Risking It All Read online

  ‘Fran, my dear!’

  Ganesh gave me a shifty look. Right, I thought, they’ve been arguing about me. Gan has been moaning about my being in the garage when I could be a lodger in the flat. Hari is starting to worry how long I’m going to be in the garage and is even more worried that if he brings me indoors the family will be on his neck. I got annoyed because I felt I was being discussed as if I was a stray cat they might adopt or not.

  As it turned out, I was both right and wrong. They had been talking about me, but not about the suitability or otherwise of my accommodation.

  Ganesh mumbled, ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘No, I’ll make the coffee,’ I said. ‘And then we can all three of us sit down and sort it out in a civilised way.’

  ‘Sort out what?’ He scowled at me.

  ‘My being in the garage, isn’t this all about that? You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll find somewhere else.’

  A customer came in and Hari turned to him with the deeply suspicious look on his face he reserves for customers he hasn’t seen before. He’s only marginally less mistrustful of the ones he knows. Gan followed me into the washroom, where I was filling the kettle from the tap. Okay, I know it doesn’t sound very hygienic, but since Gan had the whole washroom completely renovated, while Hari was away in India just before Christmas, it’s all very clean and nice in there. There’s even a plastic air-freshener dispenser so you get overpowered by Woodland Fern as you step in.

  ‘We weren’t talking about that, as it happens,’ said Gan in that way he has when he’s still cross with me; sort of critical and reproachful together. It means he’s about to tell me something, for my own good, I don’t want to hear.

  I plugged the kettle into the wall socket and said, ‘Oh, right?’

  ‘Yes, right!’ He paused, then asked in a different voice, sounding a bit embarrassed, ‘Look, Fran, you’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?’

  ‘What, me?’ The kettle hissed gently as it came to the boil. I put the mugs ready on the little shelf there for that purpose and spooned Nescafé into them.

  ‘Be serious, Fran. There’s been a bloke here asking about you.’

  That shook me up. I stood with the teaspoon in one hand and the coffee jar in the other and stared at him. ‘Who?’

  ‘No one I’ve ever seen before.’

  ‘DSS checking on me?’ That seemed the obvious answer. ‘Perhaps they think I’m drawing the dole and still working here.’

  ‘You can have your job back when business picks up,’ said Ganesh, diverted. Then he said, ‘No, it wasn’t them. Anyone can recognise them straight away.’

  ‘Not the cops?’ I was beginning to get just a tad nervous.

  ‘Not the regular sort. Here, he left his card.’ Ganesh fished a battered piece of white card from his jeans back pocket and held it out to me though I hadn’t a free hand to take it. The kettle boiled.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. I made the coffee, put down the spoon and took the card.

  ‘This is a wind-up,’ I said when I’d scanned it.

  ‘He’s got business cards printed, how can it be? He must be who he says he is.’

  ‘Gan,’ I said patiently, ‘no one, but no one, has the name Clarence Duke.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ganesh was genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Because he was the bloke who drowned in a cask of malmsey. The Duke of Clarence, I mean. I know my Shakespeare. Richard the Third.’

  My ambition, yet to be fulfilled, is to be an actor. I know I didn’t actually complete the dramatic arts course I went on after being expelled from school, but that, as they say, was for reasons beyond my control.

  ‘What’s malmsey?’ asked Ganesh.

  I said I thought it was a sort of sweet wine. Gan said he’d never seen that one in Oddbins. I asked if he’d ever looked. Anyway, it was something they drank in the Middle Ages. Gan said he thought that was mead.

  ‘And he must have been pretty well tanked up if he fell in and drowned.’

  ‘The story has it, he was pushed.’

  ‘Not another one of your murders,’ groaned Ganesh.

  We were getting off the point here but I didn’t want us falling out again. I didn’t even argue that the murder investigations I’d got caught up in were not, in any sense, ‘my’ murders. What am I? Lizzie Borden?

  ‘This Duke,’ I said, tapping the white card. ‘If he’s a private detective as it says here, he may be using an alias.’

  ‘He uses a Mazda 323,’ said Ganesh, being difficult. ‘A jade-coloured one. And he wants to find you, Fran.’

  ‘Ha, ha. What for? Hey, perhaps I’m heiress to a fortune and don’t know it.’

  ‘More likely they want you for a witness. Private eyes do a lot of work for solicitors these days, digging out missing witnesses and so on. Have you been on the scene of any trouble lately? I mean, since the last lot.’

  I studied the card.

  INVESTIGATIONS OF ALL KINDS UNDERTAKEN.

  WE ARE KNOWN FOR TACT AND RELIABILITY.

  Who were ‘we’? I was willing to bet that Clarence Duke, if that really was his moniker, was a one-man band. His card looked the sort you print out yourself at one of those machines. Perhaps I ought to print some for myself. I’m by way of being a private detective. Oh, not a proper one, no office or anything like that. That means National Insurance contributions and tax returns, things which haven’t figured very large in my life so far.

  I’ve had a lot of other jobs, all sorts, while working towards getting my Equity card. Whatever I do, it never seems to last more than a few weeks, so that’s why I thought I’d be an enquiry agent. That and the fact that I’ve had a little experience in these matters. (What I call ‘experience’ Ganesh tends to call ‘trouble’.) Anyway, I’m prepared to take on enquiries (‘run into trouble’, in Ganspeak) for people who can’t go through the usual channels. Now, Clarence of the business card, he was one step up from me. He’d got stationery and probably an office in his front room and perhaps his wife or girlfriend manning the phone. That last was guesswork but I’d bet on it. One thing I was sure of, I didn’t want to meet him. I said so.

  ‘What did you tell him, Gan? And what exactly did he ask, anyway?’

  ‘He understood we’d employed you in the past. Did we have a current address for you? I said you hadn’t worked here since the Christmas rush . . .’

  ‘Rush?’ I interrupted. ‘In this shop?’

  ‘Hey, we do all right. Could be better but we do all right. I told Duke I had no address for you, and the way I see it, I wasn’t lying. I couldn’t have told him you were camped out in Hari’s garage, could I? Even if I had been prepared to tell him anything, which I wasn’t.’

  ‘Was he satisfied?’

  Ganesh looked uneasy. ‘I think so.’

  I took Hari his cooling coffee. ‘Ganesh has told me about the private detective,’ I said.

  ‘A very strange fellow,’ said Hari disapprovingly.

  ‘What did he look like?’ It suddenly occurred to me that I might have run across Clarence Duke, under some other unlikely name, at another period in my eventful life.

  Ganesh wandered up and he and Hari exchanged looks. ‘Short,’ said Hari, taking first turn.

  ‘Moustache,’ added Ganesh. ‘Bit straggly.’

  ‘Jeans and a leather jacket,’ said Hari, brightening. ‘Yes, yes, I remember.’

  ‘Bad teeth,’ said Gan. ‘Needed to see a dentist.’

  ‘Why do I get a private eye who looks like a health warning?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t I get the ones who look like Jonathan Creek?’

  ‘This is real life,’ said Gan.

  ‘They must be out there somewhere, the dishy ones.’

  ‘Probably, but they’re not interested in you, Fran.’

  That’s what friends are for. To destroy your fragile self-esteem. I thanked them both for not telling Clarence Duke where to find me, and resolved to avoid anyone short with a moth-eaten moustache and galloping
halitosis.

  As it happened, Hari wanted to leave the shop for a couple of hours that afternoon and asked if I could put in some temporary time. We agreed I should be paid cash, just to avoid awkwardness – should Clarence Duke be working for the DSS after all.

  The afternoon was quiet and they didn’t really need me. Ganesh and I chatted about this and that, carefully not mentioning the morning’s visitor. We sold the odd Mars bar and packet of ciggies. Just after four, when Hari returned, I collected Bonnie from the storeroom where she’d been snoozing while I worked, and left the shop by the front entrance. Bonnie needed a walk.

  I set off briskly, but I hadn’t gone far, only to the next corner, when a small, moustached figure stepped out of a doorway and confronted me.

  ‘Francesca Varady?’

  ‘Shove off,’ I advised, my heart sinking. This had to be the guy who’d been round earlier.

  He ignored the brush-off. He was used to it in his line of work. ‘Clarence Duke,’ he introduced himself. ‘Private detective. My card!’ He produced another home-made effort with a flourish.

  I again advised him to take himself off asap, this time rather less politely.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he urged.

  ‘I’m not alarmed,’ I told him. ‘I just don’t want to talk to you. My mother warned me about strange men.’

  A funny look came over his face. ‘Your mother?’

  I was immediately sorry I’d said it. Since she’d walked out when I was seven, I’d never seen or heard from my mother again. A day doesn’t pass that I don’t miss Dad and Grandma Varady, who brought me up. But my mother I’ve never missed. Kids are resilient. Once I’d realised she wasn’t coming back, I’d cut her out of the scheme of things. I didn’t need her, and obviously she’d had no need of me.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you on a matter of business,’ said Clarence Duke, attempting an honest expression and failing dismally. ‘Can we go and have a cup of tea somewhere?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have to walk my dog.’

  He eyed Bonnie. ‘Then perhaps I could walk with you and we could have a little chat?’

  He was a creep. On the other hand, I’m incurably curious. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But you do the talking. All I’ll do is listen until I get bored. I don’t guarantee any replies.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Clarence. ‘I don’t think you’ll be bored.’

  He smiled. He did have bad teeth.

  Chapter Two

  We strolled along the path by the canal. After we passed under the bridge, I let Bonnie off the lead. She pottered happily ahead of us investigating interesting whiffs, of which there are plenty just below Camden Lock. The canal was on our left. The road on the other side of us was invisible high up behind a bank of dusty shrubs and a brick wall. There weren’t too many other people around. I like it down there by the canal, even though not all the memories it has for me are nice. Someone I knew died down there in that debris-strewn grey-green water lapping at the concrete rim. In my imagination, which is always active, I could picture his body, kept afloat by his old ex-army greatcoat, face down, arms outspread. But like I say, that’s my imagination. I never saw him dead. I just heard about it later.

  Thinking about that, I almost forgot Clarence Duke and had to pull myself together, realising he was talking to me. I wondered where he’d left his car. Parking places in Camden are like palm trees in the desert. They’re rare and they draw travellers to them from all directions. Being a motorist hadn’t stopped him donning running shoes. At any other time I’d have laughed. They were so clearly insurance. Few people are happy when they find they’re being trailed by a private investigator. I wondered how many quick getaways Duke had managed – and how many times he’d got caught and duffed up. He was of puny build. He ought to put in some time at the gym.

  ‘You don’t mind,’ he was saying, ‘if I just check with you I’ve got the right Fran Varady?’

  ‘I’ve never come across another one,’ I said sourly. ‘And I’m not answering questions, remember?’

  ‘If you’re not the right girl,’ he pointed out, ‘then I’m wasting my time and yours and I’ll be off. So we might as well be sure.’

  ‘You are wasting your time, anyway. As far as I can see, you’re definitely wasting mine.’

  He gave me a thin smile. He’d had difficult interviewees before. He cut out the chit-chat and got to his questions. ‘Could you tell me your father’s name?’

  A prickle of alarm ran up my spine. Sure, I could tell him my dad’s name. But how would Clarence know I’d given him the correct one? Only if he knew something about Dad. As much to find out what, as to oblige him, I told him my father had been called Stephen.

  ‘Only,’ I said, ‘he was christened Istvan. They were Hungarians.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said in a way which told me he already knew this. Who the heck was this guy? ‘How about your mother’s name?’

  My mother again. I’d spent fourteen years doing my best to forget her, and here was Clarence making me think of her. He had no right to do that. No one had that right.

  ‘She was called Eva,’ I said. ‘But she skipped out, so don’t ask me anything about her, all right?’ I drew a deep breath. ‘Look, I don’t know who you are. A scrap of card means nothing. Anyone can print them off and stick any daft name on them.’

  I’d offended him, not by doubting whether he was legit, but by attaching the adjective ‘daft’ to his name.

  ‘I can’t help my name!’ he said sharply. ‘I was called after my grandfather. Clarence is no ruddy name to have, I can tell you. I had a hell of a time at school.’

  Fair enough, I couldn’t help my name either. But I felt I’d evened things up between us a little. He was wanting to know about my family. He’d been obliged to tell me something about his. Being such a little fellow, if he’d been bullied at school as he said, he’d have been unable to do much about it.

  For a moment, I even stopped disliking him. Not that I’d got good reason for taking against him, other than the fact that he was bothering me. But dislike’s an instinct and connected to distrust. I didn’t trust Clarence Duke. But I did sympathise with his having been the target of bullies when he’d been a kid. Children are ingenious and implacable tormentors of other children. They form gangs like stray dogs and hunt like them, seeking the weak, the isolated.

  My first year at the private girls’ school Dad sent me to was wretched. I was the outsider and every other girl in my year knew it. They circled me from the first, predatory, waiting. I couldn’t tell anyone. The picked-on child never can. When you’re young, failure to be accepted is a thing of shame to be borne in silence. I couldn’t tell a teacher; that would be telling tales and dishonourable. I couldn’t tell Dad and Grandma. They were congratulating themselves that the sacrifices they were making were worthwhile. They were giving me a good start in life. To have confessed that I was miserable would have distressed and disappointed them. Worse, it would have shocked them and destroyed the image they’d created of the school being full of nice young ladies who didn’t behave like street urchins. They wanted so much to believe I was happy there. I couldn’t take that delusion away from them, especially as I knew that Dad was desperately trying to make it up to me that my mother wasn’t there. Poor Dad. He thought he’d solved my problem for me. Instead of that, he’d made it worse. Dad always had good ideas. I don’t remember any of them working out.

  ‘Tough,’ I said to Duke. ‘I mean it. Like, bad luck.’

  He chuckled to himself, the last reaction I’d expected. ‘That’s until I found out how to deal with it.’

  This I wanted to hear. Sooner or later the victim generally susses out a form of defence, though sometimes there are real tragedies when a kid doesn’t. In my case, a talent for acting got me off the hook, to an extent. I could imitate any teacher with a marked manner or voice. I disarmed my persecutors by making them laugh.

  The staff members concerned soon guessed what was going o
n. It must have been then they put me on that staff-room unofficial blacklist. Perhaps they’d been waiting for a chance to put me on it from the first. They, too, knew I was different. My family had neither money nor class. I had a foreign name, no mother, a father who was a loser and a grandmother who was loudly and flamboyantly barmy.

  I avenged myself on the entire staff by behaving badly. I saw them as fair game. I thought of myself as some kind of resistance heroine fighting an occupying power. They saw me as a subversive revolutionary who didn’t know and would never learn what was acceptable behaviour, but had a sure-fire instinct for what wasn’t. A rotten apple in their snooty little barrel. From then on, until my eventual inevitable expulsion, life was one long running battle. They brought up the big battalions. I sniped from behind cover and sabotaged their lines of communication.