Reckoning in Ice by JRL Anderson

Author:JRL Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

Make – Jaguar

Colour – Black

I felt like getting out my own car and driving down to Coleford straightaway but I forced myself to think more coldly. If X at least were keeping a sharp eye on me, the fewer my absences from the office, the better. It was a Friday – Coleford was a longish way, and I should need a whole day to get there and back and to make such inquiries as I could while there. A whole day out of the office would need a bit of arranging. I could go at the weekend but pubs at weekends are liable to be crowded. I wanted to try to find a quiet pub, with – if my luck held – a landlord who had been there for some years and who knew something about the citizens. Pubs tend to be quietest early in the week, so I decided to try to find an excuse for going off on Monday. On my way to the office I looked in at the club and found the Coleford telephone directory. Jenkins, Rhys, was duly listed as living at Clydach Ho, Coleford.

In the office I went to see Morgan-Jones. He was as affable as always. ‘I’m sorry to bother you on a personal matter,’ I said, ‘but I’ve had some rather disturbing news. I haven’t got many relations, but I do have an elderly aunt who lives at Cheltenham – she’s not really an aunt, she’s a distant cousin of my mother’s, but I always called her aunt. She’s close on eighty, and half-blind. The solicitor who looks after her affairs telephoned me last night. I know him quite well – we’re old personal friends. Apparently he’s been making a check of her investments, and some securities are unaccountably missing. There’s a hint of peculation by one of his clerks, who goes to see the old lady when there are papers for her to sign – you know, income tax forms and the like. Anyway, the solicitor has asked if I could go down on Monday to discuss what, if anything, we can do about it. Would you mind if I didn’t come in on Monday?’

‘Of course not, Dick,’ he said. ‘You’re getting on jolly well – those graphs you sent me last week were just what we need. One day more or less won’t matter.’

‘Well, thank you very much,’ I said.

*

Friday night was a Paula telephone night. She was waiting when I called the box at Shinness – she almost always was. I told her that her Mr Underwood was apparently a Mr Jenkins and that his car was a black Jaguar. I could almost feel her excitement on the line. ‘Oh, Richard,’ she said, ‘be careful. But it looks at last as if we’re really getting somewhere.’

‘Somewhere, perhaps – but where I just don’t know. There are lots of perfectly innocent black Jaguars. And Mr Jenkins may be engaged on no more than a sordid little adultery. But he’s got to be looked into somehow.

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