‘On the bike?’ she asked. And wouldn’t it be wiser to suggest meeting at the Greenbelt? But since she didn’t have the faintest idea where it was ...
‘In my car. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t want you to ruin your best bib and tucker on the babe machine,’ he said, his grin revealing a good set of cared-for white teeth. She was doing the horse-check again, she thought.
But she acknowledged that he was pretty fanciable, even if he was as arrogant in his own way as Gary Hollis ever was. She liked his style too, and she gave him one of her newly-printed cards, feeling her heart give a jolt of pleasure at the thought that she needn’t spend the night in her own company after all.
‘You might be able to help me sometime,’ she said casually. ‘I’ve got a list of people I want to trace. Nothing vital. Just contacts for a friend.’
‘Why not? I’ve got a couple of weeks spare for the vac, so I’ll be happy to join forces with you.’
He roared off on the bike again, leaving Alex wondering if she had done a stupid thing involving him, even in so small a way. She didn’t want anyone joining forces with her, although she had seriously begun to wonder about taking on an assistant — a dogsbody — and Phil certainly didn’t fit that description.
No, she thought, walking on across the Downs, and ignoring the thought that the well-toned body of a Head of Sports tutor would be anything but a dogsbody ... What she wanted, if she wanted anyone at all, was a bright girl who was a whizz with computers and the Internet and could be trusted with the private nature of the business. Maybe she should advertise. The more the idea came into her head, she knew it wasn’t such a bad idea. And Phil might well have connections. New Year’s Eve certainly wasn’t the best of times to assess anyone — but uni students should also be intelligent and keen and looking for something more interesting than the usual boring jobs.
She began to feel uplifted. An assistant could be useful in many ways, if only to take calls and field off unwanted enquiries when she was out on the job. It would be quite good to have someone to share the puzzles that her work entailed too. She would still do the legwork herself, of course. It was her show. Miss X would just be someone to do the office chores. She found herself smiling, and realized that people were smiling back at her. It must be something to do with the extended holidays, and the fact that a stronger sun was lightening the sky.
Without thinking, Alex began humming beneath her breath, glad she was here; glad she had had the courage to make the move, and scornful of any suggestion that it had been her last traumatic case that had prompted it. And even more, she had already met a dishy man who was taking her clubbing that night.
It was time to forget about work and the Jane Lengs of this world for the time being, and start thinking about what she was going to wear to wow him.
Chapter 4
Friends and acquaintances knew of Alex’s preference for wearing black. It was her trademark colour. The contrast it created with her sleek red hair and stunning green eyes made her look even more dramatic. She wasn’t too proud to admit that she liked the attention it attracted — though she could be as chameleon-like as DCI Nick Frobisher when it came to altering her appearance and her accent for professional purposes. It was part of the job.
But tonight, she was going to wear a glittery, slinky black sheath of a dress, with heels that made her even taller. Phil Cordell must be well over six feet, she had noted, so together they would make quite an entrance.
‘God, you’re vain, aren’t you, kiddo?’ she asked, grinning at her reflection on her way to the bathroom for a shower, imagining Nick saying the words, and knowing what he would say next, too.
‘Are you sure you want to go out tonight, babe? I can think of much better things to do staying in ...’
Alex turned away with a sigh. She did miss him, and she was already wondering why on earth she had agreed to go out with a stranger to a place she didn’t know. It would probably be filled with under-twenties and she’d feel out of it. But then, so would Phil — except that he would know people and she wouldn’t.
What a wimp she was being, Alex thought furiously. It wasn’t her style, and she had better buck up her ideas pretty quickly if she didn’t want the evening to end up like a damp squib. She took a few deep breaths and stepped under the shower, letting the hot water refresh her, and paying as much attention to her appearance as if she was meeting Nick.
*
‘Wow!’ was all Phil Cordell said when she opened the door to him, right on time.
That was the word all right.
‘Is that wow good, or wow I’m-dressed-all-wrong-for-the-place-we’re-going-to?’ she asked him.
‘Wow great, and you know it,’ he said with a laugh.
He didn’t look so bad himself, smartly casual in a black jacket and trousers and a beige silky rollneck sweater. And she still liked those impossibly white teeth — providing they weren’t like the stars and came out at night.
‘I’m ready then,’ Alex said brightly, resisting a giggle before her thoughts ran away with her and she turned this meeting into a farce. Not that she had any intention of letting it become anything more than friendly, she had decided. He was good-looking, and hopefully great company, but she didn’t want to start a new relationship. Not yet. If ever. Well ... not ever was a long time, and she wasn’t dead yet. But she could play it cool when necessary, and a sixth sense told her it would be wiser to do just that. She had been wrong before.
‘You’ll like these kids, Alex,’ Phil said casually, as they walked out to his car. A People Mover, she noted. Nice. Good for carrying lots of students about. Darkened windows for anything else that might be going on inside. She wished away the thought.
‘I hope so,’ she said, in answer to his comment. ‘Where I used to live, there was an actress-cum-model in the flat below, and her parties weren’t exactly my style.’
‘Really? Druggies, were they?’
His words startled her. ‘No, they weren’t, actually.’
Why did people naturally assume such things? You could think the same about students. Many people did. Drugs weren’t her scene and never had been, and she hoped she wasn’t going to be disappointed in Phil and his crowd.
‘Good. We have a real downer on that kind of thing at college,’ he said.
‘I thought you were Head of Sports at the university,’ she said.
‘Did I say that? No. St Joseph’s College. It’s a teacher training college. But I know a lot of the uni students. Some of them have come on to us.’
He glanced at her as the car took them smoothly out of town.
‘Does that make a difference? I didn’t take you for a snob, Alex.’
‘Good Lord, no. I just got the wrong end of the stick. That’s all.’
She pushed down her small feeling of unease that had risen up due to the fact that she was sure she hadn’t got the wrong end of the stick, that he was a virtual stranger, and that she didn’t have a clue where they were going. For all she knew ...
‘Sorry about that,’ Phil went on. ‘I’m afraid St Joseph’s is rather smaller fry than the uni, but a lot of my friends are tutors there, and we usually get together at this time of year. We have a lot more mature students too, of course,’ he added.
She almost said thank God for that, but stopped herself in time. She didn’t want to sound like somebody’s maiden aunt.
‘So what’s this case you’re on now?’ he went on casually.
‘I don’t remember saying I was on a case.’
He laughed. ‘I think you rather neatly ignored it, but my guess is that you are. You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who sits around twiddling her thumbs waiting for business to come in. So what kind of things do you investigate? Straying husbands, that kind of thing?’
‘Sometimes. And straying wives. Men don’t have the monopoly on it.’
‘Uh-oh — touched a nerve, have I? Bit of a feminist streak in there somewhere, is there? Still, I like that in a woman. Shrinking
violets went out with the suffragettes.’
Alex laughed back. She couldn’t quite make him out, but it was New Year’s Eve, for God’s sake, and she was hardly being abducted by aliens.
‘How long have you lived in Bristol?’ she asked him.
‘Oh — half my life. Man and boy — or should that be boy and man?’ he said easily. ‘From student to tutor, single, married and divorced.’
‘Thanks, but I didn’t mean to be that personal.’
‘Well, you didn’t ask, but now you have it in a nutshell. In case that was what was bothering you.’
He was more astute than she realized. ‘It wasn’t. I just thought if you’ve lived here a long time you may have heard something about the Leng case that happened ten years ago.’
He whistled, and for a moment Alex could have been in the company of one Gary Hollis, who’d had a habit of driving her mad with his tuneless whistling. But something told her that this guy had little in common with Gary except for being a keen biker. All Gary’s brains were in his jeans, she thought with a small surge of memory that wasn’t altogether unwelcome.
‘So that’s it, is it? The mad Mrs Leng has got you on the case, has she?’
‘You know her then? And why do you call her mad?’ Alex demanded, feeling her heartbeats quicken at Phil’s response to her question.
‘I don’t know her, but most people know of her. Every now and then she writes a letter to the local rag, knowing she’ll get more sympathy than from the nationals, demanding that the case is reopened since she’s sure she’s seen her son yet again. Sometimes it’s on TV, and sometimes it’s in the middle of a crowd. My guess is they use her letters when there’s nothing much else to put in the paper.’
‘Don’t you find that a bit sad?’ Alex said, defending her.
‘No. She’s led that husband of hers a devil of a life, by all accounts, making him think their son was still alive, when everyone knew he was dead.’
‘Did they?’ This conversation was starting to get interesting.
‘Well, so they say,’ Phil amended. ‘But listen, we don’t want to talk about that all night, do we? We’re nearly at the Greenbelt, so let’s enjoy ourselves, OK?’
He seemed mighty glad to end the discussion on Jane Leng and her dead son. Or was this her feminine intuition going haywire, just because she wanted to think she’d struck lucky in finding someone who just might know something so soon, and without even trying?
Come on, Alex! She didn’t believe in coincidences, and in any case, she knew she’d get nothing more out of him right now, because they were turning into the grounds of the nightclub. Neon lights blazed out, and even from here the music screamed loudly enough to burst the eardrums and rattle the chest. Talk was obviously going to be limited. But there would be time enough later to find out just what Phil Cordell knew or surmised.
*
The Greenbelt wasn’t exactly tacky, but it wasn’t the West End either, and Alex knew she had better not start comparing, or she certainly would be marked out as a snob. The most refreshing thing was to find that Phil’s party friends weren’t all mad-brained teenagers, and there was a fair sprinkling of tutors among the students. As he said, some of the ex-uni ones had turned to teacher training and gone on to St Joseph’s. They all seemed to accept her as Phil’s new girl, and for the time being, she let it go at that.
She approved of the fact that he drank very little, knowing that he would be driving home after midnight. What she hadn’t expected was that a few of them assumed he’d be driving them home as well, which gave them plenty of leeway to get well and truly plastered by the time midnight had struck.
There were hugs and boozy kisses all around, and then she felt herself clasped in Phil Cordell’s arms and held tight to his chest.
‘You know I fancy you rotten, don’t you, Alex?’ he whispered in her ear.
‘No, you don’t,’ she said, superior as ever. ‘We hardly know each other.’
Oh God, here was her maiden aunt stuff again, and she knew that her ice-cool voice frequently raised the libido instead of squashing it.
Phil whispered against her mouth now. ‘I mean to do something about that. Unless there’s someone else? If so, where is he, tonight of all nights?’
He was a confident, easy talker, his blond-streaked hair, height and physique oozing sex-appeal. He was every student’s dream tutor, especially on the sports field. All those muscles, and those pecs ...
But just as quickly as she had fancied him, Alex knew that she didn’t — and couldn’t. He just wasn’t her type. She gave him a cool smile as they were jostled and pressed together by people still kissing and screeching out ‘Happy New Year’ to one another as if their lives depended on it, by streamers and balloons cascading down on them, by the explosion of party poppers all around them, and by the heavy pressure of his sinewy body against hers.
‘There is someone, as a matter of fact,’ she told him. ‘He’s still in London, but he’s coming down as soon as he can get a few days off,’ she invented.
‘What the hell does he do if he can’t get away for New Year’s Eve?’ Phil said, almost surly, and again Alex was reminded of Gary Hollis — except that Phil was more powerfully built, and a black belt in karate.
‘He’s a policeman. A Detective Chief Inspector, if you want his full title,’ Alex said, awarding Nick his impressive status.
‘Jesus Christ. That’s almost incestuous you a private investigator and him a copper.’
‘No more so than you and other ranks spending time together.’
‘See what I mean? You even use the same jargon. Other ranks!’
‘Are we having an argument?’ Alex said pleasantly. ‘If so, one of your students has been asking me for a dance, and I think now might be a good time.’
He squeezed her to him very tightly for a moment, and she could feel the pressure on her ribs. And then he was all sweetness and light again.
‘I’m sorry, Alex. This isn’t the best of days for me. You couldn’t have known it, but today’s the anniversary of my divorce. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you, but the fact is, my ex-wife ran off with a copper, so it’s no wonder I’ve got no love for the breed, is it?’
So she was here on a bloody therapy trip for him, was she? Poncing her around like an accessory, to prove to the world that he could still pull, even if his wife had left him for somebody else.
‘I think I should go and have that dance with Brendan now, don’t you?’
‘All right. And I’ll get the drinks in for when you’ve put him through his paces,’ he said, grinning as if he’d said something terribly witty. ‘And I hope you won’t hold all this against me?’
‘Not a chance,’ she said sweetly.
There was no way he could mistake her meaning, and she wasn’t going to make any move towards seeing him again either.
*
Two days later, the hangover had subsided and she was thinking coherently again. She had told Nick over the phone that yes, she’d had a good time on New Year’s Eve, Bristol was fine, and she wasn’t missing the Smoke at all.
Now she was at her desk, looking gloomily at the ad she was trying to compose for the local paper.
The last thing she wanted to do was to advertise her presence too obviously. On the other hand, there were two ways of looking at that. One, she wanted the business. But two, she didn’t want every weirdo calling at all hours of the night and day, thinking it must be a hell of a kick to work for a private eye. All that sleaze going on, with their lascivious little fingers poking into every pie and reporting it to their best mates for the price of a pint.
She pushed her hands back through her hair in annoyance at her own paranoid thoughts, making her fringe stand up on end, until she heard the ring on her doorbell, and hastily smoothed it down again.
For her own peace of mind, and a modicum of security, she’d had one of those smoky glass doors installed which enabled her to see who was outside, while they couldn’t see in
. It was a gawky young man, tidily dressed, who didn’t look as if he was all set for rape and pillage. Not that you could tell these days.
She spoke into her intercom, released the door catch, and told him to push it open. The cautious, rusty-haired young man stepped inside, fidgeting with the envelope in his hand.
‘Are you a postman or something?’ Alex said, when he seemed too tongue-tied to speak.
‘Heck no,’ he said, thrown off balance for a few seconds. ‘Oh, you mean the letter. Sorry, Miss. I didn’t know what to expect. When Mr Cordell said you were a private investigator, I imagined — well, I don’t know what I imagined really — certainly not — not — well —’
By now he was bright red up to his ears, and the colour seemed to merge into his hair. Alex immediately felt sorry for him, identifying with the problem at once. Red hair could be a curse at times. She knew it only too well. It could take years to control that quick rush of blood to the face, if ever.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she said, more gently. ‘And I take it you’re referring to Philip Cordell? Of St Joseph’s College?’
‘That’s right,’ the boy said, breathing more easily. ‘If you’d read the letter Miss, it will explain everything.’
She ripped it open. It was short and to the point. It was just to introduce Ray Smart, who had always lived up to his name in college, and was keen for some responsible work experience in his gap year before going on to university. He was hot on computers, Phil added, which might be an advantage in her business, and he would personally vouch for his discretion and trustworthiness.
Alex looked up, conscious that Ray Smart’s gaze hadn’t moved away from her. She knew that look. He was dazzled, if not instantly smitten, and she wondered if it would be such a good idea to take him on. She hadn’t envisaged a male assistant, though a female would probably be far more likely to keep her phone line tied up with chatty calls to boyfriends and God knows who else, she thought cynically. This boy didn’t look as if he’d ever had a girlfriend, or knew what it was all about. He was weedy and earnest, and if he was as hot on computers and as trustworthy as Phil said, then he was probably highly suitable for the job.
Deadly Suspicions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 3) Page 5