Grace Smith Investigates

by Liz Evans

  Anyway, it wasn’t necessary. I’d recognised the feet. And they came attached to my friend and partial namesake, Annie Smith.

  ‘It’s OK. It’s another investigator. She has the office across the landing.’

  Sure enough, the opposite door opened and closed with the silent efficiency of a door that is rented by a woman organised enough to oil its hinges on a regular basis (as opposed to dabbing the full-fat spread from her sandwich over the squeaky bits, which is my usual DIY solution).

  Henry sat again. ‘I’m so sorry. I just didn’t wish ... May I have your assurance that this investigation will be completely confidential?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He gave me another small smile. ‘The fact is, I suffer from a double handicap. This ...’ He touched the tinted glasses. ‘And anno Domini. Old age to you, Grace. People tend to assume you don’t have a full set of pistons in the engine. I’d really prefer it if it didn’t become common knowledge that I was paying out good money to have you search for a young woman whom I scarcely know and can’t describe.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Henry. You’ll just be “the client” when I start asking around.’ I rifled through my (empty) diary and informed him I’d be able to fit in a few days this week.

  He seemed relieved. ‘You’ll let me know anything you discover? Anything at all?’

  ‘Sure.’ The diary had reminded me of an obvious question. ‘You said about three weeks ago, but can you pin down the exact date that you last saw ... er, spoke to K?’

  The V reappeared over the gold frames. ‘It was the beginning of the week, I’m sure of that. Monday or Tuesday.’

  ‘Was it a Bank Holiday?’

  His face cleared. ‘No. No. It wasn’t. I’m certain of that because I recall the appalling crowds coming down for the amusement park the following weekend.’

  So K had probably last pounded the promenade in the final week of April. ‘Right. Well I’ll start asking around.’

  ‘I shall look forward to hearing from you.’ He found the door handle without my assistance and then stopped, partially turning as I stood up to show him out.

  ‘There is one thing, Miss Smith ... Grace. I’ve just recalled that K mentioned a name once. Bernard ... no, Bertram, that was it.’

  ‘In what context?’

  ‘None really. She simply said something like ... “Can’t stop, got to ring Bertram before things get hectic” ... or something similar.’

  He declined my assistance to get down the stairs. I hung over the banisters watching his light, easy descent.

  At the foot of the stairs he leant back into the well, raised his stick and waved a salute. Light glinted off his lenses and for a moment they looked like huge alien eyes. He’d probably heard my breathing as I craned over the stairwell, but it was still an eerie sensation, wondering whether - or how much - he could see behind those glasses.

  I invited myself into Annie’s office. I find the blue/grey decor picked out with damask pink restful after the chaos of my own pit.

  ‘I rather fancy having my office like this,’ I remarked, plumping down on her two-seater sofa and taking care to cross my trainers over the arm rather than on the cushions (she’s possessive about upholstery). ‘What do you reckon?’

  Annie flicked on the kettle switch and delved inside the small cupboard where she kept the crockery and goodies. ‘The way I see it, you have two options. One: wait for the interior-decorating fairies to flit in one night Two: get down to the DIY hypermarket and start sanding, painting and sewing like I had to.’

  She sounded snappy. I glanced at her curiously.

  I had to look at her curiously because the only other bit of her on view was a broad bottom encased in a black skirt - and that wasn’t really giving much away. Perhaps that was the problem.

  ‘Em ... have you and computer-what’s-his-name got it together again?’ I asked.

  She’d recently been having a fling with a divorced ex-client until a plump little WPC who looked like butter wouldn’t melt had indicated she’d like to take down his particulars.

  ‘His name’s Jonathon, as you very well know,’ Annie said, straightening up and putting a vicious spin on the lid of a jar of coffee granules. ‘And no, we haven’t, and we won’t be. Jonathon is history.’

  And a particularly nasty period such as the Black Death, judging by the way she was beating the granules to a pulp with a tea spoon. If Jonathon wasn’t the problem, something else was definitely jerking her chain. I took another quick look.

  Most of her round face was hidden behind a huge pair of prescription sunglasses. All I could really see was a pert nose, thinly compressed lips and a haze of mousy hair which was currently suffering from a slight case of sea-air frizz.

  She thrust a china mug of instant at me. I decanted myself from the sofa and rooted inside the corner cupboard. ‘You’ve no milk.’

  ‘No.’ Annie shuffled a handful of identical green plastic files over her desk.

  I explored further. There was no cubed demerara either. Or chocolate biscuits. Normally Annie considered a good dose of sugar and chocolate as essential for soothing wives and girlfriends whose self-esteem/bank balance/pride had just taken a battering by a cheating spouse/boyfriend/significant other.

  ‘They’re locked in Janice’s filing cabinet downstairs,’ Annie said in answer to my complaint. ‘I collect them when I have a client.’

  For a moment I took this as a knock about the amount of Colombian roasted and milk-chocolate Hob-Nobs I’d put away recently. Then the light dawned.

  ‘You’re on a diet!’

  The lips tightened further and the file-shuffling became even more vicious. ‘Yes. What of it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said hastily. Annie’s been at least two stone overweight ever since I’ve known her. It was one of the reasons why she’d resigned from the police force. She’s also somewhat over-sensitive on the subject, so I meekly sipped the scalding black liquid and tried to look like I was enjoying the experience.

  Evidently I didn’t try hard enough.

  ‘Listen, it’s bad enough you being bloody anorexic and grazing your way through most of the contents of my office pantry, without having to put up with snide comments on my catering, OK?’

  I figured she must have been on this diet for at least seventy-two hours. Ego-boosting was desperately called for.

  ‘I don’t know why you bother. I mean, I often wish I could put on weight. You look fine as you are. Why follow the rest of the herd?’

  ‘You mean I look like a cow?’

  I revised my guess. It must be four days at least since this woman had tasted a Mars bar or a double cheeseburger.

  Abruptly Annie whipped the sunglasses off and gave me a piteous look. At least I hope it was a plea for pity. For a moment I had a nasty sensation she was contemplating cannibalism.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind being ... you know ... largish,’ she said, ‘if I could just be miserable about it and have a decent moan.’

  ‘Can’t you?’ She sounded like she was having a pretty good try to me.

  ‘No. It’s not politically acceptable these days, is it? We have to enjoy being ... largish. The flaming media’s crammed with fat celebrities telling us “Big is Beautiful” and “Real Women Have Cuddly Curves" while they try to flog us their latest line in outsize designer wear or feminist best-seller. It’s got so you can’t read a diet magazine in public without some idiot accosting you and telling you you’re letting the sisterhood down.’

  It was an interesting thought really. Maybe in a few years would-be dieters would have to meet in secret, exchanging low-cal recipes on coded micro-dots and smuggling cottage cheese across county boundaries in false car bumpers.

  I tried to lighten her up a bit. ‘You could set up autonomous underground dieting clubs. Each group only sharing foodie information on a need-to-know basis, like spy cells operating in enemy zones. Except you’d be fat cells.’

  I choked off the laugh. Annie
very obviously wasn’t in the mood. Casting around for a safer subject, I indicated the folders. ‘New filing system?’

  ‘It’s a case. Company relocating to Canary Wharf; bonds and securities. They’ve done all the standard stuff on the staff: birth certificates, chasing up references, et cetera. Now they want me to do a physical check on selected applicants. You know, drop round the schools they claim to have gone to. Check out old university chums. Ask around old neigh-bourhoods.’

  ‘Sounds a bit over-the-top. They American?’

  ‘Far East. I think that’s the problem. It’s difficult to pick up nuances in speech and expressions in another culture. So they want someone to drop in on the lucky candidates’ past... and see whether it really is another country.’

  ‘Sounds well paid.’

  ‘Top dollar, as my clients would say. And generous expenses as well.’

  ‘Jammy cow. How’d you land it?’

  Annie shrugged. ‘Contacts. And they wanted someone based well away from the London area.’

  ‘I’m based as far away as you; how come I don’t get jobs like that?’

  There was an awkward silence. We both knew the answer. Because ex-coppers who’d left the job under suspicion of taking bribes from pond-life who’d crippled another police-man were not perceived as reliable employees.

  ‘So what are you working on?’ Annie asked, a trifle too brightly.

  I told her about Henry’s missing K. And then slipped in an idea I’d been nursing ever since the reason for Annie’s peevishness had occurred to me.

  ‘I’m going for a run tomorrow morning. See if I can pick up a rather better description than Henry’s. Why don’t you come along? Tone up some of that flab.’

  ‘Do you know, Grace, I think it was probably a wise career move on your part to give the diplomatic service a miss.’

  Still, she was a mate. And she proved it by turning out at six the next morning.

  At least this late in the year the sun was up and making an attempt to sparkle the sea and warm the sands.

  ‘Imagine doing this in winter,’ I called across to Annie. ‘In the dark and the rain.’

  ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘Stop anyone who looks like a regular and ask, I guess.’

  ‘Ask what? If they’ve seen someone we can’t describe?’

  ‘Henry’s distinctive enough. And someone must have seen him talking to K. What about this one?’

  A walker was speeding towards us. The mahogany shade of his skin beneath the shiny blue singlet and white shorts suggested a healthy outdoor lifestyle and regular work-outs.

  We paused. The walker drew nearer. His elbows flashed in time with the rhythm of his knobbly knees. Sunlight glittered from his balding head and danced from the stopwatch bouncing on his concave chest.

  ‘Excuse me ... I wonder if you ...’

  ‘Time ... personal best ... oxygen intake at optimum ...’ Without breaking step he ploughed between me and Annie. By the time we spun round he was already a good ten yards up the promenade. Open-mouthed we watched his small buttocks jiggling beneath the white silk shorts until he was out of sight.

  ‘Like a couple of oranges in a pillowcase,’ Annie remarked, resuming her steady pace. ‘Let’s hope they’re not all barmy.’

  The trouble was, a lot of them were. At that time in the morning we were faced with the fanatical fitness freaks who had no wish to stand around chatting when they could be pumping oxygen, burning calories and racking up the adrenaline.

  We changed tactics and tried turning and flanking them, keeping pace as we described Henry and asked if perhaps they’d noticed him - and a young woman he often spoke with.

  After three times up and back along the upper part of the promenade, all we’d gained were a few sightings of Henry, but none at all of K.

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t exercise along this stretch,’ Annie suggested as we paused for a rest.

  ‘Henry must have done,’ I panted. ‘He lives in St John’s Road, so he’s got to hit this bit if he walks down to the front. Although,’ I admitted, stripping off my tracksuit top and tying it round my waist, ‘he did say the first time he spoke to K was in one of the shelters under the cliff. Maybe we should try further along.’

  ‘Thanks. You mean the last half-hour’s torture was for nothing?’

  Annie knotted her own top round her waist and we set off again. After half a mile the promenade that followed the main road ran out and we dropped down on to the pedestrianised strip that snaked between the cliffs and beaches. And encountered a new hazard.

  In theory the tarmacadam walkway was strictly for the use of walkers, runners and anyone else prepared to use two or four feet as a means of propulsion. Cycling was strictly forbidden. It said so on the notices attached to the promenade railings every hundred yards.

  The string of bikers hurtling towards us probably couldn’t see them since (a) they were hunched over their handlebars with the single-minded determination of a Tour de France finalist, and (b) they were travelling at warp speed.

  I leapt up on to the parapet wall whilst Annie dashed for the sea-front railings. I caught a confused blur of plastic safety helmets shaped like rugby balls and wheels spinning so fast they appeared to be solid, and then they were gone.

  ‘Flaming hell,’ I complained, rejoining Annie. ‘Where are the police when you need them?’

  ‘Working out if they’ve got sufficient in the budget to pay an officer to walk the length of the high street’

  ‘Cutting the budget again, are they?’

  ‘Zeb says it’s on the cards,’ Annie puffed.

  Zeb was her brother. As a detective constable in the local force, he was useful for gleaning those little extra pieces of information that make a private investigator’s life that much simpler.

  ‘Should mean more work in the private sector,’ Annie pointed out. ‘We could double our turnover.’

  Two clients instead of one? Yippee, I cheered silently, straining to keep up. Despite the extra baggage larded under her skin, Annie was making a better job of this than me. I’d obviously got more out of shape than I realised.

  Leaning our arms along the top of the iron railings, we stopped a minute to watch the grey breakers shushing against the pebbly ribbon of stones that marked the limits of high tide. Below us the sands still retained the wriggling lines of the council’s ‘tidy-and-tart’ machines which swept rubbish from the beaches in the season and flattened out the efforts of the sandcastle- and hole-digging visitors.

  ‘It did occur to me that if she was running that early she might work as a chambermaid or breakfast waitress or something.’

  ‘Presumably somewhere that’s not too bothered about the smell after all that exercise?’

  ‘They might let her shower when she gets there.’ We fell into a jog again. ‘Of course, she might work in London. If she lives near the front, she’d just about have time to get home, wash, change and make the commuter special if she grabbed a coffee and bacon roll from the station buffet for breakfast.’ A loud rumble from Annie’s innards reminded me why she was working out with me. I glanced sideways and met her tight-lipped glare.

  ‘Sorry. Forgot about the diet. What are you having for breakfast at the moment?’

  ‘Unsweetened cereal, low-fat milk and black tea.’

  ‘Yummy,’ I murmured as a vision of a fried-egg sandwich swam into my mind.

  Annie ignored the lie and asked why I thought early- morning exercise indicated K had a job. ‘She might just be a chronic insomniac.’

  We both did a quick line-step routine to let a fleet of skateboarders pass. When we came together again, I explained Henry’s assertion that he didn’t meet her at weekends. ‘I think she slept in on Saturday and Sunday. Probably went out later.’

  Which - it belatedly occurred to me - made it unlikely she was a chambermaid, since they usually worked shifts, including some weekends. I said as much to Annie.

  Annie stopped dead. ‘Oh great! Could
I just point out a small flaw in your investigative technique, Sherlock?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Today is Saturday.’

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘Oh shit.’

  No wonder nobody remembered K. If she worked out at all at the weekend it was in a completely different time slot to the one we’d been knocking ourselves out in.

  ‘What do you want to do? Call it a day and try again Monday?’

  ‘Dream on,’ Annie panted. ‘I shall be enjoying a luxury hotel Jacuzzi courtesy of my securities company’s expense account come Monday morning.’

  It was a low blow. But a girl needs to know how to fight dirty sometimes. ‘Pity you won’t be able to order anything fattening from room service.’

  Mutual bitching out of the way, I suggested we might as well finish here since we were up anyway. ‘Race you to the next bay?’

  I sped off. Annie overtook me.

  We sprinted past the beach cafe, which wasn’t open yet, and the public loos, which were - and towards the wooden chalets lined up at the base of the cliff.

  We were going so fast that I nearly missed the fractionally open door.

  Annie had spotted it too. By common consent we applied the brakes.

  The chalets’ doors were normally secured by a clasp and padlock. A few were privately owned, but most were rented out on a weekly basis by the council. You paid your deposit and collected your key from a window by the cafe. The occupant of this one had by-passed that step in the process, I suspected.

  The padlock had been re-attached in a way that made it look to a casual glance as if the chalet was still locked.

  ‘Figgy, hurry up. I’m dying for a pee.’

  The door swung open under the pressure of one finger, leaning the padlock hanging by its curved bar from the metal clasp.

  ‘I thought you weren’t never ... It’s me gran’s. She lets us use it. Ask ’er if yer don’t believe me.’

  The speaker had sprung up away from a Calor Gas stove as she blurted out the last three sentences. Baked beans bubbled in the saucepan balanced on top of it. A quick glance notched up a rolled sleeping bag in one corner. Wire baskets from the local supermarket that were being used for the storage of folded clothing, crockery and food. There was also a scruffy soft-canvas bag and a pair of tom-toms stacked in another corner.