for.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think he knew but he didn’t want to know, if you see what I mean.” I nod. “Apparently the shop was the last burglary she’d planned to do. They were just going to load up a van and move out of the area. She’d told her uncle she wanted to move to Lincolnshire to be near her brother.”

  “So the database told her how to get into the houses and exactly what to take?”

  “The database contained details of the type of alarm each house used and any weaknesses the house had. For instance, when Mr. Makin told Mr. Forquar-White to get a lock on that small window at the back of the house, he recorded the fact on the database. So she used that information when s
he broke into the house.”

  “I remember thinking the window was a bit small for a man to fit through.”

  “The database also had a complete list plus description of all items worth more than three thousand pounds and specified in which room the item was kept.”

  “How did she recognize them though? I wouldn’t recognize an antique if it smacked me in the face.”

  “And it probably would, knowing your difficulties in staying upright. She was brought up in the business. Her uncle owned an antiques business before he retired. An interest he and our Mr. Makin share. In fact, ironically enough, Mr. Makin used to insure the uncle’s shop. That’s how they knew each other.”

  “Gosh, she must have bashed poor old Mr. Williams over the head too.”

  “Yep. That will increase her sentence considerably.”

  “Did she just case Mr. Rolfe’s shop by going into it and looking around?”

  “That’s right. We’re bringing Mr. Rolfe down to see if he can identify her.”

  I sit back in my chair, digesting all this information. A thought suddenly occurs to me.

  “What about that substance Roger kept finding at the scene of the crime? What was that?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it might be some sort of specialist cleaning agent the uncle uses to clean his clocks. She was wearing a pair of his old gloves. Roger will confirm that tomorrow.”

  “The cat hair Roger found must have got on to her clothing. So she always took a clock for her uncle, did she?” James nods. “Did he know what she was doing?”

  “I don’t think so. He thought she worked nights.”

  We partake in minor celebrations with Callum, who insists we all go out for a drink around the corner at the Rod and Duck. Once there, James tells him all about my eventful night in the hospital while I cringe in the corner with embarrassment. I’m sure James is madly exaggerating and it wasn’t as bad as he is making out. Callum roars with laughter. Pleading tiredness (I am absolutely exhausted), I pop back to the station to collect my stuff and to see how Robin is. She is looking very low at the moment but seems pleased for James and the rest of the team at today’s arrest.