Water's Edge

Chapter XLII

Caught Red Handed

When I got inside I could still smell the petroleum underneath the cleaning products. The floor was still stained. I took a moment to rummage in some of the boxes, but I'd be surprised to find anything here other than old paper and furniture polish.

The next corridors were pitch black. Everything had been turned down to the lowest power, the least effectual. Thursday, and the place was as dead as a crypt. No typists. No clunk of metal. Nothing. Just vast corridors of empty offices, where people would hunker down to administrate everything from concrete to copier toner. It was a crypt even when it was bristling with life.

I held the gun to my side. I was technically trespassing and that meant a civil dispute: some people civilly shot people. I tried a few doors but everything seemed locked, and then I heard it—

A soft giggle ran down the hallway and I followed to the origin. A light, in one of the offices. Peering through the glass my suspicions were confirmed; laid across a table, all the belongings sent crashing to the floor, was Edith Wharton, skirt hiked up and pulling Dobson Sykes towards her.

People sometimes would remark that the voyeuristic aspect of my job must be enjoyable. It is not. Maybe that's mean to those who can still find lust in their later years, past the flab and the pock-marks; but I hated the voyeuristic aspect of my job whatever the weather.

Dobson went to kiss Edith's neck, and I ducked back down into the corridor. I would leave them to it. Whilst they were busy, I had more opportunity to explore.

It took a short while, but I eventually found some papers that detailed where the construction materials came from, and shoved them into my jacket. They may be inadmissible in court, but at least I'd have a lead for my own enquiry. I sent a text to Becky, time to get out of here.

I heard the tintinnabulations of her phone from here, and the gruff rumblings of Sykes and Wharton stopped. Their door flung wide. And Dobson, still pulling up his trousers, headed in the opposite direction to myself to seek out the source of the phone ping.

I sent another text, she had to get out of there. I moved into the office where Edith sorted out her knickers.

"We need to talk."

She squealed, and I could see out of the window Becky rushing across the carpark towards her Beetle. She disappeared.

Dobson reappeared clutching a metal meter ruler as a weapon, spotting me in their 'boudoir', "What is the meaning of all of... this?" It dawned on him (I watched it in real time) that they had been caught red-handed, and with murders only a short distance from here; I wasn't interrupting just for my jollies: sex or no sex, this was incriminating.

"I'm not paying you for this."

"Don't need to. Sort yaself out, then we talk properly."