Chapter 9

  Before I could leave though, I decided to get a quick snack and some juice. As I was leaving the checkouts, who would I see but my new and helpful assistant standing near the checkouts, just like she had been waiting for me.

  “Hey boss, surprising to see you here. Were you in the area?”

  Yeah, I thought to myself, that's a nice surprise that you just turning up here. Loudly I said, “Yeah, I was talking to some homeless people who have moved to the car park at the back here. Hoping they could give me some clues. But unfortunately, I couldn't find anything. There are some more homeless people I think might be able to help. I will go see if I can find them.”

  “ That's nice boss. I have something interesting to report. Since we just met by complete coincidence,” she smiled as she said that, “how about we catch up? We can talk in my car? Some privacy would be good.”

  We went to her car as I didn't have one. I was not surprised to see it was a brand new Mercedes S-class with a 5 litre engine - a real power horse.

  “So Eve, do you often go racing in this car? This is not the type of car one takes when going to buy tomatoes and onions at Tesco.”

  She laughed out loud

  “It actually belongs to my dad. I have just borrowed it for a few days. I don't have a car of my own yet, and I am not sure which one to buy. I love a Mercedes, but they are very expensive to maintain. I will probably get something smaller.”

  As we sat inside, I smelled the new leather smell, which meant the car wasn't that old. I don't know how much judges earned, but if she was old family rich, it didn't matter, did it?

  “So, what's the news? How are you back so quickly? I would have thought it would take you longer to find out more.”

  “Yeah, it was hard when I started—none of the neighbours wanted to talk to me. Luckily, I found a chatty old lady who was more than happy to spend the afternoon talking with me, and I found a lot of interesting stuff. It's lucky we met here.”

  “Yeah, real lucky.”

  She didn't notice my sarcasm and started speaking. “This old lady says that our detective Tobias (that is his name, though she isn't sure what he does), he does live with a woman in that house, but it's not his sister; it's his girlfriend. She left home two nights ago almost near midnight. The old lady suspects they were fighting as she heard screaming and shouting as she was leaving, and they continued screaming at each other in the car park. She believes that he hit her, though she has no evidence.

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  What do you think of that? Is that good for my very first investigation?”

  It was very impressive, far too impressive. It was almost like she had had training on how to talk with people and extract information from them. Those summers digging up broken pottery at archaeological digs in Egypt or wherever must have been very useful to her.

  “I'll be honest, that's very impressive. I thought it would take you a few days to get this information. But the fact that you have it certainly pushes the case forward a lot faster than I was expecting. If what I suspect is true, we'll have to get the police involved soon. But I'll need a bit more evidence.”

  She clapped her hands like an excited teenager girl and rubbed them very fast. “Gee, I'm so happy! I was hoping I could impress you. Anyway, what do we do next? Should we go around the neighbourhood and see if anybody else saw his girlfriend or if there is any evidence that he hit her?”

  “No Eve, we don't do that. That's not our job. That's a job for the police. But before we can get them involved, I need one more thing from you. I need to find a photo of Tobias and his girlfriend. For Tobias, see if you can just get a selfie if you cannot find a photo of him. For his girlfriend, try to see if she has any social media pages that we can get the photo from. It is very important that I know what the both of them look like before I involve the police. Can you do that for me?”

  “Sure, I can try. What about you? Are you not coming with me? I was hoping we could work together so I can learn from you.”

  “Eve, my dear,” I said “clearly you are an expert already. What can you learn from me? You could probably teach me a thing or two about subterfuge and interrogation techniques.”

  She burst out laughing. “You flatter me, boss. It's just beginner's luck. Anyway, why can't I come with you?”

  “Because I need to talk to some more homeless people. They might get a bit rough with a lady around. Trust me, you don't want to be there if they do. This is something I must do alone. If you're going to be my assistant, you need to learn how to follow instructions. Sorry, but those are the rules.”

  “I understand. Should we catchup tomorrow morning?”

  She was far too confident she could get the pictures in one night. If I were to do it, it would take me three or four days. But then I would have to go to the library to find a computer and try to remember how the social media sites worked and what my passwords were.

  Still, even if she was chronically online, I doubted it was a few hours' work. From what we knew, we didn't even know what the girlfriend's full name was. He had given us two fake names, and there was no guarantee that Tobias was his real name either, although he might have told that name to the neighbours.

  “Let's see, let's make it after lunch tomorrow or near lunch, say 1?”

  “Sweet. I'll buy lunch again. I hope todays was good and we'll meet in the office at 12, have lunch and then do a catch up at 1. That's great boss! Where should I drop you?”

  “Right here,” I said and stepped out.

  I had no intention of letting her know where I was going next.

  The witch was an old friend, and I didn't want to take an unknown to her. Besides, she was my source and my sources were the few things that kept me in business. It was the reason the police still came to me and occasionally paid me because I could talk to people who'd normally never talk to the police or whom the police wouldn't even suspect could have information about criminals and gangsters.

  My next contact was of the second type. The police would never even look at her or even think of her. But she was one of the most dangerous and most powerful women in the country if not the world. It was time to pay my friend the Nice Witch of the East a visit.