by Matt Drabble
“I’m sorry,” Becky finally managed to say, “but I’m not entirely sure just what it is that we’re doing here?”
Celestine’s flawless complexion suddenly darkened in confusion. “I don’t think that I understand?” she said.
“My friend here is doing this for a wedding present, only I’m not quite sure just what this is,” Becky said meekly.
“Your betrothed, Mr. Shire, he is a good man?” Celestine asked.
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure?”
“Of course I am,” Becky remarked firmly.
“But you can never truly know can you, Becky?” Celestine questioned, seriously. “None of us really know what lurks in the hearts of men. Oh, the magazines will have you believe that men are simple creatures with simple tastes and one-track minds. But that is not the truth Becky, trust me. Men can be every bit as mischievous and devious as women; they can be deceitful and spiteful and before you marry one you should truly know him. You have to truly know Peter before you form an unbreakable bond.”
“So you’re against marriage?” Becky asked.
“Quite the reverse, in fact,” Celestine answered. “I believe in the institution whole-heartedly. I just believe in doing your homework first, Becky. One out of every three marriages ends in divorce; those are not good odds, my dear. What we offer is a comprehensive background check and analysis of the man that you intend to marry. We offer total peace of mind for you before you commit to the holy bonds of matrimony.”
“What sort of analysis?” Becky asked nervously.
“Total,” Celestine answered.
Becky was still pondering the merits of the service as Jeanne was flashing the gold plastic with a well worn flourish. On the one hand, she didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize her relationship with Pete but on the other they had somewhat rushed into their engagement and Pete was already talking about booking a venue for the wedding.
“Oh and ladies, our policy is for very strict confidentiality,” Celestine said, staring hard at them both. “I’m afraid that we don’t tolerate violations in any form.”
“It’ll be great, you’ll see,” Jeanne stressed as they were sitting in a wine bar around the corner from the agency a few minutes later.
“I don’t know,” Becky fussed, still thinking about the last words that Celestine had said before they’d left and the hard unflinching look in her eyes when she’d said them.
“Look, it can’t do any harm, can it? I mean, aren’t you curious as to why he’s interested in you in the first place? He’s attractive, successful and well…, you’re not. I just think that there must be more going on here than meets the eye.”
And with that the conversation was over and the subject was closed. As much as Becky might have grown since she had known Pete, it wasn’t yet enough to stand against the tidal wave of Jeanne when she had her mind set fully in one direction.
----------
It was three weeks later and Becky and Pete were sitting in a restaurant waiting for their order. She hadn’t heard back from the agency and she was starting to put the thought to the back of her mind. She was sure that Pete had no skeletons in his closet, or at least none that mattered. She was happy, quite possibly for the first time in her life, and nothing was going to change that.
“Some slow service tonight, huh?” Pete said, looking around for their waitress who seemed to have disappeared.
Becky wasn’t all that hungry and neither was she in much of a rush. “I suppose,” she agreed.
Just then, the waitress reappeared with their order and set the food down with a smile. As was the way with the British, when she asked if everything was alright Pete was the first to agree that it was, despite his earlier moaning. Becky was glad that he was an even-tempered man who never seemed to get overly worked up by anything in particular.
“So how was your day?” he enquired with genuine interest.
“Same old, same old,” she shrugged. “How about you?”
“Well, old man Jenkins is riding me about the figures as per usual. He’s starting to talk about laying off staff again if sales don’t pick up.”
“You’re not going to fire people are you?”
“Not if I can help it,” he said determinedly and she loved him a little more.
Just then, a woman walked past the table on her way out of the restaurant. She was tall and slender with a casual sashaying walk that drew attention from most of the males around her. Her dress was tight and short and her legs were long and elongated further by sleek shoes with impossibly high spiked heels. Becky watched the men from the surrounding tables gawping with their tongues hanging out, thinking herself lucky when she caught Pete staring.
“How on earth do women walk in those?” he asked honestly, shaking his head. “Must be murder on her poor feet.”
Becky let out an internal sigh of relief. Her man wasn’t a lecherous pig like so many others in the world and she thought herself lucky, luckier than most, as she leaned across the table and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“What’s that for?” he grinned.
“Just for being you,” she smiled back.
After dinner, they were heading across the restaurant car park hand in hand. The meal had been pleasant and Becky was feeling a little bit tipsy in her head and a little bit adventurous down below.
“Hey you!” a man called out from across the tarmac.
Becky and Pete both turned towards the voice. A large man was striding purposefully across the car park towards them. He was tall and broad and looked very angry.
“You like to stare at other people’s women huh?” the man barked at Pete as he reached them.
“What?” Pete answered, confused.
Becky looked over the big man’s shoulder and saw the sexy woman from the restaurant waiting for him by their car. She turned back just as the big guy hit Pete full in the face. The sudden explosion of violence shocked her deeply and her expensive dinner rolled in her stomach threatening to make another appearance. “Stop it!” she screamed, badly frightened.
The man punched Pete again and he slipped to the floor, bleeding profusely from his nose and mouth.
“Don’t you go looking at other men’s women!” the man snarled as he let Pete slide helplessly to the floor clutching his bloody face. “Learn the lesson, friend,” the man whispered. “Learn it well.”
Pete hadn’t wanted to call the police and Becky thought that his male pride had been more injured than his face. He’d slapped her hands away any time that she had tried to touch his injured nose and he’d driven in sullen silence all the way home.
By the time that the next morning had arrived, he was trying to laugh off the incident but Becky could see that he was troubled by the emasculating behavior in his eyes. She wanted to tell him that it was ridiculous to feel that way but she could see that he wouldn’t listen.
The biggest travesty, of course, was that he hadn’t been staring at the creep’s girlfriend unlike most of the other men in the restaurant. Quite why the big ape would have picked on Pete was a mystery, until the thought of the agency popped into her mind.
She put off calling Jeanne for as long as she could, before finally deciding that her friend’s derision would be a price worth paying if it gave her peace of mind. The longer that the day went on, the more silly the notion sounded in her head, but still she called.
The mobile phone rang and rang and rang with no answer. She tried Jeanne at home but there was no answer there and she was about to give up when a maid picked up. Eventually, through a succession of broken English on the maid’s part and broken French on Becky’s, she finally understood that Jeanne and her husband were away on some last minute trip. It suddenly dawned on her that she didn’t have a direct number for the agency or indeed any paperwork with their details on it.
She was wondering if her thoughts were bordering on paranoia when the phone rang, still in her hand. “Hello?” she answered apprehensively.
“Becky, it’s Donald at the paper. Look, I know that it’s your day off today but I think we’ve got a bit of a problem here with Peter.”
Her heart sank a little at the call. Donald was the office manager. He was a nice man who had always treated her kindly. “What do you mean?”
“You know that business with all of the hacking scandals in the industry lately?”
“Sure,” she replied. The scandal had almost ruined the news industry with so-called journalists intercepting phone calls from victims ranging from the rich and famous to grieving crime victims’ families.
“Well, I’ve got an inside source who’s a kind of whistleblower and he’s given me the wink that Peter’s phone has been hacked. I don’t know by whom and I can’t imagine why, unless you’ve got any ideas?
Becky’s warning light went on and she wondered if Donald was warning her or fishing for information. “You’re sure about this?”
“I’m afraid so. Also, I don’t know if it’s connected or if it’s anything at all but one of the guys in the mailroom thought that he saw some guy lurking around outside early this morning. Have you got any idea why Peter might be under…, I don’t know, some kind of surveillance?”
Becky hung up the phone quickly before Donald managed to drag any information out of her as she wasn’t sure that she could stand up to direct questioning.
She chose to head down to the paper in person instead of risking a phone call. She found it hard to believe that Peter’s phone could have been hacked but after last night she was undoubtedly a little jumpy.
The taxi ride was quick and she found herself in a hurry to find Peter just to check on him. As the car pulled up outside the building, she jumped out before it had come to a complete stop and flung a note at the driver. His grateful response told her that it had been a larger one than she’d intended but she wasted no time in retrieving her change.
Duncan met her at the main entrance as she was entering and he was leaving. “Becky!” he exclaimed. “You must be psychic. I just left word for someone to call you.”
“Is it Peter?” she asked nervously.
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact,” Duncan started but she had pushed past him and was soon running into the building.
She found Peter sitting in the staffroom. Her worst fears were confirmed when she saw his ashen face. “Pete, what’s wrong?” she coaxed, sliding in next to him on the long sofa.
“It’s Julie,” he whispered.
“Julie?” she said puzzled. “Julie Framer?”
He nodded in reply.
Julie Farmer was Pete’s ex-boss and a source of some disdain from her. Julie was an aggressive woman, not unlike Jeanne. She was a woman always on the prowl and her sights had been firmly set on Pete some years earlier. Despite it being a time before Becky had even met Pete, she still felt jealous whenever Julie’s name came up. Pete swore blind that he had never succumbed to Julie’s advances, but Becky still felt awkward that they occasionally kept in touch. Julie was an outrageous flirt but Becky was always reassured to see Pete blushing furiously whenever it happened.
“What about her?” Julie asked.
“I was speaking to her on the phone not an hour ago, when…, when…, she was in an accident.”
“Oh God, is she ok?”
Pete shook his head. “A car mounted the pavement and crashed right into her; she died at the scene.”
“What were you talking about?” Becky asked nervously.
“She’s dead, Becky, what does it matter now.”
“It might. Was she flirting with you?”
“You don’t have any reason to be jealous Becky, you never did,” Pete sighed.
“Was she?” Becky insisted.
Pete looked up at her with confusion in his eyes, mixed with some shock. “I don’t know! You know Julie, she never meant anything by it.”
Becky had her answer and now she was really scared and feeling less foolish at her fears.
She left Pete at the paper and headed into town. She gave the driver the address of the wine bar near the agency because she didn’t know the building’s actual address. When the taxi passed it on the way to their destination she yelled out loudly for him to stop. The car pulled over reluctantly but she tipped him well and hastily.
She crossed the road, ignoring the blasting from the car horns that she earned as she ran almost blindly through the traffic. There was still no name on the building and it was dark inside. She tried the door and was horrified to find it locked. She yanked uselessly on the metal bar as though she could open it through sheer force of will.
She skirted around the building looking for another entrance but found only more locked doors. She peered through the windows only to find that the place seemed deserted.
She stood back on the street outside the main doors and wondered what to do next when her phone rang. She plucked it out of her bag and saw that it was an unrecognized number. “Hello?” she answered.
“Hello, Becky.”
She immediately recognised the voice and could picture the sultry woman behind it. “Celestine, where are you? I came by to see you but nobody’s here.”
“I am aware of that, hence the call. How may I help you today?”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t want to know. I just want it to stop, that’s all. Just stop it. I’ve changed my mind.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that you’re not satisfied with our performance Becky, very sorry indeed,” the woman replied, infuriatingly polite.
“Then you’ll cancel the contract?”
“Oh, I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Becky. The contract isn’t with you, remember. It’s with your friend a…, Jeanne Ringwood. I’m afraid that we pride ourselves here on our reputation; I mean, how could we possibly operate if we lost that?”
Becky could hear the smile in the woman’s voice and it only angered her further. “Look, I just want it stopped; whatever you’re doing, just stop it please.”
“Doing, Becky? I can assure you that we are only providing the service that you wanted. A service to provide you with total peace of mind that your betrothed will never stray from the path of holy matrimony.”
“Did you do something to Julie Farmer? She died this morning, was that you?” Becky couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“As I said, Becky, total peace of mind.”
“Just stop it okay? Just call it off, please,” Becky begged.
“I’m terribly sorry, Becky, but wheels are in motion - wheels that are impossible to stop without the correct authorization. Now, if you can get your friend to contact us then I would be glad to discuss it with her further. But in the meantime, I would take this opportunity to remind you of our strict confidentiality clause. I would hate to see you break it and suffer the consequences.”
The line went dead and Becky could only stare into the phone, the threat ringing in her ears. Her first instinct was to call the police but what could she tell them? She had no evidence, only what would sound like paranoid guesswork. Not to mention the fact that Celestine’s threat was one that she took very seriously.
She desperately tried all of Jeanne’s numbers again, praying that her friend would answer but she didn’t. Wherever Jeanne and her husband had taken off to, they either didn’t get reception or they were choosing not to answer.
She raced back to the paper, not daring to call Pete, not knowing who might be listening and what they might do if they heard her warning him. She remembered Celestine’s words about their strict confidentiality clause and she certainly didn’t want the woman to hear her breaking it.
----------
“Run that by me again,” Pete said, an hour or so later when they were driving onto the motorway.
Becky had used every ounce of her newly found determination to convince Pete to come with her in the middle of a work day. In the end, she had to practically drag him out of the building against his will. She’d asked him if he could get a car
and he had replied that he’d see what he could do. Now they were driving up towards where she remembered that Jeanne and her husband had a holiday cottage, praying that they would be there. Even if they weren’t, she thought that it would be safer if she and Pete were together inside the confines of a car. She had only been to the cottage once before when Jeanne had first bought it and wanted an audience to show it off to but her directional sense was normally reliable and she was sure that she could find the way again.
“I can’t say it again without repeating myself,” she shrugged as she drove. Pete, being a city boy born and bred, didn’t have a license as there seemed precious little point in owning a car and being unable to drive around the city.
“But you can’t be serious, surely?” Pete exclaimed in a hushed voice.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Pete, other than I’m scared shitless.”
“But she didn’t openly admit to anything, this Celestine, did she?”
“How could she? I mean, I want to believe that this is all in my head but that guy last night and Julie today, combined with the fact that the agency isn’t there anymore seems like a bit too much of a coincidence to me.”
“Yeah, but murdering Julie just because she’s a bit of a flirt, it seems like the work of the insane; it can’t possibly be real,” Pete argued firmly.
Becky was suddenly struck by a worrying thought. “Whose car is this?”
“What?”
“The car, who did you borrow it from?”
“From Gemma, she’s the new intern, why?” Pete asked a little nervously, given her tone.
“Was she happy to lend it to you?”
“Not really, no. I had to sweet talk her a little. You know what the city is like; hardly anyone drives anymore.”
“Ring the office and check on her,” Becky said, barely above a whisper.
“Why?”
“RING THEM NOW!” Becky shouted. “Quickly, please.”
She drove as Pete rang the office number. She listened to the one-sided conversation from Pete’s end and watched out of the corner of her eye as his face visibly paled.