by JL Merrow
I mean, obviously sometimes Phil had to work nights, and I had to work Saturdays, but we met up lunchtimes occasionally, which sort of made up for that. At any rate, it seemed pretty clear we were both serious about each other. And Phil hadn’t batted an eyelid when I’d asked him round for what amounted to emotional support. It’d been a while since I’d been that comfortable with anyone I was seeing. A long while. Actually, I wasn’t sure I’d ever been this comfortable with anyone before. It was, well, it was nice. And maybe just a little bit terrifying.
It’d been eight o’clock, near enough, when I’d rung him, and true to his word, Phil was round at mine before the clock had ticked round to quarter past. He let himself in.
“So what happened?” he asked, coming into the living room. “She threaten to get Greg to excommunicate you if you said anything about this Mike bloke to your mum?”
“Worse,” I said, smiling up at him from my slump on the sofa. “Warned me Dad might start having feelings all over the shop.” Making a slightly embarrassing contrast with my slobbing-around-the-house-in-a-heat-wave gear of shorts and crumpled T-shirt, Phil was freshly shaved, and wearing a crisply ironed short-sleeved shirt loose over a pair of chinos. The outfit did a very nice job of showing off his broad chest and shoulders and trim hips. You’d think a big bloke like him would feel the heat more—would show it, even, him being a blond and all—but he always managed to look cool whatever the weather. Maybe he kept ice cubes in his undies.
Nah, I’d have noticed. I mean, I don’t like to brag, but I reckon I was pretty well acquainted with the contents of Phil’s undies.
“God, I need a drink,” I said.
Phil disappeared into the kitchen. Merlin jumped on my lap, and I stroked his furry little head, being all manly and stoic about the claws stuck painfully in my legs. I’ve had a lot of practice.
When Phil came back, he was holding a couple of glasses with generous measures of what had to be whiskey. Presumably from the bottle given to me last Christmas by the old bloke formerly known as Dad. “I meant a beer,” I protested, taking a glass from his outstretched hand.
“Nah. If this doesn’t call for the hard stuff, I don’t know what does.”
I took a sip, enjoying the smooth taste but glad he’d added ice. Condensation was forming on the outside of the glass, so I wiped my hand on my bare leg after I’d put my drink down on the coffee table. At least it cooled me off a bit. “I haven’t even told you about it yet.”
“Don’t have to, do you? Not with that face on you.” He sat down next to me, his muscular thigh a solid bulk next to mine.
I leaned into him, wishing the day would hurry up and cool down, at least to the point where we could snuggle without risking heat exhaustion. “I thought you liked my face?”
Phil grinned. “Nah, it’s your arse I’m interested in.”
“Yeah? That’s the last blowjob you’re getting, then.”
“Like that’s a threat you’d ever carry through on.” He was right too, the smug git.
“So go on, then,” he went on. “Tell me about it.”
I scrubbed at my eyes with the heels of my hands. “I’m not asking Mum about this Mike bloke. Can’t.”
Phil humphed. “Laid the guilt trip on you, did she? Your sister?”
“She said Dad cried when he found out.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, just a bit.” I’d known that would get to him. Not the most comfortable of men around displays of masculine weakness, my Phil.
Was crying really weak, though? Or did it just mean you actually gave a shit? All I knew was that I’d rather drown myself in a bloody septic tank than be the cause of Dad doing it again.
“It’s not your fault. None of it,” Phil said, slipping an arm around my shoulders.
I managed a weak smile. “You reading my mind?”
“Yeah. It’s on the advanced PI classes.”
“Oh? They teach you that before or after the stuff about distance lip-reading and using sex as an interrogation method?”
“After. Course, I didn’t do so well on the last one. Might have to get a bit of practice in at home.”
“Are you trying to distract me with sex?”
“Might be.”
“Try harder.” I leered at him.
Phil raised an eyebrow. “Is that an innuendo in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?”
I flashed him my sultriest smile. “Why don’t you, you know, investigate?”
All in all, it probably wasn’t surprising we didn’t get a lot more talking done that evening. Or that Phil’s posh shirt had more wrinkles in than my T-shirt by the time we’d finished.
Chapter Four
It was a couple of days later when we got on the subject of my dad again. Well, sort of. I’d been trying not to push Phil about researching stuff, seeing as he still had actual paid work he needed to be doing on a suspected infidelity case. Not to mention Marianne’s little problem. I wasn’t totally sure if he’d be getting paid for that one or not, seeing as no one had discussed money in my hearing. Still, last time Harry asked me to take a look at her plumbing (literally, not figuratively, I’d like to emphasize) she’d insisted on paying the going rate, no matter how often I’d told her a pint would cover it. So, yeah, my little problem was probably so far on the back burner it was starting to ice up.
We were in the kitchen at the time, Phil watching as I faffed around with packets of cat food and tried not to get mauled to death by the overeager recipients. He clearly thought I didn’t have enough to do already, because he weighed in after a moment with, “You’ve got this ability, gift, whatever you want to call it. Why don’t you try and do something with it?”
“What, like make a career out of it? Go on Britain’s Got Talent? I’ve already got a job, thanks, and I don’t need Simon Bloody Cowell making me look like a right tit on the telly.” I straightened up from the cats’ bowls and bunged the empty sachets in the bin. Then I washed my hands, because in this heat, a little bit of cat food smell went a long way.
Merlin and Arthur didn’t seem to have a problem with it—they were heads down and tails up, well on their way to polishing off their dinner already.
“No, you can manage that by yourself.” Phil’s smirk turned into a frown as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “But I don’t get why you don’t try and develop it. See how far you can go with it.”
“How far…? I’ve found dead bodies, for fuck’s sake. I found you before you turned into one, remember? How much more do you want me to do?”
“You say you can only find hidden stuff, right?”
“And water.” I folded my arms.
Phil nodded a bit dismissively, like he didn’t reckon that last bit was all that important. It just went to prove he’d never been stranded in the Sahara without a satnav and no idea which way to stagger to the nearest oasis. Which, fair enough, neither had I, but if it ever happened, I bet he’d be glad of my company. “Have you ever tried finding stuff that’s only lost?”
“Course I’ve bloody tried! It doesn’t work. End of.”
“What have you tried it on?”
Stubborn git. “I don’t know… Keys. Stuff in the van. It never works, I’m telling you.”
“That’s all stuff you’ve lost. Have you ever tried looking for things other people have lost?”
“No, because it doesn’t work.”
“Yeah, but have you tried?” My face probably told him what I thought of that. Phil stepped up to me and put his arms around my waist. “And what about expanding the way you look for the hidden stuff?”
“Like how?” One of Phil’s hands had crept down to grope my arse. It made it a bit hard to keep my end up—of the argument, that was—which was probably his intention. Sneaky git.
“Well… You always reckon you need to be near where the thing is.
What about using a map?”
“Using one how?”
“You’ve got this water-divining connection, haven’t you? Why don’t you try some of their tricks?”
“What, get myself a forked stick and wait for it to twitch?”
“If that’s what works for you, yeah. Or there’s wire rods, or pendulums.”
“You’ve been reading bloody Wikipedia, haven’t you?” Either that or he’d got hold of a copy of Dowsing for Dummies, but I’d checked online a while back and they still hadn’t written one yet.
Phil’s gaze went over my left shoulder. “Maybe. Look, I’m just saying, it’s worth a try.” He paused. “You want to find this Mike bloke, don’t you? Maybe you could give it a go for that.”
“Think Mum went all black widow on him and stashed the body somewhere, do you?” Ye gods. Talking about my mum like she was some kind of femme literally fatale was giving me the shivers.
“Don’t be a prick. Look, would it kill you to just give it a try?”
Would it kill him to stop bloody harassing me about it?
Oh, right. This was Phil. It probably would kill him. Plus, he now had his hand down the back of my kecks and was running a finger along my crack. All my blood had shot south, leaving me more than a bit light-headed. I caved. “Fine. I’ll try it, all right?”
Phil smiled and stepped away from me, the smug bastard. “Good. I’ll get the map.”
“Oi, I didn’t mean right now! Bloody pricktease,” I muttered to his departing back and went to grab the letters and stuff.
I felt like a right muppet, sitting on the sofa staring at my mum’s old love letters and photos and then trying to pick up nonexistent vibes from last year’s edition of the AA road map, spread out on the coffee table. Phil had me trying all sorts of stuff—hovering my hand over Britain’s clearest mapping of the M25 (with added speed cameras); getting all touchy-feely with the pages; and, in a last act of desperation, swinging a pendulum we’d improvised from a bath plug.
The tight knot in my stomach that had formed at the thought of maybe actually finding something melted into disappointment—all right, maybe disappointment mingled with a tiny bit of relief.
“Shouldn’t this be some mystic crystal or something?” I complained after five minutes of the plug just hanging from my hand, rather than mysteriously circling some spot on the map like Phil reckoned it was supposed to. “This plug’s not even real rubber, just some cheap plastic. And the chrome plating on the chain’s all worn off.”
Phil huffed. “Why’d you buy it, then?”
“Didn’t, did I? It’s just something I had hanging around in the van after I replaced the fittings for a customer.”
“Well, next time we’ll go for the solid-gold stuff, all right, princess?”
“Nah, you’ve got to be careful with the gold stuff, or it just looks tacky. Speaking of which, you know there’s this place in Hong Kong that has a solid gold toilet? I was reading about it online.”
“Jesus wept.”
“Too bloody right. Bet they skimped inside the cistern, though. Bet you anything when you open it up it’s just your bog-standard bog fittings from Wickes. Well, the Chinese equivalent of Wickes, anyhow.”
Phil rolled his eyes and sent a significant look map-wards. “Getting a bit off track here, aren’t we?”
“Nope. To be getting off track, we’d have had to be on track in the first place. Which, in case you hadn’t noticed, we weren’t. I’m not even convinced there is a bloody track.” I closed up the map and sat back on the sofa. “Face it, the map thing’s a bust.”
“Not necessarily.” Phil looked thoughtful. “After all, your old man’s probably not hiding—if he’s even still around—so it was a long shot anyway. We need to give it a proper trial. Get someone to bury something somewhere, and see if you can find that.”
I stood up, narked. “This was never about my sodding dad, was it? You knew I wouldn’t find anything. You just wanted to get me trying stuff.”
Phil stood up too and put his arms around me. “Maybe, but I still thought it was worth a shot. Look, I told you, I’m going to work on finding your dad. I’m going down to London tomorrow anyway. I can stop off in Edgware on the way back and kill two birds with one stone.”
“Want me to come with?” I wouldn’t be popular with the customers I had booked in, but none of them were emergencies. They’d survive.
“Best not. I’m going for the old friend wanting to get back in touch angle, so if you show up looking like, well, the long-lost illegitimate son, people might decide to clam up. Might think they’re doing this Mike bloke a favour.”
“What, like I’m going to go after him for thirty years’ back pocket money?”
“Or just out to cause trouble generally. Your mum’s still married to the same person as she was when they had the affair, isn’t she? So maybe he is too.”
I’d have been lying if I’d said it hadn’t occurred to me he might have been married too, might have a wife and kids he’d stepped out on just like Mum had, but for some reason I couldn’t see it. It just didn’t seem to fit, although I couldn’t have explained why. “I don’t know—can you see Mike with the stereotypical wife, mortgage and two point four kids?”
Phil grinned. “With you being the point four?”
I stepped back out of his arms, all the better to glare at him. “Bloody hell, don’t you start with the height jokes and all.”
Phil put on a face I reckoned was supposed to look innocent. It came over more like smug. “Did I say anything about your height? I might have been referring to the degree of estrangement.”
“Degree of estrangement my arse. Which, by the way, you’re going to be feeling a degree of estrangement from if you keep up the gags at my expense.”
“Touchy sod.” Phil smiled as he pulled me back against him with two hands on the body part in question.
All right, he didn’t have to pull that hard. “Yep, and don’t you forget it. Hey, how far have you got on Marianne’s case?”
“Not very. It’s only been a couple of days, and I’m still working on the cheating-wife case.”
“So is she?”
“What, cheating on him?” Phil huffed. “Nothing conclusive yet, but I’ll tell you what, if I was married to that miserable git, I’d be bloody well tempted to cheat.”
I pushed away from him. “All right, who are you and what have you done with Phil Morrison? I thought you were all about the sanctity of marriage vows?”
He smirked. “Said I’d be tempted. Didn’t say I’d do it.”
“God, the gleam from your bloody halo could put someone’s eye out. So what about Carey. Have you had a good look at him? Followed him around? Actually, hang about, shouldn’t you be following him now?”
“I’m supposed to be digging into his background, not catching him with his trousers down.”
“Right. So how come you’re not down in Docklands? Digging.”
“I just said I’m going to London tomorrow, didn’t I? I had to spend today following Mrs. C around. Which turned out to be a total waste of time and petrol, seeing as she only went to the supermarket, the gym and her hairdresser’s.”
“So you haven’t found anything out about Carey?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Had a lot of down time, didn’t I, waiting for Mrs. C to get her highlights done and fill up the supermarket trolley. See, there’s this thing called the Internet. Turns out it’s pretty good for finding out stuff without having to get on a train—”
“All right, all right. Git.”
“Plus, the bloke I want to talk to most is banged up in Nether Mallet.”
“Sounds painful.”
Phil gave me an exasperated look and a one-finger salute. “It’s a category C prison in Essex. And you can’t just turn up, knock on the door and ask if one of their inmates ca
n come out to play. It could take weeks to arrange a visit—and that’s if he agrees to see me.”
“Yeah, but that’s not likely to be a problem, is it? You’re after the bastard who got him sent down. This Mortimer bloke ought to be biting your hand off.”
“Maybe. Or maybe Carey’s got him running scared, ever think of that? Mortimer’s got family—wife and a couple of kids. He might want to keep his head down.”
“Bloody hell. Who is this Carey bloke—second cousin to the Godfather?”
“Nope. Just a nasty little shit who’s going to get his comeuppance. But it’s going to take a bit of work.”
“You’d better have a word with that wife, then. Tell her to hurry up and make a booty call so you can wrap up the case and concentrate on Carey.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that. I’m sure she’ll be only too happy to oblige.”
“What’s she like, this Mrs. C? Is she a looker?”
“Why? Are you thinking of helping me out by having a go at her yourself?” Phil sent me a sardonic look. “I’m supposed to be finding evidence of an affair, not manufacturing it.”
I frowned. “You know, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You weren’t supposed to take it seriously.”
“No, you prick. I mean, you could do that, couldn’t you? Frame her so you get a pay-off from the husband. I mean, not that you would, obviously, but some blokes might.”
“They’d be daft. This isn’t some no-win-no-fee thing. There’d be more money in stringing him along, conveniently not finding anything for weeks. Which I reckon he’s going to accuse me of soon, if I don’t come up with anything.”
“So what happens if you never do find anything? Some point, you’ve got to call it a day.”
Phil nodded. “Yeah. All that happens is, I write up a report saying nothing doing, and send him a bill. Which he’ll moan about but will pay in the end because he’s worried if he doesn’t, I’ll squeal to the missus.”
“Doesn’t sound like a healthy relationship to me.” I made a face. “What with Marianne and that git Carey, it makes you wonder just how many are.”