The Tangled Web

by Lacey Dearie

  ‘Does anyone have anything they want to share with us?’ began Adam, looking directly at Flic.

  Flic looked at Vicky for approval before she started speaking. Vicky nodded. Pamela leaned forwards, ready to hear something juicy.

  ‘Before I tell you all what’s happened, I’d just like to announce that Vicky and I are officially leaving HunE-trap Investigations, as of tonight.’

  ‘Walking before you’re pushed?’ offered Pamela, who by this point was almost salivating with anticipation.

  Flic tossed a strand of her long black hair back from her shoulder. ‘We’ve come to an agreement that this is not the business we set out to start. Neither of us want to be involved any more, in any way.’

  Vicky nodded. ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Does Sasha really need to be here, Vicky? Can’t you get her out of here?’ interrupted Magnus. He looked impatient and put-out.

  ‘Yes she does and no I can’t,’ Vicky sneered. She was getting more than a little bit tired of Magnus’s attitude towards her daughter.

  ‘You were saying, Flic?’ Adam pressed, clearly not wanting to get involved in a dispute between his sister and his friend.

  ‘As I was saying, it’s not the business we set out to start. The truth is that Vicky and I jointly took on the Goodbody case. It was my idea to accept it and Vicky helped me, against her better judgement. Even though she knew about it and didn’t tell you, I take full responsibility for the case.’

  Adam shrivelled his nose in disgust and turned his gaze towards his sister. ‘Vicky? How could you? You knew Flic and I were together. How could you keep this from me?’

  ‘Am I missing something?’ Pamela objected.

  ‘I think I am too,’ Magnus frowned.

  Flic straightened the tensely hunched shoulders which had instinctively appeared and removed all traces of emotion from her expression. She had to adopt the indifference she had worked so hard at cultivating again. She didn’t look at it as masking her hurt. That would be admitting she was hurt in the first place. She saw it as a test of her acting skills. This was her time to take centre stage. It was her time to shine.

  ‘Amy Goodbody is a former friend of mine. We worked together when I lived down in England. She was my protégée,’ Flic began.

  ‘She stole your man!’ Pamela guessed.

  Flic furrowed her brow, annoyed that Pamela had stolen her thunder. ‘It was a little bit more complicated than that.’

  ‘Go on,’ Vicky urged.

  ‘She met my ex-husband on a social networking site. It was the early days of MaisonNet. Hardly anyone we knew used it, so we were all short on friends and she added my now ex-husband, George. They got friendly and….the short version of the story is that he left me for her. They gave me a shit-load of money and I gave him the house and the business I owned down in Torquay. I left England and I never looked back.’ She lifted her chin proudly and looked around to check that they had all got the gist of the story and were suitably sympathetic.

  ‘You owned a business? What kind?’ Magnus probed.

  ‘Take off your business head Maggie and pay attention. She’s not finished her story yet,’ Pamela snorted.

  ‘It was a block of holiday flats. I managed them, as well as owned them, but I had to work too. The income from the flats alone wasn’t enough to pay the bills. I recently discovered George signed the whole business over to Amy after a while and she then sold the apartments off one by one to make more money. Like she wasn’t rich enough to begin with!’

  ‘Bitch,’ blurted Pamela.

  ‘That house had been in my family for generations!’ Flic croaked.

  Vicky reached behind her onto the worktop, grabbed a sheet of kitchen paper and passed it to Flic. Flic accepted and wiped away an imaginary tear. Vicky pursed her lips together. She thought Flic was possibly laying it on a bit thick but she held her tongue.

  ‘What’s that got to do with this mystery case?’ panted Pamela. She was hooked.

  ‘Adam knew my history with George and Amy. He decided to track down Amy and send her a promotional email. She got in touch and...’ Flic trailed off.

  Vicky decided to pick up the rest of the story, sensing that Flic hadn’t wanted to admit she was drunk when she accepted the job. It wouldn’t strengthen her case for empathy.

  ‘Flic wasn’t happy about everything that had happened…George being a rat, Amy pinching him, Adam stirring it up…’

  Adam folded his arms and twisted his lips. He couldn’t possibly defend his own actions, Vicky thought. He had been stirring it up, plain and simple.

  ‘The case was accepted and we honey trapped George successfully,’ Vicky finished, omitting the finer details.

  ‘Did you use your picture?’ Pamela asked Vicky.

  ‘No, we paid a model. Using mine was too risky in case he traced me back to Flic,’ Vicky stated.

  Flic looked nervously around the table. Everyone was staring at her. Even Sasha, although her stare was probably more to do with the sparkly earrings Flic wore.

  ‘Who was the model?’ Magnus wheedled.

  ‘Just a random,’ Flic answered quickly, hoping Pamela didn’t press the matter. She didn’t want to risk Pamela mentioning her own investigation of Diana Dutkowiak - then Magnus would know too much and Lumi could easily tell George about Flic’s part in all this, if she hadn’t already.

  Magnus appeared to accept their explanation. He leaned forward and rested his arms on the kitchen table. He was clearly about to say something but mulling over the words in his head before he spoke them. Vicky wished he would just get on with it.

  ‘Obviously, you’re not going to accept the follow-on assignment, ladies. It’s much too risky. It would mean getting this random model of yours involved too. That’s not a good idea,’ he said. ‘We don’t want her any more involved than she already is. Does she know what her pictures were used for?’

  ‘Yes,’ Flic replied, unsure exactly how much information to divulge. If it hadn’t been for the fact that George didn’t appear to know he had been trapped yet, she would have told them all everything.

  ‘Ok. Adam or I will email Amy Goodbody declining her offer. You ladies are released from all HunE-trap Investigations jobs with immediate effect. Pamela, it’s your time to take on more work,’ Magnus instructed.

  ‘No can do. I’ve coaching the drama group’s junior members all summer. I’m not interested,’ Pamela grunted.

  ‘But Adam and I can’t do them! We’re busy with the plans for the gym!’ blustered Magnus.

  ‘Tough titty,’ Pamela retorted.

  ‘But we’re legally obliged to do these jobs! What are we going to do?’ he continued panicking. ‘I can’t possibly do the trapping myself.’

  ‘Chill daffodil. Just get your tart to do it,’ Pamela sniggered.

  Adam rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Come on, lets go for a pint and we’ll work this out,’ he suggested to Magnus.

  Magnus nodded an acknowledgement and the two of them left the room without a verbal farewell to anyone who was left.

  ‘I’ve got my nails to paint, and a Cypriot sleazebag to trap. I’m going to my room,’ Pamela announced.

  ‘You don’t have to carry on with that case now, just let it go. I’m sure Magnus wouldn’t push you to finish it,’ Vicky worried. She had almost forgotten that Pamela was still trying to get Christos to virtually cheat.

  ‘Tell Magnus I’ve started so I’ll finish!’ Pamela called back as she thumped up the stairs.

  ‘Wine?’ Flic looked at Vicky hopefully.

  Vicky turned to see Sasha rubbing her eyes. ‘Give me a minute and I’ll put Sasha to her bed. Then we can talk.’

  *****

  Vicky clipped the baby monitor onto the waistband of her jeans and opened the fridge door. She chose a bottle of white wine, and picked up two glasses from the cupboard above the fridge. She didn’t see Flic around and assumed she must have gone outside to sit in the garden.

  Vicky opened the do
or to the back garden and couldn’t see Flic, so she walked around the side of the house to the front garden. There was Flic with her father, playing golf.

  ‘Vino?’ she called out to Flic.

  ‘Fab! Just let me finish up here.’ Flic putted her ball through the miniature Arc de Triumph and got a hole in one. She and Bob cheered loudly.

  ‘Think you’ve earned a glass of wine for that!’ Bob exclaimed.

  ‘I think I have!’ Flic passed the club back to Bob and sat down on the front step next to Vicky, accepting the glass from her.

  ‘You know, they’ve got a pretty good crazy golf course near Paphos. Did any part of you consider taking Amy up on her offer?’ Vicky asked, sipping on the cool wine.

  ‘Nah,’ Flic replied.

  ‘I was tempted. Christos is flying out to Cyprus in a couple of days. It would have been lovely to be there at the same time,’ Vicky smiled.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m tempted by the free holiday. But we’d have to involve Lumi again. We definitely don’t want to do that,’ Flic sighed.

  ‘Not necessarily. We don’t NEED Lumi. If we went out there we could just follow him around and hope he gets up to no good,’ Vicky winked.

  Flic shook her head. ‘If we didn’t come up with anything there’s the chance she would ask for proof of the work we did. And she’d possibly even get in touch with the boys again. Not worth it.’ She shook her head again, more forcefully this time.

  ‘Would it really be such a mistake to involve Lumi again?’ Vicky wondered aloud.

  Flic could feel colour rising to her cheeks. She knew she had to tell Vicky about Lumi and Magnus before she found out some other way. Then there was a chance that Vicky would realise Flic had already known and hadn’t told her.

  Flic set down her glass. She looked over at Bob, who was so involved in his putting that he wasn’t paying any attention to them. She turned her shoulders to face Vicky.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you about Lumi. I’ve been waiting for the right time to say something, but I don’t think there will ever be a right time,’ she announced.

  ‘What is it?’ Vicky looked appropriately worried.

  ‘You know how I said that Lumi had taken on the persona of our honey? And she’s been calling herself Diana?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘And you remember that Magnus had left a message for Diana that night we uploaded the pictures of Lumi?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He went to look for her the next day. He found her.’ Flic eyed Vicky’s face for signs of realisation. Vicky’s expression was blank. She wasn’t putting two and two together the way Flic had hoped.

  ‘Vicky…Magnus and Lumi are together now. Lumi’s the live in girlfriend.’

  Vicky creased her brow.

  ‘Except, he thinks that she’s Diana. He thinks he’s living with a Polish girl called Diana. And the information on her profile about her being a chambermaid and living in London was her previous life before she became homeless,’ Flic disclosed.

  ‘I…I don’t understand…’ Vicky stammered.

  ‘I found out the day after I met her at that Polish class. She’s got one of Magnus’s stalls in the shopping centre. She sells cupcakes now. I threatened to tell Magnus the truth about her and that’s when she said she would tell George about me.’ Flic felt worse about herself now than she had done previously. Now that the whole situation had been put into words, she realised just what a mess had been made.

  ‘So, how did they get together? He just picked her up when she was selling The Big Issue?’ Vicky boomed.

  Bob looked up from his putting and eyed them with concern.

  Flic squirmed. ‘Not exactly. He volunteers at the hostel she was staying at. He went to see her there. I don’t think he realised how pretty she was until he saw the pictures we took.’

  Vicky stood up and paced the length of the garden a couple of times. She was desperately trying to make sense of the information she had been given.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that if it hadn’t been for all this Diana business, I wouldn’t have lost Magnus?’ Vicky growled.

  ‘To be fair babe, you never actually had him in the first place. You were just shagging…’ Flic was cut off by Vicky grabbing the wine glass next to Flic and pouring the remains into the miniature Loch Ness in the garden.

  ‘Oi!’ shouted Bob.

  Vicky grabbed Flic by the arm and pulled her into the house. ‘Do you realise how many lives have been affected by this?’ she spat.

  ‘I’m sorry. I never meant for all this. I didn’t force Lumi to steal your man! And someone like him isn’t worth having in the first place!’ Flic quavered.

  Vicky pulled back and leaned against the front door. She took several deep breaths to quell her temper before looking at Flic again.

  ‘I don’t really want Magnus any more anyway,’ she admitted.

  ‘He’s an arse!’ Flic stated.

  ‘I’m due some kind of compensation for all this though,’ Vicky continued.

  ‘Like what?’ Flic wriggled. She didn’t like where this was going.

  ‘Cyprus. I’m going. I don’t care what Adam and Magnus tell Amy. I’ll email her and tell her I’m taking on the case myself as an independent job, if she’s interested,’ Vicky asserted. ‘My parents offered to take Sasha away to Edinburgh with them in a couple of weeks time. It coincides with when George is in Cyprus.’ And Christos, she thought.

  ‘What about Lumi?’ Flic rammed home.

  ‘She’ll be coming with me. Free holiday and the threat of Magnus finding out what she’s all about? She wouldn’t dare turn me down!’

  ‘She’ll tell George,’ Flic fretted.

  ‘That’s her leverage for blackmailing YOU. Not me. She’s got nothing on me.’

  24

  3rd July

  Memories of the last few days had raced through Flic’s mind when she awoke that morning. The knowledge that Adam now knew about her trapping of George made her stomach churn. Then memories of Vicky’s telephone call to Amy asking if she was interested in paying her to do the work privately, outwith HunE-trap Investigations came back. Amy had been reluctant at first and made her answer what she called security questions, which in reality were just a couple of enquiries about the conversation “Zoe” had with George when Flic trapped him.

  Flic wasn’t entirely comfortable with Vicky’s plan. She knew that Vicky was desperate for a free holiday and the chance to spend time with Christos over in Cyprus, but Flic felt it was all too risky. Vicky’s feelings for Christos were clearly clouding her judgement. Flic had no desire to see George again, even if only from a distance, nor did she wish to take any more money from Amy. The last payment had been donated to the homeless shelter. It seemed like the right thing to do in Flic’s mind.

  She reminded herself the trip to Cyprus might not happen yet. It would only happen if Lumi was willing to go. And she doubted that Lumi would be up for it. After all, she had her cupcake business to think about. And a boyfriend.

  ‘What do you think she’ll say? You know her better than I do,’ Vicky scowled, peering over the steering wheel of her car from her slouched stake-out position.

  Flic ignored the comment about knowing Lumi. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think she’ll agree to it, to be honest.’

  ‘We’ll need a plan B then,’ Vicky reasoned. ‘But I am definitely going to Cyprus.’

  Flic’s stomach growled as if in response to Vicky’s stubbornness. Flic wasn’t used to being up so early on a Sunday morning and having no breakfast. She admitted to herself that the nerves she felt about the proposal they were about to put to Lumi might also be causing an upset stomach.

  She and Vicky were parked across the street from Magnus’s flat waiting for him to leave. They had been there for over half an hour and there was still no sign of him.

  ‘Are you sure he’s definitely going to leave? He might decide to have a lie in,’ Flic suggested.

  ‘He’s
leaving. Soon. He’s a good Catholic boy. He’ll be going to mass at some point this morning.’

  Flic changed from the slumped position she had initially adopted for their surveillance of Magnus’s flat to a more straight and comfortable posture. She rested her head back and stared out at the pavement. She could see the remains of someone’s Saturday night takeaway lying next to the car. It looked disgusting but she was imagining the smell of the kebab when it had been freshly cooked and it was making her ravenous.

  ‘What if he already left before we got here?’ Flic thought aloud.

  Vicky became suddenly more alert and snapped her head around to look at Flic. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Shall we phone and ask if he’s home? Pretend we’re selling something...’

  ‘That would probably be the sensible thing to do. More sensible than sitting here waiting indefinitely.’

  ‘Could you pass me my phone out of the glove compartment, please,’ Vicky asked.

  Flic opened the door to the glove compartment and handed Vicky her phone. She noticed that there was an emergency supply of baby food, bibs, plastic spoons and a toy phone along with a bottle of vinegar and some stolen salt sachets from KFC.

  ‘For my fish and chips. They never put enough on,’ Vicky enlightened Flic before she got the chance to ask. ‘And yes, you can have something to eat.’

  Flic rifled through the stash, grabbed a jar of chocolate pudding baby food and a spoon and began slurping while she listened to Vicky’s call to Magnus’s landline.

  ‘It’s ringing,’ Vicky muttered to herself. ‘Hello! Can I please speak to Mr Pellicci? My name?’

  She looked searchingly at Flic who met her look with a vacant expression and a shrug.

  ‘It’s Mrs Cowandgate. From the church.’

  Flic banged her fist against her forehead. Mrs Cowandgate? Was that even a name? Lumi would probably guess it was a fake.

  ‘He’s not home? I’ll call back later. Around six o’clock? Excellent!’ Vicky hung up her phone and switched it off. ‘We’re good to go. He’s out all day so we have plenty of time to talk to Lumi. Or Diana. Or whatever she’s calling herself this week.’