Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

“A lot of these women are men, you know!” Jade giggled. “And Eddie’s going to sign an exclusive three-book deal with us. Great! Mr Rodgers is over the moon, isn’t he, Sadie?”

My eyes shifted to the slimly curvaceous Sadie, the quieter of the two, who nodded slowly, then finished her spritzer. I got to my feet and insisted on ordering further spritzers for my blonde informants. Jade’s pin-straight hair was cut quite short, while Sadie’s wonderfully curly locks were shoulder length. Sadie’s hair was a better match for the strand Isobel had found. If this race turned out to be of the two-horse variety, it would appear that Isobel had placed her bet on the wrong filly.

On Thursday morning I called in at A Cut Above for a long overdue haircut, then, following my usual custom, I went home immediately afterwards to shake out the hairs from inside my shirt and rub my back with a towel. As I fastened my shirt buttons, something clicked in my sluggish brain about Isobel’s wayward husband and his mismatched buttons. But what of the letter? Each evening I had pondered on that handwritten piece of paper, torn vertically down the middle.

il our weekend

citing thing that’s ever

fe, and the thought of

ours being spent with

ed makes me the most

ver,

die

rling!

Certainly there were plenty of suggestive possibilities down the torn edge of the note: “exciting”, “life”, “hours”, “bed”, “lover”, “Sadie”, “darling”. But the more I studied things, the more I convinced myself that this could just as easily be interpreted as a wholly innocent missive. In the end, I typed out both versions, the innocent and the not-so-innocent, aligning the joins as neatly as my primitive keyboard skills would permit.

I was determined to be fairly honest with Isobel the following morning, but there were three matters on which I determined to remain silent. First, I would not mention the fact that on Wednesday night I had experienced a mildly erotic dream about her. Second, I wouldn’t tell her that I had composed another possible – no, quite probable – left-hand half of the letter, written this time by Sadie. Third, I would not confess that fairly early on I’d had strong suspicions that the handwriting on the letter was extremely similar to that on the cheque Isobel had given me, especially those ‘d’s and ‘r’s, and that I now felt certain that Isobel, for some strange reason, had written the letter herself.

She smiled at me winsomely that Friday morning when I asked if a drink was still on offer, and if she’d mind if I smoked whilst I recounted my findings.

She said nothing when I told her of my unproductive trip to the British Telecom offices. And when I gave her a truncated account of my encounter with the two blondes, she ventured just a single comment: “So you’re saying the hair wasn’t Jade’s?” When I nodded (hallelujah!) she did betray some surprise for once.

My proffered explanation of the shirt re-buttoning incident occasioned little reaction, and in reply to my question she admitted that Denis had been for a haircut about that time, yes.

There remained the final hurdle, though. The letter. I could, of course, have shown her my alternate version, in which “Sadie darling” figured as the happy valediction. But I instead handed Isobel my original reconstruction, then watched her closely as she read it.

“This is the best you could come up with?” she said dismissively.

“Yes,” I said, somewhat defensively. “It would have been another matter if you’d managed to find the other half.”

“And what makes you think I haven’t?” she said as she dipped one elegant hand into her Louis Vuitton handbag. “I found the left-hand half only yesterday – very careless of Denis!” Here she passed me two halves of a typewritten letter cellotaped together.

“But… but those are typed-” I began.

“Yes, they are. And they are the originals. I made a handwritten copy of the half I had found because I am not a computer person, I have no access to a photocopier, and I wanted to keep the original safe. Do you understand?

“Yes, I understand.”

“I’m a little surprised and, to be honest with you, just a little disappointed that you hadn’t noticed the similarities between the writing on the cheque and that on the letter. I’m also surprised that you put your money on Denis’ prize author. But go on! Read it!”

As I read the letter, I was conscious of Isobel’s green, green eyes upon me, and perhaps I succeeded in showing a wholly bogus surprise – bogus, that is, until I read the office nickname at the bottom: Blondie, aka Jade. Isobel had been right all along then, and I had been wrong. She had correctly guessed the winner of a two-horse race, while I had backed an outsider and lost. As we walked to the front door, I resisted the temptation to defend my ratiocinative powers (after all, the hair couldn’t have been Jade’s). Looking at Isobel for the last time, I wished that… well, that things had turned out differently.

Three weeks later I received a handwritten letter with no salutation and no valediction. It was no matter, though. I recognized the writing instantly. It read:

“Denis and I have agreed upon an amicable separation, so divorce is no longer my dearest wish. I would like you to come and have dinner with me this coming Friday – just the two of us.”

Oh dear! I had already been invited out to dinner at The Randolph on Friday evening by an attractive Anglo-Indian lady with deep dark-brown eyes. She had asked me to mediate in a squabble with her neighbours over her chatterbox of a parakeet from Paraguay, which she had somehow imported into the UK during the bird flu crisis.

In any case, I’ve always preferred dark-brown to startling green.

Well, that’s what I told myself.

I could see her from where I was crouching, behind the bushes. She was walking along the pavement, getting bigger as she came towards me, like all I could see was her. Only her. Wearing her usual stuff, business suit with a kind of belted mac thing over it, a short, beige one. Looked good in it, an’ all, her long black hair loose down the back. Umbrella up. Her heels made that crunchy, clacking noise on the tarmac – kind you only hear in films and think it must be made up till you hear it in real life. There were probably other people around, but I didn’t see them. Cars going past made a wet whoosh in the drizzle but I hardly heard them. Saw only her. Heard only her heels clack-clacking. Sounded louder than bombs.

I have to be honest, I wanted her then. Any man would.

By the way, this is a true story. I’m not making any of it up. I don’t do that any more. Which is something, which is progress. No, this is exactly how it happened. Exactly.

I’ve watched her every day this week. Know her routine better than mine. What time she gets up, what time she leaves the flat. Which bus she catches, tube station she gets off at, train she gets on. Which branch of Costa she gets her regular cappuccino, skimmed milk, at. What time she gets in to the office. In the city. Nice place. All steel and glass. Huge. Know what she does in there. Yeah, I’ve been in. Seen her.

She didn’t see me, though.

A solicitor, she is. A legal mouthpiece.

Then lunch breaks, usually a Marks and Sparks sandwich at her desk, sometimes a trip down to one of those flash new places off Spitalfields Market with a couple of the girls from the office. Sometimes with Tony. Another solicitor. Met at some party. Her boyfriend, so she claims. They’re an item. Not so sure he’d say the same thing.