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By Friday afternoon, Dare still hadn’t called. Grant sat in his office, staring at his phone screen. Grant had already left a voice mail the previous day, and there’d been no answer yet. Dare had made it pretty clear he’d be the one to call when he was ready, but what if he’d been sidetracked and forgotten to?
Grant hated the idea of being that forgettable, but he hated not knowing what was going on even more. He fired off a quick text. How’s things? You okay?
While he was staring at the screen, waiting for an answer, his phone rang. Gareth Peters flashed up on the screen. Now there was a man who might know where to find Dare.
“Mr. Matravers, could you call by my office? I have something you might be interested in.”
“Can you not just tell me?”
“I prefer to give this kind of information in person rather than over the phone. You never know who might be listening in, after all.”
While he wanted to find out now, perhaps a trip out in the fresh air would improve his mood. Grant agreed to calling by Gareth’s Southville office, and half an hour later was knocking on his door. Gareth himself answered—he didn’t seem to have a secretary, but perhaps that was simply a film noir cliché and there wasn’t much need for them in the PI game.
“Mr. Matravers, good to see you again,” Gareth said, giving his hand a brief shake. He was a stocky man with salt-and-pepper hair and a line creasing his forehead. In his cheap suit, he looked every inch the ex-police detective he claimed to be.
“Please, call me Grant.”
“Of course. Come on in. I have a few pictures you’ll be interested in.”
Grant’s stomach lurched. Visions of seedy black-and-white pictures taken through hotel windows flashed through his head. He followed Gareth through to the small, cluttered office space. Gareth sat on the comfy-looking chair behind his scarred wooden desk, leaving Grant with the rickety plastic one he remembered from his previous visit.
“Now, tracking down your Mr. Nelson hasn’t been the easiest job. He hasn’t been anywhere in sight at the scrap yard, and I didn’t see any signs of activity at the home address you gave me for him either.”
“So does he actually live there?” Maybe Cecil had been right about the caravan being Dare’s home, but that still wouldn’t explain where Dare had been for the last week.
“Hold on, I’m getting to that part. I checked with the Land Registry, and a Mr. Derek Nelson is indeed the owner of that property. It appears he inherited it from his deceased father, along with the scrap yard. Have you seen the property yourself, Mr... Sorry, Grant.”
“I haven’t.” That part of Totterdown wasn’t somewhere Grant would voluntarily visit. He’d be afraid for the safety of his car in that part of the city. You heard tales.
“Right. Well, this is the property in question. As you can see, it’s not pretty.”
“Jesus.” Grant stared down at the photo on the iPad Gareth handed over. The house was in a terraced row, and while none of its neighbours looked particularly well cared for, the one belonging to Dare was an absolute disgrace. Paint peeled off the front door and window frames. Long weeds grew up in the front garden, litter strewed the front path, and dirty curtains hung off sagging poles in the windows. “I can’t believe Dare would let it get in such a state. So, does he actually live there at all?”
“Well, that’s one of the interesting things about this. I spoke to some of the neighbours, and they had a lot to say about the lad who does live there—a man called Jason Nelson, according to them.
“Jason?” Dare had mentioned a brother, hadn’t he? “Who’s he?”
“A no-good junkie, according to the woman who lives opposite. She said it’s a crack house, and there are all kinds of people heading in and out of there at strange times of day. And a man answering your description of Mr. Nelson calls in every Sunday. His neighbour confirmed that he was Jason’s older brother.”
Grant’s stomach plummeted. Of course. Cecil had been right. But how exactly was Dare mixed up in all this? Was he selling drugs? The thought was far more upsetting than it should have been, considering that would have been excellent leverage for Grant to get Dare to sell the scrap yard.
“So, Dare’s running a crack house?” His voice sounded as hollow as he felt.
“That’s what I thought at first, but now I’m not so sure. He’s certainly been allowing his property to be used as one by his brother, but there are things that don’t add up.”
“Such as?”
“That photo was taken on Tuesday, just a couple of hours after you called by. Now, here’s what happened this morning.” Gareth flicked his finger over the screen, and the photo changed. It was the same house, taken from the same angle, but this time Dare was in the picture. Up a ladder. With a sponge and a squeegee.
“Is he doing what I think he’s doing?”
“If you think he’s washing windows, you’d be right. And it appears he’d been out there for some time already when I got there. Check out the other differences.” Gareth swiped back to the old picture, then again to the new one, and Grant forced his gaze to wander from the spectacle that was Dare in a T-shirt, his tattooed, muscled arms clearly on show.
The house definitely looked better than it had. No more litter and weeds in the front garden, and the door appeared to have been given a patchy coat of paint. The window frames were still as bad as they had been, but for a morning’s work, it was pretty bloody impressive.
“I’ve never known anyone to put that kind of effort into looking after a crack house,” Gareth continued. “There wouldn’t be any point. Those kind of places probably do better when they do look like dumps.”
“So what do you thinks going on here? Is he doing it up to sell it?”
“Couldn’t tell you, but if you want me to keep digging into it, I’ll try to find out.”
Grant puzzled over the image but eventually shook his head. “I think that’ll do for now, but I’ll call you if I need anything else.” First, he wanted a chance to ask Dare what was going on. If he didn’t get a straight answer, then Gareth would be his last resort. “Can I get a copy of this, please?”
“Sure. I’ll stick it on a USB. You want both of them?”
“Just the window-cleaning one.” Grant wanted a chance to study those tattooed arms in greater depth.
A half hour later, Grant was back in his office, staring at the picture on his own computer screen. It wasn’t anything like the sordid pictures he’d been expecting, and it was a huge relief not to have any evidence of Dare playing the field. But what he now did have evidence of, he wasn’t sure.
He’d have to give Cecil something on Monday morning, but all Grant wanted was some more time to investigate Dare himself. And there were so many ways he wanted to investigate him. Not just the obvious physical stuff, but he wanted to know what made the man tick. Every little scrap of insight he got into Dare’s way of thinking just confused him more. And even the physical was confusing. Grant had always been attracted to waifish, almost feminine men—hence why he’d ended up with Mas—and yet here he was lusting after a specimen who was even more aggressively masculine than he was.
But Dare wasn’t all macho belligerence—Grant had to remember that. He’d shown Grant real tenderness at times. He enlarged the photo, studying the bicep tattoo he’d long admired. A pineapple. Sweet and succulent, like Dare could be in private. But spiky on the outside too.
––––––––
“ARE YOU SURE YOU CAN manage without me?” Dare asked, hovering at the front door. It was Monday now—he’d ended up spending an entire week at the house, only heading back to the yard in order to feed Solly and to leave a sign explaining he’d be on holiday for a week, and to leave any urgent messages on his answer-phone.
He’d finally switched his phone back on that morning, and aside from a single text message and a voicemail from Grant—neither of which he’d dared check just yet—there hadn’t been any work messages. Things would change over the next few weeks, but there didn’t tend to be many people getting rid of or wanting to buy camper vans early in the year, so March had indeed been an ideal time of year for him to take a holiday.
Shame it had been in his house rather than somewhere warm and sunny. And a shame he’d had to spend it the way he had, but at least he knew he was leaving Jase, Rain and the house in a far better state than when he’d arrived.
Rain and Jase gave him two rather wan smiles, but at least they were genuine ones. “We’ll be fine now,” Rain said. “Thanks for everything. Couldn’t have done it without you.” She stepped forward and gave him a hug. She was still skin and bone, but after the way she’d been wolfing down food the last couple of days, Dare hoped she’d fatten up again soon.
“You’re sure you don’t need me to hang on another day or so?” Dare asked Jase. Jase was still horribly pale with dark circles under his eyes, but the look he gave Dare was 100% cocky.
“Give us a break, bro. We want to spend some time on our own. You know what I mean?”
Dare did know what he meant. He’d have given anything for a pair of ear plugs the night before. “Okay, none of the graphic details, thanks. Just promise me you’ll call if there’s anything I can do. And, please, think about going to NA meetings. They will help.” If the two of them relapsed, he didn’t think he could cope with going through another week like that.
Rain just rolled her eyes, but Jase nodded eagerly. “Yeah, we’ll go.”
After a long, suffocating hug from Rain and brief shoulder pat from Jase, Dare hopped onto his bike.
He turned back to look when he reached the end of the road, but they’d already gone back inside.