Read Online Others by James Herbert - Free Book Online Page A

to the car and opened the driver’s door with the Slim Jim (a thin metal strip that slides down easily between the window glass and rubber sealing strip, its hook contacting the doorhandle locking pin and opening it by a sharp pull) I always carried on such occasions. Once inside, it was almost as easy, although it took a little longer, to hot wire the ignition and drive off. It was as I was pulling away from the kerb that Philo’s call came through on my mobile.
    ‘Dismas,’ I said.
    ‘Dis?’
    ‘Philo?’
    ‘Yeah. Just left the Family Record Centre. At the GRO?’
    Yes, I know, Philo.’ I pictured him outside the registrar office, mobile phone, compliments of the agency, clamped against his ear to cut out the sound of busy London traffic. ‘I’m in a repo at the moment, so give me a couple of seconds to get round the corner.’
    I didn’t want the debtor returning to find me driving away the vehicle he still considered his own. Like I say, GTi drivers often mean trouble and I could do without that today. Parking around the corner and tucking nicely between a Metro and a Volvo estate, I retrieved my mobile from the passenger seat.
    ‘Still there, Philo? Good.’ I took a look around the street before switching off the car’s engine. ‘So what’s the story?’
    That’s just it, Dis. There isn’t one. No birth or death certificate for the Ripstone - sorry, the Teasdale - baby was ever issued as far as they can tell at the registrar office.’
    That’s impossible. Our client had the child and it was delivered at the Dartford General.’
    Well, you know the place burned down.’
    ‘Sure but that was some years later.’
    Yeah, but the point is that the records can’t be checked at the point of source if there was an error or oversight at this end. That’s what they’ve just told me.’
    There’s another GRO in Southport; we can check with them.’
    ‘Uh-uh. Already did. They did it here for me. No record of the baby there either.’
    I sat in silence for a moment, trying to make sense of it all. Was Shelly Ripstone nee Teasdale lying? But why should she, what was there to gain? Could she be deluding herself, imagining she’d given birth all those years ago? No, she was overwrought at the loss of her husband, but she didn’t seem crazy or hysterical. I wondered if the clairvoyant, this Louise Broomfield, had planted the thought in Shelly’s troubled mind. Some kind of auto-suggestion. What would be the point of that, though? I shook my head in mild frustration: I had no answers.
    ‘Dis?’
    ‘Sorry, Philo, just thinking.’
    What d’you want me to do?’
    ‘Get yourself off to the Search Room at Companies House. It isn’t far from where you are now.’
    In the investigation business you always tried to kill two or three birds with one stone to justify the expense of long excursions; it was important to cover the expense in time and travel for the agency. In this case, one of the national banks’ local branches in Hove had asked me to look into the commercial background of a prospective client who was seeking a substantial loan for a new business venture and the bank had a feeling that other branches and different brand banks had been approached by the same man before for similar type loans, but under different company names. They were aware that money had been lost on those deals and didn’t want the same to happen to them. Reluctant to turn away a future and apparently well-heeled client, they were, nonetheless, proceeding with extreme caution. Hence my agency’s assignment.
    ‘Sure thing,’ Philo came back at me. ‘I’ve got the details. Anything else while I’m up here?’
    ‘Can’t think of anything. Just get the train back as soon as you’ve finished - no loitering around the fleshpots. Keep away from Soho. I need to work on a report for the bank tonight, if poss.’ I didn’t, but neither did I want my apprentice roaming the big city on my time.
    ‘Right, Boss. Catch you