“George, would you mind terribly?” She leaned over and opened the passenger door. I got in and closed it; the seat was too far forward and I had to squeeze in. It was not how I liked to brief my clients, but it wasn’t the first time I’d done it in a car park.
Sylvia had tailored trousers on, flared over pointy boots, and a white mac with faint yellow spots on it. A short silk scarf was tied side-on at her neck and she looked the business. I detected a subtle trace of the perfume I’d smelled when she’d first come into my office.
“Thanks for coming out here, George. I hope you don’t mind?” She tilted her head sideways and looked at me with her jewelled eyes and I didn’t mind, though my knees were pressed against the dash, and I felt it would be too awkward to fiddle about and try and move the seat back – I didn’t know the inside of a Mini and I’d have to ask how to do it. She was turned in her seat and looking at me. Did Elliot Booker ever tire of looking into those dazzling eyes? In time, one could take anything or anyone for granted. “You said you had some news.” I twisted in my seat – difficult when you can’t move your knees.
“Yes I do.” I looked away because it was too much to look directly at her. “I’ve reason to believe Lucy is seeing someone, and has been for a while.” Sylvia put her fingers lightly on the steering wheel in front of her and looked towards the butcher’s, where an advert for wild boar sausages hung in the window. “It seems she’s been visiting someone, a man, when you believed her to be playing bridge.” I paused, to see what effect this might be having, but she showed no reaction apart from a slight stiffening of her manicured fingers.
“Go on.”
“Before I do, Mrs Booker, please remember that Lucy is an adult, at least in the eyes of the law.”
She turned to me. “Are you telling me this man is her boyfriend?” Her voice was soft and controlled.
“I’m not sure if he’s a boyfriend, as such. He’s an, erm, older man.”
Her face hardened. “Who is he?”
“I must stress that at this stage I do not have first-hand proof of the nature of their relationship, just that she has been visiting his apartment.” She gripped her hands on the wheel, as if trying to keep the car on the road, but she was still looking at me.
“His apartment? Who is he?”
“He’s a corporate lawyer called Quintin Boyd. An American.” She turned her face towards the front and her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. She was breathing quickly through parted lips and she closed her eyes for a few seconds.
“Do you know this man?” I asked. She shook her head and removed her hands from the wheel, leaving sweaty imprints on the leather. Then she stared at her hands, resting on her thighs.
“It’s… well, it’s just come as a shock. I mean Lucy isn’t ready for this, she…” I wanted to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder but felt it would have been out of order. I did need something explaining.
“Can I ask? Is there any reason that she shouldn’t be seeing someone, someone older, distasteful as it might seem?”
“How much older do you think this man is, George?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Is it normal for a girl with Lucy’s…” She glanced outside and reconsidered. “Of Lucy’s age to be sneaking around visiting a man of this sort in his apartment?” She couldn’t know what sort of man he was. I wanted to tell her that I’d seen some odd couplings in my time, and that Lucy being introduced to womanhood by an older man might in fact be preferable to the quick fumblings of a horny fresher. But I wasn’t sure how you said that to the mother of the girl in question.
I watched a group of women come out of the café. They stood chatting in the leisurely manner of people who had nothing to do next except spend more money. I knew this because I’d followed enough of them, their overweight workaholic husbands panicking at the thought of their gym-fit, expensively dressed, coiffured, manicured, waxed and pedicured wives with time on their hands while they made six-figure salaries in the city or venture capital or whatever they did. On the whole they had been guilty of nothing more than squandering their lives and their husband’s money, spending their time planning dinner parties after dropping the kids off at one of the many private schools in Cambridge. One or two had found solace in the muscled arms of a tennis coach or even, à la Olivia, the lithe arms of a Pilates teacher. Sylvia was looking at the women too, but I’m not sure she was seeing them, certainly not the same way I was seeing them.
“I’d like you to confirm whether there is anything, uh, you know…” and she had to force the next word out, “…physical going on between Lucy and this… this Quintin Boyd.”
“I’d sort of assumed there was, to be honest.”
She put her hand to her face as if I’d slapped her.
“I need to know for sure. That is what you do, isn’t it, confirm that people are having sex?” Ouch. “I want to know how they met. How did he… this man, get hold of Lucy?” Her voice was rising and then, perhaps realising that she was becoming shrill, she smiled thinly and took a breath. Then she put a hand on my trapped knee. “George.” She had taken her voice down an octave. “Lucy is a sensitive girl, and I just need to make sure she is not being taken advantage of by some lothario.” The hand was still there. “You’ll help me won’t you, George? You’ll help Lucy.” Her eyes brimmed and all I needed was for her to tell me that I was a big strong man.
“OK, I’ll try and get some more information on Quintin Boyd, and confirm the nature of their relationship,” I said. She took her hand off my knee. I was so easy. “But what happens then? The fact remains that she is probably seeing him of her own free will.”
“We all do things of our own free will that we later regret, George,” she said, blushing strongly and looking away. You can fake tears, but not blushing. “Anyway, you should know that in your line of business.”
I nodded. “Best not to talk to Lucy until I’ve got back to you,” I said.
“Do you need more money?”
I told her no and got out of the Mini.
After I watched her drive off I rubbed my knees to bring them back to life.
12
AT SEVEN-THIRTY THE NEXT MORNING, AS IT WAS GETTING light, Jason and I were sitting in my Golf in the small car park opposite River Views, Jason wearing a woollen hat with ear flaps on his head texting furiously into a mobile phone. He’d put it away but every now and then the damned thing would make a sort of whooshing noise and he would whip it out and check the incoming message, chuckling to himself before thumbing a reply. It was starting to annoy me; I thought students were all asleep until ten. We’d been here since six-thirty, having established that Quintin was in his penthouse by the glow of lights that had come on behind the vertical blinds soon after our arrival.
I was about to pour us some more coffee from the flask Sandra had provided when the silver Merc purred up to the gates and stopped, exhaust discharging into the grey sky. We hunched down so we were less visible. I could see Mark, the driver, talking as if to the dashboard. He didn’t have his cap on and from this angle he looked vaguely familiar again, with his square head and number one haircut. A roll of fat had been squeezed from the top of his collar at the back of his neck.
“I wonder who he’s talking to,” I said. Jason looked up briefly from his phone and whistled.
“Nice car. He’s probably talking to someone on a hands free set.” I opened the glove compartment and took out the GPS tracker that I was planning to attach to the Mercedes. I wanted to know where Quintin Boyd was going when he was in Cambridge. The tracker was the one I’d used to log Trisha Greene’s car movements. It had to be retrieved and connected to a computer to download the log of where it had travelled.
The driver stopped talking, powered down a window and lit a cigarette. He turned towards us to blow out some smoke and I could see he had one of those silly wireless things stuck in his ear.
“Told you, boss. He’s a bluetool. So what’s the plan?” The plan, and this is why I had Jason with m
e, was for him to distract the driver while I attached the tracker to the car. It had a strong magnet and, being the size of a mobile phone, would only be visible if someone were looking for it. I opened the glove compartment again and took out an old packet of cigarettes I kept in there. I don’t smoke but you never know when the false camaraderie of another smoker will come in useful – I’d learnt many things by striking up conversation with a smoker. I gave the packet to Jason.
“We’re going to walk past the car together. You’re going to realise you haven’t got a light and go back and ask him for one. I’m going to slip this under the car.”
“Cool.”
We got out and walked out of the car park, just two mates on their way to work nearby. The driver gave us a half-curious glance, Jason getting a fag out of the box. We crossed the road heading to the back of the Merc and Jason was furiously patting his pockets, perhaps overplaying the search for a light.
“Shit,” he said loudly, and changed direction to head for the driver’s door as I continued to the back of the car. “Excuse me, mate, got a light?” The driver said something I couldn’t hear. I glanced up the road and then bent down to untie my shoelace, slipping the tracker under the large rear bumper until I found metal. Jason was making small talk. I tied my lace and stood up, moving to the pavement. I coughed. Jason joined me, throwing the unwanted cigarette to the ground.
“Not very responsive, and not the sharpest tool in the box,” he said.
“It is bloody early in the morning.”
We crossed the road again and went towards the petrol station on the corner. I sent Jason inside and looked back down the road. The gate to River Views opened and a young woman in a long coat and heels came out. She had cropped black hair cut shorter at the back than the sides. Mark the chauffeur was out of the car and opening the back door before the gate had even closed behind her. Jason came out of the petrol station with yesterday’s Cambridge Argus as the Merc came up to the corner and turned onto Elizabeth Way, heading out of town. We walked back to the Golf: the blinds were still closed on the top floor of River Views.
The main Argus headline was something about a gypsy encampment outside Cambridge but a smaller headline at the bottom of the page read MURDERED WOMAN IDENTIFIED – HUSBAND HELD and named Albert and Trisha Greene, reporting the fact that he was a primary school teacher. A colleague of his was said to be “shocked” and there was the inevitable quote from a neighbour about how “ordinary and friendly” the couple were.
We sat in my car and finished the coffee and watched several people leaving River Views for work; mainly young professionals in smart hatchbacks. But we’d yet to set eyes on Quintin Boyd. Jason was not used to sitting quietly for long periods and started to explain the differences between Ambient and Techno music, each apparently with its own sub-genres. I tried to make my disinterest obvious; I much prefer stakeouts on my own; they give me time to brood over everything that is wrong in my life.
“I’m thinking about giving up college,” Jason said. A taxi drew up outside the gates opposite and the driver looked out to check the address. I half turned to Jason, keeping an eye on the taxi.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m thinking if I got a full-time job maybe Mum could give up the chat line.” The taxi driver was getting out of the cab. I risked a glance at Jason.
“You know about that, huh?”
“Of course I do. Our walls are like, made of cardboard. Sometimes when she thinks I’m out I’m really in my room.” I looked at him and he clocked my confusion. “Sometimes I pretend I’m going out just to get some peace and quiet.” The taxi driver, a black guy in a cloth cap, was at the doorbell panel next to the gate, looking at the glow of names.
“She’s got that job so you can be at college. She’d kill you if you left, you know that.” When I checked the driver was talking into the grill next to the buzzers.
“It’s horrible though.” His voice went wobbly and he turned his face to his window. “I hate listening to it. I mean your own mother saying that…” Shit, this wasn’t the time for a heart-to-heart. The taxi driver got back into his car and waited. I glanced up at the top floor and saw the windows go dark. I turned to Jason.
“Listen, Jason. You’ve got to suck it up, as you like to say. You could quit college, no one can force you to stay, but it would break your mum’s heart and the most likely outcome is that she would kick you out and refuse your money anyway.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. His phone went whoosh but he ignored it. The gate opened and someone who could only be Quintin Boyd came out; even at this distance I recognised him from his photo online. He paused to close the gate behind him. He looked good in a black knee-length mac. He had no luggage or briefcase and carried himself with straight-backed confidence. I was too far away to see his face properly. He ran his fingers through his hair and got into the back of the waiting taxi. I started the Golf’s engine and watched the taxi driver do a three-point turn. I turned to Jason.
“That stuff your mum says, on the phone, it’s just acting, she doesn’t mean any of it. You know that, right?” I was just repeating what little Sandra had told me about it. Apparently some of her regulars didn’t even want to talk about sex, they just needed someone to lament about what a shitty week they’d had. In fact the sex calls were the shortest calls and on a call by call basis made the least money. She’d laughingly told me that she was sometimes too good (not really a positive given the idea is to keep them on the line for as long as possible), and that it was amazing what some sound effects using a tub of yoghurt could achieve.
“You know what else would break your mum’s heart?” I asked. He nodded.
“Yeah. If she knew that I knew.” The boy wasn’t stupid, bless him.
“Why don’t you invest in some noise-cancelling headphones,” I said, only half joking. He grunted noncommittally as I pulled out of the car park.
“They’re expensive, boss.”
“Well, you might be able to afford them when we’ve finished with this job,” I said. We eased into the last of the rush-hour traffic behind Quintin Boyd.
13
IN THE OFFICE SANDRA WAS GETTING READY TO LEAVE, watering her plants and putting the computer to sleep.
“I thought you weren’t in today?” I asked.
“Just thought I’d put in a couple of hours.” She picked up some letters from her desk and went through them. “You need to renew your membership of UKAI or they’re going to take your entry off their website. There’s your share of the building maintenance that needs paying. The other tenants want a meeting next week and a John rang, something about your garden fence. Oh, and I’ve done the HPI check on the Mercedes, as well as getting an address from the DVLA.” UKAI are the UK Association of Investigators. They are supposed to raise the standards of the profession but for me membership means being in the online directory that potential clients look at – it was how Sylvia Booker had found me after all. They kept sending stuff through the post on the proposed arrangements for licensing private investigators. I never replied to these missives; licensing would probably mean the death knell for Cambridge Confidential. Sandra handed me the letters.
“The DVLA really ought to tighten up their procedure for giving out details.”
“You’re forgetting that I’m very convincing on the phone,” she said, winking at me. I smiled and looked down at the post she had given me. I considered telling her about Jason knowing how good she was on the phone but thought better of it. “Besides, men can’t resist helping a woman in distress, can they?” she said, giving me a look full of meaning which I ignored. I took it as a sign of her disapproval of my continuing with the Sylvia Booker case. I’d filled her in after meeting Sylvia yesterday and she’d said the whole thing smelled rotten, and she’d obviously looked Sylvia up on the web.
“I bet if she wasn’t posh or attractive or if it had been a bloke you would have asked more questions.”
I told h
er she was wrong even though she may have been partly right. On the other hand she seemed to be leery about any women I came into contact with. I’d also told her the whole thing reeked of money.
“Maybe, but money doesn’t cover a rotten smell. I should know,” she’d said. “I married a rotten smell with money.”
She put on her coat and went to the door. “Has Jason gone home?” she asked.
“He’s running an errand for me in London,” I said. As I spoke he was actually on the train to London with Quintin Boyd, whom we’d followed to the station after a few hours watching him in town. I would have gone myself but I was worried about missing my date with Nina, even though Jason had pointed out that he also had a date with Rowena. I figured my need was greater than his. I hadn’t said that to Jason when I’d passed him a few twenties and all but kicked him out of the car. I didn’t tell Sandra this either, of course, who stopped at the door and looked at me with a warning brewing on her face.
“If he’s involved in anything even remotely dodgy, George, I’ll have your balls.”
* * *
With Sandra gone I put my feet up on the desk and looked at the HPI report, which gives buyers an idea of whether the used car they are about to hand over cash for is stolen or has outstanding finance on it. No adverse data was recorded against the Mercedes, which was only a year old. The address that Sandra had blagged from the DVLA was in Royston, just south of Cambridge, and the car was registered to a firm called Chauffeured Comfort Cars.
I put aside the UKAI reminder and the buildings maintenance bill and picked up the number Sandra had written down for John’s mobile. I got his voicemail and told him to call by my house tomorrow. I went to the window and tried to rub some grime off but it was all on the outside. Our Lady of the Saints said it was nearing four and I was nearing the possibility of male-female contact. A bath seemed in order but first I needed to transcribe my scribbled notes from the day’s surveillance. I sat down again and went through my notebook.
The Bursar's Wife Page 6