‘Sort of a minder?’ Ray said.
‘Sort of,’ Alex said, finding it hard to keep a straight face. He evidently saw this operation as having Mafia overtones. And if this kid could successfully defend anybody, Alex thought, she was a Dutchman.
*
It was a relief to see him go, and she was halfway up the stairs to her flat when she heard the buzzer sound again. She was tempted to ignore it. It was probably Ray coming back with another query, but on the other hand, it just might be a new client, and she couldn’t afford to ignore them. One case didn’t make a career, and there were frequently smaller ones interspersed with the major one she was working on.
She went back downstairs and saw the shadow of the person outside her door. He was large and male, and she couldn’t tell if she knew him or not.
‘Can I help you?’ she said into her intercom.
‘I hope so. I need to speak to you on a personal matter,’ the voice said.
Alex released the catch and told him to push the door. The next minute it had opened and then slammed shut behind the man, and he was lurching across the office towards her, his face dark with menace.
She felt her heart leap. Whoever he was, he was no ordinary client. They didn’t usually approach her so aggressively before they told her why they were here. Unless he had just caught his wife in bed with his best friend ... that would do it — not that this one looked as if he had a best friend.
He pressed both fists down on her desk and glared at her. He stunk of strong drink and body odour, and she recoiled a little.
‘What is it you want? My assistant can take down any details —’
‘If you mean the weedy brat who just walked out of here, lady, then he ain’t coming back for a while, so don’t give me none of your lip. I know you’re on your own.’
Alex ran her tongue around her dry lips. ‘So how can I help you?’
God, she sounded like somebody in a bad TV sitcom.
‘For a start you can stop wasting my money, that’s what you can do,’ he snarled in her face, his eyes full of pent-up rage.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have the faintest idea who you are —’
Hadn’t Nick Frobisher always told her she should have a switch beneath her desk to call out the local bobbies if ever she got into a sticky situation with a client? Why didn’t she ever listen to him?
She edged open her desk drawer a little and fumbled into it as if to alert someone, not knowing if it would do any good or not. He didn’t seem to notice, anyway.
‘The name’s Leng. Ring a bell, does it, lady?’
‘Mr Bob Leng?’ Alex said, just as if there could be any other.
‘It sure as hell ain’t Steven Leng,’ he snapped. ‘Are you getting there now?’
‘Would you like to sit down, Mr Leng?’
‘No, I bloody wouldn’t! What I’d like to do is wring your fucking neck as well as hers. What’s the crazy bitch been asking you to do?’
‘I presume you’re referring to the fact that your wife is my client,’ Alex said frostily. ‘And I never divulge my clients’ business to anyone else.’
She had trained herself not to be shocked by whatever abuse she got from clients or villains, and she had got plenty of it in the past. But she had a job to stop her heart from hammering like fury, and she tried to keep as calm as possible.
She couldn’t help remembering being told that Bob Leng was like a wild animal when roused, and from the way the veins were standing out on his head like purple ropes, she had ample proof of it now. She prayed he wouldn’t hear the small whirr of the tape recorder in her drawer and spoke as quietly as possible.
‘Mr Leng, if you want to know what your wife has instructed me to do, then I suggest that you ask her. That would seem to be the first logical step to take, wouldn’t it? Other than that, I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
He banged his fist down on her desk, making her flinch. She continued to stare him out. He might bully his wife, but he wasn’t going to bully her.
‘I can guess what she’s up to, and she’s driving me to drink with this madness. The boy’s dead, and if anybody knows that, I do, God damn it.’
For a second, Alex saw the torment in his eyes, and remembered the horrendous discovery he had made, and the continuing nightmares Jane had spoken about. She had seemed genuinely concerned for him then, but by now Alex suspected it had all been a way to gain her attention and sympathy. There was little between these two now except spite.
‘Mr Leng, I really am sorry about your son, and it must have been terrible for you —’
‘I don’t want your bloody pity,’ he said, reverting to aggression at once. ‘I want you to tell her to stop, before it’s too late.’
‘Too late for what?’
If she thought he was going to come out with some great revelation, she was mistaken. He turned and blundered towards the door, and she realized he had been drinking heavily already. She disliked him intensely, and any pity she felt for him was well and truly tempered by the tales she had heard from various sources of how these two were tearing one another apart. Jane wasn’t entirely blameless.
‘Remember what I said,’ he snarled as he reached the door, ‘or my wife won’t be the only one to be sorry.’
‘Are you threatening me, Mr Leng?’
The only answer was the sound of her door slamming again, and then she wilted. But she thanked God she had had the nous to switch on the small tape recorder in her desk drawer. If anything happened to Jane Leng, or to herself, she had the evidence of this visit on tape, and she prayed it would never be necessary to produce it.
*
Her phone was ringing as she went upstairs to her flat and shut the door firmly behind her. If it wasn’t the middle of the day a stiff drink would be in order, but that wasn’t the way, and she knew it.
She grabbed the receiver and almost snapped into it.
‘Alexandra Best.’
There was a small pause, and then she heard a touch of amusement in the male voice that answered. She couldn’t tell what age it was. It sounded a bit throaty but in a fatherly, rather than a sexy way.
‘My goodness. Nick said you were a bit of a fiery one, and I can almost see the sparks coming out of my phone.’
Alex glared unseeingly at the wall. If this was some joker friend of Nick’s, she could do without him right now. She was still flustered by the encounter with Bob Leng, and as her stomach rumbled in protest at being too long without food, she also needed sustenance.
‘Look, I don’t know what you want, but I’m afraid this is not a good time for me to listen to jokes, so goodbye —’
‘Sorry, that was a pretty crass thing to say, wasn’t it? Actually, I just wanted to welcome you to Bristol, Miss Best, and to suggest that we have a little talk. My name’s Frank Gregory. DI Frank Gregory,’ he added.
‘Oh.’ The wall came back into focus.
She heard him give a small chuckle.
‘I really am an old friend of Nick Frobisher’s, but you’ll obviously want to check on that. When you’ve done so, call me back and perhaps we could go out for a drink one evening. Tonight, if you like, if you’re not doing anything? It’ll be good to know we’re on the same side.’
The warning bells began to ring. This was not just a social call, and she knew the way the system worked. His ‘little talk’ meant that he wanted to suss out whether or not she was going to stir up a hornets’ nest in the Steven Leng case, which also meant he was seriously bothered that the whole thing was going to start up all over again, when it had died a satisfactory death years ago. Except in Jane Leng’s mind, of course.
Alex’s first impulse to tell DI Frank Gregory to go to hell subsided very quickly. For one thing, it was stupid to antagonize the local police, especially when you never knew when you might need them. She wasn’t so invincible that she could always go it alone. She wasn’t damned invincible at all, she reminded herself with a shiver, remembering how she had nearly been strangled by a v
ery unsavoury character by meddling in what he saw as his affairs. Affairs being the operative word, as it happened.
‘I need to speak to Nick anyway,’ she said sweetly, dodging the issue.
His voice became coolly efficient now, confident that she would do exactly as he said.
‘You do that, and then call me back on this number.’
He rattled it off, and she scribbled it down without thinking.
She was tempted to say ‘I might’, and then thought better of it, so she simply said goodbye and rang off.
As if in defiance of doing anything the guy ordered her to do she went to her kitchen and prepared her enormous cheese and tomato pizza, liberally laced with Branston pickle, made herself a cup of strong black coffee, and spent a leisurely time over her lunch. She paid token attention to the television midday news until she got thoroughly bored with listening to pompous politicians slagging each other off, and watching the antics of overpaid footballers, and switched it off again.
And then she dialled Nick Frobisher’s mobile number.
Chapter 8
DI Frank Gregory was in his mid-fifties, with a receding hairline and a decided paunch. He arrived at Alex’s flat at eight o’clock prompt, with a bunch of flowers in his hand, and an apologetic smile on his weathered face.
‘Sorry we got off to an unfortunate start, Miss Best,’ he greeted her, ‘or may I call you Alexandra?’
‘You can call me anything you like, but I prefer Alex,’ she said, deciding to forgive him, and to stop making instant judgements. She had been wrong too often for comfort. Besides, he looked like the kind of homely old copper her father would have liked, and there was nothing of the predator in the way he looked her up and down as she invited him inside while she fetched her coat.
‘Nick said you were a looker, and he wasn’t wrong,’ he said. ‘So how do you like our fair city?’
He spoke with the air of one who took a civic pride in his surroundings. Alex approved of that, and after his big old rattletrap of a car had taken them to the Hole in the Wall pub, with its history of smugglers and press gangs, and he had told her some of Bristol’s flamboyant history, and how he was living with his son and daughter-in-law since becoming a widower, she also decided that she liked him. She liked him a lot.
In the smoky atmosphere of the old pub she found it easy to relax in his company, easy to forget that he was a copper at all, and almost easy to imagine he could be her own father — except for the accent, of course. Her dad had been a Yorkshireman through and through, and this one had the more relaxed speech of the Bristolian.
‘So what’s Jane Leng been telling you?’ he said casually. He had stuck strictly to his alcohol limit and was now on tonic water, while Alex was still pleasantly hazy on vodkas and lime, knowing that she didn’t have to drive.
But she hadn’t drunk so much that her senses were dulled to the importance of the question. No matter how softly it was asked, or how agreeable the company, or how relaxed the atmosphere was here, she knew a lead-in question when she heard it.
‘What makes you think she’s been telling me anything?’
‘I don’t think. I know,’ Frank said, going straight into copper-mode.
It was amazing how, just seconds before, the old eyes had been simply taking in the karaoke performers at the far end of the bar, and now they were copper-bright — in every way but colour ... watching her, waiting for the slightest nuance in her voice, or shift of attitude.
‘And I’m damn sure you already know far more than I do,’ Alex said. ‘All those police files can’t have been cluttering up your nick for nothing all these years.’
Frank laughed. ‘Frobisher said you were a clever one and he was right. And I gather he also told you to leave it alone.’
As the little warning note crept into his voice, she looked at him over the rim of her glass, giving him the full benefit of her green eyes.
‘Are you going to tell me to leave it alone too? Is that what this little tête-à-tête is all about? And I thought you fancied me! How disappointing!’
He sighed. ‘I’m bloody sure I’d fancy you if I was thirty years younger, Alex, and give the young studs a run for their money, but I’ll leave all that to them now. So don’t dodge the issue.’
She was immediately annoyed with herself for being so arch. It wasn’t her style, and she didn’t want him thinking it was. She spoke more crisply.
‘The issue being that when I have an interesting case to follow up for a client who desperately needs my help, I’m supposed to leave it alone on a police say-so, is that it? That’s not the way a PI works, Mr Gregory, and you must surely know that.’
He stared at her thoughtfully. ‘The case was closed years ago, Miss Best — since we’re being so formal — and my advice is to tell the lady quite firmly that there’s nothing more you can do for her.’
‘All she wants are answers about what happened to her son,’ Alex protested. ‘Is that so wrong? Without convincing evidence, it’s all unfinished as far as she’s concerned.’
‘How much more evidence does the bloody woman want? Begging your pardon, but forensic teams don’t make mistakes. The object that was found definitely belonged to Steven Leng.’
‘And what about the rest of him? People can exist without a hand or a limb, and plenty of other bits, can’t they? Or did the police discover something else about that incident in the woods that wasn’t being made public?’
She felt a sudden surge of excitement at the thought. It wasn’t unheard of for there to have been a cover-up. Families did it. Governments did it. And unless you were very naïve these days, it was a damn sure bet that the police did it when they thought it prudent to do so.
‘Don’t try to make mysteries where they don’t exist, Alex,’ Frank Gregory was saying now.
‘But they do, at least as far as Mrs Leng is concerned.’
‘Just don’t make too many waves, that’s all.’
‘Good Lord, I wonder how many more threats I’m going to get today,’ Alex said without thinking.
‘How many have you had already?’ DI Gregory asked, on the ball at once.
She laughed, knowing she had better retrieve the situation fast. Or she could report Bob Leng ... or simply hold on to the tape of their conversation until and if she ever needed it.
‘Oh, I wasn’t being serious. It was just a figure of speech, but I promise I’ll heed your words, Frank. Now, can I buy you a last drink? Coffee would be good, wouldn’t it?’
He’d know damn well she was changing the conversation, but he let her go to the bar and order the coffees, while she decided that the less the local constabulary knew about Bob Leng’s visit the better. If she was to keep her investigations as private as possible, it wouldn’t do for them to go warning him off, and making life doubly impossible for Jane.
*
Ray Smart had his own reasons for wanting to work for the glamorous PI who made him feel all fingers and thumbs and about as useless as a spare part at a wedding — except for his computer skills, of course, he thought, perking up. He could sort out anything the lovely Alex wanted. By now he had even spent a few hours showing her how to get on to the Internet and to use e-mail. And to prove his worth he could also report back to Mr Cordell whatever bits of information he could about the investigations into the Steven Leng affair.
Ray had been a small boy at the time, so he didn’t remember any of it, but Mr Cordell was collating facts for a dossier on the whole business, and when he had spoken casually of his interest, Ray had had no hesitation in saying he would do what he could.
‘I wouldn’t want you to do anything deceitful, mind,’ Phil Cordell had insisted. ‘If anything emerges that is especially private, then you must decide whether you are able to divulge it or not. It would also be as well if Miss Best didn’t know that we were collaborating on this, Ray. I admire her tremendously, and I wouldn’t want to upset her in any way.’
‘I understand perfectly,’ Ray had said,
blissfully blotting out the fact that in carrying out his hero’s request, he was doing the very thing Alex had warned him against.
But this was different, and Ray had always had the knack of turning any dubious facts to something more savoury. He was helping Mr Cordell. He was collaborating, no less, which lifted his status no end. And since he’d never had any status to speak of, at least in the social sense, he was content to go along with his orders — without ever realizing that they were orders.
Today, they were going walkabout. That was the word Alex had used, which made it sound daring and bohemian at the same time.
*
Ray had obviously led a very narrow life, Alex reflected, when she saw how his eyes lit up at their task for today. He’d been OK in the more routine tasks she had set him, and he apparently had a brain, since he planned on going to university next year — though that didn’t necessarily apply in all cases. But he seemed amazingly naïve when it came to real life. None of that mattered providing he did what she asked of him. But he did it in a puppy-like uncomplaining way, and she wasn’t sure she could take this kind of adoration all the time.
‘Right then,’ she said now, studying the A to Z of Bristol. ‘Today we’re going to pay a call on Messrs Wilkins and Wilkins at their haulage yard.’
‘And we’re going incognito,’ Ray said enthusiastically. ‘That’s why you’re wearing a suitable change of clothes.’
He also had the knack of stating the obvious, which was starting to annoy her. In these few short weeks of having him around she already knew she had far too short a fuse as far as he was concerned.
She wasn’t particularly flattered by the way he assessed her outfit, either. If Nick Frobisher — or the rampant Gary Hollis — had looked her over in her red check shirt, black cord jeans and brown fleece bomber jacket, with her hair coiled up inside a baseball cap, she’d have expected either some snide remark on going butch, or some crude lady lumberjack crack.
As it was, Ray simply approved of her disguise for the sake of going incognito. God, he was a drag.
‘All we’re going to do is ask a few questions, Ray,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m an Australian cousin of Steven Leng and I’m here on vacation. I’m interested in meeting his old friends for an article I’m writing for a small local magazine. OK?’
Deadly Suspicions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 3) Page 10