The Runaway Maid Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by E.G. Rodford

  Title Page

  Copyright

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  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  ALSO BY E.G. RODFORD AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

  The Bursar’s Wife

  The Surgeon’s Case

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785650055

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785650062

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: March 2017

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  © 2017 E.G. Rodford

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  Many thanks to Schona and Angus for their professional knowledge

  1

  JUST FIVE PEOPLE ATTENDED MY FATHER’S CREMATION. Other than myself and the young woman from the care home where he’d spent the last eighteen months of his life, two of them had never met Dad, and one he’d met at a barbecue. One of those who’d never met him gave the service; a brief put-the-deceased’s-name-here patter that meant nothing to me and would have meant even less to my father. I saw the event as a necessary formality, and declined the offer of watching his coffin (the cheapest I could get away with without appearing cheap) being conveyed luggage-like into the furnace for his cremation. Instead I got a lift back with Linda, who’d driven me to the crematorium in an egg-shaped VW Beetle. She was the other person there who’d never met my father.

  I hesitate to call Linda my girlfriend, not least because it’s not a word I can use at my age without embarrassment, but as she seemed willing to get together every now and then for a takeaway, a film, and sex (not always all three or always in that order), I liked to think of her as such. Linda was the crime reporter for the Cambridge Argus and she’d driven me to the funeral because my ageing VW Golf was nearing the end of its natural life and being kept alive under protest, the mechanics saying the humane thing would be to have it put down. But then I’d have to give up a nice boxy car for something that had no angles and was fuel-efficient and aerodynamic, not to mention safer. Everything had to be curved nowadays except women, who’d been brainwashed into thinking that looking undernourished was better than looking like a woman. Maybe it was odd that this sort of crap went through my mind coming back from my own father’s funeral but I’ll leave any interpretation to the analysts who live for that nonsense. Linda, who happily erred on the side of curves, was in a rush to get back to Cambridge due to the text she’d received (and unashamedly read) in the middle of the eulogy. Perhaps it should have annoyed me more than it had, but I’d said goodbye to my father a while ago; the person now being cremated had, due to Pick’s disease, ceased to be the person I’d known. So there was to be no wake, no speeches, no reminiscing from old pals. What friends he’d had were all dead, and living in a care home with a degenerative disease alongside other people in a similar position had limited his ability to make new ones.

  Linda was excited; I could tell from our speed and the breathy nature of her voice, which only manifested when the promise of an ugly crime reared its juicy head. My considerable efforts at getting a similar response in bed had yet to yield results.

  “A fisherman has found a body near Grantchester. A girl,” she was saying. She overtook a lorry on the A14 dangerously close to the Cambridge turn-off, the result being that as she swerved in front of it to get over to the exit I was flung towards her and had to grab the handle above the window with both hands. Some stitching gave way in the left armpit of my suit, which I had last worn at my mother’s funeral and had since expanded into. The lorry driver leant on his horn and I started sweating despite the air-conditioning. Linda compensated for her speed with some powerful braking as we came off the A14, demonstrating the advantages of a modern car as it came to a halt at the roundabout. She grinned and patted my knee as she waited for traffic to pass.

  Dropping me kerbside outside my office on Lensfield Road, she accelerated off in pursuit of her story. I shared offices in a converted Victorian building with various other sole traders who came and went, and currently included a relationship counsellor, a nutritionist, a life coach and a reflexologist. We shared a waiting room, which made for an interesting mix of people sitting in it at any one time. My clients tended to be the nervous types sitting on their own who didn’t really want to be there.

  My third-floor office was empty, as Sandra, my part-time assistant, was making her own way back from the funeral, hopefully at a safer speed than I had. Usually I’m quite happy to have the place to myself, so my disappointment took me by surprise. Sandra was quietly efficient, but she was no shrinking violet, and you always knew when she was around.

  I sat at my desk and, before I knew it, a lump constricted my throat and salt stung my eyes. The phone rang and I stemmed the tears with the sleeve of my suit before picking up.

  “Cambridge Confidential Services,” I said, my voice all over the place.

  “Can I speak to George Kocharyan?” An older, refined, white male voice.

  “One moment,” I croaked. I covered the mouthpiece and cleared my throat. “This is he,” I said, hoping I sounded like someone other than the person who had answered the phone.

  “My name is Bill Galbraith.” He paused as if waiting for me to congratulate him. “You were recommended by Pimlico Investigations in London.” I sat up. Pimlico sometimes referred jobs my way when they couldn’t be bothered to send someone up to Cambridge to deal with them, and I was keen to foster the relationship.

  “How can I help you, Mr Galbraith?” I asked, in my best customer service voice.

  “We have a problem with an, erm, employee of ours.” He stopped, unsure how to continue. It was very quiet at his end, no traffic, no ambient noise,
nothing.

  “Who is ‘we’, Mr Galbraith?”

  “My wife and I. We have a domestic, a live-in woman, a Filipino. She’s disappeared with some, erm, valuables.”

  “OK. How long has she been gone?”

  “A couple of days. We don’t want to call the police; she’s been with us a long time. You understand?”

  “Sure, you don’t want to involve them. It’s probably best if we meet.”

  “Yes, yes of course. As soon as possible. Can you meet this evening?”

  “That’s fine. Are you based in Cambridge?”

  “In one of the outlying villages.” Cagey. Not a trait I relish in a potential client. “But I rather thought we could meet in town. I’m going to be in the city anyway.”

  “Will your wife be there?”

  “Erm, no. Does she need to be?”

  “It would be best if I spoke to both of you together.”

  “Shall we meet first and take it from there? To be perfectly frank I haven’t decided to hire you yet.”

  “Fair enough. Do you have somewhere in mind?”

  “You know the big hotel on Downing Street?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Five-thirty, in the lobby?”

  I hung up before I realised that we hadn’t agreed on how we would recognise each other.

  Sandra appeared in the door, still dressed in her funeral outfit, the same outfit she’d worn when I’d interviewed her for the job several years ago. She looked a little sweaty from climbing the stairs and although the suit hung a little looser on her now than it had at her interview she was nevertheless still large. She calls herself fat.

  “Bloody hot for June,” Sandra said, appraising me. Could she tell I’d been crying? “Your car’s not outside. I thought Linda was going to drop you off at the garage?”

  “She was in a hurry. Something about a dead kid.” Sandra moved to her desk and sat down with a relieved sigh.

  “I didn’t get a chance to speak to you at the crem.” She removed her shoes and rubbed her feet. “Was that her phone that went off?”

  I nodded, assessing the rip in the armpit of my suit; I’d have to go home and change before meeting this Bill Galbraith. Sandra didn’t like Linda, nor, it seemed, any other woman I tried to wrestle with, and she did little to hide it. Before she could expound on Linda’s failings I told her I had a potential new client.

  “Something meaty, I hope.”

  “Potentially. Someone who can afford a live-in maid, so there’s money.”

  “Anything I can do?” I wrote down Bill Galbraith’s name and asked her to check him out and call me before five with whatever she found. She looked at the name and frowned.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Seems familiar, that’s all.” She switched on her computer.

  “I think I’m going to head out,” I said. “I need to change my jacket.” I lifted my arm to show her the rip.

  She smiled, a smile like a ray of sunshine on an overcast day. “Shall I order you a taxi?”

  “It’s a nice evening, I could do with the walk.” I paused because she looked like she was gearing up to say something.

  “Will you be OK, George?” adding, “Tonight, I mean.”

  “I’ll be fine. Besides, I’ve got the meeting with Galbraith.”

  She looked unconvinced.

  “I’ll be fine, honestly. Now do some research.” I could have told her that Linda would be round later to provide some sort of solace but I had a feeling this wouldn’t reassure her. I stopped at the door. “And, Sandra…” She looked up. “Thanks for coming to the funeral.”

  She shooed me out.

  2

  AFTER A NAP, A SHOWER AND A PHONE CONVERSATION WITH Sandra while I dressed in a blue linen suit that Linda had insisted I buy, I felt ready to meet Bill Galbraith. Since I didn’t have my car I inspected my dad’s bike but it turned out to be a rusty old steel thing in need of maintenance, and besides, I didn’t want to arrive hot and sweaty to meet a potential client, never mind ruin the suit. I decided to walk, which gave me enough time to mull over the information Sandra had rather excitedly imparted over the phone about Galbraith. A world-famous surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, he was probably more well known for hosting a medical programme on TV, following patients through from diagnosis to surgery. She couldn’t believe I didn’t know of him but the only TV I watch is golf and Formula One racing, both of which send me to sleep, which is precisely why I watch them. At fifty-four, Galbraith was apparently a bit of a sex symbol for the kind of women who liked to present themselves as discerning when it came to crushes on men, at least the ones they could admit publicly. This included Sandra, judging by the way she went on about him. Before I left I had a quick look at his picture online so I could recognise him at the hotel, and I grudgingly accepted that some women might go for that sort of thing. Galbraith had probably expected me to know who he was when he rang.

  I arrived at the hotel with fifteen minutes to spare. A large soulless building with a huge fake portico, complete with pillars which I passed through. I found a seat facing the doors. I’d sat in this lobby a few times, waiting for unfaithful spouses to appear from the elevators. Despite the steady income stream, I was weary of that sort of case, coming to believe over the years that monogamy was an unnatural state where people were trying to force a square peg into a round hole, so to speak. Why else was an army of counsellors and lawyers (not to mention people like me) needed to deal with the aftermath? Perhaps my outlook was jaded because it’s all I saw, which is why I was keen to drop the marital stuff. More recently, with Sandra’s help and insistence, we’d found a new income stream doing background checks on potential employees for Cambridge-based companies. This was for senior positions where personal peccadilloes were seen to be a liability. Sandra had her own reasons for trying to generate more work. Since I could only afford to hire her part-time, and she was a single mother with two kids, she’d been working for a sex chat line from home to supplement the salary I paid her. But that was drying up with the free availability of porn on the Internet and she was left with half a dozen regulars who just wanted to talk about how their week had gone because they had no one else. So she’d left the sex-chat company and moved these guys over to a mobile phone she’d got specially for the purpose. I wasn’t sure how she was monetising her listening skills; it wasn’t something I asked her about.

  I recognised Galbraith as soon as he entered, as he must have known I would. He was carrying an envelope and wearing a casual shirt, pressed jeans and deck shoes with no socks. He could carry that sort of thing off; I couldn’t. He stood in the lobby self-consciously and ran a hand through his greying blond hair, which was swept back and lay in soft waves on his head. I got up and introduced myself. He stuck out his hand, fixed me with his grey-blue eyes and gave me a white-toothed grimace to indicate this was business, not pleasure. His hand was cool and his grip firmer than expected – I thought surgeons might be more circumspect when it came to their hands.

  “I’ve got thirty minutes,” he said. We went upstairs into the bar and he ordered coffee. “I’m in surgery this evening,” he said, explaining his choice. I joined him in a coffee; it’s always best to mirror the client in this regard. I didn’t put up any resistance to him paying and we found a table. In order to look professional I took out a notebook and pen and crossed my legs. He looked at an oversized sports watch and got straight down to business.

  “So do you think you can find Aurora?”

  “Aurora being your domestic?”

  He nodded and put the envelope on the table. “Aurora de la Cruz. She’s Filipino. Her details are in there.” I left the envelope where it was.

  “If you want me to take on the case I’m going to need a little more information.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for starters, did she go out at all? Did she have friends in Cambridge?”

  “Only to the village shop – most of our groceries are
delivered. And no, she had no friends here.”

  “Did she have a computer, or access to one? Sometimes a browsing history can reveal a person’s intentions.”

  “No, she didn’t have a computer. She used ours once a month, to Skype her family in Manila.”

  “If you’ve come to me you must think she’s still in Cambridge.”

  “Her English isn’t brilliant, she doesn’t have any money on her, or credit cards. She can’t have gone far. When I talked to Pimlico Investigations they thought it was most likely she was still here.”

  “No bank account?”

  “Yes, we paid her salary into it, but it’s not a UK account. All her salary went to her family in the Philippines. We gave her cash for anything she might need, and she used a prepaid card for household shopping.”

  “Did she take her passport?”

  He glanced at the envelope. “Erm… no, she didn’t, so she’s not planning to go far.”

  “What about the valuables you said she’d taken?”

  For the first time I saw a flicker in his expression.

  “It’s nothing of any monetary value.”

  I waited expectantly.

  He gathered himself and sat forward. He was used to having control of any situation and this was no exception.

  “May I call you George?” I nodded. He clasped his hands and studied the bland carpet as if gathering his thoughts. I wondered if it was a move he’d affected for TV. I looked around the room at the businesspeople, mainly men, filling the bar after a day at workshops or conferences or whatever else they did to make working life seem bearable and give it the meaning it lacked by calling it a career.

  He looked up at me, ready for his scene. “The thing is, George, Aurora’s taken my briefcase.”

  “I see. And what was in it?”

  “It’s a little embarrassing.”

  “Rest assured, I’ve heard it all before.”

  He grimaced, not seeming to take comfort in this. “The briefcase contains patients’ notes – their medical records. It’s a bit of a problem surgeons have. We’re notorious for taking notes home with us to look at, because there isn’t enough time in the day at work. It causes problems at the hospital when staff need to see them.”