Choose Your Parents Wisely (Joe Grabarz Book 2)

by Tom Trott

  ‘Go for a piss,’ he told me.

  I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Halfway through urinating the smile left me, it didn’t add up. I told him as much when I returned.

  ‘No,’ he agreed.

  ‘Where’s the girl? If he couldn’t pay, then fine, but why not tell the police as soon as the ransom demand came in. And if he could pay, and did pay, then where is she?’

  ‘Mmm,’ Daye murmured in agreement.

  I gestured to the file, ‘Can I take photocopies?’

  He barely shook his head, ‘No.’

  ‘Can I take some notes then?’

  ‘No, you cannot.’

  I didn’t push it, finishing my cigarette and stubbing it out in his ash tray.

  ‘He’s a taxi driver,’ I said under my breath. ‘Living in Whitehawk. Who in god’s name would blackmail him?’

  He didn’t reply, he was staring out that window again.

  So I asked him: ‘What’s your feeling?’

  ‘My feeling hasn’t found the girl,’ he replied modestly.

  ‘So I’ll feel free to ignore it.’

  He smirked, put out his cigarette and took the only breath of fresh air I’d seen him take. Not that the air in this room could ever be called fresh. I mean, it was stretching the definition to call it air.

  ‘I think he paid,’ he said at last. ‘I think he paid, but they didn’t give her back. And now he’s too ashamed because if he had told the police then she might still be alive. And if his wife finds out she’ll never forgive him. And that’s why she hired you, and not him.’

  Smart bastard. But that wasn’t a surprise by now. At least we were making progress.

  ‘But you’ve been through his bank accounts,’ I said, referring to the file, ‘and no large amounts have been paid out.’

  ‘Yes. And now you’re in the same place we are.’

  I waited for more, but it didn’t come. ‘Thanks for the help.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. I just don’t see any point in that poor woman paying you to do work we’ve already done.’

  ‘What should I do now?’

  ‘My official advice?’

  I shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  He looked me dead in the eyes. ‘Tell Mrs Jilani you are very sorry, but the girl is dead. There’s nothing you can do. Then go home, and never think about it again.’

  It was cool and quiet as I stepped out into the evening. A gentle breeze caught the sound of distant seagulls ruffling their necks and drifting asleep on their perches, ready for another day of battle with people who hate them. The moon was beautiful that night, it’s pitted silver surface resting silently in space. It looked close enough to hop a bus to. Maybe from up there I could get some perspective on this whole damn thing.

  Another bank account. A secret bank account. What was Mr Jilani up to? Daye had given me a challenge whether he wanted to or not. And when I’m awake, and healthy, and reasonably sober, all of which I would be tomorrow morning, then I like a challenge.

  9

  The Little Questions

  “letter from kidnapper” screamed the headline of Monday’s morning edition. The story was even on my television, but it was the paper that had received the letter, and they printed it in full:

  To the parents of Joy Tothova,

  We have your daughter. She has not been hurt. But we will enjoy hurting her if we have to. I am very disappointed at the police. They have no idea who we are. They do not understand. Especially that fat old man who first was investigating. The blonde woman is more clever. But we are more clever than her.

  We at first did not wish to involve the media. But you have offered £100,000 to the person who finds Joy. We have her, and we now claim our money.

  You are beautiful parents. She is a beautiful girl. She has been asking for her pink bear. We do not wish to hurt her. But if you do not pay us the money then we will have to hurt her. This newspaper will receive instructions. But if you involve the police, and if the newspaper tells anyone else, we will send you your English rose in the post, petal by petal.

  Yours,

  Mancini

  I didn’t know what to think. But thankfully the paper had managed to shake out of bed a professor of Criminal Psychology at the University of Sussex, who had given them her “initial reactions”.

  She said that “the use of ‘we’ suggests multiple abductors”, but that “the use of ‘I’ in the fourth sentence of the first paragraph suggests that it is in fact one abductor, who is trying to appear as more than one. Most likely to appear more powerful.”

  The fact that the author seemed to be aware of the change in senior investigator from Daye to Price suggested that they were “following the investigation closely”. However, the fact that they did not use their names suggested that they either “do not have the mental capacity to recall them”, or that they “do not place much importance on names”. This suggests “a prepubescent mentality”. The suggestion that they are more intelligent than DCI Price suggests “arrogance, delusions of grandeur, or simply a reduced ability to make accurate judgements”. I thought that was a pretty strong compliment to Price.

  Despite all this, their use of the phrase “involve the media” was “curiously adult”, and their specificity in quoting the exact amount of money “suggests an understanding of the details of the situation that is not present in their descriptions of the investigators”. Their use of the parents’ own offer of money suggests either a “childlike simplicity” or a “distinctly adult sense of irony.” So he’s either really thick or really smart, basically.

  The professor explained that the description of the Tothovas suggests this person “had not seen the parents before the media coverage”, because it appears “as a revelation”. The mention of the pink bear toy “appears as a form of evidence to prove their claim that they have the girl”. The police would have to issue a statement on that.

  The fact that the author of the letter claimed separately that they “did not wish to hurt her” and “would enjoy hurting her” suggests a conflict of personality. But the professor made it clear that she could make no medical diagnosis. In other words, he or she is definitely mad but they might not have a name for it. The professor instead suggested that the author had a “troubled personality”. Who doesn’t?

  She brushed past that by saying that the use of the newspaper as the conduit of communication between the author and the parents seems to suggest “a lack of knowledge of the parents address, or of a more secure form of communication”. This, in her opinion, was a strong mark against the validity of the letter. Communication directed at individuals but sent via the media was common in hoaxes, as “the number one desire is publicity”. The naivety in demanding that the newspaper not “tell anyone else” did not seem genuine, she said. But she stressed, or more accurately the paper stressed, “there was no way to rule out the possibility that this was a genuine communication from the kidnapper.”

  I couldn’t believe the paper thought it was real. Even with my low opinion of all hacks, I couldn’t believe they would publish it if they thought it was. I mean, even they wouldn’t want to risk seeing the girl hurt, it would be bad for business.

  There were two things the professor didn’t remark on, or at least not that the paper published. First, the use of the phrase “English rose”, and the extension of that metaphor into “petal by petal”. And second, the use of the name “Mancini”. It had to be a reference to the 1933 murder of Violette Kaye by a man then known as Toni Mancini, actually Cecil Lois England. He murdered her and kept her body in a trunk at the foot of his bed, which he used as a coffee table despite complaints from friends about the smell and the leaking. That was at 52 Kemp Street, by the way, just down from the station. I wonder if the person living there knows that.

  History lesson aside, these facts had a distinctly personal touch. The rest of the letter was a performance, a fictional character, but those words, they were the real person. We’ve a
ll read something like it before: those stories where the interesting narrator breaks character because the self-righteous author can’t help butting in.

  Last night was a bit of a blur. After Mr Vogeli’s visit and after Monica Todman’s butler had slammed her door in my face, I’m pretty sure I rode my bike back to the office and went and got smashed. I mean, it’s a good bet. And it’s about all I had to go on.

  Sitting at the kitchenette table, reading the newspaper, eating avocado toast, drinking an espresso, all whilst ignoring the hangover that was trying to crush my skull, I made an executive decision: it was time to stop following the Tothovas around. It had taught me a lot about them, but it hadn’t got me any closer to finding the girl. And it’s not like I was getting expenses.

  I knew the questions I needed to answer, the same ones as always. To answer the big questions: is she alive? where is she? and who took her? First you need to answer the little questions: where was she abducted? Was she targeted, or taken at random? If she was taken at random, how and where did she gain the abductor’s interest? If she was targeted, why?

  Everyone knew the answer to the first question: Fiveways. But where and when exactly was really speculation. Graham Tothova was at the greengrocers, Maria Tothova was at the butchers. Joy was being abducted. There was a five minute window. Five minutes out of sight and she was out of sight forever.

  With great effort I stood up and wandered to the bedroom window. Finally, the slice of bread was gone. The baby seagull was next to the puddle where it had landed. Glistening, still a little wet from yesterday’s shower, but asleep. I studied his wings, the way they rested near his tail feathers: I had heard before that if their wings don’t cross at the back then they can’t fly yet. His didn’t. He had glided down from roof to roof in order to get the bread, but he couldn’t get out. If his parents didn’t come and feed him he would die. I threw him another slice of bread and went back to the kitchenette.

  Hangover be damned, today was a new day, time for a new oath. From now on I was going to be a sensible, serious, only mildly sarcastic detective. I would walk to the office, get my bike, head to Fiveways, and start figuring this shit out.

  This plan was slightly scuppered when I stepped outside to see my Honda on its side, no kickstand, on the traffic island in the middle of the circus.

  Ahem, I thought. Well, I guess I didn’t quite make it to the lock up last night. The tarmac and the bike showed signs that it had been dragged from the middle of the road. Time for a swift exit. The circus was as busy as always, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to me or it, so I hauled it up, got it running, and zipped along and up Ditchling Road. Today was another of those hot, hot days; when there’s even more heat coming up at you from the ground than there is from the sky, and everything wants to melt like living in a Dalí.

  Less than two minutes later I was at the Fiveways and my bike was parked on the pavement, just round a corner enough not to be noticed by any warden checking up on the freshly painted restrictions.

  The Fiveways area is so named after the crossroads that connect Preston Drove, Stanford Avenue, and Hollingbury Road to Ditchling Road. It has the reputation, strongly enforced by its residents, of being like a village for people with liberal views. A village of terraced houses with very little greenery.

  Artists living at Fiveways were supposedly the first to open their homes to visitors and therefore start the whole Open House phenomenon that sweeps the city during the Festival. And that’s probably the best summary of character when it comes to Fiveways. It’s a local place for local people, who don’t shop at supermarkets, and can’t see that that’s because they can afford not to. The place has a butchers, a greengrocers; a bakers, and an artisan bakers. Five estate agents, two coffee shops, a deli, a pub, a wine bar, and a specialist wine shop. Two hairdressers, a men’s hairdressers, and two barbers. An arts & crafts shop, an antiques and second-hand books shop, and a strange combination gifts, cards, and plant shop. A women’s clothes and knick-knacks shop, a children’s clothes shop, and a second-hand clothes shop; but you know, the posh kind where the items cost more than you would want to spend if they were new. The list goes on: a podiatrist, an independent toy shop. The practical capitalist necessities: a bank, a Post Office, a hidden dentist, a dry cleaners that never seems to be open, and a Co-op for the bits the greengrocers don’t stock. If that’s anything.

  And, whisper it, a Chinese, an Indian, a kebab shop, a fish & chip shop, a newsagents, and shock horror, even a bookies. But these last few places are ignored by the residents like muggles passing Diagon Alley.

  The people at Fiveways are all artists. Of course, not actually, they’re teachers and accountants and management consultants like every other middle class neighbourhood. But unlike Patcham or York Avenue they all paint, or make their own jewellery, or make their own pickles, or make they own smug sense of satisfaction. They all wear casual, ethnic clothes, and like the rest of Brighton are as white as snow. It’s a co-opted form of radicalism, of anti-establishmentarianism. Anarchy in a White Stuff blouse. They think they’re hip and young and unconventional because they eat Thai food and wear a poncho. But they’re middle class. Just middle class Brighton-style.

  The first stop I made was into the greengrocers, where I chatted to a lovely woman called Lil. She said the Tothovas were regular customers, but she hadn’t seen the girl that day. Uniformed officers had spoken to them at the end of last week, none of them could remember noticing Joy, they were busier than usual for a Wednesday morning and had very little time to chat to customers, even the regulars. In the butchers a man who seemed in charge, Will, remembered serving Maria six chicken thighs and a rack of lamb. But he didn’t see the girl, and like the greengrocers they didn’t have CCTV.

  I decided to be thorough and went from shop to shop, chatting to the owners and the staff. They were all lovely, and what struck me was how the staff in these places could be so normal when the customers were so weird.

  No one had seen Joy, and only a couple of other shops had noticed either of the parents. Fiveways is not that busy, but it’s not un-busy either. Joy had a choice of a million roads to wander down, following a cat or something. A five minute radius in every direction was an enormous area. And all a sick bastard had to do was see her wandering alone. That’s if she wasn’t targeted, of course.

  Sitting on a picnic bench outside the pub I texted Thalia to ask if she had found out which school Joy went to. She hadn’t.

  There was another way I could find out but I didn’t like it. I did it anyway.

  The phone rang on the other end for some time.

  ‘Alderney Investigations,’ a chirpy secretary chirped.

  I told him I needed to speak to Clarence.

  He told me to wait one minute and put me on hold. I imagined a wide marble lobby with brass hand rails and a receptionist in stiff white uniform. I liked to imagine Clarence worked in an old movie. One of those set in that kind of posh hotel that doesn’t seem to exist anymore and probably never did. With Clarence behind an executive desk with plush furniture and an oil portrait of some grave looking moustachioed man above the carriage clock on the side.

  One minute later Clarence’s voice broke through the music: ‘Joe, how are you?’ he panted.

  ‘You sound out of breath.’

  ‘I’m not in the office, my secretary put you through to my mobile.’

  ‘Hot lead?’

  ‘What if it was?’

  I just shrugged. I hoped it was audible.

  ‘At the risk of sounding direct,’ he continued, ‘what is it you want?’

  ‘I’m hoping you know which school the girl goes to.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be found there, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Can’t I find that out for myself?’

  ‘I thought I’d save you the trouble, I want to at least worry I might lose our bet. It’s no fun otherwise.’

  ‘Really, you’ve got this all sussed out, have you?’


  ‘Let’s just say, the answers will become clear to you tomorrow morning. Right around dawn. Know what I mean?’

  ‘No idea,’ I lied.

  ‘Think about it.’

  ‘Thank you, I won’t. Several decades ago I asked you a question; if you don’t remember, it was if you knew which school she goes to?’

  He did, and he told me without hesitation.

  ‘What do you want in return?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ he replied, ‘have a good day.’ And he hung up.

  The strange thing was I would’ve preferred to give him something. I don’t like being in anyone’s debt.

  From the outside the school looked eerily empty. I couldn’t work out from the date whether or not school should be on. It was the middle of July, and all I knew was that it was around the time they broke up.

  The school wasn’t that far from Fiveways, another remnant of the Tothovas’ pre-Hove life. It was hidden down a long single width fifty metre drive which revealed behind a row of houses a playing field and then the one-story building. If it weren’t for the sign at the top of the drive you would never know it was there.

  This was a problem. If you ever want to pass unnoticed in a school or hospital or anywhere really, then the bigger the better and the busier the better. As it was, I couldn’t even tell if the place was open.

  I had parked my bike at the top of the drive, remembering to take from my saddlebag my go-anywhere, do-anything master key to all buildings: a red lanyard that says visitor, and a blue one that says staff. I put both round my neck, leaving the staff one visible. Then, despite the heat, I zipped my jacket half up to cover the actual badge bit.

  I wandered to the other end of the playground, away from the sign that pointed to the reception, and then I was into the corridors. I wasn’t really sure at this point what I was looking for, but I headed for the central information nexus: the staffroom.