Running Scared Read online

  ‘You told me you thought she ought to go home,’ I protested.

  ‘I know I did. I still do. But I didn’t mean you should set it up. Families,’ said Ganesh, who knew about these things, ‘are tricky.’

  ‘It’s her only chance, Gan. She’s right. She’s not really a survivor. She looks sick. She’s had to take up with the awful Jo Jo just to get protection. She’s got to get out fast.’ I added sadly, ‘And I did offer to help.’

  ‘More fool you,’ said Ganesh. His sore head was making him grumpy. But his thinking was still clearer than mine. ‘Look at it from the point of view of her people,’ he went on. ‘They will have been waiting to hear from Tig for months. Suddenly, out of the blue, they get a call from a complete stranger who claims to know their missing daughter. The stranger wants to come and see them and arrange the daughter’s return home. What does that sound like to you?’

  ‘A scam,’ I said miserably.

  ‘Too right. The first thing they’ll want to know is, what’s in it for you?’

  ‘My fee,’ I said. ‘And it won’t be much once I’ve paid the train fare out of what Tig gave me.’

  ‘Who cares about your couple of quid fee from Tig? She’s got no money – there’s no point in you trying to get it from her. The Quayles will think you want money from them –because from the sound of it, they’re pretty well set up. So, they’ll be expecting you to ask them to pay you for acting as middleman. They won’t believe you if you say you don’t want anything. Look, who knows what they’ll think? Maybe that you’ve got Tig locked in a cellar and don’t mean to let her out until the Quayles have coughed up a really big amount. You’ll turn up in this place, what’s it called?’

  ‘Dorridge.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got that right? You’ll turn up and find a police reception committee. At the very least, they’ll call their solicitor. You know what I think you should do? You should tell Harford about it, ask his advice. At least, tell him what you’re going to do so that you’re covered if the Quayles turn nasty.’

  ‘I can’t!’ I exclaimed in horror. ‘Not Harford! He’d sneer. Besides, it’s nothing to do with him. Nor have I got Tig’s permission to bring the police into it – and I wouldn’t get it. Tig would just disappear if I mentioned the cops.’

  ‘How about Parry? He’s a pain in the neck but he’d know all the ropes in a case like this. Don’t the police deal with missing teenagers? Hey, it might even be illegal for you not to tell them about her.’

  ‘It’s not illegal to go missing if you’re overage,’ I pointed out. ‘And if a person’s over sixteen, the police won’t do anything, either – not unless it’s suspicious circumstances. She’s got to be more’n sixteen. She was fifteen in Jubilee Street, and that was months ago. She’s probably seventeen and anyway, she was only ever just a runaway. There’s hundreds of them out there, up and down the country. The coppers don’t want to know about another one.’

  Ganesh tried another tack. ‘They might not want her back. She’s been a lot of trouble. They may think she’s dishonoured them.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re worried about honour, not from what Tig says. They’re worried about respectability.’

  ‘Well, same thing, isn’t it?’ he said. I began to feel this was one of the times when Gan and I found ourselves heading for a culture clash. It didn’t happen often, but there was no way round it when it did.

  ‘Look,’ I said patiently, ‘she hasn’t run away from an arranged marriage. She just pushed off because of the pressure.’

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know what that means,’ said Gan testily. ‘You want to know about family pressures? Try my lot. But have I pushed off to live rough on the street?’

  This was getting me nowhere. I asked if I could use the phone. He told me to help myself and suggested I phoned from the flat upstairs. There was no one in the shop and he could manage. I think his head was hurting and he was fed up with talking about Tig. If I wanted more trouble, I was welcome to it. He was washing his hands of it.

  I went up to the flat and sat in front of the phone for five minutes before I picked up enough courage to dial the number Tig had given me. It rang several times during which I went over what I’d rehearsed in my head – and decided none of it would do. I’d have to improvise.

  It was still ringing. They were out. My heart lifted. I was about to replace the receiver when a woman’s voice, breathless, asked, ‘Hullo? Yes?’

  ‘Oh, hullo,’ I said stupidly. ‘Is that Mrs Quayle?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ The voice was wary.

  ‘My name’s Fran Varady. I’m a friend of T—of Jane’s.’

  There was a silence. I could feel her gathering up her wits, steeling herself to deal with this. She asked in a careful way, ‘Were you at school with Jane?’

  I understood what she was getting at. If I was an old school pal who’d not been in touch for years, I mightn’t know that Jane had left home. If that was the case, Mrs Quayle could invent some reason for Jane not being there and falsely promise to deliver a message.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m phoning from London. I know Jane here.’

  There was a gasp and a bump. After that came such a long silence I began to be afraid she’d fainted. I was anxiously repeating her name when she came back on the line.

  ‘I’m sorry – it was such a shock. I – I had to sit down. You know Jane? Where—Why isn’t she on the phone herself? Is she all right?’ Panic began to enter her voice.

  If I didn’t watch out, I’d have a hysterical woman on the other end of the line. ‘She’s all right,’ I said firmly. (I wasn’t being untruthful. Tig’s situation was grim. But she was in one piece and walking around, clean of drugs, and in street terms that was certainly all right.)

  Her voice shaking, Mrs Quayle began to ask questions so fast, I couldn’t have answered any of them if I’d wanted to. ‘Where is Jane? What’s her address? Why isn’t she calling herself? Who are you? Where did you get my home number? Did—’

  I managed to get a word in at last. ‘Mrs Quayle, I’m sorry it’s been such a shock, but if you’ll let me, I’ll try and explain. Tig – Jane would like to come home—’

  ‘But of course she can come home! She always cou—’

  I cleared my throat loudly and Mrs Quayle fell silent. ‘She’s too embarrassed to call you herself, so she asked me. Mrs Quayle, Jane’s been living rough. Things haven’t been easy for her. You ought to know that.’

  ‘You said she was all right!’ she retorted suspiciously.

  ‘She is – but she can’t – she doesn’t want to go on living as she is now.’

  Mrs Quayle was cudgelling her brain back into working order. ‘Is my daughter in some kind of trouble?’ Her voice was sharp.

  ‘Not with the law, if that’s what you mean,’ I said. ‘But things are difficult for her and she doesn’t want to come to the phone and have to answer a lot of questions. Can’t you understand that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who you are or even if you really know Jane.’

  I had to play the one card Tig had given me. ‘She asked me to wish you a happy birthday, by the way. She said it was today.’

  Mrs Quayle moaned. It was a heart-breaking sound. I felt a louse. Ganesh had been right and I ought to have told Tig I couldn’t do this.

  ‘Mrs Quayle?’ I asked. ‘Would you like to talk this over with your husband? I can ring again.’

  ‘Oh, no, please! Please, don’t hang up!’

  Now she was terrified she’d lose the one indirect contact Jane had made after so long. She truly didn’t know what to do, poor woman.

  ‘I will call back,’ I promised.

  ‘Can’t I have your number? Can’t I call you?’ She was getting frantic. ‘Look, you must tell Jane that of course she can come home. Daddy and I—’

  ‘Jane thinks I ought to come and see you, Mrs Quayle. There’s a lot I have to explain. She isn’t the same girl who left you. She’s change
d. You’ve got to understand that. She can’t just walk back in the way she walked out. I’m sorry if I sound brutal – but it’s true. You’ll have to be prepared to make, well, adjustments. It’ll take time to pick up the pieces.’

  She was quiet, thinking about it. Fretfully, she said, ‘I wish Colin were here . . .’ Then, making up her mind, ‘When can you come?’

  ‘Sunday, if it’s all right with you? I can’t come in the week, I’ve got a job.’

  I should have said that earlier, mentioned that I was in employment, not skulking on street corners. It must have sounded reassuring.

  ‘Oh, of course, we don’t expect you to take time off from your job. Yes, come Sunday.’ She sounded quite enthusiastic.

  I told her I’d be there Sunday morning and to talk it through with her husband but not to get het up. She still wanted my phone number but I refused and I’d taken the precaution of withholding it from the system in case she dialled 1471 as soon as I put down the receiver.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to go now, won’t you?’ said Ganesh when I repeated the conversation to him.

  After that, we didn’t talk about it again. I could see he wasn’t feeling well. I couldn’t get him to go upstairs and rest, even though as the day wore on, he showed no willingness to do anything but sit in the storeroom, drinking coffee or dozing off with his head on the table. I managed on my own somehow, and at eight I closed up shop, checking the back premises were secure and the shop door bolted. I left the lights on low as added security. Then I confronted Ganesh in his storeroom retreat.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked and looked bewildered when I told him.

  ‘I’ve closed up. Can you manage to open that antique of a safe Hari’s got upstairs for me to put the cash in?’

  He stumbled upstairs to the flat and we managed to stow the cash away. I don’t know what else Hari had in that safe; I could only see bundles of paper. But it seemed to me crazier than ever to put a dummy burglar alarm on the outside of the place if Hari had anything at all he wanted protecting.

  ‘As soon as I’ve gone, will you go to bed?’ I demanded.

  He promised he would and followed me down the other flight of stairs from the flat which led to the separate street entrance beside the shop window.

  ‘Promise, Ganesh?’

  ‘Swear it, Fran.’

  ‘I’ll come early tomorrow, OK?’

  I stood outside and listened to him lock and bolt this door, too. He hadn’t completely lost his presence of mind. When he’d done that, he opened the letter box and addressed me through it.

  ‘Fran, if by any chance when you get here in the morning the place is closed up because I’ve overslept or something –ring the bell on this door. It makes a helluva row.’

  I set off home. Or at least, that was my intention. But I hadn’t got a dozen steps from the shop when I heard my name hailed and recognised Harford’s voice. I stopped and turned with a sigh.

  ‘I thought you quit work at eight,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting.’

  ‘Don’t you lot ever quit work either? I had to close up, Ganesh isn’t fit.’ I glanced round. ‘Waiting where? You can’t park here.’

  ‘I’ve been sitting in that grubby little coffee place over the road, by the window.’

  ‘Police surveillance now!’ I muttered.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m off duty, right? I need to talk to you. I thought we could go and have a drink.’

  I squinted up at him in the poor lamplight. He still wore the suit, but had taken off his tie and unbuttoned the neck of his shirt. He looked and sounded genuine, wasn’t sneering, and was even acting friendly. It had to be a trick.

  I debated whether or not to go along with this. Nothing obliged me to go with him. On the other hand, if he’d been sitting over the road in Lennie’s Drop-By Café (known jocularly among the locals as the Drop-Dead Café), he must want to talk to me about something that mattered.

  ‘All right,’ I conceded. ‘There’s a pub round the corner.’

  ‘There’s also a little Italian restaurant,’ he said. ‘It might be nicer. I checked it out earlier.’

  I’d walked into that one. But it was getting late and I was hungry. We went to the Italian place.

  It was nice, with green-checked tablecloths, a green-tiled wall behind the bar, real flowers in the vases and, inevitably, Christmas decorations.

  ‘I eat Italian a lot,’ he said. ‘I hope you like it.’

  ‘I eat anything,’ I said ungraciously. Because I’d let him outmanoeuvre me didn’t mean I had to go all sweet and girly. Anyway, it’s not my style.

  He leaned his elbows on the table, propping his chin in his hands, and stared at me thoughtfully. After a minute of this, I got fidgety.

  ‘Something wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘No – nothing. Why did you cut your hair so short? I mean, it looks great – but it’s a nice colour and it’d probably suit you longer.’

  Heaven help us. Compliments from the Met. Was I, by any lunatic chance, being chatted up here? I opened my menu and took a quick look. Nothing was cheap but the penne al tonno was reasonable.

  ‘I’ll have that,’ I said, pointing to it. ‘And I pay my own way, right?’

  ‘Fine. I’ll buy us a bottle of wine. You did agree to a drink.’

  When the wine had arrived and he’d poured us a glass each, I said, ‘Look, Inspector—’

  ‘My name’s Jason.’

  ‘Well, Jason, I’d like to know just what I’m doing here. I can’t believe you’re desperate for a date.’

  He smiled. It transformed his face and if Daphne’d been there to see it, she’d have been bowled over. Not me, I’d like to make clear.

  ‘Something tells me we’ve got off on the wrong foot, Fran. Obviously, we met in rather difficult circumstances – over a corpse.’

  ‘Yes, what about the late Gray Coverdale?’ I sipped the wine, which was rather nice. ‘We’re here to talk about him, I suppose? We don’t have anything else in common.’

  ‘Yes – and no. We might have more in common than you think. At least we could try and find out. I’d like to talk about you a bit. Or you can quiz me if you want. I’d like us to be friends. There’s no point in glaring at each other like a couple of cats squaring up over territory. I thought we could bury the hatchet. It’d make life a lot easier.’

  Friends, us? I spelled it out carefully. ‘Just because this is a murder investigation and I found the body, doesn’t mean that I’ve given up all right to a private life. Ask me about Coverdale and I’ll tell you what I know – although you know it already. Anything else, Jason, is off limits. None of your business.’

  ‘Why’ve you taken a dislike to me?’ he asked, disconcerting me. ‘Is it because you don’t like coppers? A lot of people don’t – or so I’ve been finding.’ He frowned. ‘I include respectable people. I never expected to be popular with villains, but I have been shocked, since I joined the force, by the general distrust shown by Joe Public. We’re protecting them, for God’s sake! We’re not the enemy.’

  ‘You should have thought about that before you joined the police,’ I pointed out. ‘If you wanted to be popular you should’ve formed a pop group. Why did you join the police, anyway? Couldn’t you have got a job in the City or something like that? I should’ve thought that’d be more your mark.’

  ‘Why?’ He sounded offended. Then he hunched his shoulders. ‘I could’ve gone for banking or something, I suppose. A lot of guys I know have done that. I just wanted something else, not just making money.’ He fidgeted in an embarrassed way. ‘I don’t want to sound a pseud or big-headed, but I wanted to feel I was helping people, making a difference. I wanted to be able to think that what I was doing really mattered in the community. That somehow the world around would be a smidgen better for my efforts. I didn’t just decide for all those high-minded reasons,’ he added defensively.

  ‘They sound all right to me,’ I said.

  He relaxed. ‘The police force o
ffers a good career structure for a graduate these days. It has to be more interesting than sitting at a desk. You meet a lot of unusual people . . .’ Here he grinned at me and saluted me with his glass.

  ‘What am I? A freak?’ I snapped.

  ‘Of course not. I think you’re, well, bright, very attractive and probably fun if you’d get that chip off your shoulder. We could be friends, if you’d be prepared to give it a try.’

  ‘Chip?’ I goggled at him. ‘Me? Chip?’

  Fortunately the pasta arrived. We must have been equally hungry because conversation flagged while we concentrated on eating.