“Thanks for picking me up.” Daisy squeezed into the back of Partial Sue’s Fiat Uno, not helped by Simon Le Bon attempting to lick her face as she did so. Daisy lived in Christchurch in a house that was like her. Sweet and cutesy, it overlooked a stream beside a bridge and had window seats, one having been cleared of cushions to make way for her vast collection of Wade Whimsy figurines, at which very small children passing by would stare and coo over. With regimental regularity, she would clean each one to within an inch of its life, as she did with every inch of her house.
Daisy had lived alone ever since she’d split from her husband, and the less said about him the better. When her high-maintenance daughter had fled the nest to get married there had been nothing to distract Daisy from what a nasty man he was. The pair parted ways a year afterwards. Daisy got to keep the house, thanks to Partial Sue, who’d loosened her normally tight fists and dipped into her vast savings to help pay for the best divorce lawyer money could buy.
“I was just about to leave for work.” Daisy had abandoned her DCI Tennison look. The business suit had been swapped for her usual maxi dress, a pink one, and her hair had gone back to its normal curly self.
“We’re not going to work,” Fiona said. “We’re going to Westbourne.”
Daisy became excited. “Oh, I do like Westbourne. They have some lovely tea rooms.”
Westbourne was about the same size as Southbourne and had a similar genteel, Victorian vibe, except a shade posher. Its claims to fame were that JRR Tolkien had once lived nearby, as had Robert Louis Stevenson in a fittingly Gothic mansion. At the other end of the scale, Westbourne had a ridiculous number of cosy tea shops, easily outgunning Southbourne, which was no slouch either. Westbourne also boasted an M & S Foodhall, which Southbourne did not. If Southbourne residents wanted to flex their Sparks card, they had to travel a mile down the road to neighbouring Christchurch. However, Christchurch also had a Waitrose, which Westbourne did not, so, swings and roundabouts.
“We’re not going there for tea,” Partial Sue said. “We’re going there to collect evidence.”
“Evidence?” Daisy leaned forward between the gap in the two front seats. “Tell me more.”
Fiona twisted around to face her. “Remember when we phoned around charity shops to ask if anyone had bought a set of dominoes?”
Daisy nodded eagerly.
“Well, one got back to me this morning, End Global Hunger in Westbourne. The manager Maureen said she’s got something for us.”
“Do they know who bought it?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Daisy looked worried. “Oh, wait, who’s looking after the shop?”
“No one,” Fiona replied. “I thought we all needed to be here for this.”
Half an hour later, Partial Sue orbited Westbourne’s one-way system for the umpteenth time until she found a space. They parked up and headed to the shops, Daisy acting like an excited puppy. “Can we cut through the arcade? I love the arcade.”
“Why not?” said Fiona.
They wandered through the storybook Victorian shopping arcade, its pretty barrel-vaulted glass ceiling tethered with delicate ironwork. At ground level it was lined with quirky and eccentric independent boutiques with hanging signs outside and white-painted sash windows above. The temptation to window-shop was overwhelming but they resisted, apart from Daisy, who had to be dragged away from one of the many gift shops selling carved dogs and picture frames made of driftwood.
They found the End Global Hunger charity shop almost opposite the entrance to the arcade.
“Great spot,” Partial Sue remarked.
Led by Fiona, the three of them entered the posh charity shop that would easily give the Cats Alliance a run for its money. However, unlike the Cats Alliance it hadn’t managed to eradicate the collective mustiness of all those second-hand clothes. Simon Le Bon’s nose was going nineteen to the dozen sniffing all the wonderful new smells.
Fiona approached a jolly-looking lady behind the counter in a bright floral dress and whose peroxide hair contrasted sharply with her skin, which appeared to have recently seen a little too much sun. “You must be Maureen. I’m Fiona. We spoke on the phone.”
“Ah, yes. Pleased to meet you.”
Fiona turned to introduce her two colleagues, only to find they’d been distracted by the merchandise and were holding up garments against themselves to assess suitability.
“Ladies, can we remember why we’re here?”
“Sorry,” Daisy said. “You have some lovely stock.”
“Oh, don’t apologise,” Maureen replied. “We are lucky being so close to Canford Cliffs and Sandbanks. Rich clientele go through fashion at a rate of knots, then they offload it here.”
“Thank you so much for seeing us about our little matter,” Fiona said.
“Well, I’m sorry it took so long. I only got back off holiday yesterday. A cruise around the Caribbean.”
“Oh, how lovely,” Daisy said. “I’d love to go to the Caribbean.”
“You simply must. Anyway, I got back yesterday, and I saw the note someone had scribbled down, asking about dominoes.”
“So do you remember someone buying a set?”
“No.”
Fiona became crestfallen. “No?”
Maureen fiddled with her earring. “That’s the puzzling thing. I know we had a domino set in a little wooden box. I have a good memory for all our stock. None of my staff remembers selling it, and neither do I.”
Fiona struggled to work out how this helped them. If this was the case, then they’d just wasted a journey to Westbourne for information that could have easily been conveyed over the phone.
Maureen clearly read the disappointment in Fiona’s face. “Well, that got me thinking,” she continued. “Logically, if no one here sold it, then someone stole it.”
Fiona tried to be as diplomatic as possible. “Oh, okay. So how does that help us?”
Maureen pointed to a corner of the ceiling. They all followed the line of her finger, directing their gaze to a compact CCTV camera at the back of the shop. She became serious. “We get a lot of shoplifters in here, lured by our second-hand designer clothes. They think we’re easy pickings, a soft touch because we’re a charity shop. Thing is, every time someone steals something, it’s taking the food out of hungry mouths, and I’m not having that, I can tell you, so I had CCTV installed.”
“Is it HD?” Partial Sue asked.
“I don’t think so.” Maureen reached into a drawer behind the counter and rooted around. “But I do know it keeps a record of everything for the last thirty-six days.” She produced a USB drive and handed it to Fiona. “I took the liberty of transferring it to a data stick. I would have emailed it to you but it’s quite a big file. Didn’t want to risk it.”
Clutching the USB stick, Fiona beamed as if she were holding the answer to life itself. “Thank you, thank you so much. You don’t realise how much of a help this will be. I’ll return the stick to you afterwards.”
“Well, I don’t know if there will be anything useful on it. But can I ask — why all this trouble to track down a domino set? Is it valuable or something?”
“Yes,’ Fiona replied. “It’s very valuable.”
* * *
Partial Sue tried every shortcut to get them back to Dogs Need Nice Homes as fast as automotively possible. The traffic was terrible whichever route they took. Fiona was still holding the USB stick aloft in front of her, not daring to let it out of her tight grasp. All she wanted to do was fire up the shop’s laptop, shove the USB into the appropriate slot and start reviewing the footage.
“How long do you think it will take to watch thirty-six days of footage?” Daisy asked.
“There’s a clue in your question,” said Partial Sue.
“I don’t understand,” Daisy replied.
Partial Sue waited.
Realisation dawned as bright as a summer sun. “Oh, right, yes, silly me. Thirty-six days.”
“I’m sure there will be bits we can fast-forward,” Fiona said.
After they got back to the shop, they went straight to the laptop on the counter, not even stopping to make tea. Gathering around the screen, the black-and-white footage was fairly clear and gave them a direct view of a low shelf holding a stack of large board games. It was too far away to tell what each one was, however, sandwiched in between them was a distinctive rectangular wooden box, just the right dimensions to be a domino set. It also helped that a few hours into the footage, someone browsing pulled the wooden box off the shelf and put it back with the top facing out, revealing the word DOMINO in big, block letters. Now they had a positive lock on the target, as Partial Sue dramatically put it, they could speed up the footage, only slowing it down when someone came near it.
After a while they came to the conclusion that it didn’t need all three of them to do this. With hours and hours of mostly monotonous footage of people lazily browsing in a shop, it only took one of them to review it, so they took it in turns.
“Oh my gosh,” Daisy blurted out. It was her turn on screen duty. Fiona and Partial Sue darted over from opposite ends of the shop. Fiona nearly knocked over a bin of soft toys, each one only a pound (or three for two pounds), on her way to the counter where Daisy was hunched over the laptop.
“Have you found something?”
“That women’s just stolen a handbag! Bold as brass!”
“Where?” Partial Sue asked.
Daisy rolled back the footage. A woman in her forties was casually perusing the racks. She examined what appeared to be a neat brown Radley bag, judging by the little leather dog logo. She glanced over her shoulder, once then twice. After the third time, when she thought no one was watching her, she hooked the handbag over her arm and made for the door, unchallenged.
“Well, I never,” Partial Sue said. “Makes you wonder if we get shoplifters in here. I mean, I’ve never caught any.”
“We don’t sell anything designer. Besides, our stuff’s so cheap, what would be the point?”
Daisy resumed her search, then half an hour later she screamed again, waking up Simon Le Bon, who had been chuntering and running in his sleep in his basket by her feet.
Once more, Fiona and Partial Sue made a beeline for the counter.
“I think I’ve got something.” Daisy wound the footage back and pressed play. From what they could tell, it had been raining outside because people were piled into the shop, water dripping off their clothes. The place was busier than usual. Typically British, they were pretending to browse the shop, not wanting to be accused of merely using it as a place to shelter. From one corner of the footage, a figure in a soggy and baggy black anorak with the hood up appeared, their face obscured. They mingled with the other customers meandering around the shop, randomly dawdling here and there. When they passed the shelf with the board games, the figure suddenly sped up and left the shop.
“There, did you see it?” Daisy exclaimed.
“Play it again,” Fiona asked.
Daisy obliged, slowly rewinding the footage just a few seconds and pausing it at the point just before the figure approached the shelf. The dominoes could be clearly seen. She let the footage play again until the hooded figure had swept past the shelf and hit pause again. The dominoes were gone.
“We have a thief in an anorak,” Fiona said. “But who are they?”
“Excuse me.” Partial Sue leaned forward and hit the play button for just a second or two and hit pause as the figure exited the shop. She rewound and forwarded it several times until she had it in just the right position. The screen showed only the briefest paused glimpse, the frozen footage shimmying away, but that was all they needed. It was the only full-length image of the thief unobstructed by racks or displays. The “anorak” nearly reached to the floor.
“That’s not an anorak, that’s a cape.”
Three mouths fell open at once and then blurted out, “Sophie Haverford!”