Stone Cold Red Hot - страница 14

There was more work going on around Piccadilly Gardens. Manchester was in a constant process of change. The flourishing music business and club culture had brought confidence and development to the area. The city was a major tourist destination now. I was standing within spitting distance of Chinatown with its magnificent Chinese arch and plethora of restaurants, of the thriving gay village, host to the largest gay Mardi Gras in Europe, of the huge Greater Manchester Exhibition Centre and the Bridgewater Hall home to the Halle orchestra. A short ride on the Metro Link would get me to Old Trafford cricket ground or Manchester United football club. Not that I’d ever been.

I spent the afternoon in the office, writing up notes and planning how I would use my time over the next few days. Roger Pickering had dropped off his letter for the powers that be at Keele and I wrote one of my own to go with it, outlining again that I wanted to have any forwarding address for Jennifer Pickering believed to have left her course in the autumn term 1976. If they didn’t have a record of that I asked whether they could give me details of Jennifer’s Halls of Residence address while she was at Keele? And could they provide any contact details for students there at the same time who might be able to assist me? I thought the latter was a long shot really and my hopes were resting on them coming up with the address that Jennifer had moved to. Then I’d take it from there.

After a top-up of caffeine I rang and introduced myself to Mr Poole, thanked him for his offer, and asked if I could come to his house that Friday evening to start my surveillance.

“I’ll pretend to be a distant relative,” I said, “my aunt’s in Wythenshawe hospital having tests and I’m visiting from London.”

“If anyone asks,” he said, “I’ll tell them you’re one of Joan’s children. My son Malcolm remarried and moved down south. Joan already had three children from her first marriage. You’d be a step-grand daughter, I reckon. You’d not be expected to know much about this side of the family.”

“That sounds great, and we needn’t have met before. I’ll use my own first name – Sal, Sal Smith will do.”

Mr Poole cleared his throat. “What exactly will it involve? You being here.”

“I’ll have a camcorder, a video, to record anything that goes off. I’ll keep it running whenever there’s any activity outside the Ibrahim’s, so most of the time I’ll be perched in the window filming or watching for something to happen. I hope to leave in the early hours when Mr Ibrahim is back from work. And if anything happens before then will you ring me on this number – have you got a pen?”

I gave him my number and the one for my mobile and said I’d see him Friday. He seemed to be taking the whole set-up in his stride and I was looking forward to meeting him, impressed at how he was prepared to get involved and resist the threat of violence that came with the territory.

I managed half an hour on Ray’s computer searching for an e-mail address for Jennifer Pickering, J. Pickering, Jenny Pickering and J. L. Pickering.

I found three matches in all, two in the United Kingdom and one in Hawaii. I sent messages to all of them asking them to reply and confirm whether they were Jennifer Lesley Pickering formerly of Manchester, U.K. and giving her birthdate. I also left instructions for two search engines to carry on searching and give me the results later.

Of the UK matches there was an J. Pickering in London but that could have been a John or a Julie, and a Jennifer Pickering in Scarborough. This last one seemed to be the most likely – she’d given her full name but not bothered with her middle name. I tried not to get too excited about it but my imagination kept running scenes where I checked my e-mail and found a great big “Yes, that’s me!” message waiting for me. Oh, if only…

Chester is about thirty five miles south west of Manchester towards North Wales. I allowed myself three quarters of an hour to get there which was about right. When Maddie and I have holidays we often go camping in Wales, so the journey reminded me of setting off, desperately trying to remember exactly what I had forgotten to pack.