Illusions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 2)

by Jean Saunders

  ‘Don’t push me,’ Alex grinned. ‘But I’m not leaving my car here, so I’d better follow you, and I’ll leave it at the pub after lunch while we take a ride on the bike.’

  She didn’t exactly mention booking in for the night at the same time, but they both knew it was what she meant.

  ‘So what’s on your mind?’ he asked, when they had ordered their ploughman’s lunches at the quaint country pub.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come on, sweetheart, I know you well enough to know when you’re on a case and it’s not going well.’

  ‘You sound just like somebody in an American gangster movie,’ she said crossly.

  ‘And you’d never have agreed to join me so quickly if you didn’t need a shoulder. So tell me.’

  She bit into her hunk of bread that was oozing with butter now, and the sensual aromas of hot coffee, Cheddar cheese and pickle teased her nostrils.

  But she wasn’t ready for telling anything yet. While it was still in her head and nobody else’s, it didn’t have to be real. It was still all in fantasy-land... she wished.

  ‘I had to get away, that’s all. Things have got rather messy, and I needed some space to see things clearly.’

  God, she sounded as loony as Moira’s friends now, instead of the feisty private eye she was supposed to be.

  ‘And have you seen it clearly now?’ Gary persisted.

  ‘No. Not quite. Not yet. But I’m working on it.’

  He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Look, babe, if you want to confide in me, fine. If not, then forget it and let’s just concentrate on spending a few hours with the simple life.’

  ‘You’re right. If you can’t do anything about it, why worry?’ she said brightly.

  And despite his city smart ID, Gary always knew how to enjoy the simple life, whether it was playing the fruit machines at a tacky seaside entertainment venue, or walking along the sands at the water’s edge with their shoes off and their jeans rolled up, or skimming pebbles into the sea. And gradually Alex’s ferocious tension began to ease.

  It tightened again as soon as they were on their way back to the pub, and she saw the terse evening headlines on a stand outside a local newsagent’s shop. Her stomach churned sickeningly as she read the gigantic words.

  WAS LAMBETH HIT AND RUN VICTIM MURDER TARGET?

  ‘This wasn’t anything do with your case, was it?’ Gary said with a grin. And then he saw her white face. ‘Christ, Alex, don’t tell me it was!’

  ‘Let’s get back to the pub,’ she said, her teeth beginning to chatter. She badly needed the security of four walls around her again. But not her own.

  Four anonymous walls, where no one knew her but Gary. She had learned long ago that she could trust him, and she made no more objection when he had checked them into a double room for the night and took her in his arms.

  ‘How bad is it?’ he demanded.

  ‘How bad do you want it? One murder or three, it’s still murder, isn’t it?’

  He gaped at her, his tuneless whistle dying on his lips as he saw the nameless fear in her eyes.

  ‘Three?’

  ‘Three. And I was somehow caught up in every one of them. God knows I didn’t mean to be, and I wasn’t meant to be—’

  Not unless there had been some heavenly, ethereal plan in Madame Leanora’s astrological chart, that said Alexandra Best, private investigator, was destined to be on the same cruise ship as herself, and that all the events that followed were preordained…

  ‘Alex, are you OK?’

  Gary’s voice was harsh in her ears, and she realized he had pushed her heavily on to the bed. A damn good job he had, she thought, and without his usual intent too. Because if he hadn’t pushed her there, she would surely have fallen.

  ‘Do you believe in omens and second sight and all that rubbish?’ She ignored his question, and asked him the same thing she had asked Nick Frobisher a lifetime ago.

  ‘Christ, no. You’re not going weirdo on me, are you, babe?’ he said uneasily. ‘I never took you for a spook.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Alex said, with a shaky laugh. ‘Not me. Just everybody I seem to have been in contact with recently.’

  ‘Well, you can count me out of that for a start. So are you going to tell me what this is all about? Because if not, I can think of far better things to do to pass the time.’

  Her thoughts went beyond anything he was saying. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on two things at the same time any more. She also needed to call Nick. She had no choice now.

  She had to know if he had got the photos, and if he had acted on them, or if the newspaper headlines were merely guesswork.

  Or if some other witness had come forward to give some lurid story of how they had seen Harold Dawes lurching across Battery Mews, and that a big black car had run him down. And by the way, there was a small green car parked at the end of the Mews too, and it had been there for some time.

  She felt Gary’s lips nuzzling her ear. His leathers crackled with animal strength, accentuating his maleness, and his arms were tight around her. He was a walking advert for testosterone, she thought weakly, as she had thought so many times before. And he wanted her. And she wasn’t made of wood.

  ‘I will tell you, Gary,’ she mumbled. ‘Later.’

  ***

  A long while later, they surfaced from the joyful, chaotic seduction of the double bed. They shared a sensual shower before returning to bed, where they lay entwined in a comfortably intimate stupor until a different kind of need made them think of food.

  ‘I shall expect the works after that,’ Alex told him. ‘Steak and chips and all the trimmings the place can muster.’

  ‘Sex always did make you hungry, didn’t it, doll?’ Gary said with a wicked laugh. ‘And I thought you’d already had the works. But if you want more—’

  ‘Oh yeah? Superman, are you?’

  ‘Try me,’ he taunted, but she pushed him away, because the memory of why she was here was already overtaking the hedonistic pleasures of the last couple of hours. And she couldn’t ignore it much longer.

  Gary sensed her change of mood, and leaned up on his elbow to look down at her.

  ‘So tell me about these three murders, and what’s got you so rattled,’ he said, one finger idly circling her nipple.

  She pushed his hand away. The mood had definitely gone, and she felt chilled. She reached for the duvet and pulled it over both of them with a shudder.

  ‘What’s got me rattled, as you call it, is that I think I may be next in line.’

  He didn’t twig for a moment, and then he sat up straight, and his voice had a much harder edge to it than usual.

  ‘What the frigging hell have you got yourself into this time, Alex?’

  It was far too complicated to tell him all of it in detail, so she ran through the essentials. About meeting Leanora and her prophesies; and Moira’s arrival at her office; and the major’s appearance at Leanora’s funeral; and the strange friends who made her cringe; her own anonymous threats; and then Moira’s death; David Bailey who had been a friend; and the major’s hit and run accident that was no accident at all, but cold-blooded murder; and who she now knew was a con man called Harold Dawes and not a major at all…

  ‘Slow down, for God’s sake. I can’t take it all in,’ Gary snapped. ‘I know one thing, though. You should give up this bloody job, Alex. I told you that before, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did, and I can’t. Not now, anyway. Not until I see this through, and they find Mister Big.’

  He eyed her as if she was truly crazy now.

  ‘Mister Big? Bloody hell, Alex, how many detective novels have you been reading lately?’

  ‘I swear to you, Gary, there’s somebody pretty big behind all this, and as yet I don’t know who it is. But until he’s behind bars, I won’t feel safe. I know too much.’

  Her mouth was dry again, wondering how a simple request from a woman client to check out who had been stalking her, could have led to this
.

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘What I should have done a long time ago. I’m calling Nick. He’ll have got the photos I sent him by now, and with any luck he’ll have traced the car’s owner. I have to know who it is.’

  She switched on her mobile and dialled his office number before she could change her mind. To her fury, she got his answering service. She rang her own answering machine at the flat to check on any messages left for her, in the hope that he would have contacted her during the day.

  The flat mechanical voice told her that there were two messages. She waited for the click and then a familiar voice cut in, filled with urgency.

  ‘Alex, it’s Nick. I’ve got the envelope. The possibility is too big to discuss on the phone. Wherever you are, call me as soon as you’re back at the flat and I’ll meet you there. And take care.’

  The second message was brief, spoken in a cultured male voice she had never heard before. There were only five words. The warning it contained was similar to Nick’s, but said with far more menace.

  ‘Watch your back, Miss Best.’

  Chapter 13

  ‘I have to go home,’ she stuttered. ‘I have to see Nick as soon as possible. I’m sorry, Gary.’

  ‘What about tonight?’

  ‘To hell with tonight. This is more important. Look, I’ll pay for the room—’

  ‘No, you bloody won’t. What’s going on? What were those messages?’

  ‘Nick’s got some information I need.’

  ‘Bollocks. Since when were you so bloody keen to work hand in glove with the police? Or should that be hand in crotch with that nerd—’

  ‘Leave it, Gary,’ she snapped. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  He grabbed her wrist as she picked up her bag and began stuffing her things inside it. He had a vicious grip, and the pain shot through her flesh as he twisted it, but she was damned if she was going to let him know it.

  ‘You’re not messing me about, are you, doll?’

  ‘Why should I be? We both knew this was never going to be a permanent arrangement. You got in touch with me after God knows how long, and expected me to come running. Well, screw you, Gary. Now stop being so childish and let me go!’

  ‘Screw you then.’

  He spoke without innuendo for once, letting her go savagely. She rubbed her wrist where the skin was reddening. She had for-gotten how petulant and aggressive he could be.

  He was great in small doses, and that was all. The fact of the matter was, she didn’t even care. And it was a hell of an indictment on both of them if they were so shallow. But she didn’t have the time to think about that now.

  She turned back to where he was standing with arms folded in the middle of the room. The words immovable statue, seemed fairly appropriate.

  ‘I’ll call you sometime, Gary. OK?’

  He shrugged and turned his back on her.

  ‘Suit yourself. I may just be around.’

  She resisted slamming the door behind her as she ran down the stairs and out to her car. He was like a flaming five-year-old when he didn’t get his own way, she raged. But she knew that.

  Just as she knew that her anger was keeping her excitement under control from anticipating what Nick had to tell her. And more importantly, squashing her fear about the threat in the second message on her answer machine.

  She knew she should upgrade her mobile phone to one that had text on it, then she could access messages without having to listen to a voice and be scared half to death.

  She was behind the times... and she knew that some of Nick’s people mocked her for not being connected to the Internet. ‘Amateur detective’ was how they thought of her. Well, screw them too.

  ***

  Once on the road to London Alex left a message for Nick to say she would be home late that evening.

  She couldn’t give him any specific time, but she said she needed to see him, however late it got. His hours were irregular, anyway, and she knew he would turn up when he could. The summer traffic heading away from the coast was heavier than expected, and she had no idea how long the journey would take.

  And hopefully, this whole thing could then come to an end. She was sick of the Wolstenholmes and anything to do with them. She wished she had never set foot on a certain cruise ship and opted for a weekend in Morecambe instead. She grimaced at the thought. Nothing against you, Morecambe, she added silently, but a sedate boarding house would have been... well, probably dead boring and full of sen cits.

  She let herself inside her flat cautiously, and stood quite still for a few moments to pick up any kind of alien atmosphere, but all seemed as before except for the bundle of mail on the carpet.

  She picked it up quickly, and flipped through it. Mostly junk as usual. Except for the padded envelope with a Worthing postmark.

  Her heart beating fast, she slit it open, and took out a smaller padded envelope inside. No expense spared, obviously. This one was also addressed to her, though it was unstamped, and her heart jumped as she recognized Moira Wolstenholme’s firm handwriting. There was a small note stuck to the outside of the envelope.

  ‘Now that the police have finished with Moira’s house, May and I have been authorized to sort out the rest,’ Doreen had written. ‘It’s a far from happy task, but someone has to do it and better someone who was a friend, than anyone else. I’m sure you would agree. You always had such a kindly aura about you, dear. Anyway, the enclosed envelope was addressed to you, so we knew you were meant to have it.’

  Full marks for deduction, thought Alex, ignoring the comment about her kindly aura. The way she felt about the anonymous caller on her answer machine had her feeling anything but kindly.

  Her hands were shaking as she ripped open the second envelope, hoping like mad that it wasn’t going to contain more money. If it did, there would be a hell of a lot, or maybe it was something of value. Jewellery or some personal token of thanks for her services. Something that had belonged to Moira or her mother... God, she hoped not. She didn’t deserve it, since she still didn’t feel she had actually done what she had been hired to do... and she certainly didn’t want it.

  The envelope contained a video cassette. Moira had stuck a post-it note on it that simply said ‘Play Me’.

  Alex would have given anything not to have to play it, even though she guessed it probably held the key to the whole mystery. But a video sent after someone’s death could only mean one thing. There was something nasty about to come out of the woodwork, or in this case, the video machine.

  But if she wanted to know the truth, then she had no option. She pushed the cassette into her machine and switched it on. It took a few minutes for the TV to warm up and for the video to begin. As she saw Moira’s face come into focus at the front of the screen, it was also obviously a home movie.

  Oh God, was it going to be confession time now? Had Moira persuaded her mother that it was time to come clean and tell the world all about their scams? There were plenty of crims who couldn’t resist boasting about the way they had fooled people, and this cassette had evidently been preserved for posting until after Moira and her mother were dead.

  Alex gasped as the scene settled down and came into steadier focus. The person holding the camera had either adjusted it or put it on a tripod, and there were two people on screen now. A man and a woman in bed, and they were naked.

  One of them was Moira, and although the man was instantly familiar as a public figure, Alex couldn’t pin-point him by name for a few seconds. Once she did, she felt a huge shock of disbelief. She had assumed Moira’s lover to be someone of importance, but she would never have guessed... who would? These people were supposed to be above the human failings of ordinary mortals.

  All her instincts reacted against watching the video as it progressed, especially when the action moved away from the man’s face as the person filming ensured that the viewer would be drawn to the most revolting and degrading sexual acts.
>
  Had it been Leanora who had filmed all this filth? Alex found it almost impossible to connect the insignificant, dun-coloured woman on the cruise ship with a woman who would film her daughter in the tortuous positions the two people were getting themselves into now.

  But it had to be her. It was all part of the blackmailing scam. Mother and daughter had to be in it together.

  And it proved how the most seemingly innocent people could create illusions of respectability. Nothing was ever what it seemed. She had been told to always remember that.

  Watching with disgust now, she saw how the man was being spread-eagled and manacled to the bed. There was a look of lecherous bliss on his face while the woman’s enormous buttocks were raised to the ceiling, as she leaned over him and...

  ‘Good God, Moira,’ Alex whispered. ‘Is this what it was all about? Had you and Leanora already sent him a copy of this filth too to get even more money out of him? No wonder she got stabbed and you ended up in the bloody swimming-pool.’

  Her thoughts spun crazily. All this time she had thought the Wolstenholme women were blackmailing Moira’s well-heeled lover on something illegal that Leanora might have had wormed out of him during her psychic readings. People usually gave away far more than they thought they did, and led the mystic into giving them apparently startling revelations.

  But Alex had never thought of this. It didn’t make sense that the cassette had been addressed and ready to send to her, either. Unless Leanora’s psychic nonsense — which didn’t seem so crazy and bizarre at this moment — had rubbed off on Moira, and persuaded her to take precautions.

  So that in case anything unexpected happened to her, and she ended up as dead as her mother, they knew they could trust Alex to see that this pervert would be caught…

  She switched off the video with shaking hands, unable to bear any more of it.

  Nick had always told her to think laterally. And when she recalled the leering face of the man in the video, rather than any other part of his anatomy that had been exposed in all its disgusting and ageing glory, Alex forced herself to wonder why such a man would ever have got in touch with a clairvoyant in the first place.