The Girl Who Played With God: A Joey Netherhill Mystery Thriller

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Prologue

Her story was as old as the Bible. It had an endlessly recurring theme; a never-ending loop with only one outcome. The last time he had almost beaten her to death. He got six months for that. Six paltry fucking months. He was out in two. Two months spent smuggling letters to her explaining what he was going to do to her. But time goes by. His time. And now he was out.

And the law could do nothing. The police, the courts, the judges, even the law-makers themselves were hampered by a set of rules formulated by out of touch do-gooders.

The children, his children, her children, born of violence, were long since taken from her – as though she were to blame for his criminal insanity. Even her elderly parents had been frightened out of her life. And now she was alone. Alone and terrified. Alone and waiting and wondering when he would come – for come he would, and this time, for her there would be no morning after.

The man who came to the hammer-gouged front door of her trashed flat in the almost derelict project high-rise was not him. She opened the five locks and chains to see his face. She eventually let him in, but only after he explained that the police had asked him to call, and then had passed through a card. He was tall and soft-spoken with a deepish voice. He sat on the edge of her one moth-eaten couch and listened quietly while she sobbed her fears to him. When she was finished – or rather unable to speak further for the choking weeping – he asked her if she had taken out an intervention order on him. He already knew the answer before he asked. She nodded then croaked something like ‘useless’ and spat the answer at him for his stupidity.

Again he sat quietly contemplation the problem. He calmed her then spoke. He told her that when her husband did come he would automatically be breaching that order. He would be deliberately breaking the law. He then reached down to his ankle and pulled out a small pistol. He handed it to her. ‘Aim directly at his forehead,’ he said. ‘Pull the trigger once. If you miss him, pull it again.’

She gasped and looked up at him with unbelieving eyes.

‘The police will come and arrest you. You will probably be charged with culpable homicide. Insist on a trial by jury.’

He took her trembling hands and swallowed them into his own.

‘You will never be convicted. No jury on the face of this Earth could ever find you guilty,’ he said firmly.

‘But what about you?’ She asked.

‘Don’t worry about me, ma’am.’ He smiled a tranquilising smile. ‘I don’t actually exist.’

Chapter 1

The girl sitting opposite me was a train wreck. I could see that she had been pretty once. Now she was a mess. The file I had on her said she was twenty-five. More like forty-five, I thought. And even that would’ve been an insult to more than a few of that age. Her hair was cut as though it was a punishment for collaborating with the Gestapo. Her eyes were droopy and dull. Her nose might have been broken and was covered in a plaster that looked as though it should have been renewed last year. The baggy orange jumpsuit did nothing for any figure that might hide under it.

All that, and her wrists cuffed and chained together through a metal stay on her side of the steel table.

If we haven’t met before, my name is Joey Netherhill. Not my real name, of course. But one I took so that I could live a normal life - did I just say normal? A life away from the reaches of a shrew that couldn’t or wouldn’t be tamed, and her own band of brothers. Fuck her. Fuck them.

Sorry.

I came to the South to get clean away, as they say, away as far as possible. I changed my name and hid for a while. I worked for some questionable people, but tried not to do too many questionable things. I was hired by them because I was ex-Marine, six foot two plus, over two hundred and twenty pounds, and had a face that attracted women and frightened children. Due to an accident of fate, a nice guy called DS Reid, who was incongruously also a policeman, called me for some ‘off the books’ assistance regarding what he thought was an unfaithful girlfriend. I followed her, photographed her, and all the things I thought a private investigator might get up to. I was a real fucking amateur. But I did come up with some answers. I met with DS Reid one night in a pub to tell him that the problem was a wayward brother - not a hidden lover.

He tried to kiss me. Ugh!

From then on I became the ‘go to’ guy for his Department; the guy they always wanted to be themselves but couldn’t because of rules and pensions. I didn’t have those worries. They spread my name where and when they could, and before long I was a real registered PI. After time passed and I was suitably indebted to him, Davy (that was his first name now we were pals) put the hard word on me to employ a girl that had walked out on his Department after she had been offered promotion in return for lifting her skirt. Her name was Vanda and she was the best fucking grudge purchase I’ve ever mane. No kiddin’.

So now I have a two room office on the third floor in the CBD, a classy PA who’s an expert in hacking and all things police, and two signs: one on my window and one the entry door saying ‘Joey Netherhill - Private Investigator.’ Big deal, you say. OK. I can take it.

So back to the story. I was sitting there opposite this bird who was a jailbird, and who I knew was classified as extremely dangerous. She didn’t try to make eye contact with me - which for me, with a woman, was unusual. OK, just suck it up for the time being. I was there for a few reasons. Probably the first was that she, herself, wanted absolution for something she had done in a past life. Why? I was soon to find out. Secondly, she had contacted a high-flying client of mine with an offer to try to return goods which she had stolen from her. Note my words ‘try to return’. There was a whole lot of trouble lurking in them than you would ever figure from first sight – or ‘first hear’ for that matter.

So I was there to sort this out - and I had literally no idea what I was fucking-well getting myself into.

So what was new?

Chapter 2

A couple of days before my visit to maximum security Holloway, I got a call from the PA of my ‘high-flying client’ to come up to the Big House. The time was one and the date was supposed to be lunch. I drove from my office in Southampton down the motorway to Poolemouth: a small but very affluent village nestled on a wide bay in the arms of two high bluffs. This Big House, real name Arcadia, sat on the higher of the two and to the west of the small town. Stormy Spring had been blown away by the ever-escalating southern sun, and the weather was past a stormy ‘early’ and heading very soon to a balmy ‘mid’ summer. I had made this journey quite a few times, and with a now cloudless sky the view from the cliff to the sea was spectacular. The powerful Bentley engine took the rise without effort or gear-change and reached the Porte Cochere of the massive mansion with a quiet grace.

One of the male staff met and took the car away to park. I saw myself to the prestigious front entry and waited to be taken to her.

The conservatory was massive and reminded me of Singapore’s Cloud Forest – well almost. Some place. I’d been there on exercises with the Singaporean army. A good bunch. Arcadia’s was a real hot house and not the place for winter gear. The flora was an assortment of towering rain forest plants with a contrast between thirty foot palms, banana plants, tree ferns and low gardens thick with colourful exotics.

She was standing alone gazing outside at her own cow manicured grassy vista. An elbow was balanced on one hip with a cigarette posed between her fingers. She was wearing a short-sleeve skivvy, a pair of shiny skin-tight leggings, and had her streaked blond hair bunned high on her head. I knew before she turned that I’d like what I saw.

Kimberly Prester was the sole heir to old money, big money. She was head of an empire that was worth more than I could count. The Presters before her had set up a more or less self-running financial organisation which had outright ownership, major shareholding, or just big interest in many diverse enterprises which included banks, hospitals, restaurant chains, medical research, and almost any other thing you could diversify into. All this had been started almost two centuries previously by a penniless ancestor who was an out of work Scottish mining surveyor. Apparently he arrived in Poolemouth with wife and children after a harrowing trip from the north, and after settling in a derelict croft curiously built on the site of the present mansion, had made a remarkable discovery which brought wealth to him, his family, and ultimately to the nearby village. That’s the local story which I think is a load of bull, but I’m about the only person around here who doesn’t believe that Arcadia, the house, was the font of all that good fortune. Kimberly Prester knows something but doesn’t say. Oh well!

But back to facts. Kimberly Prester was not born to this life but was found in the US by the executers of the last Prester’s will. She was the last living relative and heir to the entire catastrophe. She took her time to settle into the position, but soon saw flaws in the ‘self-running’ bit of the business. In short, she took over from the many self-serving directors who were effortlessly lining their pockets and took control.

Now I’m the kind of guy that’s interested in football on the TV, girls and good whisky. Fix me up with any combination of two of them and I’m your puppy. So I really can’t fill you in as to how she did it. Plus I wasn’t around at the time. But she transformed the organisation with the recruitment of the right personnel – her PA Cate being one of them.

While Miss Prester is an enigma which I’m at a loss to understand – well aren’t most women? – she has bestowed on me a couple of very handy little gifts. During my first case for her I managed to get my little rust-bucket of a three cylinder Cougar burned to death by some very bad people. By way of compensation Miss Kimberly gave me the use of a motor from her own private collection – a state of the art Bentley no less – which she hasn’t asked for back. And some car that is.

Also, at my original meeting with her during which I was negotiating my fees and expenses – and thinking I was doing pretty well – she hit me with the presentation of a Black Visa. I say I was hit, maybe dumb struck would be better? It had a credit limit of one hundred thousand which was mine to use both where and when required. I was supposed to clear each major transaction with her. I never did. She never asked why.

After that I stopped negotiating.

Chapter 3

‘You still seeing that slut?’ She opened without turning. I knew who she meant and I was, but I wasn’t about to tell her.

I ignored her. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Does it always have to be a problem? Maybe I just wanted to see you?’

‘You never ‘just want’ anything - especially me. What is it this time?’

‘I’m so glad you didn’t trot out your old ‘who do I have to kill?’ cliché.’

‘Did you pull the wings off flies when you were a kid?’

She half turned and glanced at me sidelong from under her long lashes. She took another drag and exhaled lady-like. ‘Maybe you’d like it if I pulled the wings off your flies?’ It sounded husky.

‘Maybe if you zipped up that mouth you’d get a boyfriend or two.’

‘Then how would I keep them?’

‘You’d figure something.’

She turned and blew the smoke right into my face.

‘Sit down, soldier, I’ve got some work for you,’ she gave a wry smile. ‘I want you to go see Scotty Greene. Something big has come up and I think it’s the right job for you.’

I took a glossy rot iron seat in front of a glossy rot iron table, grabbed a transparent jug of back coffee and poured myself one. Scotty is the only solicitor in town, is young, is the source of a hellova lot of my work, and is Vanda’s boyfriend. He’s one of the good guys.

‘Go on.’ I said.

‘It’s a book,’ she said. ‘It’s mine – and I want it back.’

‘What kind of book?’ I queried.

‘Once upon a time, when I was young, stupid, and only in this place for a couple of months, we discovered a concealed basement. In it there was only one thing: a heavily framed and glass protected painting apparently by Nicholas Poussin. It was known as ‘The Shepherds of Arcadia’, or ‘Et In Arcadia Ego.’- the title.’

‘That’s not a book, though. Is it?’

‘Obviously not, dummy. To cut a good story short, I went to London to try to find out of it was authentic. There I met the leading expert on the painting – a Sir James Watters, who made my flesh creep. I also met his university trained daughter Tilly McKinnon who didn’t. Tilly was an art expert at the scientific level – or so I thought – and offered to examine the work for me. I didn’t have huge hopes. I already knew that there was an identical original hanging in the Louvre. Now our Miss Tilly discovered more than she was being paid for.’

‘Which was?’

‘I wish you’d shut up and not keep interrupting, Joey. Which was that the heavy protective frame was in fact a safe door, and the painting a clue how to open it. And fucking-well open it she did.’

‘And found your book and fucked off?’

‘Nicely put – as usual you have a way with words, Joey. But to finish, our Miss McKinnon is currently doing life in Wentworth. She claims she wants to help get the book returned to us.’

‘And you want me to find out what the fuck is going on?’

‘I want you the find out why she wants the book returned and what she’s really up to. One other thing that I do know is that the book has other interested parties who, I think, would also like to get to Miss McKinnon before we do.’

‘Like?’

‘I’ve been told that the Vatican is one of them and was or is still prepared to mortgage the Vatican itself to get their hands on it.’

I wish them luck.

Chapter 4

I had reversed my chair, was looking out of my street-side window and contemplating the woes of the world when my intercom - if that’s what you call the two phone system in the office - rang. I dragged my eyes off the early morning traffic and spun myself back to the desk. Usually Vanda would just yell through our partition, so I knew that this time we had some paying visitor. Bugger that. I didn’t feel like working today. I just felt like fucking around like Ferris Buller. But the phone was insistent. I picked up. She didn’t even let me speak,

‘Are you free?’ She asked.

I could’ve said ‘no, I’m picking my fucking nose,’ but instead I opted for ‘yes.’

‘I’ve got two gents who would like your advice on some matters.’

Sounded funny? Instinctively I put my fist around the Berretta clipped to the underside of my desk instead of down the back of my trousers or in my sock. These were business hours.

‘Send them in,’ I mumbled.

What an odd pair. The bigger of the two looked as though he hadn’t eaten in weeks - maybe years. He was Caucasian. You could tell by the teeth, not the skin colour. But he was well dressed. His hair was thin but combed and oiled. His side kick was his own alter-ego: short, fat and Mediterranean.

‘Let me introduce ourselves,’ said the tall one. With an accent that sounded like phoney Etonian.

‘First better fight for the good seat,’ I countered.

‘No less than I expected, Mister Netherhill,’ again the tall one.

He took the wing back next the coffee table while fatso pulled the kitchen chair from the front of my desk.

‘My name is Sidney Laurie. My colleague here is Mister Peter Greenstreet.’

‘Those are about as real as my own,’ I jabbed.

‘Names mean nothing, Mister Netherhill. They’re only good for something to put on a gravestone. But something that does mean something is what my tubby colleague here has in his brown paper bag.’ He gestured towards the other man.

‘I hope it’s not trouble.’

‘Trouble is where you find it - or where you make it.’

‘Or when you date it.’

‘Quite so.’

‘Is this paper bag that your friend has figurative or literal?’

‘Metaphorical, actually. It conveys a favoured method of payment to certain professionals such as you. And unless you’re not as smart as I’m told you are, you’ve worked out that particular meaning already. But let’s not bandy with words, Mister Netherhill, let’s get right to the point of our visitation.’

‘Oh, no need to rush. The first one’s for free.’

The names they gave me were obviously fake but with an ‘in’ joke woven in there. I have to admit that right from the start I neither trusted nor liked them. But their story was fascinating. I knew that somewhere buried therein would be a sting, a con or a shooting, and I was there to be suckered in.

Fat man kept his silence during the entire interview and I could only figure that he didn’t speak English, was extremely dumb, or was trying to look tough. I sensed that somewhere down the track he and I would have to sort things out - but not just yet. Sidney Laurie interrupted my musings.

‘Of course, Mister Netherhill, what we are after are your services. Why you? That’s easy. Before coming here we checked you out with a family recommended to us as being most reliable in those matters: the DeMontfords. A young lady who seems to run that family business recommended you most highly. You are eminently qualified to render the assistance we require, and soon you’ll come to understand why. But first a story.’ I held my breath in dreamy anticipation. Listening to drawn-out boring stories was par for the course in my business. He continued, ‘Once upon a time, not too long ago, there was a London antique dealer of sorts. This man came to possess an old book which was very valuable. He was fairly wealthy and ‘old school’ but he could never have afforded to acquire this little treasure legitimately. Whom he got it from was an enduring mystery which myself and my colleague have picked at over for the last couple of years. More of that later. No, reasoning that the artefact had been stolen, we also reasoned that he would never be able to dispose of it legitimately. It seems that he tried to sell it to the wrong sort of people. He went missing when the heat came on, with his safe open, and the book gone.’

‘Has the trail gone cold? Not quite. What the felons who had been sent to extract the manuscript from his possession failed to realise was that while he would have kept no incriminating record of whom he was dealing with, he still had to make contact with them And to do that he would use either email or cell phone. In either case there would be traces of his links to them.’

‘And you want me to find these links and maybe pay them a visit? Let me warn you, Sidney, that I only kill people for my friends. And you and your pal here aren’t quite in that category. Plus, before we go any further, I’d like to know why you’ve both obviously invested so much time into this quest? Just what’s in it for you?

‘A good question, Mister Netherhill,’ answered the thin man. ‘So I’ll give you a good answer. Mister Greenstreet here and I are, like you, private detectives. And like you, we too have a client who has employed us to find the book. We have chosen to sub-let the search in this part of the world. Local knowledge is money. And you are our number one choice.’

‘Because…’

‘Because the object in question was originally discovered below the floor of Arcadia – a happy hunting ground of your own, we believe.’

‘I don’t know what possible good I can do if it’s already gone.’

‘We don’t want you to find it, Mister Netherhill. Just find out where it is, who has it, and we’ll do the rest.’

‘Do you have a lead?’

‘No, sir. That’s precisely why we’re here. But we have been told that you have exceptional methods of, let’s say, research which are not available to conventional methodologists.’

Methodologists? What the fuck are they?

‘We don’t intend to teach you how to suck eggs, Mister Netherhill, but we’re sure that you can start with accessing his phone records and what’s still held on his servers. We’re sure that you probably know more avenues of discovery than that. We’ll leave it to you how you proceed.’

‘A name?’

‘Watters,’ he hesitated, ‘Sir James.’

Chapter 5

The prison warden sat opposite me across her dark cigarette stained desk. The fact that she was speaking at me at all was due to my request to interview this very unusual prisoner. Obviously she wanted to know what my interest in this woman was. But more to the point she wanted to personally speak to me about her.

She seemed warm and friendly, but I sensed that under that facade there lay something I would not want to tangle with. She introduced herself as Warden Martha Montgomery. She looked in her forties, had residual good looks hiding behind a pair of heavy browline glasses, and a figure that placed her for a career climbing administrator, rather than a well-built prison guard. She traded niceties with me, giving nothing away until the coffee arrived. Looking directly at the burn marks on the desk, I made a wrong assumption and offered her a cigarette. She politely refused explaining that the inmates that were brought to her were more often than not still smoking. Stubbing them out on her desk was a proxy act of defiance. She didn’t seem concerned.

‘I’ll come straight to the point, Mister Netherhill,’ she launched into it, ‘if you intend to have any dealings with this woman, you will have to be extremely careful. Now I don’t know what you want with her – or she with you - and since you’re here as an appointee of her solicitor, I can’t force you to tell me either. Client confidentiality and all that crap.’

I was starting to like this woman. I liked her cut. She was power-dressed but with enough cleavage to show that she was an attractive woman, knew how to use it - and me a sucker. The scent of Channel nailed it.

‘Joey,’ I said.

‘You’re a private investigator’, she hesitated, ‘Joey. I did a bit of background on you. It seems you’re quite a guy. Trouble seems to follow you, doesn’t it? Well this time, Joey, you’re walking towards it, not ahead of it. My advice would be to stay well clear of this ‘client’. But I guess you’ve got a job to do - whatever that is.’

‘Would you really like a smoke?’ I asked. I knew she’d like the change of tack. It would puzzle her a bit, but she’d know I was a player.

‘I’ll open a window,’ she smiled, ‘Mine are the only ones that do in this hole.’

I lit two at once and handed one to her.

‘I like that in a man,’ she said, ‘no lipstick.’

I got the drift.

‘I only wear that after meetings,’ I replied.

She got the drift.

‘Maybe during?’

This was going well. Too well.

‘The real point is, Joey, that this is the most dangerous woman in the whole of Europe. And I’m not exaggerating. So many murders have been pinned on