The First Stella Cole Boxset

by Andy Maslen

  Leaving her bags on the grass, she rolled, painfully, onto her front then crawled over to the tree line. The woodland here was mostly pines and other conifers. The trees had been recently cut back and branches lay everywhere. Stella rummaged around, pulling lengths of branch towards her then rejecting them until she found a six-foot length she could use as a staff. She pulled herself upright, wobbling around as she fought to keep her balance, and her weight off her injured ankle. Then she hopped back to her bags.

  “Great!” she shouted to the empty road. “Anyone fancy giving Gandalf’s younger sister a lift back to Duluth?”

  Stella’s rescuer came in the form of a truck driver. She’d been leaning on the makeshift crutch for thirty minutes, waving her free hand desperately at every passing vehicle, however unlikely they might be to offer her a ride back to town. The big red truck with a barn-door-sized chrome grille honked its air horns as it slowed to a stop and pulled over onto the shoulder. The big man in the red-and-black plaid shirt jumped down, asked what the trouble was and, when she explained, simply pointed at the cab then helped her climb in. He hoisted her two bags after her as if they were stuffed with feathers, then crossed in front of the rig and swung himself up beside her. Fifteen minutes later, she was climbing out in Duluth, thanking her knight of the road and looking round for a hotel.

  Realising that her sprained ankle and badly bruised ribs precluded any more hitching, let alone hiking, she decided to take a proper break. Within a day she’d found a friendly pharmacist who advised her on the best combination of painkillers to take. Within a week, the ankle, though painful, was able to bear her weight if she took it easy. She found a bar advertising for staff and walked in. The woman running the place loved her English accent, told her she’d probably double their daily takings if she just kept talking to the clientele, and hired her on the spot.

  That night, Stella’s phone buzzed on the night stand. A text from Jason telling her he’d just sold her house for £700,000.

  And six weeks went by. Which suited Stella just fine. Kendra paid her cash-in-hand, she found the work a blessed relief after the previous few months, and she had time both to gather her strength and let her body repair itself. And she knew that Collier would be relaxing, little by little, every day and week that passed with no disruption to his newfound life as a Fed. Ha! More fool you! she thought as she poured a couple of her regulars fresh mugs of Hamm’s Golden Draft.

  By the middle of November, she was fighting fit. She’d even put on a few pounds, thanks to the free meals from the kitchen and the occasional after-work drinking session with the other staff.

  Relaxing at the end of a boisterous Saturday night shift, which ended at 2.00 a.m., she clinked beer bottles with Kendra and told her she was leaving. Kendra was philosophical.

  “Well, I guess a pretty English girl like you was never gonna hang around in a place like this for ever, honey. You worked hard, you were honest, and the clients loved you. I’ll give you a bonus before you go tonight. Chin-chin!”

  The next morning, Stella checked out of her hotel and headed for the Greyhound station at 228 W Michigan Street. She bought a single to Chicago and thirty minutes later was sitting by a window on one of the long petrol-blue-and-silver buses, her bags stowed below and an old Kate Bush album playing through her earbuds.

  Stella slept most of the way, only waking as the bus slowed to enter downtown Chicago. The streets were slushy and whole corners of the sidewalk were roped off with signs warning pedestrians of the dangers of falling ice. Once again, she found herself checking into a cheap hotel, stowing her gear and wandering out for a pizza and a beer. Only this time, she was doing it in the same city where her final target was living and working. Now all I have to do is kill you, she thought, finishing her second beer and signalling a waitress for the bill. But first, I have to find you.

  60

  Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

  Miss Reid’s voice echoed down the years from Stella’s past.

  “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Anyone?”

  Stella had studied Latin at school. Unlike most of her classmates, she had enjoyed it. Her teacher, a stork-like woman, took apparent delight in beginning each lesson with a well-worn Latin phrase and asking her reluctant students to translate. Her grating voice came floating back down the years now.

  “It’s Juvenal, Miss. Who will guard the guards themselves?” fifteen-year-old Stella Cole had answered when pointed at by her teacher’s long, bony finger.

  Stella had always liked the Roman poet’s quote, without really knowing why. Although the events of the last few years had given the phrase fresh relevance. And now, leaning on the retaining wall of a multi-storey parking garage three blocks west of the FBI headquarters building in Chicago, holding an expensive pair of binoculars to her eyes, Stella wondered what the Latin translation would be for, “Who spies on the spies themselves?” But then, were the FBI spies? Or was that the CIA? Didn’t matter. Concentrate.

  She’d been on duty at the northwest corner of the deserted top floor of the carpark for three hours every day from four until seven for the past week. Apart from the binoculars, her other main investment had been in some warmer clothes, Chicago in November being roughly on a par with the Antarctic, as far as she could judge. With the soft rubber eyecups pressed against her eye sockets, she watched the comings and goings from the main door and the exit from the FBI’s parking lot.

  At no point had she seen Collier. It didn’t mean anything. A lot of the time, the glare of the sun on the departing vehicles’ windshields obscured the drivers’ faces. A back entrance clearly existed, as very few people left through the front door.

  Surveillance had been the first step in her plan to identify and track Collier. Without realising it, over the past couple of years, she had gradually forgone her previous detection-based approach in favour of something altogether more paramilitary. Given the ruthless methods of her enemies, this was undoubtedly what had kept her alive.

  Leaving the parking garage a little later than usual, at 8.00 p.m., she sighed with frustration as she recased the binoculars, slung them onto the back seat of her rental car and drove back to her hotel.

  This isn’t going to work, she thought, lying in bed. I need to do it the old-fashioned way.

  The following morning, Stella bought herself a tall latte from a Starbucks and booked an hour’s computer time in the public library on State Street.

  Sitting in front of the screen, she flexed her fingers.

  “OK, then. Where shall we start?” she asked herself under her breath. She typed her first query, more in hope than expectation:

  Senior British Detective joins FBI

  Nothing.

  She shrugged. She hadn’t been expecting to hit gold so easily. She worked steadily through a series of increasingly unlikely phrases, tapping them into the search box with growing impatience and frustration.

  British police officer joins Bureau.

  Nothing.

  Top Brit Cop Now Fed.

  Nix.

  Fed gets its very own Sherlock Holmes.

  Nada.

  “Bollocks!” she said, louder than she meant to, so that a few heads popped up from their own screens like startled rabbits hearing an approaching fox.

  “Sorry!” she added, in a more apologetic tone of voice, before bending to her keyboard again.

  Maybe I’m looking in the wrong direction. What if the FBI doesn’t issue press releases the way we do? Try the personal angle. Maybe the move made some local newspaper or website.

  British couple set up home in Chicago.

  Yes! She clicked the link. Then scowled.

  Lakeview welcomed two news residents from “across the pond” last month, when Alison and Christopher Burley purchased a new home on W Wellington Avenue. Alison has just accepted a job with Wells Fargo and relocated from her old bank in London. Christopher, “Call me Chris,” he told us, is a freelance graphic designer.

  She finished
her latte, which had gone cold, and decided on a third angle of attack. She logged into Facebook. Why didn’t I think of this before? she chided herself. Out of practice at old-fashioned detective-work, Stel.

  She typed “Adam Collier” into Facebook’s own search box.

  Under the People tab, she found plenty of men with the right name, but none with a profile picture matching the man she was after. Maybe he deleted his account. She clicked on the Posts tab and began scrolling down. At the bottom of the screen she hit the link marked, “Show all results.” And smiled.

  Cheek bulging with food, face flushed from sun or alcohol, Adam Collier was staring straight at her. The account belonged to a woman called Sarah Oliver. She had an arm draped round Collier’s shoulder and was displaying a good five inches of well-tanned cleavage above the plunging neckline of her red-and-yellow dress. Lips plump, pink and pouting, she was looking, not at the lens, as Collier was, but at her own image in the screen, giving her the off-centre gaze of the narcissist. The caption had triggered the hit:

  Who says the Brits are cold fish? Adam Collier looks pretty hot to me!!!

  Stella clicked through to the woman’s Facebook account. She’d left her privacy settings wide open, but annoyingly hadn’t bothered populating any of her personal information beyond her gender, which was glaringly obvious, and her location, Chicago, which was equally useless.

  Stella didn’t mind. In fact, she was elated. This was still the key piece of intelligence she needed. Although Collier wouldn’t appear on local property or tax databases, as he’d be renting his house, Sarah Oliver would. Correction, probably would. But as an unaccredited law enforcement officer, not to mention an illegal alien, Stella wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near that kind of information. Or not personally, anyway.

  Just to cover the bases, she googled Sarah Oliver Chicago. She scanned the first couple of pages of results, taking in the dozens of Sarah Olivers on LinkedIn, Facebook and all the other social media networks, and the lawyers, doctors and accountants, then puffed out her cheeks. With a decent team behind her, it would still take days to even call them all, assuming she could find their numbers. But on her own? No. She needed to move faster. Leaning forward, she searched again.

  Private investigator Chicago.

  This time, she was faced with an embarrassment of riches. The Windy City was home to thousands of PIs, all touting for business in matters matrimonial, commercial, personal and criminal. Feeling that even the most incompetent private detective could track down a woman as visible and unconcerned about privacy as Sarah Oliver, Stella clicked the first link and called the number displayed in vivid red text on the homepage. A man answered, his Midwestern accent roughened by smoking, drinking or both.

  “Churchill Investigations, this is Ray. How can I help you?”

  “Hi. I think my husband is cheating on me.”

  He sighed.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. Happens all too often, I’m afraid.”

  “I know her name, and I have a photo, but I want to know where she lives. It’s in Chicago, that’s all I know.”

  “OK, shouldn’t be too hard. Can you come to my office? Better doing these sorts of sensitive conversations face to face.”

  The man sitting across the paper-strewn desk from Stella might have picked his look from a mail order catalogue called Clichéd Private Investigator. Scruffy brown suit, tie spotted with what looked like egg yolk, and a couple of days’ growth of beard on his chin. Overweight, too, and the fingers of his right hand stained brown at the tips. Yes, I was right about the smoking. But he owned a friendly smile and seemed genuine enough. An aged PC whirred to his left, its bulky monitor plastered with yellow sticky notes and decorated along its top edge with small, multi-coloured plastic animals.

  He caught Stella’s glance.

  “My daughter gives them to me. What can I do? She expects to see ’em when she comes into the office.”

  “They’re cute. Maybe not quite the Sam Spade image you were cultivating.”

  He shrugged and plucked at a creased lapel.

  “This? My wife says I look like a hobo. And I say, you wanna blend in, don’t walk around in a Brooks Brothers suit and shiny shoes. Unless you’re an undercover cop, of course.”

  Stella smiled out of genuine good humour. She remembered being deployed to a rock festival outside Birmingham as a part of a rotation with the Drugs Squad. She turned up for work in scuffed biker boots, ripped back tights, a Clash T-shirt and a black leather bike jacket. Hair scrunched up into a wild “do” with wax, and her face a joyously off-dress-code mixture of kohl-rimmed eyes, smudgy dark eyeshadow and a slash of crimson lippy. Her colleagues, all male, all clean shaven, were dressed alike: freshly laundered stonewashed jeans, some with actual ironed creases, dress shirts without ties, sports jackets or blazers and, yes, polished black shoes. She’d been secretly delighted as one after another, her colleagues were pointed out by the stoned and drunk music fans in the campground and subjected to catcalls, whistles and cries of, “Here come the Feds!” while she only had to contend with requests for “any gear” or, when she shook her head, “In that case, how about a shag?”

  “You said you had some details about the third party?” Ray asked her.

  “Yep.”

  Stella fished out her phone and turned it towards Ray. He picked a ballpoint pen from a wire mesh cylinder on the desk and jotted down a few notes.

  “OK. Like I said on the phone, this is pretty basic stuff. I charge eighty an hour and I reckon on no more than an hour or two for her address and contact number. You want photos or audio? If you do, I offer a full surveillance package. You got your fixed, unmanned, mobile. Plus GPS trackers.”

  Stella shook her head.

  “No thanks, for now just her address, please.”

  They agreed on a fixed fee of $160, and Stella strode away from the building walking a few inches taller, and with such energy that a panhandler proffering a battered Starbucks cup jingling with small change backed away as she drew level with him.

  Ray called her that evening. After the pleasantries were out of the way, he told Stella what she wanted to hear.

  “Sarah Oliver, 45, divorced, I know you didn’t ask, but it was so quick I did some extra research for you. 1923 West Montana Street, Lincoln Park.”

  Stella asked the question she’d prepared on the walk back from Ray’s office.

  “Could you do another job for me, Ray? Still on this case? Could you find out the address where she took the photo I showed you.”

  “The guy with her’s your husband?”

  “No, no, he’s a mutual friend. He’s—”

  Ray cut across her.

  “Hey, it’s none of my business, and it doesn’t matter anyway. It’ll probably take me a day. So call it $600 including expenses, OK?”

  “That’s fine, thanks. Do you want me to drop round tomorrow with the money?”

  “Nah. Let me do the job, then I’ll give you a call. Maybe it’ll be done by lunchtime anyway.”

  When Stella’s phone rang again, it was three the following afternoon.

  “Hi, Ray. Everything done?”

  “Uh-huh. Your friend’s address is 1927 on West Montana. Give me your email. I took a few photos for you. Two cars. I got both licence plates.”

  61

  Get to the Wife First

  Stella waited until the following morning to pay her social call. The drive up to Lincoln Park only took twenty minutes. West Montana Street turned out to be a tree-lined avenue, more green than grey. From the makes and models of cars on the wide driveways—a few smallish SUVs, Toyotas, Hondas, Fords, Chevys—she knew she was in solidly middle-class territory. She parked a few houses down from Collier’s, having first checked that one car remained on the driveway, a red Mustang. Good. So Lynne Collier was in. Or, possibly, out for a jog, in which case Stella reckoned she only had an hour to wait, tops.

  She slumped in the driver’s seat and settled down for
the surveillance. Her plan, should a watchful resident ask her business, was to borrow Ray’s trade. “Private investigator, sir/madam,” was the line she’d rehearsed. Informative, yet terse, and shutting down any further inquiries. And, she supposed, true. Just not a licensed one.

  While waiting for Lynne Collier to appear, she concentrated on forming a mental picture of the house. Not that she needed it, but it was one of the techniques she used to stay alert on surveillance. By the time she’d worked her way up from the porch and front door, the ground floor and the first, and was scrutinising the patterns formed by the roof tiles, her eyelids were drooping and she was craving coffee, or a cigarette. Worse luck, she’d decided to try quitting again while in Duluth. A movement saved her.

  The front door was opening. Lynne Collier emerged, dressed not for running, but in jeans, what looked like walking boots and a thick, padded jacket in a metallic purple. The shade set off a painful memory, but Stella ignored it. The day, though bitterly cold, was sunny, and Lynne’s face was half covered by enormous round-lensed sunglasses that Stella imagined the manufacturer probably labelled Jackie O. She had a cotton tote bag slung over her right shoulder. Empty, not full, so maybe she was going shopping. She pointed her right fist at the car. The indicators flashed. In she climbed, and Stella continued to wait.

  Finally, the car moved, reversing off the drive, across the sidewalk and into the road. Stella slid right down in her seat and let Lynne Collier drive past before making a U-turn and following her. Traffic was light and Stella allowed the maximum distance between her and the red Mustang that would permit an effective pursuit without getting her noticed. Probably an unnecessary precaution, but who knew what Collier had told his wife.