by Liz Evans
It had never occurred to me she’d have a problem with the situation. By and large Gertie was one of my more reasonable relatives, but I’d forgotten that she came from an era that prized ‘strong moral fibre’. Having found out I was illegally in possession of my current address, she’d refused to legitimise the situation by sending mail to it. She insisted on sending my post to the office. Normally that didn’t cause me any problems. Except for today.
I’d telephoned her last night to ask her to divert her birthday card to my friend Annie’s place (a legitimately mortgaged flat that wouldn’t sully her principles), only to find out she’d posted the damn thing two days early - viz., yesterday afternoon. Hence my dash to the office this morning.
‘I thought,’ I said, glaring at the pile of post on Janice’s desk, ‘that there was some kind of problem at the sorting office.’
‘Fixed.’
She was still examining my birthday card with interest. I considered snatching it away, but decided that would just draw more attention to it. Maybe if I played it cool she wouldn’t notice. Some hopes!
Her voice acquired the purr of a cat that’s just spotted a mouse with a broken ankle. ‘You said you were twenty-eight. So how come this card says “Happy Thirtieth Birthday”?’
She turned it so I could see G-A Gertie’s choice in all its glory of rioting crimson roses, lacy hearts and a blazing great gold foil figure 30 in the centre.
‘Because my Great-Aunt Gertie is an octogenarian.’
‘They don’t count birthdays different abroad, do they? You needn’t—’
She was interrupted by a salvo of sound drumming on the cellar door behind her.
I grabbed the opportunity to divert her. ‘It sounds like the Grim Reaper below is trying to get out.’
‘He’s supposed to use the outside entrance. Vetch said.’
‘Hello? Hello! Is anybody there?’
I strode across, slammed back the two huge metal bolts Vetch had had fitted and dragged on the ring handle. The door swung back and Ifor-squared fell on to his knees.
‘You’re supposed,’ Jan told him, finally leaving her desk and walking over to scowl down at him, ‘to use the outside door.’
‘I’ve been trying to do so, but the lock is defective. It keeps sticking shut. It’s a little oil or some tools I was hoping for the loan of?’ He looked hopefully at Jan - a sure sign he was new.
While Ifor Ifor was discovering Jan’s legendary talent for unhelpfulness, I scooped up my card and headed for the stairs.
My office was on the top floor of the premises. It shared the landing with my friend Annie’s office and a bathroom left over from the days when Vetch’s gran had run this former boarding house on principles laid down by the Ghengis Khan School of Hotel Management.
As I went to unlock the door marked ‘G. Smith’ in uneven black paint, the one opposite decorated with a small plate engraved ‘A. Smith’ swung open.
‘Hi,’ Annie said. ‘What’s this about you lying about your real age?’
‘Flaming hell! Do MI5 know about you?’
‘Jan just rang me on the internal line.’
‘Great. She’ll have a web site set up by lunchtime.’
‘It’s true then? You have been lying?’
‘No. Well, I might have been economical with the truth.’
‘Why?’ Annie stood aside to let me into her office.
It was a tough one to explain. I hadn’t deliberately set out to deceive anyone. In fact, it wasn’t really my fault.
My ex (the one I’d lived with but not married, if you were paying attention earlier) had decided to throw a twenty-sixth birthday party for me. He’d set up the usual essentials of booze, food, helium balloons and music but he hadn’t been able to find a Happy Birthday banner reading ‘26’. So he’d brought a ‘25’, intending to fill in the gap in the 5 and turn it into a 6. Somehow he’d never got around to it, and I’d ended up having a second twenty-fifth birthday.
After that everyone had assumed I was a year younger than I actually am. It had never seemed to matter before. I mean, there was no big difference between twenty-seven and twenty-eight. Or twenty-eight and twenty-nine. But trying to pretend you’re twenty-nine when you’re actually thirty suddenly seemed...
‘Like trying to hide the fact you’ve reached the summit and hit the down skids?’ Annie suggested.
‘I can’t think how you failed that audition for the Samaritans,’ I said, accepting a cup of coffee. ‘I was going to say pathetic, actually. Like all those celebrities who are thirty-nine-and-holding when everyone knows darn well they must have hit the big five-oh.’
Annie poured herself a cup of black, and added cream and sugar. Plainly we were in one of the spells of self-contented calm that occurred between the diet storms when she tried to shift two stone of stubborn blubber.
‘Well, you’re out now. There’s no chance Janice will keep this to herself. Better take it like a woman. A thirty-something one. Anyway, it’s not so bad being thirty-odd. I’ve been there for three years, remember.’
I gave a noncommittal grunt and fished a lump of floating digestive out of my coffee. I didn’t really want it after my full breakfast, but Annie’s usually so possessive about the contents of her office pantry that I didn’t want to refuse and discourage her from offering again.
‘You working on anything interesting at the moment?’ I asked, in a feeble attempt to change the subject.
Annie let me get away with it. ‘A few more personnel checks for my tame securities company in the City; a missing hubby; and a wavering Pasdirp.’
(Pasdirps were Annie’s shorthand for: Probable Adulterous Spouse; Do I Require Proof? An awful lot of clients book an investigation in the first heat of suspicion, call a few days later to put the whole thing on hold, and eventually decide they prefer to bury their heads in the sand and hope the situation will go away. Apparently this one was in the second stage at present.)
‘What about you?’ she asked.
‘Vetch recommended me to one of his girlfriends.’
‘As what?’
‘A doorstop - what else?’
Annie’s eyes twinkled behind the large, red-framed glasses that were the preferred spectacle-design of the moment. ‘So what’s her problem?’
‘She’s having a bad heir day.’
‘Seriously.’
‘I am being serious. She’s taken some snaps of a bunch of complete strangers and wants me to track them down so she can leave them a million in her will.’
‘Is she nuts?’
‘No. She suspects her only offspring might be trying to shove her under a bus. The will is a sort of insurance policy so she can wallow in retail therapy in peace.’
‘Wouldn’t leaving it to the Salvation Army have the same effect?’
‘We’ve already done that conversation. She’s a bit of a control freak, I suspect. The idea of having that much power over them - and me for as long as this takes - is a turn-on, even if the legatees aren’t going to find out about it until she’s gone. But then again, why should I worry? It’s landed me a client with serious money.’
‘All our clients have serious money if you think about it,’ Annie remarked. ‘Even a simple job is going to run up a fair-sized bill. It’s not the kind of money someone on income support is likely to come up with. We’re another one of those areas of society from which the deserving poor are excluded.’
‘On that deep thought, I think I’ll leave you to it and get down to work.’ I swung my feet off the table and stood up as Annie jokingly told me to let her know who benefited from the mad millionairess’s will, particularly if they were male and unattached.
‘Sorry. Client wants total shtum.’
I mimed a zipper across my lips. Annie shrugged philosophically but didn’t argue. It was a sort of unwritten rule in the company that The Customer Ruled - OK?
After the soothing and beautifully decorated quiet of Annie’s office, my own bare-floored, dust-chal
lenged pit felt ... homely. The sun was pouring in through the windows, illuminating my natural talent for ignoring the housework. I eased them open to let in the sea breezes and the gulls’ incessant squarking, and then spread Barbra’s photo collection over the desk.
She had a camera with an automatic motor; by keeping her finger on the shot button she’d captured half a dozen views of each person from the moment they left the shop door until they were a few yards down the street.
I grouped them into subjects. There were three of them. Barbra Delaney was intending to leave her money to a man, a woman ... and a parrot.
4
I checked the developer’s wallet. There were no negatives. Either she’d used a digital camera or Barbra was hanging on to them as insurance against my producing any old names and addresses providing their owners vaguely resembled the pictures on my desk.
Turning one of the snaps over, I discovered her camera had automatically recorded the date and time on the back of each shot. They’d been taken on the twelfth of August, which was last Wednesday. Assuming Barbra had got there for the store’s opening, the woman had been their first customer, at 7.12 a.m.
Age isn’t that easy to judge - particularly in two dimensions - but the woman was late thirties to mid forties, I’d say. She was dressed in a loose-fitting white T-shirt with a brightly coloured abstract design, over wide-legged black trousers and flat slip-on shoes. Slimly built and of average height, using the shop doorway as a perspective guide. Her dark hair was cut in a short, feathery style that framed a face that might have been heart-shaped, although it was hard to be definite because she’d kept her head tilted downwards so the strands fell forward and hid parts of her features.
She was holding a package in her left hand and sunglasses in her right. The specs were being raised with each successive shot, and by the last they were perched on Mrs X’s nose. This particular picture was in profile and must have been taken as the woman crossed in front of Barbra’s lens. I wondered where she’d been as she’d shot off the film. Her models didn’t give any indication they were aware they were being captured on celluloid.
The man was next. He’d left the store at 7.30 a.m. Rangy was the first word to come to mind. He was certainly over six feet, but leanly built as far as I could see under the crumpled checked shirt and jeans. The narrow, long-nosed face was capped with sandy- coloured hair cut close to his head at the nape but slightly longer in the front. I’d have bet anything the style was to hide a receding hair-line. He was about a decade older than the woman: late forties to early fifties was my best guess.
The parrot had fluttered in last: departure time 7.45 a.m. She was slightly shorter than the bloke, perhaps nearer my own height of five feet ten inches. It was hard to tell her build because of the bizarre clothing. She was wearing one of those buckskin thigh-length jackets usually seen on early American backwoodsmen who favour dead raccoons as headgear. Its fringed bottom was flapping over the sort of patchwork skin skirt and boots generally worn by said backwoodsman’s Native American life- partner (or Red Indian squaw, for the politically incorrect amongst you), except in her case the natural hide colour had been dyed into jewel shades.
What made the whole thing truly bizarre were the feathers. Somewhere in the Amazonian rain forests, a couple of parrots were flying around like a pair of oven-ready chickens while their modesty was attached to Hiawatha here. She had a whole plumage spiked into her hair. It was dark and fringed like Mrs X’s, but that was about the only resemblance. These locks were thick and straight, hanging to the bust and adorned with single feathers of brilliant blue, red and green twisted in an apparently random pattern across her head.
The ensemble was completed by an almost dull pair of beige suede boots and a thonged duffle bag slung over one shoulder.
At least, I decided, shuffling the pictures back into their paper holder, number three should be a breeze to trace. How many parrot-fixated Indian squaws could there be wandering around a small country village?
My first problem was getting to St Biddy’s. I have a car, according to the log book. According to the police, I have an un-roadworthy collection of mechanical parts and they’d just love me to make their day by taking it on a public highway. At present it was lurking in a friend’s yard while a new set of stables for his donkey string was built around it.
Annie turned down my request for a loan of hers. ‘Get your own fixed.’
‘I did. Something else went wrong. Well, several something elses’, actually.’
‘Then buy another car.’ Straightening up from the bottom filing cabinet drawer, she swore softly as the button of her skirt fired across the room.
Normally I’d have cracked a joke, but today I needed a favour.
‘I know damn well you’ve got money stashed away,’ Annie grunted, struggling to insert a safety pin to secure the skirt zip.
‘How?’
‘I can count. You’ve had decent-sized fees from at least two recent cases I know of. You don’t pay rent for your flat, you shop at charity stores and you scrounge everything else off the rest of us.’
‘I’m conscientious about recycling the earth’s resources.’
‘You’re tighter than this damn skirt,’ she informed me, closing the pin at last. Letting her breath go with a gasp, she dragged her blouse out of the waistband and smoothed it over her stomach. ‘How does that look?’
‘Porky.’
‘Bitch.’ Annie grinned without rancour. The effort had left her round face slightly pink and made her mousy hair stand out. ‘Go get a cash extraction. It can be quite painless if you’re brave.’
Not for me. I hated spending my own money and only did it when the last resort failed. In this case the last resort proved surprisingly obliging.
‘Of course I can lend you some transport, sweet thing. What else are colleagues for but to share and share alike?’
I was stunned enough to bite back a flip reply and simper my thanks.
‘Walk this way - and swallow the joke about talcum powder that I just know was on the tip of your tongue.’
I turned towards the front door, since Vetch normally parked outside the office. He swung right, however, as he headed for the back of the premises.
‘This way. I presume your efforts this morning are devoted to Barbra’s cause?’
‘Yep. Did she tell you what she wanted?’
‘Naturally. How else could I have decided to whom I should pass the file?’
‘How d’you know her?’
‘Business.’
‘Our business?’
‘Hers. Here we are.’
Taking a large key from its hook by the back door, he inserted it in the lock of the substantial door installed by Grannie Vetch when she’d terrorised holidaymakers into arriving for high tea at six thirty PROMPT and leaving ALL BUCKETS AND SPADES OUTSIDE THE PREMISES. The general opinion was that she’d had this door and the metal window bars added to thwart a bolshie boarder who’d been trying to form an escape committee. Vetch disappeared into the small brick outside shed.
I stared in disbelief as he wheeled out a bicycle. Not a modern lightweight model, but the sort of robust bone-shaker that I last saw free-wheeling across the TV screen in a documentary on the 1920s Depression. Its name - according to the gilt lettering - was Sunbeam.
‘You’ve got to be kidding!’
Vetch’s grin extended to the top of his pointed ears. ‘Not at all. Grannie swore by it.’
‘I’m not surprised. I can think of a few swear words that I bet Grannie never used.’
‘I doubt that, sweet thing. Well, I’ll wish you happy hunting.’
‘I suppose it’s pointless to suggest you might want to lend me your motor?’
‘Totally. Both now and in the forever more. Take care. You shouldn’t over-exercise at your age.’
They say you never forget how to ride a bicycle. They lie. The fastest way to St Biddy’s was straight along the main east- to-west A road, but there was no wa
y I was risking it with my cycling synchronisation still struggling in the fledgling stage. Slinging my bag in the wicker basket fixed to the handlebars, I aimed for the country lanes that meandered between the farm fields. Up until now my contact with horticulture had been confined to supermarket freezer cabinets. I had no idea what they grew out here beyond the fact that I sometimes drove past rows of green that I assumed were vegetables and an occasional patch of pale gold waving stuff that was obviously some kind of cereal crop. Most of them seemed to have been harvested already.
My combats had come with a sleeveless khaki singlet and a peaked forage cap. The sun was still beating down from a sky flecked with puffy pockets of clouds, but the gentle breeze skittering over my bare arms and shoulders kept me pleasantly cool, and the cap shaded my eyes. It occurred to me that now I’d got into the rhythm of cycling without thinking about it, I was actually enjoying myself. I was sure that wasn’t Vetch’s intention which made me even more determined to go on doing it.
I had to join the main road for the last half-mile of the approach to the village. But hey - long stretches of black tarmac and white lines were no longer intimidating to an old hand at pedal power like me. Standing off the saddle to check the right was clear, I swung confidently left - and just glimpsed a large bonnet and headlights before he clipped me.
He’d been pulling out and turning right from a track that joined the other side of the main road. Flat on my back, and pinned under the full weight of the bike, I watched him pull up a few yards in front of me and heard the sound of the window sliding down.
I guessed he was watching me in the wing mirror. As soon as I demonstrated enough movement to make it a fair bet I wasn’t about to peg out, he let the clutch in and left me to watch Mr Timpkin’s Farm Fresh Vegetables roar away in a cloud of diesel fumes.