Jade Monkey

We drove in silence to the Haselgrave. Hannah hadn’t really struck me as the silent type, but there was something on her mind and I was tangled up enough in my own thoughts. A syndicate felt right. Whoever they were, they were smart, efficient, organised and not averse to killing off their own to keep their identity a secret. I stared out from the passenger window at the dull grey streets. That was their weakness, if proof of their existence got out Miss Mills would plaster their name across the front pages and DI Boura would spring into action..

I grabbed the door as the car swerved violently, and headed down a side street. We were still some distance from the hotel. I turned to check the road behind us, but no-one was there. Beside me Hannah turned the engine off. I dully noticed that we were parked outside small hairdresser. ‘Short Cuts’ of all things.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

Hannah sighed and let her shoulders relax, so that she slumped in her chair. ‘I need to turn myself in to the police.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re taking too long. Half the police in the city are looking for me, or are watching for you or the car. The longer I leave it, the more questions there are going to be. Especially if we get picked up at a crime scene.’

‘It’ll take you out of circulation for a while. They really will want to talk to you about Mr Charles.’

‘Even the more reason for me to go to them. Me dictating the terms on which I see them will make life a lot easier.’

‘And you’ll need the car to go to Pete’s to get changed as a gun toting archaeologist isn’t going to do wonders for making Loughborough’s finest believe in your innocence.’

‘Look, I’m sorry about this. I’ve been running on adrenalin since you dived into the car. I need to sort this out before things get worse.’

I put it together. ‘Surprising the things you can find out in a library isn’t it?’

‘What?’ Hannah said, taken aback.

‘Ginger has a thing for organising. Not only books, but events. She likes things to be tidy. Was it a letter on the shelf or a sheet of paper in the book she mentioned?’

‘A sheet of paper.’

‘Well she has a point. The police tend to see evasion as suspicious. Too much longer and we’d have to ditch the car and get a new one and complicate our lives. Two things though.’

‘Okay.’ She said.

‘One, can you still drop me off at the Haslegrave.’

‘Not a problem. And the second?’

‘I’d like to borrow the copy of the Jade Monkey.’

Her brow furrowed for a moment as she tried to work out why I wanted it. I wasn’t exactly sure myself, but I had a nagging feeling that it’d be useful. Eventually she shrugged. ‘Go for it. I’ll leave a message with Pete when I can meet up with you again.’

It was just after lunch when we arrived at the hotel. I could tell because I hadn’t had breakfast and my stomach was not so much rumbling as working its way to violent revolution. As I got out of the car, I stood stupidly in the street for a moment, looking for the words to say ‘Thanks for watching my back and coming with me to various crime scenes’ to her, but they didn’t seem to be there. She glanced at me, and the determined expression she’d worn since we’d stopped softened slightly.

‘Be careful.’

I closed the door and she pulled off down the road and I wondered at the repetition of Ginger’s words. I might be a little chaos prone at times but I don’t go looking for trouble. Having a partner with a grudge and deadly accuracy tends to make you wary by reflex. Perhaps I should hedge my bets and call Lisa at the Hospital. I thrust my hands in my pockets and was reassured by the familiar feel of the .32. Shaking my head I walked around the corner and up the stairs into the Haselgrave.

The clerk gave me a baleful look as I asked if there were any messages and shuffled over to a dusty shelf before unceremoniously dumping a couple of torn out pages from a notebook on the counter in front of me. I put some currency down next to them.

‘Anything else?’

The chance of some extra money seemed to bring the clerk to life as nothing else had. ‘A lady looking for you. Grey outfit, dark glasses. No message.’ I slid the money across and said thanks. He seemed a little shocked by this, as if thanks happened to other people. I stowed the messages in an inside pocket and made for the telephone.

My conversation with Miss Michelle was brief. Yes I had a few leads. No there wasn’t anything concrete. Yes I’d spoken with Miss Mills. No I didn’t think there was anything else she needed to know. By my reckoning I’d been at three crime scenes, been shot at several times, and was under watch by an unknown criminal syndicate whose existence I’d yet to prove. If I’d have actually told her any of this the syndicate might become the least of my problems. I promised to give her another status report in a couple of days, or when I had anything concrete.

I sprawled out in armchair close to the door and spread the messages out in front of me. The first was fairly mundane, the Reporter had chased down a few leads but they hadn’t panned out, the next was more excited, but light on details why. The last was different, paranoid, saying he was being shadowed and that he wanted to meet me at a diner in Billmo. I bit my lip, it was possible he’d managed to find out something about the syndicate. I swore, and stuffed the messages back into my pockets. Billmo, the last place in Loughborough. I walked out the door slowly, before coming back to borrow the telephone and call Stiles and leave a message. It was probably nothing, but at the moment, having some insurance seemed a sensible idea.