Cath Staincliffe - Stone Cold Red Hot

I switched off and gripped the edge of my seat as he cornered the junction onto Princess Parkway. I grunted now and then while he regaled me with stories of autotheft. The narrative was seamless, one anecdote rolling into the next. When I did tune in again I noticed he’d an amazing eye for detail. “So she says, ‘it’s OK, I left the shopping in the boot,’ Marks and Sparks were doing a special offer on ready meals for one and she’d stocked up like. Now, she doesn’t eat meat but she’s mad on fish so there’s all these heat-and-eat dinners going off and the police thought they’s got a body in the boot…”

Home at last.

“So what do you do?” he asked as I fished out my purse.

“I’m a private investigator.”

He laughed.

I looked at him.

“What, you’re not winding me up?”

I pulled out one of my cards and passed it to him.

“Bloody ‘ell,” he said.

I gave him a tenner.

“So what do you do, missing persons and that?” He rummaged for change in a little bag.

I thought of Jennifer Pickering. “Yeah, that sort of thing.”

“Not missing cars though, eh?” he cackled.

“Ha, ha.” Rapier-like wit.

“Security and that, CCTV, bugs?”

“No, I don’t do much of the high tech stuff.”

He handed me my change and I tipped him.

“Ta. See, I’ve got a mate who might be interested in this,” he waved my card. “His old man’s done a bunk. That the sort of thing you do?”

“Yes.” He still seemed to doubt me, his eyes flicked me up and down. “What’s with the wig then?”

I leant forward. “I’m in disguise,” I confided and removed the specs. “I don’t usually dress like this.”

He laughed with relief. “Had me worried then,” he shook his head, “those glasses.”

Those seat covers.

We said goodnight. I could imagine I would become a new addition to his stock of city tales. “I picked up this woman right, grey hair, painful glasses…”

Digger the dog greeted me at the door, had a sniff of my mac and sloped off, tail wagging slowly, back to sleep in the kitchen.

What would happen to Digger if Ray moved out? I felt a rush of panic. Ray adored the dog although I’d actually brought him home in a fit of guilt after his owner had died while helping me on a case. I’d quickly realised I was not a doggy person but Ray came to the rescue. It would be awful if Ray left Digger here with me, the dog would pine away. And if he took Digger, Maddie would lose a beloved pet as well as Tom and Ray. I couldn’t think it through then, I was bone tired. I needed something to eat or I’d sleep badly. I made some quick porridge, smothered it in golden syrup and stirred in some thick Greek yoghurt. Perfect.

I was upstairs in the bathroom, brushing my teeth when Maddie cried out. I went in to her.

“There was a thing, Mummy, in my dream.” She was sitting bolt upright, her face crinkled with anxiety. I sat beside her and put my arm around her.

“What sort of a thing?”

“Horrible.” Her voice wobbled.

“Do you want to tell me your dream?”

She shook her head emphatically.

“OK, lie down then.”

She began to protest.

“It won’t come back,” I said, “it’s only a dream, a picture in your sleep.” She wasn’t having it, her mouth pulled ready for tears.

“Maybe you could put your tape on,” I suggested.

She paused, considering. “Will you stay?”

I sighed.

“Just a bit Mummy and then leave the tape on?”

“Alright. I’ll just get changed.”

She leapt out of bed. No way was she going to stay alone in the room after that thing had been in her dream. She shadowed me to my room and back.

I settled her in, stuck the story tape in the machine and sat back in the rocking chair. Tom in the other bed slept undisturbed. Maddie mouthed the words to the story. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again she was asleep and the tape had finished. I padded across the landing and fell into bed. And then it was time to get up again.

When I don’t get enough sleep my concentration goes to pot. I knew I was going to spend the whole of Tuesday in a fuzzy state. I had a big breakfast to compensate; half a grapefruit, mushrooms and scrambled egg, toast and honey. I dragged Maddie and Tom away from the telly and got them to school, went to my office straight from there. I made a coffee and drank it with my eyes closed and feet up before I attempted any work. I made a list of things I had to do in the course of the day. Then I considered my appointments. I’d a meeting with Frances Delaney at ten thirty and I was seeing Roger Pickering later to give him the lowdown on what I’d discovered. That would take all of five minutes, I thought in my disgruntled mood. I pulled out the report I’d started and glanced over it. Alright, I reasoned with myself, maybe you haven’t found Jennifer yet but you’ve established some facts that Roger wasn’t sure of. I counted them off on my fingers. One – she was pregnant, two – Maxwell was the father, three – she left for university a week before the starting date, four – her friends were surprised at her sudden departure…

I was interrupted by the sound of footsteps up the path. I stood and craned my neck – caught sight of a Royal Mail uniform through the narrow basement window. I heard the clang of the letterbox and went up to check the mail. Most of it was for the Dobson’s, I left it on the hall table, but there was also something for me. Brown, window envelope postmarked Keele. Yes! I hurried back downstairs, opening it as I went.

‘Dear Ms Kilkenny,

Further to your recent enquiry concerning Jennifer Louise Pickering, 4.3.58, I have checked university records for the academic year 1976-77. Miss Pickering accepted a place for that year, conditional on her A-level grades, but she did not register for admittance. She was not a student of the English Faculty, or of any other University department, during that period.

Yours faithfully,

MRS V.HALLIDAY (Administrator)’

What?

I read it twice. Then I rang Mrs Halliday.

I introduced myself and thanked her for the letter. “I wanted to ask, registering for admittance – is that what students do when they actually arrive, during Fresher’s Week?”

She expelled air quickly, sounding frustrated with my question. “Yes,” she said brusquely, “we have to keep track of numbers obviously, and if someone had been through admissions and joined the Faculty they would be on the general register.”

“What if she’d been admitted but dropped out of the course early on?”

“Then there would be a record of admission.”

“Do you know if Jennifer contacted the university to say she wasn’t going to take the place?”

I heard her tut in exasperation. “No. And that sort of documentation wouldn’t have been kept as a matter of course. Our records weren’t computerised until the mid-eighties, space was at a premium, official records were all we could find room for and there are boxes full of those, I can tell you.”

“And you checked for other departments as well?”

“According to the formal admissions records Jennifer Pickering did not attend this university at all.”

I was stunned. Everything had been resting on Keele. Jennifer’s last known residence. Except it hadn’t been. I’d hoped to find a firm lead there, a forwarding address, perhaps the names of course mates who might still be in touch. I made another coffee and tried to work out what this meant. Jennifer never went to Keele. Everyone assumed that she had. There was more to it than that. I dug out my earlier notes and went back over them. Both Roger and Mrs Clerkenwell had spoken about Jennifer dropping out of her course, so had Lisa MacNeice. And who had told them that Jennifer had left Keele? Mrs Pickering – Jennifer’s mother. And who had told Mrs Pickering? Had Jennifer pretended to be at Keele when she was really elsewhere? Or had the Pickerings invented the story for reasons of their own? I had to talk to her. She must be able to tell me more about where Jennifer went at the end of that hot, dry summer. When I saw Roger later that day I would insist on meeting Mrs Pickering as a condition of carrying on with the case.