Plots and Errors

by Jill McGown

  Besides, she hadn’t been a detective. Joe had been in CID, and that had given him contacts everywhere, which would be invaluable on its own. And he had already put hard cash in as well. He had supplied all the equipment that was giving Andy high blood pressure. It was bought and paid for, though Andy didn’t know that. He’d supplied the other stuff, too, and with state-of-the-art equipment, the two of them out in the field, and Andy running the business – maybe even learning how to use the Internet – it could be good for all of them.

  But they both knew that Andy would never agree to it unless something forced his hand; it had been Kathy’s idea to make Andy believe that she was spending money they hadn’t got, so that when she did summon up the courage to suggest that Joe come in, it might be the fabled offer that Andy couldn’t refuse.

  ‘When I get another job, you’re finished with this lark, lady, so you won’t be needing the Internet or anything else.’ He reversed the chair, giving her space to get out of the little room. ‘Now, for God’s sake go and get the kettle on.’

  She sighed, rose and went past him, down the corridor to the kitchen.

  ‘And you can send that bloody computer back where it came from!’

  SCENE II – CORNWALL.

  Monday, July 21st, 2.45 p.m.

  A Stone-built Thatched Cottage in Penhallin, converted to Office Accommodation.

  A discreet brass plate informed Penhallin that Arthur Henderson undertook private enquiries.

  He checked that he could see his reflection in it, before pushing open the solid oak door of the listed building, and smiled at young Sally, who had been a very good appointment. He’d hesitated just a little, because she had a stud in her nose, but she had come across well at the interview, and she was fitting in very nicely. She it was who took the Brasso to the plate, because the cleaners left smears, and he really didn’t like that.

  Arthur had had to employ a number of people since retiring to Cornwall and setting up his business. He had worked on the principle that the world would beat a pathway to his door, when he had chosen Penhallin; he could have set up in a larger town, but he was aiming for the sort of clientele who would appreciate the calm of Penhallin, who would be prepared to go a little further in order to fare a great deal better. Not for him a poky office in a busy city street, with passers-by to see his clients when they came, and wonder what their business was with him. He went to his clients, if they so desired, and if they came to him, they came to an old-world stone-built house, cunningly and sympathetically adapted to its purpose.

  Now, he had two young men and one young woman in his employ as operatives, Sally on reception and switchboard, and a secretary who devised tastefully-worded leaflets – he refused to call them mailshots, as she did – which he sent to people living in the appropriate socio-economic band within a forty-mile radius. And it was startling, even to him, how many people had availed themselves of his services, and for what a variety of reasons.

  Not that he ever ventured into the field himself these days. That wouldn’t be dignified. No, he trained his operatives well, and they did any sleuthing or observation that had to be done, while he sat back and reaped the benefits of his very pleasant, very lucrative retirement.

  SCENE III – BARTONSHIRE.

  Monday, July 21st, 4.10 p.m.

  An Office above a row of Shops in a once-commercial Street in Barton.

  Ian Foster terminated both the long, involved telephone conversation he had been having, and his only current investigation, wiped beads of perspiration from his moustache, and opened the window wider, but it didn’t make much difference. In the corner of the room a chipped and dented fan oscillated jerkily, lifting the papers on his desk when it was pointing that way, but otherwise making no discernible difference to the heat. Oh, to be in air-conditioned offices. As it was, he was three storeys up in an old, rundown office block in Barton.

  Without much hope, he buzzed through to Debbie on the intercom that he had bought second-hand the day he had moved into the office, when he had had visions of making it big, rather than scraping a hand-to-mouth living. He couldn’t really afford Debbie, but she was the wife – estranged for the moment, but he didn’t think that would last – of an old friend, and she didn’t mind waiting for her pay when times got bad. It was very nearly going-home time, so she might as well do that as hang about until the arbitrary time he had laid down for ending the day’s work.

  ‘Anything doing, sweetheart?’ he asked, in the Bermondsey accent that he tried to hide from clients.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. ‘There’s a Mrs Esterbrook with me. She doesn’t have an appointment, but I said you might be able to fit her in if she didn’t mind waiting.’

  He felt like Sam Spade when Debbie opened the door and Mrs Esterbrook came in. A blonde with a pair of pins that could knock a guy’s eyes out at fifty paces. He ought to have one of those glass doors with his name written backwards on it. He got to his feet. ‘Ian Foster,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘At your service.’

  ‘Elizabeth Esterbrook,’ she said.

  And an accent that could polish diamonds. You didn’t buy vowels like that at no state school. ‘How can I help?’ he said.

  ‘I think my husband’s having an affair,’ she said. ‘I expect you’ve heard that before.’

  He had. Oh, well. No one was out to get her because of the knowledge she possessed. She didn’t need him to trace the whereabouts of a mysterious artefact. She wasn’t crossing her legs to reveal black fishnet stockings and red suspenders when her skirt rode up, but she was a good-looking blonde, she was wearing what even he could see was some very expensive schmutter, and she was in his office, giving him a job, however routine and boring, God bless her.

  ‘Right,’ he said, drawing a lined pad towards him. ‘And . . . I take it you want me to try to get proof of this?’

  ‘If we can agree terms.’

  He outlined his rates for the job, and gave her a rundown on how the expenses situation operated. A little higher than his usual rate, a little more on the mileage rate. She could afford it. ‘Still interested?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Because if you do get proof of his adultery, I will come into a legacy worth over a hundred million pounds.’

  His mouth fell open. He had fallen asleep, the heat getting to him. He would waken up to find Debbie telling him that it was morning, and he’d slept in the office all night. He rubbed his eyes, but Mrs Esterbrook was still there; she hadn’t turned into a wood-pigeon or a camel or his old maths teacher or anything; he might not be dreaming. But why had she come to him?

  He asked her. He had to ask her. He would like to look as though he didn’t roll over for no broad, however classy, no amount of money, however astronomical, but he had to ask her.

  ‘Because I don’t have that kind of money now,’ she said. ‘I have very little money of my own. I pay for most things with my husband’s charge card, but I think he might smell a rat if he had to pay for a private investigator, so I’m having to use my own rather limited reserves. This is going to be a long job – it might take years, for all I know. I want your exclusive services every weekend from May to September inclusive for as long as it takes, and in short, Mr Foster, you’re all I can afford.’

  He didn’t mind her frankness. He was Sam Spade, he must be. And it got better.

  ‘If you succeed,’ she said, ‘I will pay you a bonus of point one per cent of the net amount I receive, if and when I receive it. There would be an expensive and doubtless long court battle, but I would win, if your evidence was good enough.’

  He found out where and when Mrs Esterbrook suspected her husband of carrying on this affair. She wanted him to go there, watch him. That would be no hardship, but he frowned. ‘If he works with the girl,’ he said, ‘isn’t it more likely to be going on there?’

  She shook her head. ‘He wouldn’t dare conduct a liaison on the premises,’ she said. ‘I doubt very much if th
ey so much as mention it to one another at work. And taking her to mythical conferences was always risky. He uses these diving weekends. I know he does. You see – he stands to lose five times that amount if he’s caught, so he makes very certain that he isn’t.’

  Foster looked down at his pad, at the locations she had given him, the names she had given him, the inflated rate that she had agreed, and wished he’d asked for more. Mrs Esterbrook’s notion of limited reserves differed a little from his.

  ‘It won’t be easy,’ she said. ‘He runs the whole thing like a military operation. You’ll have to catch him off guard, and I’m not convinced he ever is off guard. But as long as you stick to the rate we’ve agreed, and don’t go overboard on expenses, I can afford to have you do it for as long as it takes. Will you take the job?’

  He nodded. He wanted to reach into the top drawer of the desk, draw out a bottle and pour two slugs of bourbon to seal the deal. But a quick glance into the open drawer revealed several rubber bands, a stapler that hadn’t worked for years, about a dozen ballpoint pens that might or might not work, and a funny little black plastic thing with a sort of spring-clip that he had found on the floor and had thought must belong to something, so he hadn’t thrown it away.

  Oh, well. He looked back down at his pad. ‘I don’t know the area,’ he said. ‘And there are a lot of places to check out. It might be an idea if I went down there for a day or two in the week, to get the lie of the land, so to speak.’

  She didn’t react at all, and he explained his reasoning.

  ‘That way, you see, I can perhaps work out what strategy to adopt without running the risk of them seeing me. Knowing the terrain, so to speak, will help.’ He didn’t really think that a freebie with no prospect of evidence-gathering would be acceptable, but it had been worth a try.

  ‘Whatever you think is best, Mr Foster,’ she said.

  A freebie it was then.

  ‘And maybe,’ he added, ‘I should get a camcorder. If you need incontrovertible proof, it’s just possible I could get them on video doing something that would count as evidence.’

  She nodded. ‘That seems sensible,’ she said. ‘Buy whatever you need. But ask me first.’

  Sam, you’re on a roll. ‘Leave it to me, Mrs Esterbrook,’ he said, standing up, shaking her hand again, opening the door for her. ‘Just leave it all to me.’

  That afternoon, he purchased a camcorder that fitted into the palm of his hand. That night, he packed a bag, and booked himself in at the Excalibur in Plymouth, the husband’s regular hotel, for a few nights, sucking in his breath at the inflated single supplement, but it wasn’t his money, so who cared? And once he’d done a bit of recceing and sleuthing there, it would be time for a drive over the Tamar, time to book in to the Egon Ronay-recommended luxury guest-house favoured by the girlfriend, time to walk the mean streets of Penhallin.

  It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.

  SCENE IV – CORNWALL.

  Tuesday, July 22nd, 10.15 a.m.

  Penhallin.

  The Excalibur was a big, busy hotel, with people coming and going at all hours of the day and night, and the perfect place in which to carry on an affair, but Mrs Esterbrook’s own sleuthing seemed to suggest that this Townsend girl didn’t stay in the same hotel as Esterbrook. Of course, he had money coming out of his ears, and it would be more than worth it to book her in to some other hotel in order to deal with just such an eventuality as his wife accompanying him. Foster imagined that that was what he had done.

  After his full English breakfast, he had driven to Penhallin, and The Point, when he eventually located it, turned out to be where you might expect; right on the sea-front, an old house built above the rocky coast. He wouldn’t fancy being there in a force ten, but today, with the sea doing a good impersonation of the Mediterranean, and the sun beating down from a cloudless sky, it sat smugly on some of the best views in Cornwall, slightly weather-beaten and ragged, like an old alleycat surveying its domain. The rocks over which it was built formed a channel into which the sea rushed, making froth and spray shower upwards, however calm the day. That sea-spray cooled the air, and Foster could have happily wandered around here all day, but he had work to do.

  He booked himself into The Point from Friday to Sunday; that way he would already be there when Townsend arrived, an established resident, and therefore not suspicious. Watching where she went might be more fruitful than watching Esterbrook himself.

  He got back into the car, and looked at the neat map Mrs Esterbrook had drawn of how to get to her mother-in-law’s cottage. It turned out to be not all that far from The Point, as the crow flew, but he had to take the car down narrow, cobbled streets, and then out along a windswept coastal road, at the end of which the cottage stood alone. Not much good for trailing purposes. But he drove around, and worked out that if he drove past the turning for the coast road, and parked up in one of the larger streets, he could walk along there, and then go down a jetty to the harbour, on the opposite side of the small spit of land from the cottage. From there, he could walk along the shore itself, and if he was right, he would find himself at the rear of the cottage.

  He tested his theory, and discovered that not only was he right, but the cottage had a hedge rather than a fence, and the winter winds had made it simplicity itself to slip into the garden in which there was an old, solid tree complete with a treehouse just about roomy enough to conceal a not very large private eye.

  He checked that there was no one in the cottage, and cautiously climbed up the ladder, testing each rung before putting his weight on it. One rung was unsafe, but the others were all right, and he arrived at the top, sitting on a thick branch to assess the soundness of the structure itself. It had been built by a craftsman, that much was obvious; he decided that it was worth the risk, and crawled through into the warm, spidery depths. It was happy to take his weight, and that hideout might be worth knowing about at some time in the future, because he could see right into the bedroom from here.

  He took out his camcorder, and made a test video, playing with the zoom and the focus and making certain that he knew exactly how to operate it, in case he got lucky. Sometimes he did.

  His last port of call, so to speak, was Lazy Sunday, which sat in the quiet harbour. He hopped on board over another couple of boats. Apart from the glass-sided wheelhouse, there was nothing much to see, or to record, though once again he used the camcorder; all the doors were padlocked, and there was nothing of interest on deck.

  ‘Did you want something?’

  Foster turned to the neighbouring boat to see a man of about fifty, with a short white beard, cream slacks which stretched over an ample stomach, and a blue jacket. It didn’t have braid on it, but it clearly wished it had.

  ‘Just wondered if there was somewhere I could hire one of these,’ he said.

  ‘Not like that one,’ said the man. ‘It’s not for hire. But you can hire outboards along there.’ He pointed, his eyes still suspicious. ‘If that’s what you’re after.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Foster. ‘I fancy a spot of sea-fishing.’

  He did fancy a spot of sea-fishing; he had brought his fishing tackle with him, in the hope of a bit of leisure time, and now he could see that hiring a boat was a legitimate expense. If there were any shenanigans on Lazy Sunday, he’d be perfectly placed to see them while he was fishing. See them, and record them.

  He made arrangements to hire a motorboat, then headed back to Plymouth for lunch at the Excalibur. The sun glinted on the water, a warm breeze ruffled his hair as he drove with the windows down, and he felt a little sorry for Debbie, back in Barton, battling with the fan.

  SCENE V – BARTONSHIRE.

  Tuesday, July 22nd, 1.45 p.m.

  The Copes’ House.

  Kathy had taken on a job. It meant being away for the weekend, but it wasn’t until next month, and she had plenty of time to think of how to get round Andy, who wouldn’t like her being away from home.

  But that
wasn’t the important part. Mrs Esterbrook was going to book her into a hotel, and Kathy had said she thought it would be better if she was there as part of a couple, that she thought her husband ought to accompany her. That was the important part, because she had no intention of taking Andy with her. It didn’t have to happen – she hadn’t spoken to Joe yet. It depended on Andy, really, and how he reacted to her proposal. If he agreed, then she would take Joe on as a full business partner and nothing else, and go to Plymouth alone. If not . . . well, the die would be cast.

  She dried the last of the cutlery, and put it in the drawer. There wasn’t going to be a right time to broach the subject, but she’d made him a really good lunch, and after he’d just had an enjoyable meal was a better time than most. She took a beer from the fridge, and went through into the other room.

  ‘We would get a lot more work if we had someone else working with us,’ she said, handing him the can. ‘Some jobs need two people.’

  He motioned to the sideboard; Kathy went over and took out a glass. He used to drink beer straight from the can, but these days he used a glass, because she had to get it for him, since opening the cupboard door was difficult when you were in a wheelchair.

  ‘I’ve had an offer,’ she said. ‘From Joe Miller.’

  He stared at her. ‘Joe Miller?’ he repeated. ‘Joe Miller?’

  She smiled. ‘You’re not still jealous,’ she said. ‘It was you I married.’

  ‘And it was Joe Miller who kept ringing up and writing to you and hanging around outside for months afterwards.’

  ‘I let you read the letters, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘And all that’s ancient history. He married someone else in the end.’

  ‘She left him six months ago. He’d be in there like a bloody shot, given half a chance, and so would you, I shouldn’t wonder! I’m not exactly keeping you satisfied in that area any more, am I?’

  He could. The doctor had said. He just wouldn’t. She didn’t know if she would have ever thought of Joe again if things had been different; she would never know. But she did know that life with Andy became almost intolerable at times, and seeing Joe again had given her some hope for the future. One way or the other. It was up to Andy which way.