Cold Blood

Chapter 1

Anna Louise Caley remained beneath the shower for a full half-hour, scrubbing herself clean, making sure every inch of her perfect body was cleansed. She could blank what she had done from her mind — that was easy — but it was the abuse she inflicted on her body that worried her, and she examined herself with care, pleased to see that there was no bruise or other mark to show what she had done the night before.

With just a soft white towel swathed around her, she re-examined herself, checking and patting her flesh until she was satisfied, then oiled and powdered her body and got dressed. White tennis socks, white cotton panties, white tennis dress and, lastly, pristine white tennis shoes. She laced them up, then chose one of a row of professional-standard racquets and unzipped the cover, tapping the taut strings with the flat of her hand before she slipped the cover back on. She checked her hair, putting on a white stretch head-band to keep her long blonde hair back from her face.

Anna Louise left nothing out of place in her room, placing the towel she had used in the laundry basket along with the previous night’s soiled clothes. She liked the fact that she was not like a normal teenager, prided herself on being meticulously neat, and she slowly appraised her immaculate room before she headed for the tennis court. She passed through the kitchen, still empty at 6.30 in the morning, before any of the domestic staff had begun to prepare breakfast, and went outside, where a gardener was already turning on the sprinklers and sweeping up any dead leaf that might have fallen during the night. He did not look up, however, as Anna Louise headed for the changing room where the tennis balls were kept, picked up a large basket of them, then made her way to the court. First she examined the net, making sure it was precisely the correct height, then fed the balls into an automatic delivery machine and set the dial for speed and direction. She carefully removed her racquet from its cover and switched on the ball machine, ready to begin to play against it — against herself. She stood on the service line, her weight thrown on to the balls of her feet, poised and ready for the first ball to shoot out, then began to practise her double-handed backhand. She was a precise player, fast, meticulous and very powerful, and she slammed ball after ball up the court until she was sweating with exertion, each stroke accompanied by a low grunt of satisfaction.

Her concentration lapsed for a moment and she missed the next ball, which struck her hard in the chest. Someone was laughing, and she recognized both the laugh and the accompanying soft, low giggle.

The balls continued to pop out of the machine, but Anna Louise ignored them now and walked off the court towards the summer-house, through the shrubbery, where she knew her approach could be neither seen nor heard.

Some time later, the machine fired out its last few balls, but now Anna Louise was slashing furiously at them, sending them crashing around the court as Tilda Brown, her closest friend, opened the court gate. Tilda was as blonde and as pretty as Anna Louise and dressed in a similar white tennis dress, but Anna Louise didn’t stop playing even for a moment to acknowledge her.

‘Hi, Anna!’ Tilda called. ‘Sorry I’m late, I’ve got a terrible headache. Maybe I won’t play this morning, I feel real bad,’ she continued, pulling a face.

Anna Louise made no reply, but switched off the machine and picked up the basket to begin collecting the stray balls. Tilda, still complaining of a headache, balanced some balls on her racquet and carried them across to the basket to tip them inside.

‘Did you hear what I said? I don’t feel like playing.’

Anna Louise smiled.

‘Ahh, but I’ve been waiting for you. I want to show you my backhand, it’s really progressed.’

‘It was always good,’ Tilda replied.

‘Yes, but now it’s better,’ Anna Louise said nonchalantly.

‘Maybe later!’ Tilda carried the basket over and tipped the balls into the machine. ‘I’ll refill it for you.’

Anna Louise stood on the service line, bouncing a ball up and down on her racquet, then suddenly took aim. The ball slammed into Tilda’s back, making her turn round, gasping. The blow had hurt so much she could hardly speak, and the next ball hit her so hard in the stomach that she staggered backwards, winded.

‘Stop it, Anna, STOP IT, THAT HURT... YOU HURT ME.’

Anna Louise moved closer. ‘Get Polar to kiss it better...’

Tilda was scared and tearful; her belly ached, while her back felt as if it was burning, and Anna Louise was bouncing another ball, ready to aim at her again. Tilda ducked for cover as the third ball came towards her.

‘What are you doing? STOP IT!’ she screamed.

Anna Louise grinned as she picked up a fourth ball.

‘You can’t get away from me, Tilda Brown.’ She was now throwing the ball up in the air as if to serve. Tilda moved further back and bumped into the ball machine, hitting the switch with her arm. The machine began to pump the balls more rapidly towards Anna Louise, who laughed as she swung her racquet, forehand and backhand in perfect unison, every ball viciously directed at the cowering Tilda, who screamed, running this way and that to avoid the swift hail of tennis balls, until she squatted sobbing behind the net.

Even behind the safety of the net, balls slammed into her arms and legs through the mesh, Anna Louise first taking aim at Tilda’s body, but then at her face.

‘Stop it, please stop it,’ sobbed Tilda, looking up to see Anna Louise standing over her.

‘You stay away from him, Tilda, he’s mine. I see you with him again and I’ll make you sorry, I’ll hurt you more than any tennis ball, I’ll hurt you so bad, Tilda Brown, you’re gonna wish you were dead...’

Tilda was crying like a baby, terrified as much by Anna Louise’s verbal threats as by her violence, and she sobbed with relief when she recognized the figure coming towards them. Anna Louise saw him too, and gave Tilda a final quick, hard blow on the side of the head, then lowered the racquet, smiling sweetly, her whole manner altered.

‘Hi, honey,’ Robert Caley smiled to his daughter, then looked towards the weeping Tilda. ‘What’s happened, Tilda?’

Anna Louise linked her arm through her father’s. ‘It was my fault, you know that serve o’ mine, Papa, poor little Tilda here got right in the way of it... and you got to take some of the blame for coachin’ me to serve so hard, but I didn’t mean to hit her, I guess she just isn’t up to my standard.’

Robert Caley had one arm around his daughter as he reached out to Tilda with concern. ‘You all right, sweetheart?’

Tilda wouldn’t look into his eyes, but held her hand to her head feeling the lump where Anna Louise had hit her. ‘I want to go home, Mr Caley, today,’ she said in a low, but firm voice.

‘She is just bein’ silly ’cos she lost the game,’ Anna Louise said petulantly. She tried to keep hold of her father’s arm to stop him following Tilda, but he pulled free of her, and she was infuriated to see him help Tilda to the gates and walk her back to the house. She smashed the racquet against the tarmacked court, then examined it, afraid she had damaged one of her favourites. Long strands of Tilda’s hair were caught between the strings.

Tilda had packed, and refused to say anything else to Anna Louise through her locked bedroom door other than that she was going home at once. Anna Louise tried to cajole her, saying she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant to be nasty, but Tilda refused to unlock the door. Now Anna Louise was worried about what Tilda might say to her mother, and was beginning to think that perhaps the sooner she left the better.

‘Fine, you leave, Tilda Brown, I don’t care,’ she said angrily, but she was worried enough to decide to go and sit with her mother. Tilda would certainly want to say goodbye to her, and more than likely would tell tales. Anna Louise tapped on the door of her mother’s suite and waited; it was often locked in the mornings as Elizabeth Caley hated being seen without her warpaint, even by her own daughter. Anna Louise knocked again, then walked in: all the curtains were drawn and the room was in darkness. She called out to her mother, but receiving no reply wondered if Elizabeth was still sleeping or, worse, had gone downstairs and would see Tilda. She hurried through her mother’s sitting room towards her bedroom.

‘Mama,’ she whispered, then pressed her ear to the door, listening. ‘Are you awake Mama? It’s me, it’s Anna Louise.’

She eased the bedroom door open and peeked inside, adjusting her eyes to the darkness of the room, then called out softly again, but saw that the bed covers had been drawn back. Her mother was known to fly into an even worse rage if she was woken from sleep than if she was surprised without makeup. She suffered from severe insomnia and her sleep was precious, if rarely natural.

Anna Louise looked across to the bathroom door and heard the soft sounds of bath-water running. She was about to leave when she noticed the low, flickering light of a candle on her mother’s bedside table. The candle was sputtering, and she crossed the room to check it out, not expecting to find anything else.

The gris-gris had been consecrated, because it was positioned on top of a worn black Bible, a small white cotton sack of salt to the left and a tiny green bottle of water to the right. Above the Bible a blue candle, representing the element of fire, guttered in its candlestick; below the book was a square of sweet-smelling incense, the symbol for air. Anna Louise felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle when she opened the gris-gris bag and looked at the contents, unaware of their meaning and of what it meant to have seen and touched a consecrated gris-gris. Fascinated, she picked up the old Bible and opened the fly-leaf: in old-fashioned scrolled handwriting whose ink had faded from black to brown there was an inscription to Elizabeth Seal — her mother’s maiden name. Anna Louise carefully replaced the book, flicking through the tissue-thin pages to try to make sure it was in the same position she had discovered it.

Back in her own room, she sniffed her fingers and decided they smelt musty, so she filled her wash-hand basin with hot water and soaped her hands clean. She was just drying them when she heard her mother calling for her and returned to the suite.

‘Tilda wants to go home today,’ Elizabeth said, toying with a silver spoon on her breakfast tray. ‘But that’s silly as we’re all leaving tomorrow.’

Anna Louise sat on the edge of her mother’s bed, noticing that the bedside table had been cleared. ‘Oh, we had an argument, we’ll make it up.’ She was anxious to change the subject, so asked with concern, ‘How you feeling today?’

‘I’m just fine, honey. Now you go and talk to your friend, it’s stupid for her to go if we’re all going to New Orleans tomorrow.’

‘Okay, I’ll make up with her. Do you want me to take your tray?’

‘Mmmm, I’ll sleep a while maybe, I had a bad night. Kiss kiss?’

Anna Louise leaned over to plant a kiss on her mother’s cheek and then carried the breakfast tray out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Tilda had already left by the time Anna Louise returned her mother’s tray to the kitchen. Anna Louise was unconcerned: she’d make it up to her, buy her something expensive. She wandered into the kitchen where Berenice, the housekeeper, had just baked a tray of fresh blueberry muffins, and began picking at one with her fingers, remembering the strange, musty smell from the Bible she had seen upstairs.

‘Tilda told me somethin’ weird, something she’d seen...’ she began casually, still picking at the muffin’s crispy top.

Berenice was emptying the dishwasher, not paying too much attention to her employers’ daughter, only half-listening as she went back and forth stacking the clean dishes in the cupboards. She poured a glass of milk for Anna Louise and set it beside her.

‘Miss Tilda sure was upset about somethin’, crying her eyes out. We thought maybe she’d had bad news.’ She continued putting the clean crockery away.

‘What does it mean if you got a Bible, a blue candle and funny little bags of salt and incense, you know, like those gris-gris bags they sell back home?’

The cupboard door banged shut.

‘You don’t wanna know, Miss Anna Louise, an’ you stop pickin’ at each muffin. You want one, then you take one.’

‘What does it mean?’

The housekeeper was replacing the cutlery in its drawer now, buffing each knife and fork quickly with a clean cloth before she put it away.

‘Well, it depends on which way the cross is placed on the Bible.’

‘Ah, so you do know what it means?’

‘All I know is, if you and Miss Tilda are playing around, then you stop and don’t be foolish. That’s voodoo, and nobody ought to play games with things they don’t understand because evil has a way of getting inside you, like a big black snake. It sits in your belly and you never know when it’s gonna uncoil and spit... and if you touch another person’s gris-gris, then you got bad trouble.’

Anna Louise broke off a large piece of muffin and stuffed it into her mouth. ‘You don’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, do you?’

She took a gulp of milk, swallowing it the wrong way, and started coughing and spluttering as the muffin lodged in the back of her throat. She gasped, her eyes watering and her cheeks turning bright red. She couldn’t breathe — it felt as if she was being choked, and Berenice had to hit her hard in the middle of her back as she retched and clung on to the edge of the table before at last she coughed the mouthful of food up, heaving for breath.

The housekeeper fetched some paper kitchen towel to wipe up the mess.

‘You see, what did I say about that snake? It just come and hissed an’ spat right now, almost chokin’ you, so you hear me right and don’t go meddlin’.’ But when she turned back Anna Louise was gone, so she went out into the hall, catching sight of the girl as she ran helter-skelter up the stairs.

‘Are you all right, Miss Anna Louise?’

Anna Louise looked down and then leaned over the bannister rail, whispering, ‘It was in my mama’s room. It wasn’t Tilda that saw it but me!’

She laughed suddenly and continued running up the stairs, not seeing the fear on Berenice’s face as she slipped her hand inside her uniform dress to feel for her own gris-gris. It was safely tucked into her underslip, on her left-hand side, beneath her heart.

Berenice returned to the kitchen: that silly spoilt child had no notion of what went on in the house, and she hoped to God she never would. She cleaned up the mess from the table, and finished putting the dishes away, then tipped all the freshly made blueberry muffins into the trash. She would make a fresh batch, just in case a drop of the snake’s venom that had hissed from Anna Louise Caley had touched them: there were some chances that just weren’t worth taking.

The following afternoon, accompanied by her parents, Anna Louise flew from Los Angeles to New Orleans. It was 15 February, and on 16 February, Anna Louise was officially reported as missing. Police in both Los Angeles and New Orleans attempted to trace her, and when they failed to do so, her parents brought in private investigators.

The weeks became months — no body and no ransom note were ever discovered, and even with top investigation agencies on the case, no clue as to the whereabouts of the missing girl, or her body, ever came to light. After nine months the disappearance of Anna Louise Caley was no longer news, and she had to all intents and purposes become just another statistic, another photograph on the missing persons files.

Eleven months passed, and with no new information, Anna Louise’s distraught parents faced the possibility that she might have been murdered. By this time, more than fifteen investigation agencies had been involved with the case, the Mississippi had been dragged and helicopters had searched the swamplands of Louisiana. Agnews Investigations, along with three other less well-known agencies, were still retained on the enquiry: the Caleys had paid out millions of dollars but the expenditure had yielded no motive, no suspect, no result. All the grieving parents were left with was an aching period of waiting, while they longed for a sign that their beautiful Anna Louise was still alive.

All the PI agencies involved had made a lot of money, and some had even traded information with one another, but the Anna Louise Caley bonanza was coming to an end. Pickings were getting slim for private investigators — it was a tough business in which contacts and recommendations by word of mouth were a necessity, as Page Investigations, a small PI company, had found out the hard way. Even getting a foothold on the lowest rung of such a competitive ladder had proved impossible, and the attempt had been financially crippling for Lorraine Page: now, her agency was virtually bankrupt.

Even though she was a former police lieutenant, her own case history as an alcoholic and an officer who had shot dead an unarmed boy while drunk on duty meant that instead of being welcomed into the PI fraternity, she was being frozen out — just as she had been kicked out of the LAPD. The hardest part was explaining to Rosie, the assistant whom Lorraine jokingly called her partner, and who was also a recovering alcoholic, that they were going under. Dear Rosie, who still hoped, Rosie who still maintained that business would pick up — but there had never been any business. There was nothing to pick up from: it had all been a gamble, a dream even, but now it was over.

Lorraine had the phone cupped in her hand, half-listening to the call, half-wondering whether tonight would be the night she would tell Rosie — she knew she would have to do it soon. She listened, interjecting twice how sorry she was as the man’s deep rumbling voice made incoherent references to his wife’s passing.

Rosie, a plump woman with a kind, open face, was reading her star signs, a cup of coffee and two orange chocolate cup cakes beside her. She had flicked a glance at Lorraine when the phone had jangled through the silent office and sighed when she had heard Lorraine’s over-cheerful ‘Hi, Bill, how ya doing?’

Rosie had been trying a new diet: proteins one meal, carbohydrates the next, with fruit forty minutes either before or after each meal, and no fats or fried food. She had stuck to it for a month and felt better for losing a few pounds, but today she was indulging in a binge of chocolate cup cakes, hating herself with each bite. Still, it was just one of those days — she couldn’t face another chicken breast without crisp golden skin or French fries, or another salad without dressing, and a whole month with no fresh crusty bread spread thickly with peanut butter had been excruciating.

At last Lorraine was able to replace the receiver. ‘That was Bill Rooney,’ she murmured, lighting a cigarette. ‘His wife died.’

‘I didn’t know he had a wife,’ Rosie said, lowering her magazine.

‘I don’t think he did,’ Lorraine said as she counted the butt-ends in her ashtray. She sighed and leaned back in her chair. By turning her head a fraction she could just make out the cheap sign printed in fake gold leaf on the outer office door — ‘Page Investigations Agency’. There was a stack of calling cards on her desk with the same inscription. It was a farce.

‘Well, the end of yet another over-active sleuthing day.’ Rosie chomped on her cup cake, staring at the free digital alarm clock she got from ordering some non-stick pans. It was almost six. Unaware of the smear of chocolate over her right cheek, she looked over at Lorraine, watching her as she inhaled deeply on her thirtieth or so cigarette of the day. Her eyes were staring vacantly across the small white painted office. Rosie hated it when she did those vacant stares. Sometimes her silences could last over an hour and Rosie could never tell what her partner was thinking. She hoped this was not going to turn into one of Lorraine’s moods. ‘You should cut down,’ she said with her mouth full.

‘So should you,’ Lorraine retorted, looking at the trash can filled with empty silver foil cup cake moulds.

‘I don’t smoke, so it’s expected to crave sugar. That’s half of what alcoholism is about too, you know, sugar craving.’

Lorraine pushed her second-hand typist’s chair back from her empty desk. ‘Is it? Well, well, isn’t that interesting. And just what are hamburgers and fries, are they a craving too?’

‘For chrissakes, don’t start having a go at me! You and your brown rice and your vitamins make me wanna throw up.’

‘Might do you some good!’

Rosie now pushed her large ass back in her catalogue sale of the month office chair. ‘Right, that is it.’

‘Yep, I guess it is, Rosie.’

It was hard to explain how each day Lorraine felt more isolated, because in physical terms she wasn’t: Rosie and big Bill Rooney were always there. It wasn’t that she didn’t have anyone to talk to, interact with — it just felt that way. Her mind seemed to be atrophying and she felt drained, lethargic; sometimes she wanted to weep, out of a deepening feeling of utter loneliness, or was it lovelessness? Whatever it was, it was having a more and more destructive effect on her, and she felt its undertow sucking her down.

Lorraine flicked the old Venetian blind that didn’t quite fit the windows. She gave a sly look at her plump room-mate as she stubbed out her cigarette. She didn’t even live in a place of her own, but was sharing Rosie’s small apartment in a run-down district off Orange Grove. She was thirty-seven years old; almost six of those years had been lost in a sea of drugs and alcohol addiction, and sometimes, especially at times like this afternoon, she felt it was all a waste of time; in reality she was never going to get back into the only business she knew or had known when she had been a cop.

The two women had met when Lorraine had been recuperating from a near-fatal hit-and-run accident. It wasn’t the vehicle that had almost killed her, but her drinking and self-abuse. Now she had been sober and attempting to get her life organized for nearly two years. As an ex-lieutenant attached to the Pasadena Homicide Squad, she had experience not only in the field but as a detective, and she had been a very good one. ‘Had’ being the operative word: after drinking took over her life it had cost her the husband she had loved and the two daughters she had adored.

‘What you thinking about?’ Rosie asked, pretending to be immersed in her magazine.

‘Nothing,’ Lorraine answered, but she quite obviously was. She wondered if she should attempt another reconciliation with her kids. Yet as always whenever she thought about them, she decided they were better off without her intruding on their new life, a life she had not been a part of for too many years. Added to that, her ex-husband had remarried and her daughters called his new wife ‘Mother’. They didn’t even want to see her.

Rosie pored over her magazine again. Lorraine’s long sighs made her aware that something was coming, but she said nothing, flicking over the pages to a new diet that guaranteed you could lose weight with ease if you sent off for their special-priced ‘slimming drinks’. But as she’d attempted most diets, including slimming drinks, and none had worked, she flicked over to a knitting pattern.

‘This is a farce, you know it and I know it. I mean, I dunno what else we can do. How many more adverts can we afford to run, if we don’t drum up any customers by the end of the week?’

Here it comes, thought Rosie, scowling. ‘You’ve said that every week.’ She hated it when Lorraine started on this tactic, partly because she knew everything she said was true but also because it made her afraid. Afraid Lorraine would leave, afraid that without Lorraine she would go back on the booze, afraid Lorraine would too.

‘Got to face reality.’ Lorraine prodded her empty cigarette carton, hoping she’d overlooked a stray one. But it wasn’t to be, so she looked over the stubs in her ashtray again.

‘Yes, I know, I know, and I hear what you are sayin’, but at the same time we got to stick at it. Everyone knows any new business takes time to lift off, even Bill Rooney told us that.’

Lorraine appeared not to be listening as she rummaged in her purse and started to check her loose change.

‘I mean, we could get a case in tomorrow that’d make everything you just said obsolete,’ Rosie said a little too cheerfully.

‘What?’ Lorraine asked challengingly.

‘Obsolete,’ Rosie repeated flatly.

‘Really? Well, you’ve been saying that for the past month and we’ve not had so much as a telephone call. And if you want to check the diary out, we are hardly likely to get some case off the street that’d pay for your cup cakes and my cigarettes, never mind the rent on this place and your apartment, so straighten out, Rosie. Shit, I need a cigarette.’

Lorraine crossed to the hooks by the toilet closet. She yanked down her raincoat.

‘Maybe the rain’ll stop soon.’

Lorraine pulled on her raincoat. ‘Oh yeah, so it’s all gonna be okay if the sun shines, is it?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You’re a dumb optimist.’

‘What?’

‘Optimist, Rosie. Even if the sun cracked the paving stones that’s not gonna help us. Two stray dogs, a missing senile grandfather, a two-week stint in a department store to cover for their in-house detective’s vacation, five car traces, four warrants and a woman suspecting her husband of having an affair with his secretary, and as the wife was your size and his secretary looked like Julia Roberts, it didn’t take us long to investigate, and that... that is it, Rosie, that’s been all there’s been for the past nine months.’

‘You always gotta get personal. If you look on the good side, you’ve been sober nine months more, so have I come to think about it, so my guess is we’ll make it. This is just a bad patch.’

Lorraine clenched her teeth. ‘No, it isn’t, Rosie, it’s just a fact. We are flat broke and searching my ashtray for dog-ends is not exactly what I had planned for the future. We might as well admit it, face it, before we get any deeper in debt.’

‘But we are facing it,’ Rosie said stubbornly.

Lorraine closed her eyes as if talking to a child, her voice sounding annoyingly over-patient. ‘No, we are not. Fact is this whole idea was shit, and to be honest I am not feeling like patting myself on the back ’cos I remained sober. Truth is, right now I feel like tying one hell of a load on and the only thing stoppin’ me is that I have no money.’

‘Never stopped you before,’ snapped back Rosie.

Lorraine’s eyes were like cold chips of ice. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? What are you suggesting, Rosier Come on, spit it out, are you saying I go out and screw a few guys to keep this place open? That what you think I should do?’

Rosie blushed and turned away. She loathed Lorraine when she was like this, she could get so cold, so unapproachable, so downright nasty. But unlike the times they’d bickered about the agency before, there wasn’t another sarcastic retort forthcoming, just an ominous silence.

Lorraine was staring at herself in the small mirror glued to the back of the door. Her hair needed a cut and new highlights. She leaned closer, frowning, as she checked the scar running from her left eye down to midway of her cheekbone; that needed to be fixed but plastic surgery cost. She stepped back, giving herself a critical appraisal. Considering the punishment her body and insides had taken from all the abuse, her skin looked remarkably clear, but there were fine lines at the sides of her eyes and they were getting deeper. Either way, she didn’t like what she saw, and kicked the door closed.

Lorraine picked up her gym bag and flicked off the main overhead light switch. Her shadow etched across the main office wall as she reached for her purse. Caught in the half-light from the lit-up screen on Rosie’s word processor, Lorraine’s chiselled features never ceased to make Rosie’s heart lurch. She obviously didn’t see herself as Rosie did, because she was still a very attractive woman. Perhaps not as ethereal as Rosie thought, but for her age, and considering what she had been through, Lorraine Page was still a looker. The stronger she had become physically over the past twenty-one months, the more her natural beauty shone through. Lorraine’s strict diet, her almost obsessive work-outs at the gymnasium, had proved that a woman who lost six years drinking herself into oblivion, who had become a hopeless, scrawny, sickly alcoholic when she and the overweight Rosie had first met, could now pass for an athlete. The only thing ex-Lieutenant Lorraine Page could not recapture was her career, and her husband and two daughters. She never spoke of them, either to Rosie or at AA meetings, whereas Rosie spilled many tears about wanting to be reunited with her son.

Rosie now took a long deep sigh; maybe, as she herself had half-suggested, the failure of their business would send Lorraine back to the bottle, back to a life in the gutters. Rosie was therefore totally unprepared for what Lorraine had to say as she hovered by the main office door, about to leave.

Lorraine swung the door slightly with her foot. ‘I meant to tell you, the department store have offered me a full-time job as their store detective. Remember the job I took over for two weeks? Well, apparently she had one hell of a holiday and came back pregnant.’

‘What?’

‘So, we close up at the end of the week and at least I’ll have enough for the rent on the apartment.’

‘What about Page Investigations?’ Rosie asked as the tears started.

‘Like I said, it’s over, end of the week we close up shop.’

‘What about me?’

Lorraine wouldn’t look at her friend, still tap-tapping the door with the toe of her shoe. ‘Well, I guess you got to go out into the big world, Rosie, and get a job. Shouldn’t be too tough, you can use a word processor and...’

Rosie turned away, her eyes brimming, and Lorraine felt awful. She went over and slipped her arm around her friend’s shoulders.

‘I’m sorry, sometimes I say things and they come out all the wrong way. What I am trying to say is — you got a life, Rosie, and maybe I have too, not just doing what we’re doing, okay?’

Rosie nodded and felt in her pocket for a paper tissue. Lorraine hesitated, knowing that to stay with Rosie would only involve going over old ground, but was saved by the ring of the phone. Rosie snatched up the receiver, hoping against all hope that the call would mean a job, but didn’t even get out ‘Page Investigations’. It didn’t matter anyway — it was only her sponsor, Jake, wondering if she’d be at AA that evening. By the time Rosie had replied that she would, Lorraine had gone.

‘You okay, Rosie?’ Jake’s friendly rasping voice enquired.

‘Nope, we’re shutting up shop. Can I see you tonight before the meeting?’

Jake agreed and Rosie replaced the phone, feeling the tears welling up again. Was it ever going to end? Did she have a life of her own, as Lorraine had said? Did she hell, as without Lorraine, Rosie knew she was hopeless — sure, she could use a word processor, but she didn’t have enough confidence to go out alone into the big wide world. That was the difference between them — Rosie needed Lorraine, and without her, the world scared the shit out of her. Or maybe it wasn’t the world, just her own weakness and low self-esteem. Just seeing the empty cup cake carton made her want to weep — she couldn’t even stick to a diet! How could she cope without Lorraine? By having a drink, that would be how, and that realization made her want to weep even more. She badly needed to go to that meeting.

Lorraine went to her weightlifting class. She pushed herself to breaking-point, wanting to exhaust herself so she’d crash out and sleep when she got home. She blanked out Rosie’s doleful face. In truth, she was just as sad at the failure of the business, but unlike Rosie she knew she could not let it swamp her. If she had to move on, then she would do what had to be done. She knew she could not take responsibility for Rosie, it was tough enough taking it for herself, and if she was to survive then she had to put herself first, otherwise she’d go down. She had not been kidding when she had said she wanted a drink. She did. But she was not going to take one, well, not tonight. She knew by now that it never ended, the ‘thirst’ was never over. It was, and would continue to be, a constant battle for the rest of her life. Part of her wanted to fight it but sometimes, just sometimes, it seemed so pointless.

Rosie was in floods of tears, sitting beside her dear friend Jake Valsack, who was patting her hand.

‘Well, maybe she’s right, Rosie. If it’s not working out on any front, more specifically financially, why flog a dead horse?’

Rosie blew her nose. ‘She just came out with it, like she must have known a while back about this offer of a job. You see, she’s pregnant.’

‘What, Lorraine?’

‘NO! The goddamned store detective, the bitch!’

Jake raised his thick, matted eyebrows. He was having a tough time following what Rosie was going on about, but surmised that Lorraine had a job and Rosie didn’t, and their so-called investigation business was kaput.

‘I mean, how could she do it, Jake? I decorated and painted the place, we got all that office furniture... I know it’s not much, but we got phone extensions put in, I got a word processor to pay off, a fax machine and a... It was me that got the desks, you know, and the furniture. It took us months to set up, how could she do this to me?’

‘She did it, Rosie, because you got no work offered, right? Am I right?’

‘That is not the point,’ she said stubbornly.

Jake sneaked a look at his watch; the meeting was about to start. Rosie could carry on like this for a long time, he knew it of old, and no matter what he said she paid no attention, she just went round and round in circles.

‘What about that ex-captain, Rooney? I though you said he was gonna drum up work?’

Rosie blew her nose. ‘Oh, him! He’s boozed out, his wife’s just died.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know him, but how is he coping?’ Jake asked, trying to change the subject.

Rosie continued as if there had been no interruption. ‘I mean, if you don’t stay with something, you know, really see it through... we got the office furniture and I schlepped all over yard sales for that...’

Jake gripped her hand tighter. ‘Rosie, sweetheart, maybe Lorraine did just that, saw it through and came to the conclusion it wasn’t gonna work. It hasn’t worked.’

‘She never gave it a chance,’ Rosie snapped back.

Jake sighed in frustration. He was in the chair this evening and he could see that the crowd of people arriving for the meeting was thinning out as they entered the hall. ‘Rosie, I got to go in now. Maybe talk this through after?’

‘I need to talk it through now, Jake.’

He was trying to hold on to his temper. ‘Rosie, I have been talking it through with you for over an hour but you won’t face facts.’

‘Facts are, Jake, she just dumped me. We might have got overflow work from the other agencies.’

‘No, honey, facts are Lorraine’s talking sense. I mean, you think about this, you know her history, she was a drunk cop on duty, she got kicked out of her station, she shot a young kid, for chrissakes. You ever think that maybe, just maybe, none of the other agencies can take the risk of an ex-junkie, ex-alcoholic orderin’ their toilet paper, never mind taking on any overflow of cases? They know about her, so even if it’s tracin’ stolen vehicles—’

‘But we did a trace, we got three.’

Jake rumpled his thinning hair; she was refusing to listen to him. ‘I got to go in, Rosie, like now, so come on, wipe your nose and let’s go in. You need a bit of stabilizing.’

‘I need a drink, Jake.’

He closed his eyes. It was going to be a long, long night.

They were just about to go back to square one when there was a tap on the window of his beat-up Pontiac. ‘Jake, it’s me, only I’ve welcomed everyone as I don’t think we’re going to get any more here tonight. Coffee is served and everyone’s waiting for you to take the chair.’

The thin-faced woman in a rather expensive tailored suit stepped back from the car. Phyllis Collins didn’t even glance at Rosie, who was blowing her nose loudly.

‘Okay, Phyllis, I’m comin’ now.’ Jake stepped from the car, bent down to Rosie. ‘Let’s go, Rosie.’

‘No, I’m not coming in.’

Jake gestured to Phyllis. ‘Do me a favour, Phyllis, she needs a bit of encouragement tonight. You’ve met, haven’t you?’

Phyllis nodded and peered towards the passenger seat. ‘Good evening.’

Rosie didn’t even acknowledge her as she delved into her bulging purse for a clean tissue. Jake raised his eyes to heaven and Phyllis gave him a reassuring smile.

‘You go in, I’ll stay with her. Go on, you can’t keep everyone waiting.’ Phyllis bent down to the car. ‘We’ve met a few times, I’m Phyllis Collins.’

Rosie glared. She had no recollection of ever meeting the woman before and she had no intention of getting out of the car.

‘Jake can’t not go in, he’s chairing tonight. You mind if I sit with you?’

Rosie shrugged, looking away, but she didn’t stop Phyllis from getting into the car. If nothing else, she was someone she could repeat the entire scenario to; she’d have spilled it all out to anyone, she was feeling so wretched.

‘My partner just dumped me.’

‘Oh, I am sorry, were you married long?’

‘My business partner. I’ve worked my butt off and tonight she just told me she had another job, just like that.’

Phyllis nodded, her thin, plain face concerned. ‘Oh dear, no wonder you’re not feeling good.’

Lorraine eased the wet iced cloth further over her sweating face. The heat in the sauna was so intense she could take only another few minutes. She was lying naked on the highest bench, two other women were flat out on the benches beneath her. No one spoke.

Lorraine was wondering if Rosie was okay but she figured if Jake was with her she wouldn’t do anything stupid. She decided to clear out the change in her purse and get a bottle of alcohol-free cider to cheer her up. It looked like champagne and tasted like gnat’s piss, but Rosie loved it.

‘Excuse me,’ Lorraine murmured as she swung her legs down to the lower bench and then eased her body past one of the prone women who leaned up on her elbow to allow Lorraine to pass. She remained half-upright, staring at the tall woman as she left the sauna. She envied the beautiful, straight, muscular body and then became curious when she saw the patched scars across Lorraine’s arms, the small jagged razor lines and round burn marks.

The same woman caught sight of Lorraine again in the changing room. Using a brush, she was blow-drying her fine silky blonde hair rather expertly.

‘I wish I could do that.’

Lorraine turned, slightly puzzled, wondering if the woman was talking to her.

‘Save a fortune at the hairdresser’s. I can never do the back of my head.’

Lorraine switched off the hair-dryer. ‘Oh, it just takes practice,’ she said politely, and concentrated on finishing her hair. When she walked out from the changing cubicle the nosy woman was talking confidentially to someone else, both their overweight bodies cushioned together in their white fitness club-issue towels.

‘She used to be a police lieutenant, drunk on duty, that was what I was told. She knows the gym instructor and he told me that...’

Lorraine let her cubicle door bang hard and they whipped round like startled hamsters. She would have liked to tell them where she would like to ram the hairdryer but she didn’t. She said nothing. And all the tension her exercise and sauna had relaxed from her body was back. By the time she passed through reception she was wired and angry.

Arthur, the gym instructor, gave her a friendly grin and called out, ‘Goodnight.’

Lorraine kept on walking.

Some friend he’d turned out to be. She decided she would not come back. She just knew she had better head directly for home instead of getting Rosie’s cider because that feeling of wanting a real drink was growing out of her control.

Three bottles of Evian water downed between them, Phyllis and Rosie were sitting in a small café. Only it wasn’t Rosie spilling out her tales of woe, it was Phyllis, and she had Rosie’s rapt attention.

‘I suppose in some ways I stayed on because it was all so dreadful and I keep on saying to myself, “When it’s all over, I’ll leave.” But it’s not over, maybe it never will be. Sometimes it gets so bad with her I just don’t think I can take any more of it. She is so demanding, expecting me to be ready to drop whatever I am doing any time of day or night. If she wakes up at four in the morning, she can’t be bothered to use the intercom, she just screams my name. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat because I think I’ve heard her shrieking for me, and other times, when she’s very sick because she’s taken so many pills to sleep, I just get rigid with fear and all I do is feel her pulse to see if she’s still breathing. It’s a wretched, terrible time for all concerned, a tragedy really...’

Rosie took a big breath. ‘I used to see all her movies.’

Phyllis poured the rest of the Evian into her glass.

‘“Used to” being the operative words. She hasn’t made a movie for maybe fifteen years.’

Rosie leaned closer to Phyllis. ‘Why, why do you take it? Is it the salary? Oh, I’m sorry, that was rude, you don’t have to answer that, I’m sorry.’

Phyllis pursed her lips, becoming defensive. ‘No, no, it’s not the salary, believe me, and lately we’ve not travelled the way we used to, she’s hardly left the house.’

Rosie nodded. ‘Yeah, I guess it must be awful.’

‘It is, every time the phone rings. Not that she answers, just screams for me to do it, and so I get all tensed up, over and over again, hoping for news and afraid it will be bad, the worst... She was such a pretty girl.’ Phyllis started to sniffle, opening her purse to take out a small lace handkerchief. Rosie noticed it was a very expensive suede-lined purse, with a gold chain threaded with leather for a strap. ‘I’m so sorry to get like this, but I don’t have many friends, no one to really talk to. That’s why since I joined AA, it’s meant so much to me, you know. And Jake, he’s such a dear man, he’s been wonderful.’

‘Oh yeah, I know, he’s a godsend to me too. Would you like another glass of water, Phyllis? Or we could go on to something stronger, like apple juice?’

Lorraine was waiting to apologize to Rosie when she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs leading up to the apartment.

‘Rosie?’

Jake opened the screen door and then peered in. ‘Nope, it’s me. She’s not here then?’

‘Nope.’

‘I’ll drive around, see if I can find her. She took it hard about the business folding.’

Lorraine lit a cigarette. ‘Yeah, well, I’m not out celebratin’ myself, Jake, but one of us has got to earn the rent.’

‘You’re right, you’re right. So stay put, I’ll drive around.’

‘Was she at the meeting?’ Lorraine asked with just a tinge of concern.

‘Outside it, I left her with Phyllis whatever her name is. I just hope the two of them aren’t out some place tying on a load. See ya.’

Her heart sank when not long after Jake had left she heard a bellow from the street and then Rosie’s footfalls. The small apartment, which only had one bedroom, a tiny bathroom and a lounge with a kitchen crammed into a corner annexe, was on the second floor of an old house on Marengo Avenue. The apartment below was occupied by an ever-growing family of Hispanics. Luckily, they created much more noise themselves, their radio and TV sometimes turned up so loud you could hardly hear yourself speak; anyone else having to live beneath the thunder of Rosie’s footsteps would have had a nervous breakdown.

‘Hey! You won’t believe what I got to tell you.’ Rosie’s cheeks were flushed pink with the exertion of hurrying home. She gasped for breath.

‘Rosie, how much have you had?’

‘I’ve got more bottled water swilling around inside me than the main water tank.’ Rosie kicked off her shoes and chucked her coat aside, hurling her purse on to the sofa, and then, with her hands on her wide hips, she beamed from ear to ear. ‘I think we just got lucky.’

‘You want some coffee?’

‘No, sit down and listen, right now. Go on, siddown. Okay, now, you ever heard of a very famous movie star called Elizabeth Seal?’

‘Nope.’

Rosie threw her hands up in the air. ‘Of course you have, The Maple Tree, you remember that one. And you gotta remember The Swamp and Mask of Vanessa, yes?’

‘Nope.’

‘For chrissakes, we saw it on cable. The movie star Elizabeth Seal is famous, you gotta know who I’m talking about, late seventies, eighties, she was... huge!’

‘Have you been drinking with her?’

Rosie flopped down on the sofa bed, which creaked ominously. ‘Don’t be dumb, as if Elizabeth Seal would be out drinkin’ water with me in Joe’s Diner. She’s a big movie star! Maybe you heard of the name Caley? Elizabeth Caley? That’s her married name.’

‘Nope.’

‘Holy shit, I don’t believe you. Elizabeth and Robert Caley have been headlines, well, almost a year ago they were. Every paper ran their story, even the TV, it was headlines because of her bein’ so famous. Their daughter went missing, you listening? Their eighteen-year-old daughter, Anna Louise Caley, disappeared.’

Lorraine was trying to recall their names but she still had a blank. Nothing new in that, there were big gaps of months, even years, when she hadn’t even recalled her own name, never mind anyone else’s.

Rosie sipped the coffee. She was so excited she was sweating, her eyes bright like a child’s. ‘She disappeared without trace. They had the police involved, they had mystics, psychics, ’cos they had a big reward on offer. But they got no ransom note, no phone calls, no notes, nothin’. Like she just disappeared into thin air. Cops reckoned she might have been kidnapped and it went wrong and they killed her... They think she’s been bumped off and...’

Half an hour later, Lorraine was sitting with her head in her hands, still unsure what Rosie was so excited about. ‘I mean, Rosie, if according to this Phyllis woman the Caleys have hired the top private investigation agencies, why come to us?’

‘Because nobody has found her yet and they’re still spending thousands. They’re mega rich, Lorraine, and they keep on shellin’ dough out.’

Lorraine held up her hand. ‘Wait, wait, Rosie, please, just you hear me out now. If the... Caleys, yes? have already over the past... how long did you say?’

‘Eleven months or so, happened during Mardi Gras in New Orleans,’ Rosie said eagerly.

‘What? In New Orleans? Are you serious?’

‘Yeah, what you think, I’m makin’ all this up?’

Lorraine sighed. ‘Rosie, if it went down in New Orleans they’re not likely to hire private dicks located in LA, are they?’

‘Yes, they already have, Phyllis told me. Cops were working on it here as well, they live here, right?’

Lorraine raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘If they have paid out all this money and still got no result, what makes you think they would be willing to shell out some more, say, to us, which I presume is what all this hysteria is about?’

‘I’m not hysterical, for chrissakes.’

‘Okay, but facts are facts, Rosie. Why do you think they’d be interested in taking on Page Investigations Agency, i.e. you and me? Just because you’re in AA with the family’s secretary is not what I would call a great introduction.’

Rosie yelled, ‘I never fuckin’ mentioned you were a soak, I built you up, said you were one of the best. I even gave a good line about havin’ Rooney as part of our team, you know, him bein’ ex-Captain, that kind of thing. She was impressed, she was real impressed.’

‘She was?’

The sarcasm was lost on Rosie. ‘Yeah, she was. I gave her our card and she said she was gonna talk to Mrs Caley.’

‘Oh, and when she’s talked, then what?’

‘Look, she’s trusted by them, worked for them for years, right? And she knows that Elizabeth Caley is desperate, like going nuts, because she just wants to know what happened to her daughter, and she’ll pay anythin’ to find out.’

‘And you gave them our card?’

‘Yes! An’ I’m not stupid, you know, ’cos first I was all upset, right? Like tellin’ her about my partner quitting, but soon as I smelled a big fish on the line I sort of made out the new job you got offered was some big murder investigation, not just actin’ as a store detective. I’m not dumb, I know how to spin a good yarn when I need to. I said you was in demand.’

‘So how long do we wait for her to get back?’

The phone rang. Lorraine stubbed out her cigarette, nodding to it. ‘That’ll be Jake, you got him all wired up. He’s been looking for you so you answer it.’

Rosie snatched up the phone. But it wasn’t Jake, it was Phyllis, and she wanted details of Page Investigations’ company background sent round as soon as possible for Mrs Caley. She replaced the receiver with a smirk.

‘See? She did talk to her, just like I

The following morning, after a hurried session on the word processor, they had what they felt looked like a reasonable folder, Lorraine giving full details of all her recommendations as a police lieutenant, listing the cases she had been involved with. They also included as part of Page Investigations’ team the experienced and dedicated ex-Captain William Rooney, recently retired from the Pasadena precinct.

Rosie went off to deliver the freshly printed folder to the Caleys’ home in Beverly Hills. Lorraine sat in the empty office brooding over the new events. She had a couple of days before she had to give the store job a yes or a no so she didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t hang in there. Rosie may be right, they might be able to earn a few bucks, but she somehow doubted it.

The buzzer on the office front door sounded as Bill Rooney wove in with an over-bright ‘Hi, you called, didn’t you? So as I was just passin’...’

‘Oh yeah? Via which bar, Bill?’

Rooney gave her the finger as he squashed himself into Rosie’s swivel chair. He looked unshaven and well hungover, his big, florid face and bulbous nose a shade of mulberry. One side of his shirt collar stuck up at an angle, and his tie was food-stained and pulled to one side; the seat of his pants was shiny, and the whole suit had a crumpled, worn-too-often look.

‘You look in good shape,’ Lorraine said, smiling.

‘I feel it, I feel real good. Lost half my pension on the PI agency I never got off the ground — in fact, I think the paint’s still wet on the door. Never was a businessman, never any good with figures, an’ the bastard that sold me the place must have seen me coming — he fuckin’ saw “sucker” written right across my forehead. I got a computer compatible with no one, least of all myself, a cock-eyed telephone system, and I had my mobile no more than half an hour before I lost it. I hadn’t gotten the insurance arranged, so I got no cover, an’ now I can’t sell the equipment for what I paid for it. So, I don’t know about passing any overflow cases to you, I’m looking around for myself, business pretty thin on the ground. You got much going?’

He looked over the office and smiled. ‘I see business is flourishing, can hardly hear myself talk for the sound of telephones ringing!’

‘Very witty, considering your own fiasco.’ Lorraine fetched some clean mugs and prepared coffee. Rooney had glossed over the fact that he had been in no shape to run an agency — with Ellen dying, and making arrangements for her funeral, he had been in a deep depression for weeks. Lorraine felt sorry for him, as for all his bluff manner he was probably lonely, and she watched out of the corner of her eye as he leaned on Rosie’s desk and looked at the new Page Investigations Agency folder.

‘Makes interesting reading. I like the way you skim over the missing years, sweetheart. Readin’ this it’s as if you left the Force with glowing recommendations instead of out the back door on your ass.’

‘Yeah, your section reads pretty good too.’ She banged down the mugs.

Rooney laughed as he read about himself and then he let the folder drop. ‘I tell you Ellen passed on?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry.’

‘Yep, went to collect her urn. I said to the guy, how can I be sure these are my wife’s ashes? I mean, I know it’s the urn I ordered but you could’ve filled it with any crap.’ Rooney shook his head as he continued. ‘“It’s your wife, Mr Rooney sir, you see her name is on it!” Fucking crazy, whole life and it’s packed into one tiny brass jar this size.’ He indicated with his hands and then rubbed his face. ‘She was in the kitchen, cooking. Her radio was on, always had her radio playing, used to drive me nuts. And she fell, I heard her sort of thump to the floor.’

Lorraine poured water into the percolator. He didn’t seem to be talking to her or to care particularly if she was listening.

‘She was lying on the floor, still with a wooden spoon in her hand, and she had this sort of look of surprise on her face. She was dead.’

‘I’m sorry, Bill.’ Lorraine leaned on the cloakroom door.

‘Yeah, I guess I am. I mean, I know I’ve not been easy to live with. I’ve not even cleared her clothes out yet, hadda move into the spare bedroom. It’s like any minute she’s gonna call me, tell me food’s on the table. I dunno what to do with myself, Lorraine, I’m goin’ nuts. The house is quiet, I even miss her goddamned radio.’

‘Don’t you still see all the guys down the station?’

‘No. I did for a while but you know the way it is, once you’re outside it, you’re an outsider. Old drinking bars don’t feel right any more, they all talkin’ about this or that case and I gotta be honest, it’s all high-tech nowadays, you know, everything’s computerized, breeds a different kind of cop.’

Lorraine went to his side and patted his big, wide shoulder. He gripped her hand for a moment.

‘I’m not in the way, am I?’

She felt sorry for him so she punched him lightly. ‘Like you said, we’re not exactly rushed off our feet. I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out for all of us.’

Rosie stormed in.

‘What a place, it’s like a palace, I’ve never seen nothin’ like it... gardeners and servants, and the grounds are like some showpiece, ferns and flowers and swimming pools, two pools, and pool houses, and tennis courts and... Hi, Bill, how ya doin’? I was real sorry to hear about your wife.’

Rooney rose to his feet. ‘Thank you.’

‘You ever heard of a movie star called Elizabeth Seal?’

Rooney nodded. ‘Sure, used to have the hots for her.’

Rosie turned, pointing to Lorraine. ‘See? I told you she was famous. Well, that’s where I just come from, Elizabeth Seal’s home, like some kinda palace.’

Lorraine passed coffee to Rooney and indicated a mug to Rosie.

‘I’ll have one,’ Rosie said as she took off her light coat. ‘They even got an English butler, I’m not kiddin’ and a maid. They left me in the hallway a while until Phyllis came down. It’s enormous, the hall, like you could roller-blade around it. They got some cash, reeks of it, got paintings worth millions, I’d say. These old movie stars sure know how to live in style.’

Lorraine poured Rosie a coffee. ‘Did Phyllis say anything about us working for them?’

‘Nah, she just took the envelope, thanked me for coming round and said she’d see me at the meeting day after tomorrow. Never even offered me so much as a glass of water. To be honest she seemed edgy, know what I mean? Kept looking over her shoulder... Maybe we should have sent it by courier.’

‘Elizabeth Seal, I remember her,’ Rooney said, closing his eyes. ‘She’s originally from New Orleans, starred in a movie called Swamp somethin’ or other, while back. She was real sexy...’

Rosie nodded and began to list Elizabeth Seal’s later films. Lorraine sat at her own desk with her coffee. Rooney frowned as he listened to Rosie, then nodded his head.

‘Yeah, yeah, I remember now, she was all over the papers a while back, somethin’ about a girl — kidnapped, wasn’t she?’ Rooney was pinching his nose, trying to recall what he’d read about the case.

‘I said it made all the press, didn’t I?’ Rosie was nodding and beaming.

‘Her daughter, her body was never found?’ Rooney pondered.

‘Right, and they are still trying to find her. But it wasn’t here in Hollywood, it was in New Orleans. She went missing there, didn’t she?’

Rosie pointed. ‘Yes, disappeared into thin air. She went there with her parents during Mardi Gras. She goes out and is never seen again.’

Rooney chewed his lip and then looked at Lorraine. ‘I think a friend of mine, Jim Sharkey, handled the case here... all comin’ back to me.’

‘Lorraine didn’t even know who Elizabeth Seal is,’ Rosie interjected.

The phone rang, making Rooney jump as he was sitting on the edge of the desk closest to it. Rosie answered, feeling very superior by now.

‘Page Investigations.’ She then commenced a waving pantomime to Lorraine, gesturing towards her desk and her phone. ‘Would you hold one moment and I will see if Mrs Page is free to take your call.’ Rosie covered the phone with her hand and took a deep breath. ‘Elizabeth Caley, line one!’