Stone Cold Red Hot (4 page)

The far wall was smothered with an array of fancy picture frames and mirrors, everything from tiny, stylish mosaic-edged mirrors to padded, frilled and be-ribboned portrait frames. There were plaques too, painted with house names and numbers and, at waist height, a long shelf held vases and jars decorated with vibrant glass mosaics.

“They’re great,” I pointed to the vases, “I love the mosaics.”

“They’re selling like hot cakes at the moment,” she admitted. She edged her way past the table and picked up a small urn-shaped vase. “Here,” she held it out, “do you like this one?”

“Oh, no,” I protested, “I can’t.”

“It’s good PR,” she insisted, “when your friends admire it you can tell them where you got it. Word gets round, it all helps the business.”

“Thank you, it’s lovely. You manage to make a living out of it?”

I thought of my friend Diane, a textile artist and printer whose income went up and down like a yoyo.

“Now, I do. I’ll just wrap this.” She pushed back her long, grey hair and rummaged in a carrier bag for some bubble wrap. “The first few years were very hard. I made a loss for the first three. But I’ve a couple of big contracts with gift shops - that gives me a fairly regular return and the craft fairs and commissions top it up.” She tore some sellotape from a dispenser and stuck it round the bubble wrap. “There.”

“Thank you, it’s lovely.”

“And I’ll give you one of these,” she took a business card from a box on the table. “I do orders to design, too.”

“Swap you,” I fished one of my cards from my pocket.

She helped me to manoeuvre my bike out of the door and down the steps to the path. She wished me luck with my search for Jennifer. “I do hope you find her,” she said, “I’d love to know how she’s turned out, I always thought she’d make something of herself, you know.”

I couldn’t make up my mind whether to keep the mosaic vase at the office or take it home where I’d see more of it. I dithered for a while. It looked great on the filing cabinet next to the cactus and the yucca, the tiny deep blue, turquoise and orange tiles complemented the colours in the room but not many of Mrs Clerkenwell’s potential customers would see it there. I would leave it at work until I’d finished the job for Roger Pickering, a sort of talisman for the case. Then, whatever the outcome, I’d take it home and show it off.

I rang the number for Frances Delaney but there was no reply. I glanced at the clock. She’d probably be doing the school run. It was that time already.

Lisa MacNeice rang me that evening. She sounded very cautious. Probably thought I was trying to flog her a new kitchen or a conservatory.

“I’m a private detective,” I explained, “I’m trying to trace Jennifer Pickering on behalf of her family and I’d like to come and talk to you if I may.”

“Jennifer! Is this a wind-up? What’s your name again?”

I told her. “You can check with Roger Pickering if you like,” I said, “he’s still living at home.”

She reeled off the Heaton Mersey number. “I can remember it after all this time. It’s OK,” she continued, “the private detective lark sounded a bit weird and I had some unwelcome attention from the press last year, dishing the dirt, you know. I thought it might be more of the same.”

“No, it’s not.” I was intrigued; what dirt had been dished? I was dying to ask but I bit my tongue. “In fact Roger’s been to see your parents. That’s how I got your number in the first place - you can confirm it with them if that would help.”

“No, it’s OK,” she said, “if you had been the press I’d be able to hear you squirming by now, spinning some yarn, either that or you’d have hung up. So you’re looking for Jenny, I haven’t seen her since I left home, I’ve no idea where she is now.”

Oh no. I was disappointed. I’d been hoping for a break, wanting to hear that Jennifer had kept in touch with her friend and that Lisa could give me her phone number and address. Just like that.

“I realise it’s a long time ago,” I said, “but as yet I’ve no recent sightings to follow up. I’m having to go way back. When is the best time for you, if I were to come over?”

“Evenings, I’m usually home by seven.”

“Eight o’clock,” I suggested, “tomorrow or the day after?”

“Tomorrow, yes.”

She gave me directions from the motorway and we said our goodbyes.

I was burning with curiosity about her references to the press? Perhaps I’d hear more about it when I met her. Or I could trawl around the news sites on the Internet, Ray was online now and I was having fun and getting frustrated at what I could and couldn’t glean from it. If all else failed my friend Harry who was an investigative journalist turned Internet whizzkid would help out. He got a kick doing that sort of thing for friends, said it was light relief.

It occurred to me that I could search for Jennifer Pickering on the Net too. If she had e-mail it could be quite easy to find her address. It was too late in the day to try it now, I always spent twice as long staring at the screen as I’d anticipated, but I made a mental note to give it a go the next day.

I went down to the cellar to ask Ray if he’d be in the following evening - he hadn’t mentioned anything but his relationship with Laura involved plenty of last minute arrangements. He had headphones on while he worked, he was varnishing a cherry wood corner cupboard. He’d used fretwork for the doors and it looked beautiful, intricate like lace.

“Ray.”

He straightened up and slid his headphones down.

“I have to work tomorrow night, someone I need to interview, I’ll be leaving about 7.15.”

He nodded. “I’ll be here.”

“I shouldn’t be too late back. That’s looking good.”

“Bugger to varnish.”

I waited a beat or two sensing a slight awkwardness in the exchange. Nothing obvious. Symptomatic of how things had felt to me since Ray and Laura got involved with each other. He was always preoccupied. As if the rest of us had become minor supporting characters, there in the background but taken for granted. We definitely spent less time together and talked less. The worst thing was not being able to work out if my observations about the atmosphere were objective or if it was just my perception. It bugged me, it bugged me a lot.

Things were bound to change with a serious relationship, I kept telling myself, new lovers were notoriously selfish, maybe I was jealous (of Ray or of what they had?) Come on! I’d talk to Diane about it, my best friend, my confidante. She wouldn’t shy away from being honest with me.

Thursday morning and I had an appointment with Mandy Bellows at the Town Hall. Withington is about four miles south of the City Centre and Wilmslow Road links the two in a straight line but I don’t like doing that journey by bike so I got the bus in. That stretch has the dubious reputation of being the busiest bus route in Europe and although there are cycle lanes for part of it they are often used as handy parking spaces by motorists. You end up weaving in and out of aggressive traffic and waiting for the inevitable moment when some nerd does a sharp left turn across your handlebars or opens their door into you. Painful.

The bus journey was complicated by the annual intake of new students who were clutching maps and trying to find their way about, trying to get on the right bus to the right site on the right campus. Manchester boasts three universities and a handful of colleges and the city’s population leaps by thousands every autumn.

They were a feature at every bus stop. Thankfully our driver was helpful and courteous. He patiently pointed out where the bus would go, corrected people’s mis-pronunciations and called out loudly when we reached the various buildings on Oxford Road.

After living in Manchester, Keele would have seemed small to Jennifer Pickering, manageable. I’d a notion it was one of the out-of-town campus universities like Lancaster. I wasn’t even sure where it was, Midlands? Somewhere near Stoke perhaps.

If Jennifer had got pregnant she must have met someone fairly early in the term. It takes a few weeks to make sure and I knew that she’d left Keele and had broken off contact by the Christmas. If I could find any people who were students with her, maybe people who shared her accommodation and did English with her they would be pretty likely to know who the man involved was, a student or a lecturer? Secrets were hard to keep in the close environment of university life. I remember in my own case we seemed to know everything about who was screwing who, who was into drugs or had debts or got violent when drunk.

At the top of Oxford Road there were adverts for new apartments in the heart of the city. Some of them were selling for ludicrous prices. Manchester was the place to be. We had the best football team in the world (according to Ray) and had produced Oasis as well as Coronation Street. Time was people in Manchester felt overshadowed by the dominance of London; people moved south for the opportunity to develop. But these days Manchester was on a roll. The centre of the universe. A Manchester accent was an asset - chuck.

The bus swung round past Central Library with its domed roof and pillars and I got off when it stopped near Albert Square.

It was a mild, misty day, the air felt soft. The Gothic style Town Hall with its honey sandstone seemed to glow against the colours of the surrounding trees and the slate grey of the sky.

The Neighbour Nuisance Unit is upstairs but I had to report to the security desk on the ground floor and they rang for Mandy to come down and collect me. She led the way up the stone staircase, between marble pillars with vaulted ceilings, everything rich with intricate stone mouldings and carvings. She made us coffee before we settled at her desk in the corner of the open plan office. She picked up a file from the sea of paperwork that cluttered her desk and spilled over onto a side table as well.

“Mr Ibrahim and his family came here from Somalia in 98. Refugees. They had two children, now three. They managed to get asylum. They were in London originally then got moved up here. They were in homeless families accommodation for a while then we offered them a house in St Georges, in Hulme. They moved the first week of July. Since then there have been a series of incidents; verbal abuse, graffiti daubed on the house, stones thrown at the house, children threatened. They’ve reported it to the Housing Office and the police have cautioned some of those responsible.”

“Kids?”

“Not all of them. There’s a family on the Close who have a reputation for anti-social behaviour; the Brennans. Neighbours have made a number of complaints about them to the council already and some neighbours have been asked to keep a diary to record any incidents. We will be seeking a court injunction to get them to alter their behaviour but it’s going to take some time. However, there’s another family, the Whittakers, and they seem to be the ones who are particularly targeting the Ibrahims. We’ve not had prior complaints about the Whittakers though I believe Colin Whittaker is known to the police, he’s a member of some neo-Nazi group, he’s banned from football matches - that sort of scene. From what Mr Ibrahim tells me he wants them out and he’s making no bones about it.

“Now we can see about re-housing the family but as you know we would prefer to tackle the issue of antisocial behaviour or racial harassment and deal with those responsible. For that we need firm evidence to enable the police to take those involved to court. That’s where you come in. We can give you a camcorder and one of the neighbours is prepared to let us use one of his rooms for surveillance. He’s told us a lot about what’s actually going on. I think he’d do it for us himself if we asked him but we need a professional job doing. You’ll have to sort out a cover story, visiting relative or some such.”

My stomach missed a step. Surveillance is a mixture of dull and dangerous. But undercover work which I have done on occasion demands even more nerve and involves playing a part with enough aplomb to convince. Surveillance is covert; the main aim to observe without being noticed, ninety-nine percent of the time it’s a bore. Undercover work is both overt and covert, it involves being seen and being believed, fitting in or getting found out. The adrenalin never lets up, it can be terrifying. It is never boring.

“You know I can’t do twenty-four hours?”

“We can work round that. The harassment usually happens when Mr Ibrahim is at work, in the evening. He’s got a job at a take-away in Chorlton.”

“So Mrs Ibrahim’s on her own with the children then?”

“Yes. It’s not Mrs Ibrahim though, they have a different custom for names, she keeps her father’s names even though she’s married. All Somali’s have three names, the children will take two of their father’s names and be given a name too. So even they won’t be known as Ibrahim. It gets very complicated,” she smiled, “well, it does for us as you can imagine but the Somalis know exactly what’s what.” She checked the file. “She’s called Fatima Hassan Ahmed, so you can call her Mrs Ahmed or Fatima - that’s her given name. Now, there have been incidents at the weekends too and they seem to be increasing in frequency. We’d like you to start with a night this weekend, his shift is six to two, you could cover that. I’m hoping you’ll be able to get the general picture, maybe do another night if you need to. In addition to that I want you to be on call - we’ll ask Mr Poole, that’s the neighbour, to ring you if trouble starts. The Ibrahims don’t have a phone. Mr Poole has called the police for help in the past though he doesn’t want it broadcasting.”

“Do the Brennans and the Whittakers know?”

“Not sure, they may have their suspicions. However Mr Poole’s got a great deal of respect in the area, used to run the local Tenants group until a couple of years ago. If they go up against him there’ll be a lot of antagonism from other neighbours. He’s not such an easy target.”

I thought about the role Mandy wanted me to play. “I might be coming and going quite a bit and at odd times if I’m on call. I’ll need some cover to allow for that.”

The pair of us began to invent possibilities,

“District nurse?”

I shook my head. “Too risky, people might know who the nurses are and he’d have to play sick as well. If I was a relative why would I be at Mr Poole’s? Job interviews?”