The Reluctant Detective Read online

  If nothing else, Martin had manners. His nanny, who had looked after him during his first few formative years, had instilled in him that good manners and polite behaviour were the cornerstones of a civilised society. She also took a leather strap to him when he missed out a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’, so that helped the learning process dramatically. So he put aside the disappointment that it was not Jenny calling him.

  “So you are interested in the position here at Hayden Investigations?”

  Susan composed herself, sat up straight in her chair, and replied,

  “You're in early; I was expecting an answer machine.”

  “Well I'm terribly sorry about that, would you prefer to speak to my answer machine? I would pass you on to my personal assistant, but for the fact that that is the role I am advertising and hoping to fill.”

  “No, you're fine. And yes, I am very interested in the position.”

  “Well, let's see if we can take some basic information from you, then if you sound the sort of person that we could employ, I'll ask you to attend an interview so we can meet face to face. First of all, what is your name?”

  “Susan Morris, but you can call me Sue, most of my friends always call me that, amongst other things,” her nerves caused her to over answer the question.

  “OK Sue. Well you might have guessed from the newspaper that we are an investigations agency, dealing with blue-chip clients across Europe, so you will not find our company splashed all over yellow pages. Discretion is our motto so I hope you are the sort of person who can be discreet?”

  Susan wondered if sitting in a now very crowded coffee shop alongside a transvestite, who was leaning against her head so he could listen to both sides of the conversation, and whom she had only just met, would be considered as discreet. She was not sure, so just answered,

  “Of course.”

  She began to answer his somewhat odd questions as honestly as possible, questions which she figured were those psychological ones she had read about. Clearly a detective agency had to be very careful who they employed, even she could understand that, so the questions, strange as they were, she was happy to answer, after all she needed a job. She found Martin's voice calming, his voice definitely contained a public school twang. As the questions moved on, she began to dream about herself in the job: modern offices, booking trips, dealing with clients, phone calls, letters to write, maybe a small team of other office staff. Travelling with Martin, who did sound cute, if he asked her out to a restaurant, would she….? She stopped herself daydreaming, when he asked,

  “Are you in a stable, current relationship?”

  Offbeat question she thought, but was still happy to answer,

  “No,” if he had met her semi-regular boyfriend, no way could he be described as being stable.

  “Would you object to travelling around Europe in the course of our business?”

  “No,” she said calmly. 'Hell no!' she thought with excitement. Going to pubs and clubs abroad with an expense account now that was just the sort of work she could handle with ease.

  “Would you describe your alcohol intake as moderate?”

  “Most certainly,” the first three glasses of wine she would consider moderate, after that she just didn’t give a monkey’s.

  The questions became ever more psychological, although Susan didn’t mind in the least. With his posh accent he sounded like Hugh Grant, hopefully his hair was better groomed. She wondered if he was married, she guessed he might well be or in some long-term relationship with some heiress or other.

  “All of our staff need to be physically fit, so how tall are you and what is your current weight?”

  “Five foot three and eight stone,” she lied a tad as she was nearer nine stone, well to be brutally honest nine and half was a more accurate description. She had planned to go on a diet as soon as she had a job and could afford a better, healthy diet. “I'm a size ten if that helps you picture me.”

  Colin raised his eyebrows at that response, he could see, without any doubt, she was at least a size 12.

  This was getting easier she thought, and just hoped she was building up a high score in the test, she really needed this job. If there was going to be a choice of sleeping with her landlord or this Martin, Martin would win out, even without having ever seen him.

  “What do you think is your best attribute?”

  Colin was now pressed against her ear like a teenager on heat, trying to listen in. His earrings were leaving a red welt on her neck; his perfume was no less obnoxious.

  “My breasts, people say they are small but perfectly formed. I am often complimented when I wear low-cut tops,” she stopped, her cheeks now burning, Susan was not often embarrassed. It was an odd question, but she really needed this job.

  “What I actually meant was what your best quality is, you know, good short-hand, excellent communications skills, that sort of thing.”

  “Oh shit, I'm sorry,” Susan had a habit of speaking first, then thinking, then regretting. She couldn’t help it, it was just something she had done all her life; it came to her as naturally as breathing.

  “No, don't worry, it was an interesting answer.”

  Susan tried to make up for her misinterpretation of the question by trying to dilute her previous answer, but instead managed to make things worse, yet another quality she had.

  “When I say my breasts are my best part, there's nothing wrong with the rest of me, my legs aren’t bad, in fact I’d say they were as good as my breasts, maybe you should see both and decide for yourself.” ‘Shit!’ she thought again. Did I actually say, 'let him see both’?

  Colin gave her the thumbs up, before standing up and thrusting his hip backward and forwards in a fornicating motion, much to the confusion of the three business men who decided they should conduct their meeting elsewhere.

  “OK, Susan, I think that's enough about your physical side for now. Well, Susan, you certainly seem to be the sort of person that Hayden Investigations would be interested in employing; so with that in mind, I would like to invite you to our offices for a formal interview.”

  Colin hugged her like an enthusiastic Auntie.

  “Hurdle one cleared darling, time for clean underwear, then hurdle two. Tea at the Ritz here we come.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  For the third time since leaving Oxford Street tube station, Susan checked the address as she stood outside the imposing Victorian building. Being so close to the BBC, (British Broadcasting Centre), she kept a vigilant eye out for celebrities. If there had been any walking past her in the street, then they were not that famous as far as she was concerned, as she had not recognised anyone. The address, One Duchess Street, looked to her like a palace. It was no such thing, just an imposing white four-storey building that once had been home to a rich Victorian family. No longer a home full of family, servants and maids, it had now been separated into plush office-suites where small companies, who could afford it, had an office with an impressive address. Susan took a deep breath then pushed the glazed, black, wrought-iron door and stepped into a grand, ornate hallway with a wide carpet. Ahead of her was a staircase leading upwards and to the left of it was a small, elegantly-carved wooden desk with an elderly man, in a type of grey uniform, seated behind it. He looked up from the computer screen and smiled at her.

  “Can I help you, Miss?”

  Susan approached the desk; her shoes seemed to sink into the deep-piled carpet.

  “I'm here for an interview with Hayden Investigations.”

  “Then you'll need to knock on that door over there. Mr Hayden is already in.” The elderly man pointed to a black-painted panel door just to her right at the foot of the staircase.

  “Before I go in, can you please tell me if there have been any other people turning up for an interview today?”

  “Not that I know of Miss, but good luck anyway.”

  Susan tapped firmly on the door just below the brass plate that had the words: 'Hayden Investigations' engr
aved on it. A moment later the door was opened by a cute young man, maybe in his thirties, who ushered her in before closing the door behind her.

  “You must be Susan,” he offered his hand and they shook hands formally.

  “That's right; I'm here to see Mr Hayden.”

  “And now you've met him, however please call me Martin, I hate calling people by their surname. Grab a seat; can I get you a drink? Tea, coffee, water?”

  She looked at him and compared him to the mental image she had drawn during their telephone conversation. He was taller than she had imagined, with a slender figure and his hair was better groomed than Hugh Grant’s.

  She looked around the room for the first time becoming aware of her surroundings. The room was perhaps twenty feet by twenty feet square, although Susan had never been good at judging sizes. The office was decorated with boring beige-painted walls, and just two desks facing each other in the centre of the room. One desk was clearly being used and had a smart looking laptop on it. A brown paper bag with a half-eaten bacon roll was lying beside a branded take-out coffee cup. Opened out, across most of the desk, was a broadsheet newspaper, not the sort that Susan would ever consider reading; she was a Daily Mirror sort of person as had been her parents. There was a leather settee to the left of a small door where, from what she could see, there was a small kitchen area.

  “Water's fine,” she finally replied.

  “That's a relief; they supply a water machine here. I haven’t got around to sorting out the kitchenette yet, so I rely on the many takeaways around here for my coffee fix. Sit down Susan, thanks for coming.”

  She sat down at the desk facing his cluttered desk, it was totally empty, just a plain bare desktop.

  Martin sat down, pushed the paper to one side and picked up the bacon roll.

  “Late breakfast,” he confessed before continuing,

  “So after our interesting and very revealing early morning telephone conversation, what more can you tell me about yourself? Maybe not too intimate this time,” he smiled warmly, then proceeded to take a large bite from the roll and ate while he waited for Susan's reply.

  Susan was not inclined to answer at once, from her new viewpoint; she continued to take in her surroundings. The beige walls were still as boring, emphasised she now realised, by not a lot else in the room. No office machines, no filing cabinets, no bookcases, nothing that you would expect to find in a modern office. There was a long, black leather settee, on which someone had thrown their coat; she guessed that would have been Martin. Not even a picture or a poster on the wall, Susan would describe the office to be an empty office; certainly not a busy office. Just one cluttered desk, one empty desk, one settee and two now occupied chairs.

  “I think you'll find all you need to know in this,” she passed him a well-presented CV; a CV that Colin had spent time revising, rewording, and in his own word, 'reinventing'.

  Martin glanced over the document, all the time rolling his ear lobe between his fingers. Susan sat nervously. She did not have possession of the most sought after curriculum vitae in the kingdom. In fact it had been compared to a wet, wilted lettuce leaf, which had been how one potential employer had described it to Susan, when she had rung up demanding a reason for not getting the job as a chartered accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Clearly she understood that she was not qualified to be a chartered accountant, but that was six months ago when she had been a firm believer in the ‘don’t ask, don’t get’ frame of mind. Since then her self-confidence had plummeted to the point where when she failed to get a job at MacDonald’s, her only reaction had been to shrug her shoulders and walk away eating a complementary Big Mac.

  Now at twenty-nine years old, she still had at least forty years of possible employment ahead of her; unless the Government continued to raise the retirement age, in which case she could have fifty to sixty years left. Her qualifications consisted of a ‘D grade’ in Home Economics, a St John’s Ambulance first aid certificate plus an overnight badge she obtained from the brownies after spending twenty-four hours under canvas when she was seven. Otherwise her educational days had been spent: chasing boys, applying make-up, wearing clothes which her mother described as inappropriate and the occasional bit of shoplifting with three other girls, all of whom, as soon as they left school, became professional single parents.

  Susan had been lucky, or unlucky, whichever way you wanted to look at it, as her teacher, Mr Stokes, well in fact Mr Stokes’s wife, ran a small, street corner mini-market, and she had provided Susan with a full-time job when she left school. This gave the sixteen-year-old Susan the chance to begin a career in shop-keeping, as well as affording the opportunity for Mr Stokes to grope her in the stockroom whenever his wife was out front serving.

  Susan put up with his wandering, mostly harmless, hands for a year before leaving Mr & Mrs Stokes to begin a new life with Boots the Chemist. She stayed three months at the chemist before moving up the high street to work at HMV, followed by another change, Thomas Cook, (four doors along from HMV). So by the time she was twenty-one, Susan had run out of shops in Tooting High Street in which she could work. So, at that point, Susan jumped on the tube and headed for Bayswater, where the streets are longer and contain more shops.

  Longer streets were not the only reason Susan had jumped on the tube to Bayswater. She was lucky enough to have an aunt who worked in Bayswater for a family whose business was selling stationery to companies both large and small. For close on two years, Susan settled down to work by day and enjoyed some nights out, life was tolerable until the family business went bust. The first Susan and her aunt knew of the calamity was when they arrived one cold November morning to find the doors locked and some long, legal notice pinned to the door. Auntie returned to a small market town in Suffolk where she had grown up, leaving Susan to fend for herself.

  Martin looked up and spoke to her across the desk,

  “I see you spent a lot of time in retail management, it sounds a very good scheme being seconded to so many different companies, and it must surely have broadened your horizons tremendously?”

  Susan smiled again, “Yes,” that was all she could muster by way of an answer. She was not too sure what else Colin might have mentioned about her retail experience.

  Martin looked over the type-written pages again, wondering what sort of questions he should be asking. This interview business, both the telephone and in person versions, were turning out to be a lot harder than he could have imagined. He wanted to come across able, director-like, decisive; comfortable ordering people around, developing strategies, making serious business decisions. Yet having never read the instructions, he totally screwed up the answer machine. He had pressed all the wrong buttons and had been left with two recorded calls after the advert appeared: - one from an agency who wanted to run the advertisement in some other publication, then one from a dragon of a woman who sounded a lot like his mother. So now his main and only candidate for this job was the attractive girl now sitting in front of him. Looking at her CV she could most likely run rings around his business sense and tie him up in little knots.

  Martin looked over her qualifications once more. She had seven ‘O’ levels, (Colin had told her that no-one ever checks these things), and had spent five years on a retail management course which involved her being seconded to a number of high street chains; Boots, WH Smith, Sainsbury’s etc. Colin had assured her that if they asked, she could always say the company which ran the management course has closed down. Then two years as a Commercial Business Finance Consultant, (Colin was confident a Commercial Business Finance Consultant could in fact be anything as long as at some point you touched an invoice or handled money), working alongside the Finance Director of a large stationary company as it merged with a larger group and her post had then become redundant, (Colin thought it sounded cool and powerful, plus references might be difficult as records do get lost in these moves). At present, according to Colin, she was a freelance consultant working for Pricewaterho
useCooper in their Global Communications Directorate. Colin guaranteed her that there were over a hundred people in that department, with a revolving carousel of consultants that jump on and off all the time. He should know because he knew one of the guys who worked there, Derek, a tall, sweet-talking Aussie with big biceps, who in his spare time wore make-up, and was thinking about wearing women’s clothes as well, he was just not yet sure.

  Yes, Martin thought, she was well qualified, possibly too qualified for what he wanted. Even though she had the looks and the walk he was tempted to be up front with her, give her the chance to leave then and there, but that would mean Martin would be back to square one, and his mother would still be pushing him to get a personal assistant.

  Without looking up from the CV Martin asked, “How’s Zoe nowadays? I haven’t seen her for, oh, must be about six months.”

  Susan had a blank look on her face, who was this man talking about, Zoe? Were things about to get even weirder?

  “Who?”

  “Zoe, Zoe Harris, Comms. Director at PwC.”

  “I’m sorry Mr Hayden, you have lost me there.”

  “Call me Martin, I said this was an informal interview and we are an informal company. Zoe Harris, Communications Director at PwC, your boss,” he smiled.

  Susan had one word in her mind on a continuous loop: ‘Shit! Shit! Shit….!’

  “You know Zoe?” Susan laughed to hide her fear at being tripped up and her urge to stuff Colin’s drop-earrings down his throat the next time she saw him.

  “Dated her for about three months, I might even have walked past you in the office, small world. So how is she?”

  There is always a danger that a small lie that is found out, leads to another slightly bigger lie, which in turn, when that one is found out, leads to another even bigger lie, and so it goes on and on until, before long, you are telling the person you are lying to, that the earth is flat and you have positive proof in the form of a written affidavit from God. Unless of course you stopped the lies in their tracks by confessing the moment the first lie is found out. Susan, on the other hand, believed there was a saying that states, two lies make a truth. As long as the second lie moves you away from the first lie.