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  As Good As Dead

  David Good Private Investigator Series

  Ben Westerham

  Also by Ben Westerham

  DAVID GOOD PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR SERIES

  The Strawberry Girl

  Good Investigations

  Good Girl Gone Bad

  Too Good to Die

  Smart Way to Die

  The Good Con

  Good and the Vanishing Act

  BANBURY CROSS MURDER MYSTERY SERIES

  The Hide and Seek Murders

  The Club of Death

  The Hobby Horse Murder

  SHORTS IN THE DARK SERIES

  Collector of Crimes

  Shattered Dreams

  50FOR30 SERIES OF MICRO SHORT STORIES

  50for30 Series One

  50for30 Series Two

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  Published by Close9 Publishing

  Copyright © 2021 Ben Westerham

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 978-1-911085-30-0

  This story is a work of fiction.

  To all my friends, past, present and yet to be met. Life is nothing but existing without family and friends with which to share it.

  When a Drawer is Nothing Other Than a Draw

  In this book, I make full use of the version of English spoken by people from an area that takes in south London and north Kent. That does mean you will sometimes need to turn the other cheek when given offence by what would otherwise be seen as a grammatical error. Perhaps the best example of this, and certainly the one most often highlighted to me, is the use of the word draw in place of drawer. If this is the kind of thing that gives you sleepless nights then you might want to look elsewhere for your next read.

  All the best,

  Ben Westerham.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter One

  I may be a Londoner, but that don’t stop me from liking the seaside. For starters, there’s all that fresh air, pickled gherkins and how's yer father naughty business that goes on in every bed and breakfast across town. I’m partial to a bit of the old Punch and Judy too, when you can find it around; the bloke with the big nose, he tickles me pink. Not so keen on the crapping seagulls and the elderly women with hairy armpits that you seem to find in droves on every beach, though I wouldn't like to say which of those is the worst.

  Being a bit of a traditionalist at heart, it's the old seaside towns that do the business for me. Places like Hastings, Margate, Southend. They may be a bit run-down and on the mouldy side, but they've got more character than a well worn jockstrap. And they're the places I got taken to as a kid. A week in the summer, everyone packed into a couple of motors, tonking it down the A-roads, fingers crossed for some decent weather and all of us kids more lively than a box of lit fireworks. Must have been hell on earth for the grown ups, but we kids weren't much bothered about that.

  We’d be packed like sardines into some ramshackle chalet or a wobbly caravan, all us kids scrapping it out for the best bedrooms and desperate to get out the door and down to the beach, where we'd have a right old go at digging through every last bit of sand we found there.

  My cousin, Peter, took his brand new stunt kite along one year. We took it down the beach on the first day and sent it up in a force nine gale. The string broke and we watched in wide-eyed amazement as it made its crazy way towards some sand dunes way, way off in the distance, where it nose-dived back to Earth. Took us an hour-and-a-half to rescue that kite. Then it took my Uncle George another hour to fix it.

  Another time my Auntie Clare was dropped on the back of a little donkey on Southend beach. Trouble was, she was a big woman, was Auntie Clare, and the donkey didn't seem too keen on hauling her up and down the beach, so he did a runner, all the while trying to throw his passenger on to the sand. Poor old Auntie Clare held on for grim life for about a hundred yards before the beast lobbed her off. We all stood there, laughing our heads off. There's no doubting it, we had fun on those holidays.

  And now, here I was, back on the coast for the first time in years. I was going to say I don't know why it had been so long since I'd last dipped the old toes in the murky swill that makes up the sea around our shores, but that wouldn't be quite true. Since those happy-go-lucky days as a kid, I'd been back to the coast a fair few times and I'd had some fun along the way. But these days the seaside also held some bad memories for me, ones I wasn't in a hurry to revisit. Worse still, Brighton had been the scene of a failed attempt at settling down into a proper domestic relationship, one that had left a deep scar it had taken years to even begin patching over.

  All the same, there I was, sitting outside a cheap cafe, looking out across Brighton beach, its stone-filled shore dancing in the sunlight. And I have to say, it felt bloody great; just so long as I ignored the painful memories. If I’d had the choice, I would have sat right there all day long, doing absolutely nothing at all. But I wasn’t there to have fun, or at least that wasn’t the main idea. No, I was there because business had brought me there.

  I’d taken a phone call at the office, one lonely Friday afternoon at the end of May. There was a posh sounding fella on the other end of the line. He spoke slowly, taking care to pronounce his words just so. Made me wonder if he thought I was stupid or hard-of-hearing.

  “Mr Good?”

  “Yep, that’s me.”

  “The private investigator?”

  “That’s the one. At least, I think I’m the only one.”

  I’d not long been back at the office, having spent most of the morning following a suspected fraudster across half of London. It being wet out, I’d got absolutely soaked and was sitting at my desk wearing nothing more than my undies. I bent forward and started picking at one of my toenails, where a length of blue cotton thread had got itself stuck.

  “This is Henry Scoular of Scoular and Hart Solicitors.”

  There was a pause. Perhaps he thought I ought to be impressed that he had called me up, but since I’d never heard of the bloke, I couldn’t see any reason to be anything of the sort. We’re all up to using a phone; it’s not exactly hard to do.

  “And what can I do for you, Henry?”

  “We have a client who is in need of your particular skill set and a good friend of mine at the Lodge recommended you to us.”

  Lodge? He must mean the funny handshake brigade at the Masons. I stopped picking my toe and sat up. I wasn’t sure I cared much for the Masons. Didn’t they sacrifice naked virgins in the hope that Old Nick would do them a favour and see off their enemies and business competitors? Or was I thinking about some other bunch?

  “And what particular skills are you looking for?”

  “Our client needs someone to look after them for a few days. Someone who recognises trouble before it becomes a problem and takes steps to avoid it. I believe they call it being streetwise.”

  He pronounced the last word as if it offended him to use it. Probably not the sort of thing they put in whatever dictionary he had sitting on his shelf.

  “I suppose I fit that bill pretty well. Who is this cli
ent of yours and, more to the point, why do they need looking after?”

  I was curious to know more, only ever having once before been handed a babysitting job. That one had involved a witness for a court case that the local constabulary didn’t think was deserving of police protection. The witness took a different view. I spent five days eating and drinking everything I fancied, most of the time locked in a house in Dulwich with the owner, a short thin fella who’d worked as an accountant for a haulage company that turned out to be owned by a couple of disreputable geezers who made their real money shipping in all manner of illegal gear. He’d shopped ’em to the law and was now the star witness. He’d even sent his wife off to relatives in Denmark, worried the bad guys might try to get to him through her. There was never a snifter of any trouble and I walked away with over a grand for one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever done. Oh, and the bad guys both got ten-year stretches.

  “Our client is a young lady.” I sat up some more. “An unscrupulous and most persistent individual has made a claim for compensation against her and has resorted to following and generally harassing her at all hours of the day and night, in an effort to extract a more favourable settlement from her. His behaviour is most unpleasant and upsetting for our client, but the police are unable, they insist, to take any action since, in their opinion, he has yet to break the law. We have attempted to press the point, since it seems to any reasonable person that this man’s actions amount to harassment and intimidation, but the police merely told us to move the young lady somewhere he wouldn’t be able to find her.”

  “Sounds fair enough,” I responded, starting to see where things were heading. It looked like another easy pay day was on the horizon.

  “Yes, we were forced to conclude likewise after giving the matter further thought. However, under the circumstances, our client felt it would be prudent to employ someone to accompany her, just in case things should not work out in a satisfactory manner.”

  Satisfactory manner? Why didn’t he just say what he really meant, instead of pussy-footing around? She was worried she’d get tracked down and find herself in a tricky spot, maybe even a dangerous one. If that happened, she needed someone there to take care of things. Seemed simple enough. There again, I ought not to be too hasty. Would be a good idea to find out just how serious this threat was, before I went as far as committing myself to anything.

  “And just how nasty might things get?”

  There was a pause before the man answered. “I would imagine, to a man as experienced in these things as I understand you to be, Mr Good, it would all seem somewhat inconsequential and of no real concern.” He was at it with the gobbledygook again. “We have no reason to believe our client’s life is at risk, but this man has been most persistent and these things can wear a person down after a while. It’s more a case of intimidation than outright risk of physical violence or, at least, it has been so far.”

  “Worried it might get worse, are you?”

  “Well…” he didn’t seem too keen on answering, so I took that to be a ‘yes’. “We’ve not wanted to unduly upset our client, but, yes, we have begun to worry that things might take an unpleasant turn. Sadly, they often do in such cases, if experience is anything to go by.”

  “What’s her name, then, and what’s this bloke looking for?”

  “Do I understand that you are willing to take on the case, Mr Good?”

  “I am, so long as you have the readies to pay my fee.” Didn’t want him forgetting all about the small matter of payment.

  “Excellent. I will arrange for a contract to be delivered to your office today. If you would be so good as to sign it and hand it back to the courier before he leaves that will allow us to put things into motion promptly. We have made some arrangements already and once we have your signed contract, my assistant will call you back to provide more details, including our client’s name. My assistant will also agree the fee structure with you. I take it that is all agreeable?”

  Odd way of doing business, as far as I was concerned, but I supposed I’d agreed to more unusual set-ups in my time. Seemed the nitty-gritty stuff was too dirty for him to bother with; not that I cared much, so long as someone told me what I had to do and made sure I was going to get paid.

  “Suppose so.”

  “Excellent. In that case, we will leave matters there. A very good day to you, Mr Good.”

  He turned out to be as good as his word. A motorbike courier showed up an hour later. I took one look at the contract, decided I couldn’t be doing with reading a couple of dozen pages of legal waffle, signed on the dotted line and handed it back to the courier. Another hour went by and I got a phone call from a posh sounding bird, Anne Leech, who said she worked for Scoular. That was when all the fun started.

  The woman I was going to babysit was one Alexandra Rudd. Pronounced like the name of the fish, but spelt with an ‘e’, she informed me. Twenty-four years old and single. Apparently Scoular thought that last part was relevant to the case, or so said Miss Leech, though why that was she wasn’t able to say. Personally speaking, I didn’t give two hoots, but there didn’t seem a lot of point in telling me it mattered if I wasn’t going to be told why. I made a mental note and parked it for later.

  The bit of information I wasn’t expecting was when Anne Leech told me where I’d be holed up with Miss Rudd. It wasn’t going to be at her place, which was what I’d been expecting, nor anywhere else in London, for that matter. No, Scoular and his mate had decided it was best if we got out of town. Went somewhere we were less likely to be found. For some reason, their assistant either didn’t know or wasn’t happy to share, they’d picked Brighton.

  I swore when she told me that. You see, as I mentioned, me and Brighton have a bit of previous. Of all the places they could have picked, why the hell did they have to go and choose Brighton? What was wrong with some other south coast town, like Bournemouth or Hastings? Even dodgy old Southend would have been OK, but Brighton!

  “Is there a problem, Mr Good?” She’d asked, sounding like she had a broom handle stuck somewhere no one could see it.

  “No chance of making a last-minute change to the location, I don’t suppose? Somewhere on the east coast, maybe.”

  “I’m afraid not. All the arrangements have been made. The hotel is booked, along with the train tickets.” There was a brief pause, before she added, “I’ve always found Brighton rather pleasant, myself, though I know it’s not to everyone’s taste.”

  I ignored the suggestion I was a tasteless git. Brighton!

  “Brighton it is, then,” I conceded reluctantly. “Which hotel we staying at, only I’m used to a little bit of luxury? Never skimp on hotel costs myself, when I’m away.”

  “It’s the Churchill. Right on the seafront. I’m told they had a major refurbishment only last year. Sounds very nice indeed.”

  The Churchill was about as upmarket as you could get in Brighton. Oh well, maybe I could forget my last run-in with the town after all and slum it for a few days in a posh hotel.

  “Guess it will do,” I said, trying to sound hard done to. “When are we off?”

  Chapter Two

  As it turned out, Scoular and Hart, Solicitors, needed to keep hold of their client for a couple more days, so she could sign some paperwork, which did make me wonder why bother shipping her out of town at all, but they were the ones paying the bills so who was I to complain?

  They wanted me to make my way down south the next Monday morning, so I could check out the hotel, though what I was supposed to be looking for they weren’t saying. Just some waffle about looking out for anything odd. You can usually find plenty of odd-looking people staying at any hotel, so I wasn’t too sure that was going to do much good.

  Miss Rudd would be catching a train to Brighton on the Tuesday afternoon, with Scoular for company. My instructions were to meet them at the railway station, take her back to the hotel, then generally look after her until further notice. Two or three days, most likely. Seemed e
asy enough.

  Since it was Friday afternoon when all this happened, I decided to jump on a train that evening and have myself a nice little weekend break, booking a room in a cheap bed and breakfast before I left. I’d transfer to the Churchill on the Monday and make my rounds of the place before Rudd and Scoular showed up. Tickety-boo and all that. Maybe I’d be able to enjoy myself, after all.

  *

  “More coffee, darling?” The waitress may have had an ugly face, but she had a great pair of legs. I’d noticed that as soon as I’d walked in the place. I’m a quick observer. It’s part of the job.

  “No, thanks. I’m all coffeed out. What’s the damage?”

  She ripped a sheet off her little notepad and handed it to me with what looked like a suggestive smile. I half-expected her to have scribbled her phone number on the piece of paper, but no such luck. All that was there was the cost of the meal.

  I paid up, leaving leggy Lucinda a few extra coins, then ambled out into the sunlight. A bunch of rowdy seagulls were bickering over a half-eaten bag of chips someone had thoughtfully dropped on the pavement nearby. A queue of cars made their way slowly along the beach-front road, while the beach itself was empty of humanity, except for a couple of people out walking their dogs. It was still pretty early, nearly quarter-past eight, but already warm. That wasn’t any big surprise because it had been warm and muggy during the night, which had made it hard to sleep properly and that was why I’d rolled out of bed so early when there wasn’t any need to do so.