Backlash

by Marnie Riches

Genres: Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

The darkest secrets are the hardest to uncover...

When Private Investigator Beverley Saunders is tasked with going undercover, she relishes the chance to disguise herself as a cleaner in order to get close to Anthony, renowned drug lord of Manchester. Anthony's neighbours are sick of his behaviour, and Bev's just the woman they need to find out what's going on behind closed doors.

As Bev begins to infiltrate Anthony's world, she soon realises she's in danger — and this time, she might be too far in to get out. Alongside her sidekick Doc, Bev must fight to discover the truth — but when people begin to die, she has to ask herself — is exposing Anthony worth risking her own life?

Marnie Riches is back with a gritty, gripping thriller, perfect for fans of Martina Cole and Kimberley Chambers.

Release date: January 9, 2020

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 368

Sample

It had been easy to escape while Terry wasn’t watching. The bullying chump was too greedy to pay anyone to guard them all overnight. Just as it had been up north, under the watchful eye of the bossman bastard himself and his brute of a brother, the second-tier foreman depended on fear and withholding their IDs to make them stay put. It certainly worked on the Bulgarians. And if they were terrified of a paid lackey like Terry, who wasn’t even on site, those spineless bulangius wouldn’t dare challenge two Romanian real men like Mihal and Bogdan – especially when they were loaded with Spice. With drug-fuelled super-strength, Bogdan loosened a thick sheet of ply to let Mihal through the building-site fencing. They were out.

A short walk took them into the heart of Holland Park, where the elegance of one of London’s most expensive neighbourhoods was tastefully spotlit in the early evening darkness and patrolled around the clock by infra-red, hi-res CCTV.

Mihal peered up at the three and four storey Victorian villas that surrounded them on either side of the tree-lined boulevard.

‘This is a waste of time,’ he said, eyeing the alarm boxes and CCTV orbs that festooned the eaves of every single house. He swayed like a whippy sapling in the October wind; made dizzy by the wealth on view and the pink clouds that scudded across black London skies. ‘You might as well try to break into a bank. We’d do better in a crappier area. Let’s head north and see what we find.’

But Bogdan grabbed a fistful of his filthy hoody and dragged him along the street. ‘You’ve got no faith in your older brother.’ He pointed at one of the houses where the paintwork was looking tired, even in the dark. ‘See? No CCTV,’ he said, grinning. ‘And look at the bell-box for the alarm. It’s ancient.’

‘Maybe it’s empty,’ Mihal said, shivering not just with the cold but because of the paranoia that was just nibbling away at the edges of his high. The four-storey house loomed above him. With no lights on or curtains drawn, the windows were like watchful black eyes. Perhaps the house knew his and Bogdan’s intentions. For a moment, even the sharp tangle of the tall holly hedging seemed enchanted, barring their entry with malicious intent. ‘I bet there’s nothing in there worth stealing. Let’s just go back and smoke some more. If Terry finds out we—’

Bogdan pushed him through the gate and into the deep shadows of the front garden. ‘Bet it’s old people,’ he whispered. ‘They’re lazy about security. Think they’re immune to break-ins.’

‘And they never have computers. What’s the point if there’s nothing we can sell in the pub?’

‘There’s bound to be food in the fridge at least. And jewellery, maybe.’

A security light came on, bright enough to make them both squint. That paranoia was taking a tight hold, now. Mihal imagined he could hear a dog barking inside the house. Perhaps the snap of a twig on the other side of the fence was the sound of a nosy neighbour watching their every move. ‘We should have just gone through the bins at the back of Sainsbury’s Local. I’ve got a bad feeling, Bogdan.’

In answer, his brother steered him round the back to some wood-framed French doors that, even in the dark, looked as though rot had taken hold after decades of neglect. He held his hand out, flexing his callused fingers.

‘Give me the crowbar, for God’s sake.’

Reluctantly, Mihal hoisted the tool from the waistband of his jeans. Snatched it from beyond Bogdan’s reach and started to jemmy the patio door himself.

The lock on the rotten door popped with only a little encouragement, swinging open in the breeze. The room was shrouded in blackness. Bogdan pushed him aside, barrelling into the gloom.

‘No dog,’ he said, crashing into something.

Mihal hung back, regretting leaving the predictability of the building site. He felt the cold sweat rolling down his back, soaking into the grimy waistband of jeans that had grown baggy through weight loss. Were the sirens in the distance coming for them? Was the slamming door beyond the tall hedge a neighbour coming to see if there was an intruder?

Suddenly a strobe of light illuminated the room. Mihal jumped, thinking it the owner emerging from the blackness, shining a torch onto Bogdan. But his brother had merely opened the door to a refrigerator, revealing a dated kitchen.

‘Aha!’ Bogdan said, lifting a plate from the bottom shelf of the fridge. ‘Chicken! Smells fresh, too.’ He wrenched off the leg and bit into it hungrily. ‘Come in and shut the damned door, you pussy!’

Salivating, his stomach growling, Mihal followed suit and ripped the second leg off the chicken.

‘Come on!’ Bogdan said, still chewing. ‘Let’s see what’s worth nicking.’

‘No. Let’s just take whatever food we can find and leg it,’ Mihal said, rifling fruitlessly through the vegetable drawer. He spied a block of cheese wrapped in cling film and rammed it into the pocket of his hoody. Belched. ‘I don’t feel right.’

But the creaking of floorboards beyond the kitchen said his older brother was already exploring. A light went on elsewhere, casting a yellow glow onto the faded splendour of the hallway. The sound of crockery smashing was deafening.

‘Jesus Christ, Bogdan!’ Mihal ran through to the living room to find him sweeping everything from an old mahogany sideboard onto the floor. ‘At least shut the curtains, you fool! Anyone can see us.’ He hastened to the window and yanked the dusty velvet curtains together, praying nobody had looked in whilst walking past.

‘Nice candelabra,’ Bogdan said, holding his tarnished silver trophy up to the cobweb-festooned chandelier. ‘Weighs a tonne. I reckon it’s solid.’

‘It’s too big. How the hell are you going to stick that inside your jacket? We need cash or small stuff that’s easy to sell quickly.’

‘The bedroom,’ Bogdan said, hurling the candelabra onto the green draylon sofa. ‘Rich old farts in places like this always have pearls and diamonds knocking about.’

With his heart thundering inside his chest and the blood rushing in his ears, as he climbed the stairs, Mihal could barely hear Bogdan’s wager that there would be a cash-tin in the wardrobe. His hands were so slick with sweat, they slid from the bannister. But Bogdan lurched on into the master bedroom at the front of the house, crashing over to the dressing table, yanking drawers clean out of their housings. The bed was made neatly, covered by an old-fashioned handmade quilt – the kind their mother used to sew in the summer evenings in readiness for the harsh Romanian winters. Old soft furnishings and yellowing wallpaper made Mihal sneeze with gusto as though his body wanted to expel the musty stench of age, damp and neglect.

‘See? Look at the size of these gobstoppers! They’ll be worth a packet, I’m telling you.’ His brother lifted up a necklace, still clinging to a simple silver necklace tree planted on the dressing table – a flash of iridescence under the 100W glare of the centre light. But Bogdan’s movements were Spice-clumsy; the spittle bubbling up at the corners of his mouth in excitement. He grabbed the pearls and tried to yank them free. The thread snapped and Mihal watched as they bounced like cheap children’s beads across the thin carpet, rolling under the bed.

‘Idiot!’

They scrabbled on their hands and knees to retrieve their precious bounty, each blaming the other. But sirens and the squeal of tyres outside interrupted their squabbling.

Mihal darted to the window. Stole a glance through the edge of the net curtain at the street below: two uniforms clambering out of two squad cars. Looking straight up at the window. Could they see him?

‘Shit! It’s the cops!’ He retreated hastily, tripping over Bogdan’s kneeling form. There was that rushing of blood in his ears again, so loud, he could barely hear himself speak. ‘Turn the damn light off!’

With cracking knees, Bogdan rose, his fists full of pearls. He stood on his tiptoes, craning his neck to see the ambush that awaited them below. Plunging the pearls into his pockets, he started to run. ‘Out the back. Before they come round.’

As Mihal followed him onto the landing, feeling he might vomit at any moment, he heard low voices in the kitchen. A man’s and a woman’s. No. Two men and a woman. Saw torchlight probing the darkest corners. The crackle of police radio. They were already inside.

Suddenly, a figure emerged into the hallway, clad in black and hi-viz green. A policewoman. She looked up and locked eyes immediately with Bogdan who stood like a statue on the galleried landing, peering down at her, transfixed.

‘Police! Raise your hands where I can see them!’ Her voice was confident and strong.

In an instant, she was flanked by the two men. They were thundering up the stairs, shouting.

Bogdan yelled something indistinct in their native Romanian, rooted to the spot as though the Spice had turned his feet to concrete. But Mihal was already running towards the staircase that led up; away from the cops.

‘Run, Bogdan!’ he cried.

Finally, his brother seemed to wake from his reverie. He pelted past Mihal on the stairs, almost sending him tumbling back down. The cops were almost upon them, now.

‘Hold it right there!’ the tallest of the policemen yelled. He reached out and grabbed Mihal’s hoodie. ‘It’s over, mate. Put your hands where I can see them. You have the right to remain silent …’

Mihal stumbled and fell chin first onto the next stair up. He tasted the metallic tang of blood immediately as his teeth cut into his bottom lip.

Above him, Bogdan climbed on. Where the hell was he going?

‘Give it up, bro!’ Mihal called after him, straining to see his brother’s ascent into the dark and the unknown. ‘There’s nowhere to go!’

But with the remaining cops only steps behind him, he watched in dismay as Bogdan yanked open the door to the attic. He heard footsteps across bare floorboards. The distinctive rattling sound of a sash window being hoisted open resounded through the house. Warnings, shouted from below by the police.

‘Don’t do anything stupid, Bogdan!’ Mihal yelled, struggling in vain to be free of his captor.

He was answered only by his brother’s guttural scream and the dull thud of a body hitting the patio outside.

‘Keep an eye on the time, will you?’ Bev said, pressing the phone to her ear. She continued to peer through the windscreen at the entrance to the factory. It was a crumbling 1930s brick building with a tired 1970s makeover. She was sick of the sight of it. ‘I’ve got to be out of here for half one. That Jim Higson is coming in at two.’

‘So, set your alarm, man!’ Doc’s voice was muffled. The clack-clacking down the line was undoubtedly the sound of his molars, grinding away at food. She’d clearly caught her business partner mid-sausageroll.

Her own stomach rumbled. ‘You’re tech. So that means you’re my alarm.’

‘Tech, bollocks! You must be the only thirty-year-old I know who doesn’t know how to set—’

‘Call me at 1.30 p.m. on the dot. Right? We might be doing well right now, but we can’t afford to lose new business. And don’t forget, if someone calls, you’re my posh, female receptionist. How do you answer the phone?’

‘Beverley Saunders, Private Dick,’ Doc said in a falsetto. ‘How may I felch?’

‘Say it properly, for God’s sake.’

‘Beverley Saunders Private Investigations. Mandy speaking. How may I help?’

‘Better. Call me at 1.30 p.m. Don’t screw up.’

At the sight of her first target emerging from the heavy glazed doors, she ended the call, flinging the phone onto the passenger seat of her Polo. Her pulse was pounding, her breath coming in short bursts. Bev lifted her camera to take photos of the man she had been observing for weeks. Dave Caruthers. Balding with a comb-over. Shiny trousers, pulled up over his gut. He seemed a picture of innocence but the camera didn’t lie.

She zoomed in with the long-range lens, making sure she got a clean shot of the fat shopping bag he was carrying. It had been quite obviously empty when he’d gone in at 8.00 a.m. Now, it bulged. The boss said the company had been making a steady loss for a year. Could the contents of that bag provide damning evidence as to why?

‘Where are you going with that, you sly old sod?’ Bev asked, snapping away as he trudged across the factory’s car park.

Looking over his shoulder, Dave Caruthers, the man who had played the role of faithful bookkeeper for the last thirteen years, sidled up to his old blue Nissan and stuck his key in the lock of the boot.

Bev knew it was time.

Snatching up her phone, she clambered out of her car and sprinted over to the Nissan. She needed to intercept him before it was too late.

‘Excuse me!’

He was poised to open the boot. His questioning look was frozen somewhere between fear and a half-smile.

Bev beamed at him, knowing she had to put him at his ease long enough to avoid a nasty confrontation. ‘Dave, isn’t it?’ She clocked a flash of the bounty inside the bag in his hand. All she needed was for him to hesitate for a moment longer and perhaps she’d be celebrating weeks of patient waiting and watching coming to fruition.

‘Do I know you?’ he asked.

‘I’m Daisy,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember?’

She stretched out her hand to shake his. That look about him of a deer caught in a hunter’s sights said he was considering his options.

Finally, he blushed, plonked the bag onto the boot lid of the car and wiped his hand on the seat of his trousers before thrusting it towards her in a move to reciprocate.

Bev looked from his hand to the bag; from his hand to the bag. Her heart thudding. Now! Now!

She snatched the bag from the boot lid and swung it out of his reach.

‘Hey! Get off that! It’s mine!’

She opened it to reveal packet upon cellophane packet filled with cheap, jewel-coloured bras. Finally! ‘What? Are you going to cry, “thief”? That’s a bit rich, isn’t it?’

In her peripheral vision, she’d seen the vertical blinds hanging at one of the office windows twitch. Now, Bev’s client – the owner of this backstreet lingerie packing factory – was marching towards them wearing an expression that could melt tarmac.

‘Caught you, you thieving, lying …’ Grabbing Dave Caruthers by the shirt sleeve, shaking like a brewing volcano, the boss’s face grew redder and redder until he erupted definitively with a bellowed, ‘Twat!’

Sensing even before her phone rang shrilly in her coat pocket that it was time to bow out and leave her client to it, Bev handed him the bag full of pilfered underwear. ‘Thanks for your business, Malcolm. I’ll be in touch regarding payment.’

On the way back to the new office that she shared with Doc, Bev felt sunshine in her heart, though the A56 from the outskirts of Trafford back up to Altrincham was slick with falling rain.

‘Ah. There you are,’ Jim Higson said, before Bev had even had the opportunity to pull off her bobble hat and coat.

Her potential new client stood to attention in the waiting area of ‘Beverley Saunders Private Investigations’, which was little more than two second-hand leather armchairs that Doc had found on eBay, a thrift shop tea trolley containing well-thumbed copies of PC Mag, Kerrang and Computer Weekly and an IKEA yucca plant. Bev sized up Higson’s Farah slacks, slightly too short in the leg, and his extremely shiny orthopaedic shoes, undoubtedly polished on a weekly basis by the woman sitting at his side.

Bev smiled warmly. ‘Yes. Here I am. Bev Saunders, Private Investigator, at your service.’ She spun her bobble hat in the air in a flourish and bowed at this uptight little man and his apparently demure wife. ‘How did you know it was me?’

Jim Higson pointed to the picture that hung above the seats. It was a framed, blown-up copy of the article that had appeared in The Times, declaring Bev a ‘Super-Snooper’ for having outed a national hero as a thief who had been operating at a level Dave Caruthers, bra-burglar, could only ever dream of. ‘You’re famous.’

Feeling pride swell inside her like a small balloon filled with warm air, Bev unlocked the door to her office. Her cheeks flushed hot with the implied compliment. ‘Guilty as charged.’

‘We were ever so excited to read that someone local was behind all that,’ Higson’s wife finally said, smoothing down her A-line skirt as she rose from the leather chair. She was a good four inches taller than her husband. Looked like one of those rangy old birds who had been stunners in their day but who now shopped at the Edinburgh Woollen Mill and baked cakes for the WI. Except this woman wasn’t that old. ‘I said to Jim, that’s the PI we need on our side! Didn’t I, Jim?’

‘That’s right, Penny.’ Jim Higson grabbed his grey anorak and marched towards the door that Bev held open. ‘Are you the man for the job, Beverley Saunders?’ Jim raised a bushy eyebrow and laughed knowingly, as though he was trying on being debonair like a pair of shoes that were beyond his budget.

‘That depends on the job, doesn’t it?’ Bev said, trying to guess what could possibly have driven this drab couple to pay for a professional’s services. A bad future son-in-law who needed to be exposed for the spendthrift he was? A workman who had walked away from a bodge-job, taking their life savings with him? Perhaps a ruckus with a parish councillor over the church Christmas fund?

She ushered them into the office that only marginally stank of mildew now that Doc had laid a new laminate floor (badly) and its walls had been treated to several coats of Damp Seal and white emulsion paint. Bidding them to sit, she disappeared into the kitchenette, making instant coffee in a cafetière and placing it on a tray, together with some Lidl shortbread biscuits which she piled into an impressive looking Fortnum & Mason tin that Doc had found in the charity shop. Two second-hand china mugs, a bowl of brown sugar cubes that she’d swiped from a café in Altrincham and milk in a small jug she’d liberated from Costa completed the appearance of corporate sophistication.

‘Now, how can I help you?’ Bev needlessly plunged the instant coffee in the cafetière with some ceremony, eyeing the Higsons surreptitiously. She then laced her hands together on her desk top, wearing her best confidante’s expression, since most of her client’s wanted a good half hour to unburden themselves before there was any hope of securing a paid contract.

With a mug of coffee steaming in front of him, and his wife sitting silently beside him fingering a biscuit on a side plate, Jim began.

‘It’s our neighbour. Anthony Anthony.’ He paused, clearly expecting a reaction from Bev. ‘What do you think of that for a name? I mean! Have you ever heard anything like it?’

When he spread his long fingers along the desk top, Bev remembered that when she’d done a background check on him, she’d discovered he was a piano technician. It figured, given the elegance of those fingers on an otherwise plain man.

Penny Higson tittered and tucked her mousy blonde hair behind her ear. Blinking hard. ‘Very silly name. I’m sure it’s made up. But if you met the man, you’d think it was right on the money, wouldn’t you, Jim?’

‘Well, I agree as names go, that’s pretty daft, but it doesn’t warrant private investigation at an hourly fee,’ Bev said, making a silent wager with herself that this case would have its roots in a leylandii dispute. ‘How about you tell me the full story and why you need my help?’ She eyed the couple and noticed then the dark circles under Penny’s eyes and the booze-reddened nose on her husband. Were these people at the end of their collective tether? Did she sit up at 3.00 a.m., sipping hot chocolate and fretting while he snored fitfully in a brandy-induced stupor?

Jim nodded. He was suddenly all serious. ‘He’s giving us a dog’s life, is 2Tone – that’s what his loutish mates call him. He has these parties ’til all hours. They’re shouting and jeering and swearing. He’s got one of those massive speaker systems like what you get at the Moss Side carnival. Notting Hill and that. I’ve seen them on the telly. All home-made sub-woofers in wooden cabinets with bass cones the size of Texas. I know my music. Classical music, obviously! And I mean … can you imagine the racket, pumping out rave music so that pictures are falling off the walls? Falling off the walls, like we’re living by the runway at the blinking airport! You should see the rubbish all over the cul-de-sac after one of these parties, too.’

‘Oh, yes. It’s like the end of Glastonbury Festival,’ Penny said. ‘And he doesn’t clean it up. Us other residents have to do it.’

‘And sometimes, they have live bands. And they’re cavorting in his pool in that back garden of his in the nip! The nip, I ask you. Like Sodom and Gomorrah. We live on a quiet cul-de-sac in a residential area, you know.’

‘Very respectable,’ Penny chimed in. ‘Apart from Anthony, obviously. It’s a little development of ten exclusive executive homes. We were the second family to move there when it was first built in 1996. The problem is …’

Jim leaned forwards, holding his wife back in a gesture that was both protective and domineering at the same time. ‘Problem is, he built the blinking development. Anthony, I mean.’

‘So, he’s a builder,’ Bev said, scribbling in her notepad whilst mentally patting herself on the back for having guessed correctly that a workman was involved, even if the connection was only tenuous.

‘No,’ Jim said. ‘A landscaper by trade.’

‘Is there a problem with the house?’

‘Not at all,’ Penny said quietly, shaking her head. ‘It’s lovely. Very solidly built.’

‘Excellent pointing,’ Jim said, nodding. ‘My wife keeps the place like a show home, don’t you, love? And you should see my workshop. But that’s not why we’re here. This man is a dangerous bully. Antisocial, like.’ He tapped the desk top repeatedly. ‘He’s got this dog.’

‘Soprano,’ Penny said, her colour suddenly draining. Her finely plucked eyebrows beat a retreat towards her hairline. ‘It’s a German Shepherd. Big as a horse.’

Jim slapped the table, clasping those fingers into a fist. Pointing with a jab, jab, jab towards Bev; his lips pressed together so that they were almost white and bloodless as he seemingly fought over what to say first. ‘It’s not a dog. It’s a hound. He hasn’t got it trained, you know. It barks all day like a wolf.’

Wolves howl, Bev thought, but she merely nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘It jumps the fence. I’m sure he’s goading it. It jumps the fence and … and …’ He breathed in and out heavily through his nostrils. Lowered his voice to an almost-whisper. ‘It goes toilet in my dahlias.’

‘Yes,’ Penny said. ‘We’ve spoken to Mr Anthony several times about the … poo. We’ve got a tiny grandson, you see. He’s into everything. So, I’m worried about toxoplasmawhatsit.’

Though the situation sounded grim, Bev held her fingertips to her mouth, trying to hold the giggle inside as she imagined a giant German Shepherd shitting in Jim Higson’s undoubtedly pristine flower bed. ‘Mmmn,’ was all she could manage.

‘But that’s the least of it,’ Jim said. ‘The parties are a nightmare.’

Both nodded. Bev wrote parties in her pad and gestured they should tell her more.

‘I’m semi-retired,’ Jim said. ‘I tune and refurbish pianos for the finest musical establishments. I do a lot of work at home in my workshop, and we like a quiet life, don’t we, Penny?’

Penny nodded. ‘Yes. I’m out a lot, giving piano lessons. At least I get a break, but Jim’s at home much of the day. I’m worried about all the stress he’s under.’

‘Tell me about more about the nature of these parties,’ Bev said, turning to Jim.

‘Well, this 2Tone twit calls them, “fundraisers”. That’s how he gets away with it. It’s every blinking weekend, if not twice a week. Half of Little Marshwicke descends on his house. Most of them seem like thugs – gangsters and their molls. Flashy cars and that. You know the type. And as if the loud music isn’t bad enough, they’re riding up and down near my perimeter fence on quad bikes! I ask you!’

‘Oh yes. Quad bikes,’ Penny corroborated. ‘They chew up his lawn but he doesn’t seem to care. They make such a racket. It’s just the two of us these days, now that the kids have grown up. It’s very intimidating.’

Bev folded her arms and sighed. Neighbour disputes. The bullying of an ageing couple by a wide-boy, by the sounds. It was a familiar story. She could imagine her ex, Rob the Knob doing exactly such a thing if he had a spine … or friends.

‘They’re diving into his pool ’til four in the morning. All the floodlights on. Shouting and whooping and the ladies half undressed. It’s not respectable. It’s …’ Jim’s shoulders started to heave and Bev was surprised when tears welled in his sad blue eyes and spilled onto his ruddy cheeks. He opened and closed his mouth, cocking his head to the side and frowning as though it was a struggle to say anything at all. Finally he managed, ‘I’m at the end of my rope.’

‘Have you been to the police?’ Bev asked, pausing in taking notes.

Penny nodded. Smoothing her hand over her husband’s shoulder. ‘They won’t touch it. They say there’s no evidence. Police won’t come out to a disturbance, now, you know. They tell you to keep a noise diary and complain to the council. The couple of times they did come out because that heathen’s guests had vandalised my greenhouse, and then, one time, they car-keyed my car … both times, the party had been closed down before the coppers got there. Convenient, eh? No way of proving I wasn’t lying. Same with the dog. Apparently a canine movement in a bag and some crushed dahlias isn’t hard evidence of a crime. They told us to lodge a formal complaint with the Dog Warden.’

‘And did you?’ Bev asked.

‘If we did, we’d have to declare it as a formal neighbour dispute and we’d never be able to sell our house.’

Bev turned back to Jim. ‘Do you want to move? After all these years?’

He held his hands out, examining spotless short fingernails. They shook slightly. ‘It might come to that if we can’t prove what a nuisance he is and how he’s ruining our lives. The last thing I want is to be driven out of my own home when I should be gearing up for a quiet retirement. But unless Anthony is forced to admit his behaviour is …’ He squeezed his eyes shut. His brow furrowed.

‘Psychopathic,’ Penny finished. ‘If we can put together something we can take to the police and our solicitor, we can get him to stop. In the meantime, he’s claiming harassment.’

‘Oh,’ Bev said. ‘So, he’s saying you’re the nuisance neighbours?!’

They looked at one another and nodded.

‘Apparently so. Where’s the justice in that?’ Jim said. ‘He’s up to all sorts, if you ask me. He’s got too much money to burn and he’s a nasty type. But we’re here because he’s making our lives a misery. He’s going to put me in an early grave. Can you help us?’

Bev narrowed her eyes, wondering if the Higsons could even afford the hours and hours of surveillance that this case would inevitably require. Then again, if she was ever to get a decent place where she could permanently accommodate her daughter, Hope, she’d need every penny she could get. ‘Let me speak to my digital-research team.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Doc said, shaking his head, not looking up from the rose he was fashioning from red Lego bricks.

‘Why? What now?!’ Bev asked, throwing her hands up in exasperation as her ‘digital-research team’ vetoed yet another. . .