Peter James - Dead at First Sight

Then he left his perch, ambled over to the bar and ordered a second Space Dust, feeling pleasantly woozy, but unpleasantly anxious. Potent beer at 8.5 per cent, so he needed to be careful, but at the same time he needed the courage it gave him. This was, truth be known, his first date in over forty-five years, since he had first taken Rozanna to the prom.

As he headed back to his table, the calm of the early evening was shattered by the reverb of a bunch of tattooed, mostly shaven-headed beefcakes in singlets, throbbing by on Harleys, all thinking they looked pretty macho.

‘Dickheads,’ he murmured under his breath, and checked his phone. No response.

Evelyne Desota. What a babe. So sweet. He loved how much she cared about her family. So much more concerned than Rozanna had ever been. And what a night lay ahead! He’d blown a wad on the ocean-view honeymoon suite at the Hyatt Centric. Champagne on ice was waiting up there. He’d blown another wad on filling the suite with flowers. Petals on the bed read out, Evelyne, I love you!

He couldn’t wait to see her face when she walked in there.

He flipped down through the recent texts from her, the last one 12.02 p.m.

Matt, I cannot wait, finally to be in your arms! Tonight! At last.

My darling, my love, Matt. I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off you for long;-)

God, why didn’t you and I meet years ago? My heart is exploding to meet you, finally! XXXXX

His phone pinged.

He looked down, hopefully. The display had a message in red below the one he had sent a few minutes ago.

Not Delivered

He tried again.

Almost instantly the same message appeared.

Not Delivered

Some of his recent casework had involved internet fraud, and he’d familiarized himself with all the workings of computers and phones. Familiarized himself enough to understand what was happening.

She had blocked him.

Jack Roberts had been at his desk, in his comfortable office, since 6 a.m., as he was most days. A tall, muscular man in his forties, with a shiny head and a light beard, he exuded natural charm which always inspired confidence in his clients. But he could be tough as nails at the flick of a switch, when he needed to be.

He retained the same enthusiasm for his work as he had as a youngster, when his dad had taken him to see The Spy Who Loved Me. He had been immediately captivated by James Bond, and determined, one day, to be like him.

At the age of twenty-one he began working for a firm that traced people, and four years later started his own private investigation agency, Global Investigations. His company, based in a modern low-rise office block, offered a range of services including carrying out background checks, tracing missing persons, surveillance of suspected unfaithful spouses and investigating fraud. During the past few years, much of their business was with online scamming, and increasingly with the new menace of so-called ‘romance fraud’.

With three beautiful daughters and a wife he still adored every bit as much as when they had first married, he loved the photographs of his family on his desk. They gave him an often-needed reassurance of normality in what seemed to him to be an increasingly toxic world — all the more so with the shameless targeting of the vulnerable and elderly by online predators.

He liked the early morning, the sense of being ahead of the world. In the silence of his company’s otherwise empty first-floor office suite with a view across the quiet high street, he caught up on his emails and the overnight reports filed by his field agents. He was smiling as he read through a surveillance report emailed from one of his agents.

The man had spent two days concealed in a tree, in pelting rain, watching a secluded cottage in Dorset, the suspected illicit love nest of a couple having an affair. It reminded Jack of a case early on in his career. He had spent three days concealed in a hedge bordering a lay-by, watching and photographing a man who had been claiming disability benefits, who was out every day, digging in his cottage garden. Jack had worn his ghillie camouflage suit to reduce the chances of being spotted. Around midnight on the first day a car had pulled into the lay-by, and a man got out and walked straight towards him. Convinced he had been spotted, he braced himself. Instead the stranger unzipped his flies, urinated on him, blissfully unaware of his presence, and drove off.

Some parts of being out in the field he really did not miss, he reflected.

‘Good morning, Jack, what are you looking so cheerful about?’ his long-standing secretary asked, breezing into the room.

He decided she might take it the wrong way if he said, ‘Being peed on,’ and instead simply replied, ‘Oh, nothing, Lucy.’

‘Your 8.30’s here.’

He glanced at his calendar on his screen. ‘Elizabeth Foster? Romance fraud issue?’

‘That’s her.’

‘Fine, show her in.’

He stood up as a smartly dressed fair-haired woman in her mid-thirties entered. She was a lot younger than most victims of romance fraud, who were more usually in their fifties and upwards. He shook her hand, ushered her to the black leather sofa in front of his desk, then sat down in a chair beside her and picked up a lined pad and a pen. It always put his clients at ease to sit beside them rather than the more confrontational position of facing them. ‘Would you like some tea or coffee, Ms... Mrs... Foster?’

‘Liz is fine — and just some water would be good, thank you.’

He gave the instruction through the intercom, then asked her if she would be OK with him recording the interview. She was. He placed the recorder on the coffee table in front of her. ‘So, Liz, how can I help you?’

Wringing her hands nervously, she said, ‘My mother is being conned blind by someone she met a few months ago on an internet dating site, and won’t believe the man’s not real. She’s in thrall to him. She’s already paid some cash and I’m scared stiff he’ll keep going until he’s bled her dry and she’s lost her home and everything.’

It was an all-too familiar story. ‘Cat-fishing’, the Americans called it. He did his best to put her at ease, mentally adding that she was probably worried about her inheritance, too. ‘OK, can you tell me about your mother — start from the beginning.’

She paused, as if gathering her thoughts. ‘Her name is Lynda Merrill. She’s fifty-nine and was totally devoted to my... our... father, who died four years ago after a horrible time with early-onset dementia. He worked in the Diplomatic Service and we lived abroad, moving around for much of our lives — my two brothers and I. When he retired, my parents came back to England and settled in Surrey, just outside Godalming, near Guildford. When he became ill they moved to Hove, to be near myself and my husband.’

Jack jotted down a note.

‘Dad did everything, taking care of all the bills, and Mum was totally dependent on him. She was lost for a long while after he died and they didn’t have many friends here. Both my brothers live abroad — one in California and the other in Australia — so it sort of fell to myself and my husband, Don, to take care of her. She wasn’t that tech-savvy, so Don pretty much taught her how to use her computer for more than just emails and changed her old phone for a smart one. The next thing I knew was that she very excitedly told me she’d joined an online dating agency. A recently widowed member of her book group had told her about a wonderful man she’d met online. So mother decided to join one.’ She hesitated.

‘As a lot of single people do,’ Jack encouraged.

‘Absolutely. Next thing, she told me she’d met someone. At first I was delighted — I thought he was probably a retired professional, someone like Dad, until one day I went round to the house and saw a picture of this — er — fellow — on her computer screen. A very good-looking man, younger than my mum, whose name, she told me, was Richie Griffiths.’