Relief Valve: The Plumber's Mate, Book 2 (17 page)

Now
I
was nervous too. “Er, yeah. Course. Come in.” Bloody hell, any minute now I’d offer to shake hands. But it felt weird, this. A bit, well, significant. Despite the fact he’d stayed over here plenty of nights. But those had just happened. He’d never brought luggage before.

“Thought it’d make sense. In the circumstances,” he muttered, looking at his feet as he wiped them carefully.

“You mean, in case Mr. M pops round and tries to poison me? I thought we’d decided he couldn’t have had anything to do with it, though?” I could have kicked myself the moment I’d said it. Did I
want
him to bugger off again? “Course, better to be safe than sorry and all that bollocks.”

He gave a quick nod. “There were a lot of people in that place. There’s no guarantee you’d have seen everyone who was there—especially someone you’d only met once, and who was trying to avoid you.”

“He’d have had to be trying bloody hard. Not the sort of looks you forget.” Nice one, Paretski. Go on, shoot yourself in the
other
foot now.

Phil raised an eyebrow. “Fancy him, did you?”

I shuddered. “Not so much, no. Are you coming in, or were you planning on camping out on the doormat all night?”

He smirked. “Going to make it worth my while?”

“Oh yeah.” I leered at him. “I ordered poppadoms and everything.”

“Think I’m easy, do you? One poppadom and I’m anyone’s?”

“Reckon I’ve got a jar of mango chutney in the cupboard,” I said and licked my lips for good measure.

“Well, in that case, you’re on.” Phil lumbered past me and dumped his bag in the hall. “Kinky sod.”

After an early night that didn’t involve a whole lot of sleep, we had a lazy, shagged-out Sunday morning on the sofa with the papers. Well, I did anyway. Phil had been slouched at the other end of the sofa, Merlin on his lap, making eyes at his phone for the last ten minutes. I had a strong suspicion he was doing some work.

“I want you to go along and take a look at this lot,” he said just as I was about to tell him he might as well stop pretending and get his bloody laptop out. “Says here they meet on Monday nights.”

I folded the sports pages to keep my place for later. There’s a lot to get through on a Sunday. “What lot?”

“The Lea Valley Literati.” He held out his phone and flashed the screen at me. Seeing as the website he was looking at apparently didn’t have a mobile version, all I could read was “ley Lite,” which sounded like something lay readers cut their teeth on when they were just starting out.

“Oh, them.” Morgan Everton’s crew. “Oi, why’s it got to be me? I don’t know the first bloody thing about writing.” Or private investigating, to tell the truth, although I had got a bit of an introduction to the art since Phil had unexpectedly popped back into my life in Brock’s Hollow.

“Doesn’t matter. Look, I knew someone who used to go along to one of these circles.”

Not, “I had a mate who” or “someone I used to work with.” Which didn’t
necessarily
mean it was the mysterious Mark, obviously.

But I knew what my money was on.

“Anyway,” Phil was saying, “he said it was just a bunch of old women sitting around drinking tea and writing stories about their cats.” He stroked Merlin’s head and got a toothy yawn for his trouble.

“So?”

“So you’d be a natural. Wow them with a few reminiscences about your Auntie Lol, tell them how Arthur once maimed a burglar, that sort of stuff.”

“In his dreams, maybe.” I cast a glance around for the cat in question and spotted him fast asleep on a chair, tail twitching. Maybe he was dreaming about maiming small furry animals. “Anyway, I don’t think this lot are like that. I can’t see Morgan Everton writing stories about cats, can you? And he’s the wrong sex.”

“Like you’d get anything out of him anyway. It’s the rest of them you need to talk to.” His eyes narrowed. “Just give them a bit of the Paretski charm. You’ll have them eating out of your hand.”

I flashed him a flirty smile. “I can think of someone else I’d rather have eating out of my hand. Or, you know, other places.”

“Focus.”

“Killjoy. Anyway, I still don’t see why you can’t do it.”

“You’ve got the connection with Everton. I haven’t.”

I leaned my head back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. “We talked for five minutes. I wouldn’t call that a bloody connection.”

“You don’t have to have sucked his dick to have a connection.”

“Great, make me lose my appetite, why don’t you?” I had moussaka in the oven for a late Sunday lunch. I’d be well pissed off if he put me off eating that, after all the faffing around with the sauce.

“Anyway, if I go, it’ll be a whole different ball game. He’ll know—they’ll all know—I’m there to ask questions about Cherry. If you go, they’ll be more willing to buy into the idea you might actually be serious about writing.”

“Yeah, maybe. Until they actually ask me to, you know,
write
something.”

“You don’t go to these things to write. You go there to talk crap about writing.” He smirked. “So like I said, you’ll be a natural.”

“What, at talking crap? Love you too, you bastard.” There was a catch in my chest as I realised a split second too late that this was the first time I’d said it. That either of us had, come to that. The l-word, I mean, not called him a bastard. I’d done that plenty of times.

I glanced at Phil. He was looking at me funny. Or maybe he just had wind. Then he sort of shook himself. He didn’t say anything.

“Right,” I said, standing up. “Better go check on the moussaka.”

True to his word, Phil buggered off Monday morning, taking his posh holdall with him. Apparently he reckoned murderers had day jobs just like anyone else. Either that or sixty hours straight was as much as he could take of my company, which was fair enough. The place felt a lot bigger without him in it, and Merlin slunk around the kitchen with his belly to the ground as if his best friend had died. Arthur and I left him to it and stretched out on the sofa with the laptop. Well, I stretched. Arthur just curled up into the usual solid, furry lump.

The Lea Valley Literati website, when I finally got it up and running, was so bloody clunky I expected it to carry ads for flypaper and crinolines. Or, you know, my old laptop. But at least it gave me a number to ring to find out where they actually met. This information was clearly too sensitive to be trusted to the World Wide Web.

I punched the number into my phone and waited.

A dozen rings later—I can be a persistent sod when I want to be—the phone was answered with a brusque, “Yes?”

“Is that Margaret Pierce?”

“Whatever it is, I’m not interested. Good-bye.”

She slammed the phone down. Seemed the so-called Paretski charm was getting past its sell-by date.

I sighed and pressed redial. This time, it only took three rings before she picked up and drew in a breath, presumably about to demand to know what I was selling and why I was harassing her like this. “I’m calling about the Lea Valley Literati,” I said quickly, before she could get a word out.

“Yes?”

I’d been hoping for a more encouraging response. “Er, yeah. You’re the contact name on the website? I was thinking of joining.”

“I see. Well, you’d be very welcome to come along to a meeting.” Her tone called her a liar. I felt about as welcome as syphilis.

“Great! Er, so when and where?” It’d said on the website that they met on Monday evenings, so there ought to be a meeting tonight, but it’d been a bit short on any other helpful information.

“We meet at the chairman’s house.” That, if I wasn’t mistaken, was my old friend Morgan E. “Half-past seven. Don’t be late.”

“I’ll set my alarm. So where’s that, then?”

“You do understand this is a
literary
society?” She reeled off the address—one of the posh places in Redbourn. Nice if you can get it. I’d done some work up that way not so long ago. Friendly lady, always happy to chat and served up Marks and Spencers choccy biccies with the morning cuppa. Terrible taste in carpets, though. She went for these fluffy cream ones that showed a speck of dirt at five hundred yards. I mean, I always took my boots off when I went inside, but that place made me worry even my socks weren’t clean enough.

“I’ll see you tonight, then. Cheers.” I managed to stop myself calling her “love”. I had a feeling she wouldn’t have been impressed.

I’d almost forgotten about going to see Auntie Lol’s ex. If Cherry hadn’t rung from her sick bed to remind me, I’d have ended up blowing him off. As it was, I didn’t much fancy going round there—seemed a bit, I don’t know, disrespectful, messing about with gag gifts from beyond the grave when Cherry had just come close to joining Auntie Lol in the afterlife.

Not that I believe in the afterlife, really.

Well, probably not.

I mean, who knows?

Anyway, I thought seeing as Cherry had bothered to ring and remind me, I should probably bother to go, and it wasn’t like I had any jobs on, seeing as I’d blanked out the space in my diary. So I bombed down the A1(M) in the van to the sounds of an animated discussion on Radio 5 about violence on the football pitch. Just as I reckoned they were about to come to blows in the studio, I hit Mill Hill. The satnav perked up at finally having some work to do, so I had to switch off the radio and listen to Sean Connery doing James Bond as he told me to turn left at the lightsh.

The roads got posher as I neared my destination. Shame I hadn’t brought any leaflets to bung in letterboxes. There’s a lot of money in Mill Hill, although it’s got its grotty side too. Morangie Manor (not that it was actually called that, mind) was very definitely at the posh end, near the old village centre rather than the modern bit around Mill Hill Broadway. This is commuter country, same as St Albans, only more so, seeing as it’s that bit farther down the line towards London. Lots of high-powered jobs in the City funding all the big houses and professionally tended gardens.

I wondered if Mr. M had a high-powered job. Mind you, he was what, in his sixties now? So he could be retired. Maybe he’d be glad to get rid of the big house and move somewhere smaller.

Or maybe he’d be horrified at the thought of moving after living in the same house so long. God, I felt like a home wrecker, or some heartless bastard of an absentee landlord turfing old folks out of their homes so Tesco could build their six-millionth store.

I gave a low whistle as I pulled up outside Mr. M’s place. Suddenly, his offer didn’t look anything like as generous, if we really were talking half the house. Half of this place wouldn’t just take a chunk out of my mortgage, it’d pay the lot off with change to spare. I wondered what I’d do with the money, if I got it. Develop a cocaine habit? Buy a wardrobe of cashmere sweaters to match Phil’s?

No point counting those chickens, I thought. I got out of the van, walked up the short brick drive and rang the doorbell.

“Morning,” I said cheerily as Mr. M opened the door.

His sour expression didn’t alter. “At least you’re punctual.” He stood back, leaving the door open, so I took that as all the invitation I was going to get and stepped into the house. It was weird—once I was in there, I could actually really imagine Auntie Lol living there. She was into all this sort of stuff: solid, chunky furniture that had had a few knocks in life and looked like it could take plenty more, and bright, cheery fabrics. The sofa and chairs were covered with the sort of scatter cushions posh women on the telly show you how to make yourself for only three times the price you could buy them in a shop, and the walls were cheerfully accessorised with haphazardly arranged pictures showing animals and landscapes.

“Nice house you’ve got here.” I cringed inside. Shit, did that sound like I was looking forward to kicking him out of it? He didn’t reply. “No Mr. Wood?” I tried again.

“He’s been detained.”

I hoped that just meant he’d been held up, not that he’d been arrested or anything. Still, it wasn’t like he was my solicitor, so no skin off my nose either way. “So, should I just get started?”

Mr. M glared at me. “Tea?” he said abruptly.

“Ta. White, no sugar, please. Actually, second thoughts, I’ll drink it black.” I was betting any tea served in this house would be more watery than the River Lea.

Mr. M stomped off to make it, and too late, I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be accepting any offers of refreshments. Still, it’d be okay if I watched him make it, wouldn’t it? I hesitated, then followed him into the kitchen. It had honest-to-God gingham blinds and tiles with hens on. Had Auntie Lol married him for his house?

Then I remembered they’d bought it together. Maybe she’d decorated, and he hadn’t bothered to change anything since she’d left? I wasn’t sure I’d be too happy living in a house that had my ex stamped all over it.

“So, er, how’s things?” I went on awkwardly as Mr. M fussed with his state-of-the-art electric kettle. Auntie Lol had had an antique stovetop one that even whistled, like the ones in the battered old Enid Blyton books she used to lend me. I remembered being fascinated by it as a kid. I wondered if it was still around here somewhere, shoved in a cupboard after she’d left. Maybe that was what she’d left me in her will. “Family okay? Cherry said you had a son—what is he, about my age? He doesn’t still live here, does he?”