Find The Lady: A 47th Shopping Precinct Mystery Episode 2

By Stevie Smith

By Stevie Psmith

Materialising in my life like a stage magician's lovely assistant in an empty box, Andy had lost none of his charm. 

The only company I'd had for a while was my office cleaning lady, whose monthly visits to drink my Old Harper's were generally anticipated by me three or four days in advance, when I'd set to and catch up with the chores, the better to share her frequently proffered views on what I was doing wrong.

When I half-bashfully showed her Andy's card, after mentioning our recent encounter, she laughed.  Mellowed by years of imbibing her clients' alcohol as she surveyed their (I assumed) similarly spotless premises, the sound of her chuckling bounced off the filing cabinet and fell awkwardly between us.

"What's so funny, may I ask?"

She looked at me appraisingly as she reached for her coat from a peg behind the door, revealing the lettering of my name on the door in reverse, as she did so.

"A property consultant?  Covers a multitude of sins, doesn't it?" she observed laconically, replacing on my desk with a barely suppressed air of disdain the deckle-edged passport to what I'd hoped would be at least a couple of companionable Old Fashioneds.  

"He's made a success of it, anyway," I said, adding defiantly, "Whatever it entails."

"Him and a few thousand like him, I daresay.  Not that it's any of my concern," was her pert response.  "I'll do your desk next time, when you've remembered to get the filing up-to-date," she continued, now halfway out of the office.  "Must dash, or I'll miss me bus.  Ta-ta!"

I was, again, alone with my thoughts - and, I estimated from a glance at the hospitality trolley in the corner, about four less cocktails than I'd had to look forward to at the start of the morning. 

Not many days had passed since Fast Andy's hail-fellow-well-met routine on the corner of Third in Hove had left me en route to Worthing with his visiting card and a hurriedly given commitment to phone the Brighton number it presented to the world in a fetching shade of magenta.

My cleaning lady's strictures were scornfully relegated to the pending tray of history as, impulsively, I reached for the phone and dialled.

We'd grown up together, Andy and I, on Hove's Lower East Side, after all.  There was nothing so unusual about old buddies meeting up to celebrate their accidental mutual recognition after years of separation.  It was time to give nostalgia full rein.

I smiled as I recalled the young Andy's restlessness, and his outright disbelief on the one occasion in our youth when I'd tried to explain to him the pleasures to be had from bird-watching.

"I prefer mine indoors," he'd pronounced, mystified.  Not long after that, London had, it was briefly rumoured, claimed him for good and all.  Time went by and, presumed still to be dicing with the love of speed that had seen him graduate from go-karts and skateboards to the non-stop for Victoria, Andy was forgotten.

His earlier, more rounded features were fondly recollected as I cradled the phone between my shoulder and ear.  They dissolved as, at the third ring, an electronic command bid me leave my name and number.

I rapidly swung my feet from the desktop on to the floor.  I like birds, but I like people, too.  Answering machines always make me feel uneasy.  Speaking into a void you come over with all the spontaneity of a pre-war BBC announcer in his dinner jacket -or, after cocktail hour, as so filled with effusive love for humanity that just how many times "mate" can be included in a one-way conversation becomes next day's topical question. 

I needn't have worried.  Within twenty minutes of my hesitant call, Andy was on the line, bubbling with joie de vivre.

The seafront hotel he named as the venue for our reunion was the sort of place I'd read about in brochures more often than visited, and I made a mental note to get in some practice with the ironing board before we agreed four o'clock next day in the foyer as the necessary precursor to "catching up on the Brighton bird scene," as Andy put it.

While he was enlarging on this remark, and professing to a new respect for the natural world that he was keen to explore with me, I thought for a moment I detected a hint of faintly mocking female laughter somewhere in the background, from beyond the confident tones with which he cheerily ended our chat.

But, I told myself, I'd probably imagined it.  With a cleaning lady like mine, it sometimes seems pretty well anything is possible.

(to be continued...)