In At The Deep End Read online

  Anabel Donald

  IN AT THE

  DEEP END

  Contents

  Monday, June 1st

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Tuesday, June 2nd

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Wednesday, June 3rd

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thursday, June 4th

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Friday, June 5th

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Saturday, June 6th

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Sunday, June 7th

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Monday, June 8th

  Chapter Thirty

  Tuesday, June 9th

  Chapter Thirty-One

  For the pupils of

  St Mary’s School, Doncaster

  Monday, June 1st

  Chapter One

  The rectangle of pasteboard lay on the desk between us. My card. Alex Tanner, Private Investigator, it said. With my address and telephone number.

  The man opposite me was pretending to read it. I say pretending, because he knew all the information on it anyway. That was why his secretary had rung me the previous Friday. That’s why I was here now, in one of the larger offices in the newish office building in one of the narrow side streets between the Strand and the river that housed the firm of Whyteleafe,Whyteleafe,Trigg, and Plummer, Solicitors.

  My man was Plummer. He was in his late thirties, sandy-haired, balding, short and stocky beyond even the skill of what his pinstripe suit identified as an expensive tailor. In a cheaper suit he would have been simply fat. As it was his descending chins met his ascending neck over the white collar of a pink shirt, and when he smiled his pale blue eyes were submerged in flesh.

  So far he hadn’t spoken, except to greet me and, as it was teatime, offer me tea. I’d accepted coffee. I was tingling with curiosity – Why would a top London solicitor hire me? How had he even heard of me? – but I sipped the coffee and looked around, pretending to be relaxed. It was a pleasant enough office: uncluttered, thick-carpeted, book-lined. His desk was a good reproduction of an early Victorian design, mahogany with brass fittings and a tooled red leather top, bare except for a computer terminal, a telephone, a silver-framed photograph of his well-fleshed family, and my card. One wall of the room was glass and if I leant backwards a little in my reproduction eighteenth-century dining chair. I could see the Thames sliding heavily past, unruffled by the light June breeze.

  As I sat, I speculated on the cost of Mr Plummer’s time. What did he charge per hour? A hundred and fifty quid? Two hundred? If it was two hundred, the client, whoever he was, had just paid £23.33 for his solicitor to watch me drink a cup of coffee. I’d been there seven minutes.

  He picked up my card and tapped it against his teeth. White, regular, sharp teeth, like a baby shark’s. Otherwise he was more like a dolphin, sleek, friendly, no fool. Did dolphins have teeth?

  ‘Miss Tanner. You seem very young,’ he said, sounding pleased.

  ‘Twenty-nine this week,’ I said. It was true, but twenty-nine always sounds to me bogus because it’s usually misappropriated. Like giving your occupation as model or your name as Brown.

  ‘You look younger.’

  People often say that. It could be the way I dress. I usually wear 501s, a T-shirt, and plain brown Doc Martens. I was wearing them now. Today’s T-shirt selection: colour, dark green; style, short-sleeved. No logo.

  I smiled and said nothing.

  ‘How long have you been a private investigator?’

  ‘Six months. Part-time.’ Very part-time. Last November, by chance, I’d investigated the disappearance of a cabinet minister’s daughter. Since then I’d decided to set up as a private investigator as a sideline. Not because I’d managed the first investigation well: actually, because I’d made a hash of it. I hate screwing up. I knew I could do better than that. I’d fixed it with my accountant, had the stationery printed, put an ad in the Yellow Pages and in local newspapers, and waited. I’d had one missing persons case which I solved in an hour. It was hardly enough to consider giving up the day job (freelance television researcher), but enough to keep separate accounts.

  ‘You work alone?’

  ‘Yes. And I’ve none of the usual experience. I haven’t been in the police, I didn’t learn my trade in a big agency, and I haven’t even been a store detective. Most of the time I’m a television researcher. I started out at the BBC. My research skills are good, I have some contacts in the police, and I enjoy finding things out. But that’s it. And I’m very much a beginner at the game.’ There was no point in trying to flannel him. If I wasn’t what he was looking for, the sooner we both knew it, the less time would be wasted.

  ‘Thank you for being so frank,’ he said. ‘Your detective work is – shall we say a hobby?’

  ‘My accountant doesn’t think so. And I take it seriously.’

  ‘Very laudable,’ he said drily. Oddly, he sounded disappointed. ‘Would you be free immediately?’

  ‘To start, yes, but I’ve commitments later this month. It depends how long the job’ll take.’ My diary was full of three weeks of nothing – a freelancer’s nightmare. Another reason why I sat so alertly in Mr Plummer’s chair, ready to be his dream detective, if I could identify what that would be. My only clues so far was that young was in, serious was out. I sparkled winningly, trying to look like an early Shirley Temple.

  ‘I imagine a week at the most,’ he said.

  ‘How did you get my name?’

  He gave a sharp, white, pointed smile. ‘You were recommended to me.’

  ‘By whom?’ I’d buy them a drink and urge them to keep up the good work: Whyteleafe, Whyteleafe, etc. were an extremely prosperous set-up. I didn’t for a minute expect to get much of their business because they’d certainly use a top-flight international detective agency in the ordinary way, one of the big boys, full of ex-senior officers of the Met; but anything was better than nothing, and Whyteleafe etc. would be a good credit.

  ‘By someone who praised your discretion,’ he said. I nodded discreetly, still sparkling. He wasn’t going to answer my question. Perhaps if I offered him £1.66 cash on the nail for thirty seconds of his time, he’d tell me. Then again perhaps he wouldn’t.

  ‘If you would tell me your fees?’

  I gave him my daily rate. He tapped away at his keyboard. Now the computer knew my rates, as it presumably knew my name, address, telephone number, and reputation for discretion.

  Another pause. Twelve minutes past four. I was running out of sparkle. Mr Plummer didn’t speak and I didn’t speak and I was beginning to find it odd. He didn’t strike me as indecisive. We weren’t exactly having a thrilling time chewing the fat and exchanging views on politics, art, and life. I wasn’t wearing a skirt he could squint up and he showed no signs of finding me his type. So why were we waiting? The football chant began in my head.

  Perhaps, I thought, he expected a sign from me. A masonic handshake. A password.

  I tried small talk. ‘It’s a lovely day.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said, and we both
looked out of the window at the Thames. He didn’t have to tilt his chair from where he sat.

  ‘Are we waiting for someone?’ I said.

  He sighed as if he’d come to a decision, opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a folder. ‘The information my client requires—’

  ‘Don’t I get a name?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. My client wishes to remain anonymous. And the information he is interested in is rather – nebulous. Not a question of facts.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, to encourage him. He didn’t want to spit it out.

  ‘In late March this year, a seventeen-year-old boy named Olivier de Sauvigny Desmoulins drowned in the swimming pool of his boarding school in Oxfordshire.’

  ‘Was there an inquest?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Accidental death?’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘Is it the accident that your client wants me to investigate? In case it wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘Not exactly. My client is interested in Olivier’s state of mind before he died.’

  I let that statement sit in the air a while, hoping he would focus its vagueness for me. Eventually I accepted I’d have to do it myself. ‘When?’

  ‘Before he died,’ he repeated, puzzled.

  ‘When exactly before he died? The seconds before? The day before? The week before?’ We could go back as far as Olivier’s nursery days.

  ‘Say – the day before.’

  I still didn’t understand it. ‘In case it was suicide?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘And what exactly do you want from me?’

  ‘A report. A detailed report. Who you spoke to, what they said. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Any signed statements?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Tape-recorded interviews?’

  ‘Not necessarily. A detailed report.’

  ‘You say your client isn’t interested in details of the accident? Just in case it wasn’t?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Just his state of mind.’

  ‘And am I looking for anything specific, like was he being bullied or had he just had bad news – about his parents, for instance?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked, his voice for once as sharp as his teeth.

  ‘No particular reason,’ I said. ‘Is your client a man?’

  He hesitated, examined the question, evidently decided the answer wasn’t compromising. ‘Yes.’

  Now I was suspicious. None of it rang true. ‘Mr Plummer, you’re holding out on me.’

  He tapped his fingers on the folder. ‘What gives you that impression?’

  ‘You’re a partner in a high-powered firm. Your hourly charge is probably my daily rate. Any client of yours is probably equally high-powered, or solidly rich. Either way, he’s not likely to ask such a fuzzy question and pay someone like you to find someone like me to answer it.’

  ‘Grief does strange things,’ he said.

  ‘Certainly true. But predictably strange. You tell me a man wants to know the state of mind of a seventeen-year-old boy before his accidental death? I say that isn’t true. Not for himself. Not unless he was in love with the boy, and probably not even then. Men are usually pragmatic. Sensitive, within a narrow range, frequently. Passionate, certainly. But not speculative if speculation gets them nothing but further suffering. It sounds to me like a guilty woman’s question. So I ask you again, who wants to know this?’

  He looked at me steadily. ‘My client does.’

  ‘Your male client?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked steadily back, and shook my head. ‘I have to be able to trust you,’ I said. ‘I nearly died in an investigation last November because I was badly briefed.’

  ‘That can’t be the case here,’ he said. ‘There is no question of murder. There was an inquest. You must trust me.’

  ‘And there’s a cheque in the post,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Things you don’t believe,’ I said. ‘Things people say, that are more often lies than truth. I’ll love you in the morning. There’s a cheque in the post.’

  ‘You inhabit a harsh world, Miss Tanner.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We both do. The only difference is that at the moment it suits you to pretend you haven’t noticed.’

  He cleared his throat impatiently. ‘What, precisely, is your difficulty with the assignment?’

  ‘If your client is a man, as you claim, I want to know his name, his relationship to Olivier, and his specific intentions. I’ll keep it confidential.’

  ‘I cannot answer your questions,I’m afraid,’ he said.‘One further point. No one is to know the purpose of your enquiries, or indeed that you are enquiring about Olivier at all.’

  ‘That’ll double my fees,’ I said. I meant merely that it would take much longer. He misunderstood me and tapped my new higher rates into the computer without a blink. I should have charged more to start with, I realized. Evidently confidential private investigators cost more than television researchers. I still didn’t like the job, but now I couldn’t possibly afford not to take it. Properly padded, it would cover my three empty weeks.

  He saw the money was hooking me, and he pressed home, taking a chequebook from his drawer. ‘I’ll pay you for a week in the first instance, and add two hundred pounds as a float for expenses. After a week, report to me, please.’

  ‘In person?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. A detailed written report will be quite enough. I suppose you have headed stationery?’

  Odd question. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Specifically in your capacity as private investigator? Not merely as a freelance researcher?’

  Labouring the point seemed odder still. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Good. If you find you need more time, telephone for further instructions.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, and watched while he wrote the cheque, then pushed it across the desk to me with a piece of paper from his folder.

  I stowed the cheque away in a front pocket of my jeans, and looked at the piece of paper. At the top, the name and address of the school, together with the headmaster’s and housemaster’s names. Then two more names, under the heading: Olivier’s special friends.

  He was making ‘the interview is over’ movements, but I needed as much information as I could get. ‘Now tell me about Olivier.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well briefed is efficient,’ I said. ‘Like any enterprise. The more you know at the outset, the less you have to take time finding out. The family, for instance. His name is French, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes. His father is French. Michel de Sauvigny Desmoulins, more commonly known in France as Michel Mouche.’

  He waited for me to identify Mouche. I’m not good on France and I had to grope around in my memory. Eventually it came. ‘The singer-poet-actor who looks as if he never washes, shaves, or sobers up?’

  ‘Quite. Olivier’s mother is an Englishwoman, Mary Anne Pertwee, better known as Freedom Mouche. She also has a career in France, as a minor singer. The parents have been divorced some years. She now lives in a commune in the Gers region of France. He lives in Paris. Olivier is their only child.’

  I’d been taking notes but as he seemed to be opening up I took a tape recorder out of my big squashy leather bag. He saw it, and shook his head. I put it away.

  ‘Where did Olivier live?’

  ‘He was at boarding school, as you know. During the holidays he spent time with his parents and grandparents. His English grandparents, Raymond and Alice Pertwee, live in Sydenham.’

  Could the English grandfather be Plummer’s client? Not likely, living in Sydenham. ‘Raymond Pertwee’s retired, is he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he do before?’

  ‘He was an electrician.’

  Certainly not Plummer’s client. ‘And the French grandparents?’

  ‘Charles and Marie-Therese de Sauvigny Desmoulins. They hav
e a flat in Paris and a house between Toulouse and Bordeaux.’

  Much more like it, I thought. OK, French, but posh French. ‘What kind of house?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Small? Big? A shack? A chateau?’

  ‘More a chateau than a shack.’

  The boy had died in late March. A fatal accident at school, a child of minor celebrities – I was surprised I hadn’t seen any coverage in the national papers. I asked Plummer about it.

  ‘There were small paragraphs in the Telegraph and the Mail, I believe. Fortunately the Mouche connection passed unnoticed.’

  With some help from Plummer, I guessed. He’d have been all over it like a winter-weight duvet. ‘Why was Olivier being educated in England?’

  ‘Desmoulins sons always are.’

  Very posh. ‘At this school? Rissington Abbey? I’ve never heard of it.’

  He shrugged again. ‘It is a small private school for boys from thirteen to eighteen. Run on military lines, but understanding.’

  ‘What did they have to understand?’

  ‘Olivier was unusual.’

  Not very helpful. ‘Unusually badly behaved or educationally subnormal?’

  ‘Not educationally subnormal. He was very bright. He started at Eton, but – the school didn’t suit him.’

  ‘Or he didn’t suit the school.’

  ‘As you say.’

  ‘Did they ask him to leave?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A question of drugs. Several other boys left at the same time . . .’

  ‘How old was he, at this point?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  Young, I thought. Very young, to be expelled for drugs. Much more likely that they’d assume a fourteen-year-old was being led astray by older boys.

  ‘And then he went straight to Rissington?’

  ‘Yes.’

  How come you know so much about him? I thought. He had the facts in his head: he didn’t even have to look at his notes. The chances were that Mr Plummer had dealt with Olivier for years. A guardian, perhaps, or a trustee for the French grandparents.

  ‘You’ve met Olivier, I expect,’ I said blandly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did he strike you?’

  He shrugged. ‘He was an adolescent. Self-absorbed. Rather – theatrical. Prone to make scenes. Attention-seeking.’