Illusions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 2)

by Jean Saunders

  ***

  The reference library was nearly empty, and a tired female assistant located the directory she needed.

  Everything was on microfiche film these days, and Alex knew she could consult it that way if she chose, but she still preferred the good old page-turning methods. There was nothing quite like the smell and feel of a book, whether brand new or musty with age. And the photocopier was close at hand.

  She discovered that there were seemingly dozens of peers of the realm with names beginning with I, J or L. Well, she was pretty damn sure her target wouldn’t be Lord Lucan, she thought with a feeble attempt at a joke, so she could dismiss him for a start.

  She ended up with a formidable list of possibles, but since the man was Moira’s sometime boyfriend, the elderly ones among them would seem to be unlikely. Alex would never have considered Moira to be a raving nympho, but there had to have been some kind of attraction between them.

  Unless Moira had done all the running, and threatened to compromise her lover unless he continued to pay up whatever blackmail amounts she and her mother were demanding from him.

  She shivered. There would obviously have been a lot at stake for a man in the public eye. However high up the social scale he was, the more he would have to lose. And whoever he was, he had known both women, and now both of them were dead. And Alex had no wish to be his third victim.

  ‘Will you be finished here soon?’ she heard the librarian say. ‘We’re about to close.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Alex said hastily. ‘Anyway, I think I’ve found everything I need.’

  That was an understatement, if you like. But she knew she had been at the photocopier far too long. She paid for the privilege, put the papers in a folder, and gave the librarian a smile before leaving the building, knowing that she didn’t really have much to go on except a long list of people whose backgrounds all appeared to be impeccable.

  Common sense told her there would be any number of hereditary peers with shady pasts, as well as the nouveau riche and the New Year annuals — and whether they were true blue or a dubious grey, they would all have the means or the contacts to hide those pasts. That was the problem. If she was going to investigate every damn one of them, she’d be whitehaired before she found the one she wanted.

  So she would have to weed some of them out. But it looked like being a lengthy job, and before she even began to tackle it, she was going to do a little more night-time surveillance on Harold Dawes as she had planned. First things first, and it was always useful to establish if a suspect had a regular modus operandi.

  ***

  Alex debated on whether or not to don her disguise again, and then decided it would be sensible. There were too many street lights around the area of Battery Mews. It was pretty crummy, and may be well-lit for a very good reason, and she reminded herself to lock her car doors before she reached the end of the street where she had a good view.

  There was no sign of life, and after nearly an hour she got out of the hire car to stretch her limbs, and walked purposefully towards the off-licence. She bought a couple of cans of coke, while she casually chatted up the elderly guy behind the counter, trying not to notice the huge beer gut beneath his stained woollen pullover.

  ‘Quiet tonight, isn’t it? I thought you’d be full of customers,’ she said, adopting a south of the river accent.

  He looked her up and down with a small leer of appreciation, apparently glad of a diversion from his racing paper, and she was glad she wasn’t wearing her usual black gear with her distinctive red hair hanging loose. He might be old, but he still had a lecherous look in his eyes.

  ‘It gets busy later, darlin’. I get my reg’lars from the streets and the Mews, and there’s always folk that are glad of an all-nighter once the boozers shut.’

  ‘You stay open all night?’ Alex said, immediately wondering just how late a night-owl Harold Dawes would turn out to be. ‘Bit risky, isn’t it? You hear all sorts of things about all-night shops being turned over these days.’

  The man shrugged. ‘I got my alarm system, duck, and I ain’t had any trouble I couldn’t handle yet. You don’t go into this business without some know-how if you’ve got any sense. I ain’t seen you around here before. Visiting, are you? Or just passing through? If you’re looking for a bed for the night, I could put you up, and you’ll be quite safe wiv me—’

  Alex laughed. ‘I’ll bet!’ she grinned, giving him the benefit of the doubt. ‘No, I was meant to meet a friend, but I don’t think she’s going to show now. She lives somewhere around here, but I’m not sure exactly where.’

  ‘Bleedin’ waste, a lovely gel like you waitin’ for a female friend, if you ask me.’ The guy leered more boldly. ‘Unless, of course — well, pardon me for mentioning it, but you meet plenty of both-ways these days, doncher?’

  Alex looked at him blankly for a minute, and then got his meaning. ‘Oh God, no. She’s just a workmate, that’s all.’

  He chuckled. ‘That’s all right then. Live and let live, I say, but there’s some you wouldn’t want to give house-room to, ain’t there? But like I said, if you’re wanting a bed for the night—’

  ‘I’m not, but I’ll keep it in mind if I ever get desperate,’ she said teasingly, as if she could actually be interested in the creep. ‘So where are all these regulars then? Not very keen tonight, are they?’

  ‘Oh, they’ll turn up when they’re ready. Couple of old ducks from the Mews will be in for their bottle of gin, and the sergeant will be back for a fresh supply later. He’s a midnight man, as reg’lar as clockwork. Goes through drink like a dose of salts too. I can’t make head nor tail of him, but I reckon he’s trying to drown his sorrows.’

  ‘Sergeant? As in police sergeant?’ Alex said coolly.

  ‘Christ, no. Army. Or so he says. Sometimes you can’t understand the nonsense he talks, he’s so puddled. Don’t get him talking if you’re still here when he comes in,’ he warned her. ‘He’s always aggressive, and he don’t like women much.’

  Except when he was sucking up to them in his major guise on a cruise ship.

  ‘Thanks for the tip, but it’s time I was going, anyway.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Your friend will be looking for you.’

  She looked at the shopkeeper blankly, and then remembered the non-existent friend she was supposed to be meeting. She looked at her watch quickly.

  ‘God, you’re right. I’d forgotten the time. Well, it was nice talking to you.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, any time you’re passing, darlin’ — or feel like stopping—’

  She laughed as she went out, feeling his gaze on her backside as she clanged the door shut.

  Some of these lusty old guys never lost their urges, or knew when it was time they hung up their tackle. They all thought they could get any woman they fancied, whether it was their hair or their teeth that were dropping out, or their beer bellies had prevented them seeing their feet — or anything of more importance — for years.

  Most of them could probably do nothing more than dream about it, anyway... but even if it was only the thought that kept them alive, she supposed it was preferable to mouldering away in front of the TV... and you were a long time dead.

  And why the hell she should care, anyway!

  She stopped her meandering thoughts as she slid back into the hire car, opened a can and took a long drink of coke. She needed to concentrate on her own cause, instead of wondering about a geriatric’s loss of libido. She gave a little shudder. Whether he could or couldn’t do the business, it was hardly a thought to make her heart beat faster.

  But by now, she was quickly revising her idea of meeting Dawes tonight. If he was going to be as aggressive as the shopkeeper said, she would do better to leave it until another time and earlier in the evening before he got legless. She had no wish to encounter the rage of a madman. Nor could she guess how he would react to seeing her, either, knowing that she had tracked him down.

  So for tonight, she decided to keep up her watch until
she saw him come out of 84 Battery Mews and make his way to the off-licence, just to establish that he did indeed have a regular pattern. There was only another hour to go until midnight, she thought with a groan. But boredom went with the job. It wasn’t all excitement and thrills. Hardly ever.

  ***

  As the time dragged on, she heard a clock strike somewhere in the distance. Fifteen more minutes to go, and then she could observe as long as necessary, and go home. Her normal amount of energy was flagging fast, and the aftermath of her recent flu was still lingering. She needed sleep — and some extra vitamins to pep her up.

  A short while later she sat up more stiffly as a couple of young guys in jeans and sweatshirts came swaggering down the street towards her, mouthing drunken obscenities and thrusting their hips towards her suggestively.

  ‘Bastards,’ she muttered, forcing herself not to retaliate or make obvious eye contact, and feeling thankful she had locked the car doors again.

  It was almost exactly midnight by her watch when she noticed movement from Battery Mews. Halfway down the street a door opened, spilling light out on to the pavement for a moment before it was closed again. From her observations she knew it came from number 84.

  ‘Hello, sergeant cum major, whoever the hell you really are,’ she said silently. ‘Stay still long enough for me to take some pics for posterity—’

  But it hardly mattered, because he shuffled slowly, like a very old man, as if it was an effort to move anywhere too quickly. Or else his brain was too addled to bother, and Alex guessed he was pretty drunk already. She watched him begin to cross the cobbled street to get to the side leading to the off-licence, wondering if he really enjoyed drinking himself into a stupor. Or was he just drinking himself to death because he had so little else in his life?

  Alex kept her camera clicking to get a series of reference shots. He was in the middle of the Mews street now, seemingly oblivious to the car that was approaching from the opposite direction. It was behind him, and it didn’t have its headlights switched on. Curious... but presumably it was a resident’s car, and it was going to slow down and stop…

  In a split second of complete shock, Alex knew it was wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, the car was too large and impressive to belong to anyone in this seedy street. And for another, she was suddenly aware that it was gathering speed, and that the headlights had been just as suddenly turned on, blazing into life, and dazzling anyone near enough to be in their way.

  Like a crazed animal scenting its kill, the car was heading straight for Harold Dawes. And in the same split second, he realized it too.

  He turned as if bewildered, and was caught full in the head-lights, frozen for a moment in time before he screamed in terror as the car ploughed into him, tossing him into the air like a rag doll.

  Then the car hurtled on into the night, passing Alex’s car, while she threw herself sideways on to the passenger seat, flinging her camera to the floor.

  ‘Christ,’ she whispered, her heart pounding, and forcing down the vomit in her gut. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’

  Half of her brain was completely disorientated. The other half was furiously registering that she had neglected to keep filming at the vital moment. She had just lost it. She had witnessed a cold-blooded murder for the first time ever, and she hadn’t got it on film.

  But her fury was just as instantly submerged by what she had just seen. The sight had been just as sickening and shocking as she always imagined. No. It was worse than imagination, because she had not only seen the impact, she had heard the dull thud of the body as the car struck it, and the screams of terror from Dawes as he saw what was coming…

  It had all happened so fast, and there was nothing she could have done to warn him that somebody was coming for him, deliberately targeting him. Somebody who must have known his movements so well... the truth of it was so bloody merciless.

  Alex’s mouth was so dry now that she almost gagged. She knew who the hit and run driver had to be. She had registered the size and shape of the car, even if she hadn’t fully recognized it as a Jaguar. But it was black, and it was large.

  So it had to be him. MB. Mister Big. Taking charge of things himself, now that his henchman was habitually too drunk to be trusted any longer, and might well start blabbing or boasting about what they had done.

  The stupid nickname Alex had given him was too infantile to credit any longer. She sat crouched over the steering-wheel while the terror of it stunned her mind, knowing that she should go to see if anything could be done. Dawes might be horribly injured, and although she balked from going anywhere near him, it was only common decency to do so.

  And if he thought he was about to breathe his last, he might be willing to give her some information. She was further sickened by her own thought, but she knew it was the way Nick’s mind would have worked. Always the professional, no matter how ghastly the circumstances, putting personal feelings aside to get at the truth.

  But Dawes might already be dead. Was almost certainly dead, she thought, seeing that there was no movement at all from the heap of humanity lying at the side of the road now. MB would have made certain of that. He would have done his job well and made no mistakes.

  While she dithered in those moments, a mass of shivering indecision, she saw that curtains were being pulled aside from windows in the Mews. Other people had clearly heard the roar of the car and the terrified screams.

  And then she saw that doors were opening, and people were rushing out of the houses to bend over Harold Dawes’ mangled body, and there were more shrill screams mingled with voices shouting for someone to send for an ambulance and the police.

  Alex could have done all that, but so could someone else. There were plenty of people with access to phones, and she had to get out of there fast, before somebody came running to the end of the Mews to see if she had seen or heard anything. The last thing she wanted was to be called as a witness, and to have her name blazoned in the newspapers for MB to see and recognize, and to wonder if she might be on to him.

  The fact that he almost certainly knew it already made her blood freeze. It also made her his next potential target.

  She fumbled with the car’s ignition switch, crashing the gears as she shot away from the scene, desperate to get away from anywhere remotely near Battery Mews.

  He hadn’t seen her, she kept telling herself. He couldn’t have seen her. She had had her head well down by the time his headlights had lit up her car and moved on, and she was still wearing her baseball cap and check shirt.

  If he had ever seen her, or had a description of her from Dawes, he couldn’t possibly have recognized her tonight…

  She tore off the baseball cap and flung it on the floor, then drove around for an hour before she had calmed down enough to think logically. If he had seen a car parked near Battery Mews, he would have seen a green Mini, and not her own car. So she had to get rid of this one as soon as possible. The hire place was closed now, but from past experience she knew she could leave it in the yard and post the keys through the office letter-box.

  Long hours of surveillance could get very cold, and she thanked God she’d had the nous to bring a dark jacket with her, and she put it on over the check shirt as she walked back to her flat from the hire car place, her hair hanging loose.

  The time it took to get home was sheer torture. Every large car she saw made her want to shrink into the shadows, as if he had truly stalked her now.

  She felt as if she knew how it felt to be hunted, and no matter how many times she told herself she was being completely irrational, she couldn’t shake off the terror.

  ‘Christ, Gary, you were so right,’ she whimpered, when at last she reached her own building. ‘I am in the wrong bloody job, and the sooner I get out of it, the better.’

  And she refused to give credence to her father’s usual remonstration that everything will look better in the morning, Audrey... Because everything wouldn’t. Not this time.

  In any case, s
he wasn’t waiting until morning to see how things looked. She had to get away. Her own flat didn’t feel safe any longer. He knew where she lived. And now that Leanora, and Moira — and now Harold Dawes — had been disposed of, she was the only one with any real information about the blackmailing scam the two women had been operating.

  She no longer felt as if she was doing a noble service to help people. It was just bloody stupid, meddling into other peoples’ lives, and pretending you were some godlike creature who could do miracles. Well, she couldn’t, and she hadn’t, and the sooner she got out from it the better.

  She flung some things into a bag and had vacated the flat again within fifteen minutes. She got into her car, and once through the city, she headed for the south coast with no clear idea of where she was going. Worthing? Mrs Dooley’s guest house? And how stupid would that be!

  The temptation to prowl around the Wolstenholme house looking for clues had lost all its allure. Besides, the boyfriend may have keys to it. He wasn’t brainless, and he might figure out that she would go there, and lie in wait. And she might well be the next one to end up in the swimming-pool and not just for a moonlight dip.

  There was one place she could try for refuge. The Happy Days Retirement Home might not be her first choice, but it would be a good place for cover, until she could get her scrambled thoughts together. She was sure Graham Johnson would give her a room for the night, if she invented some trouble with her car and couldn’t find a garage open at this hour.

  ‘Calm down — and slow down,’ she muttered out loud, as another car flashed its headlights at her and honked its horn as she shot across its path. ‘A fat lot of good you’ll do if you get stopped by the police.’

  But maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea, either. If she was stopped for reckless driving and forced to spend a night in the cells, at least MB couldn’t get at her there. But her pride quickly reasserted itself. She’d be damned if he was going to make her hide away like some snivelling criminal. He was the villain, not her. All the same…