She knew the name of the victim before I told her. She knew the street, the time, the colour of the car. She had hired me to find a killer — and somewhere between the third question and the fourth, I began to understand that she already knew exactly who it was.
My name is Ray Colton. I had been a private investigator for nine years, and in that time I had learned to read the gap between what clients said and what clients knew. Most people who hired me were frightened or desperate or both. This woman was neither. She sat across from my desk in a charcoal coat with her hands folded and her posture straight and she spoke about the murder of a man named Victor Laine the way you speak about a problem you have already solved but need someone else to document.
Her name, she told me, was Eleanor Marsh. She had been Victor Laine’s business partner for six years.
The case, as she presented it, was this: Victor Laine had been found in his car on Aldgate Street eleven days ago, a cardiac event, officially uncontested. The police had closed it quickly — he was fifty-eight, he had a history, the circumstances were unremarkable. Eleanor did not believe it was natural. She said Victor had told her, two weeks before he died, that someone inside their company was moving money in ways that would only make sense if they were planning to walk away from it. He had been about to go to a financial regulator. And then he had died in his car on a Tuesday evening.
She wanted me to find the person who had done it. She was offering a significant sum. She wanted results within three weeks.
It was a clean pitch. Too clean.
I asked her how she knew the details she had mentioned before I spoke — the street, the time, the colour of the car. Public record, she said. The police report summary had been published in a local news digest. I made a note to check that. I said I would consider the case and be in touch within twenty-four hours.
She left. I watched her walk across the street below my window and get into a dark blue car. From that distance I couldn’t see the plate. But I noted the car.
I checked the news digest that afternoon. The police report summary mentioned Aldgate Street and a cardiac event. It did not mention the time. It did not mention the colour of the car.
I sat back in my chair with that information and turned it over.
Eleanor Marsh had known two details that were not in any public record I could find. She had attributed them to a source that didn’t contain them. Which meant either she had access to the full police file — possible if she had a contact inside the department — or she had been there.
I called a contact of my own at the department. Not to ask about Eleanor — not yet — but to ask about Victor Laine. He took twenty-four hours to come back to me and when he did, his voice was careful in the way that meant something was being chosen.
Victor Laine’s case had been internally flagged, he said. Not reopened — flagged. Someone had requested a secondary review of the toxicology. The request had come from within the financial crimes unit, not from the original investigating officers. It had not yet been actioned.
I thanked him and ended the call and sat for a while.
Someone in financial crimes had looked at Victor Laine and seen something worth looking at again. And Eleanor Marsh, his business partner of six years, wanted me to find a killer inside their company. Those two things were not necessarily the same thing.
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