‘Well, you’re out of luck,’ Matilda told me with a shrug of indifference. ‘We had a falling out,’ no surprise there, ‘and she went somewhere else. I don’t have her number because she changed her phone. I expect she was trying to stop people like you from contacting her.’
Matilda was beyond belief.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I wanted to grab her by her shoulder and give her a good shake. ‘Karen could die. I need to find her.’ Okay, the truth is that I didn’t know if Karen was in any danger at all, but it was also true that once we caught the Sandman – potentially with Karen’s help – the need to be in hiding would evaporate and all danger of being murdered in her sleep would pass. Being involved was therefore very much in Karen’s interest.
Infuriatingly, Matilda shrugged again. ‘I can’t give you what I don’t have. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m watching TV.’ She stepped back and closed the door.
It bounced off my foot.
When her angry face reappeared, I handed her my card and begged. ‘If anything occurs to you, please call me.’
She kicked at my foot and I removed it. The door slammed in my face.
Hilary said, ‘Goodness. What a cow.’
‘Christmas spirit,’ I commented flippantly.
We had wasted over half an hour already and now we had to get back to the office.
Big Ben. A Show of Strength. Friday, December 23rd 1652hrs
I don’t really know Jane/James and haven’t shared many conversations with him/her ever. I find the crossdressing thing a little odd but make no comment about it. It’s not my place to do so and while he and other men are chasing men, I figure that leaves more ladies on the buffet table for me.
It was enough for me that Tempest chose to trust her/him. Tempest never had a bad word to say about his former assistant. In fact, it was more the case that Jane/James continually impressed my old army colleague. She was part of the team. My team. And that someone had chosen to mess with that team did not sit well with me.
So I was going to find the person behind it all and introduce their teeth to their feet. By which I mean I was going to shove one of the feet into their mouth. The other foot I was going to shove … well, I’m sure you can imagine.
Jane’s gran lived in a narrow terrace house right on Aylesford’s main street. If you can call it that. Aylesford is more of a hamlet than a village though when you examine the buildings you can see how many used to be pubs or small shops of some kind. Several hundred years old, the street where we found granny’s house was no doubt a hub of commerce once.
With Basic looming on my shoulder – he loomed better than anyone I knew; it was his vacant expression and all-round hugeness that created the effect - I politely knocked on the door.
Standing back, so we wouldn’t crowd the old dear when she answered the door, we were forced to wait. A minute ticked by, and getting impatient, I stepped back into the narrow street to look up at the house.
There were lights on inside but otherwise there was no sign of life. It presented me with a dilemma.
Given that Jane’s things were all inside her car, I doubted she’d made it to the house, but did that mean the Sandman wouldn’t come here? From the little I knew, his normal method of working involved going into people’s houses. Had he done something to granny?
Eyeing the front door and biting my lip, I considered kicking it in. I knocked again for good measure and got the same result as before.
Time continued to slip away.
There was no point calling the police – they would take ages to do anything and that was if I were able to convince them to act at all. I didn’t live here and could provide no evidence there was anything untoward occurring.
Nodding my head as I accepted the damage I was about to do, I swept my left arm through the air to shift Basic back a couple of feet.
‘What yer doin’?’ he asked.
‘Granny might be hurt, or she might be kidnapped like Jane. There might be clues inside. There could even be a note from the Sandman for all I know. We can’t leave until we know the answers.’ Looking at the solid oak door which had probably been inside the frame since the house was erected in the eighteenth century, I reconsidered my plan. Or rather, I upgraded it.
‘Go for it, Basic. Knock the door down.’ Rather him than me because it looked like it wasn’t going to give on the first go.
His forehead shifted slightly, Basic frowning as he processed my instruction.
‘Knock it down?’ he questioned.
I nodded encouragingly. ‘Yup.’
He was about to take a run at it when voices cut through the late afternoon air. I gripped Basic’s arm to stop him moving.
To the left of Granny’s house is Aylesford’s one remaining public house still in business. I couldn’t guess how long ago the others shut down but this one was doing a good trade. It was the Friday before Christmas and no doubt most of the people inside were already finished with work for the holiday.
The voices were coming from the doorway of the pub as a gaggle of ladies left. They were all in their twenties and they were not only attractive but also clearly a few glasses of pinot into their Christmas spirit. The jingle of keys told me one of their number was a designated driver and they would have to walk past us to get to the
