Part 12 (2/2)

'I'm a big girl now.'

'This is what troubles me.'

'I'll talk to you later, Joe. Thanks.'

'Friend?' asked Wigwam. On the off-chance, presumably, that it had been a wrong number.

Sarah took her tea. 'Thanks. Somebody who did some work for me.' Trying to make Joe sound like a jobbing plumber. 'Do you want a biscuit to go with this?'

'That'd be nice. He doesn't do gardens, does he? This Joe of yours?'

'I'd have to ask.'

'Only I've a branch needs sawing down. It's a bit high for Rufus.'

'We've a ladder you can borrow.'

'It's safer going professional, isn't it?'

Thus it was that, without actually having to lie or make false promises, Sarah arranged to ask the Private Detective if he did gardens at four pounds an hour. Not long after Wigwam left, she was back on the phone. There was little else for her to do. She'd not yet had replies to last week's letters.

'Oxford Investigations.'

'Joe, I want to take a look.'

'So take a look. I'm stopping you?'

'Will you come with me?'

'I'm a tour guide? Sarah, I want wild goose, I hang around Port Meadow in the autumn. I want a drive in the country, I head for the Catskills.'

'Cotswolds.'

'Whatever. Surrey, I don't touch. It holds bad memories. I had a dreadful case there once.'

'Murder?'

'Flu. And I'm busy at the moment, or I expect to be. Any day now.'

'Okay.'

'So I'm not going.'

'Okay.'

The silence down the line was very loud. The humming of unsaid words snarled up in the wires.

'This happens in films,' he said at last. 'One scene you get the man saying no way is he doing it. The very next he's doing it. Whatever it happens to be.'

'I've seen that,' Sarah said.

'But that's not going to happen here.'

'No, Joe.'

Whatever she had been expecting, the building was a brilliant cacophony of wings and crenellations, with small round towers jutting up at available corners, suggesting that it had been built to the specifications of a six-year-old. But all of it was tired, too; rain-streaked, mossed over in patches, and even in the bright suns.h.i.+ne looking like it suffered a chill. Or an ague, Sarah amended. Sometimes only the old words fit.

'Miss Havisham's wedding cake,' Joe said.

'Gormenghast,' she countered.

'Bit obvious,' he muttered as they got out of the car.

Oxford to Littleton had been no drive in the country, involving enough plastic bollards to throw a ring around the moon, and barricades of metal signs conveying cryptic instructions, small sandbags slung over their crossbars like dead piglets. Joe proved both neat and nervous behind the wheel; choosing his lane and sticking to it, and a.s.suming every other road user was a homicidal incompetent. This didn't stop him talking. 'I need my head examined,' he'd said.

'You're a very good man.'

'I'm a schmuck. You know the expression?'

'It doesn't apply.'

'I'm a sucker for a pretty face.' He glanced at her sideways, but she didn't register the compliment. 'I need a tougher contract. No refunds, no guarantees. That way, I wouldn't be taken advantage of.'

'Is that what I'm doing?'

'If the cap fits . . .'

'You've probably got it in upside down,' she finished, and immediately regretted it. 'Joe, you're kind to do this. But I'll pay for your time.'

'I promised,' he sighed. 'Remember?'

She did. And thought she was pretty good, actually, not to have reminded him herself. 'At least let me pay for the petrol.'

'Okay.'

They had set off early, no more than ten minutes after Mark left for work: as long as she was home before him, he'd never know she'd been gone. Except he might wonder why there was no supper. That was a problem she'd shelved; meanwhile she savoured the fact of setting out on what might be an adventure. With a real live private detective, authentically grumpy to boot. Though he thawed once they were under way; showed an alarming tendency, in fact, to wax nostalgic.

'I remember when I first came to Oxford '

'Where were you born, Joe?'

He thought about it. 'Croydon.'

'Nice part of the world?'

'You don't want to hear about Oxford?'

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