Dead Broke: A Private Detective Crime Novel Page 5

  “It’s just you here?” I asked.

  “Yes. For now. I have… friends around a lot.”

  There was something about the way she chose the word ‘friends’ that led me to believe that they were more than just friends.

  “Is Ashley Lee one of those friends?” I asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Can you confirm that you were with him on the night of the robbery?”

  “Sure. We were here all night.”

  She was being coy, deliberately so. What was she hiding?

  “Can you give me some context? Is Ashley a boyfriend?” I asked.

  “No. I don’t do boyfriends,” she said, a sly smirk forming and revealing a hidden dimple.

  “So you’re not romantically involved?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she said. She turned to pour her coffee.

  “Miss Vaughan-”

  “Sam, please.”

  “Sam, help me out here. I’m not the police. I’m just trying to track down a stolen antique. Whatever you and Ashley were up to, I’m not here to judge. I just need to corroborate the alibi to remove him from the investigation, because sadly he's the prime suspect at the moment.”

  She looked me up and down, biting her lip. She put down her coffee and paced up to me.

  “Your word?” she asked.

  “Scout’s honour,” I replied, and offered my hand. She shook it and walked back through the kitchen door. I hurried after her.

  She came to a stop in the elephantine hallway outside a door under the stairs that I hadn’t seen on the way in. She took a key from her pocket and opened the door, walking through it and down some steps. I assumed I was meant to follow her. It could be a trap, but I figured I could take her in a fight, if needs be. I walked down the steps into a dark basement.

  “I’m on an app,” said Sam. “Whippd. Do you know it?”

  I did not, but stayed silent.

  “It’s a hook-up site for lovers of BDSM and dominatrices,” she said. I stopped in the middle of the room, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. Just then, she lit a match and I was able to see the basement in all its glory. Did I say basement? I meant dungeon.

  “Jeepers,” I said, suddenly channelling my grandma. The walls were lined with whips, chains and various toys made out of rubber and plastic (I ain’t talking tonka trucks here). In the centre of the room was a sturdily-built torture table, with handcuffs at each end.

  “Gentlemen contact me on the app, we spend some time together down here and I receive a little payment for my services. It’s legal, and totally safe. We even have to rate and review each other.”

  “Like Uber?” I asked. I suddenly realised how closeted my little life was. “You do this for the money?”

  “Not really. I just enjoy it,” she said. I was now unable to meet her eye. “Although it does keep the wolf from the door. Pays for repairs to the house, more equipment, textbooks for university, that sort of thing.”

  “I see,” I said. I didn’t. The whole pain-for-pleasure thing had always eluded me. “And this is where you and Ashley Lee were on the night in question?”

  “All night,” she grinned. “You want details? Or the video?”

  “You keep videos?”

  “If the client consents, yes,” she said. “For my own amusement, and insurance.”

  “I see. I guess if they try to besmirch your reputation later on, you have the hard proof that it took two to tango.”

  “Something like that.”

  There was no need to pry further. Ashley had the ultimate alibi – something so embarrassing that if he admitted to it in court he would convince everyone on the jury. Nobody makes up an excuse like that. I thanked Sam and left the house. The night was drawing in and my adrenaline and caffeine levels were running low. I could feel my body tiring and decided to call it a night. I caught the tube back to Camden and fell into my bed head first.

  Chapter Nine

  I woke early and left home before my landlord could start sniffing around. I decided, since I had the advance from good old Grassman, to treat myself to coffee and a breakfast bagel at a nearby cafe. Walking down the street I noticed a hooded figure sitting on a wall.

  “Alright bruv,” said the kid. “You buying?”

  “Anton?” I said. “Man, it’s early! Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “Nah man! Early bird catches the worm, you get me?” he said, grinning.

  “Hey, Anton? You know people, right?”

  “Me? Yeah dude, I know everyone. I’m connected like the internet.”

  “You think you could track someone down for me? His name is Ashley Lee. Chinese-English, around twenty-five. Did some time in the Scrubs for a diamond heist.”

  “I can ask around,” said Anton. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in a non-subtle way. “What’s the pay?”

  I slipped him thirty pounds and my phone number, with a promise of the same if he came through. He smiled and shook my hand. I liked Anton. Under different circumstances he’d be a good worker and a hell of a businessman.

  I pressed on, in search of my beloved bagel.

  *

  The Institute of Asian Art is one of those colleges that has somehow survived through the years with only a few hundred students on roll, tucked into the corner of Bloomsbury and turning out graduates of niche subjects. I had certainly never seen it on an episode of University Challenge, but that may have been because they had never had enough students to form a team of four. I had a job to find it, but was pleasantly surprised by the building. It comprised the entirety of one of the Georgian terraces, set opposite a communal square. Each house had been knocked through to create a giant building and scholars could be seen at the windows, working away and occasionally leaning out to stealthily smoke a cigarette. I signed in at the front desk, having made a hasty phone call to get an appointment earlier that morning. No cosmopolitan, glass-fronted buildings with grand lecture halls here – gone too was the now essential student coffee shop (pity, as I was jonesing for an espresso). The building was large and labyrinthine, as I found out when the receptionist showed me through to my appointment. I followed her through a corridor, up a service elevator, through an office, up another flight of stairs and across a walkway before coming to the office of Professor Jennifer Grayling.

  The word ‘office’ is a generous term. It was more of a closet, with racks of shelves and a broken photocopier in the corner. Her desk was small, a laptop balanced on a heap of papers and textbooks.

  “Mr Cole?” said Professor Grayling, standing and knocking over a mug of pencils. She leaned over to shake my hand and offered me a seat. I had to remove a pile of essays first. It wasn’t that the place was messy, more that there was not enough room for the amount of stuff she had.

  “My friends just call me Cole, Professor,” I said.

  “Then I insist you call me Jenny,” she smiled. She was in her mid-forties, dark hair in a bob with a single silver streak hanging down the right hand side of her face. Her smile revealed some crows feet around her eyes, which made her a lot sexier than I would have expected an art professor to be. She dressed in a style that was probably called something like ‘academic chic’ (I wouldn’t know, I lost track of fashion in the mid-nineties. My version of smart-casual is double denim). She wore a smart miniskirt and a white sleeveless shirt. Her arm bore a tiny delicate tattoo of a Chinese dragon. It was a striking juxtaposition from the professional image in front of me.

  “Nice ink,” I noted, pulling out my notepad.

  “Hmm? Oh, that. It was a birthday present to myself. I thought it fitting, given my chosen subject.”

  “Kind of scary, a dragon, for a mild-mannered academic?” I joked.

  “Whoever said I was mild-mannered?” she grinned, revealing the dimple again. I had the strange sensation I was being flirted with. It was an alien experience for me. “The dragon in ancient Chinese culture was always seen in a positive light. It lived in the clouds and was associated with life-giving rains.”

  “Consider me schooled. Does he have a name?”

  “Han,” said Jenny.

  “Like… Han Solo?”

  She laughed. It was a rich, dirty guffaw.

  “It was a dynasty in the first century BC. But I don’t think you came to talk about tattoos?”

  She had the sort of plummy English accent that the girls in my boarding school had. All horses and jolly hockey sticks. I had fallen in love with many girls in my teens with that voice and it all came flooding back to me.

  “No, of course not. The auctioneer at Barnaby’s gave me your name, told me you were the expert when it came to Asian art. You’ve certainly proved as much already.”

  I explained the situation. The skull, the robbery, the investigation. She stared at me unblinking until I came to the end. I paused to see if I had put her to sleep with the mundanity of the tale.

  “I can’t place your accent,” she said. She pulled a small wooden box from her desk drawer and opened it. The box was Asian, ornately carved and looked hundreds of years old. She reached into it and pulled out a pouch of tobacco and a pack of cigarette papers. “New York?”

  “You got me! Manhattan, but with a heavy dose of London,” I nodded. “I went to school here and I’ve been here for the last ten years or so. But, the skull? You inspected it?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, expertly drizzling tobacco into the Rizla while keeping eye contact. “Sorry, it’s a terrible habit. One I intend to break...one day.”

  Was she stalling?

  “But yes, the skull. It’s not often an artefact of that sort of notoriety comes into the city. And if it does, I certainly don’t get to look at it. I’m grateful to Mr Frankland for bringing it to my attention.”

  “So Frankland called you about it?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’ve been able to help out Barnaby’s in the past with verifying some antiques. They’ve been very kind in letting me see any other artefacts that may come into their auction rooms.”

  She raised the roll-up to her lips and licked the gummed strip, long and slow. I was starting to feel like I should leave the two of them alone. It was like being a gooseberry on date night.

  “What’s so notorious about the skull?” I asked. “I’ve done a little research, but all I come up with is rumours.”

  Jenny placed her cigarette down on the desk, locking me with her gaze once more.

  “It’s history is fascinating. It was commissioned by an ancient warlord. He had many enemies but when he was disposing of one of them, a soldier of the emperor, the soldier swore to return in another life and take his revenge. The warlord was superstitious and believed him. He doubled his security, became paranoid for the rest of his life. Everywhere he looked, he expected to see the reincarnated soldier, ready to kill him.”

  “Poor little warlord,” I said.

  “Don’t feel too sorry for him. He murdered thousands of people,” she continued. “So this man is a nervous wreck, and one day he’s in bed when a tiger comes through his window. It was just looking for food and shelter, but found the warlord in his pyjamas. The warlord yelled, tried to defend himself but, well, it’s a tiger and it had the upper hand. He thought it was the dead soldier, come back to get his revenge. His guards were asleep on the job, but a passing maid burst in and sliced the tiger’s head clean off with a sword.”

  “Woah! Twist ending.”

  “The warlord was so grateful and amazed that he fell in love with her and proposed marriage, there and then. And for his wedding present to her, guess what he got her?”

  “Not a fondue set?” I chanced.

  “The Jewelled Skull of Hangzhou,” she finished. “How’s that for notoriety?”

  I scribbled down a brief note on my pad.

  “You tell a mean story. You should do audiobooks,” I said. “I heard rumours of the occult? They use it in ceremonies?”

  Jenny snorted and stood to grab a file from a shelf. She laid it open on her desk, showing some pictures of the skull itself.

  “I’m a historian, Cole. I deal in facts,” she smirked. “That’s how the jewelled skull came to be. How it was used after that is a travesty to its memory.”

  “How so?”

  “The warlord was killed by his wife. If you believe in that sort of thing – and the warlord and his cronies definitely did – then she was the reincarnated soldier who eventually got his revenge. Or her revenge. Whatever.”

  “Do… do you believe that?”

  “Please! He was a mass-murdering warlord. There’s a high probability that he tried to rape her or kill her or both. She was handy with a sword as we know, so she finished him off,” Jenny said. She was gazing longingly at the roll-up on her desk.

  “Shall we take this outside?” I offered. She smiled.

  “Thank you! Sorry, it’s pathetic...”

  We negotiated the hallways of the university once more and emerged into the rear gardens, which had been amalgamated into one large car park and a few outdoor seating areas to eat and smoke. Jenny lit up and turned the tables on me.

  “So what’s your interest in the skull?”

  “Purely professional. A client wants to retrieve it. They pay, I find.”

  “Simple as that?” she said, letting the smoke drift slowly from her lips. “So does PI Cole always get his man?”

  “Just like the mounties.”

  We stood for a moment, an easy silence. The smoke circled up and into the London air, mixing with the smog and fumes of the city.

  “Who would want the skull?” I asked.

  “Crazy occultists? Common jewel thieves?” Jenny guessed.

  “Historians?”

  “Ha! Well we certainly wouldn’t be able to afford it. There’s not much money in pure research. No, we’re happy to look on from the sidelines while the crazy billionaires of the world collect the artefacts for us.”

  I thanked her for her time and handed over my business card, in case she thought of anything. I was about to make my exit when she grabbed my arm.

  “There is someone you could speak to. Elias Gunner. He’s over at the Museum of Ancient Art. He’s a friend.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I smiled, despite myself. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Jenny.”

  I walked away, refusing to turn back in case she was watching.

  *

  I walked to the nearby Bedford Square and took a seat on a bench. Jenny Grayling had had quite the effect on me. She was a fine looking woman, and I think we had a spark between us. I couldn’t be quite sure. I had never been completely confident in the dating game, especially since Becky had disappeared. Your partner of five years running out on you tends to leave you a little shell shocked, and even after the initial disappearance, once the police investigation had died down, I found it hard to form relationships. Can you blame me?

  Truth is, we were going through a rocky patch when she left. Not a scream and shout, throwing things at the wall kind of rocky patch, more a silent treatment and working late to avoid talking kind of deal. She worked long hours at the home office. She pulled sixty to seventy hour weeks, plus drinks at the office at midnight. She was a ‘rising star’. Then… she vanished. The thought of those first few weeks after I reported her missing made me shudder. I was in a personal hell, not helped by the police tracking my every move. Eventually, it was deemed that she had just run away. With no body and no sign of foul play, they had nothing on me. The relief I felt at being considered innocent was marred by the fact that my fiancee had run out on me.

  I shook off the memory and got back to the job. I pulled out my phone and dialled.

  “What now?” Dylan answered.

  “Hello to you too,” I said. “Sorry, are you at work?”

  “No, why?”

  “It sounded like I was interrupting you.”

  “You are. Homes Under The Hammer is on.” Dylan was a property porn superfan.

  “I apologise. I just wondered if you could look up an address for me?”

  “Cole, you are literally talking to me from a mobile phone. You know you can get the internet on it, right?”

  I laughed.

  “On this thing? The only thing it can multitask as is a paperweight.

  I could almost hear the eye roll through the phone.

  “What do you need?”

  I asked her for the Museum of Ancient Art and she spat back an address immediately, which I noted down on my pocketbook.

  “Making headway?” she asked.

  “Not sure yet. But I’m definitely getting my ten thousand steps in for the day,” I said. “Any messages?”

  “I don’t work for you Cole, remember? This is just a favour.”

  “Oh yeah. Sorry, force of habit.”

  I said goodbye, apologised again, and hung up. Looking around, the sun peeked through the clouds and I saw London in a new light. It was hard to remember what a great city it was, especially when you delved around its darkest corners like I did.

  The square was beautiful, but I couldn’t stay and watch the birds any longer. I had a man to see. Anton had texted me. He had managed to track down Ashley Lee, and it was high time I paid him a visit.

  I stood and walked back to Charing Cross Road, headed for the underground station. The crowds suddenly got thicker and I realised I was bang on the lunchtime rush. Before I could get to the station entrance, which was flanked by people handing out free newspapers, my phone rang. I pushed my way through the crowd to a shop window, where I answered the call and pressed the phone against my ear in an effort to hear the person on the other end.

  “Cole Investigations?”

  “Cole? It’s DS Mercury.”

  Detective Sergeant Sindhu Mercury, affectionately known to her friends as ‘Freddie’, was a friend of a friend. We had found ourselves comparing professions at a drinks party on one of the few times I had been invited to one. She was one of the only cops to believe I was innocent when Becky disappeared.

  “Freddie? Hi!” I said, but her tone informed me that this wasn’t a social call. “I mean, how can I help you, Detective?”