Dead Flowers Read online

  I was still living in the same poky studio flat not far from my office, although I’d had plans to sell up and maybe buy a little house in case Judith decided she wanted to live with me at some time in the future. That possibility was getting more remote by the day, but I still hoped it might happen.

  I wanted to speak to her. Tell her about the job. Make her proud of me again. So at around four-thirty I phoned John Condie’s home number in Aberdeen. His daughter answered. ‘Susan,’ I said. ‘Hi. It’s Nick Sharman. Is Judith there?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said in her cute Scottish accent and banged down the phone. I could hear the new Oasis album playing in the background. After a few seconds Judith came on. ‘Dad?’ She hesitated. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Sure. I got a job.’

  ‘That’s good. What sort of job?’

  ‘A missing wife.’

  ‘Have you been paid?’ Ever the pragmatist. Her mother’s trait. Not mine.

  ‘Yes. And very well paid at that. The geezer’s just won the lottery.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Never been more serious in my life. You should see the car he’s driving.’

  ‘You and cars.’

  ‘I know. Shallow.’

  ‘You’re all right.’

  ‘Thanks. I just thought I’d let you know I’ve got gainful employment.’

  ‘I’m pleased. I hope you find her. Now I’d better go. I’ve got revision.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  We made our farewells and hung up. It hadn’t been the warmest conversation I’d ever had with Judith, but then it hadn’t been the coldest, so that was something.

  I was feeling hungry by then so I nuked a Sainsbury’s jacket potato with cheese in the microwave. I took it straight from the freezer so it was solid, and it took nearly five minutes to cook; even then the inside was still speckled with ice and the outside hot enough to bring up blisters on my tongue. Ah, the bachelor life. Don’t you just envy us single citizens with no responsibilities?

  When I’d finished my delicious snack, soaked in ketchup and eaten out of the plastic container it was cooked in with a wooden fork from the local chip shop, I celebrated my new job by breaking open a bottle of JD. I poured myself a drink and rang Melanie Wiltse’s number. I got an answerphone, but no message. Just music. A lot of people seem to do that these days. Maybe it’s angst, maybe it’s to give callers a peek into their psyche, or maybe they’re just too lazy or too embarrassed to speak. Melanie’s machine gave me thirty seconds of ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba. Work that one out for yourself. I left my name and home and office numbers and hung up.

  After that I sat in front of the dead TV nursing my drink and decided to leave the mysterious Mr Grant and the lovely Sharon until the next day. What the hell, I was holding folding and decided to celebrate.

  Round about eight I got dolled up in a suit, clean shirt, tie and freshly polished brogues and called a mini-cab. Whilst I was waiting the phone rang. A female voice asked if I was Nick Sharman. I agreed that I was. The voice, which had a slight east London intonation, told me she was Melanie Wiltse and said she’d got my message. She sounded puzzled and a bit suspicious.

  ‘Do I know you?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied. I’m a private enquiry agent. I’m looking for Sharon Miller.’

  ‘Sharon. Why?’

  ‘Her husband has hired me to find her.’

  ‘Ray. You’re joking, aren’t you? The last time I saw Ray I was on my way to work and he was off to the housing benefit office. How could he afford to hire someone to find Sharon?’

  ‘His circumstances have altered somewhat since then,’ I told her.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ she said.

  ‘And he told me you might have some information about a bloke called Chris Grant.’

  ‘That scumbag. I warned Sharon about him.’

  ‘Did you? Listen, I wondered if we could meet. Where do you live?’

  ‘Walthamstow.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. Walthamstow is well off the beaten track.

  ‘But I work in Blackfriars.’

  ‘That would be more convenient. Are you doing anything for lunch tomorrow?’

  ‘Nothing special.’

  ‘Can we have lunch?’

  ‘Who’s paying?’ she asked, a bit suspicious again.

  ‘Ray Miller,’ I replied.

  ‘Blimey. Things must’ve changed. Yes, I’ll have lunch with you, but it’s got to be somewhere nice.’

  ‘You choose,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a decent place on Gabriel’s Wharf. Do you know it?’

  ‘I can find it.’

  ‘It’s called Gabriel’s Brasserie. There’s a bar next door called Studio Six. I’ll meet you there at ... What... ? Twelve-thirty?’

  ‘Fine. How will I know you?’

  ‘I’m blonde and I’ll be wearing a mac. You’re an enquiry agent. Make enquiries.’

  I laughed. I liked that, and I hoped I’d like Melanie too. ‘I’ll find you,’ I said. ‘See you tomorrow at twelve-thirty.’ And we both hung up.

  A few minutes later my cab arrived and I directed the driver towards the West End. Of course he didn’t know where the fuck he was going, but that’s about par for the course. Eventually he managed to find Shaftesbury Avenue and he dropped me off sans tip. One day, one of those cabbies is going to invest in an A–Z.

  I wandered the wet streets like a wraith looking for forgiveness. I dined alone in an expensive Italian restaurant on Dean Street and ended up in a chrome and acrylic bar close to Soho Square, full of women with bad skin, bad hair, bad clothes and bad marriages getting tanked up either on champagne or sticky, highly coloured drinks of a dubious nature and listening to Frank Sinatra on the in-house stereo. They were all looking for love, or some reasonable facsimile thereof.

  I was all alone and I missed my dead wife and my daughter, but I wasn’t seeking solace amongst the clientele. The thought of waking up next to a stranger again clenched my stomach like a vice. Love. No thanks. I’d had enough love for two lifetimes.

  I got a stool at the end of the bar and settled in for a night of steady drinking and minding my own business.

  On about my fourth Jack and Coke I suddenly had this strange feeling I was being watched.

  I slowly scoped the room, and way back at a table in the far corner next to the Ladies was a young woman on her own. She looked to be about twenty, pretty, with long straight black hair and a floaty print dress. Every time I looked round at her she looked away from me. Now, I’ve been eyed up by women in bars before and it wasn’t like that. There was no eye contact or smile. And she looked different from the rest of the punters. Like she didn’t belong. When I turned away for the third time I just knew she was clocking me again and for some reason it began to make me feel nervous.

  I had just ordered another drink and Dean Martin’s greatest had come on the PA when I felt a tug on my sleeve. I turned and it was her. Close up, she was more than pretty. Beautiful even, with a nose ring in her left nostril and a lot of black on her eyes. She reminded me of girls I used to know back in the seventies when I was at university. Hippies. She even smelt of patchouli. A musky perfume I hadn’t smelt for years. I felt like we were in a cone of silence when she spoke. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’ve been watching you.’

  ‘I noticed,’ I replied.

  ‘No, no.’ She waved a hand. ‘Not like that. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘It’s just that sometimes I get these feelings.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  ‘You don’t understand. I’m not hitting on you.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’ She didn’t seem to get the note of irony in my voice. I thought perhaps she was too young for irony, but later I was to find out different.

  ‘It’s just … It’s just that I see things,’ she said.

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘All sorts. And it frightens me sometimes.’


  Jesus, I thought. A fucking nutter. Just my luck. But I said nothing. Later, I was to find out that I was wrong about that too.

  ‘I know it sounds weird,’ she went on.

  ‘I’ve heard weirder,’ I said. ‘Fancy a drink?’

  ‘No. I’ve got to go. Please listen. I see that you are involved in something. Something dangerous. I see a bad moon rising. I see terrible things. A woman with a coffin and a skull. I’m not sure …’ She hesitated. ‘You’re in danger. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve …’ She paused again. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry. I have to go. Just be careful.’ And she turned and vanished into the growing throng.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, but she was gone, and when I hiked myself up on the bars of the stool to look over the heads of the crowd she’d disappeared. I stood up and pushed my way through the people, but there was no sign of her and I went back to my seat and ordered another drink.

  8

  I sat in the bar until it closed at three, then went and got a black cab home. I couldn’t get the girl or what she’d said out of my mind. She was pretty, but a spooky little bitch. And she was right. I was getting involved with something. Something she’d warned me against, and although she might indeed have just been a harmless nutter, it kept preying on my mind. All that talk of coffins and skulls had got me jittery. And how the fuck did she know? I made a cup of tea when I got in and smoked a last cigarette before collapsing into bed around four. I dreamt about the girl in her floaty dress, telling me to beware. Telling me she saw a bad moon rising. Well, it wouldn’t be the first.

  When I woke up it was full daylight and it felt as if a couple of battalions of the Chinese army were doing a short-order parade ground drill inside my head. I moaned and checked my watch. It was already nearly eleven and I decided I was too old for staying up half the night. Or maybe it was something I ate. Depressing thought.

  Eventually I crawled out of bed and under a shower, had a shave and got dressed. It was still raining which depressed me even more, especially as I had a lunch date with Melanie Wiltse when all I really wanted to do was to close the curtains and go back to my unmade bed and grab another few hours’ sleep.

  But, shored up with tea and toast, at eleven forty-five I called a cab and headed for Waterloo. At least this cabbie knew where the river was, which was something, and at twelve-fifteen precisely he dropped me off on the south side of Waterloo Bridge and vanished into the traffic in a blue haze of oily smoke and a swish of tyres on the wet road.

  I walked along the embankment under the dripping trees to Gabriel’s Wharf and found the bar that Melanie had described to me and ordered a beer. It was pre-lunch empty and there were no blondes in situ, with mackintoshes or without.

  I lit a cigarette and waited. The bar had a view of the river which was the colour of old iron that perfectly matched the clouds that hovered over the city and leaked a soft drizzle that hardly dotted the puddles on the wharf. The place began to fill up as the lunchtime crowd arrived, shaking their umbrellas and wiping the damp from their hair. A blonde in a mac came bustling through the door, looked round and headed straight for me. ‘Nick Sharman?’ she queried.

  I nodded and slid off my stool to greet her. ‘How did you know?’ I said as we shook hands.

  ‘You fit the description. So he won the bloody lottery. That’s amazing.’

  My head still hurt and it took me a minute to catch up. ‘Description? And how do you know about the lottery?’ I asked. I was beginning to repeat myself.

  ‘I phoned Ray last night after I spoke to you. Flattering though it is to be asked out to lunch by a handsome stranger, I just wanted to check your story. I was lucky to catch him at the old number. He’s moving up market. And who can blame him with that sort of money? Mine’s a G&T. A large one if he’s paying. This bloody weather’s messed up my hair.’ She ran her fingers through her short, yellow, spiky locks that looked just fine to me.

  ‘He is,’ I said and called over the barman.

  When we’d got our drinks we snagged the last free table in the bar, and she said, ‘I’ve got a long lunch. I want to know everything. He was a bit mysterious last night.’

  ‘You still probably know more than me,’ I replied, offering her a cigarette, which she accepted. She was a clone of Sharon. Good-looking, tall, shapely, and wearing a blue suit with a very short skirt. She wore a lot of jewellery. Rings and things, and a clunky gold charm bracelet on her right wrist.

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘As I told Ray last night I haven’t seen Sharon since she ran off with Chris Grant.’

  ‘Ray tells me you know Grant.’

  ‘I don’t really know him. I’ve seen him with Sharon a few times, and the fewer the better.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He’s a nasty bit of work.’

  ‘How nasty?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain. I just didn’t trust him. Too smooth.’

  ‘And you don’t like smooth men?’

  ‘Not the kind water runs off.’

  ‘But Sharon liked him.’

  ‘Sharon liked what he could give her. If she’d known about the lottery—’

  ‘She wouldn’t have gone.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So tell me about Sharon.’

  ‘I thought this deal was for lunch.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then let’s go next door and get comfy.’ The way she said it made me think she might have mistaken me for a lottery winner too.

  We finished our drinks and went to the restaurant. I’d phoned a reservation through before I left home and our table was upstairs in a corner, out of the way, just like I’d asked for. Not that I’d known when I’d phoned that it had an upstairs, but, hey, I’m an enquiry agent. I made enquiries.

  The table was by a window also overlooking the river, and straight away I ordered two more gin and tonics. Or is it gins and tonic? I can never remember. But I wanted Melanie in a chatty mood and I figured the mother’s ruin would do the trick.

  Whilst we were waiting for the drinks we scanned the menu and the wine list. If Melanie wanted to get comfy, who was I to argue? It was lottery money, after all. Better we should enjoy it than it got spent on lesbian fringe theatre. When the large Veras arrived we ordered: lobster for her and steak tartare for me. Plus a bottle each of the most expensive red and white wines on the list.

  ‘You’re spoiling me,’ she said.

  ‘Ray is,’ I countered.

  ‘Or you’re trying to get me drunk.’

  ‘Perish the thought.’

  She looked up at me from under sooty lashes. ‘I can handle it,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s get back to Ray. How long have you known him?’

  ‘Eight years, I guess,’ she said, taking a swig of gin and leaving a perfect pink lipstick mark on her glass. ‘Since he met Sharon.’

  ‘And how long have you know her?’

  ‘God ... years. Twelve. Maybe more. Since we started clubbing it. I bumped into her in the Ladies at a club in Romford. “Borrow your perfume?’’ You know the sort of thing.’

  I didn’t, but I could imagine. Where I come from blokes don’t do much perfume borrowing. It tends to get you strange looks in my local. Then I thought about Charlie. I’d thought about him a lot since our meeting in the bar, but I hadn’t been in touch. Some friend. I put him out of my mind and nodded encouragement to Melanie.

  ‘We started hanging out together,’ she went on. ‘Pulling blokes. You know the sort of thing.’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Then she met Ray. In the Hollywood. He had a few quid. And lots of medals from the army. She fell for him.’ She wrinkled her nose.

  ‘But you didn’t,’ I ventured.

  ‘No. No. Ray’s fine. If you like that sort of thing.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Someone who looks like Grant Mitchell from EastEnders. Mean and moody.’

  �
��And you don’t?’ She didn’t like smooth. She didn’t like mean and moody. I wondered what the hell she did like and, more and more as we talked, whether I fitted the bill. It had been a while, and there was something about Melanie Wiltse that I quite fancied.

  ‘I like men with more hair,’ she said, and looked at my thatch.

  ‘So was he?’ I asked. I still had a job to do.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mean and moody towards Sharon.’

  ‘No. As it happens he wasn’t. He was very good to her. Gave her everything she wanted. Too good really.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Letting her go back down the clubs after she had Liam. Letting her out on her own.’

  ‘But she wasn’t on her own. She was with you.’

  ‘You know what I mean. She phoned me. Miserable as sin she was. Wanted a chum. I was up for it. I could use a chum myself.’ The last few words hung over the table like a challenge.

  ‘But not her new boyfriend.’ Job. Remember?

  ‘No thanks. I warned her about him.’

  ‘So tell me. What does he do?’

  ‘He said he ran a pub down the Old Kent Road.’

  ‘But you didn’t believe him.’

  ‘I don’t know if I believed him or not,’ she said as our food and wine appeared. ‘He had a flash motor.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘A Merc. A new one. Dark blue.’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Sharon thought so. Ray was driving about in an Escort van.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘I bet. How the hell did he do it?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Win the bloody lottery. I spend a fiver a week and all I’ve won is a couple of tenners.’

  ‘Just put down six numbers, I imagine. That’s usually how it’s done.’

  ‘And he kept his name out of the papers. The other winner that week was some ex-footballer and the papers chased him all over the country. Ray just sat tight and cashed the cheque. We had a long chat last night.’

  I just bet they had. ‘I thought you said he was mysterious,’ I said.

  ‘Only about you.’ I nodded as I sipped at my wine. It was very good. I could get used to it and it was helping my hangover no end.