Dead Men’s Shoes: Bluebelle Investigations, #0

By Geoff Palmer

Banking can be dull ... and deadly!

Jane Child's career is going nowhere. Stuck in the headquarters of a large London bank, she's in the slow lane heading towards a middle-management dead end when her boss becomes a basket case. Suddenly thrust into the limelight, Jane is now Acting Divisional Manager of International Business – a demanding role she's not sure she even wants.

The new job comes with a new computer, a laptop that contains something more than official, bank-authorised software. With the help of her new friend Pri, Jane cracks the computer, discovers her boss's tawdry secret, and stumbles on an unexpected and intriguing relationship along the way. But there are secrets within secrets, and when Jane inadvertently stirs the murky waters of the criminal underworld, some very big, very nasty fish swim out.

What she's uncovered is a grand conspiracy that could not only cost Jane her career and everything she holds dear, but also her life ...

 

Dead Men's Shoes is a prequel to the highly-acclaimed Bluebelle Investigations series, and takes place two months before the incidents in the first book, Private Viewing.

Read Dead Men's Shoes and help Jane expose a heinous conspiracy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Geoff Palmer
• Release date: Nov 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393006107

Geoff Palmer

Geoff Palmer is a writer, which is astonishingly convenient as you appear to be a reader! He’s climbed mountains in Africa, picked grapes in Switzerland, sold cameras in London, programmed computers in Fiji, and spent eight years working as a professional photographer. He’s also quite tall. Geoff’s first novel, Telling Stories, won the Reed / North & South Fiction Award, and in 20+ years of freelance technical writing he’s won four Qantas Media Awards and been a finalist for Columnist of the Year. His second novel, Too Many Zeros, was published by Penguin in 2011, and a number of other novels have followed since. He writes, every day if he can, subject to the demands of his cat, Heidi, who regards him as her personal servant, portable cushion and entertainment centre. In return, she kindly allows him to share her house in Wellington, New Zealand. You'll find him at: facebook.com/geoffpalmerNZ twitter.com/geoffpalmer

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Author’s Note

The events in this book take place a couple of months before Private Viewing, the first novel in the Jane Child/Bluebelle Investigations series of thrillers.

Dead Men’s Shoes is a novella of 40,000 words (roughly 110 print pages) and is a prequel to the other books in the series. I’ve been careful not to include spoilers (for those of you who are new to the characters), but existing fans of Jane’s adventures will find a few hints of what’s to come. There’s plenty of fresh action and mystery for everyone to enjoy, as well as a little extra background detail on some of the major players.

Like all my books, I had great fun writing this. I hope you have a blast reading it.

Geoff Palmer

Wellington, New Zealand

Dead Men's Shoes

A Bluebelle Investigations

Suspense Thriller

Geoff Palmer

PSlogo

PODSNAP PUBLISHING

Wellington, New Zealand

1

‘Ron Jonson thinks he's a sofa.’

Jane Child looked up from her screen. Alistair Downley was always making little jokes. ‘Chesterfield, divan or mid-century modern?’

‘Certainly something well-worn and over-stuffed,’ Barry Tonks added in a low voice, pushing back from his desk and wheeling his chair across to join the conversation.

The other two looked askance. Barry was normally the quiet one of the trio. Bespectacled, middle-aged, married, with a house in Surbiton, he wore pinstriped suits and carried a rolled umbrella to and from work each day regardless of the weather. The archetypal banker; a cardboard cut-out you could slot in anywhere in London’s financial district. But there was more to Barry than met the eye, as Jane and Alistair knew. Still, he rarely made snarky comments, so they regarded him with surprise.

Barry coloured from the base of his cheeks to the top of his balding head. ‘Well... you know what I mean. I’ve never had much time for that lazy so-and-so.’

‘Worn out and completely stuffed,’ Alistair said. ‘You know I’ll be quoting that in the staff bar, don’t you?’

‘I did not say he was—’

‘The punchline, Alistair?’ Jane sighed. ‘Ron Jonson thinks he's a sofa because...? C’mon, I’m busy here. Audit reports don’t write themselves.’

‘Forget your audit reports, darling, I’m serious. There is no punchline, just a simple statement of fact: Ron Jonson thinks he's a sofa. End of statement.’ With that, Alistair tossed his head, went to his desk and logged in to his computer.

Barry and Jane exchanged a glance. They knew Alistair. They knew he was waiting for them to beg for more, and they were both equally determined not to play his game.

‘And Arthur Timms plays with dolls,’ Jane said to Barry.

‘I heard David Cholmondeley-Majoribanks won his surname in a raffle,’ Barry replied, pushing back to his desk.

Seconds of silence filled the cubicle as Jane and Barry pretended to get back to work, then Alistair spluttered, ‘What the devil are you two talking about?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing.’

‘I give you the hot goss of the year, and all you can do is come back with school yard tittle-tattle.’

‘Was mine the tittle or the tattle?’ Jane asked Barry.

‘I thought you had audit reports to finish.’

‘You can't really split that conjunction, you know.’ Barry ignored Alistair. ‘Tittle on its own just means a tiny amount, while tattle can refer to disclosing information, speaking rapidly, or—’

‘Yes, yes, thank you, Thesaurus Rex! Look, if you’re not interested, just say so.’

‘Not interested.’

‘Not interested.’

‘But you should be! It’s absolutely, stone-cold true. He’s just been escorted from the premises.’

Jane glanced towards the window despite herself, but nine storeys up she couldn’t see the street.

‘Not out the front, obviously. Divisional managers get executive treatment, even barking mad ones. Especially barking mad ones.’

‘A barking sofa. Now there’s an image to conjure with.’

Alistair let out an exasperated sigh, rocked back in his seat and stared at the ceiling.

‘Oh come on, Al. We’re just teasing. We can see you’re bursting with it. Just spit it out and stop being such a drama queen.’

He gave her a petulant look. Jane was one of the few people who could get away with a remark like that. ‘Well, I was talking to Maddy Higgins on twelve. Just chitchat, passing the time of day, you know the sort of thing. Then she got bleeped. Urgent text. Up to the boardroom, pronto, please. They had a situation.’

‘This is Dr Higgins from HR?’ Barry asked.

Alistair’s glare said two things: How many Maddy Higgins are there? And will you damn well stop interrupting!

Barry had the grace to look chastened. Alistair continued. ‘So me being me, I tagged along. Said I had something to drop off on the seventeenth and took the lift up with her. And she said, without any prompting at all, I expect it’s Mr Jonson again. Oh, really? I said. Yes, he’s been having one or two issues lately. What sort of issues? I asked, ever so nonchalant, and she said I wasn’t to tell anyone, but she suspected he was suffering from Ekbom's Syndrome.’

‘Wha—?’

‘Ssshh!’

‘I was about to ask what that was when the lift pinged, and we arrived. Max Rogers from Security was waiting for her, and Laurel and Hardy waved them straight through, leaving poor old moi standing around like a spare whatsit at an orgy.’ Laurel and Hardy were the nicknames staff gave to the two starchy receptionists with alabaster faces and ingenuous smiles who guarded the executive suites from behind an imposing oak desk. ‘So, quick as a flash I said I had a ten o'clock with Mr Jonson. I didn’t of course. They checked his diary. But I said he’d asked me to come up on his way in to work this morning and had probably hadn't written it up yet.

‘What could they say? They knew something was up backstage and that it involved him, but not what or how bad. All they could do was ask me to take a seat. Which I did. And while I was there, I looked up old Ekbom.’ He withdrew his phone with a flourish.

The others watched as Alistair began reading from the screen. ‘Ekbom’s Syndrome, more commonly known as delusional parasitosis, is a disorder in which individuals believe they are infested with parasites, insects, or bugs, whereas in reality no such infestation is present.’ He looked up. ‘Remember his left arm? How he was always shaking and scratching it?’ Jane did. Jonson had been her boss for over a year now, and she assumed it was a nervous tic, though it had got worse in the last few weeks. He’d started twitching his left leg too. ‘He apparently thought he had woodworm.’

Barry’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s a bit of leap isn’t it, Alistair? How could you possibly know that?’

‘Because they escorted him out while I was sitting there. Max on one side, Maddy on the other. Ronnie-boy kept saying ‘Mind the arm, that’s an antique,’ and stomping and shaking his leg. Reckoned the woodworm were wreaking havoc with the mahogany, and that without him, the king and Princess Caroline would have nowhere to sit.’

‘Princess Caroline?’

‘Married George IV in 1820. You can trust an old queen to know his monarchs. And he said they, plural, would have nowhere to sit. Therefore, he must’ve thought he was a sofa.’

‘Why not a pew or a park bench?’

‘Fuck off, Barry.’ Alistair sniffed. ‘Anyway, before the lift arrived, he had some sort of fit. Nothing major, just a bit of twitching and swearing. They sat him down, either Laurel or Hardy called an ambulance, and the other one said they should take him out the back way. The executive lift. You know, the one that goes straight to the executive car park. Can’t have old Ronnie frothing and babbling at the proles. We might lose all respect for senior management. Hah!

‘So, exit Ron Jonson, stage left. God knows when, or even if, he’ll ever be back.’ Alistair sat forward in his seat, crossed his arms and regarded his cubicle-mates with a So what do you think of that? look.

‘And that just happened, just now?’ Jane asked.

‘Not five minutes ago. You two are the first to hear.’

‘Gosh, that’s...’ Jane didn’t know what to say. Jonson was her boss. She reported directly to him, but he was a smarmy man with a heightened sense of his own importance. He’d tried to slip a hand up her skirt on her first day, and she’d forcefully dissuaded him. So forcefully that he never tried anything like it again. If it had been his right arm that had that tic, she might have worried she’d done some permanent damage. Since then, their relationship had been remote and purely professional, and on a purely professional basis she didn’t regard him as a particularly good or a particularly effective manager. Still, she didn’t wish ill on anyone, and despite Alistair’s humorous recitation, it sounded like the poor man had had some sort of breakdown.

She blinked, aware of the other two looking at her expectantly. ‘What?’

‘She doesn’t get it, does she Barry?’

‘It’s certainly taking a while to sink in.’

Jane frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘If she expects us to grovel, forget it. Alistair Downley grovels to no one – with the possible exception of George Clooney. And then only if he asks nicely.’

‘No, I don’t think Jane’s like that,’ Barry said. ‘She wouldn’t let it go to her head.’

As he spoke, the realisation dawned. Jane was Ron Jonson’s deputy. With him out of the picture – on long-term sick leave or perhaps even pensioned off – she was now in charge of the whole division.

2

The call didn’t come till late that afternoon. Jane had been on tenterhooks since Alistair delivered the news, and by the time Arthur Timms’ private secretary called to invite her to a meeting on the seventeenth floor, the whole building knew what had happened.

‘You’ve no doubt heard the stories about Mr Jonson’s unexpected departure,’ Timms said, brushing a hand over his slicked-back grey hair.

Jane nodded. There was no use denying it.

‘I wish I knew where these damn rumours came from.’

Jane had a pretty good idea. ‘Is it true then?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Yes, I’m afraid it is. Mr Jonson has been suffering from overwork...’

Overwork? Him?

‘...and has been for some time. I take the blame, of course. I should have recognised the symptoms sooner. It’s early days yet, but we may have to consider premature retirement. In the meantime, it’s an important role and I need someone to step up to bat for him. As his deputy, Ms Child, you would seem to be the obvious candidate.’

There was something about the way he stressed the word seem that Jane found mildly discouraging.

Timms arched an eyebrow. ‘My question to you is, are you up for it?’

Jane regarded him squarely and nodded. ‘I think so, yes.’

I have only been propping that oily idiot up since the day I started working for him.

‘Only, you are...’

A woman?

‘...rather young.’

Hell’s bells, I’m thirty-four. Still, thanks for the compliment.

‘How long have you been with us now?’

‘The bank?’ Jane said. ‘Twelve years. The last seven here in Head Office.’

‘And you’ve been under Mr Jonson for what, the last year or so?’

I wouldn’t put it quite like that. In fact, I wouldn’t put it like that at all.

Jane nodded.

‘Well,’ Timms frowned, ‘if you think you can cope. Only on a temporary basis, of course, but as of now consider yourself acting Divisional Manager of International Business.’

Jane felt a flush of pride and had to grit her teeth to stop herself from smiling. Grinning probably wasn’t the best way to react to the illness of a colleague, even if it did mean promotion.

‘Does that mean I’ll be taking over his office?’ she asked.

‘Move up here? No, no, no. This only a temporary arrangement. He may be back with us in a week or two. We shall have to await word from the doctors.’

‘And... if the news isn’t good?’

Timms massaged an