by Rebecca Tope
‘What was that for?’ he asked.
‘It wasn’t for anything. Just checking that you’re real. I’ve had a very peculiar day.’
But he was prevented from hearing about it when Timmy demanded help with a school project, and the phone rang twice, and then Andrew came to the door to consult about the coming funeral. Valerie Innes and her miserable story were pushed aside by more urgent matters.
And yet the woman would not go away. She haunted Thea’s dreams and unsettled her equilibrium, although not in any predictable fashion. Nothing to do with trusting Drew or worrying about money. It was more personal than that – more a case of regretting her lack of feeling and the assumptions she had made. There was an unfinished argument endlessly looping inside her head. She found herself assessing the relationships of friends and family in an attempt to demonstrate to herself that Valerie’s Paul had been a far from typical example.
A week passed, and still she was unable to shake the obsessive comparisons. Strangely, she said nothing about it to Drew, after that initial moment had been lost in the whirl of family and work. It felt risky to talk about it before she could come to any firm judgement on the matter. And in order to do that, she needed evidence. It was a familiar situation, in some ways. There had been several mysterious crimes committed in the vicinity of her house-sits, which had prompted her to indulge in her own investigations, for her own inquisitive purposes. Something in her nature required that a story must always be finished, the questions resolved.
She wanted to meet the renegade Paul and see for herself what kind of man he was. For that, she would need his surname and current address. A tiny little flat in Headington was the only clue she had to go on. She needed to discover more than that if she was to stand any chance of finding him. And the obvious place to use for tracking anybody these days had to be Facebook. This was something she had managed to avoid until very recently. Only when Drew’s daughter Stephanie had begun to show an interest in social media, starting with YouTube, had both the adults realised their obligations to acquire at least some knowledge of the subject. Drew had already accepted that his business would benefit from a Facebook presence, and had elicited Thea’s help in setting it up. She could now navigate it, but still felt a strong emotional resistance to becoming personally involved.
Valerie Innes had a minimal profile, but two of her sons were much more forthcoming. The links and likes and friends and favourites swirled back and forth until anyone with the slightest diligence could formulate a picture of the whole family. And there was Paul Grover, with photos and boasts about his brilliant new venture into the world of instant displays of house plants. The postings dated back a year or so, and nothing was very recent. But a few more searches revealed an address in North Oxford where any creditors were invited to apply. There was something almost endearing about that detail. At least the man wasn’t trying to dodge his debts. Did that not suggest that he wasn’t actually a swindler, after all?
Oxford was not far away, although it was a place she hated to drive in. She always got lost and there was nowhere to park. There was no need to go there. Paul Grover was nothing to her. She was slipping back into the same bad old ways that had got her into trouble more than once. She had quite forgotten Valerie and Frampton Mansell and its canal until the woman reminded her. And yet here she was, indulging an itch that would not go away. Doubt had been cast onto much that Thea held dear, her assumptions shaken and her values undermined. If she could persuade herself that this Paul was an obvious scoundrel, everything would slot back into its normal pattern.
It was a quiet day, the children safely at school, the dog briefly walked around the field at the end of the lane, Drew on one of his visits. In fact, Drew’s visits were increasingly reminiscent of the daily round of an old-fashioned village vicar. He would call in on lonely elderly folk, letting them reminisce about their lives and drinking their tea. ‘They’ll suspect you of touting for business,’ Thea worried. ‘It must look awfully bad. Isn’t there some sort of protocol that says you shouldn’t do this sort of thing?’
He looked at her from under his eyebrows, saying nothing for a few seconds. ‘You haven’t paid proper attention,’ he reproached her. ‘Everyone I visit has been bereaved in the last year or so. Even if I didn’t do the funeral, they know I understand. And they mostly came to me first, asking about the burial field. I’m not doing anything in the least bit dodgy.’
‘Here I go again,’ she’d apologised. ‘Always thinking badly of people – even you.’
‘I forgive you,’ he said easily.
In some convoluted way, she felt she was correcting this failing in herself by seeking out Paul Grover. It would be good to find that he was nothing more than inadequate, and not a professional con man, greedily stripping vulnerable women of their assets.
So she took her little car to Oxford, using the satnav that she had long resisted, and quickly found the modest backstreet that was the address she hoped was Grover’s home. It looked like an ordinary house, but nobody came to answer her knock. She stood there, undecided, thinking she might wait in the car for a while, before trying again. It was parked some streets away, on a meter. She was reluctant to waste the money she had shovelled into it, and had a book to read while she waited.
Half an hour later she was back. Coming in the other direction was a woman of a similar age to her own. It soon became apparent that they were both calling at the same door. ‘After you,’ said the woman.
Thea knocked, and again there was no response.
‘I think it’s one of those places that lets itself be used as an address,’ said the woman. ‘As a sort of cover.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know. All kinds of people are afraid of giving their true address, so they use a false one. Whoever lives here agrees to pretend to be the right name, if they’re asked. They do it for dozens of people, all paying a bit, and it adds up to a nice little earner.’
‘I see,’ said Thea slowly, thinking she must have lived a more sheltered life than she realised, for such a service never to have occurred to her before.
‘Who are you looking for?’
‘A man called Paul Grover.’
‘Never heard of him. I’m after an outfit called Blaskett Data Services. They owe me five hundred pounds.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Could be worse, I s’pose.’
‘How am I going to find him?’ Thea wondered aloud. ‘It’s meant to be easy to find people these days.’
‘Do you know where he works?’
‘No idea. I think he’s just got a new job, although nothing about him’s at all definite. He might not even be in Oxford at all.’
The woman shrugged. ‘Well, I guess you’re out of luck, then. Same as me.’
‘Can we be sure this place is what you think? That in itself would be a bit of a giveaway.’
A man was approaching them, his expression a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. He seemed to be in late middle age. ‘Uh-oh,’ he said, stopping beside them. ‘Is this what I think it is?’
Neither woman answered him.
‘A drop house,’ he explained. ‘False address, and all that.’
‘Looks like it,’ said Thea. ‘Who do you want?’
‘A bastard by the name of Baxter. Harold Baxter.’
‘Not Blaskett?’ asked Thea’s new friend.
‘Nope. Who’s Blaskett?’
‘The swindlers who did me out of five hundred quid.’
‘There must be hundreds of letters in there, at this rate,’ said Thea.
The others looked at her. ‘Why?’ said the man. ‘Nobody writes real letters any more. All they need is an address. The house is probably registered to someone who lives abroad, just kept as a front. If there was someone living here, they’d never get a moment’s peace, would they?’
A kind of collective shrug emphasised the futility of standing there, and they dispersed. Thea’s car had ten more minutes of parki
ng time, some of which she spent in thought. On the back seat was a map book, and she reached over for it, wanting to get an overall idea of just where she was. A satnav was hopeless in that regard, which was the main reason she had always disliked them.
A tiny little flat in Headington repeated itself inside her head. This address was not in Headington, which was a complication she had overlooked, but there could be no possible sense in going in any further search of the man, when she had no idea what Paul Grover looked like. Facebook hadn’t offered a picture of him. In the olden days, there would have been the simple expedient of looking him up in the phone book. But even then, if he had only recently moved, he wouldn’t be listed.
She would go for a look anyway. Having lived in Witney for many years, she was familiar with Oxford and knew that Headington was an expensive address. Even a tiny flat would set a person back considerably. Grover might be renting, unless the flat had been a bolt-hole he had kept up his sleeve while living with Valerie. Think, she adjured herself. Valerie had approached her for some specific reason. Was this madcap trip to Oxford a result of a deliberate plan? Was she so predictable? It seemed impossible. There had been far too little information provided to ensure that she came here to this spot on this day.
And yet, this North Oxford address had been easy to find. The nature of the building had quickly become apparent. The strong implication was that Grover was indeed a con man. Why else use such a place?
So what was Valerie’s intention? Thea drove westwards with that question ringing loud in her ears.
So loud did it ring that she went again to Frampton Mansell, zigzagging confidently via the A429 and then the 419. She was there in well under an hour, ignoring the fact that it was the middle of the day and lunch was going to be an issue before much longer.
There was a mud-splashed Renault outside Valerie’s house. Thea parked behind it and walked up the short driveway to the front door. She could see movement through a window, but nobody answered her knock. This was annoying, and she tried the door. Plenty of people still left them unlocked, after all. But not Valerie.
Angrily, Thea went around to the back. There was a gravel path, and a flimsy garden door that she easily unlatched. The rear of the house had its own porch, full of plants and a chest freezer. She could faintly hear a shrill voice. But this door did not open, either.
She went to a window and pressed her face close to it. The interior was shadowy, but she recognised the kitchen she had eaten in a few days earlier. A woman was standing in the furthest corner, her arms raised. As Thea watched the arms came down, and the object held between them collided violently with the balding head of a man sitting at the table. He was facing Thea, slowly focusing on the surprising appearance of a face at the window. It was hard to be sure, but she thought he smiled at her, before slumping forward.
The woman leant over him, carefully placing the heavy iron skillet beside him on the table. Then she looked up and saw Thea at the window. Her lips drew back in a snarl, part horror, part triumph.
Thea’s heart was thumping irregularly. She had just witnessed a murder. Valerie Innes had just killed the man who had ruined her life. A swindler who deserved whatever came to him – within reason. Hardly anybody deserved to be killed like that, though. And he had actually looked rather nice, in that final second. ‘Hey!’ she shouted stupidly. ‘What have you done?’
The double glazing muffled all sound, but Valerie clearly understood. Then she looked up at a point above Thea’s head, and her expression changed.
‘Bad luck, love,’ came a man’s voice. ‘In the wrong place at the wrong time, well and truly. You know what they say about cats and curiosity.’
She whirled round and met the face of a handsome man. Paralysed for a moment, the next thing she knew, Valerie had come out to join them.
‘Roger – it’s done. I did it. I never thought I would, but this woman helped me to decide that I had to.’
Thea simply stared from one face to the other, unable to find words.
Valerie went on. ‘She’s called Thea Slocombe, and she’s the nosiest woman I have ever met.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, ‘Val’s play-acting worked, then? You swallowed the story she spun you.’
‘She did,’ said Valerie triumphantly. ‘You should have seen us, arguing about whether a man could be trusted or not. Now, what do you think we ought to do with her? I never thought she’d come back here, I must admit.’
‘Play-acting?’ Thea managed to speak. ‘That wasn’t play-acting. Nobody could act as well as that.’
Valerie cast a nervous glance at the man she’d called Roger. ‘It was. I made it all up.’
Thea’s mind was in turmoil. ‘But why involve me at all? I don’t get it.’
Valerie gave her a complicated look. ‘Credibility,’ she said briefly.
‘What?’
‘If I could make you believe I’d finished with Paul, once and for ever, I’d know we could safely follow the plan through.’ She grimaced. ‘But you turned out to be even more nosy than I thought.’
‘And now she’s seen a lot more than she should,’ said Roger grimly. ‘This changes things you know, old girl.’
Before either woman could react, he had grabbed Valerie around the neck in a tight hold from behind. ‘You’ll be joining lover-boy in the old well, my darling. Sorry about that.’
‘What about me?’ Thea realised she could simply run away and report the entire episode to the police. But that would entail abandoning Valerie to her fate, which was clearly unthinkable. A phonecall was the obvious answer, but as usual her mobile was in the car, and time was clearly crucial. Roger could break his captive’s neck in a second.
‘You can go to hell,’ said Roger calmly. ‘I’ll be off where nobody can find me before your thumb hits the first nine.’
‘But Roger,’ Valerie choked out. ‘Why?’
‘You’ve served your purpose, my pet. Paul was never a swindler. I was blackmailing him into taking your money. He loved you, every bit as much as you loved him. But he couldn’t take the humiliation of you thinking so badly of him. He was doing everything in his power to get back on track and redeem himself. He’d have done it, too – which very much did not suit my plans. Not at all.’ He tightened his grip on her, and Thea braced herself for some sort of ineffectual rugby tackle, which might at least slow him down. It did not occur to her for another fifteen seconds that she might simply scream as loud as she could.
‘Lucky for me that it’s true what they say – Hell hath no fury like a woman who believes herself scorned. Stupid bitches,’ he added.
Thea launched herself forward, with a shout that was nowhere near as loud as she’d intended. Her face met Roger’s knee, and came off very much the worse.
Then a voice came from the side of the house. ‘Hello? Is anybody there? Hello?’
‘Yes!’ squealed Thea. ‘Help!’
Round the corner came the man from outside the drop house in North Oxford. He was holding out some sort of card. ‘Good afternoon, everybody. I’m Detective Sergeant Vernon. I’m conducting an investigation into a fraud, involving false addresses. I thought perhaps this lady might be able to help, so I followed her as she drove down here.’
Thea crumpled into a boneless heap. Roger began to run down the garden, before realising there was no way out. Valerie Innes simply wailed.
In Which Thea Meets Tony Brown
Timmy was being petulant and Thea was doggedly trying to mollify him. ‘So what do you want to do?’ she asked him.
‘Run round the woods with Hepzie,’ he replied promptly. ‘The woods look great.’
‘Oh.’ The reply was not what she had expected, and it placed her on the spikes of a dilemma. Stephanie and Drew wanted to look round the Roman villa. She herself was flexible. Chedworth still had several unexplored corners and she was happy to wander around any of them.
‘But the villa’s really good,’ she tried. ‘Aren’t you interested in the
Romans?’
‘They’d have been in the woods as well,’ he said quite reasonably. ‘There are probably ruins of stuff they made in there.’
‘I doubt it. And even if there are, we’re not going to find them, are we?’
‘You can leave me and Heps on our own, and find us later,’ he said, without a vestige of hope. A boy of eight was regarded as barely more self-sufficient than an eight-day-old baby, in these anxious times. Even Thea couldn’t remember being allowed to roam free until very much older.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. ‘I’m not crazy about Romans myself, to be perfectly honest.’
She left him in the shop attached to the villa, and went to find Drew. He and his daughter were waiting by the entrance to the site. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.
‘Tim’s not sold on the villa. I said I’d take him and the dog for a run in the woods. Probably just as good for him, and definitely better for Hepzie.’
‘But I bought a family ticket,’ he said. ‘That’s a big waste of money.’
‘Go and see if they’ll change it.’
‘They won’t. Computers won’t allow that sort of thing.’
She sighed and looked around. ‘There’s a man with a little girl, just going into the shop. I’ll ask them if they want tickets. You can create a family somehow. Don’t make it difficult, okay?’
‘It’s not me being difficult. It’s Timmy.’
‘He’s only making his wishes known. That’s not so awful, is it? Not everybody likes this sort of place.’
‘Timmy does. He’s being awkward on purpose.’
That was possible, Thea conceded, but it still felt easier to go along with what the little boy said he wanted. She looked at Stephanie. ‘Do you think he’ll be sorry he missed it when it’s too late?’
The big sister shrugged. ‘He might,’ she said. ‘Where is he, anyway?’
‘Over there, look. Let me go and talk to that man before he buys a ticket.’