DECOY (Kindle Single) Read Free Page B

only been taken last summer.
    The Tribes had been together for three years, a second marriage for both of them. Susan was open about the fact that her first husband had dumped her for his secretary; she never had managed to pin down why Kev’s first wife had upped and left.
    After what had seemed to be two happy years, Susan had begun to get suspicious that Kev might be seeing other women on his travels about Oxford as a locksmith. He worked alone, responding to callouts twenty-four-seven in his little van. Numbers obtained from sneak inspections of his phone suggested that some of his emergency callouts to rescue customers in distress, often late at night, were frequently to the same addresses. Maybe they were just careless folks who kept locking themselves out. Maybe they were something else. Mrs Tribe had called some of the numbers, heard a woman’s voice each time and then hung up without a word.
    Meanwhile, Kev had cooled towards her. He often seemed furtive and secretive, gave vague and sometimes inconsistent answers when she asked him as casually as possible about his day’s work; and now and again she’d thought she could detect perfume on him when he came home. The one time she’d challenged him about it, he’d got indignant and gone on about how could he help it if a customer’s house smelled like a French brothel? She couldn’t argue with that, but nonetheless she was convinced he was messing around.
    She couldn’t afford to have a private detective trail him from place to place – and who could tell anyway what went on behind closed doors? A lot of Kev’s jobs were inside work: interior doors, security systems, window locks, garages. Mrs Tribe believed there was only one effective way to probe at the truth and get the evidence she wanted, and feared, of her husband’s infidelity. She told Kate that after seeing her female decoy services ad, she’d copied down the number and then quickly disposed of the back page of the local paper she’d found it on. She’d been agonising for two days and nights before contacting her.
    ‘Can you tell me anywhere your husband frequents regularly, like a bowling alley or a local pub?’ Kate asked. ‘Somewhere I’m likely to run into him accidentally?’
    ‘I was thinking about that,’ Mrs Tribe said. ‘Kev does auto work, too. You know, people getting locked out of their cars, losing their keys, that kind of thing. Would that be a way to … you know?’
    ‘It’s possible,’ Kate said, nodding. She thought about it for the next couple of minutes as she reconfirmed some of what she’d told Mrs Tribe on the phone. It was important for the client to know that because nothing of a sexual nature could actually take place between the decoy and the subject, the only evidence the final report could contain was of the man’s intention or willingness to break his marriage vows. It didn’t constitute legal proof that he in fact had done so in the past, or would do so in the future. It wasn’t grounds for divorce, but it did give a fairly reliable indication of how elastic his notion of marital fidelity was.
    Susan Tribe listened, nodded, understood and said that was good enough for her. ‘When can you start?’ Now that she’d taken the plunge, she couldn’t wait. For better or for worse, she desperately needed to be put out of her misery.
    ‘Right away,’ Kate assured her. She could see the fatigue and emotional strain in Mrs Tribe’s face, and she felt sorry, and felt guilty for being happy about the money. As they parted and Kate left Florence Park with an envelope full of cash, she hoped that Kev was as innocent as Adam.
    But they couldn’t all be innocent. Could they?

Four
    By the time she returned to her little Nissan on Florence Park Road, a simple plan of attack was already forming in Kate’s mind. Back home, she checked in on Charlie, spent a few minutes chatting with Hayley, then retreated to her bedroom to do some scouting on the computer.
    It