Quid Pro Quo

Chapter Six

Three days later, I had received several calls from Walker Pelc; he was demanding the money I owed him for the work on the Edge case, and threatening a slow and bloody death if I did not cough-up.

It was a standard technique for Walker and, after he had vented his spleen on the phone many times, he would add the cost to the notional tab that we had running between us. In practice, I did favours for him; chasing down leads for his cases or giving him some juicy gossip to titillate his prodigious darker side, all of which carried a charge. We tended to threaten each other periodically, but settle for the understanding that in the long run we were probably quits.

I had a very impressive forehead; I looked as if some mad surgeon had sewn a large purple egg under the skin. A vicious raised welt ran across the swelling like a fattened earth worm. The lump had a life of its own; it throbbed and pulsed with all the menace of the eerie meteorite at the bottom of a B movie crater. Bizarrely, my injury had also got me an abnormally large amount of attention from Priya.

Seeing me laid low seemed to have awoken a maternal instinct buried so deeply within her that it had been previously so well hidden as to belie its very existence. She had cooed and fussed over me a little, even bringing me a bag of frozen peas which provided me an interesting dilemma. On one hand I had not wanted to shun her assistance, despite the fact that I suspected them to be the same vegetables that I had held to my face some days before. On the other hand, the excruciating agony I underwent when frozen vegetable met forehead bump felt like someone pushing rusty nails into my eyes. I manfully took the pain for about five minutes until I thought I might repeat the infamous scene from Scanners, and then surreptitiously moved the bag out of sight.

Meanwhile, life in the office had gone from bad to worse.

Joan steadfastly refused to believe that I had, in fact, found Tyrone Edge and would not release another file to me. Specifically, it seemed that the Yeoman twins had got to her with a diktat stating that pending the firm's Annual General Meeting, no new cases would be distributed.

I sat and stewed in my cubbyhole, drinking a lot of water and completing precisely four crossword clues. I found an old, framed picture of my sister Mary and busied myself with hanging it. She had been a beautiful woman, with my mother's soft eyes and wavy hair, but no matter how much I looked at the photo I couldn't shake the image of her lying in the mortuary. Her eyes in the picture gazed at me now, full of sadness at the cock-up I was rapidly making of my father's business, and the backwater my life had drifted into.

It was a little past noon when I first heard it. From out in the lobby came a noise that I had never encountered before; a horrifying rattling, whooping neigh. I peered around my door to see the unbelievable sight of Joan laughing. It wasn't a lilting tinkle of a laugh, more like the sound of offal gurgling down the slaughterhouse drain.

Strangely, despite the hideous noise she was emitting, Joan was entirely transformed. The act of smiling took thirty years off her and I saw in her a little of the woman that my father must have done. Standing loosely and completely at ease in front of her desk was a tall, clean-shaven and beaming Tyrone Edge.

"Ah, Satchmo!" she cried, tears running from the corners of her eyes. "Mr. Edge was just telling me about his heroic rescuing of you."

"Really? How charming," I grumbled.

I was pleased to be vindicated by the appearance of Edge, but a little ill- at-ease at the manner of his arrival. "Perhaps you'd like to come through to my office?" I muttered grumpily.

"Of course," he replied, flashing Joan a smile and striding through the door to my sanctuary.

To his credit he didn't so much as blink at the state of the shit hole. I obviously hadn't used my enforced free time to tidy anything. In fact, I had added to the mess with recent copies of the Guardian, Independent, Times, Economist and Private Eye, articles from all of which I had clipped and strewn around the few available flat surfaces.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Edge?" I swept a pile of papers off the chair opposite my desk, manfully ignored the clatter they made upon hitting the floor, and motioned for him to sit, which he did, stretching his legs out artfully between bottles and folders.

"I would like to know who the executors of my uncle's will are. Then I would like you to take me to them."

"Me?" I was staring at a spot below each of his armpits, looking for the bulge of a gun.

I had not forgotten the circumstances of our initial meeting, nor his erratic behaviour during that traumatic experience. I was not keen on spending any more time with this guy than I actually had to. As I saw it, I had satisfied the needs of the job Reeman and Reeman had retained me for, and that was that. I wanted to put the whole evening as far behind me as possible.

"Yes, you, Sherlock. You tracked me down, broke the news and solved your case. I think you can give me a lift to the solicitors. You might even get a bonus for delivering me alive," he grinned.

I couldn't detect any sarcasm, but I suppose that didn't mean it wasn't there.

"The executors are Reeman and Reeman," I replied.

"Excellent. Get your coat," Edge said, his smile broadening and the lines on his tanned face deepening as he made to rise and leave. At that moment Joan entered, without knocking, and placed a cup of tea in front of him.

My jaw dropped. Never, not ever, had Joan offered, let alone made me a drink. She smiled at Edge as he raised the brew to his lips. It was all very disconcerting.

"Joan, we were just leaving," I said, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

"Oh, there's always time for a nice cuppa," Edge said. She made a noise I can only assume denoted pleasure and left without saying a word to me. He peered at me over the rim of the cup, his eyes alight with mirth.

"How long have you worked here Satchmo? I'm guessing that you aren't the original and eponymous Turner in this firm."