by C Harrison
Wallet heard Knight's words and shouted through to the lounge. "Didn't you like being described as a MILF?"
"Children need to learn to respect their elders. He knows now some lessons in life are tougher than others."
"Here, take a look at this." Wallet walked in and handed Elaine the printout. It was a screen grab. "I thought Terence Pearl might have a video of his appearance on that news item and I was right. There's your man. The Peter Miles lookalike."
Elaine sat up. Wallet had casually presented the past, a lifetime's memories, on a single sheet of paper. He would have given anything now for Susan's ability to get inside someone's head just to find out what unanswerable questions were bubbling up from the depths of Elaine's subconscious. Her eyes gave nothing away, but they darted around the image looking for any clues secretly stored in it.
"So who is he?" asked Wallet. "Is that Peter Miles? Is he like us? I don't know what he looked like, but you do."
"It's not him," said Elaine. "He looks just like him, his face, his build, the way he stands, but it's not Pete."
Pete? An overly familiar term for a man last seen in 1973. Wallet was afraid to probe any further. He knew the limits of Susan's patience and how far you could push before Dee finally snapped, but Elaine was a quiet volcano and didn't need an excuse to blow up in your face. Never one to give too much away she was permanently steaming and gave no indication of how long you had left before the boiling magma emerged. Wallet tip toed around her.
"What about Terence Pearl, who's he?" she asked, still studying the print out.
"Not too sure. All I can find is a PDF of a school governors' meeting in Ipswich. I think he was a teacher, might still be."
"When?"
"Recently. PDF was dated 2011. All the stuff on his website was written this year. Links to his books are broken. Maybe they don't exist."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Call me paranoid," said Wallet, "but you announce your return and he starts writing about you. Maybe he's got a different agenda. Especially with this guy literally in the background." Wallet tapped the A4 sheet. "Someone needs to talk to Terence Pearl."
"You think he's drawing us into something? Can you dig a little more, find out what you can about him?"
"Yeah. I'll try."