She also knew these things couldn’t be hurried, but Gregory promised to keep her informed until the comparison of bone from the exhumed hand and the bones from the well finally put the pieces of the puzzle together. It had begun as an adolescent lark that had all gone wrong, but the repercussions had happened because of the involvement with drugs and the evil Philip Cordell, and a pact of silence that had resulted in the deaths of two more of the group.
Once she was told that the facts were going to be released to the Press, Alex went to see Grace and hubby. Nick went with her, still acting as unpaid chauffeur, as he called it.
The couple sat stiffly in their cottage while Alex told them of the police findings as gently as she could. Steven had been their nephew, and they would be upset to hear of his end. They heard her out and then Grace nodded decisively.
‘That’s that then,’ she said. ‘’Tis a pity it all had to be raked up again, but I suppose we’ll be expected to pay out for a proper burial now, will we?’
‘It would be the proper thing to do,’ Alex said in a strangled voice. ‘I’m sure the police will inform you when the — when Steven’s remains will be released.’
‘They’ll have to send ’em straight to the undertaker. He’ll know what to do,’ Grace went on. ‘We’ve had enough of buryings lately.’
They were inhuman, Alex thought. Didn’t they care at all?
Driving back to Bristol, Nick told her not to take it to heart.
‘It takes all sorts, babe. You know that.’
‘I do know,’ she raged. ‘But I was just thinking of my uncle’s funeral, and how everybody remembered him and had good things to say about him. They were sad and supportive at the same time, full of concern for the rest of the family — and that poor kid is going to be stuck in the ground with his cold-hearted aunt and uncle just saying ‘that’s that then’.’
‘And so it is. The case is over, Alex, and you’ve got to forget it and resist getting overemotional about it. It’s the way we work, isn’t it?’
She knew he was right, of course. She knew too, that he couldn’t stay with her much longer. He had to get back to London and get on with his job. He couldn’t pander to a feeble private eye who fell to pieces when things got tough. And she had to admit that apart from this little excursion to see Grace and hubby, which she saw as the final thing she could do for Jane Leng, she had already begun to recover from the ordeal at the quarry pit.
She had her so-called Yorkshire grit to thank for that, and also the fact of knowing that the four men involved were safely in police custody now and awaiting trial. Everything was going to come out in the open, and a good thing too.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked suddenly, as she saw that he wasn’t driving her back to the flat, but somewhere in the middle of the city. For someone who didn’t know his way around Bristol, he had a copper’s knack of finding places when he wanted to.
‘Women like shopping, don’t they?’
‘Oh God, Nick, don’t label me with all that sexist stuff,’ she said in annoyance, knowing it was true, but not now, when she had never been in less of a shopping mood.
He laughed. ‘I don’t mean ordinary shopping, babe. You’ll like this. At least, I think you will. And it’s something you need, as well as want.’ He glanced at her. ‘A bit like me, really.’
She didn’t bother to deny it, and a few minutes later they turned into the forecourt of a large car showroom, and then she knew. And he was right, as he usually was, she admitted. Her most sensible talking point in these last few horrendous days had been the necessity of getting a new car to cheer her up.
She couldn’t allow Nick to go on being her personal chauffeur. He had already helped her so much. They had sorted out her bank statements and renewed her credit cards, and checked with her insurance company, and the other odds and ends in her car hadn’t seemed important after all. Everything else could be replaced. But a car was essential in her life, and it would be the biggest thing to raise her spirits right now — apart from Nick.
‘I wanted to make sure you’d got your car before I went back to London,’ he told her as he applied the brake. ‘I know how you like driving.’
His eyes challenged her, forcing her to admit that one drama in the job she had chosen wasn’t going to make her give up one of the joys of her life. She leaned across and put her arms around him, kissing him full on the mouth, and ignoring the wolf whistles from a couple of yobs walking by.
‘I do, and have I ever told you I think you’re terrific?’
‘Now and then, but I don’t mind hearing it again.’
‘You’re terrific,’ she repeated. ‘So now let’s go and buy a car.’
And she knew exactly where she was going once she had got the one she wanted. It hadn’t been more than a glimmer of a thought until that moment. But now it was decided. She would go back to Yorkshire. Back to her roots — not for ever, but just for a brief spell of renewal with Aunt Harriet. Just to be Audrey Barnes again for a little while. She remembered that her dad used to call it recharging the batteries, which wasn’t such a bad way of thinking.
‘So what will you do next?’ Nick said, when they saw the first available salesman heading their way with the usual gleam in his eyes at the thought of making a sale on a dismal February afternoon.
‘I’m going back to Yorkshire to spend a little more time with Aunt Harriet,’ she said decisively.
‘Pity. I’d hoped you might have second thoughts about coming back to London.’ He paused. ‘Or is this your subtle way of telling me you’re giving up the job, Alex?’
She laughed, and she registered, almost with surprise, how good a sound it was. A very good, positive sound. Her voice became its classiest and sexiest, her eyes as bright as emeralds, as she answered.
‘Not me, darling! So don’t think you’re going to lose me for ever. I promise you — I’ll be back.’
If you enjoyed Deadly Suspicions you might be interested in Thicker than Water by Jean Saunders, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from Thicker than Water by Jean Saunders
Chapter 1
Long before she left the flat that evening, Alex sensed the adrenalin pumping around her veins. The job frequently got her into tricky situations, and some were downright dangerous, verging on the scary and lethal. But at least they were never the same. And they were rarely dull.
And, since she relished a change of tempo in whatever she did, her choice of career had taken considerable thought, ticking off the unlikely and the impossible, and coming down to the, um, well, maybes.
After a sketchy schooling, she was cheerfully hopeless at maths, and science was a frighteningly alien country. But geography and art had always fascinated her, and she definitely had an enquiring, not to say avidly nosy mind. So in choosing to go for the quirky instead of the predictable, she reminded herself severely that she had no one to blame but herself for whatever turned up that night, or any other night.
God, what a job description, Alex thought with a faint smile now. It made her sound more like a street-walker than a perfectly respectable private eye, however amateurish the big boys might think her methods. And at least she got results. Nearly always. Well, sometimes.
The Rainbow Cellar Club was just as she had expected it to be: dimly lit with rose-coloured lamps, and smoky with an indefinable smell that was more than just cigarettes and the overpowering scent of cheap perfume and sweaty bodies.
It was familiar territory for this kind of initial meeting. Those who turned up in her office after hesitant phone calls, were usually nervous lady clients, wanting to check up on errant husbands with as little fuss as possible. For those she just needed to keep a supply of tissues at the ready, and just as great a need to keep her own emotions well under control. Beneath her air of hard-won city sophistication there beat a heart of pure unadulterated slush — or would be, if she once gave it its freedom.
She was still a sucker for a woman’s sob story, which, sh
e freely admitted, came from too many late nights watching old movies on satellite television, curled up on her sofa with the said tissues, dipping her fingers far too often into a box of chocolates, to the despair of her thighs.
But when it came to the men who found her name in Yellow Pages, they generally sought her out to investigate a crime thus avoiding the interference of the police. And if they didn’t turn up unannounced at her minuscule office, then, as predictable as breathing, they invariably suggested this kind of place for a first meeting.
She guessed that what they never expected was the kind of upper-class persona she exuded, as if she’d been born to it. It could put them off, of course, but on the other hand, it also kept them firmly in their place.
***
As she moved across the room, her long slim legs seemed even longer in the short black silk skirt and well-fitting jacket she wore. The chocolate-enhanced thighs hadn’t yet succumbed to the wearing of elastic-waisted skirts, she thought thankfully. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but she did her best with what she had.
And how about that for an epitaph! She ignored the head-turning and the wolf-whistles and the blatant remarks, and let her startlingly green eyes roam lazily around the disco floor towards the bar.
‘Fancy a night to remember, darlin’?’ a guy in black leathers said, pressing close to her in the crush, and letting his hand slide around the silky mounds of her buttocks.
‘Get lost, creep,’ Alex said, giving him back the kind of language he would understand, and a stare that would freeze a polar bear at ten paces.
‘Is that any way to treat somebody who’s looking for a good time? How about this for starters, babe?’
He pressed closer now, and she could feel his erection pushing against her. She hid a faint smile, and swivelled round as if she was interested.
‘How about this, babe?’ she said softly, kneeing him just hard enough to make him grunt, and then twisting away from him to merge into the crowd of disco dancers.
‘Bitch!’ she heard him yell after her, but she was no longer interested, even though she had swiftly registered that he had a nice bum and clean white teeth, and was probably a biker. Maybe another time she might have accepted a drink or three... but tonight she was here on business, and the guy she was here to meet was a gent called Norman Price.
She scanned the bar area quickly, used to making instant assessments of people. It went with the job. Alexandra Best, Private Investigator... even now, whenever she caught sight of the title on her business cards or headed notepaper, it sent a thrill of almost sexual pleasure running through her.
She had learned the job unaided and through instinct, some of which had admittedly sent her down plenty of wrong alleys. But she finally felt she had made it — sort of — and if she was ever asked about her job, she said with as much irony as possible that turning to crime was the best thing she had ever done...
***
There were half-a-dozen guys at the bar. She discounted the two who were surreptitiously holding hands. It was none of her business. An older man, hunched over his whisky, looked as if he was settling in for the night, and had already drunk half his weekly salary away. One guy turned away from the bar with a trayful of drinks, so he wasn’t her man.
That still left two. It would be the dark-suited one, Alex decided. He was distinguished, slightly greying with a neat haircut and a furrowed frown on his face.
It certainly wouldn’t be the yob with dirty fingernails, at least, she hoped not. She might often be involved in dirty jobs, but she was fastidious when it came to personal hygiene.
In the long mirror behind the bar she could see the guys watching her approach, and sensed that the barman was wondering what the hell she was doing in a place like this.
Her face, while not of the Demi Moore variety (nose too long, chin too pointed), nevertheless had a kind of autocratic quality about it — or so she always kidded herself when bemoaning that she was never going to be movie-star material. But she did have those glorious eyes, and long, pike-straight, fringed red hair that somebody once said shimmered with the richness of autumn leaves in New England.
It was a phrase that alternately charmed her and made her want to throw up. All Alex knew was that it was the kind of springy hair that leapt defiantly out of curling tongs no matter how much she coaxed it or swore at it... but right now, its hot colour was muted under the rose-coloured lights, and it looked pretty good, she acknowledged modestly.
What she did have — so she was told — was a sensual mix of innocence and hidden passion. They were assets that had got her into hot water as often as they had got her out of dangerous situations. She pushed some of the uglier memories out of her mind now, as she wove her way through the disco dancers to reach the bar of the Rainbow Club.
‘Mr Price?’ she queried the well-dressed gent in the suit. He looked at her, startled and wary at being approached, and she knew at once she had made a mistake.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, backing off. ‘I thought you were someone else.’
‘I wish I was, miss,’ he began with a ready smile, and she could tell he was intrigued and reassured by her well-bred voice and that Sloaney air of sophistication. It always fooled them.
‘Miss Best?’ she heard a thick voice say from somewhere along the length of the bar.
She smothered a groan. It was the huncher. The drunk. She hid her distaste as she moved towards him. She forced herself to remember that he was a client, no more, and personalities and lifestyles made no difference to her determination to do her damnedest for her clients.
Anyway, they were the ones who paid the bills for her tiny office and West End flat, she thought, with the inborn cynicism of somebody who had found her way to the proverbial top by her own efforts and no silver spoon.
She pushed aside the thought. Tonight, Alex Best’s northern background was the last thing on her mind. She was here on business.
‘I’m Alexandra Best,’ she said, extending a slim hand adorned with her favourite antique silver and turquoise rings. ‘And you are Mr Norman Price, I take it?’
‘That’s right.’
He looked at her from beneath bushy eyebrows. He was probably about sixty, but he looked older and seedier. But now that she looked at him properly, she thought he probably wasn’t drunk at all. And why did something tell her the casual clothes he wore were far from his usual style?
His hair was too cropped, and too tidy around his nape; his fingernails were trimmed and ultra-white. She always took account of such things; it went with the job.
But he had a worn, defeated air, like one of those dogs with sad eyes and drooping jowls whose name she could never remember. And he was desperate for somebody to find his missing daughter. Which was why she was here.
‘It’s far too noisy for us to talk here,’ she said quietly, as the disco music reached a chest-hurting crescendo. ‘Why didn’t you come to my office like I suggested? We could go there now, if you like.’
God, she hoped he didn’t think this was a pass. The barman, listening with eyebrows raised, obviously did.
‘No,’ Price said sharply, with no further explanation.
‘Then we’d better find a table,’ Alex said, jostled from behind once more. The biker had recovered from his kneeing, and was glowering at her now, his dark eyes gleaming with anger, but also something else.
Despite her earlier annoyance, she felt a frisson of excitement. After the boredom of a childhood spent in the wilds of Yorkshire, the longing for a more vibrant lifestyle was what had brought her to London and into this work in the first place. And this guy had a look of animal danger about him... deliciously so. And she was no nun.
She treated him to a smile and mouthed a ‘Sorry, I’m here on business’ at him, as Norman Price looked at her cautiously, then clearly remembered the social niceties.
‘Let me get you a drink, Miss Best.’
‘Just orange juice, thank you,’ she said firmly. She normally went
for vodka and lime, but maybe her innocent choice would encourage the guy to do the same.
He scowled as the barman asked him pointedly if he should make that two orange juices, and then reluctantly agreed. A couple of minutes later they were heading towards a table at the far end of the room, but not before the biker had leaned towards her and whispered in her ear, nuzzling his lips far closer than was necessary. He smelled of the healthy outdoors.
‘See you later, Miss Best.’
So he knew her name. Well, it didn’t take a genius to know he’d overheard Norman Price mumble it. But the way the guy in the black leathers had said it was something else.
Sternly, Alex reminded herself that she fell in and out of lust too easily... and all too often it had nothing to do with love, just a wild sexual attraction, as inevitable as the pull of the moon on the tide. And, incongruous and unexpected though it was, it was pulling her now...
‘So tell me what I can do for you, Mr Price,’ she prompted, when the client sat morosely looking into space. ‘I can’t help you unless I know every detail you can think of.’
She flipped open her notebook unobtrusively. The guy was nervous. She knew he didn’t really want to be telling her anything at all. Despite his attitude tonight, Alex suspected he was behaving out of character, both in drinking heavily and coming to this kind of place. Maybe he thought he could find the kind of anonymity here that was in total contrast to his normal life, whatever that was.
Interesting. She filed away the thought for future reference. Intuition told her that he was either a very private person, or somebody with secrets. She plumped for the second, knowing what little she already did. Somebody had invaded the privacy of his life and snatched his daughter. Or so he suspected. And for some reason he didn’t want the police involved. QED.
‘It’s my daughter.’
‘Yes?’ she prompted again, knowing he couldn’t be rushed.
Deadly Suspicions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 3) Page 27
