One Way Ticket (7 page)

“Right.”

“What they’ll be thinking this morning I
don’t know. Is this how you behaved at parties back home?”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry, Aunt June,
I guess I’ve been feeling a bit homesick lately.”

 “For most people, it isn’t a literal
feeling. I hope Kate and Frank understand. They are good friends of mine.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Right, here we are.”

The police building appeared on my left, I
was at work already.

“Have a nice day,” my aunt told me,
opening my door and waiting expectantly for me to get out.

I obliged her, resolving to try to sort
things out with her when I got home. At that moment, the end of the day seemed
a frighteningly long way off.

 Plastering a smile on my face, I entered
the office in what I felt was a confident and, more importantly, sober manner. I
hoped the only corpse I would be thinking about today was my own.

9 Lucky Lucky Me

“What’s the matter with you?” Vara
asked, moments after I’d walked in. Obviously, my sober walk wasn’t fooling
anyone.

“Bad head. And stomach.”

“Are you hungover?”

“That’s another way of putting it,” I admitted,
slowly sitting down at my desk. Vara was wearing a vivid orange coloured top. I
had to look away.

“That’s often a bad sign, when expatriates
turn to alcohol,” she said.

“I haven’t turned to alcohol, I just had a
few too many, that’s all.”

“The government set up a helpline, there’s
a number somewhere.” To my horror she opened a drawer in her desk and started
rustling through.

“Vara,” I said too loudly and had to put a
hand to my head. “Having a few drinks one time doesn’t constitute a problem.” I
was surprised, Vara had never come across as a prude before.

“Here’s a number, for next time.”

That gave me a lovely warm glow. She held
a card out and waved it insistently so I had to walk over and take it.

“Thanks.” I was about to drop it on my
desk when I saw what was written on it. “Matina’s Booze?”

“Mention my name, she’ll give you a good
discount.”

“I’ll add it to my list.”

The glare of my computer screen was too
much for my headache, so I escaped to the kiosk for some water. Addi was
sitting there, alone, staring into the distance. He looked how I felt.

“Alright?” I managed to mumble.

“Hmm.”

At last, a level of conversation I could
cope with. I poured some water and sat next to him.

After what felt like hours, but was
probably only ten minutes, I remembered what had happened last night (pre gin).

“Rang you last night.”

“Yeah?”

“Your mum wouldn’t put you on.”

He turned slightly to look at me. “Oh no,
really?”

“Yeah.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know, she didn’t say.”

“No, what did you ring about?”

“Oh. Oh! Aunt June had a tip.”

“About what?”

All this talk was wearing me out, I was
starting to wish I’d waited to tell him when my head had cleared a bit more.
“The trophy theft,” I told him, waving my hand as if that would make him
understand.

“What is it? The tip.”

Could I remember? “It’s a woman’s name.”

“Yes?” Addi was sitting forward now,
literally on the edge of his seat.

“Don’t push me, I won’t be able to
remember.” My head was still pounding, the fact that I could even remember my
own name was some kind of miracle.

“Is it a woman in the organisation?”

“No idea.”

“Try to think what letter the name starts
with”.

“I’m trying but my head’s killing me!” I
did genuinely try to remember for a few seconds. “No, I’ll have to give Aunt
June a ring later.”

Addi’s production of his mobile phone meant
I’d have to ring Aunt June now.

“Please? I really need a break in this
case,” he said.

I rang Aunt June.

“She doesn’t know anything about a
break-in in Jasmine Gardens as well, does she?” he asked as it was ringing.

I gave him a withering look.

“I don’t think she’s going to be helping
us again in a hurry,” I remarked, hanging up after speaking to her. Addi wrote
down the name I’d been trying to remember. “She really wasn’t happy.”

“Do you know who this woman is?” he asked.

“No idea.”

“I’ll do a name search. Talk to you
later.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I answered and sprawled
back on the seat. I needed some recovery time after all that effort.

I was still sitting there,
nursing a glass of water, an hour later when Addi came back.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked,
only now noticing I wasn’t my normal, chipper self. With those powers of
observation, it was no longer surprising he had so much trouble solving cases.

“Not feeling too well today.”

“Why don’t you go home?”

And face the scorn of Aunt June? “I’ll be
okay in a bit.” My head was starting to clear, maybe in another hour or so I might
even be able to face doing some work.

“I can’t find any information on this
woman. The database hasn’t got anything on her, just a parking ticket a couple
of years ago. I can’t see what she’s got to do with the theft.”

“Have you spoken to her?”

“No.”

What did they teach them at police school
round here? Was there even such a thing?

“Don’t you think it might be an idea to
interview her?”

“I suppose so. I guess I’ll go give her a
ring.”

“No, Addi,” I called out before he got up.
“Go and see her. You can’t see people’s reactions over the phone.”

“Alright. Do you want to come?”

It sounded like too much effort for the
current state of my brain but I couldn’t hang around the kiosk all morning, I’d
get rumbled eventually.

“How far away is it?”

“Not far, a few miles.”

“Alright, let me get my jacket.” The
weather had turned colder in the last few days and even I had conceded to
wearing warmer clothes.

Stepping out of the office into the cool,
fresh air was like a shot of adrenalin. “Ah,” I exhaled loudly, breathing
deeply and feeling the muddleness in my head receding.

“You’re not going to throw up in my car,
are you?” Addi asked.

I thought about it for a second. “No,” I
told him confidently.

Ten minutes later, I worried perhaps I’d
been overly optimistic.

“What is this?” I asked as we bumped and
bounced along a rough dirt track out of town.

“This is the address we have for her.
Probably a smallholding or something. These roads are a bit rough, aren’t
they?”

A bit rough? My head was pounding again
from the constant jarring. We hit another pothole and I had to swallow hard as my
stomach lurched. This woman would be charged with something for putting me
through this if it was the last thing I did (which felt entirely possible at
this point).

The property, when we eventually got to
the end of the track, looked like a broken down barn. Addi went investigating
whilst I collapsed on an empty olive oil drum nearby.

“This can’t be the right place,” Addi was
moaning as he walked round the side of the building.

I no longer cared where we were, just how
we were going to get home again; I didn’t think my stomach could stand a return
journey on that so-called road.

“It doesn’t look like anyone lives here,”
he continued, coming back round the other side. “Why has she given this as her
address?”

I watched him do another circuit of the barn
just in case he’d missed a three bed bungalow lurking inside.

“Nope, nobody here. Guess we’ll have to go
back to HQ.”

I let out another groan.

Addi came and stood next to me. “You
feeling ill still?”

His powers of observation were truly astounding.

“Listen, if your friends ever need any
cheap booze, vodka, brandy, gin…”

“Please stop talking.”

“I know there’s an old farm track down the
back of that field. Do you want me to try it instead? It may not be any better
but it might be softer than this one, since it’s been raining.”

I had been contemplating walking back to
the main highway but in my state that seemed like a 10 mile hike. “Anything.
Anything but that road again.”

We had to endure a few more metres of
rough, stony ground but once we hit the farm track it was bliss. The jarring stopped
and, although we were lurching from rut to rut, it was a lot less harsh.

“Much better, thanks,” I managed to
mumble.

“I thought it would be easier,” Addi told
me, looking pleased with himself. “The ground here’s taken on some of the
rainfall so it’s a lot softer.”

No sooner had he said these words than the
car lurched alarmingly into a massive puddle and stopped. Addi pressed the
accelerator and the car filled with the sound of wheels spinning uselessly.

“Maybe a bit too soft?”

He gave a sheepish shrug of his shoulders.

Like the car, this day seemed to be lurching
from one disaster to the next. Closing my eyes, I clicked my heels together and
chanted: ‘there’s no place like home’ a few times, but it didn’t work. When I
opened them again we were still stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Addi got out and tried to push. The car
didn’t budge.

“Right, let’s see if we can find help,” he
said, coming over all authoritative suddenly.

“I think they’ve invented something for
this situation. It’s called the mobile phone. Why don’t you just ring someone?”

“Let’s see if there’s a farmer nearby
first.”

He didn’t want to have to ring the boys
and tell them his car was stuck, that was the problem.

“I’ll ring them,” I offered.

“Let’s check the neighbouring fields
first.”

Reluctantly, I got out and followed him
down the muddy track, not only feeling miserable but my stomach had calmed down
enough to start reminding me it was a long time since I’d eaten anything.

“You go that way, I’ll go this,” he
suggested when we hit a fork at the bottom.

Great. “Okay,” I agreed and watched him head
off down his path. When he had gone a little way, I stepped back into the
bushes with the idea of making myself a little nest inside (listen, I was now
tired, cold and hungry). To my surprise I saw there was a building in the field
behind the hedgerow. Too lazy to walk back around to the path, I forced my way
through the rest of the hedge and headed for it.

I guess they didn’t hear me coming because
they didn’t turn around. I heard the middle aged woman’s haughty English accent
first, it made me wonder if this was really the place we had been looking for
all along.

“The bmws have to be ready for Wednesday,
I’ve given my word,” she told the younger, dark haired man standing with her in
front of the large, whitewashed house.

“We’ve only got the silver one. Tony
hasn’t been able to find a black one yet.” He seemed on the verge of shouting
which slowed me down a little, I didn’t want to interrupt an argument to ask
for a favour.

“This town is crawling with bmws, you
can’t walk down the street without almost being run over by one!”

She had a point, even Addi drove a bmw
(albeit a very elderly one). And it was black. Perhaps his car could help them
out of whatever fix they were in? A little quid pro quo was always a good
bargaining point. I approached more confidently, imagining how funny they would
find it when I mentioned an example of what they sought could be found stuck in
the mud just a couple of lanes away.

“Not ones that match the spec,” the man
screeched back. “If you think it’s so easy, you go out and steal it!”

That stopped me.

There’s nothing like being caught up in a
crime to cure a person of a hangover. Suddenly, my headache had vanished and my
stomach was forgotten. I was now solely focussed on getting out of this
situation in one piece. I ducked quickly to the side and tried to hide behind a
small tree.

Peering round the trunk, I could see them
still arguing. It didn’t seem like they had seen me, so I dropped down to my
knees and started crawling back the way I had come.

That few feet felt like a mile but
eventually I was back at the hedge. I took a lot longer to crawl through it
this time, trying not to disturb the foliage too much in case it got their
attention. After a few sweat-filled minutes, I was through and running up the
lane looking for Addi.

“That was lucky,” Addi told me
later when we eventually got back to the police building.

“Lucky?”

“My sat nav taking us to the wrong part of
the farm. Doubt we would’ve found anything if we’d just driven up to the front
door. And them talking about stealing cars just when you were there. That was a
bit of a break.”

Yes, it could have been, of my neck
probably.

We heard later the surrounding
outbuildings had contained several cars stolen in recent weeks with new number
plates and documents ready to be shipped out.

“That was lucky,” Aunt June remarked when
I told her later that evening.

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” I
complained. “Stumbling into the middle of a car stealing operation doesn’t seem
at all lucky to me, it was actually pretty dangerous.”

“It was lucky for local car owners.”

Yes, don’t worry about me at all.

“I take it you won’t be cooking dinner
tonight?” my aunt asked as I spread out on the sofa, comforting bar of
chocolate in hand.

In the excitement I’d forgotten all about
my plans to update my aunt’s tastebuds. “Ah.”

“Don’t worry, I can get something from the
freezer.”

“Sorry, thanks. I’ll do dinner another
night. There was no sign of the trophies by the way,” I told her. “They
searched the house but they weren’t amongst the things they found.”

“Oh well. When I’d heard Beth had been
asking people about metallic polish, I’d just assumed she was talking about
your cups.”

“Metallic polish? And you just assumed she
was talking about the blinking cups?”

“She used to be a very active member of
the church. It’s come as quite a shock.”

 “You’ve had a shock? Imagine how I felt
about to walk up to them and offer Addi’s car. You could have gotten us killed,
you know that?”

“Jennifer, you’re being all melodramatic
again.”

“It’s been a melodramatic day.”

“You do seem to get yourself into these
situations.”

With a lot of your help, I wanted to
answer, but held my tongue.

“I hope you’ll get some kind of reward for
this?” my aunt asked.

I had a horrible feeling there would be
some kind of reward for me in this, and I was right. More paperwork.

As well as providing witness statements, I
had to undergo countless hours of questioning, answering the same questions over
and over again, by an ever changing round of policemen. It felt like every
senior officer in the station wanted to be involved and had to get the story directly
from me.