Hard Fall: A gripping, noir detective thriller (Thomas Blume series of Hard-Boiled Mysteries, Book 1) (5 page)

The meandering, tight knit London streets made it hard to see much in terms of oncoming traffic but I was confident in my location.
It had been a long time since I had been on a true stake-out, and it felt good to be back. 

I sat there for almost an hour and a half before the woman’s car arrived. I’d had a hunch that it she would show up again. She’d come two nights in a row…so why not a third?

Her car passed mine and crept towards my apartment. She pulled to the curb 20 yards ahead of me and stepped out. The interior light of her car came on when she opened her door, and I saw a couple things in the dim illumination. She looked to be in her mid-to-late fifties. She was wearing a luxurious coat that looked like it might be worth more than my car. She had pretty blonde hair cut in a simple fashion. I didn’t see much of her face, just the taught line of her lips drawn down into something that wasn’t quite a frown.

She stepped up onto the sidewalk, headed for the alley that led to my apartment. When she disappeared out of sight around the corner, I placed my hand on the door handle, ready to open it if she remained out of sight for more than thirty seconds.

But she was back within ten seconds, apparently having changed her mind. I wondered why it had been so easy for her to come to my door and knock two nights ago but now found it harder. There were far too many questions, and I knew from experience that it would only frustrate me to try to figure them out on my own. So I didn’t bother.

Instead I watched her walk back to her car, get inside, and sit for a moment. Her shoulders sagged and her head was bowed. After a while, she started her engine and pulled away. I let her get a good distance ahead before I rolled out behind her. I kept a safe distance and followed her car, watching the taillights flickering in the steady to-and-fro of my wiper blades.

Christ, is it ever dry here?

It had been a while since I had tailed anyone, but I felt the old familiar rhythm kick in easily. I let a few cars weave in and out between us as I followed her north. She drove for twenty minutes before she turned into a suburb filled with houses that all looked identical to one another.

I followed cautiously as she neared a cul-de-sac and turned into a driveway. I passed her as a garage opened and she parked inside. I came to the end of the road, keeping my eyes on her in the rearview. I turned the car and wound back through the street. I maintained a comfortable speed, not wanting to draw her attention.

As I passed her house, I was able to see her again, but only from the same side as before. I was pretty sure I had never seen this woman before.

So then what the hell does she want with me?

It was a good question, but I wasn’t going to press it tonight. If she was somehow afraid to speak to me, I certainly didn’t want to go up to her door and ring the bell. I passed her house, taking note of the numbers on her mailbox and the name of the street. As I did, my mind began to form the most basic semblance of a plan.

Halfway back to my apartment I decided that some mental lubrication might help stitch a plan together.

***

I managed to stay mostly responsible…meaning that there was no hangover the following morning, or maybe there was already so much poison in my body that I couldn’t notice anymore. I
was
tired though. I wasted very little time, sipping coffee and eating a fried egg as I typed the address from last night into a database that I frequently used but was not supposed to have access to. The software was similar to a Police database but offered forensic investigators,
or individuals with enough cash
access to a frightening array of information data mined from online purchases, credit card transactions, and government records.

I discovered quickly that the house belonged to a woman named Elizabeth Ellington. The name rang no bells, and as I replayed the events of the last two nights, a startling thought occurred to me: Anthony Taylor’s suicide now seemed like something that had happened in a faraway place.

It’s because I’m getting active again,
I thought.
Re-opening my family’s case and trying to solve my own little mystery. I feel…almost like a cop again.

It was a good feeling. I clung to it as tightly as I could. It was all I had.

It was still there when I took a shower and even more powerful when I headed down to Amir’s restaurant an hour later to catch him half an hour before he opened.

He poured us coffee which we drank at his ritzy little bar while his staff readied the place for the early lunch crowd.

Again, Amir didn’t waste his time asking me if I had been drinking over the last few days. I assumed he saw a still-developing change in me. We shared some small talk — about the damned rain and how the police had not returned to ask me more questions about Anthony — before I got around to the real reason I had come by.

“So, I get that this is a large town,” I said. “Very large. But I also know that you run a very successful business and are one of the friendliest men I have ever known.”

“Why are you buttering me up?” Amir asked with a raised eyebrow. His black bushy hair and dark brows giving him a fierce appearance belying his amiable nature.

“No butter. Just pretext,” I said.

“For what?”

“I was wondering if you might happen to know a woman named Elizabeth Ellington.”

Amir gave me a skeptical look. “It just so happens that I do. At least on paper. Several papers in fact, she’s quite well known in local circles. Why do you ask?”

“Can you keep it confidential?” I asked.

“Yeah…as long as you haven’t done anything you shouldn’t.”

“No. Nothing like that.” I mumbled, wondering what kind of man he took me for. I then proceeded to tell him about the events of the last three nights. As I came to the end of it — following her to her home and getting the address — he seemed puzzled.

“What?” I asked, noticing his look.

“Elizabeth Ellington is sort of a legend around here. She’s a recluse…a shut-in. The only time people see her around is late at night, when she goes grocery shopping at those twenty-four hour shops. She’s been that way for…I don’t know…probably the last ten years.”

“Why is she like that?” I asked. “Anti-social?”

“Her husband died of cancer…don’t remember what kind. And about two months later, her kid went missing. She just sort of shut down, I guess. She and her husband were borderline rich, so it made headlines in the local newspapers. Tragic stuff.”

“So why the hell would she want to speak to me?” I asked.

Amir shrugged. “She must have heard about the cop from New York that was in town. Just about everyone here in London with a badge looked into her kid’s disappearance and got nowhere.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Look, I’ve got to get to work. Keep me posted on this will, you?”

“Sure,” I said.

I finished my coffee and headed out to pick up some supplies I would need, now more fired up than ever that things seemed to be getting back on track for me. For once, I didn’t even mind the endless rain that had picked up to a steady downpour. Something was going on here and I was going to find out what.

SIX

Wasted heroics.

I did something that afternoon that I had never done as a cop: I spent time researching a case that I hadn’t been given. After a stint at the store I headed back to my apartment, put on a pot of coffee and spent that day researching the disappearance of Jack Ellington, Elizabeth’s son. I was typing, printing, and pinning and getting work done.

I set up a crudely fashioned crime board from the supplies I had purchased. Printouts, notes and newspaper clippings all surrounded a timeline of Jack Ellington’s disappearance. At one end I added an image of the boy himself. Barbs of grief touched me when I saw how alike Jack had been to my own son.

The other end of the whiteboard was centered around possible suspects and the ‘Unsub’. The unknown subject behind his vanishing. It was possible Jack had vanished of his own accord, but my years of experience and gut feeling told me otherwise.

The office seemed like an entirely different place as it was filled with productivity. Like the activity burned away the smoke and the memories.

All boiled down, the case was fairly simple. There were small scattered stories here and there of how a ten-year-old Jack Ellington never quite got along with his mother after his father died. Elizabeth had become very protective of Jack after losing her husband, going so far as to walk him to school. Jack was teased by his friends about this, as indicated by a few articles I read.

At some point, Elizabeth backed off and let Jack live his life like a normal ten-year-old. He walked to school with his friends, had playdates, and participated in sports. It was around this time that he went missing. According to reports, he had been walking home from soccer practice. When he was an hour late, Elizabeth had called the cops. The next morning, he was still not home, and a manhunt was launched.

The hunt never turned up anything. Not a single shred of evidence. Ultimately the case had been signed off as an unsolved disappearance.

After six hours, I had a nice stack of paper on my desk. I read back through them as the day faded out, bringing in the night. A light spattering of rain still fell, rhythmically pelting my windows. I threw together a hasty dinner of a ham and cheese sandwich, cracked open a beer, and pulled my office chair over to my window.

As I the night drew on, my mind kept returning to what Amir had told me. How solving my family’s murder wouldn’t bring them back. About how it was a waste of my talents to seek vengeance when there were people out there that needed my help. Maybe Elizabeth Ellington was one of those people. I couldn’t bring Tommy back, but if there was even the slightest chance that I could help this mother find out what happened to her son… Well, that might not be so bad.

And besides, I needed the work. If I kept spending everyday reading Sarah and Tommy’s case files over and over again, I would run out of money. If the cops didn’t deport me first, that was.

So, I kept looking out for headlights and slowly approaching cars, waiting for my nervous visitor to return. But Elizabeth didn’t show up that night. If she did, it was sometime after two in the morning, at which point I fell asleep in my chair with reports of her son’s disappearance scattered in my lap.

***

The little computer program I had pilfered was doing no good for a case that was almost 10 years old, so the following day I took a trip to the library. The grand old structure near St James’s Square was an imposing stone edifice now tinged by centuries of diesel smoke and fumes. It took nearly an hour to arrive but it felt good to be moving again, to be actively working towards something other than cheating spouses. But in the back of my mind, reality was whispering sweet nothings.

The case isn’t even yours. You’re putting all of this time and effort into it for free.

Maybe that was true, but as I sifted through all of the files and public records on the events, I didn’t care. Not once had I felt such a sense of purpose since arriving in London as a haggard and beaten man.

I managed to uncover a bit more in the public records than the internet had offered the day before. I scraped together a full timeline of the last known day of Jack Ellington’s life, from when he was seen walking on the way to school by a neighbor to the last of his friends indicating that he had seen Jack on the street, headed home, shortly after 6.00 in the evening.

With that ironed out, I also put together a list of names that, to me, seemed to be suspects. Many of them were already logged as having been questioned by police, but I wasn’t willing to rule anything out. Last on my list was the name of the officer in charge of the investigation. I didn’t think he was a suspect per se, but definitely someone that would be a great source of information.