by Sibel Hodge
‘Let me see what I can find out.’
‘Thanks – oh, and if the police found any bugs in there, they’re Brad’s.’
He paused for a while. ‘How come you don’t know what happened if Brad was listening to him?’
‘Well, the bugs didn’t work. It wasn’t my fault, honestly. He must’ve given me some duds to plant.’
He chuckled. ‘So, if I do this, what are you going to do for me in return?’
I smiled to myself. ‘How about I order some take-out when you get home, and we have a repeat performance of last night?’ I flushed, thinking about our sex-a-thon session. ‘As long as you don’t snore like a hippo again afterwards. I swear I’m going to put duct tape over your mouth when you’re asleep.’
‘As long as I can put duct tape over your mouth when you’re awake.’ He chuckled at my gasp of indignation. ‘Sorry, but I can’t make it tonight.’
I hesitated. ‘Is this because I won’t move in with you?’
‘No, I’ve just been assigned to a special operation, and I’m going to be out of communication for a while.’
‘Oh,’ I pouted, knowing I sounded like a spoiled brat but not caring. I really liked the sex-a-thon idea.
‘Are you jealous?’ He couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice.
‘Me? No way!’ I said, doing a damned good impression of not sounding utterly pissed off.
‘You are so bad at lying.’
‘That’s not true. Sometimes I can tell really good lies,’ I said.
‘Like when?’
‘Like the time you bought me that really horrible hookerish top.’
There was silence for a while. ‘You said that top was nice.’
‘It is. If you’re a hooker.’
‘I see. What about the terracotta plant pot I bought for your birthday, which you’ve just left by the front door for months, untouched? I distinctly remember you saying that was nice.’
‘No, I like that. I just don’t know what to do with it.’
‘I don’t know whether to believe you now,’ he said. It was his turn to try and not sound pissed off.
‘Sorry, but I’ve got to go. We’ll talk later,’ I said, not really wanting to get into a lying contest with him over the phone.
‘This conversation isn’t over yet. What about–’
‘Great. Bye!’ I hung up and dialed Brad.
‘Speak,’ Brad said.
‘Once upon a time there was a princess, and she lived in a far away land called Woogahumphta, with free clothes and shoes and chocolate that had no calories in it–’
‘What are you on, Foxy?’
‘Stop answering the phone like that, then.’ I pulled a face at him down the phone. ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
He let out an impatient sigh. ‘What’s the bad news?’
‘Fandango isn’t here.’
‘What’s the good news?’
‘There’s lots of crime scene tape everywhere.’
‘And why is that good news?’
‘I guess it isn’t,’ I said. ‘I just didn’t want to say there was only bad news.’
Brad sighed, and I could imagine him running his hand through his hair in frustration. ‘What was Fandango like when you saw him yesterday?’
‘Short, hairy, wearing a smoking jacket, can you believe that? I didn’t think they–’
‘Did he seem nervous or worried about anything?’ He broke in.
‘Why?’
‘There’s one other thing that I didn’t tell you before. Fandango may be connected to the mob. I’m trying to get some more information from my informant, but he’s gone missing, too.’
My jaw dropped. ‘The mob mob? Or another unrelated, totally nice kind of mob?’
‘Right the first time.’
I just had to think it yesterday, didn’t I? What else could go wrong, indeed?
4
Bad news always gives me an appetite. I had a huge box of fried chicken and fries spread over Brad’s desk. Not quite a family size bucket, but close. I sat opposite him, stuffing fries in my mouth and reading through the file he’d handed me when I sat down. It was another case he wanted me to look into.
‘Have you done something different to your hair?’ Brad asked as he peered at my head.
‘No!’ My hand shot up to my hair, smoothing down a wayward strand.
Brad raised an eyebrow, but shrugged, moving on. ‘What happened with Bates and Clark?’ he asked as he picked up the greasy chicken box with the tip of his finger and plonked it down on my side of the desk.
‘Just a slight hiccup. Nothing to worry about. I’m more interested in this.’ I stared at the information in the file. ‘The Cohen brothers are up to their old tricks then, are they?’
Brad stretched his toned legs out in front of him and laced his hands behind his head. He leaned back in his chair while he answered. ‘I’ve heard there may be an accidentally-on-purpose case of arson on the warehouse they’ve got insured with us. I need you to find out what they’re up to.’
I pulled apart a steaming hot chicken breast and caught Brad staring at me. ‘Want some?’ I held the box out to him.
‘I never thought you’d be offering me a piece of your breast again, Foxy.’ He grinned.
Luckily, I was saved from answering by Romeo calling me back.
‘OK, here’s what I’ve found out so far. Fandango is officially missing. His assistant says she was hit over the head and can’t remember a thing. She’s not going to be released from the hospital until sometime tonight. The detectives assigned to the case found blood at the scene and a couple of bullets on the floor in his office. It looks like his entire season’s fashion collection is missing, too,’ Romeo said.
‘Thanks. Anything else?’
‘Yeah, don’t go poking around at the scene until tomorrow. SOCO are backed up with jobs and can’t examine the place for evidence until later on.’
‘As if I would,’ I said, mentally crossing it off my to-do list for the day.
‘You need to be careful because it gets worse. Fandango has apparently got some kind of connection to the mafia. I knew this was a bad idea, you working for Brad.’ He paused for a beat, and when he spoke again there was an undercurrent in his voice. I couldn’t tell if it was jealousy or concern. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit strange that he offered you this job? How did he even know you needed one when you haven’t had any contact with him for years?’
I let out a nervous laugh. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, although that wasn’t strictly true. If Brad wanted to know something, he would always find a way to get the information. I cut my eyes to Brad who watched me with interest.
Romeo hesitated. ‘You haven’t had any contact with him for years, right?’
I moved to the corner of the room. ‘Of course not,’ I whispered into the phone. ‘Anyway, it’s not like anything is going to happen, is it? It’s all water under the bridge. I’m with you now.’
‘It’s not you I’m worried about,’ he growled.
Remembering the scene in the unisex bathroom, I tried to camouflage my own concern as confidence. ‘There’s no need to worry.’
He sighed. ‘OK. I still don’t like it, though. Why don’t you get Brad to do some checking about this mafia thing? He can do a different kind of investigation than I can.’
‘You mean like secret, illegal, Special Forces stuff that sounds much more interesting than your special operation?’ I know, I know, it was a bit below the belt, but I couldn’t help it. His lack of confidence in me had hurt.
Romeo didn’t answer for a minute. ‘You know exactly what I mean. And be careful. People who get close to Brad have a tendency to end up dead. Look what happened to his business partner who owned half of Hi-Tec.’
I snorted. ‘You mean Mike Cross? That wasn’t anything to do with Brad.’
‘Cross disappeared under suspicious circumstances, only to turn up later in the River Lee under very dead circumstances.�
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‘You didn’t even work that case. It was my case. And the prime suspect, David Leonard, was an officer who’d served in the SAS with Brad and Mike in Afghanistan or Iraq, or some other hot, sweaty country in need of their help. Leonard developed some kind of mental disorder shortly after returning from armed combat and began killing members of his old unit.’
‘Yes, but Leonard was later also found in the River Lee with a single bullet to the head, execution style. And I don’t need to point out that Brad is a trained killer who can cover his tracks pretty well.’
I glanced at Brad. Oh, yes, he was dangerous alright. And not just for the bad guys.
‘Just look after yourself, is all I’m saying,’ Romeo said, his voice suddenly distracted. A woman’s voice sounded in the background. ‘I’ve got to go now.’
‘Hey, is that Janice Skipper I hear?’ I yelled into the phone. ‘Shit!’ I said when I realized I was talking to the dialing tone.
‘Well, well, well. Romeo is on special ops with Detective Chief Inspector Skipper.’ Brad folded his arms across his chest, his face watchful. A blind man could have heard the smile in his voice.
I picked up a packet of sticky notes off his desk, and threw them at him, hard. He ducked as they sailed through the air toward his head, but I’ve got a pretty good aim. They hit the top of his head and bounced off onto the floor. I grinned and stalked out. I would’ve thrown the chicken, but I was still hungry.
****
With Fandango’s building out of bounds until tomorrow, and his Ice Queen assistant tied up at the hospital, I turned my attention to the new case Brad had handed me that morning.
Lonnie and Lennie Cohen were in the import-export business. They liked to import goods into their possession without the rightful owner’s consent and export them at a great profit to themselves. Mostly they dealt in high quality, stolen-to-order vehicles, but pretty much anything was fair game to the Cohens. As the odd couple of the crime world, Lonnie was tall and skinny, and could easily double as a beanstalk. Lennie looked like he’d stopped growing at age twelve. Both of them had been hit by an ugly stick.
I drove down the Ware to Hertford road, trying to ignore the shriekingly purple jeep that seemed to be following me. While it wasn’t exactly strange for a car to be behind me on a main road, what was strange was that the woman driving it had slid in behind me as soon as I’d left the car park at Hi-Tec. She had stayed on my backside while I drove around the town center five times, which I did just to make sure it was a tail. I didn’t know who she was, but it seemed safe to say that following someone in a car that stood out like the Purple People Eater was not the kind of thing a professional would do.
I pulled into an industrial park that housed about twenty large warehouses and some smaller storage units. As my eyes scanned the area for the Cohens’ unit, I drove an entire loop of the site.
So did the jeep.
I couldn’t exactly do a recon with Miss Conspicuous behind me, so I slammed my brakes on, threw open the car door, and strode toward the jeep.
She quickly crunched the gearstick into first and sped out of the park.
I hurried back to my car, jotted down her plate number, and drove around to a residential area that sat behind the industrial park. Luckily for me, the Cohens’ warehouse sat at the very edge of the park. I parked and cut through an alleyway at the back of the houses, where I could observe the warehouse from the safety of a secluded wooded area.
It didn’t take long to push my way through the oak and silver birch trees, and I made myself comfortable as I sat on top of a slope that overlooked the building. It was pretty average as far as warehouses go – a large loading bay at the side, a front door with a small window next to it, and windows on the top floor, which were probably offices.
I hoped I’d only have to sit there for a little while. Maybe I’d get lucky and a couple of thugs wearing Arsonists-R-Us T-shirts, carrying petrol bombs and flamethrowers would appear, and that would be it. Case closed.
No such luck. Bummer.
Three-quarters of an hour later, the only exciting thing to happen was my ass falling asleep. I stretched and shuffled around a bit, and came to attention when I saw a gold Mercedes SLK Kompressor approach the warehouse. It drove up to the loading bay and the door opened. I scribbled down the plate number and tried to snap a couple of pictures, but my camera battery was dead.
‘Crapping hell!’ I watched the car disappear into the building, and the door rolled down again.
The same thing happened with a black BMW X5 and a silver Aston Martin DB9.
I suspected that the vehicles had already been cloned, and the registration numbers would come back to a legitimate car of the same type. In a few days, the chassis numbers would be ground down and replaced with seemingly legal ones, and the vehicles would be exported out of the country.
I had a dilemma. On the one hand, the people in the building were more than likely committing a crime. On the other, this wasn’t my kind of problem any more. I was only being paid to look for the possible arsonist. I could always pass on the info to Romeo and get him to check it out.
Satisfied with that plan, I decided to come back the next day with a camera that worked.
****
With the Cohen brothers taken care of for the day, Callum Bates was next on my list. I parked in front of his house and ran to his front door, banging on it loudly.
A glassy, bloodshot eyeball peered out at me as the door opened a sliver. Callum’s young criminal life had obviously taken its toll. He had a nose that had been punched a few times, leaving it at a crooked angle. His hair was thin and greasy, his skin was spot-ridden, and his pallor was so grey, he looked half dead.
‘Oh, it’s the pigs again. I’ve already reported my stolen van to you lot and got a crime number.’ He tried to shut the door again. ‘So, not today thank you, Miss Piggy.’
‘I take it you don’t want the insurance payout on the van, then,’ I said, trotting back down the path. ‘Fine by me.’
The door flew open and Callum stuck his head out. ‘What do you mean? What’s the insurance got to do with you coppers?’
I gave him a smug smile. ‘I’m not a copper anymore. I work for your insurance company, and I’m the one who gets to decide if your claim is legitimate or not. Anyone who calls me Miss Piggy instantly gets their claim denied.’
Bates pulled the door open further, leaning his short, scrawny body against the doorframe. His jeans hung frighteningly low over his skinny hips. I hoped they fought gravity for just a little longer. I didn’t want to be around when they fell down.
‘Is this a trick? I bet you’re still a Miss Piggy copper, aren’t you?’ A blob of engine oil dripped off his crusty sweatshirt and plopped onto the doorstep.
‘Nice top,’ I said.
‘What are you now, the Fashion Police?’ He smirked and tugged at a hair growing out of his ear. ‘Anyway, who says I get my insurance claim denied?’
‘It’s in the rules.’
‘What rules?’
‘The insurance claim anti-abuse rules, number three. See ya.’ I gave him a wave and pulled my car door open.
‘Hang on a minute,’ he yelled down the path.
‘Yes? Do you have something to say?’ I cupped a hand to my ear.
He mumbled something inaudible.
‘Sorry, couldn’t hear that.’
‘SOR-RY!’ he screamed.
I grinned. ‘That sounded a tad insincere, Callum. Why don’t you try again?’
His shifty eyes darted up and down the street. Eventually, he said, ‘I’m really, really, really sorry. Satisfied?’
I shut the door and retraced my steps over the obstacle course of car parts that lined his front path. ‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? So what’s all this about your van? Do you seriously expect me to believe that Mr. Gone-in-Sixty-Seconds has had his own van stolen?’
He bit a grimy fingernail. ‘It’s true!’
‘What, like the tim
e I arrested you on Christmas Day for driving a stolen car, and you said Santa Claus must’ve delivered it to your house by mistake?’
‘Yeah, Santa Claus is always making those kinds of mistakes. It happens every year.’
I glared at him.
‘But it’s really true this time,’ he added quickly.
‘OK. Then how about you tell me about the other guy.’
He stopped gnawing on his nail. ‘What guy?’
‘The one you were talking to outside your house the night the van was allegedly stolen. The guy you shook hands with, who then drove off in your van.’
‘Have you been talking to that crazy old bat next door?’
I folded my arms and waited for an answer.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. The van was stolen, and, unless you can prove otherwise, I’m going to get my insurance money,’ he sneered at me, revealing teeth that looked like they hadn’t seen a toothbrush in very long time.
‘OK, if it was really stolen, then you won’t mind taking a lie detector test, will you?’ I smiled and watched him squirm.
‘They don’t have them things here. They only have them in American films.’ His voice cracked slightly.
‘Oh, yes, they do,’ I fibbed.
‘Don’t.’
‘Do.’
‘Don’t,’ he insisted.
I rolled my eyes and yawned. ‘Boring!’
Suddenly his gaze sharpened. He peered at me closely. ‘Have you got paint in your hair?’
I touched my head. God, I thought it had completely faded by now. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Anyway, call me when you want to do the test.’ And I disappeared quicker than Doctor Who’s Tardis.
****
I beamed up at the Hi-Tec office half an hour later.
‘Yo-yo,’ I said to Hacker as I strolled in.
He glanced up. ‘It only one yo.’
I shrugged. ‘I’m saving time. I can say hello and goodbye together.’ I plugged my camera battery into a socket to charge, picked up another camera from Brad’s office and dumped it into my rucksack. Pulling my notebook out, I sat on the edge of Hacker’s desk. ‘Can you check out these license plate numbers for me, please?’