Mystery Man (11 page)

'Do you think you've been ignoring the bigger picture?' Alison asked suddenly.

'How do you mean?'

'All these little bitty cases you've been solving . . . ?'

'They aren't bitty to me . . .'

'Don't get defensive. I just mean they're not earth-shatteringly important, are they? They're about trousers, and vandalism, and missing plants and that one about the rat . . .'

'I said cat.'

'You know what I mean. Haven't you asked yourself what these little cases have in common?'

I looked at her. 'No.'

'They're all connected to this guy Malcolm Carlyle, Private Eye.'

'Well I know
that
.'

'But is
he
not the real mystery here?'

'
No
. He went bust and then got offside so he wouldn't have to deal with the fallout. That's not a mystery, it's normal business practice.'

'That's what you
think
happened. Tell me this, how many of his customers have you had in asking about him?'

'Dozens by now.'

'Does that sound like a business in trouble?'

'Well, no. But what does it matter
why
he closed? Maybe he was fed up with
itty-bitty
crimes.'

'Because it was so sudden.
Overnight.
We arrived for work one day, and he didn't. His shutters never went up. I saw it, you saw it. He was in our shop the day before, just chatting, but not a peep out of him about closing down.'

'Maybe he didn't want to say
my business is a flop and I'm going to leave all my customers in the lurch
.'

'But nobody ever came and cleared it out, I never saw the furniture go or filing cabinets, and to this day there's been nobody looking round it wanting to open a different business, there's been no for-sale sign. And this is prime retail. Don't you think that's strange?'

I stared at her. Who did she think she was? She sold
bangles,
and by all accounts – Jeff's, in fact, although he may have had a chip on his shoulder – not very good ones.

But there was no stopping her.

'Maybe the big mystery, the mystery you were born to solve, is right next door to you. What really happened to Malcolm Carlyle? Why did he close so suddenly? Where did he go?'

'Yes,' I said, 'it's certainly a big mystery.'

I admired her passion, but passion can be misplaced. Maybe she was deciding that as well. I studied the footpath and its patterns. I liked her immensely, but I
would not
be railroaded into something that wasn't
me.

'To tell you the truth,' I said, 'I kind of prefer the itty-bitty crimes. They're like little animated crossword puzzles. They take a couple of hours, they focus the mind, they make the day go a little quicker and there's like this nice feeling of satisfaction when you solve them. Then they're out of your mind and you look forward to the next one. Nobody gets hurt, what's right and what's wrong is pretty clear. These crimes are at my
level.
I don't like
bigger pictures.
I'm not interested in panoramas, I'm fascinated by small portraits. That's why I'm not interested in what Daniel Trevor thinks is happening in Germany, and why I can't get excited about what may or may not have caused Malcolm Carlyle to close up shop and disappear.'

'
God
,' Alison said, 'where did all that come from?'

I shrugged.

'Did anyone ever tell you you were very intense?'

'Yes. Sorry.'

'Don't apologise. I like a man who knows what he wants. Even if he's wrong.'

'What do you mean,
even if he's wrong
?'

'Stalin was wrong, but he was absolutely convinced he was right.'

'
What?
Are you comparing me to
Stalin
?'

'Absolutely not. He led hundreds of millions of people. You lead an idiot boy. He looked at the bigger picture and reshaped the world. You like small portraits and, well . . . You have nothing but the courage of your convictions in common.'

I studied her. 'Are you serious?'

She studied me.

Then she burst out laughing. '
No!
' She gave me a friendly but nevertheless painful dig in the arm. 'I think the problem is that you're
dying
to take on a major case, but now that you've met me you just don't want to expose me to danger. And
that
is sweet. But I'm much tougher than I look. You have to be if you work in a women-only jeweller's, because there's hardly a month goes past without some pissed-up Spiderman staggering in and trying to grab a tray of earrings.' She held up her elfin hands. 'I could kill you with one blow.'

I took a step back and she laughed. She couldn't have known that I have brittle bones.

She turned to study Malcolm Carlyle's premises again. 'Do you know what we really need to do?'

'No.'

'We need to get inside.'

'
Inside . . . ?
'

'Don't you see? It closed down overnight. So if nothing came out, then all his old files are still sitting there. And if you get hold of those, you might be able to answer whatever questions come walking through your door right away.'

'But that would be like someone telling me the answers to the crossword. The fun is—'

'Oh
shush,
it'll give you time to tackle bigger fish. Didn't you say Malcolm Carlyle flew off to Frankfurt and claimed to have found something out? Maybe it's
in the files
.'

'What're you suggesting? We
break in
?'

'Maybe we don't have to
break
anything. Maybe if we thought we heard intruders and in the spirit of public service we went to investigate . . .'

'No, Alison. Absolutely not. No
way
.'

She smiled again. It was lovely and warm. But misleading. I knew now that she was capable of extreme violence. She had hands of death. I'd spent the last few days looking for a femme fatale, while all the time there was one right under my nose.

'Oh, look at your face.' She reached up and touched it. Her hand was soft. 'I'm only teasing you. Shouldn't you be opening up? Are you not worried about Looney Tunes messing up your precious books?'

She had a point. It was well past lunchtime now. Any other business along this street might have had a queue of impatient customers waiting to enter.

I had none.

As I pushed the shutters up Alison said, 'I should be getting back myself, but I have to see if he's been murdered.'

'He hasn't been murdered,' I said.

As I punched the combination, then undid the bolts, then turned the five keys in a particular sequence, she said, 'In those sick books you sell, the murder victim is quite often displayed in some gruesome fashion, you know like he's been crucified or his organs are laid out in alphabetical order.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' I said.

I opened the door.

I stepped back and allowed Alison to enter first.

I am a gentleman. And she is a self-confessed trained killer.

It was gloomy inside. And quiet.

Nothing moved.

The clock ticked on the wall above Columbo.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

We stood side by side.

We said nothing for six more ticks.

There was no blood.

No smell of cordite.

No stench of death.

'Do you think . . .' Alison whispered, but before she could finish, a noise came from the small kitchen at the back of the store. There was a shadow of movement across the gap at the bottom of the door, which slowly began to open.

Alison's hand found mine.

Daniel Trevor appeared. 'I hope you don't mind,' he said, 'but I made myself a cup of tea.'

It was the first bodily contact I'd had with a woman since 2002, and that was my mother slapping me in the chops for failing to send her a Valentine's card. My hand-holding with Alison lasted for about eight seconds before she let go. I was
elated.
For Alison I think it wasn't anything remarkable. I was learning that she was quite tactile. To be able to touch someone like that without even considering the likelihood of them being a carrier of bubonic plague, well, I could only perspire to that.

Daniel volunteered to make us both a cup of tea. When he returned to the kitchen I said, 'See, alive and kicking.'

'And not obviously deranged,' said Alison. 'Although in the sort of books you sell, they're all sweet one minute, then they plunge a knitting needle through your eyeball the next.'

'You have a very poor opinion of the books I sell.'

'You forget I come in here at lunchtimes.'

'Yes, but with idiot boy as your guide. I could show you fantastic things.'

'I know. But what about the books?'

Reader, I blushed.

Alison had to go back to work, but asked if she could return later. Instinctively I replied, 'Why?'

She gave me a funny look and said, 'If it's not
convenient
. . .'

I talked my way out of it. Of
course
I wanted her to come back. I was just a little bit wary of being alone with her. Starbucks was different. There were other people there. Distractions. Even being in my own shop with her was different in daylight, with Daniel there and the remote possibility of customers. But alone, after closing time, with the shutters at least half down? What would I say? There was
The Case of the Dancing Jews
of course, but it couldn't all be about that. There would have to be chit-chat. I've never done chit-chat. That or I could ask her to stand with me and look for patterns in the spines of the books, and I don't mean alphabetically. But it was probably a bit early in the relationship for that.

Relationship.
I liked the sound of that. It was so
alien.

When she'd gone I spent another twenty minutes talking to Daniel. He had calmed down considerably, and after we'd looked up a German newspaper on the internet – like Rosemary, he was quite fluent – and read an account of the death of one of the country's best-known publishers, he was quite relieved to learn that the police were not treating Manfredd's death as suspicious, but, as I'd kind of known all along, an unfortunate accident.

'I've been so foolish,' he lamented. 'But you have to understand . . .'

'I do understand. It's a very difficult time.'

'But at the end of it, we're no nearer finding her, are we?'

'I wouldn't say that. I think the dancing Jew is an interesting lead.'

'The what? Oh – Anne. Yes. Possibly. Does that mean you're not giving up the case, that you're going to keep looking for her?'

He seemed impossibly sad. It was like looking in a mirror.

'Of course I'll keep looking for her,' I said. And then added, 'As long as you keep signing the blank cheques.'

He smiled gratefully. Sometimes when things seem impossibly bleak, when you think they can't get any worse, the tiniest little light, nothing more than a candle flickering in a strong breeze at the far end of a lengthy tunnel, can mean so much. Daniel Trevor had
me.

I had Alison.

And
lithium.

He was going to return to his country retreat. He was going to tell the poets to
shut up
and go for a lie-down. He was exhausted by nine months of worry and despair.

He should inhabit my shoes.

I kept a surreptitious eye on the jeweller's via the webcam, and worried some more about what to say or do. But she didn't look over, not once. She was a cool one indeed. When there was a lull in business –
hah! –
I popped out and bought dips. When Alison arrived, she had changed out of her uniform and had that ridiculous woollen flying cap on her head.

She said, 'Wow, are you having a party?'

I had been unable to decide about which dips, so had bought every variety. They were laid out on a trestle table, which was covered in a disposable cloth. There were paper plates and plastic cups and four bottles of wine.

'Book launch,' I said, 'but they cancelled at the last moment. Have a Quaver.'

We munched.

After a while she lifted her handbag and opened it. 'We should probably get started,' she said, removing a flashlight from within.

'Started what?'

She raised a speculative eyebrow before indicating for me to follow her across the store. We entered the kitchen. 'If this place is anything like our place . . . and they look identical . . . then . . .' At the end of the kitchen there are stairs leading up to three rooms on the first floor. 'Yip, here we go.' She started up. I followed. Each of the rooms was stuffed full of unsold stock. She stopped in the hall and looked up at a panel in the ceiling. 'Drop-down steps?' I nodded. There was a stick with a hook on the end of it resting against the wall. She lifted this and prised open the panel before carefully lowering the steps. 'Light up there?' I nodded. 'Floored?' I nodded. 'Hot water tank by the dividing wall?' I nodded.

'Excuse me,' I said, 'but I didn't order a plumber.'

'We have to do this,' she said.

'What?' I asked as I began to follow her up the steps. 'And why?'

She pulled herself up into the roof space and tugged on the string light. As I clambered up myself, fearing at any moment that the vertigo that had stopped me becoming a paratrooper or window-cleaner might strike, Alison shimmied her way through more boxes of books until she was standing to the right of the tank, facing the wall that separated No Alibis from the vacant detective agency next door.

'Okay,' she said, tapping the wall, 'exactly like ours. A child could get through it.'

'Excuse me?' I said, coming up beside her.

'Unfortunately we don't have a child.' She put her hands on her hips. 'Look, we owe it to ourselves to do this.'

'We owe . . .
ourselves
. . . to do
what
?'

'
This
.'

She swivelled and
kicked
the wall. I had not noticed until this point that she was wearing DM boots. A lump of plaster immediately came away.

'Please stop,' I said. 'The insurance . . .'

'Insurance, in
schmurance
. . .'

She kicked again. More plaster cracked and fell. The wall behind now had a visible crack in it.