The Dirty Game

by Solomon Carter

  “What do you mean, Mr Bradley? You want tittle-tattle?”

  “I’d like something, Mr Dewsey.”

  “Then here it is. Chauncey is a big ego type. He always loved the good life, and he has certain affectations many people find quite annoying. His arrogance came across pretty well in the courtroom for the most part.”

  “Any other tips?”

  Dewsey shrugged and looked at the clock again and threw his hand in the air. He summarised quickly. “There were rumours about his personal life –extra-marital interests. His wife apparently despises him. None of my business, really. Time’s up, I’m afraid, Mr Bradley, Miss Roberts.”

  “You’ve been generous to a fault, Mr Dewsey,” said Dan.

  “More generous than I needed to be. And here’s a special tip you, Mr Bradley. Spend a little more time investigating before you darken my door again. You said DMC were an expensive outfit. What would you do if I billed you for wasting my time?”

  “I’d tell you to stick your bill the same place as those weirdo specs of yours. We’ll see ourselves out, Mr Dewsey. After meeting you I think I’m going to like Joss Chauncey.”

  Dan waited until they got outside before he let go of a growl. “We’re getting nowhere, Eva. That prick was just a red herring. We don’t know who killed Laura, but we thought it was Balfour. We start digging on Balfour and suddenly he dies. We try this solicitor as a reference point to get some more information, and it turns out he’s the biggest dickhead I’ve ever met. This is sapping me, Eva. We need to get somewhere with this now. Laura deserves better than this.”

  Eva laid her hands on his shoulders. “Of course she does, and we’re going to do better, Dan. Ignore Dewsey. He’s a cranky old curmudgeon. But listen – he gave you a next step. Why did Balfour change his solicitor at the beginning or a murder trial? Surely Chauncey will know a lot more than DMC could ever tell us. Stay calm, be patient, keep digging. You’ll bring home the bacon on this one.”

  Dan squinted in thought. “Maybe Dewsey doesn’t want us on this case either.”

  “It’s possible. But the way you find out is through this Joss Chauncey character.”

  “When you’re right, you’re right. Next stop Joss Chauncey. But if Chauncey pulls the same arrogant lawyer crap we just got from Biggles back there, I’m going to knock someone out…”

  “If Dewsey was telling the truth about Joss Chauncey, arrogance will be the tip of the iceberg…” said Eva. Eva stopped walking, an idea forming in her mind. “Dan, Dewsey was all front and rudeness. Solicitors are trained in bluster. He dealt with us pretty quickly. They’re not far along from politicians in that respect. Maybe before we try Chauncey, we should go in under the radar and surprise him… aim for the softer target.”

  “Go on…” said Dan.

  “His wife. I’ll tap up his wife.”

  “But you’ll only hear what an asshole the guy is. They’re divorced. What about the facts? We’re after meat here.”

  “It sounds like Joss Chauncey really is an asshole from what we already know. Don’t worry, I can sort the wheat from the chaff.”

  “Fine. Just make sure you come up trumps,” said Dan, turning back to the car park. Since when had Dan become her boss? She wore it because he was stressed. Dan’s mood swings were exhausting. Then there was Alabaster and Jim Greer. Laura Gosling and Balfour. And then there was Rowntree… Eva’s problems were mounting and solutions looked far out of sight.

  Sixteen

  It took one hour to track down Eleanor Duval, formerly Eleanor Chauncey. Search engines made light work of things these days. First off she Googled Joss Chauncey Southend, and then dug into articles about his career and charity work. It wasn’t long before Eleanor appeared in images as his wife, with her philanthropic tastes in helping disadvantaged people to access a garden project. Eleanor Chauncey was photographed with several successive giant cardboard cheques made payable to the Peace Garden Project, and there were snaps of her at soirees, then finally Eva found a press note about her divorce from Joss Chauncey in 2006. It wasn’t much, just a snippet with a couple of lines buried amid a list of a thousand other notices archived at a local online registry. Two years later Eleanor Duval pops up at another Peace Garden function, photographed with a host of faces as they receive a lottery grant to develop the Gardens. Eva looked at the body language in the photograph and zoomed in. Eleanor, a good looking brunette in her early fifties at the time, looked very comfortable next to a similarly aged gentleman in a tweed jacket. Eva would have bet money the man’s surname was Duval. Now Eva Roberts stood on the doorstep of Eleanor Duval’s detached house in upmarket Chalkwell.

  Evidently, Eleanor knew how to pick them. The doorbell chimed and reverberated, and half a minute later, the bevelled glass porch was filled with the figure of a lady in a big peacock patterned skirt. The woman opened the door. With a soft and young looking sixty-something face, Eleanor Duval had gleaming brown eyes which could have been thirty years younger. They were cutting and analysed Eva Roberts quickly.

  “Yes?” she said eventually.

  “Mrs Duval, I am Eva Roberts, a private detective and I need to speak with you on an urgent matter.”

  “A private detective? Surely not.”

  Eva produced her business card. “I assure you it’s true.”

  “Whatever can you want with me?” said Eleanor Duval, reading the card and flipping it over.

  “Actually, this isn’t about you. It’s about your ex-husband and the late nineties. I think you may be able to help us.”

  “Oh dear. Not Joss again.”

  Eleanor Chauncey looked left and right, then opened the front door wide enough for Eva to step in. She followed Eleanor and closed the door.

  Eleanor Duval was not one to mince her words. They drank fragrant Earl Grey in fine china cups, as they sat in a conservatory full of wicker furniture with lots of space. The garden beyond was immaculate and bright in the crisp winter sun.

  “Joss was a scoundrel, Miss Roberts, most people would tell you that, but he was especially a scoundrel to me. He was a love cheat and a liar, a drunkard and a selfish hedonist who would do anything and then attempt to lie his way out of it. He had such bravado. Sometimes I would believe him then later I couldn’t believe a single word he said. I was forty-nine when I thought am I really going to put up with this for the rest of my life? Did I have to? Not on your nelly, I didn’t! I had good cause for a divorce, he had plenty of cash to survive it, and his courtroom career was still flying high. All I was taking from him was the one thing he didn’t actually want – me…”

  “How long were you married to him?”

  “Twelve years. We married late. We both had full lives before we met, and even then we didn’t settle down for a good deal longer. Even though we both seemed like intelligent people I don’t think either of us were very mature. I’m still not mature for Heaven’s sake, look at my clothes for instance!”

  Eva liked the woman. She hoped she could be as charismatic and interesting in thirty years, though hopefully without the divorce.

  “What did you do, before you met him?”

  “Oh… this and that. I worked in the Home Office. I still had boyfriends when most of my friends were already doing the school run. I even had an affair with a government minister in the early nineties, and believe it or not that is actually far more fun than it sounds. But I don’t tell names, and my dear Roger doesn’t even know about that. I think he’d get terribly jealous… but this isn’t about me, Miss Roberts,” said the woman putting her cup and saucer down on the glass-topped coffee table.

  “No. We’re after background information on a man called John Balfour.”

  “Balfour, yes, I remember him. The man who killed the prostitute. He’s dead himself now, is that right?”

  “Yes. He was murdered too. We were talking to him about the case of another very recently murdered prostitute, Laura Gosling, who my business partner knew very well. We were investigating people linked
to her murder. We were eliminating Balfour from our inquiries, as the police would say, then the next day Balfour was found dead. There is a chance that Balfour was killed because we believed he was a suspect, or because he was able to tell us the identity of Laura Gosling’s killer. Balfour made some hints to us about that, nothing more. That’s all we have to go on. Earlier today we visited Edward Dewsey, from DMC solicitors, the first person appointed as John Balfour’s brief when he was arrested for the murder of Rhiannon Calderwood. We didn’t realise Dewsey had been dropped in favour of your ex-husband until Dewsey told us himself.”

  “The pompous bastard. How is he?”

  “Still pompous.”

  “Miss Roberts. Why are you talking to me?”

  “The honest truth? Edward Dewsey stonewalled us. I guessed that’s what solicitors do best. If there’s something they don’t want you to know, you’re not going to find out, no matter how hard you try.”

  “But Joss Chauncey has an Achilles heel to exploit, doesn’t he?”

  “Something like that, Mrs Duval. We just need to get closer to the truth as quickly as we can. Two people have been murdered now and I think the deaths are clearly linked.”

  “I see.”

  The woman picked up her cup and took a lengthy sip.

  “I’ll tell you what I remember, and I’ll tell you what might help you with Joss. But really, the only thing that will help you, my girl, is to stand ten feet away from him at all times. The first thing one must know about Joss Chauncey is that he will try to touch a pretty girl at an opportunity, and you my dear fall into that category.”

  “Surely he’s too old for all that now.”

  “No, Miss Roberts. With men like Joss, the older they get the worse they get.”

  She fixed Eva with a look which suggested Eva would soon be shocked. Eva doubted it. She had seen, heard and lived through so much by now it would have taken interdimensional beings breaking through the floorboards for Eva to have been remotely surprised. Or so she thought. Eva picked up her cup and got ready to listen to another tale.

  With a stomach swishing full of tea, Eva shook hands with Eleanor Duval as if she were a friend. She opened the notes on her phone as the rising wind snatched at leafless branches and shook them around. Eva wanted to review what she had learned. The notepad app on her phone displayed a short list with a new fact on each line.

  Joss Chauncey had four affairs during his marriage to Eleanor.

  Eleanor found him in a suspiciously sexual conversation with his male legal assistant, but this was never proven as another affair. She calls it the missing number five.

  Joss Chauncey was a functioning alcoholic and was a constant drinker at the local Conservative Club.

  Joss Chauncey liked cocaine as his drug of choice.

  Joss Chauncey was an excellent solicitor with a vast reputation for saving indefensible cases.

  Joss Chauncey viewed the courtroom as a place to show off his wit.

  Eva had been entertained with a tale about a man so colourful, with such an outrageous libido, and such disregard for the status quo, but also a man who wooed the status quo all the way. She felt the man was more a historical character than reality. But sometimes people this large and audacious were real. Now she had enough personal information on Mr Chauncey he would not be able to steam roller her like the many people Eleanor said he had steam rollered before her. If he tried it, Eva could come back and sting him with knowledge of his personal misdemeanours. And if he played it defensively and offered no answer, she had enough ammunition to wound him and draw him out. Yes, the visit to the former Mrs Chauncey had been interesting and entertaining. But she hoped it also proved useful.

  They needed to get closer to the truth about what John Balfour knew. They needed to find his Mr Big. Surely Chauncey would know enough about that to give them something which would throw Laura Gosling’s killer into the light… and she was almost certain that the same person had put an end to Balfour’s life too, in order to stay hidden. As for Chauncey, there was little to link him to the murders. But as she’d heard from Eleanor, there was plenty of tendency for many other things. They were still no nearer to finding the killer. But Eva was determined they would get there sooner because of the muck she had on the solicitor. Eva drove to the office for a debrief with Dan. They would face Chauncey together.

  Seventeen

  Chauncey was out of town, supposedly on business, though from his ex-wife’s account the truth could have been very different. In the meantime, there was money to be earned and the truth to uncover. She wanted more evidence, maybe a confession - hopefully the name of an accomplice from the boy. Jim Greer wasn’t in the mood to hear about accomplices and the enemy within Alabaster, but Eva knew it was vital. If the old man shut the case down without fixing it, the culprits would be free to hold the firm to ransom all over again. It wasn’t logical for the old man to stick his head in the sand, and Eva would eventually make him see that. Until then she had to go off-piste and without permission. Nathan Fielding’s family were not hard to track down. Jane Fielding lived in the few social housing areas of Rendon. Most of the place was well-to-do, but rarely showy. Pulley Road was neither showy nor well-to-do, but even so Eva noticed that its residents had taken a little more care about their estate than others. The front gardens were well tended and clean, with flowerbeds and garden ornaments. She’d tracked Jane Fielding down by looking for addresses listed under the name in Rendon, and expected to go as far out as Basildon to find the right match – after all, it was unlikely that the culprit lived so close to Alabaster’s offices, but in fact they did. Less than a mile away, on the main road which looped to join the A127 toward London. Pulley Road was a side street with its own parade of small-time shops. There were sixteen local entries for Fielding, and a few of them were at 54 Pulley Road, including Nathan Fielding. Bingo. Now she had to approach with care, because Eva had at least two people to watch out for – Jane Fielding, the protective mother, and Nathan himself. She guessed the mother was going to not like a private detective accusing her son of theft. But on top of that, she would be doubly protective. Her son had been labelled autistic in childhood. Mothers of kids with a condition could rarely tolerate anything more than the cards they had already been dealt.

  Eva’s late afternoon visit was calculated to catch the house when most people would be in. The rest was up to chance.

  She wrapped her knuckles on number 54 Pulley Road’s red glossy front door. The bell didn’t work. She could hear noises inside. TV, someone clattering crockery and pans in the kitchen as they prepared an evening meal. The door opened and a round faced boy with chocolate in the corners of his mouth looked at Eva and blinked. Eva had him at around twelve years old. “Mum! There’s a woman here for you…” said the boy without a greeting. He was wearing the red jumper and a white shirt of his school uniform.

  “Just a sec!” called the woman from some way back in the house. The smell of greasy cooked food wafted out and made Eva hungry. It smelt like something and chips. Maybe beef burgers. The boy left the door open, leaving Eva looking at a distant mirror image of herself at the end of the hallway. The place was painted cream and brown, functional, maybe the way it had been painted a long time ago. There was a telephone table with a porcelain dog on it, and artificial flowers in a copper vase.

  A woman walked down the hallway with a busy air, wiping her hands on a tea towel which she dropped onto the telephone table.

  “What can I do for you?” said the woman, polite but with suspicion in her eyes.

  “I’m Eva Roberts. I’m a private detective.”

  “A what?”

  “A private detective. Let me explain. Jim Greer engaged my services to help him look at a problem he’s been having at Alabaster. Are you familiar with the problem?”

  The woman shook her head. “Jim doesn’t talk shop much, but he did say he had some concerns when I saw him a few weeks back. I didn’t think it would have been anything major though, or he
would have told us. So, why has he sent you here?”

  “Sent me?” Eva had to be careful now. Say the wrong thing and the woman would close down quickly. Jim Greer had not sent her at all. Eva decided to skip the question and move on.

  “It’s to do with Nathan. Is he here?”

  “Why would Jim ask a private detective to talk to Nathan about a problem he’s got at work? None of that makes sense, and it doesn’t sound like Jim at all.”

  “No? But I have good reason to believe Nathan has been to Alabaster Properties several times recently.”

  “Been there? What are you saying?”

  “Is Nathan at home? It might be best if we all got together and talked this through.”

  “I don’t think so. Nathan’s not home. I’m going to call Jim about this. I’m not happy. You can come back after I’ve spoken with him, maybe.”

  The woman’s face was all concern and upset. Eva knew that once Jane Fielding had spoken with Greer coming back was never going to happen. “Look. Something serious is happening at Alabaster. No one has been hurt, but for any more information yes, you’d better speak to Mr Greer.”

  “I still don’t get what you’re doing here, that’s what bothers me. My son is autistic. He doesn’t need any trouble in his life. He won’t even understand why you’re here. It’d confuse him.”

  “Look, if your son isn’t here I don’t want to cause you any distress. I’ll go. But if you’re willing, once you’ve spoken to Mr Greer, maybe we could all meet together. You’ll see the need once you talk it through.”

  “I don’t think I will, all the same. Please don’t come here again, okay?”

  Eva nodded. “Okay.” Well that went well, thought Eva, as she walked back to her car. The door closed behind her, and Eva walked away pondering her next move. Jim Greer was going to go ballistic and the degree of Jane Fielding’s concern told Eva it wasn’t going to be long before she heard all about it.