‘Mr Cordell gives a very good report of you, Ray,’ she said at last.
‘I hope so. He’s always been a bit of a hero of mine.’
Good God, he was the epitome of a kid with a crush on a teacher now — and that was probably all he was thinking about with regard to her too. In which case, she could certainly expect loyalty — and somebody wearing a skin-tight black sweater and ski-pants must be a bit of a shock if he’d been half-expecting to meet a female Sherlock Holmes.
‘You know what the nature of this work is, don’t you, Ray? I presume Mr Cordell will have told you that much. It’s essential that everything that goes on in this office is totally confidential.’
‘Oh yes. I’d die before I revealed anything outside it, Miss Best.’
‘Well, I don’t think you need go that far,’ she said, hiding a small smile.
He was so bloody intense she hardly knew how to handle him. But at least he was taking the whole thing seriously. Some gap year students she had met took the whole year as an excuse for one big rowdy party. This guy seemed sincere, enough. Her dad would probably have called him a swot.
‘Where do you live, Ray?’ she asked next. ‘Eastville. With my parents. My dad’s an
insurance agent, and my mum’s a home help.’
‘Right.’
No sweat there then, and he was looking so anxious now she was starting to feel a bloody heel at the thought of turning him down. But since he came well recommended, she could always hire him on a temporary basis. She was mentally giving herself the options, already knowing what the answers would be.
‘We could start on a month’s trial, Ray, but I can’t say any more than that at this stage. I hadn’t definitely decided I needed an assistant at all,’ she lied, ‘so how does the arrangement suit you? Unless it’s too temporary, and you’ve got anything else in mind?’
She almost hoped he’d say yes, but from the way he shook his head so vigorously, you’d have thought his life depended on getting this job. Maybe the parents were sticklers for not letting their little boy be seen as a wastrel. Perhaps they insisted that he earned his keep during this year. Whatever.
‘Right then, you’re hired,’ Alex said, putting out her hand to shake on it, and surprised to feel how clammy his was.
She drew back as quickly as she could, resisting the urge to wipe her fingers down the sides of her trousers.
‘So when do I start? Today? Now?’
‘Let’s leave it until Monday, shall we?’ Alex said, wondering if she was going to have to wet-nurse him all the way. But Phil did say he was hot on the computer, didn’t he? That was what had drawn her to him, even though he looked as useless as a bent penny. First thing next week she would put him to the test by asking him to track down anything he could on the Followers.
‘You can sort me out with the Internet stuff,’ she added. His face lit up at once and she knew she’d said the right thing.
‘Fantastic. Anything you want to find out, I’ll get it for you, Miss.’
‘Good. And for pity’s sake call me Alex. Otherwise I’ll begin to think I’m your headmistress.’
The smile vanished from his face and he just managed to stutter out her name as he reached the office door.
‘All right — er — er — Alex. I’ll see you on Monday then.’
‘Nine sharp,’ she called after him, but he was already gone.
Ye Gods, what have I done? she wondered weakly. She rummaged in her desk drawer until she found Phil Cordell’s card. It would be courteous to call him and thank him for putting Ray on to her. However, that would open up communications again, and although he had initially offered to be around for his two weeks’ vac, she had the feeling that idea had cooled by now. Anyway, Ray still had to prove himself. There would be time enough to contact Phil and report, when she had seen what the boy was worth. She put the card back in the drawer again and closed it firmly, and opened the file on Jane Leng.
Jane Leng was turning out to be a bit of an enigma. On the one hand she was the doting mother, desperate to believe that her son hadn’t died. On the other, she was the monstrous wife, killing her husband with her obsession, as surely as he was killing her with his drunkenness. It was too cruel to think that they deserved one another, but in Alex’s opinion, they damn well did. Instead of Steven’s death drawing them together, it had had the effect of driving them further and further apart.
But sorting out their marital problems wasn’t the purpose of Jane’s hiring Alex, nor her problem. She just wanted the truth about Steven, as if it wasn’t staring her in the face with all the weight of police and forensic evidence — except for the lack of a body to prove once and for all that he was dead, of course. And that was the one thing Jane couldn’t accept. The final proof was missing. In her eyes it was unfinished.
Alex closed the file and shrugged into her leather jacket. It was time to make a start. She switched on her answering machine and left her office, armed with a local map, and made her way to the local newspaper offices. It wasn’t far, and she decided to walk, making the most of the clement weather while it lasted. She needed to find out everything she could — not only about the reports of the events ten years ago, but she was curious to see the letters Jane Leng had been bombarding the paper with ever since.
There was nothing much moving at the offices that day, and New Year’s Eve was clearly having a lengthy recovery time here. She was passed on to an older reporter in answer to her queries, who looked none too pleased at being disturbed from whatever activities he had been engrossed in. The arrival of a glamorous PI in the town wasn’t enough to create a stir, even if she had advertised the fact, but it was part of the job to use her female assets whenever the need arose. And it arose now.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ she said, giving the guy the full benefit of her green eyes, and passing over her card. ‘I’ve been given permission to look in the archives for some information I need.’
‘Then I’m your man, and we aim to please, Miss Best,’ Charlie Adamson said, reviving from his reverie with a smirk that passed for a smile. ‘So what is your desire?’
She smiled sweetly back at these clumsy attempts to be gallant, wondering if he always spoke in clichés, and told him she was interested in seeing some of the letters written to the newspaper by poor Jane Leng over the years.
That did it. Charlie gave a guttural laugh, which started him coughing and spluttering, and had Alex stepping back a foot or so to escape it all.
‘Don’t waste your sympathy on that one, dearie,’ he almost honked. ‘She’s as daft as a brush, still thinking she can see her boy around every corner.’
‘You don’t believe it then?’
‘Do you? I’d have thought a young lady of your credentials would have known better.’
‘I didn’t say I believed it. I was merely asking if you did.’ She wasn’t falling for that one. A reporter was always a reporter, and he’d be mentally noting her responses to his artless questions, just as she was noting his.
He laughed. ‘No, I don’t believe it. The boy’s long dead, and it’s time the silly woman let him rest in peace.’
Or in pieces, Alex supplied in her head. ‘So can I take a look in the archives, then?’ she persisted.
‘Oh well, if that’s what you want, I daresay we can manage that. Come and see my etchings,’ he chuckled, in what was apparently meant to be winsome.
What was it about men? Alex wondered. They took one look at a woman, and they were either young enough to be bursting out of their jeans with testosterone, or old enough to think their age allowed them to get away with anything — even corny lines like that. But she guessed he was harmless. If she made as much as one move in the same direction, she guessed he’d go scuttling away in fright. Most ageing would-be gigolos did.
She followed him down into the bowels of the building, only half-listening to his comments that the kids upstairs (presumably anyone under twenty-five) had everything on computer now,
of course, but you couldn’t beat the old hands-on methods of turning crackling, yellowing newspaper pages, and breathing in the essence of past events and crimes.
‘There’s passion in them thar pages, my dear,’ he went on, putting a pseudo-Western drawl into his voice, ‘them old crimes and reports come to life through the pages far more than they do on any newfangled screen.’
Alex had a sneaking empathy with those feelings, although it was something you hardly dared say to the Internet nerds these days for fear of ridicule.
You mean you’re not connected yet? Good God, what planet have you been living on, Alex?
Well, she was now, even if she wasn’t exactly conversant with it all yet. She found herself revising her first opinion of Charlie Adamson. He was a real newspaperman, one of the old school. And chatty with it.
‘So how far back do you want to go, Miss Best? I’ll tell you summat for nothing too. Whenever they get stuck upstairs, they send me down here to ferret out the lost bits of news. Progress ain’t everything, and I’m a bit of a ferret myself, ain’t I? If it’s here, I’ll find it.’
He chuckled at his own joke, clearly priding himself on his knowledge.
‘You’re a treasure, Charlie, and please call me Alex. I’ve a feeling we’re going to be down here for some time.’
As long as it took, she said mentally to Jane. Until I put together the pieces of your personality — if not your son.
Chapter 5
Charlie proved to be a godsend. As well as finding all Jane’s letters over the years, he had his own tame computer nerd upstairs. Neville put all the letters into one file and printed them out for her to take away. Progress wasn’t all bad news, Alex thought humbly, ignoring the superior attitude of said Neville, and the undoubted whiff of something suspiciously like pot that wafted all around him. It was none of her business, and who cared as long as it got results?
In any case, the make-it-legal brigade would sneer at her for still living in the dark ages. Or the Yorkshire Dales.
She left the offices, promising that the next time she came in for information, she’d stand Charlie a pint and a pie at the local of his choice. It was the least she could do, and it made for good public relations — even if she had to include the revolting Neville as well.
*
Jane had been very thorough in her vicious attacks on the ineptitude of the police, and the lack of interest in her precious boy once the coroner had decided he could give no verdict other than accidental death. That was how she put it in her letters, no matter what the official terms would have been. She accused anyone and everyone for being in on a cover-up, without naming anyone specifically.
Occasionally the paper published an answering letter. It usually told her mildly to give it a rest, since it was doing no good, and only hurting herself and her husband to keep resurrecting it all. It was the kind of response that could have been kindly meant, or a threat. Especially as it was usually signed ‘a well-wisher’. How corny could you get? Alex thought to herself.
But in the end, Jane’s letters told her little more than she already knew, which was hugely disappointing. If she had hoped to unearth some great revelation that the police had missed, she was foiled, because there was nothing more than the ramblings of a sad and embittered woman.
She wondered how long it would be before Jane got in touch with her again. She and her husband were moving back to Somerset when Bob retired in February, she remembered, and she had no doubt that Jane would be pestering her for news the minute she got the chance. So before then, Alex had better have something ready to report, if only to get her off her back.
Nick called her while she was still wishing fervently she’d never got tangled up with the woman in the first place.
‘How’s it going down in the sticks? Found any missing haystacks yet?’
He was so brash and breezy it made her bristle; assuming naturally that she had done no such thing as finding anything interesting; that there was nothing much doing in the back of beyond, anyway, and that London was the only place to be ... and he of all people, should know better. If she was getting all that from an inflection in a voice, she must be in dire need of physical company!
‘I’m very busy, as a matter of fact,’ she said coolly, ‘and you just caught me before I left my office.’
‘Oh yeah?’ She could hear the grin in his voice now. She could imagine the smile curving his mouth. ‘What is it today? Somebody lost something at the village jumble sale?’
‘It’s not that provincial,’ Alex snapped. ‘And you’re being very snobbish, Nick. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with the country — not that Bristol is the kind of country I was brought up in, as you never forget to remind me.’
‘Hey, calm down, babe! I was only teasing, or have you lost your sense of humour along with all your best mates?’
‘What best mates?’
‘Yours truly, for one. But that’s a situation that’s about to change next weekend, if you play your cards right.’
‘Go on.’ As if she couldn’t guess what was coming.
‘Well, it all depends if you’ve got room in your flat to put up a close friend for the weekend.’
‘How close?’ But she couldn’t help smiling back into the phone now.
‘Your call, darling,’ Nick said, his voice dropping even lower. ‘I just want to see you again — and I might just have a bit of news to interest you.’
‘Oh yes?’ Alex said more sharply, her attention caught far more than the prospect of sharing her flat with Nick for the weekend. That could wait.
His laugh was soft and sexy. ‘Didn’t your daddy ever teach you the joys of anticipation? On all counts, sweetheart. And with that thought in mind, I’ll see you around eight on Friday evening.’
The next minute he was gone, leaving her fuming at the phone. Damn cheek, expecting her to be ready and waiting ... as she would be, of course. What else did she have to do? And if he’d read that little piece of her mind, he’d be less than flattered, Alex thought.
But when she let her feathers unruffle, she knew she would be enormously glad to see him. It had only been a few weeks, but already it seemed like a lifetime since she left London, and if she had ever thought it an impersonal city, she was learning that any city could be just as impersonal if you didn’t know people. It was a mistake to be isolated.
On impulse she called her aunt and uncle, and was even pleased to hear her Aunt Harriet’s caustic tones at the other end, though she was certainly not bothering to hide the surprise in her voice at this unexpected communication.
‘There’s nowt wrong with you, is there, lass?’ Harriet said suspiciously, ‘only when we don’t hear from you from one year’s end to the next —’
‘You only saw me a few weeks ago, Aunt Harriet,’ Alex protested.
‘Aye, and that was the end of one year, and this is the beginning of the next. Or don’t they count the same number of days in a year down south?’
Alex gritted her teeth. Nothing changed — except herself, she thought.
‘I just wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year, that’s all.’
‘Oh well, if that were all, then the same to you, but ’tis an expensive way of doing things, when you could have said the same at Christmas before you left.’
‘So I could,’ Alex said in a strangled voice. ‘Goodbye then, Aunt Harriet.’
She put down the phone again, staring at it resentfully. But it had been a worthwhile couple of minutes: it reminded her of just why she’d had to get away from them all in the first place.
‘I’m a snobby pig, if there is such a thing,’ she told herself out loud. And then she relaxed. ‘But I’m a happy snobby pig because Nick’s coming down for the weekend!’
*
Before then she had work to do. By now she had checked out all the John Barnetts in the phone book, and concluded that he had to be one of the Weston-super-Mare ones. One of those had sounded far too elderly to qualify, and there was no reply
from the other. But that was the one she was going to suss out.
Before that, she went into a couple of nearby shops to buy bread, milk and the morning paper, and made friendly overtures to the girls behind the counters. She told them she was new in town and asked for directions to the library, the nearest post office, the bank, the supermarket (not too tactful, in a corner grocer’s shop) and other places of interest. She got a friendly response and a few smiles, and thought that life wasn’t all bad. One of the girls was especially keen to chat, and said if she ever needed a guide around town, to call on her. Name of Mavis, Alex noted by the badge on her lapel.
‘Mavis, I might just do that, since I don’t know many people here yet,’ she told her.
‘Don’t forget then,’ the girl urged. Her accent was broadest Bristol, but such things never bothered Alex, since she could as easily lapse into her native Yorkshire at the drop of a hat. (Why hat, she found herself wondering?)
‘I won’t. See you soon,’ Alex promised.
People said that all the time, didn’t they? And rarely meant it.
But maybe she should mean it. Maybe it would be good to find a woman friend who was uncomplicated and had nothing remotely to do with the kind of world she lived in. And how about that for a kind of backhanded snobbery?
But she didn’t mean it that way, and once she had found her way out of the city in her car, she found herself humming as she eased onto the open road and followed the signs for Weston-super-Mare. She could have taken the motorway, but from the look of the map it seemed more of a devious a route to reach it than driving smoothly out of town through Nailsea and Backwell and Congresbury and onto the mini-metropolis that was Weston-super-Mare.
Alex headed for the seafront through the main road into town with its plethora of B&Bs, and her eyes widened with pleasure at the vast open bay, fringed with sand, with its pier splitting the curve of the bay in two. The tide was in, and there were small boats at the sheltered end of the bay, bobbing majestically on the little waves. She had already learned that the tide went out a very long way, so she was catching it at its best, despite the greyness of the January sky. The weather was still mild, but she imagined that with a gale blowing and the sand being whipped up to sting the eyes and ears, it would be a very different picture.
Deadly Suspicions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 3) Page 6