The One a Month Man by Michael Litchfield Read Free Book Online Page A

start. She could have been miles away in minutes – by cab, Tube, or any number of buses. Anything he did that night from then on would be futile. My idea was for him to come home so that we could take stock and devise a constructive, cool-headed plan. He needed to take a step back. I was really beginning to think that he should take this new information to the private detective he’d commissioned earlier, but no, he was determined to stick with it; the Lone Ranger.’
    She contrived a shallow smile.
    ‘But to no avail, obviously,’ I said.
    ‘He stayed at the hotel that night. The following afternoon, he phoned the escort agency, using a different name from the previous day. He made up a story that a few weeks previously he’d dated a girl on their books, “Lolita”, and he was anxious to date her again because he’d been so satisfied.’
    Once again, the outcome was so transparently predictable.
    ‘She said she was very sorry, but “Lolita” had called that very morning to say she wanted to be removed from the agency’s books and her photo be shredded, all of which had been duly done. She tried to “sell” him another girl, but he hung up; gutted.’
    ‘And finally he came home?’ I said.
    ‘No, not right away, not even then. He revisited the escort agency. The same woman as the previous day was running the office and she remembered him, of course. He decided to open his heart to her and come clean.’
    ‘Saying he was “Lolita’s” father and she was his runaway daughter?’
    ‘Exactly.’
    A tactic that hadn’t a hope in hell – or indeed heaven – of working. Escort agency madams don’t do compassion. ‘I bet she asked for proof of his story?’ I said.
    ‘First thing she said. She was thinking the obvious, no doubt, that Ronnie could be someone with a grudge who wanted to harm Tina. She claimed not to have an address for our daughter, only a phone number.’
    ‘Plausible,’ I said.
    ‘In any case, she said, it was company policy never to give out personal contact details, such as phone numbers, to clients.’
    ‘Definitely true,’ I said.
    ‘He got angry and she threatened to call the police. Fortunately, he pulled himself together and then, only then, did he come home. We stayed up all night debating what to do next. We decided that he’d go to our local police station and report what he’d discovered.’
    ‘And what did they say?’ As if I didn’t know already.
    ‘That she was clearly no longer a missing person. Ronnie had located her. She didn’t look ill. There was no reason to believe she’d been harmed. Hard as it was for a parent to take, Tina had made a definite statement that she had no wish to interact with us. She was grown up and we had to respect her wishes, however irrational and unreasonable they seemed. The file would be stamped “No further action”. Ronnie was dismayed. So deflated.’
    I made no comment. Ronnie got the response I’d have given him. The more caring a parent, the meaner the pay-off; that was something else on which I was an empiric expert.
    I could sense that the narrative hadn’t quite run its full course, so I prepared for the punchline.
    ‘Next morning, Ronnie got up early, didn’t bother with hisroutine shower, dressed, said he was going to buy a newspaper, walked to the railway station, gave the newsstand a miss, and threw himself in front of a train. He went out on an empty stomach. Didn’t have breakfast. Not even a cup of tea.’
    Mrs Marlowe couldn’t see anything hysterical in what she’d just said. That’s the way it is when people are traumatized and telling the truth, relating the minutiae of the moment, the mundane madness of it all.
    ‘I had a little item inserted in the Announcements column of the
Daily Telegraph
, recording his death and the funeral arrangements ,’ she said, bleakly. ‘I hoped – prayed – Tina would see it and show up at the cemetery, if not the church.’
    More chance if she’d advertised