by Ford, P. F.
‘Now let’s think about this,’ said Norman. ‘I know it looks bad, but there could be a simple explanation.’
‘Oh yeah? Like what?’ scoffed Slater.
‘Well let’s see,’ began Norman. ‘It could be she found them somewhere. It could be she really does hand them out to people. It could be you’re right and she’s involved in whatever it is we’ve stumbled across.’
‘So why don’t we go and ask her?’ said Slater.
‘If that’s what you really want to do, and you think that will solve this case, then go ahead and do it,’ said Norman. ‘But if you want my opinion, that would be a big mistake.’
Slater was unconvinced.
‘She even tried to seduce me to keep me sweet and get more information out of me,’ he explained, as if that was enough to prove he was right.
‘Has it occurred to you that she might just fancy you?’ said Norman.
Slater looked sceptical.
‘Oh come on!’ said Norman. ‘You’re a good looking guy. Don’t tell me it’s never happened before.’
Slater wasn’t a vain man, but he knew Norman had a point. And he had allowed himself to be seduced in the past, on more than one occasion.
‘So what do you suggest?’ he said, much more calm now.
‘I suggest we let our ‘whizz kid’ over there find out what he can about this escort agency. If we get lucky we might even find out who owns it, and that could lead to a very interesting conversation. For a start, we might be able to confirm if Clinton’s telling the truth about Ruby being a one-night stand.’
‘You think he was a regular customer?’
‘You’ve seen her. Do you think a guy like Clinton would be satisfied with a one-night stand when he could come back for more? If he was prepared to offer her protection for a one-off, maybe he was prepared to offer the owner of the agency protection for a regular slot.’
‘You may have a point there,’ Slater agreed.
‘We can decide what to do about Jenny Radstock after we’ve spoken to the owner. Alright?’
‘Okay. I suppose you’re right,’ admitted Slater.
‘Of course I am.’ Norman beamed. ‘That’s why you like working with me so much.’
It didn’t take long for Biddeford to come up with the information Norman was hoping to find.
‘Her name’s Lucinda DeLove,’ he told them. ‘38 years old, lives in Hampton. As far as I can tell, she runs the website from home. I’ve got the address here.’
He handed Norman a sheet of paper.
‘Lucinda DeLove? Good name for someone who owns an escort agency,’ said Norman appreciatively, looking at the address. ‘I wonder what her real name is. Oh, Spring Gardens. I think I know where this is. Posh area.’
‘Probably,’ agreed Biddeford. ‘And the name looks genuine. Her parents have money. She was privately educated. And get this, she went to the same school as Jenny Radstock. They even studied law together, but Lucinda gave it all up before she qualified. Sorry, but that’s about all I’ve got.’
‘Sorry?’ Slater was surprised. ‘Jeez, Steve, you don’t need to apologise. You’ve done really well. We’ve got plenty to be going on with here.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Biddeford, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘Do you want me to carry on with this, or what?’
‘Actually I’ve got something a bit juicier for you. I need you to go over to see Bob Murray and make sure we’ve got the warrant I asked for him to arrange this morning. And then, when you’ve got it, come back here and start looking into Mark Clinton’s financial affairs.’
‘Wow! Murray okayed that?’ asked Norman.
‘He wasn’t happy about it, but he agreed with me that it had to be done.’
Slater clapped his hands together.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Maybe now we can start getting some answers.’
‘It would be a lot easier if we knew which questions to ask,’ said Norman. ‘But then we can always do what I usually do.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Make it up as I go along. It works every time!’
As Norman had so rightly pointed out earlier, Spring Gardens, in Hampton, was indeed what might be called a posh area. Exclusive would be just one of the words an estate agent might use.
‘Are you sure it wouldn’t have been a better idea to call first and make an appointment?’ asked Slater, as they climbed from Norman’s car.
‘Would you have preferred it if I’d given her a chance to contact Jenny Radstock before we got here? This way no one knows we’re coming, so we have the advantage of surprise.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ warned Slater. ‘Otherwise we’ll have wasted a whole afternoon by the time we get back.’
‘Will you stop being so negative?’ asked Norman. ‘Vinnie was right. All this negative stuff you give off doesn’t help anyone.’
‘Negative?’ said Slater. ‘I’m not being negative. It’s just that if she’s not-’
‘Can’t you hear yourself?’ asked Norman. ‘You’re looking at what might happen to stop our progress. How about, just for a change, you start looking at what might happen in our favour? Is that too much to ask?’
That shut Slater up. He had never thought of himself as being negative, but now two people had suggested he was. Surely they must be wrong. Mustn’t they?
‘Am I really negative?’ he asked.
‘Not always, but you do have a tendency,’ Norman replied.
‘I do?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘Hmmppphh.’
‘Come on,’ said Norman. ‘Let’s go see. She’ll be at home, I’m telling you.’
He led the way towards number 10.
The door was opened by an elegantly tall, good-looking woman, with thick dark hair that tumbled over her shoulders. She smiled expectantly at the two detectives.
‘Can I help you?’ The cultured tones told Slater this must be who they were looking for.
‘We’re looking for Miss Lucinda DeLove,’ said Norman.
‘Well, your search is over. You’ve found her,’ she replied.
They showed their warrant cards and Norman made the introductions.
‘We’d like to talk to you if you could spare a few minutes,’ he said.
‘Goodness! How exciting,’ she said. ‘Have I done something wrong?’
She had the confident air that comes from money and a private education. Slater thought she was a bit too ‘jolly hockey sticks’ for his liking, and he hoped she wasn’t going to start saying ‘Okay, yah!’ at the end of every sentence. He couldn’t decide if she really was pleased to see them, or if she was taking the piss, but he chose to follow the agreed plan and keep quiet. Norman was taking the lead here, and he certainly didn’t look phased by her.
‘Could we come in?’ asked Norman.
‘Oh, of course. How rude of me. I am sorry,’ she gushed. ‘Do come in.’ She stepped back and opened the door wider to reveal a thick-piled, white carpet.
‘Do go through.’ She waved them towards a door across the hallway.
‘We’d better take our shoes off,’ said Norman, indicating the carpet.
‘Oh don’t worry.’ she said, smiling. ‘Just make sure you don’t walk any dog poo in and it’ll be fine.’
Obediently they checked the soles of their shoes, just in case.
As they had expected, the decor oozed class, and must have cost a small fortune.
‘Do sit down,’ she insisted. ‘Can I offer you tea? Or coffee?’
‘Err, no we’re fine thank you, Miss DeLove.’
‘Call me Lucinda, please,’ she said. ‘Miss DeLove is so formal, don’t you think? Or are you not allowed to be informal? Am I in trouble?’
Slater decided no, she wasn’t taking the piss, this was the real her.
‘It’s about Beautiful Ladies,’ said Norman.
‘Oh! Is there a problem? It’s not illegal you know. I’ve made sure of that.’
‘You have photos of yo
ur escorts on the site,’ Norman continued. ‘We’re interested in one of them. Her name’s Ruby.’
‘Goodness, Ruby hasn’t been with us for some time now,’ said Lucinda, looking concerned. ‘I told them to remove her page and picture months ago. Honestly, you pay a small fortune to have someone look after your website and they can’t do the simplest job.’
‘What can you tell us about Ruby?’ asked Norman, ignoring her comment.
‘She left about six months ago. I was quite pleased really because she was getting to be quite difficult.’
‘In what way?’ prompted Norman.
‘When she first joined us she was wonderful. She was very popular, always in demand. She would have made a fortune if she’d been prepared to work weekends. For a year she was brilliant, but then she started to become a bit awkward. First, she wanted to pick and choose who she saw, and then she didn’t want to work Wednesdays. Then she’d sometimes call at the last minute to tell me she was unavailable on a Tuesday, or a Thursday. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but it meant I had to come out of retirement to fill in. So when she left I think it was for the best, you know?’
‘Do you think she was cheating on you? Stealing your clients?’
‘Heavens, no. I don’t work like that, Sergeant. I run an escort agency, I’m not some sort of pimp. If a client wants to see one of the girls without asking me first, that’s fine by me. I have a constant stream of new clients. I make a nice steady income whatever. And the girls appreciate the fact that I’m so easy going. It makes for great working relationships, I can tell you.’
Slater thought it was interesting Lucinda didn’t see herself as a pimp. He thought that was exactly what she was. No matter how she might dress it up, it was money for sex at the end of the day, wasn’t it?
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘But they’re all adults. They pay for an introduction and for the company. If it goes any further that’s nothing to do with me.’
Slater found it slightly unnerving that she had read his mind so accurately. He wondered if they learned that at private school.
‘Did Ruby let you know she was leaving?’ Norman clearly had no intention of getting into the ‘is this just a posh brothel’ argument.
‘No she didn’t. I suppose that just goes to show how far apart we’d become.’
‘And you didn’t try to contact her to find out?’
‘Goodness, no.’ She looked appalled. ‘As I said, she had become more and more difficult. To be honest I was quite relieved.’
‘The thing is,’ said Norman, ‘we believe something may have happened to her. She seems to have just disappeared off the face of the earth. She even left all her things at her flat.’
‘Oh my God! How awful. Poor girl. What do you think happened?’
As the observer, Slater thought she certainly looked and sounded genuine.
‘That’s what we’re trying to figure out. So, if there’s anything you can think of that might help us…’ Norman said, encouragingly.
‘I feel terrible now,’ said Lucinda quietly. ‘Perhaps if I’d made an effort to talk to her...’ The sentence fizzled out to silence.
Norman paused for a moment before continuing on a different thread.
‘Was a DCI Mark Clinton one of your clients?’
Lucinda looked visibly shaken at the mention of Clinton’s name.
‘Why yes,’ she blurted. ‘But that’s supposed to be confidential information. How do you know about it?’
‘His name has come up in our enquiries,’ admitted Norman, and Slater knew he had been playing a hunch. ‘Naturally we want to keep that as quiet as we can.’
‘Ah. Yes, I see,’ said Lucinda conspiratorially. ‘You know about that. I suppose you have to go through the motions in a case like this.’
Slater had to fight hard to keep his relaxed pose and stop himself snapping to attention.
‘Just to make sure we’re on the same side.’ Norman smiled. ‘Can you just confirm the situation for us?’
‘Mark and Ruby. I made sure he always got her, he made sure I never got any hassle. That was it.’
‘So he was a regular, paying client?’
‘Regular, yes. Paying? Heavens, no. Complimentary service, so to speak.’
‘Oh yeah,’ lied Norman. ‘That’s the word he used. Complimentary. And I bet he’s never let you down.’
‘You’re the first visit I’ve ever had,’ she said, nodding.
‘Do you know Jennifer Radstock, the barrister?’ asked Norman.
Slater was poised ready to pounce as soon as she denied all knowledge.
‘Jenny? Good lord, yes. I’ve known her for as long as I can remember. We went through school together. Even went to college together, but we sort of drifted apart after that. She was brilliant. Law suited her like a duck to water, but I struggled with it for a couple of years, then realised I was never going to make it so I dropped out and did this instead.’
She seemed to lose herself in reminiscence for a moment before suspicion took over.
‘Why do you want to know about Jenny? I haven’t seen her for ages. Surely she’s got nothing to do with this?’
‘Well, we found a bunch of your business cards in her possession, so we got to wondering how come? So you see, we have to think maybe she is involved or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Perhaps you could help us out with that.’
‘Wait a minute,’ cried Lucinda. ‘You think you’ve discovered some sort of conspiracy here, don’t you? Surely you don’t think Mark has anything to do with Ruby going missing? You’re totally wrong if you do. He adored her. And as for Jenny, I’m sure she doesn’t even know Mark uses the agency. She would be appalled to think he was cheating on her sister like that. She certainly wouldn’t be helping him.’
‘Well, I’ll be honest with you, Lucinda,’ said Norman. ‘Right now we’re not sure what to think. Solving a case like this is a bit like building a jigsaw. We have all these different pieces and we’re trying to figure out where they all fit in. We have a piece called Ruby, a piece called Mark, a piece called Lucinda and a piece called Jennifer. Right now, they’re all connected by your agency.
‘So I’m sure you can see our problem. We can guess how they’re all connected, and maybe we’ll get it all wrong. Or we can ask someone who knows, and then we’ll get it right. So far you’ve told us about Ruby, and about Mark. All that’s left is Jennifer. All we want to know is why she’s carrying your business cards.’
Lucinda looked hard at Norman and then at Slater. She was obviously struggling to make a decision. For the first time since they had arrived, she looked just a tad worried. Finally, she seemed to make her mind up.
‘Look. Do you promise me this won’t go any further? Jen’s done really well for herself, and I wouldn’t want to be the one who brought the house tumbling down.’ She looked anxiously at them.
‘Anything you say here is just between the three of us,’ promised Norman.
‘It had jolly well better be, or I’m dead,’ she said, grimly.
‘I know secrets about plenty of people and they still have their careers,’ Norman assured her.
‘Discretion is all part of our job,’ agreed Slater.
‘God, I hope I don’t regret this,’ muttered Lucinda.
‘Back in the days when we started at college,’ she began, finally, ‘it came as a bit of a shock to find we had to pay our own way. We were used to spending what we wanted, when we wanted, and suddenly we had no cash. So we had this bright idea of creating an escort agency. I mean, why not? We were two attractive girls, we knew how to behave, how to make intelligent conversation. We were the business. And we soon found we could make very good money working just a couple of nights a week.’
Slater looked at Lucinda, and thought about Jenny Radstock. They weren’t sisters, but anyone could see they came from the same mould. It was easy to imagine how popular these two would be if someone wanted some company for the night.
‘S
o you’re partners?’ asked Norman.
‘Were partners,’ she corrected him. ‘When it became clear Jen had a flair for the law and putting her case, she chose to step away from the agency. It wouldn’t have done much for her career, would it? And that was the same time I was thinking of dropping out, so it all worked out rather well. She focused on the law and I focused on Beautiful Ladies. It all worked out rather nicely for both of us, actually. The only downside was we drifted apart. It’s a pity really; we used to have so much fun.’
‘How long ago was this?’ asked Norman.
‘Gosh! Ages. I haven’t been to college for something like 15 years,’ she said.
‘So why would she have your business cards?’
‘I have no idea,’ she said. Then, as an afterthought, ‘Do you have one with you?’
Slater fished in his pocket and handed her the card.
‘Good lord.’ She laughed. ‘This is so old! These must be the cards we were using back in college. They’ve been updated several times since then. Look, we don’t even include a website on here, because we didn’t have one back then.’
She handed the card back to Slater.
‘She must be keeping these for old time’s sake, that’s all I can think.’
‘So what do you think?’ asked Slater when they were back in the car.
‘I think we now know Clinton’s a liar. He was seeing Ruby on a regular basis. Maybe that’s why Ruby started to become a problem. Maybe she didn’t like his company. Perhaps she made the video to blackmail him into keeping away?’
‘Yeah. That would make sense,’ agreed Slater. ‘But what about Lucinda DeLove. Do you think she’s for real, or is she bullshitting us? Maybe she was in on this with Ruby. Perhaps it was a joint venture to get him out of both their lives.’
‘Well, that’s a possibility, but I didn’t hear anything that didn’t add up, did you? And if she’s acting she ought to go to Hollywood, she’s that good. What did you think?’
‘I’ve got to be honest,’ answered Slater. ‘I actually liked her. I didn’t think I would at first, but she came across as genuine. Her reactions all seemed real enough, so I agree with you. I think she’s telling the truth. But I still don’t understand why Jenny would have those business cards in her bag, especially as they’re so old.’