Jane Hetherington's Adventures In Detection

by Nina Jon

  “I’d rather we didn’t,” Jane replied, sat in front of her bathroom mirror, sandwiched between Charity and Charity’s hairdressing trolley.

  “Yeah and one about to go out dating again,” Charity said.

  “It’s not a date,” Jane reminded her.

  “Can you remember getting ready for your first date with Hugh?” Charity asked, ripping a piece of tinfoil from a large roll and laying it between the strands of Jane’s hair. She used an applicator brush to dab a section of hair with the bright orange paste.

  III

  Jane could remember her first ‘official’ date with Hugh vividly (she’d decided to exclude the library and Sunday lunch with his parents). She’d spent all afternoon sunbathing in her parents’ back garden, to top up her tan, and another hour in the bath, while her mother ironed her white dress. Her mother had put her hair into rollers, while her aunt painted thick black kohl under her eyes and bright pink lipstick on her lips with a tiny brush. She’d still been wearing the rollers when she’d stepped into the dress held open by her aunt. Her aunt did up her dress while her mother removed the rollers from her hair and combed it through. Large gold earrings were clipped to her ears (she couldn’t remember by whom) and, lastly, a mirror was held out to her, to allow her to admire the transformation.

  “My God!” Jane said, on coming face to face with her reflection. “I look fantastic.”

  “We know,” gushed her mother and aunt.

  IV

  “I can’t do this,” Jane suddenly said.

  “What!” Charity said. She’d just ripped off a piece of tinfoil from the roll, and was about to place it strategically between two strands of Jane’s hair.

  “I’d be betraying Hugh.”

  “You’re having a few drinks with an old friend, not committing adultery, which I don’t think you could do now anyway,” Charity said.

  “You’re the one who said we should treat it as a first date,” Jane said defensively.

  Charity spun Jane around in the chair and faced her.

  “You’re right, I did and I shouldn’t have done, because it’s not. I just got carried away in the moment. I just meant I wanted you to look your best – that’s all,” she explained. “I’m a hairdresser. I want everyone to look their best all the time.”

  Jane was still hesitant.

  “Hugh’s dead, yes,” Charity said. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t here. He is. He’s here. I can sense him. He’s always here.”

  “Don’t be so ridiculous.”

  “He’s here watching us. He wants you to do this. Hugh,” she shouted. “Hugh, if you don’t want Jane to go tonight, turn my trolley over. Go on!”

  Strangely, even Jane found herself waiting for some great invisible force to turn over the trolley on wheels, which contained Charity’s hairdressing equipment. When, inevitably, nothing happened, Charity smugly turned back to Jane and said, rather triumphantly: “See! He wants you to go.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Jane said, wearily. “But if it’s a straight choice between you attempting to conjure up apparitions in my bathroom, and a night out, then I’ll go.”

  “At least you won’t run out of things to talk about,” Charity said, polishing Jane’s nails, while a portable hairdryer dried Jane’s hair. “You’ll have the last forty years to discuss, and if that’s not enough, you’ll be able to tell him all about your recent escapades.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  DEAD MAN DRIVING

  I

  Greater Flyborough was a seaport. In its Victorian hey- day, the houses which lined its seafront would have been packed to the brim with holidaying folk for the summer, and there wouldn’t have been room to move on the beach. Nowadays people tended to come on day trips only, and the town had changed to accommodate this. Over the years, Jane and Hugh were frequent visi- tors, having taken Adele there many a time on days out. Jane would have been the fi rst to admit that it wasn’t only Adele who’d enjoyed building sandcastles, going on donkey rides, taking trips on the snail-mobiles and munching on sticks of Greater Flyborough rock. Although Jane hadn’t ever been on the cruiser, she’d seen it moored many a time, thinking what fun it might be to take a trip on it one day. When she arrived, Stan was waiting patiently by the entrance to the gangway. Jane recognised him because he was carrying the identifying trio of white roses he’d promised to. She coughed once and approached. “Stan?” she asked, nervously. He broke into a wide smile upon seeing her. “Preston,” he said. “You haven’t changed at all.”

  On those words he kissed Jane once and handed her the flowers. As she took them, he offered her his arm, which she took and they walked up the gangplank, side by side. Jane realised she was shaking slightly. If Stan noticed it, he didn’t mention it.

  The cruise ship could hold over one hundred guests. On its upper decks, guests could enjoy the trip along the river; below deck, they could dine in the restaurant or take a turn on the dance floor. Jane and Stanley chose the upper deck, but because it was rather cold and beginning to drizzle, they sat under cover. No sooner had they sat down than a young waiter arrived with a cocktail list. Jane had caught the bus to Greater Flyborough and would be taxiing home. She studied the list and announced, “You know, I think I’ll have a Pina Colada.”

  “Make that two,” Stan said.

  The waiter departed to fetch their drinks, leaving them alone for the first time in over forty years. Stan placed his hand on Jane’s shoulder and said, “I’m sorry to hear about your husband.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your wife.”

  “Ah. Life has its tragedies for sure,” he replied, sadly.

  Jane studied him. His youthful handsomeness had flown with the years and there was now little left of that mop of dark curly hair, and what was left was thin and grey. Even his once luscious lips were shrivelled and thin. Also gone were the arrogance and impatience of his youth and in their place, a certain mellowness and self-reflection certainly not present in the younger Stan. Overall, she decided, Stan had improved with age.

  The ship quietly left its moorings and began its journey upriver, while the newly acquainted couple talked on. The two talked with ease, fairly comfortable in each other’s presence. They were not as comfortable as a couple who had been together for forty years would have been, yet the nerves and awkwardness, which often accompanied first dates, went pretty quickly. Stan told Jane that after leaving the Army, he’d gone into the road haulage business, where he had built up a fairly successful business running a fleet of twenty trucks.

  “My son John runs it now,” he said, proudly. “I have a daughter too. She’s the firm’s accountant.”

  “A family business then,” Jane said.

  “Most definitely.”

  “I also have a daughter. She’s called Adele. She has a daughter of her own, called Amy, and has just told me that she’s pregnant for the second time.”

  “You only had one child, Jane?”

  “Yes, that’s another sad story,” Jane said, and on that subject nothing more was said.

  “How’s Merle?”

  “Very well,” Stan said. “She and her husband have both retired, and they spend half the year on cruise ships. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you again.”

  “And I would love to meet up with her again,” Jane replied, honestly.

  By now, the rain was coming down quite heavily and the two decided to move downstairs to the restaurant and take their places at their table. They ordered tapas. Bread, olives, a large salad and a bowl of spicy chicken wings quickly arrived, followed by a pitcher of sangria. Reluctant to talk about her years with Hugh, Jane began to tell Stan about her decision to become a private detective.

  “I’m a lot shrewder now than I was when you knew me,” she said.

  “We were both so young then,” he said wistfully. “As I say to the youngsters in my office every day, I don’t know where the time has gone.”

  Meatballs arrived, followed by paella and squid. Aft
er their waiter left, Stan studied Jane, forcing her to look away shyly.

  “I don’t regret falling in love with Elsie, but I do rather regret falling out of love with you,” he said.

  “But if you hadn’t I would never have met Hugh, and I can honestly say that my time with him was the happiest of my life, and my decision to marry him, the best I ever took.”

  “During all that time, did you ever think that one day you’d be having tapas with me on a cruiser in Greater Flyborough?” Stan asked her.

  “I did not Stan, I did not.”

  Jane told Stan something of her recent exploits, beginning with the Kings, although she changed both the name and location.

  “Well I never,” Stan said. “Well I never. I might write a poem about it.”

  “You might want to change some of the details, in case my client works it out,” Jane said.

  “I’ll change it to gold nuggets, kept in a well at the bottom of the garden,” he said, leaving Jane uncertain whether or not he was joking.

  Stan and Jane’s evening ended with a slow dance on the dance floor, and as it had stopped raining, one last cocktail on the upper deck.

  “Are we going to repeat this, Jane?” Stan asked.

  She smiled and replied, “Yes, I think I’d like that.”

  II

  Jane felt quite exhilarated in the taxi home. She’d enjoyed the evening far more than she’d anticipated, once her nerves had flown.

  “Yes,” she said to herself in the back of the taxi. “It will be nice to see Stan again.”

  It was at that moment that something, or rather someone, caught her eye. The taxi waited to turn right into a junction, from which a car waited to turn left. There was something about its driver which made Jane take her glasses out of her handbag and put them on. Even at that time of night, the traffic was quite heavy and she had to wait for a number of vehicles to pass before she could study the driver.

  “No – it can’t be?” she said to herself.

  “You okay, love?” the taxi driver asked her.

  She made no reply, but continued to stare out of the window, while the taxi took advantage of a break in the traffic and turned right. At that moment, the other car turned left into the road Jane’s taxi had just left, giving her a clear view of the driver. He’d altered his appearance and looked very different from how he normally did, but there was something about the way he sat behind the wheel of the car that caught and held her attention – it was the way he suddenly bobbed up and down in the seat for no reason and then did it again. There was only one person she’d ever seen do that.

  “It can’t be?” Jane repeated. Surely she must be mistaken. It couldn’t be him, she thought. What about the car dredged from the lake? The suicide note? The body washed up on the shore?

  The two cars passed and went off in opposite directions. Jane spun around just in time to watch the other car disappear down the road.

  “You say something, love?” the driver asked.

  “Follow that car,” Jane said quickly.

  The driver laughed, and said, “No can do, love. There’s laws against us taxi drivers doing stuff like that. I’d lose my licence. Besides I’ve another pickup after you.”

  With no alternative, she sat back in her seat and stared straight ahead, as annoyed as she was perplexed. The taxi driver was still concerned about her. He glanced at her in his rear mirror, and said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, love.”

  “That’s because I think I have,” Jane said. “I’ve just seen a man I thought was dead, driving a car. A man called Mr Kim Moo-Hyun.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CALLUM MACCALLUM

  I

  Harrison Monk was a drug addict and petty criminal, well-known to the police. He also worked as a male prostitute. When his crumpled, broken body was found lying in a pool of blood at the base of a multi-storey car park, the police initially assumed that his was a drugs- related killing. Their investigation wasn’t helped by the lens of every CCTV camera in the car park having been blacked out by spray paint. But then a digital voice recorder was found in his jacket pocket, providing the police with the last thirty minutes of his short life. In an instant they had both the motive and the perpetrator of the crime. It was literally an open and shut case. “Frankly, you could have heard a pin drop when we realised who Monk was talking to,” one of the investigat- ing offi cers later told his wife. “The Guv stood up. The digital recorder was on the table. He just stared at it and then at us. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. We played it a couple of times, to be sure. ‘It’s him, all right,’ the Guv said. Then he swore, and we all started swearing.” “But why did Monk record the conversation?” his wife asked him. “So he could force even more money out of his victim,” her husband replied.

  Callum MacCallum was arrested at home and driven to Southstoft police station where he was shown into a drab police interview room, furnished with a table, some chairs, a camera to film the interview, a recording deck to capture everything said, and nothing else. After a few minutes, MacCallum was joined there by the senior officer in charge of the investigation, Inspector Maryhill. Both camera and recording deck remained turned off and their conversation went unrecorded.

  “I’m out of order, Mac, telling you this with the camera off. I’m telling you this off-record, so you don’t make it worse for yourself than it already is. Everything you say to us sooner or later is going to get into the public medium, Mac,” Maryhill explained. “It’ll be played at the trial for a start, and once that’s over, the recordings will be made public. We know what happened, Mac. Monk recorded everything that happened between you and him on that multi-storey car park. He had this in his pocket,” the police officer said, pushing a small silver digital recording unit across the desk under MacCallum’s nose. “Your life’s over, Mac. Ruined!”

  MacCullum put his forehead on the desk, his arms stretched out in front of him, hands clasped. Oh God! he thought. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!

  “He was a pro, Monk was. You weren’t the first to be blackmailed by him, Mac, I can assure you. He knew what he was doing,” Inspector Maryhill continued. “I’m going to invite one of my colleagues to join us in a minute, then I’m going to turn the camera on and you’ll tell us exactly what happened, step by step – no lies, now – make life easier for yourself.”

  MacCallum attempted to speak, but a combination of nerves and his stammer made it impossible. In desperation, he grabbed hold of a notepad and wrote, “I want you to call my solicitor.”

  II

  Russell Stone arrived within the hour. “You have clearly got the wrong man. Callum MacCallum is quite incapable of murder,” Stone bluntly told the police on his way to the interview room.

  He took his seat beside his client, facing Inspector Maryhill and the second interviewing officer. Inspector Maryhill ran through the procedure and confirmed the time and date of the interview and the names of those present.

  “Are you ready to commence Mr MacCallum?” he asked.

  Callum MacCallum nodded. The officer looked towards Russell Stone.

  “My client is ready to proceed,” Stone confirmed.

  “I’m going to play a recording found in the pocket of the deceased, which I am informed by our forensic team was made at the time of the crime for which you are being interviewed. When the recording has stopped playing, I will ask you some questions,” Inspector Maryhill explained. He held the digital recorder up to the camera. “I have in my hand the recording device referred to and I will now play the same to the defendant in the presence of his solicitor.”

  He pressed play back. The first words heard on the voice recording were those of Harrison Monk. The sneer in Monk’s voice was clearly captured.

  “What’ya lookin’ at? Worried someone will see through the disguise? Worried what your public will think of you being seen with me, Mac? It’s sorted. I’ve vandalised more CCTV cameras than you’ve had hot dinners – no one’s watching us, baby!” />
  The next few words were inaudible, drowned out by noise coming from the streets below. Whatever it was that MacCallum had been trying to say to Monk, Monk couldn’t have understood them either, because his next words were, “Wha… wha… wha… what’s that you’re saying, Mac? Can’t quite make it out?”

  “What do you want?” was the reply.

  It was said without a hint of a stammer, but it was unmistakably said by Callum MacCallum. Stone was so startled when he heard MacCallum speak that he shot him an urgent sideways look, but his client refused to meet his eye.

  Stone had known MacCallum for many years. He’d advised him on his contract with the studio when he’d landed the role of Inspector Hubris. At the time he’d joked with him that when he got married to ‘a lovely young actress’ his firm would prepare a prenuptial for him. Stone flinched when he remembered this. He turned his attention back to the recording.

  “What… what… what do I want? I want money, that’s what I want. I want money,” Monk sang from his grave. “Give me money.”

  If MacCallum had said anything, it hadn’t been recorded, because Harrison spoke again.

  “How much do you think the press will cough up for the exclusive right to tell the British public that clean-cut hetro-man Inspector Hubris pays good money to spend the weekend with the likes of me? Make your momma real proud reading about that in the press, I’ll bet.”

  It sounded as though MacCallum might have tried to speak at this point, but if he had his words had been drowned out by a siren passing close by. Monk’s voice filled the room again, sneering and cruelly mocking MacCallum’s stammer.

  “Did I tell you I…I lllloved you, Mac? Yeah, well I say a lot of things I don’t mean.”

  Silence descended. Everyone in the room knew there was worse to come – the violent death of a violent man. Stone didn’t want to hear it, but hear it he was about to. MacCallum stopped crying and looked up at the police officers opposite him. They of course, knew what was coming. So did MacCallum, presumed Stone picking up his ballpoint pen and preparing to make notes. On the recording, Monk’s voice changed. He was no longer sneering and menacing, but pleading.