Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
‘H ow disappointing you’re still getting my name wrong after we’ve shared such closeness,’ said Leo with a laugh.
‘I’m being serious,’ I said, sitting up straight. ‘I heard Brian’s voice.’
Leo joined me in an upright position, all laughter gone from his expression.
‘Are you sure?’
‘One hundred percent. I’d recognise those cut-glass tones anywhere. He’s here. He’s actually here.’
‘Wow, I can’t believe he turned up,’ said Leo, which begged the question why he’d suggested this outing in the first place. But I didn’t have time to worry about that now.
I stumbled to my feet and moved closer to the fence, trying to tune into that one particular voice among the rest of the shouting and hubbub. Leo stuck close to me, glancing around us as if expecting to fend off an attack at any moment.
‘At least try and act normal,’ I hissed. ‘You look like Robin when she’s spotted a squirrel. You’re going to draw the wrong kind of attention to us.’
‘Grab the lip of the fence and then haul yourself up,’ urged the voice again. ‘I’ll keep holding on to your arms so you won’t fall.’
The instructions helped me narrow down the candidates.
There were currently two guys straddling the top of the fence.
One was surveying his surroundings with casual ease, while the other was leaning forward in a more precarious position, holding onto a woman with stunning two-tone dreadlocks who was sliding back down in horrifying slow motion.
‘You’ve got this, one more heave, then you’ll be up,’ said the guy who was helping her.
I took hold of Leo’s arm and then stood on my tiptoes so I could whisper in his ear.
‘It’s that bloke, the one on the top of the fence. Not creepy Marc after all.’
Leo pretended that I’d said something hilarious, then wrapped his arm around my waist and leaned down to respond in similarly quiet tones.
‘Muscle man?’ he asked.
‘The one on the left. Medium height, blond hair, unnecessarily skimpy vest. Listen to his voice, it’s unmistakeable.’
Of course, now Leo was trying to hear him speak, Scammer Brian had fallen silent, accepting the grateful babble of thanks from the woman with the dreadlocks who was practically crying with relief that she’d finally conquered the obstacle.
‘Okay, we’ll have to make him speak again,’ I said, starting forward.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Leo, rushing in front and blocking my progress.
‘We need to think carefully about this. Remember that our target is at an advantage over us. He’s seen your profile pictures.
What do you think he’s going to do when he spots you coming towards him?
Disappear into the ether, if he’s got any sense. ’
I glanced down at myself. If my face was anything like the current state of my clothes, then I already had pretty good camouflage.
‘I think I’ll be okay. Besides, you said yourself that people always look different in photos from real life. I’m wearing make-up in all my pictures on the app. He’ll never associate my current swamp monster vibe with Miss Neat from online.’
‘A little bit of mud can’t hide your shine. I really don’t think it’s an effective enough disguise,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should fall back and reassess our options from a safe distance.’
‘You flatterer, you. But don’t think pretending to be nice to me will distract me from the mission in hand. Now is the time to take action. This is the moment we’ve been working for.’
I wasn’t going to let his switch into over-protective mode stop me.
I hurried forward and started another attempt at climbing the fence.
I couldn’t risk losing sight of Scammer Brian now.
Applying the lessons I’d learned from my previous disaster, I took my time, seeking out imperfections in the wood to hold on to and carefully maintaining three points of contact at all times.
When I was nearly at the top, I pretended to lose confidence and let out a fake whimper.
‘Can somebody help me, please?’ I said, cranking up my normally subtle Yorkshire accent to a level that bordered on parody, and keeping my head lowered, in case Scammer Brian did see past my muddy exterior and recognise me.
‘I’m here to catch you. And hey, mate, can you move along a bit so there’s space for her to sit at the top?’ said Leo, cottoning on quickly.
‘No problem, I’ll move onto the next obstacle, unless you want a hand being hauled up,’ replied Scammer Brian.
Gotcha. It was one hundred percent the voice I knew and had loved.
‘We’ve got this,’ I said, silently apologising to my fellow Yorkshire folk as I once again butchered my accent. ‘We’ll be right behind you.’
‘See you at the next obstacle. Perhaps we could chat then?’ said Scammer Brian with a suggestive waggle of his perfectly groomed eyebrows.
‘Mm-hmm,’ I squeaked. He was obviously using this as a hunting ground for fresh targets, just as I feared.
As soon as he’d moved on, Leo and I dropped down to the ground again. My heart was racing with adrenalin.
‘We’ve got him. We’ve really got him,’ I said, hopping around on the spot, unable to keep still. ‘I can’t believe how unassuming and normal he looks, apart from the dodgy vest, of course. Should we do a citizen’s arrest? Is that even a thing? And if so, how do they work?’
Leo frowned. ‘It’s not a thing we’re going to be trying in these surroundings.’
‘But we can’t let him get away with it,’ I said.
‘I wasn’t suggesting that we do.’
‘Okay, so what now? What would you do if you were still in the police?’
‘I’d invite him in for questioning, but as we certainly don’t have enough evidence for an arrest, it would have to be a voluntary interview.’
I nodded. ‘That makes sense. As we can’t exactly bring him in for an interrogation without revealing our hand, I guess our next step is to find another way to get enough evidence for that arrest. Then we can take it to the real police.
I mean, the ones who are still serving. Sorry, I didn’t mean to rub it in. ’
He absent-mindedly put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. ‘Don’t worry, you need to try harder than that to offend me. How do you feel about doing some surveillance? Now that we know what Mr so-called Brian James really looks like, we need to press home our advantage.’
‘I think I can see where you’re going with this,’ I said.
‘We follow him around the course, observe every interaction, and then tail him home so we can find out his address. Then I can go on to the electoral register at the library and see who the registered occupant of that address is, and then there we have it, the real identity of Brian James.’
Leo blinked. ‘Okay, I hadn’t thought we’d go quite as far as tailing him home. Perhaps that’s a tad extreme. But the observing every interaction at this event bit sounds good.’
I shook my head. ‘Where’s your sense of adventure?
This is the biggest breakthrough we’ve had.
This time tomorrow our whole investigation could be successfully completed.
Or at least, well on its way to being,’ I added hastily, realising that I didn’t feel the delight I should at the idea of accomplishing our aim.
Because that would mean I no longer had a legitimate excuse to spend so much time with Leo.
‘Let’s see how we get on,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ I agreed. ‘We need to start now, then. We’ve spent too long talking about this already. I hope the next obstacle is a tough one so he’s still stuck on it, otherwise we’re going to have a job tracking him down again.’
It turned out to be practically impossible.
We had to negotiate our way across a wide stretch of icy water by hopping across a series of tiny platforms which wobbled wildly as soon as anyone landed on them.
Most sensible people were giving up fairly early on and trying to swim instead, but our quarry seemed determined to do the thing properly.
He was currently balancing on the middle platform, urging the woman with the dreadlocks to leap across and join him.
‘I’m a bit worried that she’s going to be his next target,’ I said to Leo as we pretended to be working out our strategy for getting across. ‘He certainly seems to be very interested in her.’
‘Then we need to get her away from him,’ he replied. ‘But to do that, we have to get across this water. Ladies first.’
His expression was gleeful.
‘Oh no, I think, in this instance, I will let you lead the way,’ I said. ‘If only one of us is moving at any one time, the other can be observing what Brian’s up to.’
I was pretty pleased with that excuse. In reality, I was wimping out at the thought of ending up in that muddy, cold lake.
I knew the worst thing that would happen was that I’d get wet, but I couldn’t tell how deep it was and I’d never liked the idea of being in water where I couldn’t touch the bottom.
Who knew what kinds of creatures might be lurking in the depths ready to grab hold of me?
Not that I wanted Leo to know I was thinking that way.
He shrugged. ‘Time to learn from the master,’ he said, exuding confidence from every pore.
‘Show off,’ I retorted.
Leo winked. ‘Isn’t that exactly what this whole event is about? It’s the human equivalent of chimpanzee chest-beating. I’m merely getting into the spirit of the occasion. Here I go.’
And with that he leapt from the shore to the first platform. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to make it, but he landed with effortless ease and then pulled himself up into a gymnastics-style salute to his imaginary audience.