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Great Writing - Home > Extended > The Case of the Missing Husband ch2
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Extended Work
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| The Case of the Missing Husband ch2 | |
| By Snodlander | ||||
| 13 April 2007 | ||||
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The first thing I did was upload the pre-pay into my pocketbook. You’ve got to prioritise things in life, and cash was always a priority. Then I closed the game of solitaire and uploaded the stick she had given me. She had done a good job. There were a couple of photos of him, his personal details and suchlike. But also a list of businesses he was involved in, the clubs he belonged to, his last ‘hobby’, his last known whereabouts. I wondered if she had compiled all this herself, or whether some discrete lawyer had drawn it up. I dropped her contact details into my phone. No landline number, I noted. Just her cell. Then I started to work. The details she had given me were a start, but I needed to know about what made him tick. Google is a PI’s friend. Mr Anthony Debray (said the web sites) was 42 years old, at least ten years his wife’s senior, by the look of her. His family had had old money. Old money, it seemed, was worth so much more than new money. The Debrays had made their money back when the country was young, and had continued to make it up until Anthony’s old man. Back in the twenties Old Man Debray had fallen foul of the LGMs. Well, so had a lot of people. Any cult that says that God is an alien and wants us all to treat animals like humans is going to have a limited appeal, but when we got that transmission from the alien spaceship an awful lot of people joined the LGMs. Old Man Debray included. The difference being, he had a fortune to sink into their coffers. Even now, when it had been proven a hoax transmission bounced off of Mars, there were still people who believed. Who thought that the whole thing was a government cover-up. My experience of government was that they couldn’t cover up a hole in a window, but each to his own. So Debray’s current money came from his wife, Dorothy Debray, nee Sanchez. Guess that must have hurt. Old family, no money, having to be rescued by some nouveau riche immigrant with pretensions to be a socialite. Maybe that was why he had a hobby when his wife looked so hot. Hot, you understand, being my professional observation. I turned to the material she had given me. Debray, according to his wife, had been at home last Monday night. She had gone to bed about 11. She left him watching a movie. Tuesday morning 8 a.m. he was missing. His bed had not been slept in (hmm. Separate beds. Another reason for his hobbies?). The in-house security had been switched off at 11:22. My guess was that either his security was compromised and he was kidnapped, or that he had wanted to slip out unobserved. I’m licensed, strictly legit. I don’t take on cases that will risk me losing my licence, or that might leave me with a view of the bottom of the river. But I’m no saint, either. Sometimes in this business you have to do things that in some eyes might be considered just the wrong side of legal. I needed to know what had happened that evening. A year ago there had been this guy. Some computer genius. Claimed an ex-partner had ripped him off over something he had written. I had managed to ‘acquire’ a copy of the software, and boy wonder had shown the courts that the software had been written by him. The problem was, boy wonder had no money. He offered me a share of his profits he was going to make that year. Yeah, right! I had held out, and eventually he had paid in kind, a useful little piece of code I could use. He was well on his way to being a millionaire now, and I had settled for a piece of code he had probably tapped out in an hour or two. But then, if I was a financial genius, I wouldn’t be in this job. He had tried to explain how it worked, like I was remotely interested. But what it did was, it hid in the root drive of a server, then woke up when you wanted it to. I had sort of known a girl in Homeland who worked with the CCTVs. A couple of dates and a mickey had given me access to the terminal in her apartment. OK, I’m not proud of that, but no-one was hurt. It had proven useful a couple of times since. I bounced a call through an anonymous proxy in Hong Kong, just in case my little friend had been discovered, and opened up the Homeland TV site. The code still seemed to be undetected and working. The Debrays lived in Oakhills, a district you had to have a million just to drive through. There was a camera in the road they lived in. I punched in the date and time and zipped through the footage. 11:27 and a taxi pulled up outside the house. A man jumped in. Looked like kidnapping was out. As the taxi pulled away I could make out the company: Azee Taxis. I tracked it through various cameras through the Westside, but then lost it somewhere near Beeches. I had half an eye on the time. If I spent too long on-line some eagle-eyed tech might spot my presence. Damn. I broke the connection. Looked like I’d have to use my charm. I dialled Azee. A man answered. My charm offensive started to look a little shaky. “Hi. I hired a taxi last Monday night, and I think I left an envelope in the back. Could you check for me?” “Nothing handed in,” was the eloquent reply. “Listen, this envelope is really important. Could I check with the driver?” “Got twenty drivers. Which one” “He picked me up from Oakhills about 11:30 Monday night.” “Got his name?” “The driver? No, sorry.” “Don’t know, then.” “Listen, my name is Mr Debray, of Debray Industries. We use an awful lot of taxis. I’d be really grateful if you could just look up the call. I mean, my company would be grateful, if you know what I mean.” “Never heard of you.” And the phone went dead. I wondered whether I should send Doris to the same telephone technique course Mr Talkative had been on. I tried Debray’s cell phone from the information his wife had given me. The call went straight to voice mail. I left a message for him to call me, just in case. Maybe he was just hiding from the missus. It wouldn’t be the first time a man got tired of his wife’s voice. I ran out of things to do sitting on my butt. There was nothing else for it. I’d have to try and talk to Mr Talkative face to face. Me, Mr Talkative and a dead president or two. But I’d do that later, when the night shift drivers were coming on. Instead I’d try some of the haunts Mrs Debray had given me. I grabbed my coat and left.
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