I am dividing this into separate parts as it is quite long

Present Day:

Whenever I imagined dying it was always in bed surrounded by my whole extended family (including imaginary children and grandchildren). Not getting whacked by some fat English man called Maurice in a badly fitted suit who was under the mistaken impression he was a character in a Guy Ritchie movie. I could hear my dead mother’s voice in my head berating me for becoming a Private eye in the first place. My first case and I had managed to get myself caught in the middle of an East End Gangster feud.

“Alright, Darlin’...” he said his thick face creasing. “I’ll try make this as painless as possible,” he said in his cockney accent.

“You’re all heart, Maaauuurice,” I said in my most sarcastic tone. It went right over his head and he smiled showing blindingly white dentures. Apparently thugs for hire had a great dental plan.

How the heck did I get myself into these situations?

He pulled the safety off the gun and it seemed to click really loudly in the abandoned office block. My stomach started churning wildly and I hoped I didn’t piss myself. The thought of my corpse being found stinking of piss made me uneasy. Mac would be horrified. I grinned inwardly at the thought.

“Look here A-hole, Hurry the fuck up and do it already!” I said tired of his bullshit as my mood shifted erratically again. All this waiting around was starting to annoy me. He started scowling then. Where sarcasm had failed epically, profanity apparently hadn’t. He put the barrel of the gun against my head. I had seen this happen in movies but this was different. It was cold; I shivered in spite of myself. My heart beat wildly and my mouth was suddenly dry with terror. I closed my eyes and waited to die...

Two weeks earlier

It was around noon that the man with the chicken suit walked into the main office doors. I heard a few snickers and an email popped up reading ‘He’s all yours’. I glared impotently from my desk. It was my first case. I should be happy but all I felt was slighted. He’d done this deliberately. I opened the office door, walked over to chicken suit and directed him to my tiny office. Chicken suit removed his head piece. He was slightly chubby white guy with a receding brown hairline with blue eyes which peered myopically from behind a thick pair of glasses. I took out my word pad with Mickey Mouse adorning the cover. He tittered and raised his eyebrow at that. I refrained from giving him a bitch slap and plastered a fake grin on my face. When a guy in a chicken suit makes fun of you, you know that you’ve sunk lower than ever before.

“My name is Lucy Bilkins. How can I help you, Mr. err?” I paused and waited for him to fill in the silence.

“My name is Maxwell Jackson,“ he stated loftily. I refrained from rolling my eyes at him. It was very hard. I wrote it down on my pad. He then handed me a photograph. It was slightly worn as if it had been handled frequently.

“This is my wife, Veronica,” he said and waited for me to take a look. She was extremely beautiful in a flashy blonde sort of way. How the heck had he managed to land her? Maybe he was rich or good in bed? I looked at his chicken suit and his clumsy fingers. Maybe Not!

“She disappeared a year ago. I plan to remarry so I need her to sign some divorce papers,” he said.

“Okay, Mr Jackson...I’ll take your case but I need a few details...Maiden name, NI number, previous employers if any, birth certificates,” I trailed off as he handed me an old shoe box. In it was a wad of papers, photos and her passport. Maybe I could see if she had the passport replaced. I wondered why she had left her passport behind. We discussed fees and he agreed to all costs. After a few minutes I opened up a file on him and his missing wife. He owned a fast food fried chicken place. It explained the slightly greasy smell emanating from him that I could now identify with chicken nuggets.

“Do you have the names of any of her friends who I can talk to?” I asked. His face hardened at this but he gave me the names of two men and two women.

“Any addresses?” I asked and he muttered back resentfully, “No current ones...They stopped returning my calls when the bitch left me.” I ended the questions there. I didn’t want to hear the bitch session he so obviously wanted to launch into regarding his wife. I shook his hand and led him outside. There were barely concealed snickers from the predominantly male office. I glared at them in warning and said goodbye. I stomped moodily into my office and shut the door with a bang. The door opened and there stood Mac, my nemesis and unwilling partner.

“First case, kiddo,” he said with a charming smile. I squashed all fluttery feelings that it invoked ruthlessly.

“Why did I get the freak show case?” I asked belligerently. He continued smiling but his eyes glinted and hardened.

“Because you have no surveillance background, you can’t hack, you don’t know how to debug a boardroom nor do you have experience with corporate espionage work. You’re a rookie so that is why you get the freak show case," He gritted the last bit out. I jutted my chin out and stood up squaring against him. His eyes met my challengingly. My breath caught as we were caught up in a powerful surge of lust. His grey eyes burned into mine hungrily. He grabbed my chin and suddenly stepped back as if burnt, letting me go.

“I’m old enough to be your father, kiddo,” he said gruffly. And he was eighteen years older than me, making him forty five years old to my 27 years. It suited him though. He had big rugby player shoulders and was in great shape with big bulging arms which were encased in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves. It was his face that got me. It was strong and full of character with lovely grey eyes, a broken nose, full unsmiling lips, a hint of blonde stubble on his strong chin. He had laughter lines around his eyes and lips and bloody gorgeous dimples which winked roguishly whenever he smiled. He smiled a lot though not normally at me. This was all topped off with shaggy blonde hair with hints of grey and white running through it.

It irked him- This attraction to between us. I could tell he resented finding me attractive. I was definitely not his type. He had a parade of women he went out with. They were all in their late thirties, tall, classy, wearing designer clothing and jewellery and were blonde. I was a short, funny, mouthy brunette who wore jeans, t-shirts and trainers and could make a sailor blush with my use of profanity. It irked him even more that I owned half his business. He had offered to buy me out numerous times. I had refused and he hadn’t taken it well. I made a promise to my dying estranged father that I would give being a private eye a chance for a year.

The crafty bastard must have sensed my weakness because he had extracted a promise followed up by a lawyer giving me a piece of paper which I had to sign. If I didn’t like doing it after a year I could sell it to his partner. I was also bound by a confidentiality agreement so I couldn’t tell Mac either. Thanks dad...Another in a long line of crap decisions! I am the worst detective in the world. I used to be in IT. I had to learn everything like an idiot child. Mac had resented having to teach me as well. He couldn’t spare anyone so he had started teaching me himself. How to check a paper trail? What questions to ask clients?

He had me trail someone once and when I accidently walked into the man and had blown my cover, he had relegated me back to my desk. He had taken the piss out of me in front of anyone. It still made me cranky. I hated not being good at things. . I hated coercion and dad’s guilt extracted promises had coercion written all over them. Mac could tell I wasn’t wholly into it and he didn’t understand my stubbornness in not selling him my half of the business.

He had offered me a job as a secretary and had been surprised when I had gotten all snarky with him. I have nothing against secretaries. If I wanted to do this properly then I had to make damned sure I wasn’t going to be making cups of coffee for fifteen or so detectives. And fielding calls from their girlfriends or wives. They had tried that shit with me when that started. I was nice about it for a week. Then I had my revenge by making the worst coffee they had ever tasted (I wasn’t asked again). The end of calls had taken an evil stroke of genius, a made up breathy voice and persona and a wife of one of the detectives on the phone (I wasn’t asked again).

I started writing down for my own benefit

How to find someone who doesn’t want to be found?

· Look through her box for clues

· Do searches on social networking sites (You wouldn’t believe the gullibility of people posting every miniscule detail of their lives online)

· Find and interview the friends

· Follow up her passport bit of it. See if she had it replaced

Lists calmed me down a lot. They created purpose out of chaos. I had started it the list making when I used to be in IT. There was always a gazillion things to do all at once. I quit my job to look after dad. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and they had become pivotal to my whole being. They helped me get through many a heart breaking day. Running had got me exhausted enough to fall asleep at night.

Breaking out of my reverie with a sigh, I decided to start on my list and look for clues. She’d need money to survive. I pulled the box toward me and started to sort it into piles of photos, personal correspondence and junk mail. After a while it became obvious that she had expensive tastes. There were big withdraws from a joint bank account. She had spent £500 on a coat. My inner miser recoiled at this extravagance. My most expensive clothes were a pair of fancy running trainers which had cost me £80(at least they were functional). I wonder why she had left her husband when he seemed to indulge her.

‘Maybe she had found a more expensive meal ticket’ I thought cynically. There were no entries from her financially into the bank account so she must have leeched off Chicken Suit. I knew those kind of woman. I left home at sixteen. I had to get a job to pay rent on a tiny bedsit and to feed myself. I had decided I wasn’t going to ever rely on anyone else again. It had been hard at times but I got a government student loan to study computers. Then I got my first job in IT and the money started rolling in. I had a colossal loan to pay off and other expenses. To this day I still find myself going to the’ nearly pass it’s sell by date’ section to get meat in the supermarket. I restrain myself ...barely.

I pulled out the contact details and started looking for the four friends - Maggie Malone, Jenna Parker, Jason Creedy and Mark Spangler. I started with Maggie Malone. After an hour of phoning every Maggie Malone in the phone book I was getting a bit disheartened. I got the phone put down on me copious amounts of time. One lady had screamed at me and told me to fuck off as she didn’t want what I was selling. When I tried to explain I wasn’t trying to sell something to her she started screaming and asked if I came from India. Finally I got through to the right Maggie Malone. She gave me her address and I arranged to meet her in an hour. She lived a few miles away in the next village.

I jumped up doing an uncoordinated victory dance when I looked up and realised Mac was watching me shaking with laughter. I gave him the finger and walked out of the office while he bellowed with laughter. As I looked back he was mimicking my dance to the guys who were also laughing their heads off.

‘Jerk’ I thought angrily.

I slammed into my Ford Focus and pulled away too quickly causing the car to squeal and the tires to burn a little. I put on the sat-nav and punched in Maggie Malone’s address. I then pushed in a Food Fighters CD and sang along badly ignoring the amused grins of fellow road users. I had to be calm when I interviewed her. I didn’t want to miss a thing. I started to chill out a bit as I imagined Dave Grohl in the buff. Hmmmmm Dave Grohl. And then I looked into my mirrors and saw the blacked out SUV behind me. It was weird but my stomach went all funny as fear gripped me. The car wasn’t following me. I was being paranoid. I decided to test my theory and made a sharp turn into a side road. The SUV braked suddenly and followed me down the side road.

“Shit...shit ...shit...” I muttered. I was being followed.