A Jess Bridges Mystery
‘How did you meet Leo, Jess?’ asked Freddie.
Our first meeting had been over the dead body of a college bursar and I’d not been wearing any clothes at the time, just a few sheets of newspaper. With great difficulty, I restrained my usual urge to blurt out too much detail.
‘We met on a crime scene.’ I leant back to make room for my cup and thanked the waiter for the cappuccino he’d made for me.
‘It’s hard to imagine him as a serious policeman.’ Freddie’s smile turned thoughtful. ‘I always thought him too gentle for that line of work.’
‘But if you know Leo well, you’ll be aware that there’s a toughness to him. He’s a perennial, not an annual.’
Freddie chuckled. ‘Yes, he’s survived the frost. So nice to see him talking to Janice again.’
It really wasn’t. ‘Hmm.’
‘They didn’t get on very well for years after she ended things.’ – What? – ‘More pancakes, Jess?’
Lauren must’ve caught my deer-in-headlights expression. ‘Freddie, I think you might’ve put your foot in it.’
‘What’ve I done now?’ He looked around in all innocence.
‘I don’t think Jess knew – about Leo and Janice.’
Why didn’t I know?
‘Oh, that?’ Freddie waved it away. ‘Ancient history. It must be… what, fifteen years ago? I mean, I had wondered if they might… but you’re on the scene now and clearly he’s very happy with you.’ He beamed at me. ‘Another pancake?’
‘Er, no, thanks, I think I might unpack.’ I picked up my cappuccino to stage a strategic retreat while I came to terms with this new information. ‘Which room are we staying in?’
Freddie beckoned the manager. ‘Rebecca, this, as you’ve probably guessed, is Jess. Jess, Rebecca.’ He gave what was clearly another old friend a one-armed hug. ‘It’s all thanks to Rebecca that we’ve got these classy digs for the weekend. I keep asking her to sit down with us but she’s always on duty.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get her drunk later and make her relax.’
This had to be the woman Leo had mentioned, the friend of Lauren who had got us the discount. I gave her a friendly smile.
‘I’m off tomorrow,’ Rebecca said, patting Freddie’s shoulder. ‘Just let me do my job for now.’
‘We’ll keep you to that. Would you be an angel and show Jess to her room?’
‘Of course, Freddie.’ She helped me up by moving my chair back so I didn’t spill the coffee.
I followed Rebecca to the opposite end of the cabin. I grabbed the suitcase we’d abandoned just inside the door.
‘Let me take that,’ said Rebecca. She had a great voice, like a BBC programme announcer. Everything about her was classy, which I suppose fitted the job. Pale-skinned with blue eyes and tousled collar-length auburn hair, she was pretty but not very smiley. A few inches taller than me, she shared my tendency towards a fuller figure.
I kept hold of the handle of the case. ‘No need. You’re the manager. You shouldn’t be carrying stuff.’
She gave me a pinched smile. ‘Manager or gofer? Sometimes the roles seem very similar.’
‘No gofering for me, thanks. You’re a friend of Freddie and Lauren’s?’
‘That’s right. I met Lauren at a yoga class way back when she and Freddie first moved to London.’ She led me across an area given over to black leather sofas and low coffee tables.
‘Nice of you to get them this deal.’
‘My pleasure. I’ve been an honorary member of the Durham group for a few years, even though I didn’t go to college with them.’
‘You’re like me then?’
She gave me a patient half-smile. ‘I think you’ll need a few more years before you reach “honorary”.’
Ouch. Was that a little mean-girl coming through? ‘Meaning I’m at “plus-one” status?’
‘No bad thing to be.’ She opened the door at the far end of the corridor. ‘This is yours. Oh—’
I poked my head into the room. There was the promised four-poster, looking splendid, but on it lay an open suitcase with two others at the foot of the bed – a matching designer set in cream and tan, the kind that cost a couple of thousand even before you put anything in them. A silky nightgown lay on the covers and the bed had been slept in.
‘Just give me a moment.’ Rebecca went back to the table and whispered in Janice’s ear.
‘Oh, that was meant to be Leo’s room, was it?’ Janice said loudly and unrepentantly. ‘But when I arrived the rooms were all empty.’
‘Janice—’ Leo threw an apologetic look at me.
‘I’m in the middle of moving back to the UK, and I have so much luggage with me.’ She fluttered her false eyelashes at Leo. ‘You’re always so accommodating. I was sure you wouldn’t mind.’
The cow. But I was the plus one so I was hardly in a position to kick up a fuss. It wasn’t my reunion.
Showing she was used to dealing with awkward customers, Rebecca regrouped. ‘Well, that does leave one twin room free.’
She had to be kidding me. The big appeal of coming this weekend was a sexy time with my guy, not dormitory beds.
‘I’ll see if we have a mattress topper and can push them together.’ Rebecca walked away to pass on a message to housekeeping.
Janice placed a hand on Leo’s wrist. ‘Of course, I had imagined that maybe someone might like to join me. That was before Freddie broke the news that you were bringing a guest.’
Oh, no, she didn’t! Get your beautiful manicured claws off of my man! Before I could storm over and say something unwise, Leo pulled his hand away and stood up. Coming quickly over to me, he took the case from my grip.
‘Jess, are you OK with this? We can always just stay for the day and go back to Oxford.’ He sounded as if he very much wanted me to say ‘yes’.
‘Oh, Leo!’ protested Lauren.
‘That one backfired rather spectacularly, didn’t it, Janice?’ said Phil. He appeared to be relishing the upset.
Rebecca returned to calm troubled waters. ‘I’m sure you’ll find that there is no such thing as a bad room in this cabin. Phil, are you in the one facing the boathouse?’
‘Yes. Next to Janice. Not budging.’ He grabbed a piece of toast off a silver rack.
‘Then that leaves the one upstairs. It’s smaller but it does have the nice feature of a balcony. I think you’ll find it cosy.’ She led Leo, who was carrying our suitcase, up the open wooden stairs. I didn’t protest. It was just a room. And I still might get a chance to murder the bed-stealer.
Freddie rubbed his hands together, trying to dispel the bad atmosphere with his positivity. ‘Everyone eaten enough? Right, meet here in ten minutes, coats and boots on.’ Being a parent had obviously become ingrained.
‘Yes, Daddy,’ Janice replied, smirking. She glided to her room and shut the door in my face.
When I reached the upstairs room, Leo put the case down by one of the narrow twin beds and gave me a hug. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not your fault.’ I rested my head on his chest. Janice might have the four-poster but she didn’t have this. ‘It’s just for two nights.’
‘Cosy’ was one way of describing what was clearly meant as the room for junior guests who didn’t require full headroom. There was a tiny en suite where the shower door would bang against the toilet if you pushed it all the way open and a handbasin rather than a full-sized sink.
I flopped back on the bed and looked up at the roof beams. Accentuate the positive. ‘Heidi’s attic.’
Leo opened the door to the balcony, letting in a draft of cold air. ‘Heidi, who?’
‘The Heidi, from the book. She lives in a hayloft of her grandpa’s chalet in the Swiss Alps. That’s what this reminds me of.’
Leo lay down next to me, staring up at the same view. ‘I’d forgotten about Janice.’
I turned to look at him – a much better view – my gorgeous officer of the law. Leo had an aquiline nose, dark brows, and a strong jawline. My very favourite feature though were his eyes. Slightly hooded, hinting at an Asiatic forebear on the family tree, his eyes always looked out at you as if he suspected you of doing something – that was until he smiled and then the suspicion vanished and he became almost boyish. That was a side of him that only a very select few saw, certainly none of his colleagues or the people he dealt with at work.
‘Forgotten as in, forgotten she existed?’ I asked hopefully.
‘No, as in how she can be so selfish. I think the lifestyle of an actor doesn’t help, but she was always like that even before she started to make a name for herself.’
I ran my finger over his chin, touching the little dent at the end. Not quite a Henry Cavill cleft but the suggestion of one. ‘How long did you date?’
He winced. ‘You heard about that?’
‘Within about five seconds from Freddie. That guy is a terrible gossip.’
‘He’s always had the tendency to just spill what he’s thinking without considering the audience.’
‘And you told me he works at the Ministry of Defence in procurement? That means he’s signed the Official Secrets Act?’ I dropped my hand and chuckled at that prospect.
‘I’ve not heard him spill any official beans. Probably because he doesn’t think about work once he goes home.’
‘Thank God, for the sake of national security.’
He caught my hand and kissed my knuckles. ‘He’s a nice person.’
‘I got that too.’ I left a pause. ‘You didn’t tell me?’
He clasped his palm to his forehead. ‘I know. That was stupid. I was going to but then I thought that would look like I was making too much of it.’
‘Basically, you wimped out?’
‘I wimped out.’
Was I going to make him pay or let him off the hook? I know Leo fretted about relationships. Sure-footed in investigations, he overthought his moves when it came to me because he’d had a few catty girlfriends tell him he wasn’t enough for them. I imagined Janice lay near the front of that short line of women who didn’t know a good thing when they saw it.
I kissed the place on his forehead that he’d squeezed, which had the nice side benefit that he could nuzzle my breasts.
‘It’s OK, Leo. She’s incredibly hot. I’m impressed you pulled that at college. Go, you.’
He tugged me on top of him so we lay sandwiched in a full body stretch. ‘She’s nothing compared to what I have now.’
Two months into our relationship and he still thought I was a good thing. I kissed him on the lips for that completely biased remark, then levered up to mock-scowl at him. ‘But if I catch you walking down memory lane with her, I’ll cut up your favourite suits, poison your plants, and push her into the lake.’
Chapter Four
Jess
Trying to incentivise me, Leo assured me that I’d like Rainbow. When I asked about Lloyd, Leo grimaced and said it might end up as an even hit and miss.
‘You need to aspire to a better hit rate for friends, Leo,’ I advised him, tucking my trousers into my boot socks.
‘Lloyd’s not my friend – only Rainbow. Making friends isn’t easy for me.’ He zipped up a dark-blue fleece with the Thames Valley police shield on the breast. ‘I appreciate that they’re loyal. Freddie never lets me feel left out, never gives up.’
I kissed him, understanding completely how you could just fall into unwise relationships in the hothouse of university first week. It was a lottery that could decide the rest of your life. ‘I’ll sort you out. I make friends easily.’
He smiled and brushed my hair behind my ear. ‘I’ve noticed – too easily, some would say.’
‘What?’
He tapped my nose. ‘Your boss, Paul, who still makes your life difficult at work? Kristie, your housemate, whom you won’t tell to shut up when she’s speaking loudly on her phone at night? The homeless man outside the supermarket who tells everyone you’re his girlfriend?’
OK, maybe I was a bit soft-hearted. ‘I don’t want to be rude.’
‘Occasional rudeness is necessary.’ He knotted my scarf, making sure I was going to be warm. ‘Somewhere between your extroverted “love the world” and my introverted “distrust everyone” attitude is the perfect human.’
‘I don’t love everyone. I have quite the talent for hating certain people,’ I said in my defence.
‘Oh, yes? And how long does that last?’
In my father’s case, a lifetime, but I didn’t want to dampen the mood by bringing him up. Early in our relationship, before we started going out, Leo had had to arrest him for stalking, or as I put it, being a terrible human being.
As urged by Freddie, we returned to the ground floor, wrapped up for a winter walk. We joined the others putting boots on outside.
‘I’m walking with Jess,’ said Lauren, curling her arm through mine. ‘Leo, please go and talk Freddie out of his latest madcap idea. I think it must be the looming big four-oh that’s getting to him. Forty? How did that happen to us?’
‘Please, it hasn’t happened yet,’ I replied with a mock-shudder. I was still comfortably at the other end of the decade.
‘Freddie’s a few years ahead of us,’ explained Lauren. ‘He had some years out before college, crewing, and that’s seeded some romantic delusions.’
Over by the clubhouse, I could see a string of ponies as guests went out for a ride. The building itself was a converted manor house, Georgian style with the obligatory accessory of an oversized portico with a frieze of mythical figures. Apparently there was a spa and swimming pool and a restaurant and several bars. A casino was open after dark in the basement if we wanted to pretend we were extras in a James Bond film.
Were me and a casino a good idea? It sounded like petrol and a match.
Leo stood up from tying his bootlaces. ‘What’s Freddie thinking of now?’
Lauren blew on her fingers. ‘His latest plan is that we should take a career break and sail around the world with the children.’
‘Seriously?’ I asked. I’d been expecting her to say he was thinking of getting a motorbike or growing a goatee.
She pulled on what looked like a home-knitted hat in gold and black stripes, turning herself into a queen bee. ‘It would be serious if he had the logistical skills to organise the home schooling and all the practical stuff. He’s a good sailor. Been doing long voyages since he was a teenager and could probably manage to get us through it alive. He says he wants the children to experience the freedom of the high seas while it’s still easy to take them out of school.’
‘And you?’
‘I get seasick on a boating lake.’ She gestured to a blue dinghy moored outside the house in case any of us wanted to freeze our butts off on the water. ‘Apparently I’d get over that.’ She laughed dryly. ‘Then I say, “Somali pirates, tropical diseases, storms, and missed schooling,” and he goes quiet. And he fails to take into account I’ve only just got back into my career after taking a five-year break for child-rearing. Hardly the time to hare off on a new adventure.’
I could tell there and then that there was no way the Freddie-Lauren clan were getting on board a yacht to cross the Atlantic.
Our walking party set off, OS map in capable hands (not mine). Freddie and Leo took on guiding us to the right footpath, tailed by Janice and Phil who seemed quite close in the dynamics of this friendship group. Had they ever been an item, I wondered? There didn’t seem to be any chemistry between them, but there was something intimate, almost conspiratorial. Lauren and I brought up the rear.
‘Ah, this is the life: no kids to worry about, outside in the fresh air, good company!’ Lauren smiled at me. ‘I love our reunions. They kept me sane when the kids were babies.’
I wondered how she could think like that when there were clearly tensions among so many members. Maybe she and Freddie skated by not noticing? That was my mother’s attitude to life. ‘It’s nice that you make time for it each year.’
‘I can’t see how you maintain real friendships if you don’t invest the time. Tell me about looking for missing people,’ Lauren urged.
Picturing my motivational Post-its on my computer, I reminded myself not to downplay my skills. ‘My research background is in psychology and I always loved behavioural studies. I guess this is a logical extension. I tend to be brought in when the police or social services have lost interest or reached a dead end. They very often don’t have the resources to devote to it.’
‘What do you do that’s different from the authorities?’
‘I usually start by drawing up a detailed profile of the person. I mine their social media for clues, follow up with interviews of friends and family, find out everything I can from open sources. The main thing is I have the time to really dig, to give the problem the attention it deserves.’
Lauren bounded over the stile. I followed more gingerly because the lower step rocked in the mud. The others were already ahead, entering a copse of skinny birch trees.
‘Do you track their phones?’ she asked. ‘Triangulate them from the nearest phone mast?’
I laughed. ‘I wish. You’ve been watching too much TV. I can’t do that – and I can’t hack into financial records either.’ Though I did have a few shady contacts who could for a price, but that wasn’t something to be admitted out loud. Leo would find it problematic as it wasn’t exactly legal. ‘Mostly, the breadcrumbs are there, if you’re persistent at asking the right questions. And you get a feel for it after a time, especially with the kids.’
‘I suppose they are the most likely to go missing, aren’t they?’
Passing under the birches, I unwound my scarf, warming up from the brisk pace. ‘You wouldn’t know it from the news, but children go missing with surprising regularity – older teenagers mostly. A lot of them these days are in care because they were trafficked into the country and ended up in foster care – then they just… poof!’
She frowned, brows almost meeting beneath the yellow and black stripes. ‘Where do they go?’
‘Regrettably, that’s the deal with the traffickers. Come find us once you’re in country or else. They end up in sweatshops, nail bars, prostitution, and so on. It’s happening all over the country.’
‘Sounds fascinating. I wonder if anyone’s ever done a programme about it?’ she mused. ‘Who asks you to find them?’
A light rain began to fall, cold on my hot cheeks.
‘Sometimes the social workers or foster parents, more often friends or concerned teachers from their school and very occasionally family from abroad if they get suspicious something is up. Then there’re the ordinary runaways.’
‘What counts as ordinary?’ She held back a bramble so it didn’t whip my jeans.
‘Good question. No one’s really ordinary once you look hard at them.’ I was embarrassed by how out of condition I seemed compared to everyone else on this walk. I really should be less relaxed about my fitness regime. ‘You sound very interested, Lauren.’
‘Hazard of my profession. Always on the hunt for ideas. I’m a series editor for Bellwether TV. We specialise in drama documentaries.’
The path widened so I moved up beside her. ‘What are you working on at the moment?’
I let her talk for a while, eager to turn the attention away from my very unimpressive little business. I wouldn’t want a TV person to get the wrong idea about me. ‘Leaning in’ was OK until you toppled over with the weight of your self-misrepresentation.
The path eventually emerged from the wood into a field bordering a country road. Freddie shook raindrops off the plastic cover of his map.
‘That was Whichford Wood. Covered in bluebells in the spring, apparently. A few more fields and then we’ll be at the stone circle.’
Our walking party shuffled after this pause and I found myself beside Phil. I had to make the effort, didn’t I?
‘What do you get up to, Phil?’ I asked. Leo had been very unforthcoming about this member of their group. Phil’s features were fine taken individually but didn’t quite add up to handsome. He had hard eyes, quite deep-set and a little too close together, like Ryan Gosling’s, and a clipped beard that had more red in it than his tawny hair. He styled his hair swept back, leaving his forehead very square, as if someone had ruled a line across the top. Comparing him to Leo, who was over six feet, I guessed Phil was a little shy of that.
‘I have my own construction company,’ he said, answering my icebreaker, a little Brummie in his accent.
‘You’re a builder?’
He looked peeved to be described in that way. ‘I develop new housing. We built forty executive homes last year.’
The pause he left suggested the correct response was ‘congratulations, housing magnate’, but he sounded like a builder to me. ‘That must be satisfying.’
‘Would be if I didn’t have to spend all day hacking through red tape. This country is so full of regulations, it’s impossible to get anything done.’
‘Apart from building forty executive homes.’
He frowned, not sure if I was teasing (I was). ‘Apart from that, obviously.’
‘I always have a problem with rules too. They usually appear to me as a great suggestion of things to try.’
‘Exactly.’ His expression became more open. ‘What gives society the right to make up our minds for us? We’re adults: we can assess the risks.’
‘Unless we’re drunk. I have to admit some of my worst decisions happen when I’m half-cut.’ A sheep bleated an agreement from a field away. My adult form of ADHD made me pro-risk so even without the alcohol my choices were often not the safest.
‘But you still can decide for yourself and take the consequences, can’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Me? I like to think of myself as a sovereign citizen.’
‘Like super loyal to the Queen?’
He snorted. ‘The exact opposite. I was born here without any say in the matter so I don’t recognise the power of anyone over me – not the state, not my family, not the police.’ He cast a look at Leo’s back, now walking with Janice. They weren’t touching, I was relieved to see.
Quaint. Phil was an English survivalist. If he were American, I could just see him up in the hills somewhere with his assault rifle and ‘get off my land’ attitude. Hard to picture him in Birmingham though.
‘I guess you and Leo get on like a house on fire then?’ I made no effort to hide the irony.
‘Leo always liked his rules, even when we were at Durham and were at our freest. At nineteen, twenty, he hated to see anyone cutting corners.’
By which he meant ‘cheating’. ‘Hmm.’
‘I wasn’t surprised when he decided to join the police. That job was tailor-made for him. Finally he could do something when he saw someone breaking the rules.’
All of which had probably been a natural reaction to Leo’s chaotic upbringing. ‘You do need the police when there’s a violent crime involved, surely?’
‘Do you? What’s wrong with those that are wronged exacting their own punishment?’
‘Well, if you’re dead, you can’t.’
‘In that case then it’s left to the family or friends to hand out the punishment.’
‘Not so good if you’re a kid who can’t protect themselves from an abusive parent.’ I’ve been there, I added silently.
‘Then others should step forward and do it for you.’
It really wasn’t so easy. How would you even reach out for help at that age? Not everyone had someone in their corner. ‘That’s mob rule, Phil. Next stop, lynching.’
‘Instead, we get legitimised lynching by the police. Just look at America.’
He was enjoying this, I realised. His ‘no rules necessary’ stance had probably provided him with lots of lovely debates down the pub for years, but no one actually lived that way.
‘You are against the social contract then? “Down with Rousseau!” your rallying cry?’
He curled his lip. ‘Who?’
OK, he wasn’t coming at this from a philosophical stance after a careful consideration of the western tradition of human rights. I guessed this was something cooked up on conspiracy-fuelled social media. ‘What about speed limits?’