Risking It All Read Free Page A

Borden?
     
    ‘This Duke,’ I said, tapping the white card. ‘If he’s a private detective as it says here, he may be using an alias.’
     
    ‘He uses a Mazda 323,’ said Ganesh, being difficult. ‘A jade-coloured one. And he wants to find you, Fran.’
     
    ‘Ha, ha. What for? Hey, perhaps I’m heiress to a fortune and don’t know it.’
     
    ‘More likely they want you for a witness. Private eyes do a lot of work for solicitors these days, digging out missing witnesses and so on. Have you been on the scene of any trouble lately? I mean, since the last lot.’
     
    I studied the card.
     
INVESTIGATIONS OF ALL KINDS UNDERTAKEN.
WE ARE KNOWN FOR TACT AND RELIABILITY.

     
    Who were ‘we’? I was willing to bet that Clarence Duke, if that really was his moniker, was a one-man band. His card looked the sort you print out yourself at one of those machines. Perhaps I ought to print some for myself. I’m by way of being a private detective. Oh, not a proper one, no office or anything like that. That means National Insurance contributions and tax returns, things which haven’t figured very large in my life so far.
     
    I’ve had a lot of other jobs, all sorts, while working towards getting my Equity card. Whatever I do, it never seems to last more than a few weeks, so that’s why I thought I’d be an enquiry agent. That and the fact that I’ve had a little experience in these matters. (What I call ‘experience’ Ganesh tends to call ‘trouble’.) Anyway, I’m prepared to take on enquiries (‘run into trouble’, in Ganspeak) for people who can’t go through the usual channels. Now, Clarence of the business card, he was one step up from me. He’d got stationery and probably an office in his front room and perhaps his wife or girlfriend manning the phone. That last was guesswork but I’d bet on it. One thing I was sure of, I didn’t want to meet him. I said so.
     
    ‘What did you tell him, Gan? And what exactly did he ask, anyway?’
     
    ‘He understood we’d employed you in the past. Did we have a current address for you? I said you hadn’t worked here since the Christmas rush . . .’
     
    ‘Rush?’ I interrupted. ‘In this shop?’
     
    ‘Hey, we do all right. Could be better but we do all right. I told Duke I had no address for you, and the way I see it, I wasn’t lying. I couldn’t have told him you were camped out in Hari’s garage, could I? Even if I had been prepared to tell him anything, which I wasn’t.’
     
    ‘Was he satisfied?’
     
    Ganesh looked uneasy. ‘I think so.’
     
    I took Hari his cooling coffee. ‘Ganesh has told me about the private detective,’ I said.
     
    ‘A very strange fellow,’ said Hari disapprovingly.
     
    ‘What did he look like?’ It suddenly occurred to me that I might have run across Clarence Duke, under some other unlikely name, at another period in my eventful life.
     
    Ganesh wandered up and he and Hari exchanged looks. ‘Short,’ said Hari, taking first turn.
     
    ‘Moustache,’ added Ganesh. ‘Bit straggly.’
     
    ‘Jeans and a leather jacket,’ said Hari, brightening. ‘Yes, yes, I remember.’
     
    ‘Bad teeth,’ said Gan. ‘Needed to see a dentist.’
     
    ‘Why do I get a private eye who looks like a health warning?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t I get the ones who look like Jonathan Creek?’
     
    ‘This is real life,’ said Gan.
     
    ‘They must be out there somewhere, the dishy ones.’
     
    ‘Probably, but they’re not interested in you, Fran.’
     
    That’s what friends are for. To destroy your fragile self-esteem. I thanked them both for not telling Clarence Duke where to find me, and resolved to avoid anyone short with a moth-eaten moustache and galloping halitosis.
     
    As it happened, Hari wanted to leave the shop for a couple of hours that afternoon and asked if I could put in some temporary time. We agreed I should be paid cash, just to avoid awkwardness – should Clarence Duke be working for the DSS