I get a kick out of following people. There’s a childish excitement in trailing the unwitting suspect, in not being caught doing something shady. It’s rarely easy. Fate conspires to fix the traffic lights, spirit up needy strangers seeking directions, wayward dogs and road-works. Actually, I can’t blame fate for the road-works; that’s down to the city council. They’d only just finished digging up the whole of Manchester, to replace the rotting sewers, when they started digging it up all over again to lay the tram lines.
Of course, in between the thrill of the chase there’s the stifling boredom of waiting. Waiting for the woman to emerge from having her hair permed, for the couple leaving the hotel, together or separately, or for the bloke to finish his stint at the pub.
But that Friday morning back in June, I was lucky. Vernon Wainwright, supposedly off on a business trip to Amsterdam, left the airport ten minutes after his wife dropped him and took a cab to the Trust House Forte hotel in nearby Northenden. There he was joined in the foyer by a young woman. They booked in and took the lift up to their weekend of bliss. The Trust House Forte hotel would hardly be my idea of the perfect setting for a weekend of forbidden passion (couldn’t he at least have taken her to Amsterdam?) but then it’s so long since I had any passion, forbidden or otherwise, that I’m hardly au fait with these matters.
With my adrenalin buzz fading, I drove my old Mini back to face the less than pleasant task of telling Mrs Wainwright that her suspicions were well founded.
I’ve found they usually are. Women know. They spend an inordinate amount of time blaming themselves for being paranoid or insecure, giving hubby the benefit of the doubt just one more time – then, at their wit’s end and fearful for their sanity, they approach someone like me. It’s my job to prove to them that they’re not going loopy.
Mrs Wainwright took the news in her stride. Politely, even. She thanked me for doing the job. I was relieved. I’ve been on the end of a whole heap of anger and bitterness before now. Don’t shoot the messenger.
I sat back and tilted my chair at a dangerous angle. What now? My desk was clear. No work in the pipeline. Should I struggle on as a private eye or launch myself on another career? I’d never actually had a career. I’d had a broad and fairly useless university education, a stint as a desk-potato in a tax office, a baby (now a four year old) and eighteen months as a self-employed investigator. ‘Women returners’ screamed the ads in the local paper, but what had I got to return to? Being re-educated didn’t appeal. And my fantasies of an alternative career ran along the lines of jazz-singer, investigative journalist, film star. None of which featured on the summer school syllabus at what was left of the adult education college.
I sighed, righted my chair and took a turn round my office. It’s a cellar room I rent from a family who live round the corner from my house. Well, not my house – I rent that too. From a brain-drain lecturer who’s over in Australia.
The office looked decidedly jaded eighteen months in. The leak from upstairs the previous winter had left ugly water stains over most of the ceiling. Two corners sported an interesting variety of fungus. Random coffee stains and what looked like bits of old food peppered the walls. I’ve no idea how they got there. I have no recollection of ever throwing food and drink around. Faced with no useful employment and time on my hands, I decided to do something practical. I’d redecorate. There would be paint left over from the kids’ room. Pale lilac. It would be an improvement on what I was looking at.
An hour later, clad in dungarees, I was back in the Dobson’s cellar with step-ladder, roller and tray, paint and dustsheet. I shoved the furniture into the middle of the room, rolled the edges of the carpet in and covered the lot with the dustsheet.
I paint fast and messy. The ceiling was done in twenty minutes and I was speckled lilac like some rare bird’s egg. The phone rang just as I was scraping the excess paint off the roller. I dived under the dust-sheet to find it.
‘Hello.’
‘Is that Sal Kilkenny?’ The woman’s voice was soft, a glottal Bolton accent.
‘Speaking.’
‘I got your name from a friend of mine, Audrey Johnson.’
‘Yes.’ I remembered Audrey Johnson. She’d been less than civil when I’d told her what Mr Johnson was up to.
‘Could I come and see you…if you’re able…you see…oh…’ She was floundering.
