by Dawn Brookes
Carlos almost choked on his beer.
‘The diminutive Meg Sissons has more about her than I imagined.’
‘Not only that, she informed him that when she had explained to her daughter that a highly respected and reputable private investigator was staying with her neighbour, Mrs Winslow suggested she should hire said investigator!’
‘Me?’
‘You.’
‘He looked angry enough when I saw him heading your way this afternoon. I’d give anything to have seen his face on leaving. I hope he didn’t shout at Meg.’
‘No. He wouldn’t have dared after his shakedown from the Chief Super. He gritted his teeth and remained controlled, but firm, explaining to Mrs Sissons this was a police matter and that you would only get in the way. He advised her that it would be better if she left it to the professionals, and his parting shot was that he would discuss it with Mrs Winslow when she arrived tomorrow. He felt sure she would see sense.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I was summoned to accompany him outside. By then, his rage was uncontrollable. Thankfully, he doesn’t know about our friendship, and even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t dare tell him now. Seriously, he was scary. Chilling, almost. He’s a dangerous enemy, Carlos.’
Carlos sat back thoughtfully. He knew Fiona was right. Masters had been humiliated, something that would make him more dangerous than ever. Perhaps he should back away now while he had the chance. If he took this case, there was no knowing how difficult it was going to get. Plus, it would dredge up more pain and ill feeling from the past. One thing was certain: Masters would give him no assistance whatsoever, and would likely block his every move. How far would his nemesis go? That’s what troubled him.
‘Let’s eat,’ he suggested, picking up the bar menu.
‘You’re going to take the case, aren’t you?’
‘I have to, Fiona. For more reasons than I’m prepared to share. Besides,’ he grinned, ‘I’m a highly respected and reputable private investigator.’
She smirked before shrugging, replying in a serious tone, ‘Then I’m going to have to watch your back.’
‘Do you think I’m in danger?’
‘Looking into that man’s eyes today, I’m certain of it. Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘Yep. I’m sure.’
10
The winter sun formed a bright orb outside in contrast to the room Carlos was standing in. Carlos gazed around Meg Sissons’s lounge-diner, absorbing the lack of personalisation or knick-knacks usually present in people’s homes. The cottage wouldn’t be out of place in a sales brochure had it been on the market, except for the outdated décor. Caroline Winslow had called an hour earlier, not long after he’d noticed a taxi pulling up outside Meg’s house to invite him round. Sophie accompanied him, warning him in advance to expect a minimalistic and regimented interior.
Caroline was around forty, with frown lines marking her forehead. She wore a tweed skirt and jacket with a plain Crimplene blouse buttoned tightly up to her thin neck. A heavy gold chain adorned the front of the blouse. He watched as she shuffled through papers, noticing her right knee jerking up and down while she concentrated. Highly strung, he concluded.
Meg called from the kitchen for assistance with the tea tray and Carlos was only too pleased to help. The frail-looking woman smiled appreciatively and followed him back through to the lounge space. Once they were seated and Meg had poured tea – Sophie had warned him about the ritual – Caroline looked up from her papers.
‘Mr Jacobi, I understand from my mother you are a private detective.’ Not waiting for an answer, she proceeded, ‘As you are aware, a body was found in the woods the night before last, and it turns out to be that of my mother’s husband.’
Carlos didn’t miss the matter-of-fact nature of the announcement, nor the omission of the word “father”. Caroline could have been describing a missing piece of jewellery or a stolen car.
‘Yes, I am a private investigator, and yes, I was aware of the sad discovery. In fact, it was myself and my brother-in-law who found your, erm… Mr Sissons.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t informed of that. Mother, you need to tell me all the facts. How else am I supposed to help?’
‘I don’t think the police mentioned it, did they, Meg?’ Sophie cut in protectively.
Caroline Winslow straightened. ‘Well, judging by their incompetence so far, that doesn’t surprise me. Anyway, Mr Jacobi—’
‘Carlos, please. I rarely go by Mr Jacobi.’
‘As you wish. Carlos, I have discussed the matter with my mother, and we would like to hire you to find out who killed my mother’s husband. I believe she wanted to do so even before you found him.’
‘We would be grateful,’ agreed Meg.
‘I would be happy to help, but there’s something I should make clear.’
‘What?’ Caroline’s head shot up, causing her long neck to lengthen further, reminding him of a turkey.
‘I will need to ask questions, some of which you may not be happy about. And I must insist that you don’t keep anything from me. In my experience, people are rarely murdered randomly, although I don’t rule that out. Often, there is a reason behind such a killing. I warn all clients they might not like what I uncover in the course of an investigation.’
Caroline’s knee jerk became frenetic as she replied. ‘So be it. If it will put my mother’s mind at rest so she can move on, we will assist. However, Mr, erm… Carlos, please try to refrain from the modern trend and insatiable lust for digging up dirt for the sake of it. And try not to upset my mother. She’s been through enough. Not that you’ll uncover any hidden secrets, of that I’m certain.’
The accelerated knee jerking made Carlos think otherwise. Meg blanched as she stared into her teacup, miles away.
Carlos took the veiled warning in his stride. ‘Would you like to hire me on a day-by-day basis or for the duration?’
‘I would like you to find out who killed Harold.’ Meg lifted her gaze to meet his. He noticed the dullness behind the light grey eyes; she spoke quietly, casting a brief glance at her daughter as if to check she hadn’t spoken out of turn.
‘I will do my best. I must work with the police and report any significant findings to them.’
‘Agreed,’ said Caroline.
They finished their tea in uncomfortable silence and Carlos felt now was not the time to begin asking questions.
‘How long will you be staying in Peaks Hollow, Mrs Winslow?’
‘If I’m to call you Carlos then you must call me Caroline.’
He smiled agreement. ‘Caroline?’
‘I’m not certain. The in-laws have arrived at our house in Edinburgh for Christmas. It’s inconvenient at this time of year to have to be dealing with this, but I suppose it can’t be helped,’ she huffed. ‘I can work from here for a few days next week, and will need to fly home on Christmas Eve for Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Will you be coming with me, Mother?’
Meg clapped her hands together, almost giggling. ‘Oh yes. I can’t wait to meet the children at last.’
‘So, there you have it. We’ll fly up on Christmas Eve and return on Saturday if need be.’
‘Could the children come back down with us?’ asked Meg, still clearly excited.
Carlos viewed the exchange. A complete transformation in Meg was taking place before his eyes. Poor woman hadn’t even met her grandchildren.
‘We’ll have to wait and see, Mother. Aiden’s parents are staying now. They haven’t told us when they are leaving.’
‘Oh,’ Meg stared down at her hands. Sophie patted her on the arm, but Meg baulked at the contact.
‘Would it be all right if I come back in an hour and look in your room, Mrs Sissons? It would be useful if I could go through your husband’s things.’
‘Yes. But it’s Harold’s room you’ll need to see. I’m not allowed in there.’
‘Why haven’t the police already done that?’ snapped Caroline.
‘They were perhaps allowing your mother time for the news to sink in,’ answered Sophie. ‘The chief inspector I met thought it might have been a mugging gone wrong.’
‘Humph.’ Caroline blew out the word. ‘The same chief inspector who told my mother he’d left her?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. A surly man, but I liked the sergeant with him. She was nice,’ Meg chimed in, looking to Sophie for support.
‘Yes, Detective Sergeant Cook,’ Sophie agreed.
‘Has anyone been in the room since your husband disappeared, Mrs Sissons?’ asked Carlos, trying to bring the conversation back to the point. He didn’t want Caroline to know there was friction between him and the DCI in charge.
‘No. I’m not allowed in Harold’s bedroom, and Caroline has only just arrived.’
‘I won’t be going in that room.’ The knee jerking, which had eased a little, set off at a pace. ‘Please let me know if there are documents I should know about when you do your search. I suppose it could have been a mugging. Did they find any money on him?’
Carlos hoped he didn’t redden. ‘They didn’t find a wallet.’ He felt terrible not being up front about it, but he owed it to Fiona to keep it quiet until she made it official. ‘I’ll let you know if I find anything.’ Carlos stood. ‘Now, I think we should leave you to catch up with your mother. I’ll try not to intrude, but I will need to ask you both some questions. Will tomorrow do?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be back in an hour to check the room.’
‘What the heck was that all about?’ asked Sophie when they got home. ‘Why wasn’t Meg allowed into her husband’s room?’
‘And why won’t Caroline go in, or what’s worse, even acknowledge him as her father?’ asked Carlos, shaking his head. ‘I understand from the vicar and the flirty woman I met yesterday that Harold was a stern man, controlling, bordering abusive. Did you ever notice anything?’
‘Not when he was alive, no. But, in retrospect, I don’t think we knew them at all. They were pleasant neighbours and appeared kind and devoted, but his apparent air of protector and chivalrous husband could have been something else.’
‘Harold Sissons had secrets, and despite what Caroline says, she knows something. But what?’
‘Perhaps they just didn’t get on. Remember, she’s not spoken to him in twenty years. I hope you don’t find anything sinister, Carlos. Be careful when you go into that bedroom,’ said Sophie, shivering.
He laughed. ‘Don’t let your imagination get the better of you, Sophie. Lots of people are protective of their own space, particularly men like Sissons who thrived on being in control.’
‘I do wish I’d taken more notice.’
‘Of what? You were neighbours, that’s all, and they may yet turn out to be an ordinary boring couple with no more secrets than the average person. No-one knows what goes on behind other people’s closed doors.’
‘It’s just… what if he was a wife-beater, and I didn’t help her?’
‘There’s no suggestion he hit his wife, but there is most certainly something about him. I don’t like all this “Harold wouldn’t like… Harold didn’t allow…” stuff. Their place has OCD written all over it, but they might both have chosen to live that way. The murder is most likely related to whatever he was up to outside of home – something he kept from his wife. Good old-fashioned embezzlement, bribery or even an extramarital affair. The vicar implied Harold Sissons wasn’t above offering a bribe to get his own way. I’ll dig into his background, but might need help with that. I also want to talk to the colonel I met yesterday. He argued with Sissons, and I’d like to know what that was all about.’
‘Now, all that stuff I can deal with,’ laughed Sophie.
‘Don’t worry, Sis, I’ll get to the bottom of this.’
He hoped he sounded reassuring, because he too had a bad feeling about the man next door.
11
Carlos didn’t go next door an hour later because he recognised Masters’s unmistakable bright green Audi RS5 Coupe parked on the road outside. He waited impatiently, keeping an eye on the DCI’s car. Another hour passed before a red-faced Masters lumbered down Meg’s driveway, climbing into his Audi and screeching away. A minute later, Carlos’s phone pinged with a message.
‘All clear. Come round, Fi X’.
He smiled, relieved that his comrade in arms would be joining him to go through the mysterious Harold Sissons’s off-limits bedroom.
Gary’s car pulled up on the drive just as Carlos was leaving with Lady on the lead. Gary clambered out of his Citroën DS3 SUV and tapped the side of his nose.
‘Off to investigate, are you? Do you need any help?’
‘Erm, thanks, Gary, but that won’t be necessary.’ Noticing the look of disappointment cross his brother-in-law’s face, he added, ‘Sophie would kill me. She’s got a special dinner ready. Something about a “dating” anniversary?’
Gary’s hand went to his head. ‘Damn! I almost forgot.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wrapped gift box, holding it up for Carlos to see. ‘I was a boy scout.’
Carlos stared quizzically at the twinkling green eyes.
‘I bought this a few weeks ago and tucked it in my jacket pocket just in case I did forget.’ Gary brushed one of the curls from the front of his face. Carlos laughed out loud.
‘Aren’t you full of surprises? You’d better go give it to her, then.’
Fiona was waiting at Meg’s door when Carlos arrived, her finger to her lips.
‘I’ve left them to eat after Masters disrupted Meg’s regimented mealtime. She got more and more agitated the longer the boss stayed. We arrived at dinnertime and “dinnertime is never delayed”, apparently.’ Fiona shrugged.
‘Don’t tell me: Harold wouldn’t like it?’
‘You guessed it!’ Fiona smirked.
‘I was going to ask if it was all right to bring Lady in. She might help us find something.’
‘Hang on.’ Fiona disappeared and returned a moment later with a thumbs-up. ‘The bedroom’s upstairs, right on to the landing and the last door on the right.’
Carlos followed Fiona up the narrow staircase, noting the dark landing, a stark contrast to his sister’s. Sophie and Gary’s house had been modernised with a new staircase and restructuring of the rooms upstairs, including additional windows. As he looked around this cottage, he admired what a good job they’d done next door.
He grinned. ‘I take it Masters didn’t persuade Caroline not to hire me?’
‘You’re right on that count. In the end, he was asked to leave. He was none too pleased about that, I can tell you.’
‘I caught a glimpse of his face when he left. Even if I hadn’t, I would have known he was angry when the tyres burnt rubber. How come he let you stay behind?’
‘He insisted upon it when they told him you were coming to look in Mr Sissons’s bedroom. I’m to make sure you don’t find anything without him knowing about it first, hide evidence from you if I come across it and call him if you do find something.’
Carlos couldn’t help grinning again, but paused as they arrived at their destination.
‘I don’t want to get you in trouble, Fiona.’
‘You let me worry about that. The less he knows about our friendship, the better. I will have to keep him informed, though; I still haven’t found the right moment to mention the wallet. I’m under specific instructions not to tell you anything that we uncover our end, either. So, you’re not to know that Harold Sissons had a private bank account in just his name with £63,000 in.’
Carlos whistled, raising his eyebrows.
‘Any recent deposits or withdrawals?’
‘We don’t know yet. Masters tried to fob Caroline off that the private account was the reason he thought her father had left her mother. I bit my tongue. He only found out about the account yesterday afternoon, but I couldn’t say that. I didn’t know about it when we met last night or I’d have said. He’s put in a
request to the bank for access to more information to check for any suspicious activity.
‘Meg didn’t know anything about the account, or any of their joint accounts, for that matter. She left money matters to her husband. I don’t know how she’s going to survive without him; she doesn’t seem to know how to do anything other than cook and clean.’
‘Just as it should be,’ he laughed.
Fiona thumped him on the arm. ‘Wait till Rachel hears that one. Anyway, I’ll let you know if anything crops up on that front. Now, are we going to stand here all day or go into this bedroom?’
Carlos smiled sheepishly. ‘In we go, then.’
He flicked the light switch just inside the door to reveal a pendant light that shone brightly through a white lampshade. First impressions were an anticlimax.
‘I don’t know why, but I was expecting some sort of den of iniquity,’ Carlos sighed. The room was similar to downstairs: virtually empty with little sign of it being the personal space of the late Harold Sissons. It was minimalistic, just like the rest of the house, revealing nothing about the man in question.
A huge iron-framed double bed took centre stage, covered in an old-fashioned counterpane. Two pillows lay on top on the right-hand side of the bed. A single lamp stood on the dark mahogany bedside table and a brass windup alarm clock had stopped at 3.30pm.
‘You’ve been watching too many horror films.’ Fiona laughed. ‘I’ll take the wardrobe; you take the drawers.’
Forty-five minutes later and they had found nothing other than confirmation that Harold Sissons lived an ordered obsessive-compulsive type of life. Not a thing out of place. His socks were rolled up and stored in orderly rows according to colour – the only colours being black, grey or pale blue. Pants and vests were neatly folded. Other drawers revealed an orderly array of pyjamas, jumpers and cardigans with nothing hidden; even handkerchiefs were ironed and folded. No secret photos, no hidden vices, nothing. Carlos exhaled.
Fiona’s search revealed a similar pattern in the wardrobe. Shirts, trousers, jackets and ties all neatly hung according to colour and type.