Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

That was odd, I thought. Usually reps stayed at fleapits and charged the higher allowance to make a bob or two, not the other way around. I was about to point this out, even though I’m sure Sullivan was way ahead of me, but then he leaned over the table and kissed me full on the mouth and in public, and it went straight out of my head. I had other things to worry about.

“My daughter has a crush on her road-safety officer,” I said. Lately we’d taken to having lunch on Saturdays, when Susan went to Josie’s. “She thinks he’s handsome, clever, funny, a real scream-”

“That doesn’t sound like a crush.” The gravel in his throat churned up in laughter. “It sounds to me like she’s found a friend, but in any case, where’s the harm? She’s nine.”

“Hero worship? Nothing.” I downed half a glass of wine in a single swallow. “Providing she grows out of it.”

And there it was again, too much damned Chianti, because suddenly I was blurting out my own stupidity at falling in love with an older, married man-

“Whoa.” His hand covered mine and half the table. “Why do you keep blaming yourself? The bastard knew exactly what he was doing, Lois. He’s the one who preyed on your youth and innocence. He’s the one who led you on, lied to you, and cheated. And Lois, he’s the one who bailed when you got pregnant.”

I’d never really thought of it like that, any more than I’d imagined Stephen Rolands as a child molester, who ought to be locked up and the damn key thrown away for good. If Sullivan ever got his hands on him, so help him, he said, Rolands would need a bloody plastic surgeon. What odds the bastard was still doing it today?

“Is he still teaching?”

“Long Road Secondary Modern, but-”

“But nothing. You said yourself, you’d only just turned seventeen, but times have changed in ten years, Lois. Rock and roll has taken over, Teddy boys are in, girls are wearing make-up, looking older. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny Rolands is targeting fifteen-year-olds or younger.”

I wanted to do something, say something, be really grown up about this business of scales dropping from the eyes. Instead I burst into tears.

“Don’t worry, we’ll stop him,” Sullivan said softly. “He won’t ruin any more lives, you have my word.”

“It’s not that,” I blubbed. In fact, it wasn’t even the thought of Susan’s father rotting in jail – nothing half so noble.

The thing is, right up till that moment, I’d genuinely believed that I was special.

It’s surprising how businesslike you become when there are no illusions left. How detached you feel snapping adulterous husbands with mistresses/call girls/rent boys and in places most decent people couldn’t imagine, or how disconnected you become furnishing cast-iron proof of wives with gambling addictions, drug addictions, lovers, or just a love affair with the bottle. After all, who was I to judge what constitutes an unfit mother? I only needed to take one look in the mirror.

As a result, shades of grey no longer figured in my life. My job was to secure Susan’s future, and whereas before, when it came to runaway children, my heart was torn between finding them and reporting their whereabouts to their parents, I simply reminded myself that if I hadn’t intended to return them, I shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. Black and white worked well. With the cheque from Mrs Cuthbertson’s solicitor, for instance, I could send Susan on a foreign-exchange visit, maybe two. Her life would never be like mine.

So Guy Fawkes Night came and went. We roasted potatoes in the bonfire, let off rockets from a milk bottle, tied Catherine wheels to the next-door neighbour’s shed, and frightened his dog with our jumping jacks. Susan took up ice skating and fell in love with horses, and since cases didn’t come in any faster, I found myself with more time on my hands than I’d ever known.

That’s what comes from being too efficient.

Which is why I was sitting at my desk one Wednesday afternoon, poring over the photograph of Stanley Hall’s dead body.

Someone broke his neck with one clean snap, Sullivan told me, shortly after the results of the postmortem had come through. That, to me, suggested someone who’d been in the army. You can’t kill that cleanly and that swiftly without training and (I’m sad to say) without practice. Then there was the trunk. Commercial representatives in motor oil don’t lug around huge amounts of samples. There are no demonstration models to tuck away in cases. For one night’s stay, he wouldn’t need much in the way of change of clothing, and as a lowly rep aged twenty-six from a council house in London’s notorious East End, he was unlikely to be sporting a tuxedo.

I made myself a cup of tea and dunked a ginger nut. Why the Belle Vue, either? I’d never met Stanley Hall and maybe it was unfair to judge, but somehow I wasn’t getting the impression that this was his own special personal treat. That blue check suit was more at home on a bookie’s runner than at Brighton’s top hotel. If Hall was pampering himself on the sly, subsidizing the room rate out of his own pocket, surely he’d have treated himself to more apposite attire? Or at least, like me, rented something suitable? Questions, questions, questions. I could see why Sullivan was so frustrated. The difference was, he had a dozen other cases to work on, while I had nothing to distract me except a bit of filing and maybe window cleaning. (It’s Christmas that widens the gulf in marriages to the point of irrevocability. Not the run-up).

More tea. More ginger nuts. And I guess it’s all that osso bucco and fettuccine, but I noticed the other day that my hips have got some shape at last, and those poached eggs on my chest no longer need so much cotton wool inside their bra. And I thought of Stanley Hall. His body still not released for burial. What his poor mother must be going through-

“Sullivan, it’s me. Well, no, it’s not me, of course, it’s the security manager. That’s who killed Stanley Hall.”

“Lois, slow down. You’re running all your words into one.”

“Then listen faster, Sullivan. Why didn’t Stanley Hall check out on time?”

“Because he was dead, darling.”

“Yes, but why didn’t someone go and check? He was supposed to have vacated the room by 9:30 in the morning, yet the “Do Not Disturb” sign was still hanging on the doorknob after lunch. Someone either told Housekeeping that this was fine-”

“She says cleaning two-twenty-three wasn’t on her list.”

“Exactly. Or, if you’d only let me get a word in edgeways, someone deleted that room number from her roster. And the only other person who has access to the housekeeper’s room is the manager of security!”

After eight years in the PI business, I know hotels inside out.

“The very first thing that struck me about him was his military bearing,” I continued firmly, before he could interrupt again. “I can’t be sure, but you check his army records and if he didn’t serve in Korea and have experience of one-to-one combat, I’ll eat my brand-new pedal pushers.”

“Please don’t, you look unendurably sexy in them.” I could hear his pencil scratching down the line. “So assuming you’re right, that’s taken care of means and opportunity. How about a motive?”

“Don’t CID ever talk to ordinary people?”

All it needed was a few discreet enquiries of the staff at the Belle Vue – and okay, I admit it, a few discreet ten-pound notes as well – to drag out the fact that three or four times in the past year, some of their clients had been robbed.

“The desk clerk confirmed – incidentally, I’m expecting Her Majesty’s police force to reimburse me for these expenses – but anyway, he confirmed that these robberies coincided with every one of Stanley Hall’s visits.”