Grace Smith Investigates

by Liz Evans

  Luckily I’m not, and I think Annie believed me when I said he’d mentioned a big job a few nights ago. At any rate, she moved on to the subject of my life instead.

  I gave her a brief description of the non-event that was currently the Kristen Keats investigation, an even briefer run-down on Bone’s boyfriend, and a no-detail-spared picture of my evening with Kevin.

  ‘So you’ve got a bloke who’s more-or-less unattached; charming and good-looking; and as fanciable as double-choc ice-cream with hot fudge sauce. And you told him you just wanted to be friends?’

  ‘Yes.’ I doodled a fudge sundae on the message pad.

  ‘You know what your trouble is, don’t you?’ Annie said.

  ‘What?’ I surrounded the sundae with a necklace of daisies.

  ‘You’re suffering from a chronic inferiority complex. Because this is a date to die for, you’ve convinced yourself you don’t deserve him.’

  ‘Thank you, Claire Rayner.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘So when are you coming back? I miss our girlie dissection of life and all the loathsome things therein.’

  ‘You mean you have to buy your own pizza and bottle of wine.’

  ‘That’s too.’

  ‘I’ve got a couple of days here and then I’m moving down to Leicester. Should be back middle to end of next week.’

  ‘Couldn’t do me a favour in Leicester, could you?’ I explained about the university’s refusal to give out information over the phone. ‘But there’s probably some kind of old students’ association or something. See if you can sweet- talk her old home address out of them, would you?’

  ‘If it doesn’t cost me anything, but no promises. I’d have thought this charity lot were your best lead. She’s bound to have made some friends there. Particularly if they’ve had her roughing it in some Third World hole. All that using the same bucket for a loo makes for significant emotional bonding, from what I can remember of the family camping trips.’

  ‘No ...’I said slowly, filling in doodles on my pad. ‘I don’t think that lead is going to go anywhere.’

  Looking down at what I’d just written, I suddenly knew that wherever Kristen had been in the time between leaving Okranshaw’s and joining Wexton’s Engineering, she definitely hadn’t been working for that Third World charity.

  CHAPTER 19

  The doodle read: Third World Initiative Teams.

  Not exactly the sort of catchy acronym a bona fide charity would choose.

  I mentally saluted Kristen for sticking a blatant lie right under their noses - and getting away with it. She obviously had guts. Or chutzpah, as Rachel Simonawitz put it.

  I’d been feeling a bit guilty about not taking up her invitation to dinner, so I’d wandered round to the flats midmorning Saturday and indicated I was free this evening.

  ‘Darlin’,’ she apologised, jangling enough gold to restock the Klondike as she balanced a huge black hat on top of the walnut-whip hairstyle. ‘My Saul is coming to pick me up any minute.’

  ‘My fault ... I should have rung first.’

  Rachel patted the air dismissively. ‘Surprise visits are best. What about tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow is good for me.’

  ‘Wonderful, darlin’. Come about twelve, and we eat early. That way we got time for a little snooze maybe before supper.’

  Definitely my sort of hostess.

  Saturday, I have to report, was a dead loss. For everyone except the owners of the arcades, cinemas, shops and cafes.

  The rain fell steadily all day. Not vicious squalls like Friday, but a light, unrelenting downpour that descended in straight rods, gurgling along the gutters, running down the drains and dripping off the canvas awnings over the rock and novelties shops.

  The sea was flat and grey, the overcast oyster sky merging into the pewter waves that heaved and swelled sullenly but didn’t seem able to work up enough energy to create a white- topped wave to break the monotonous view.

  I sat in a wooden shelter for a while with a group of pensioners, watching the water pooling on the thick canvas coverings of the deckchair stacks. When the excitement became unbearable, I went back to the office and re-tried my three Bath Keates I hadn’t been able to contact yesterday.

  Two still weren’t answering. The third didn’t have any relatives called Kristen, but he was in touch with an extended family on the planet Zakov who communicated with him via waves beamed into his television set.

  I told him he needed a special licence for that now they’d put in satellite TV and went home to flop out in front of my own television, which just looked like it received transmission via a distant galaxy.

  For want of something more constructive to do on the case I summarised what I’d got so far on Kristen:

  1. Mid to late twenties. Approx. 5 feet 8 inches tall. Long dark hair. Possibly a ‘babe’. Intelligent.

  2. Secretive about her past. Why?

  3.Got job at Wexton’s after reading notice of previous test engineer’s death. (NB Check this out.)

  4.Despite being a ‘babe’ only socialising seems to have been with Rachel Simonawitz - why?

  5.Why did she get paid by personal cheque from Wexton’s? How did she cash them?

  6.Why didn’t she open a bank/building society account locally?

  7.Who was the driver of the dark car Rachel saw at the flats?

  8.Who is Bertram?

  It all added up to precious little. There was only one query that I could do something about immediately. I dialled a local number and was answered by a voice that sounded like pure sex dipped in honey. It belonged to a pensioner who spent most days in the public library to save on the heating bills and was happy to ferret out any information you cared to name for a flat fee of four pounds an hour.

  With an effort I dredged up what details I could recall of Wexton’s previous test engineer. ‘It would have been early last summer, I’d guess. His name was Wingett. Rob. Short for Robert. Crashed his motorbike. Check the daily papers as well as the locals, can you, Ruby? See if the reports went national? Say six hours’ limit?’

  ‘Will do, my lovely. The money will come in very handy for my little trip to the seaside.’

  ‘You live at the seaside, Ruby.’

  ‘I know. But you like to see a different few gallons of salt water sometimes, don’t you? Take care now.’

  By Sunday the rain had become intermittent again, but the wind had increased, ruffling the sea into cream frills. Wandering up to Rachel’s, I was passed by several cars, loaded to the window tops with kids and luggage, whose drivers had already decided they could spend the rest of the weekend in cheaper misery at home.

  ‘Such a pity for the parents. Children, they can be happy anywhere,’ Rachel lamented, taking my damp jacket whilst I tried to brush off the thick scum mark of white hairs that Balthazar had left round my black jeans.

  The flat smelt deliciously of simmering herbs and home- baked rolls. I demolished several as an appetiser, ripping open the thick crusts to get to the still steaming bread.

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble,’ I mumbled half-heartedly.

  ‘No trouble, darlin’. I like to cook. And now Ada is in hospital - may the Lord spare her -1 don’t get no one to cook for; except sometimes maybe when Guy comes home.’

  ‘Guy?’

  She pointed upwards with her index finger. ‘Upstairs, old Mr Stevens’ boy.’

  I remembered now. Kristen’s flat had been owned by someone’s grandson. ‘Any sign of a new tenant?’

  ‘No. Such a shame, darlin’. It’s a nice clean little place. Guy painted it all up after his grandfather - God rest him - died. That reminds me ... stir this for me ... if I don’t do it now it will go clean out of my head. Such a memory I have these days.’

  Handing me a wooden spoon, she disappeared into the bedroom. Balthazar took the opportunity to stroll in and give his impression of feline starvation.

  ‘Forget it, puss. If God had w
anted cats to eat before me, he’d have taught them how to use can-openers.’

  Rachel returned with a large brown envelope and a roll of sticky tape. The cat went into yowling overdrive.

  ‘Hush, baby. Mama will give you your dinner soon as she wraps up Uncle Guy’s mail.’

  Opening a unit drawer, she extracted a bundle of letters and started pushing them into the larger envelope. The implication hit me.

  ‘Does the postman drop them off here, or have you got a key to the upstairs flat?’

  ‘Oh no. He won’t give them to me. He puts them through the slot upstairs and then I go get them. When Kristen was here she brought them down for me.’

  ‘And since she’s left? Do you take her mail as well?’

  ‘Of course, darlin’, no sense it sitting up there.’

  ‘Can I take a look at it?’

  She shrugged and extracted more envelopes from under the tea towels. ‘It’s junk. I was thinking maybe I should put it in the bin. She’s not coming back, is she?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it. In fact she appears to have dropped off the planet.’

  Rachel was right; it was just junk. Apart from a letter from the estate agent formally confirming the end of the tenancy, which had been posted - I checked the postmark - at least a week after she’d left, she’d got a catalogue selling useless gadgets, a brochure from a holiday company giving escorted tours to the Far East and a personalised standard letter from a bucket shop offering free travel guides, maps and mosquito repellent to the first fifty customers to book a long-haul flight.

  Dumping the lot in the bin, I asked if I could take a look round Kristen’s flat.

  ‘Sure. But there’s nothing there.’

  The layout was the reverse of Rachel’s, with the kitchen and main bedroom overlooking the front and the living room and bathroom the back garden. What I’d assumed to be an airing cupboard in the downstairs flat proved to be a small second bedroom. Despite crawling over everything, I didn’t find so much as an old shopping receipt.

  I tried the phone. It had already been cut off but the backup battery was still in place. Taking it from the socket, I trotted downstairs again and borrowed Rachel’s line. It was a waste of time. There were no numbers pre-programmed in the memory and the redial button connected me to a local pizza takeaway.

  I replaced the phone upstairs and followed my nose back to lunch.

  The main course was some kind of spicy lamb casserole with chick-pea dumplings. We shared a bottle of claret with it and moved on to muscatel for the puddings.

  ‘Grand Marnier oranges, darlin’? Or treacle and pecan pie?’

  ‘A little of each, perhaps?’

  Rachel waited until the coffee before asking me how far I’d got in tracing Kristen.

  I hesitated. I’d promised Henry to keep the investigation confidential. On the other hand, it was his involvement he didn’t wanted bandied about. And there was always the possibility that something I’d uncovered so far might jog a memory in Rachel.

  Not that I’d uncovered much. Practically all my results were negative. No school records; no college records; no workmates; no home address; and definitely no voluntary worker.

  Rachel roared with laughter when I got to the bit about the Third World Initiative Teams.

  ‘Twits! Twits! Oh yes, that is my Kristen. She had chutzpah, you know.’

  The sunset-coloured walnut-whip hairstyle shook in time with her chest. For the first time, I realised it was a wig.

  ‘So what you going to do now, darlin’?’

  ‘Pursue the Bridgeman connection, I suppose.’

  ‘You think maybe she was carrying on with this man?’

  I sipped my coffee and nibbled a marzipan. ‘I think it’s unlikely. If you were married and your girlfriend had a cosy little bachelor flat, where would you spend the evenings?’

  ‘But she never brought nobody home.’

  ‘Exactly. Maybe she just wasn’t interested. She could even have taken off rather than go through the hassle of a sexual harassment case. Are you quite sure you never heard her mention anyone called Bertram?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure. Pretty girl like that ought to have a romance. Believe me, if she’d have mentioned a man, I’d have got him round here to look him over.’

  ‘I believe you, Rachel.’

  I thought about Kristen whilst I lay on Rachel’s sofa, flicking through the TV channels and digesting lunch. Employing someone with access to the confidential computer files of somewhere like the Insurance Contributions Agency or the Central Banks Clearing Houses might be productive. But as I said, they charged serious money. And in some obscure way, it had always seemed like cheating to me.

  Which really only left one possible connection still unprobed. If Kristen had taken herself off because of something Bridgeman did - or didn’t - do, perhaps he knew about it. It might not be something he wanted to share with the devoted Ms Ayres and her personnel files.

  It was a tenuous chance, but I had nowhere else to go for the present. Balthazar watched through suspicious green eyes as I lifted Rachel’s phone, dialled the number Bridgeman had given me and asked for Mrs Amelia Bridgeman.

  ‘Speaking. But if you’re going to try to sell me fitted kitchens or double-glazing ...’

  ‘I’m a cleaner. I do up the factory sometimes, Your husband said you were looking for one.’

  ‘Stephen?’ Her voice was light, with an almost girlish inflexion. ‘Stephen found me a cleaner? How terrific. When can you come? I’m absolutely desperate for someone to deal with this mess, so if you could make it soon ...’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Terrific. I’ll see you then. Ciao.’

  I had to shout to stop her hanging up before I’d got a time and house directions and given her my name.

  ‘Smith. Even I should be able to remember that. Ciao again then.’

  Rachel emerged bleary-eyed and wigless as I replaced the receiver. A net plastered near-white hair to her head. ‘Was that for me, darlin’?’

  ‘No, me,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘You’ve not got to go? I got little picks in for supper.’

  ‘It’ll keep.’

  Rachel beamed, stretched, went to adjust her wig - and found it wasn’t there. My stomach muscles had unconsciously tightened, preparing to share her embarrassment.

  With a roar of laughter, she told me her Saul was always saying she’d forget her head one day. ‘And now I started with my hair ... oh dear, oh dear ...’ Still chuckling, she trotted back to the bedroom and returned pulling it on like a tea- cosy.

  ‘Now, is there something nice on the television tonight? Or we can go get a dvd if you like.’ She plumped down beside me and told me it was so nice to have company. ‘The Colemans, next door you know, they go round her mother’s Sunday evenings. And the flats are so quiet... it’s like being in your grave.’

  ‘Doesn’t Saul invite you over?’

  ‘Every other Saturday. I don’t like to push.’

  ‘What about your daughter?’

  ‘My Berenice? She lives in Geneva. Her husband’s a scientist. Very clever. Nothing but the best for my Berenice.’ She sighed heavily. I squeezed her hand. With a grateful smile, she patted mine and told me not to mind her. ‘You visit your parents a lot, darlin’?’

  ‘When I can,’ I lied.

  The truth of the matter was, I wouldn’t have been welcome if I had. My dad is an ex-policeman who was left in a wheelchair after an attack whilst on duty. Everyone knew who’d done it - he used to stand outside our house and taunt my dad sometimes - but nobody could prove anything. The low-lifes he hung around with gave him an unbreakable alibi. But despite their inability to charge anyone for his injuries, Dad remained loyal to the force. So when yours truly got invited to leave, he chose to believe the evidence that I’d taken a bribe to alibi a local villain, rather than my story that I’d been set up.

  The familiar waves of depression started to wash over me as I ran through that night
- and its consequences - in my mind.

  Giving myself a quick mental shake, I said: ‘Fancy going to a karaoke night?’

  I wasn’t sure we’d get into the Downs Estate social club. But a message sent into the beery noisy atmosphere brought Nola to the door to sign us both in. She didn’t seem to find it odd that I’d invited myself round for the evening. And Rachel’s offer to pay for the next round made her instantly acceptable. We squeezed on to a table with Nola, Donna and Bonnie.

  An anorexic kid with acne like raspberry porridge was on stage wriggling his bottom and asking if we thought he was sexy.

  ‘No!’ we roared in unison.

  ‘Ta, Howie, you’re off, mate ...’

  The bloke who been propping up the front of the bar on my first visit led the applause while he edged the pupative Rod Stewart off the stage.

  ‘Now we’ve got Brian ... you’re on, mate ...’

  Adam Ant strutted forward to a synchronised hand-clap. Evidently he was one of the star turns.

  Donna sat silently, picking at the hem of her mini-dress. Under cover of the noise, I leant across and asked if she was managing OK without Tom.

  ‘Sure. Nola helps out. And I got money from the Social.’

  ‘You’ve not heard from him?’

  She shook her head. Tonight her hair was hitched up in two unlikely bunches that swung back and forth in alternate swishes. ‘No.’

  ‘Good riddance,’ Nola said, gulping down half a pint of the rum and blackcurrant Rachel had paid for. ‘You’re better off without that waste of skin. Money don’t stay in his pockets long enough to shake hands with the fluff.’

  ‘That ain’t true!’

  ‘It bloody well is!’

  Unexpectedly Bonnie interrupted: ‘No it ain’t. He had a whole wedge up the post office.’

  ‘When?’ Nola demanded.

  ‘I dunno. Weeks ago. He was getting a tax disc for the van.’

  ‘Oh yeah ... all right, if it’s something for him,' Nola conceded.

  Donna’s indignant protest that he’d got the kids new trainers was cut off by a geriatric and overweight Gloria Gaynor taking the stage and assuring us she would survive. Our eardrums mercifully hung in there with her until she finished to a round of relieved applause.