SAM’S SONG
Hannah Howe
Goylake Publishing
Copyright © 2014 Hannah Howe
All rights reserved.
The moral right of Hannah Howe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Goylake Publishing, Iscoed, 16A Meadow Street, North Cornelly, Bridgend, Glamorgan. CF33 4LL
https://goylakepublishing.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.
To my family, with love
Chapter One
I was sitting in my office, tapping my fingers on my desk, waiting for my computer to start. As usual, my fingernails were bitten to the quick – it was an annoying habit, one I was trying to break – and, as usual, my computer was having one of its ‘moments’. Like most of the items in my office, the computer was a refurbished model, the best I could afford. Today, I was in luck and the programme opened. I selected the appropriate file and was about to type up a report for a client when a man walked in carrying a silver-tipped cane in one hand and a felt fedora in the other.
“Samantha Smith, enquiry agent?” he asked.
I looked up from my keyboard and nodded. “Do you want to hire me?” It was a question I asked everyone who entered my office – money was tight – I needed their patronage. In the early years, my voice had an almost desperate edge to it when I asked that question, a desperate edge that matched my pleading look. Recently, I’d modified my tone and look, but to my ears, I still sounded frantic.
“Can I come in first?” the man with the fedora asked patiently.
I waved a hand towards my client’s chair and mumbled, “Oh, sorry. Yes. Take a seat.”
The man with the cane and the fedora looked around my office. He gazed at the apple-white walls, which I’d recently painted, my coat rack, my cream trench coat – I like to dress the part – and my battered oak desk, acquired on the cheap from a second-hand market. In truth, apart from a couple of iron-grey filing cabinets, there was nothing else to look at so his eyes alighted on me.
“Nice office,” he smiled politely.
I nodded.
He glanced over my shoulder to a rain-streaked window, the only source of natural light in my first floor office. Maybe he didn’t like the view because his top lip twitched into an Elvis Presley snarl. “Lousy district.”
I shrugged. My office was located in Butetown, Cardiff, near the docks. It wasn’t a salubrious district. In fact, I plied my trade from a distinctly seedy street, but it was all I could afford.
He shuffled in his seat, then brightened, his smile revealing a gold filling on his right eye-tooth. “As a matter of fact, young lady, I would like to hire you.”
“You have a name?” I asked.
“Milton,” his smile intensified. “Milton Vaughan-Urquhart.” He leaned forward and offered his right hand. I shook it. His handshake was a trifle limp. I noted that his fingernails had been neatly manicured and that his hands were as smooth as a baby’s skin.
“Okay, Milton, so you want to hire me.”
“On behalf of Derwena de Caro.”
He paused for dramatic effect.
I flicked my hair over my shoulder. I picked up a pencil. I sat back in my faux-leather chair. I twirled the pencil between my fingers. I offered Milton a polite smile. I was playing it cool, as though managers of multi-million pound pop stars walked into my office every day of the week.
“You’ve heard of Derwena de Caro?” he frowned.
“Sure.” I’d heard of Derwena. I’d heard that she could be a five-star pain in the arse, a pop diva who sent her fellow musicians and hangers-on climbing up the walls. I needed the money that was painfully true. But did I need the emotional baggage that came with Derwena de Caro? I thought not.
“Didn’t she have a hit a few years back?” I searched my mind for the name of the song. “Love Bullet, wasn’t it?”
“Come up to me, baby, hold me real close, you know I’m the one who loves you the most, and I wanna shoot all my love bullets into you,” Milton sang. He had a terrible voice, akin to chalk scratching on a blackboard.
“They don’t write them like that anymore,” I sighed.
“Actually, they do,” Milton corrected me. “Woody, Derwena’s guitarist and lover, wrote that lyric and he’s put together a series of classic songs for her next album, Midas Melange. Okay, Derwena’s gone through a fallow period – it’s all about hip-hop and rap now, beats per minute, it’s difficult for a chanteuse like Derwena to break through – but she’ll be back big time with Midas Melange.”
Milton sat back in my client’s chair. He placed the silver tip of his cane on my office floor. The floor was bare floorboards – I was saving up to buy some carpet. He twiddled the bulbous crown on the cane between his flaccid fingers. He gazed at me through soft, brown, expectant eyes. Then a cat jumped in through a gap in my side window and landed on my desk.
“Shit!” Milton put a hand to his throat, caressing his cravat in an effort to compose himself. “What the hell’s that?”
I stroked the cat and he purred, rubbing his damp head against the back of my hand. “This is Marlowe. And don’t shout like that, he gets nervous.” Marlowe, a mean looking, battle-scarred alley cat, had adopted me. I’d walked into my office one morning and there he was. He’d jumped in through my open side window via the roof of a ground floor shed. I gave him a saucer of milk and next day, he was back demanding food, meowing like a badly tuned violin. Three months later, we were still together, which was a record for me when it came to recent male relationships.
Marlowe sat on the edge of my desk. He opened his legs, leaned forward, and licked his balls. Don’t do that, Marlowe, I groaned inwardly, at least, not in front of potential clients. But Marlowe licked away. I guess a cat’s gotta do what a cat’s gotta do.
I glanced at Milton and noticed that he’d raised his right eyebrow in inquisitive fashion. He nodded with approval. “If only I were that dexterous.”
I blushed. I blush easily. It’s symptomatic of having freckles and auburn hair.
Marlowe continued to lick his privates. Then he wandered around my desk, found a suitably vacant spot and curled into a ball, purring his way into a catnap.
“Derwena thinks that she’s being stalked.” Milton was back into his linguistic stride, leaning forward, resting his arms on his cane, which was planted between his legs.
“And is she?” I asked.
Milton shrugged a well-rounded shoulder. In his early forties, he was flabby around the middle with short legs. Clean-shaven, he had a comfortable double chin and soft jowls. His hair was wavy and brown, parted on the right, reaching to his collar, revealing a high-forehead. He flicked his hair away from his collar in a foppish manner then offered me a thin smile. “Derwena’s an artist,” he explained, “she’s given to flights of the imagination.”
“So the stalker’s all in her mind.”
He shrugged again, offering me a tight, polite, yet painful smile. “Or he could be real. The music industry attracts a lot of fruitcakes.”
Like Derwena de Caro, I thought, but I was being unkind. After al
l, if my life appeared in the Sunday newspapers, people would hardly regard me as Housewife of the Year.
“Why hire me?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Milton Vaughan-Urquhart stared at his fingernails. He blew on them then polished them on his tweed waistcoat. “There are not that many female enquiry agents around.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” If I sounded sarcastic, that’s because I’d been having a difficult time lately. In fact, I’d been having a difficult time for the past thirty-two years, but you muddle through, don’t you, hoping that the sun will shine, one day.
“And Derwena insisted that we hire a female enquiry agent,” Milton continued. “And I checked you out amongst your male peers and they said you’re the best.”
That would be Mickey Anthony, a fellow private eye. He was always quick with a kind word about me, but he was a womaniser and I suspected an ulterior motive. Accept the compliment, the little angel inside my head said, you work damned hard, you’re conscientious and you never quit until your client is satisfied. But I couldn’t accept the compliment; I’ve always found it hard to accept praise.
“Divorce is more my line of work.” There I go again, being defensive; it was a coping strategy, and being a female alone in this game, I needed plenty of them.
“Do you want to stay in this dump forever?” Milton glanced around my office. He glared at me. His tone was surprisingly harsh. “From what I’ve heard you’ve got a good reputation amongst your peers. You’re trustworthy, meticulous and very resourceful. But a good reputation alone doesn’t put carpets on your floors or curtains on your windows. So I ask again, do you want to stay in this dump forever?”
It was a dump. But I liked my office. I liked the people in the neighbourhood. Even so, I was mildly ambitious and I knew that I had to challenge myself and move on. Besides, I had a string of bills to pay by the end of the week – I needed the money. Beggars can’t be choosers, so I shrugged, “I charge £25 an hour, plus expenses.” I knew that I was undervaluing myself. Indeed, if I had a twin sister I’d probably advertise as ‘hire one, get one free’.
Milton stared at the gold rings and gold wristwatch, adorning his left hand, and the gold identity bracelet dangling from his right wrist. He smiled, “I think we can stretch to £25 an hour. We are ensconced in Castle Gwyn, living and recording on site. Do you know the castle?”
I nodded.
“Meet us at noon; Derwena should be up by then.”
“She likes her bed.”
“Recording sessions can go on into the early hours. Her voice is often at its best after dark.”
Milton Vaughan-Urquhart stood. He placed his fedora on his head then straightened the seams on his trousers. His trousers were brown with a fawn pinstripe. He also wore spats, I noticed, tan and white. He checked his pocket watch, then returned the watch to his waistcoat. A pocket watch and a wristwatch – either this man had Swiss ancestry or he was obsessed with the time. “We’ll see you at noon.”
I glanced at Marlowe. He was still asleep, no doubt dreaming of mice. Maybe in the next life, I’d come back as a cat. I nodded. “I’ll see you at noon.”
Milton left my office. I stared at my desk. There were two drawers in my desk; one contained a bottle of whisky, the other a gun. I had a strict rule – the whisky was purely for medicinal purposes and, as with all medicines, you must never exceed the stated dose. My stated dose was two fingers a day, maximum. I’d seen my mother consume gin like water. In fact, my earliest memory of my mother is of her slouched drunk in a chair, an empty bottle of gin in her limp hand. I must have been three or four at the time. I’d been to some dark places, but I had no wish to go there. Two fingers, maximum. That was my stated dose. The second desk drawer contained a Smith and Wesson .32. I’d fired the gun in anger, though I hadn’t killed anyone. I thought about the gun. I thought about a potential stalker. I opened the drawer and slipped the gun into my shoulder bag. Okay, so it clashed with the make-up, the tissues, the panty-liners, but hell, better to be safe than sorry. I had an hour to kill. Enough time to complete my report and deliver it to my client. So I crouched over the keyboard and with Marlowe stretched over my desk, I earned some bread.