by Mike Ripley
‘Now wait a minute. I only said could, not would. Shepherd’s Bush Green is west and I’m going east, plus at this time of the day I’m going to get stuck in traffic and consequently be late for a very important social engagement this evening.’
Quite what, I hadn’t decided yet, but it seemed a reasonable sort of alibi. The sort of argument any reasonable person would accept without too much strife. First mistake; thinking I was dealing with a reasonable person.
‘You did say you would, you did, you did,’ she snapped, increasing the volume with each beat and, believe it or not, stamping her foot again.
This was ridiculous. What she needed was another five-year-old to run up and pull her pigtails. I scanned the street in vain. There’s never one around when you want one.
‘Okay, okay,’ I soothed. ‘Calm down, foot off the pedal. Let’s sit inside and we’ll negotiate.’
I know I should have just driven off and left her there. But I was in a strangely generous mood. I had time on my hands, some cash in the bank for once and all my teeth back in my mouth, so I was moved to take pity on her. The mood I was in turned out to have a medical name: barking mad.
‘Get inside?’ she said suspiciously.
‘Were you thinking of riding on the roof?’ Two minutes ago she was baying at the moon because I said she couldn’t get in.
I think she said ‘Hmmm’, while weighing up her options, but after no more than half a minute’s thought she reached for the door handle and got in. She slid across the back seat as far as she could go, pulling the trench coat around her legs and making sure she was in grabbing distance of the offside door handle. Little did she know that one of the few lessons in the Safety Body Language for Men course that had got through had been the one about riding in taxis. I had never known before then that the act of getting into the back of a black London cab was such a sexual minefield, and happy hunting ground for men with the subtlety of approach of a Panzer attack and hands supple enough to count mating snakes. But then again, I don’t wear short skirts. Or at least, not in the back of cabs.
I pulled down the jump seat diagonally opposite her and put my hands on my knees where she could see them. I even left the door open a tad, not so much to reassure her but to allow me a quick exit if needed.
‘Now, Ms Blugden ... was it?’ I don’t have a good memory for names and I’d only seen her card for a second or two, but there are some that register quickly.
‘It’s Miss, not Ms. I hate Ms.’
Oh, great.
‘Whatever. Now, why the scene, the big production number?’
She took a breath deep enough to make her bosom wobble, and I promised myself that if she took out a lace handkerchief to dab away a tear, I’d drive her to the nearest museum and enter her in the Feminist Time-Warp section.
‘I’m on assignment,’ she said quietly, ‘a confidential assignment that involves ... surveillance.’
She said ‘surveillance’ with the same awe other people reserve for ‘Good ganga’, or ‘Hey, it’s unlocked’, but I remained unimpressed.
‘The girl I was following went into one of these ... these … houses.’ She waved a limp hand at Wimpole Street as if it was to blame. ‘I’d been following her all day, making notes, and then she came out and she jumped into a taxi. I hadn’t expected that. I mean, she came by tube, so I thought she’d go back by tube.’
‘To Shepherd’s Bush Green?’ I offered helpfully.
‘No, that’s where I live. I don’t know where she lives. That’s what I was trying to find out.’
‘But you said you followed her all day. Where did you start?’
‘At a – ah – that’s confidential, I’m afraid. But it wasn’t where she was living, just somewhere I was told she’d be this morning.’
‘So why not start again tomorrow morning? Same place, same time?’ I was full of helpful suggestions.
‘Because she was only going to the ... to where she was this morning ... this morning. If you see what I mean. This morning was my one chance and I got blown.’
‘I think you mean you blew it.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Never mind. So why not head back to Shepherd’s Bush? Call it a day. Grab a real cab or a bus. Why the emotional blackmail? Why me?’
‘I haven’t any money,’ she sniffed. ‘I only look a few pounds from petty cash and it’s all gone. Bus fares, the tube, cups of coffee, lunch, it all mounts up. And a spare pair of tights just in case. I would have given you a cheque at the other end if you’d been a real cab.’
I bit my lip and breathed deeply, but be honest, Mother Teresa would have resorted to harsh language at this one.
‘So what were you trying to find out, anyway?’
Why did I ask? What possessed me to waste vital oxygen that way?
‘Where she lives, what she does. Why she was here, for example.’
‘Well, that last bit’s easy.’
She blinked at me through glasses that, if they were any thicker, would come with wipers.
‘It is? What do you mean?’
‘Do you know who she went to see?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
‘I know, but look, all these houses are practices.’
‘What?’ She looked blank.
‘All the houses are sub-divided into medical or dental practices. Oh, never mind. Just tell me which house she went into.’
‘That one.’ She pointed across the street. ‘The one with the green door and all those brass plates.’
‘And what’s her name?’
She hesitated at that, then went for broke.
‘Rudgard. Stella Rudgard.’
‘Okay, hop out and wait here. I’ll show you how it’s done.’
There I went again. Typical man.
The big houses in Wimpole Street tend to be divided into consulting rooms run by either one large medical consulting practice or several smaller ones, or maybe just a group of medics with nothing more in common than a shared secretary/receptionist/nurse, who is always the key person in the set-up as she’s the one who sends out the bills.
My orthodontist had a part share in a receptionist/nurse who also worked for the physiotherapists operating on the next floor. She was blonde, probably Austrian and fiftyish – around the biceps. I had no idea how old she was, but she hadn’t lost her accent. The first thing she’d said after checking my credit rating and writing my name on a file cover was: ‘Rrrright, Meester Angel, strrriiip down to your underpants, pliz.’
I had started to comply, but when I happened to mention that this was a trifle informal for a dental examination, she slapped her forehead and muttered something about force of habit.
The other gopher invariably shared among the practices is a concierge figure, usually an elderly, middle-class widow fallen on hard times and only really doing the job because it gets her out of the house. Their main task is to open the front door, check your name and show you into a waiting room with floor-to-ceiling sash windows, yellowing net curtains, uncomfortable armchairs and fake walnut tables groaning under last year’s Country Life.
They then retreat to the back of the hall and into a glass and wood conservatory-like structure housing a switchboard at least ten years technologically redundant; but they still haven’t quite got the hang of it. There they guard the Appointments Diary – a book treated more reverently than a Guttenberg Bible – their knitting and yesterday’s milk, which surely someone should have collected by now.
The bottle-green door Veronica Blugden had pointed out had enough brass plate on it to be worth stealing for scrap. There were 12 names listed, each with a Scrabble triple word score of letters after them. I didn’t bother reading, I just rang the bell.
The concierge lady answered it, taking her own dignified time. She was dressed as I could have guessed: d
ark blue turtleneck top and long tartan skirt. I liked the Nikes she wore, but I supposed they were for comfort rather than a fashion statement. Around her neck, a long string of fake pearls competed with a gold spectacles chain to see which would strangle her first.
‘Yes? Can I help?’
There was a trace of an accent there. Maybe Mittel-European dispossessed aristocracy rather than Guildford middle-class with a head cold. Then again, maybe not.
‘Taxi for Miss Rudgard,’ I said, snapping into character and showing her my new teeth.
I had Armstrong parked at the kerb, engine running. There you are, now I am a cab. And I had pulled on the old sweater I always kept in the boot (one leather elbow-patch, the other elbow-holed), so I looked the part. To a civilian I looked the part. A London black cab driver getting out of his cab? When did you last see that?
‘I’m sorry?’ She opened the door fully to check me out.
No worries about me being a mugger or burglar. Total confidence. After all, this was Wimpole Street.
‘Taxi for Miss Rudgard,’ I repeated, then looked at my watch. ‘Ordered for 4.30.’ Did I let a hint of impatience creep into my voice, perhaps? Well, what can you expect from the lower orders?
‘Is she a patient?’ The concierge looked genuinely perplexed.
‘You tell me, luv, I ain’t got a clue.’
She fumbled her glasses onto her face and turned back into the hall, leaving the door wide open. I think the ‘luv’ had got to her, but she really ought to have been more careful. I could have had the painting off the wall and been away on my toes before she turned round. Come to think of it, being Wimpole Street, the painting might have been worth having. I decided to file the address away for a rainy day.
Actually, she did turn round before she reached her cubby-hole, as if suddenly remembering something.
‘Rudgard, did you say?’
‘That’s what I was told, luv.’
‘She’s just left.’
‘She can’t have, luv, I’m her taxi.’
‘But she has. I remember it quite clearly. She was the four o’clock appointment for Mr Linscott.’
I shrugged my shoulders and showed her my palms in the universal ‘not my fault’ gesture that London cabbies have perfected from the sitting position.
‘I can assure you, she’s gone.’ She reached for her Appointments Diary to prove it. No-one could dispute a holy entry.
But then the phone rang, and of course she had to answer it.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said into the receiver while stabbing the desk diary with a finger.
I leaned into her cubbyhole to get a better look.
‘Miss Sanderson? Ah yes. No. No. I’m sorry, but no …’
I dropped my eye down the day’s entries. Each doctor or consultant had a colour code. Mr Linscott. whatever he did, had been seeing females all afternoon at half-hour intervals. I was in the wrong business.
‘It’s just not possible, Miss Sanderson. Dr Cutts is away this week …’
There at ‘1600 hours’ (I liked that) was ‘Miss E Rudgard’. ‘E’ for Estelle, I guessed. They wouldn’t allow Stellas in here. ‘I’m sure it isn’t opening up. Go back to the poultice. And thank you. Goodbye.’
She came back to me, only slightly flushed.
‘You see. Rudgard at four. She’s been and gone.’
‘Well,’ I started huffily, ‘you’d better tell this Doc Linscott that his patients are causing honest blokes like me to lose trade. Downright irresponsible, I call it …’
‘Oh, that Miss Rudgard isn’t a patient,’ she said earnestly.
I gave her the full smile.
‘Isn’t she?’
And I didn’t have to call her ‘luv’.
Back on the street, I drove all of ten yards before Veronica Blugden flagged me down.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said as she got in the back, ‘I wasn’t trying to do a runner on you.’
The excitement had left her breathless.
‘So? Do you know where she lives?’
‘No, but I know where she’ll be at nine o’clock tomorrow when she starts her new job.’
There was a silence from the rear of the cab, and I relished it.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Easy, really.’
Chapter Two
‘It’s my Rule of Life No. 83. Approached in the right way, anyone will tell you anything, and it will usually be true.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Obviously not. Or at least, not very well.’
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’
‘You didn’t follow that Stella Rudgard very well, did you? You lost her.’ .
‘That’s a horrid thing to say.’
‘Just stating the facts, ma’am.’
‘Are you saying I’m no good at my job?’
‘You’re the private eye, or whatever it says on your card.’
‘Well, really. I’ve never been so insulted in all my life.’
‘Then you can’t be as old as you look,’ I said quietly.
Of course, after that little exchange, I ended up driving her to Shepherd’s Bush. It was either that or another scene by the kerbside accompanied by tears and histrionics; some of them hers. Along the way, I told her what I had found out.
Estelle Rudgard, whoever she was, had been for an interview with a Mr Linscott, consultant surgeon of this parish, whose regular full-time receptionist had been called away to look after a sick mother (90, if she was a day, but still managing on her own down in Broadstairs: marvellous, really).
Estelle had come highly recommended from an agency, and a girl like that, with such obvious good breeding, well, she just strolled into the job, didn’t she, starting tomorrow.
‘They just told you all that?’ asked Veronica Blugden.
‘Not me, really,’ I said modestly. ‘It was gossip with a cab driver. Who remembers cab drivers? Where’s the harm in telling them anything?’
Heaven knows the real ones got told lots more interesting stuff, whether they wanted to hear it or not.
‘Oh, and one other thing,’ I offered at no extra charge. ‘Her name was on a fax from a company called the Office Cavalry. It was in the Appointments Diary.’
‘Yes, that fits, she’s registered with them. It’s a temping agency in Holborn. I’ve been watching it for two days.’
I cut up a chauffeur-driven Mercedes just for the hell of it, then readjusted the rear-view mirror so I could get a better look at her in the back.
‘You knew she was registered as a temp secretary, receptionist, whatever?’
‘Yeah, and I knew she’d get offered a job and have to come … have to turn up at the office. They always like to check you for appearance and deportment and stuff like that before they send you out for an interview.’
Deportment? I wondered if they’d placed anyone since word-processing, but Veronica had read my mind.
‘They test you on skills as well,’ she added defensively. ‘Check your shorthand, though nobody uses that much these days, and which programs you’re familiar with, whether you can mail-merge. That sort of thing.’
She’d been there, but I didn’t say it.
‘And you’ve had the place staked out for two days?’
She looked puzzled, then rather pleased with the thought of ‘stake out’.
‘I’ve had it under observation. Yes.’
‘And all you wanted to do is find out where this Stella person lives?’
‘Yes. So?’
‘So why didn’t you ring for the Office Cavalry and say you had a job going for a bright young girl, preferably one called Stella?’
She thought about this and made to answer at least twice, but the words wouldn’t come. The brain just wouldn’t let them.
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‘Do you think that is what I should have done?’ she burbled.
‘Well, it’s one way. You could have rung the agency and said it was a temporary job, a stand-in, just like the job she’s got in Wimpole Street. Agencies always send out new girls on jobs like that just to try them out at the client’s expense. And the girls think it’s good; they get some work straight off. I take it she is new to the agency?’
‘Yes.’ She chewed something over in her mind before asking: ‘So if I’d said I had work, they would have sent me her home address ... I mean the place she’s living?’
‘Probably not straight off. They like to keep an edge in case you hire the girls direct and bypass their commission. But you could have offered her an interview and asked about how far she had to travel, did she share a flat, was she married, so forth, so fifth.’
There was a long pause. I was almost through Notting Hill and down into Ladbroke Grove before she said: ‘But that would be using deception wouldn’t it?’
I gripped Armstrong’s wheel tighter.
‘How long have you been a private detective, Veronica?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘How long? And no deception, now.’
‘Two days.’
‘Thought so.’
Somewhere through a black hole, probably far, far away, in a parallel galaxy, there is the obverse of Rule of Life No. 83. The one that runs along the lines that if you say the wrong thing, people will tell you the absolute lot about themselves, none of which you are interested in and nothing of which could be of any possible use to you. And the clincher is there is no way of shutting them up short of homicide, or finding another pub, or getting off the train even when it’s not your station, and none of these options is viable because it simply isn’t worth the hassle.
As Veronica Blugden talked at me from the back of Armstrong, I had only my innate ability as a driver and the fact that other road users tend to get out of the way of black London cabs, to get her to where she wanted to go before I got her life story.
She had moved to London three months ago from one of those East Midlands towns that left you with no discernible accent and fewer fond memories. She had been a nurse, well, not quite a nurse, never having properly qualified, but she had a lot of experience as a first aid officer in a big shoe company. Then she got made redundant, but heard there was an opening for a medical officer of sorts in an engineering works out in north London between Edgware and Barnet. And would you credit it? The place closed down before she’d drawn eight weeks’ pay.
