Thicker Than Water (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 1)

by Jean Saunders

  Thicker Than Water

  Jean Saunders

  Copyright © Jean Saunders 1999

  The right of Jean Saunders to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1999 by Robert Hale Limited.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Extract from A Real Shot in the Arm by Annette Roome

  Chapter 1

  Long before she left the flat that evening, Alex sensed the adrenalin pumping around her veins. The job frequently got her into tricky situations, and some were downright dangerous, verging on the scary and lethal. But at least they were never the same. And they were rarely dull.

  And, since she relished a change of tempo in whatever she did, her choice of career had taken considerable thought, ticking off the unlikely and the impossible, and coming down to the, um, well, maybes.

  After a sketchy schooling, she was cheerfully hopeless at maths, and science was a frighteningly alien country. But geography and art had always fascinated her, and she definitely had an enquiring, not to say avidly nosy mind. So in choosing to go for the quirky instead of the predictable, she reminded herself severely that she had no one to blame but herself for whatever turned up that night, or any other night.

  God, what a job description, Alex thought with a faint smile now. It made her sound more like a street-walker than a perfectly respectable private eye, however amateurish the big boys might think her methods. And at least she got results. Nearly always. Well, sometimes.

  The Rainbow Cellar Club was just as she had expected it to be: dimly lit with rose-coloured lamps, and smoky with an indefinable smell that was more than just cigarettes and the overpowering scent of cheap perfume and sweaty bodies.

  It was familiar territory for this kind of initial meeting. Those who turned up in her office after hesitant phone calls, were usually nervous lady clients, wanting to check up on errant husbands with as little fuss as possible. For those she just needed to keep a supply of tissues at the ready, and just as great a need to keep her own emotions well under control. Beneath her air of hard-won city sophistication there beat a heart of pure unadulterated slush — or would be, if she once gave it its freedom.

  She was still a sucker for a woman’s sob story, which, she freely admitted, came from too many late nights watching old movies on satellite television, curled up on her sofa with the said tissues, dipping her fingers far too often into a box of chocolates, to the despair of her thighs.

  But when it came to the men who found her name in Yellow Pages, they generally sought her out to investigate a crime thus avoiding the interference of the police. And if they didn’t turn up unannounced at her minuscule office, then, as predictable as breathing, they invariably suggested this kind of place for a first meeting.

  She guessed that what they never expected was the kind of upper-class persona she exuded, as if she’d been born to it. It could put them off, of course, but on the other hand, it also kept them firmly in their place.

  ***

  As she moved across the room, her long slim legs seemed even longer in the short black silk skirt and well-fitting jacket she wore. The chocolate-enhanced thighs hadn’t yet succumbed to the wearing of elastic-waisted skirts, she thought thankfully. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but she did her best with what she had.

  And how about that for an epitaph! She ignored the head-turning and the wolf-whistles and the blatant remarks, and let her startlingly green eyes roam lazily around the disco floor towards the bar.

  ‘Fancy a night to remember, darlin’?’ a guy in black leathers said, pressing close to her in the crush, and letting his hand slide around the silky mounds of her buttocks.

  ‘Get lost, creep,’ Alex said, giving him back the kind of language he would understand, and a stare that would freeze a polar bear at ten paces.

  ‘Is that any way to treat somebody who’s looking for a good time? How about this for starters, babe?’

  He pressed closer now, and she could feel his erection pushing against her. She hid a faint smile, and swivelled round as if she was interested.

  ‘How about this, babe?’ she said softly, kneeing him just hard enough to make him grunt, and then twisting away from him to merge into the crowd of disco dancers.

  ‘Bitch!’ she heard him yell after her, but she was no longer interested, even though she had swiftly registered that he had a nice bum and clean white teeth, and was probably a biker. Maybe another time she might have accepted a drink or three... but tonight she was here on business, and the guy she was here to meet was a gent called Norman Price.

  She scanned the bar area quickly, used to making instant assessments of people. It went with the job. Alexandra Best, Private Investigator... even now, whenever she caught sight of the title on her business cards or headed notepaper, it sent a thrill of almost sexual pleasure running through her.

  She had learned the job unaided and through instinct, some of which had admittedly sent her down plenty of wrong alleys. But she finally felt she had made it — sort of — and if she was ever asked about her job, she said with as much irony as possible that turning to crime was the best thing she had ever done...

  ***

  There were half-a-dozen guys at the bar. She discounted the two who were surreptitiously holding hands. It was none of her business. An older man, hunched over his whisky, looked as if he was settling in for the night, and had already drunk half his weekly salary away. One guy turned away from the bar with a trayful of drinks, so he wasn’t her man.

  That still left two. It would be the dark-suited one, Alex decided. He was distinguished, slightly greying with a neat haircut and a furrowed frown on his face.

  It certainly wouldn’t be the yob with dirty fingernails, at least, she hoped not. She might often be involved in dirty jobs, but she was fastidious when it came to personal hygiene.

  In the long mirror behind the bar she could see the guys watching her approach, and sensed that the barman was wondering what the hell she was doing in a place like this.

  Her face, while not of the Demi Moore variety (nose too long, chin too pointed), nevertheless had a kind of autocratic quality about it — or so she always kidded herself when bemoaning that she was never going to be movie-star material. But she did have those glorious eyes, and long, pike-straight, fringed red hair that somebody once said shimmered with the richness of autumn leaves in New England.

  It was a phrase that alternately charmed her and made her want to throw up. All Alex knew was that it was the kind of springy hair that leapt defiantly out of curling tongs no matter how much she coaxed it or swore at it... but right now, its hot colour was muted under the rose-coloured lights, and it looked pretty good, she acknowledged modestly.

  What she did have — so she was told — was a sensual mix of innocence and hidden passion. They were assets that had got her into hot water as often as they had got her out of dangerous situations. She pushed some of the uglier memories out of her mind now, as she wove her way through the disco dancers to reach the bar of the Rainbow Club.

  ‘Mr Price?’ she queried the well-dressed gent in the suit.
He looked at her, startled and wary at being approached, and she knew at once she had made a mistake.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, backing off. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

  ‘I wish I was, miss,’ he began with a ready smile, and she could tell he was intrigued and reassured by her well-bred voice and that Sloaney air of sophistication. It always fooled them.

  ‘Miss Best?’ she heard a thick voice say from somewhere along the length of the bar.

  She smothered a groan. It was the huncher. The drunk. She hid her distaste as she moved towards him. She forced herself to remember that he was a client, no more, and personalities and lifestyles made no difference to her determination to do her damnedest for her clients.

  Anyway, they were the ones who paid the bills for her tiny office and West End flat, she thought, with the inborn cynicism of somebody who had found her way to the proverbial top by her own efforts and no silver spoon.

  She pushed aside the thought. Tonight, Alex Best’s northern background was the last thing on her mind. She was here on business.

  ‘I’m Alexandra Best,’ she said, extending a slim hand adorned with her favourite antique silver and turquoise rings. ‘And you are Mr Norman Price, I take it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He looked at her from beneath bushy eyebrows. He was probably about sixty, but he looked older and seedier. But now that she looked at him properly, she thought he probably wasn’t drunk at all. And why did something tell her the casual clothes he wore were far from his usual style?

  His hair was too cropped, and too tidy around his nape; his fingernails were trimmed and ultra-white. She always took account of such things; it went with the job.

  But he had a worn, defeated air, like one of those dogs with sad eyes and drooping jowls whose name she could never remember. And he was desperate for somebody to find his missing daughter. Which was why she was here.

  ‘It’s far too noisy for us to talk here,’ she said quietly, as the disco music reached a chest-hurting crescendo. ‘Why didn’t you come to my office like I suggested? We could go there now, if you like.’

  God, she hoped he didn’t think this was a pass. The barman, listening with eyebrows raised, obviously did.

  ‘No,’ Price said sharply, with no further explanation.

  ‘Then we’d better find a table,’ Alex said, jostled from behind once more. The biker had recovered from his kneeing, and was glowering at her now, his dark eyes gleaming with anger, but also something else.

  Despite her earlier annoyance, she felt a frisson of excitement. After the boredom of a childhood spent in the wilds of Yorkshire, the longing for a more vibrant lifestyle was what had brought her to London and into this work in the first place. And this guy had a look of animal danger about him... deliciously so. And she was no nun.

  She treated him to a smile and mouthed a ‘Sorry, I’m here on business’ at him, as Norman Price looked at her cautiously, then clearly remembered the social niceties.

  ‘Let me get you a drink, Miss Best.’

  ‘Just orange juice, thank you,’ she said firmly. She normally went for vodka and lime, but maybe her innocent choice would encourage the guy to do the same.

  He scowled as the barman asked him pointedly if he should make that two orange juices, and then reluctantly agreed. A couple of minutes later they were heading towards a table at the far end of the room, but not before the biker had leaned towards her and whispered in her ear, nuzzling his lips far closer than was necessary. He smelled of the healthy outdoors.

  ‘See you later, Miss Best.’

  So he knew her name. Well, it didn’t take a genius to know he’d overheard Norman Price mumble it. But the way the guy in the black leathers had said it was something else.

  Sternly, Alex reminded herself that she fell in and out of lust too easily... and all too often it had nothing to do with love, just a wild sexual attraction, as inevitable as the pull of the moon on the tide. And, incongruous and unexpected though it was, it was pulling her now...

  ‘So tell me what I can do for you, Mr Price,’ she prompted, when the client sat morosely looking into space. ‘I can’t help you unless I know every detail you can think of.’

  She flipped open her notebook unobtrusively. The guy was nervous. She knew he didn’t really want to be telling her anything at all. Despite his attitude tonight, Alex suspected he was behaving out of character, both in drinking heavily and coming to this kind of place. Maybe he thought he could find the kind of anonymity here that was in total contrast to his normal life, whatever that was.

  Interesting. She filed away the thought for future reference. Intuition told her that he was either a very private person, or somebody with secrets. She plumped for the second, knowing what little she already did. Somebody had invaded the privacy of his life and snatched his daughter. Or so he suspected. And for some reason he didn’t want the police involved. QED.

  ‘It’s my daughter.’

  ‘Yes?’ she prompted again, knowing he couldn’t be rushed.

  Sometimes you had to winkle information out of them with the proverbial pin. She gave a mental shrug. It was her time, but it was their money that was paying for it, and she had her eye on a winter cruise that was going to be her reward for finding the Price girl.

  ‘To my knowledge she’s been missing for two weeks now, and it’s vital that I find her by the end of next month.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  Encouraging him, Alex calculated that six weeks’ work would produce a healthy sum towards her cruise.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why is it vital to find her before the end of next month?’ she repeated, as patiently as if she was questioning a child.

  There was something odd here, thought Alex. The guy had a clipped Yorkshire accent, like hers had once been before she had spent months in smoothing and rounding it after moving south. He spoke with a sense of desperation when he mentioned his daughter, but also with some irritation that didn’t sound like genuine parental concern.

  She had noted it on his initial phone call, well attuned to an accent and the nuance of a disembodied voice. But why such precise attention to detail — and why not get the police on to it, or Interpol, for God’s sake?

  ‘She comes into a large inheritance then, and she must be in good health to claim it. If not, it all goes to a cousin.’

  Alex could hear the anger in his voice now, and felt a ridiculous sense of disappointment and betrayal. So it all came down to money. And where was the love he should be showing for his daughter? She was indignant at what she imagined was the girl’s loveless childhood, knowing the signs all too well, and she felt a brief pity for the kid.

  ‘How old is your daughter, Mr Price?’ she said carefully.

  Good God, he even had to think about that, she thought, as he hesitated. But apparently it was simply reluctance to reveal his daughter’s age.

  ‘She was twenty-nine on her last birthday, but of course she’ll be thirty at the end of next month—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, I’m sorry — but I had assumed from your phone call that she was a child,’ she said, momentarily floundering. ‘It’s hardly unusual for a woman of twenty-nine to take off on her own for two weeks, is it?’

  ‘It is for Caroline,’ he said, clearly annoyed at her involuntary reaction, just as Alex herself was at making it so clumsily. ‘She doesn’t go walkabout. And she’s deaf.’

  So she was looking for a deaf adult woman, three years older than herself, who could be anywhere in the world, especially if she had something to hide, or something she wanted to escape from. Great!

  ‘Have you tried the usual places — friends, acquaintances, workmates, local hospitals?’

  The morgue? she added silently.

  ‘She doesn’t have any friends, and she works at home. She’s a crossword compiler.’

  ‘Her publisher then, her agent?’ Alex went on relentlessly. ‘They must be in contact with her.’


  ‘No. She’s totally freelance, and I have to tell you, lass, we don’t get on. She’s been a recluse since meningitis left her deaf about ten years ago. She had a hard time dealing with it. She works alone and lives on her own in her cottage, and she’s as touchy and defensive as a cat. I check on her every few weeks, and she even hates that. Last time I saw her she said vaguely she was between commissions. Or, as actors would say, she was resting temporarily.’

  Alex jotted down the details as he spoke. She knew a bit about acting in an amateur way. Right now she was playing her best part — Alexandra Best, confident super sleuth, and with as much idea of how to go about each new case, as flying to the moon on a broomstick.

  She also played to perfection — and sometimes far too well the kind of upper-class girl who turned men horny the minute they discovered her outgoing nature, and thought that even if there was nothing much between the ears, there was considerably more between those great legs.

  Nobody would ever connect her with little Audrey Barnes from a farming family in the remote Yorkshire Dales, who’d missed out on schooling through caring for elderly parents. And who, with true Little Dorrit melodrama, had vowed to make A BETTER LIFE for herself if she had to kill for it... She never had, thank God, but by now she had met others who had.

  Through learning by trial and error to be streetwise, she had seen how the minds of those people worked, and the idea had begun to form of solving some of those crimes. During all the tedious hours at home caring for her parents, she had read voraciously, learning about the way the police and other investigators operated. She could solve most TV crimes as soon as the suspects were presented on screen.

  When the farm eventually became hers, she had sold it for a surprisingly decent amount, and had come to London. And she knew at once that she was in a different league. So the invention of Alexandra Best, née Audrey Barnes, had been an essential part of the transition.

  ‘Look, miss, perhaps I’ll leave it after all,’ Norman Price was saying now, as if her intense green stare had begun to unnerve him. ‘I’m sure Caroline will turn up soon—’