Eight
EIGHT
“Hello, this is Sophie speaking, who’s calling please?”
Her voice was soft and breathy with a slight Irish lilt. Bruce made her wait a little longer than was comfortable; he wanted to drag her out of her comfort zone, get around her rehearsed defences. She couldn’t handle the silent treatment.
“Hello? Who is it? Is anyone there? This had better not be some PPI thing... ”
Clearly that trick had been ruined forever by nuisance callers. It was time for a change of tack. Bruce began to breathe heavily and held his hand over the bottom of the handset to muffle his words and spoke, forcing his voice as deep as he could manage. He came off sounding like Christian Bale’s Batman, but that was better than sounding like Bruce von Toose.
“Sophie Masters? We have urgent business to discuss. It’s about your husband, and your fuck buddy.”
Either the sentiment, his bad language or weird accent had achieved what his silence couldn’t; she snapped.
“What are you supposed to be? You sound like you’re gargling gravel, asshole. Is this about Jimmy? Jimmy’s dead you sick fuck!”
Her voice cracked as she said his name. Of course she knew; it had been over 24 hours since he’d met Jimmy and Jimmy had met the tarmac from twenty storeys up. He had to handle the next part carefully or the whole game was up.
“Listen up lady, and listen up good. Who am I? Jackie fucking Chan for all it matters. Fact is, I know what happened to your husband. I also know what happened to Mastah Blastah. Seeming as how you liked to fuck both of them, I thought you might appreciate a little heads-up.”
“What do you know about my personal business, freak? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t hang up and call the cops right now. My HUSBAND is dead.”
“Lady, everyone in town knows your “business,” personally! I’m a private detective, I’m way ahead of the boys in blue and I can be at your place in the next hour.”
“What do you know?”
She sounded tired; it was time to press home the point, time to knock it out of the park.
“I can’t tell you over the phone, Mrs. Masters, it’s not safe. You’re being watched. We meet now, or you’ll never know. I’m on your side here.”
A brief silence followed as she thought on it. Bruce tried imitating the beeps of a dying mobile to further his case, but his feeble attempts turned into a coughing fit. She spoke, at last.
“My place is number 149, Elmhurst Avenue. It’s the big white place with the monkey puzzle tree in the front garden. I didn’t catch your name, Mr...?”
Bruce ignored the question; it was a slam dunk.
“I’ll be there.”
He pushed the red button and smiled; Elmhurst Avenue was ten minutes away. He could check the place out before her lipstick had dried and still arrive surprisingly early. He put his foot down.
As he moved out into the rush hour traffic, his hand strayed to the radio dial. Radio One was all nonsense bleeping, dubstep wobbles and warbling harlots, but Radio Two were playing “Hotel California” by The Eagles. The rain beating against the windshield provided extra percussion for the lively country refrain and emotional guitar playing. He switched it off.
He hated the fucking Eagles; he hated the state of popular music. He hated. The random pattering of rain on the car roof and the purring engine seemed a perfect soundtrack to hate to. A white street sign zipped past as he turned the corner, catching his attention; Elmhurst Avenue. He had arrived.
People were pulling into driveways or parking up at the side of the street, holding things over their heads and bustling hurriedly in shades of green and blue through their front doors. Bruce parked up between a smart white Mercedes and a sleek black BMW and got out of his battered, mud-strewn car so fast that he forgot to lock the door. He started walking the pavement on the odd side of the street, checking the door numbers and peering into lounge windows.
As the house numbers counted down toward 149, a middle-aged, harassed-looking woman wearing an apron ran screaming from a house across the street holding a blender. As he watched, she tossed it into a yellow skip at the kerbside and stood back, shaking. She caught Bruce’s eye across the roof of a passing Punto. She was bleeding from a cut on her forehead. She pointed in the skip’s direction.
“That, thing, it’s alive, it attacked me! It’s the work of the devil!”
With that, she gave the skip a kick and hobbled back towards her house. Bruce could have sworn he could hear a faint angry buzzing sound from across the street.
He shrugged it off, pulled his hat brim low and walked on. He had a case to solve. He didn’t need any other mysteries in his life, certainly not ones that didn’t pay anyway.
He soon spotted a big white house with an odd looking tree in the front garden. It was really tall, with a long, skinny, bald trunk and a shock of tropical-looking foliage at the top, like the arboreal equivalent of The Simpsons character Sideshow Bob. The house number, painted black on a wooden plaque, confirmed it as his destination; 149 Elmhurst Avenue. He stopped outside the house next door, lit up a cigarette and pretended to fiddle with the red post box on the pavement while he cased the Masters place.
The front garden looked well-kempt, probably the work of a paid gardener. There was a mixture of sub-tropical and traditional English planting, short stubby palm trees next to pink and blue hydrangea bushes. There was a small, metallic blue two-seater Japanese soft-top sports car parked in the driveway with the roof up; a real hairdressers car, definitely not Jimmy’s ride. The walls of the house and all the fences were painted white and looked as though they could use a little TLC. The lounge curtains were open downstairs, but the room was dark. A blonde figure rushed busily back and forth across a window upstairs before pausing to close the drapes. She was lit up momentarily and looked exactly as she did in the photograph. Bruce smiled as he crushed the butt of his cigarette out with his heel.
“Hello, Sophie.”