by Nina Jon
She was back on the job first thing the next morning. Phil’s routine was back to normal. He left the bed-and-breakfast at seven-thirty a.m., this time alone, and made his way to the store where he parked in the staff car park. Jane returned at nine a.m. intending to park in the customer car park only to see Phil’s car pulling out of the staff car park. She followed him. He took the road he normally used to get to the bed-and-breakfast, but at the last minute, instead of turning left, he turned right, with Jane still in hot pursuit. Despite the traffic, it didn’t take Phil long to reach the city centre, where he parked in a car park. Jane didn’t have any alternative but to park on the same side of the car park, and hope that Phil didn’t recognise her. She remained in her car and watched Phil step out of his and walk straight past her and into the arms of the same woman Jane had seen him leave his bed-and-breakfast with the day before. Well, well, thought Jane.
The embrace lasted for some minutes. They did not kiss. It all seemed rather platonic. Jane wondered if they might be brother and sister, or old friends, but then again, they may have resisted too physical an embrace – after all, they were standing in the city centre car park and it was still only mid-morning, not to mention that Phil was engaged to be married to someone else; and for all Jane knew, so might be his lady friend.
The couple walked towards the car park exit. Jane got out of her car and followed them as quickly as she could manage, whilst maintaining a discreet distance at all times. It was essential she didn’t draw attention to herself, she realised.
In the months which had followed Hugh’s illness and eventual death, Jane had lost a considerable amount of weight. It’s lucky I did, she thought to herself, quickening her pace, without actually breaking into a sprint. How she would have been able to do this if she’d still been carrying those extra pounds, she couldn’t imagine. Private detectives, who collapsed breathless in the middle of the street every time they had to follow someone on foot, probably wouldn’t stay in business very long, Jane decided.
Jane turned the corner to see Phil and his lady friend walk into the Willow Tree Hotel. The hotel seemed to have an old-worldly charm about it. An information stand proclaimed the hotel to have been built in the 1920s. She peered through its door into a reception beautifully preserved from the twenties, where a dark oak reception desk faced a wide spiral staircase carved from the same oak as the desk; alternate black-and-white marble tiles covered the floor; white gloss panels, edged with black, lined the walls and a man-sized willow pattern vase, stood to one side of the hotel’s swing doors, protected by a glass case.
Jane followed the two inside the hotel, where she found them waiting for a lift to carry them up to one of the upstairs rooms. Jane was a little taken aback at this. On the face of it, it certainly seemed to prove Sam’s suspicions, particularly when taken with what she’d seen the day before. Now this she really hadn’t expected. The lift doors opened and the couple stepped through them. As they turned round to face the front, Jane walked past them as nonchalantly as she could, as though making her way to the dining room. When she heard the lift doors close, she stopped and returned to the lifts. She wanted to know where lift was going.
“Can I help you?” the hotel receptionist asked suspiciously, looking as though she was close to calling security.
“No, I was just leaving, thank you,” Jane said, making her way towards the exit.
“My word!” Jane said to herself, on the street outside the hotel. There may have been an innocent explanation for yesterday’s excursion, but this? “My word!” she repeated.
She looked around. With Phil and his companion presumably there for some time, Jane had no alternative but to wait. She checked the hotel’s notice board. Although the restaurant was open all day, Jane didn’t think she could spend all day there without raising suspicions, and so, she sat down at a bus stop. From this position could see into the hotel’s reception and dining room. As she had no idea how long the two would be she’d have to kill time. Luckily she’d had the presence of mind to bring a book with her. She took it out and began to read it. After about an hour, with no sign of Phil or friend, she took a short walk up the street, making sure she didn’t stray too far away from the hotel. Every now and then she glanced towards its entrance. At the end of the street she turned around and walked back to the bus stop to return to her book.
About three hours into her stakeout, and after another short walk, she glanced into the restaurant and saw Phil and his lady friend sitting at a corner table, talking earnestly. Jane quickly made her way through the hotel reception towards its restaurant. Luckily the receptionist on duty wasn’t the one who’d challenged her earlier on in the day.
Jane sat as close as she could get to the two, ensuring her back was turned to Phil. She ordered a cappuccino, and as she was rather hungry, some cinnamon toast.
For his age, Phil carried rather too much weight. Judging by what Jane had seen him eat since she’d started her surveillance of him, she wasn’t surprised. Today was no exception. While his slim companion lunched on scrambled eggs and grilled bacon, Philip devoured a full English breakfast, complete with fried bread and buttered toast on the side. The ‘couple’, spoke in hushed tones, making it hard for Jane to listen to their conversation. A coffee machine whirred incessantly and loudly in the background. Jane could only catch the occasional word the two said: “Sam”, “Can’t go on like this”, “I’ll speak to …” Jane heard the young woman ask “When?” and Phil reply: “Soon.” She didn’t catch the rest of the conversation because at that moment the waiter asked her if she required anything else.
“No, thank you, just the bill, please,” she said.
Jane glanced behind her. Phil was on his feet, pointing to his wristwatch. He looked up and made eye contact with Jane. He looked confused – as though he’d seen Jane before and was trying to work out where. Jane turned away as calmly as she could manage, hoping he’d realise he’d seen her earlier heading towards the hotel restaurant, and assume she was a guest at the hotel. This he must have done, because nothing more came of it, and a few minutes later, the couple left the hotel, followed by Jane.
By the time she got outside, the couple were walking away from each other in opposite directions. Phil was walking in the direction of the store, but where was his companion going, Jane wanted to know. It wasn’t in the direction of the car park where her car was parked that was for sure. She set off after her. The young woman was walking quite quickly and Jane doubted she would have been able to keep up with her, but for the one thing that was slowing down the younger of the two – her high-heeled platform court-shoes. Here, Jane had the advantage. She’d taken the precaution of checking the weather forecast before donning a pair of moccasin loafers that morning. She could cover a lot of ground quickly in them. Shoes were Jane’s passion, or at least they had been in her younger days, but unfortunately sciatica forced her to wear flat shoes nowadays.
She’d have admitted to a pang of envy, as she watched the young woman clip along the pavement in her high-heeled shoes, which Jane noted, matched the smart navy suit she was wearing. Once, Jane herself would never have been seen in anything else but high heels. The young Jane had virtually lived in them. She’d danced the night away in heels, and had even travelled the world in high-heels, ignoring her husband’s ridiculous suggestion that packing something flat might be sensible.
“When have you ever seen me wear flat shoes?” she’d said dismissively. “I can’t walk in flat shoes, you know that.”
“What do you mean you can’t walk in flat shoes? Your feet are flat!” he’d said.
Jane smiled, as she remembered this. She looked down at her own feet. The passing of time meant comfort now had to take priority and flats, once considered “ghastly, ugly little things”, were now the norm. The shoes she was looking down on weren’t ugly. They were actually quite feminine and stylish, but heels would always remain her first love. Nonetheless, comfortable shoes she’d concluded sadly, were an esse
ntial part of the equipment required by a private detective, which also included internet access; a car; a sat-nav; a mobile phone; a warm coat; a strong bladder; a brain; and in her own case at least, a book or some knitting to keep her occupied.
The end of the young woman’s journey came fifteen minutes after she left the Willow Tree Hotel, when she walked into an office block. Jane waited just outside the building. Phil’s breakfast companion said a few words to the receptionist, before crossing the reception and stepping into a lift. Jane watched as the panel above the lift doors showed the lift climbing to the third floor and stopping. Jane studied the floor plan for the building. A firm of accountants occupied the second and third floors. So now we know more, Jane thought. What she didn’t as yet know though, was whether the two were connected romantically, professionally, or as appeared increasingly likely, both. The question was how to find out.
She returned home, her head spinning by the turn of events.
CHAPTER NINE
MRS GRAY’S LONELY LITTLE BOY
She got home to discover two e-mails: one from her daughter in the United States, and another new instruc- tion. Adele’s e-mail reported a litany of minor domestic disasters: Lee spending a day at an overrunning golf tournament, when he should have been decorating the spare room; a power failure, and her with a freezer full of food; and to cap it all, an oversight left them without fresh milk, and her at home with a toddler all day! The e-mail contained a P.S: ‘Hope the new detective agency is going well!’ ‘Do you think life was always easy with your father?’ Jane replied. ‘I once hit him with a packet of frozen peas, although I can’t for the life of me remember why now. The agency is going well – thanks for asking. In fact I’ve just received another response to the webpage. That’s four cases now and it’s only my fi rst month!’ Her reply to her daughter sent, she opened and read her new enquiry: ‘Dear Mrs Hetherington,
I’m writing to you about our little boy, Iain. He used to be so popular at his last school, but since we moved here from South Africa, he hasn’t made a single new friend and spends all his spare time with his snake. He used to be sports mad, but now he refuses to take part in any after school activities. His teacher says he’s not being bullied as far as she can see, but he is making himself an outsider, by refusing to make friends with the other children at school. I refuse to believe this. He is being bullied. What other explanation could there be? My husband and I are in despair. You sound so sensible, Mrs Hetherington. Please help us get to the bottom of this. I want you to find out who is bullying him, so I can make the school take action against those responsible, however rich their parents are. Only then can my little boy be happy again.
My name is Mrs Dawn Gray.’
Jane leant back in her chair to think. Getting to the bottom of this one might be harder than it appeared. Loitering outside the school for hours on end, intent upon finding evidence of bullying, was a strategy that could only end in trouble. Her best bet would be to get a job inside the school but this would be very difficult. She wasn’t a qualified teacher and therefore the only job she would be able to get inside the school would be as a teaching assistant, or a dinner lady, and this would obviously take time (and probably involve lying about her age), assuming there were even any vacancies at Iain’s school, of course. She’d have to think of something else. Life as a private detective was becoming complicated. She still hadn’t got to the bottom of the Phil and Sam case, as she called it, and there she was with yet another case on her books.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her twenty-four-year-old next-door neighbour, Charity Parsons ringing her.
“Jane, I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’ve a late client tomorrow and Johnny,” Charity said, referring to her boyfriend, “won’t be able to get back till late and I don’t want Jack spending all evening in the house by himself. Could he have his dinner with you? I shouldn’t be later than nine.”
Charity lived in the last of a row of Victorian labourers’ cottages which ran along Cuckoo Tree Lane, up to Jane’s thatched cottage. Charity’s mother had died from breast cancer four years earlier. Because her father had died many years earlier, the death of her mother left Charity the sole carer of her brother, Jack, forcing her to step into her mother’s shoes to become mother to her own brother – in reality a single parent – when she was barely out of her teens.
This had meant many sacrifices. Charity had grown up fast, faster than she, her mother, or even Jane, would have wished her to. All-night parties were out of the question. She’d been unable to take the year off to go travelling, as she’d wanted to, or go to college as she’d hoped. Instead she’d taken a job as a hairdresser, something she turned out to have a natural flair for. When other young women were out with friends or boyfriends, Charity would be shopping for household provisions, or helping Jack with his homework.
Jane and Hugh rallied around, offering support. “If you ever want us to help out with Jack, be it for work, rest or play, you know we’re here for you,” Hugh had said. “Or if you just want a shoulder to cry on,” Jane had added. With their own daughter overseas, the couple had enjoyed their babysitting duties; and after Hugh’s death, Jane made it clear that in this respect nothing had changed. She enjoyed Jack’s company, all the more so now Hugh had passed away. When Jack, who was coming up fourteen and who spent so much time at Jane’s house that her spare room was referred to as his second bedroom, said he thought of her as his adopted grandmother, it had made her as proud as anything.
“Of course I can help. Jack can make himself useful by telling me everything he knows about snakes and the type of boys who keep them as pets. In particular, I need to know if boys of that kind are usually popular or unpopular with their classmates. Incidentally, Addison’s asleep on my boiler,” Jane said, referring to her neighbour’s jet black cat.
“Oh bless him. I wondered where he was.”
Jane came off the phone wondering what she would feed Jack on. Stir-fry followed by trifle she decided, opening her fridge. It was half-empty and her food pantry wasn’t much better. Before she did anything else, she’d have to go food shopping, she realised, picking up her keys.
CHAPTER TEN
MR KIM
“Charity says I’m to say thanks, so thanks,” Jack announced, almost the minute he was through Jane’s back door. “I presume you’re hungry?” Jane asked him. “Crazy hungry,” the lad replied, dropping his ruck- sack on the fl oor of the utility room. Jack had been play- ing football after school. Although he’d changed, he hadn’t yet eaten. It was early evening. He sat down at the table at the place set for him, while Jane set out the Chinese meal she’d cooked before Jack arrived. Adele had given her a Chinese din-ner set for Christmas and she was using it today. She placed chicken chow mein, and Jack’s favourite dish, beef in black bean sauce, down on the table, followed by special fried rice and noodles. Jack furiously piled food into the small Chinese bowl in front of him, and holding the bowl close to his mouth, began shovelling the food into his mouth using chopsticks. Jane limited herself to the noodles and some chicken chow mein, which she ate with a fork, having never quite mastered chopsticks. She treated herself to a Chinese beer, while Jack drank ginger beer.
“I know when you’re going to die, Jane,” Jack suddenly announced.
“Have you poisoned my noodles?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“I went on the internet and filled in a lifespan questionnaire. I did it for Charity first and she’s going to live to ninety.” He produced a printout of the lifespan calculator he’d completed on behalf of Jane. She read through it briefly and was quite amused to see that Jack believed she ate only bran for breakfast and never drank more than a glass of wine a day.
“I shan’t read the end,” she said. “It’ll spoil the surprise.”
“I did one for Mum,” Jack said sombrely. “It said she’d live to eighty-two.”
Jane leant across the table and squeezed his hand.
“It’s oka
y,” he said, looking at her straight in the eye. “It’s okay. It’s just, well…” he stopped to help himself to more food. “You can’t believe anything, can you?”
“No, Jack, you certainly can’t,” Jane replied.
Meal over, Jack cleared the remains of the Chinese meal away, while Jane removed the trifle she’d made from the fridge.
Jane spooned a portion of the trifle into a desert bowl and placed it in front of Jack. He took a long slurp of his ginger beer and devoured the bowl of trifle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pushed the empty bowl back towards Jane – a statement that he wanted another helping. While Jane filled the bowl for the second time, Jack said, “Heard about Mr Kim Moo-Hyun?”
The Kim family lived in Failsham. Jane knew what Jack was about to tell her, but said nothing.
“He’s disappeared. Charity told me this morning, when she made my sandwiches for lunch. Toby’s mum rang and told her.”
“And what did Toby’s mother say?” enquired Jane, handing Jack his second bowl of trifle.
“Well,” Jack said, scooping the cream from the top of the trifle and licking it off his spoon, “she said that Mr Kim told his wife he was going out to buy a packet of cigarettes and no one’s seen him since. He took a change of clothes and money’s been removed from his bank account.” Jack finished the layer of cream and turned his attention to the layer of custard underneath. “Both Toby’s mum and Charity think he’s run off with another woman. ‘Typical man!’ Charity said, but like Johnny said, she would. What do you think?” he asked.
“I think it’s all rather perplexing and rather sad,” she replied.
“When Mum was alive, our cat disappeared. Not Addison, the tabby we had then. He came back ages later, thinner and covered in coal dust. Mum said he must have been trapped in a coal cellar. Maybe Mr Kim is trapped in a coal cellar?” he suggested, as Jane dropped a ginger and lime teabag into a mug and covered it with boiling water. “Or maybe he’s been held against his will by a Triad gang he used to be a member of?” Jack speculated, his eyes wide.