The Tangled Web (16 page)

She hung up her coat and strolled through to the living
room, hoping she looked at ease.  She rubbed her hands together to attempt to
defrost them from the ice blocks they’d become on the walk back to her flat
from the town centre. 

Adam switched off Deal or No Deal and looked Flic straight
in the eye.

‘Where have you been all day?’ he asked.

‘I went to see Vicky,’ she replied, hoping this pacified
him.

‘Vicky had a funeral today,’ he frowned. 

‘I know.  She was getting ready to go as I arrived.  I went
into Debenhams after that and had a hot chocolate.’

‘All day?  A hot chocolate took you all day?’ he snapped.

‘I had more than one!’ she defended.

‘Your disappearance wouldn’t have anything to do with
this?’ Adam held up the envelope they’d received from Amy.

Flic pinched her brow and scrunched her eyes closed.

‘Why didn’t you tell me it was her who had sent this when I
asked this morning?’ Adam raised his voice slightly.

‘I was trying to get my head around it.  I couldn’t believe
of all the people who must have read the article, SHE would be the one to get
in touch!’ Flic shook her head, still not quite understanding why it had
happened.

Adam looked down at his knees and wrung his hands
together.  ‘I might have had something to do with that.’

‘What?’

‘I looked her up, just to be nosey.  Then I thought it
would be a laugh to send her a… a bit of advertising.  Plant the seed in her
head.  Get her suspicious.  Burst her bubble a wee bit…’ he trailed off.

‘You did this?  YOU?’ she roared.  ‘Do you have any idea
what you’ve done?’  Tears pricked at her eyes.

‘I didn’t think she would get in touch, I thought she would
think it was a spam email and delete it,’ Adam replied.

Flic glared at him.  She couldn’t believe he had done
this.  And when?  Amy said in her letter she had emailed them at the weekend. 
Flic only told him about her divorce on Sunday afternoon.  Had he done it right
away?

Unable to process the facts, she backed out of the living room
and searched the short hallway for sanctuary.  She took the first door that
caught her eye – her spare room – and locked herself in. 

She slumped down, her back against the door, and allowed
the tears which had threatened all day to trickle down her cheeks for a few
minutes.  It was only late afternoon but it was already dark.  She reached up
for the light switch but realised she hadn’t replaced the bulb last time it
fused.  She had seen no reason to do so.  She never used this room - except to
throw all her junk into.

Deciding the dimness would drive her crazy, she looked
around for a solution which would allow her some light without leaving the room
and having to face Adam again.  She noticed her old desktop computer.  She
hadn’t used it for a few weeks.  She’d bought it to use when she worked from
home, before she had been made redundant.  She now had a laptop for her work
with HunE-trap Investigations – provided by Magnus, of course.  She shone her
phone at the cables and used the limited light to connect the monitor to the
computer, then flicked the switch at the socket and let the computer boot up. 
It took ten times as long as the laptop. 

The glow from the monitor cast an eerie light on the room. 
It really was full of junk.  She smiled ruefully and walked towards an old
suitcase in the opposite corner of the room.  She knew exactly what was in
there – a bottle of champagne her sister Joanne had sent her when she got
divorced.  She had never liked George.  As tempted as she’d been to drink it, she
thought it was in bad taste.  Divorce wasn’t something to celebrate.  She
didn’t even want to think about George and she certainly didn’t want to rejoice
in the fact their life together had ended.

Well, maybe it was time to open that bottle of champagne,
she thought.  Not really a celebration, as Joanne had intended.  More like a
wake.

Flic swiftly removed the foil from the top of the bottle
and popped the cork.  It was much louder than she’d intended and the sticky
liquid sprayed the walls and covered Flic’s hand.  She cursed succinctly and
sucked the champagne from her skin.

‘Flic?  Did you just pop a cork in there?  Are you
drinking?’ Adam called through the door.

‘Piss off,’ she blurted thoughtlessly.  She decided he must
have done as he was asked because she didn’t hear a response.

She removed her boots and sat down in front of the monitor,
cross-legged and positioned the keyboard on her knees.  Time to find out what
George has been up to, she told herself.  She then used every method she knew –
search engines, social networking, several websites she knew he had worked on
as a translator and an old picture forum he used to use.  It seemed George
wasn’t too concerned about privacy.  He was everywhere.  Granted, there wasn’t
much in the last few weeks, but there was plenty of information for her to find
since their split.

Before she knew it, the bottle of champagne was finished,
her head was fuzzy and she knew almost everything of consequence George had
been doing since they split up.  She’d trawled through five years of holiday
pictures, read his blog about Glastonbury 2009, found out where he worked now
and even caught up with what some of their old mutual friends had been doing by
following the comments and posts they’d made on his social networking profiles. 
His life was right there in front of her.

His wonderful, happy, cosy life.  With Amy.

The tears threatening again, Flic felt a rage bubbling up
in her chest and throat.  She had to send that email telling Amy they weren’t
going to do the investigation into George.   She had to do it now, before she
changed her mind.

She typed the email out.

“
Dear Mrs Goodbody

Unfortunately, HunE-trap Investigations are unable to
search for evidence of cheating by your husband, George Goodbody…”

Right, that’s a good start, she thought.  No way could she
investigate him, like she had tonight.  Tonight had been a one-off.  A
surprisingly easy one-off.  It definitely hadn’t been as difficult as she had
thought.  She’d imagined it would be like a knife to her heart.  But it had
been strangely satisfying.  She could do it again.  If she really had to, she
could.  She didn’t though. 

But if she was getting paid for it…

“...
until we receive a deposit from you of £50 for work
already done to trace your husband.  We can then proceed.  The name of the
agent investigating your husband will be…”

She couldn’t use her own name.  Or The Pink Cougar.  Then
Vicky would know she had gone against what they’d agreed.  And Adam would
know.  She had to just make something up.  Something glamorous.  Something
which could possibly be foreign, but sound good in English too.  George would
love that.  Something like…..Diana.  She needed a surname.  It had to be
foreign, but not from a nationality where George could speak the language. 
Flic retrieved a scrunched up receipt from her pocket to see who had served her
in the café this morning.  P. Dutkowiak.  It sounded Polish.  Excellent.  He
didn’t speak Polish.

“
….Miss Diana Dutkowiak.  Please address all
correspondence to her at the address this email was sent from.  Please do NOT
use the main HunE-trap Investigations email address as this is for enquiries
only.”

Flic pressed send, without proof-reading, and smiled to
herself.  It was time to wipe that smile off Amy’s face.

12

12
^th
February

Vicky swung back and forth on her rocking chair and stared
at the snowflakes falling peacefully on the window.  The watery daylight was
gently emerging, although it didn’t make the landscape any less bleak. 

She cursed Flic for texting her so early to say there was
another emergency.  She cherished her Saturdays.  No driving a hearse through
slush, no standing in the biting wind at a graveside, no tedious admin, no
meticulously checking the temperature of the fridge to make sure the clients
were preserved properly, no waiting for the phone to ring to say someone had
died.   Saturdays like this, when she wasn’t on call and the weather was so
dismal were even more precious because she could just curl up in bed with Sasha
and a hot chocolate watching Waybuloo, calm in the knowledge that there was
really nothing else she could do.

Fat chance of that today!  She had a feeling there was a
drama ahead and silently berated herself for getting involved with Flic in the
first place.  It was starting to feel like there were two Scarletts in her life
now.

‘Vicky!  Flic’s here!’ her mother called up to her.  Vicky
was surprised Flic was up and about so early after Adam had phoned last night
and complained that Flic had locked herself in the spare room and was
drinking.  Surely she’s not fit to drive, Vicky thought.

‘Send her up,’ Vicky called back.  She stood up from the
cosy padded rocking chair she’d bought when Sasha was first born and positioned
her daughter to sit comfortably on a beanbag in front of the television.  Vicky
hoped this drama wasn’t about Flic’s ex-husband again. 

The door to her bedroom creaked open and Flic scuffled
through, not uttering a word.  Vicky noted that Flic looked as smart as she
always did, except for her eyes.  Her make-up was heavier than usual and the
whites of her eyes were pink.  It was obvious she had been crying.  And
drinking.

Flic glanced around the room, searching for Vicky.  Vicky
had a lilac glass partition separating the nursery section from her own
sleeping area.  Vicky peeked her head around the glass and nodded her
acknowledgement.  Flic said nothing.  She sat on the edge of a padded stool
positioned at the edge of the bed and chewed on her lips. 

‘What’s happened?’ Vicky asked.

‘Got drunk and…accidentally…sent the wrong email,’ Flic
muttered.

Vicky closed her eyes, wished she’d heard Flic wrong, and
opened them again.  ‘What did you send?’

‘Told her we needed a deposit of fifty quid then we’d start
work on the investigation.  She sent it through PayPal this morning.’

‘That was no accident!  You have to fix this!  Email her
back.  Tell her it was a mistake,’ Vicky barked.

‘We’re under contract now,’ Flic bleated.

‘I don’t care!’

‘We can’t!’

‘We can!’ Vicky countered

‘If we start paying money back to clients, Magnus will ask
what’s going on and find out what’s happened.  Then Adam will find out.  Do you
really want them knowing?  It’s much easier to just carry on, get it over with
and then forget it,’ Flic protested.

Vicky was halted by Flic’s statement.  She thought about
how unprofessional it would seem to Magnus if they admitted what had happened. 
She knew she should have sent the email herself and not let Flic handle it. 
Flic was too closely involved to be able to detach herself emotionally.  Magnus
would blame Vicky and say she should have taken control of the situation when
she realised Flic couldn’t handle it.  And he’d lose any respect he had for her
professionally. 

‘You’re right,’ she conceded. 

She perched on the edge of the pouf next to Flic and
searched her mind for a resolution.  ‘But this will blow up in our faces!  How
are we going to keep this from Magnus and Adam anyway?’ Vicky tutted.

‘I told her to send all emails directly to me,’ Flic
replied.

Vicky surmised that Flic had clearly thought some of this
through, but not it all.  She wondered if this had really been a drunken
mistake or if it had been premeditated.  She twisted around and studied Flic’s
face for signs of guilt and saw nothing – just the same neutral expression she
always saw.

‘Won’t she see your name when she looks at the sender
anyway?’ Vicky reasoned.   

‘No.  When I send emails they’re sent from the name FXR. 
That’s all it says.  I’m paranoid about my security online,’ Flic explained.

‘What’s FXR?  What does that mean?’ Vicky squinted.

‘Felixia Rice.  That’s my name.’

Vicky stood up and glanced around the partition to check on
Sasha before slowly walking towards the window.  She was smart enough to figure
this out.  Flic was too, when she wasn’t drunk.  Vicky was confident they could
fix this without Adam or Magnus finding out. 

‘Right, say we DID proceed.  Do the job, make it quick,
keep it quiet.  What about the character we use?  We can’t use your picture for
the honey because you were married to him.’

‘We’ll use yours,’ Flic shrugged, like it was an obvious
solution.

Vicky shook her head.  ‘Not possible.  I’m friends with
your Gran on Tête-a-net.  All he’d have to do is look her up and he’d see me. 
There’s too close a link.’

‘My Gran’s on Tête-a-net?’ Flic boomed.  ‘Oh, that is too
much!  She’s eighty-three!’

‘We have no picture we can use then.  There’s no way we can
carry on with this.’