Looking for Trouble - Cath Staincliffe

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Looking for Trouble - Cath Staincliffe

Cath Staincliffe - Looking for Trouble о чем книга


She's a single parent. A private eye. And liking it. Until, that is, Mrs Hobbs turns up asking Sal Kilkenny to find her missing son. Sal's search takes her through the Manchester underworld, a world of deprivation and petty theft, of well-heeled organised crime and ultimately, murder. Would she have taken the job on if she had known what she was getting into? Probably, because Sal is fired with the desire to see justice done, to avenge the death of a young lad whose only crime was knowing too much.The first Sal Kilkenny Mystery, short-listed for the Crime Writers' Association best first novel award and serialised on BBC Radio 4, Woman's Hour.

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The first book in the Sal Kilkenny series, 1994

For Tim


Acknowledgment

Thank you to all the people who helped me write this book: to Annie who was there from the beginning and shared all the ups and downs along the way; to Mo, who kept telling me I could do it; to Brenda, for great chunks of free child-care; to the novel writers’ group past and present, Ailsa, Christina, Jay, Livi and Maggie for encouragement, support and the pleasure of learning together; and to my children, Daniel and Ellen, for their sweet inspiration.

CHAPTER ONE

I get a kick out of following people. There’s a childish excitement in trailing the unwitting suspect, in not being caught doing something shady. It’s rarely easy. Fate conspires to fix the traffic lights, spirit up needy strangers seeking directions, wayward dogs and road-works. Actually, I can’t blame fate for the road-works; that’s down to the city council. They’d only just finished digging up the whole of Manchester, to replace the rotting sewers, when they started digging it up all over again to lay the tram lines.

Of course, in between the thrill of the chase there’s the stifling boredom of waiting. Waiting for the woman to emerge from having her hair permed, for the couple leaving the hotel, together or separately, or for the bloke to finish his stint at the pub.

But that Friday morning back in June, I was lucky. Vernon Wainwright, supposedly off on a business trip to Amsterdam, left the airport ten minutes after his wife dropped him and took a cab to the Trust House Forte hotel in nearby Northenden. There he was joined in the foyer by a young woman. They booked in and took the lift up to their weekend of bliss. The Trust House Forte hotel would hardly be my idea of the perfect setting for a weekend of forbidden passion (couldn’t he at least have taken her to Amsterdam?) but then it’s so long since I had any passion, forbidden or otherwise, that I’m hardly au fait with these matters.

With my adrenalin buzz fading, I drove my old Mini back to face the less than pleasant task of telling Mrs Wainwright that her suspicions were well founded.

I’ve found they usually are. Women know. They spend an inordinate amount of time blaming themselves for being paranoid or insecure, giving hubby the benefit of the doubt just one more time – then, at their wit’s end and fearful for their sanity, they approach someone like me. It’s my job to prove to them that they’re not going loopy.

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