Her Beautiful Monster Read online

“Can’t rule it out,” said Ken.

  “Wow,” Marcie said. “You went to the dark place fast.”

  “It doesn’t make sense if he killed his father and wants to kill his mother,” I said. “Much easier if he just got rid of her at home rather than run off with her.”

  “So the missus and Junior have gone to ground,” Roger said. “I take it you know how to set about finding them?”

  “The usual,” I said. “Scour social media.”

  “Sacha has a big disadvantage,” Olivia said. “He’s nineteen years old.”

  “And no nineteen-year-old doesn’t keep social media accounts,” I said as it dawned on me.

  “So he’s as good as found, then,” Roger said. “Hop to it, children.”

  “Will we be putting them in danger if we find them?” I said.

  “Not our concern,” Roger said as he walked back to his office. “The job is to find them. Everything else is not our problem.”

  “Yet,” Cheryl said.

  Roger shrugged.

  “Hang on,” I said. “How do we know the Harkingdales haven’t got people looking for Irina and Sacha right now?”

  “Because they haven’t hired us to do it.” Roger grinned.

  And so we set to work. Cursory searches for Sacha’s social media accounts. Sure enough, he had all of them, all the ones a teenager would have had from the age of twelve onwards.

  “What’s with the pensive look?” Mark asked.

  “We’re still operating on a plane of uncertainty,” I said. “I suppose I’m still hoping it’s all just nothing, a misunderstanding. No murder, a harmless explanation for Sacha and his mum going off, like a quick holiday, the Harkingdales just a family that needs money. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a dull case without drama?”

  “Is this something the gods are saying to you?” Mark asked.

  “No! I never talk to the gods and I certainly never do anything they say! They never tell me to do anything!”

  “Steady on, son,” Ken said. “Mark’s just askin’.”

  “Sorry. Look, I just want to be clear. It’s possible I’m schizophrenic, but it’s never affected my work or what I do, all right? Schizophrenia is a thinking disorder, and if I have it, I need you lot to tell me. Does anything I say come off as the ravings of a nutter?”

  “Not that we’ve noticed,” Benjamin said with a shrug.

  “Look, the gods are just extensions of my stress and hang-ups, all right? They show up when things look dicey because it’s probably my mind’s way of making sense of it all and making me feel guilty. They don’t give me prophetic visions or advice. They’re just parts of me, not visitations from the beyond. If I start to sound incoherent or stop making sense, I need you all to tell me. If I go completely doolally and need to be sectioned, I need you to do that for me, yeah?”

  “Totally,” Marcie said.

  “Good,” I said, perhaps a bit too emphatically. “Good.”

  A layer of storm clouds blanketed the ceiling of the office. Thunder and lightning, then a storm right there in the office, that only I noticed. Rudra stood in the center of the office, orchestrating the storm, sipping coffee from my mug.

  “We might have another problem,” Olivia said, not even looking up from her computer. “I looked up Irina Mayakovsky’s medical records.”

  “Bad news?” I asked.

  “She has early onset Alzheimer’s.”

  “So we really need to find her, then,” Julia said.

  “Yeah,” Clive said. “Duty of care and all that.”

  NINE

  Once again, it was Olivia who compiled and collated Sacha Mayakovsky’s digital footprints on the Web. She did it with her usual air of bored superiority. It wasn’t even that satisfying for her since she could hack as easily as she breathed. I sensed she could use a proper challenge soon lest she got too bored, and then God knows what she might get up to in her hacker ways. Olivia, in her librarian glasses and black Gucci pantsuit, was punching below her weight and she knew everyone knew it. Even doing forensic analysis on a major finance company was small potatoes for her when she could hack her way into anywhere and take over everything if she wanted to.

  “Clever boy, our Sacha,” she said. “The day he disappeared, he locked down his accounts and made them private.”

  “So we can’t see any of his posts?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “We’ll do this the hard way, then,” I said.

  It wasn’t really that hard. We just did a search for any forums or blogs he might have shown up on. There was a Russian expatriate forum he posted on to talk about his life in London. There was a message board from his college he had an account on. Mark found a message board devoted to psychedelic and synthetic drugs that Sacha was especially active on, and read through his posts.

  “Sacha’s a talented lad,” Mark said. “He’s got some interesting ideas on combining certain compounds to boost memory and cognition without the negative effects of speed.”

  “To enhance learning and retention,” Olivia said. “Very clever.”

  “Is he still posting?” I asked.

  “Too right,” Mark said. “I’m going to start a dialogue. Pick his brain.”

  “Still sloppy,” Olivia said. “Typical teenager. Just can’t leave his interests alone.”

  “Here’s a thought,” I said. “What if he’s been brewing up some of these synthetics and selling them?”

  “Go on,” Mark said.

  “He’s in hiding. He’s going to need cash to feed himself and his mum. He’s probably used to dealing a bit to his mates at school.”

  “I’ll start feeling him out on that,” Mark said.

  Olivia and I began to cross-reference all the people he communicated with on the message boards and blogs, and ran a search for their social media accounts. Sure enough, many of them followed him and he followed them back. We found photos of him and his friends at parties, on holiday, just down the pub.

  And there was one girl in particular that he appeared with more than all the others.

  “Girlfriend,” Olivia said.

  Her accounts were not locked down, and it was easy enough to see her real name. Tamsin Lowry. From there it was especially easy to find her contact information. She was one of Sacha’s classmates. She still lived at home with her parents, because student housing and loans were through the roof so that was a way to save money.

  “I doubt Sacha and his mum would be staying with them, then,” I said. “But she probably knows where he is.”

  This worried me. If we could trace Sacha’s girlfriend this easily, so might whoever the Harkingdales might have hired to do the same thing.

  “Sorry, who are you again?” Tamsin Lowry asked, wide-eyed.

  Her parents’ house was in Hounslow. We knew she took the Tube to university in Central London every day.

  “I’m the caseworker for Sacha’s mum,” I said, presenting the card that we’d printed up in the office. “We need to find her to make sure her treatment is continuing.”

  “I don’t know . . . ,” Tamsin muttered, stalling for time as Julia and I stood outside her front door.

  “Have you spoken to him recently?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know his mum was ill. He just said he took her on a trip.”

  “Well, she’s not really supposed to travel. He really should have spoken to us first.”

  “We just want to make sure she’s all right,” Julia said, offering sympathy. It was all about bedside manner.

  “How did you find me anyway?” Tamsin asked.

  “Sacha listed you as an emergency contact,” I lied. “Have you heard from him recently?”

  “N-no,” Tamsin stammered. “He just said he was going on a trip with his mum.”

  “Did he say how long they’d be gone?”

  “I don’t know, a week, maybe two?” She was making up her answers as she went along.

  “Tamsin,” Julia said. “You’re not in any trouble. We’re
just concerned about Sacha’s mum, that’s all.”

  “Did anyone else contact you asking about her?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, suddenly more confident. “Dodgy-looking bloke. Said he was a private investigator.”

  Julia and I exchanged a look.

  “Did he say why he was looking for her?” Julia asked.

  “Said something about her being owed money and he needed to find her as soon possible.”

  “Did he leave you a card?” I asked.

  She went back inside and brought back a slightly crumpled card that read “Richard Boyd Investigations.”

  Looked like a small firm compared to ours. He must have been hired by the Harkingdales. He probably did a cursory Internet search for Sacha’s social media accounts like we did and found Tamsin. There was a slightly beat-up Ford Fiesta parked across the street and two doors up that looked a bit out of place in this neighborhood.

  “Tamsin,” I said. “Are you all right? Have you felt like you were being watched or followed since this guy knocked on your door?”

  “N-no,” she lied. Poor girl.

  Boyd must have been watching her, following her to and from school, hoping she might lead him to Sacha. Old-fashioned footwork. It’s what we were considering doing. Question was, how far was he willing to go? Would he intimidate her? I didn’t like that idea.

  “Don’t worry,” Julia said. “We’re caseworkers. We can sort this out for you.”

  We left Tamsin and walked back to our car. I glanced at the Ford Fiesta and the slightly puffy sod sitting in it, pretending not to watch us. He was actually scribbling into a notebook.

  I got on my phone and called in. We told Roger and Cheryl about the man in the car.

  “Hang on,” Ken asked over the office speakerphone. “Did you say ‘Boyd’?”

  “As in Dickie Boyd?” Clive chimed in.

  “You know him?”

  “Oh, we know him,” Ken said with a chuckle. “Leave him to us.”

  TEN

  Dickie! Me old china! Awright?” Clive bellowed, a bit too friendly.

  “Ken . . . Clive . . . long time no see,” Dickie Boyd stammered.

  Julia and I were back in the office by then. We were watching on our computers alongside Mark, Olivia, Marcie, Benjamin, and David. Roger and Cheryl were content to do their own thing at their desks.

  Ken and Clive sidled up behind Boyd’s car as he kept watch on Tamsin’s parents’ house, all in hopes that she might lead him to Sacha. Sloppy of him that he didn’t even notice Ken and Clive coming up until they were right next to him. We were trained to spot danger better than that. We could see the terror on Boyd’s face, a perfectly understandable instinctive reaction to being approached by big bastards like Ken and Clive. This was the fundamental lizard brain kicking in from back when our ancestors had to worry about being eaten by big fucking predators. Good to know Boyd was at least normal in that respect. I immediately felt sorry for him, as I would for anybody Ken and Clive went after.

  Roger had taken to equipping Ken and Clive with lapel cameras whenever they went out on a case now, to document events for evidence. Benjamin was more than happy to fit them. I suspect even Roger wanted to make sure that if Ken and Clive kicked off on someone, he had the facts straight so as to sort out any legal ramifications. Ken and Clive were surprisingly compliant about it. In fact, they seemed to relish it, as if it was a chance to show off, to show they could play well with others.

  I wondered what they were going to do here.

  “Are they going to drag Boyd out of his car and kick the living shit out of him?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” Cheryl said. “That’s a cliché out of private eye novels. What would be the point of that? It would only tell Boyd he was onto something.”

  “Why make new enemies when you can make new friends?” Roger said, cheerily.

  Before we knew it, Ken and Clive had brought the justifiably nervous Boyd back to Golden Sentinels and into the comfy seat in Roger’s office. I was very glad the video hadn’t turned into a snuff film. Cheryl was even offering him tea and biscuits, the latter of which he palmed and put in his pocket for later.

  “Richard.” Roger put on the charm. “May I call you Richard? We’re all friends here.”

  “We are?” Boyd whined. I realized then that the nasal quality of his voice was permanent.

  “Ken and Clive told me a lot about you,” Roger continued. “All the way back in the days in the Met.”

  Turned out Boyd was another ex-copper from Ken and Clive’s days. Worked Vice but developed a cocaine addiction and was caught sampling the wares out of evidence. Turfed out on his ear, lucky not to be sent to prison, and with his pension withdrawn. Sacked in disgrace. Scraping by as a PI.

  “So what’s this about?” Boyd asked. “When I saw Ken and Clive comin’ up to me, I thought I was a goner for sure. Unmarked pit in the middle of Epping Forest for me. No one’ll miss me. Not the ex-wife, not the kid. Not even my pub landlord.”

  “Perish the thought! Ken and Clive’s reputation for drastic population control is strictly the stuff of rumor!” Roger said.

  “Could have fooled me, the stories I heard back in the force,” Boyd muttered.

  “They tell me you do good work as a PI,” Roger said. “Small firm. Strictly solo, trying to make ends meet. Must be hard, the alimony payments, the bookies you owe.”

  “You seem to know a lot about me, Mr. Golden.”

  “Like I said, I’ve been watching you with great interest.”

  (More like a five-minute summary of his life and career from Ken and Clive before they drove out to get him.)

  “Yeah? Give us a job here at your fancy firm, then,” Boyd ventured, glimmer of hope in his eyes. “That’d be a good leg-up.”

  “I’m afraid my quota’s filled here, old son,” Roger said.

  Boyd’s shoulders sagged.

  “However, I do need an outside contractor from time to time when my people are all booked up, and I could use an old-school geezer like you for some old-fashioned footwork.”

  “Well, Mr. Golden, that’s very generous of you,” wheezed Boyd. “Whatever you need, I’m your man. Yeah.”

  We could see the qualities in Boyd that would make Roger not put him on staff. The neediness, the desperation, the lack of finesse and politesse, as Roger liked to tell us when he wanted to flatter us.

  “So, Richard old son,” Roger pushed. “Tell us about your current case.”

  “Oh, I dunno, Mr. Golden. I dunno—client privilege and all that, you know?” Roger, fully prepared, handed a small envelope to Boyd.

  “Client confidentiality! Of course! But you’re one of us now, Richard. And we keep each other abreast of our caseloads so we can back each other up if need be. Consider this your first retainer.”

  Boyd opened the envelope. His eyes lit up at the five hundred quid in crisp £50 notes. This indicated to us that whoever had hired him to track down Sacha and Irina, they were paying him fucking peanuts. Poor sod. Of course, we were under no illusion that he would hesitate to sell us out if a better offer came along. But for now, Roger was the best offer he had.

  “Classic missing persons case, innit?” Boyd said. “Find this kid and his mum. Summink about the readin’ of his dad’s will wot they need to get on with. Probably a lot of dosh involved.”

  “So who hired you?” Roger asked. “The lawyers?”

  “Nah, the other family, innit? The second wife, Cecily Harkingdale and her dad, Sir Tobias Harkingdale. Right bunch of toffs that family, like their shit don’t stink. Even haggled down my usual rate.”

  “Disgraceful.” Cheryl shook her head in sympathy.

  I was in awe watching Roger and Cheryl work as a team to charm, cajole, manipulate, bribe their way into the heart of a mark. I saw right there their shared history as scrappy PIs back in the day before there had been smartphones and the Internet, when Roger was less polished and Cheryl was a violent punk in leather; that shared dy
namic was still there, even though they’d both cleaned up and learned to look respectable in the intervening decades.

  “Did they approach you directly?” Cheryl asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, they did.”

  “Not through any intermediary? Not through their solicitor?” Roger raised an eyebrow.

  “Nah,” Boyd said. “Cecily contacted me herself. Said I came highly recommended. Maybe their solicitor told ’em about me. Odd, that. She phoned, invited me out to their fancy gaff in Lancaster Gate, had the help show me in. It was as if they wanted to show off to me, make sure I knew my place.”

  “And how does that smell to you, my old son?” Roger said.

  “Like a pile of pants. Keepin’ me isolated, got me thinkin’ they might set me up to take the fall for summink dodgy later on.”

  “Your instincts are probably spot-on,” Cheryl said. “We have reason to believe the Harkingdales did in Lev Mayakovsky for his inheritance.”

  “Stone me!” Boyd cried. “You reckon they aim to snuff the kid and first wife as well?”

  “Great minds think alike, Richard,” Roger said.

  From her desk, Olivia, who never looked up from her computer, stifled a giggle. She heard every word. She did enjoy her godfather Roger in action. I’m sure he’d taught her a thing or two growing up.

  “So if I find them, they might do ’em in and pin it on me!” Boyd started to hyperventilate. “Wankers!”

  “Here’s where us lowly plebs have to stick together, eh, Richard?” Roger said. “We back each other up.”

  “Yeah, yeah, right you are, Mr. Golden—”

  “Roger. Please, friends call me Roger.”

  “Right. Roger.”

  “Could you tell us what the Harkingdales are like?” Cheryl asked. “How that family fits together?”

  “They’re tight, they are,” Boyd said. “Very cagey. There’s Cecily, Sir Tobias, her father. Charles, her brother. They seem to speak in a kind of code or shorthand among themselves. Probably all kinds of secrets between ’em. Sir Tobias is a heavy drinker, even more than me. With him it’s brandy. Charles was a gambler and speculator, always losin’ money in bad stocks that I could never understand. Has a shrew of a wife with expensive tastes. Feels like Sir Tobias calls the shots in that family. They were gaggin’ for me to find Mayakovsky’s kid and first wife so the will can be read and the estate can be divvied up right and proper. No love lost between them and the first wife, I can tell ya.”