I paid my entrance fee and wandered about, completely in tune with the surroundings in casual grey tracksuit and trainers. Who would notice that I never went on a court? The camera was in my Adidas sports bag, another charity shop purchase. It also contained a bottle of water and a packet of oatmeal biscuits, in case it was a long siege. Also the unreturned Rawlings issue torch. I did not feel safe without it.
From the visitors’ gallery I watched her play. Yes, she was left-handed. But for all that, her mobility seemed excellent. Not a twitch or a wince. She looked fit to me. In the cafeteria she carried a tray of snacks without trouble, moved chairs, reached for things, nodded and talked to people sitting behind her. She’d be even more mobile if Guilberts had to pay her £150,000 compensation.
I took some boring shots of squash.
I couldn’t even imagine having that much money. What would I do with it? Move? No, I liked my two bedsits. They suited me. Anyway, who’d do the housework in somewhere bigger? Buy lots of new clothes. What for? I had enough to wear. I might buy a new pair of boots since last night’s soaking had taken the gloss off mine. They looked past their best now. Get a bigger and better car? Never! The ladybird and 1 were bonded for life.
Could I seduce DI James with loads of money in the bank? I doubted it. He would just shrug off offers of weekends in Paris, cruises in the Med, sun-soaked beaches in Barbados. He might accept a Mexican at Miguel’s but that would be all. He’d leave me at my door, go back to whatever he called home at the moment, forget me.
Then I saw the stalker. Someone else was watching from a table at the far side of the cafeteria. Sonia had not been lying. A man was definitely following her. Again that uniformed look, yet I could not see his face or define the uniform, dark material, shoulders padded. He was keeping out of her sight. I began following him, following her. It was uncanny. She went to her car and he went to his, a Vauxhall. I went to mine. This was ridiculous. I started the engine. My ladybird throbbed to life immediately.
The three cars manoeuvred towards the exit. It was like a computer game. I wondered where it would lead me to. I had to tell DI James, just in case. The hermit’s hole haunted me. I left a message on his answer phone. A rambling sort of message, but I hoped he understood the gist.
We drove in a raggedy convoy. I tried to note which roads we were taking but it was impossible. These people knew inland Sussex better than I did. Strictly against the law, I drank and ate as I drove. I was feeling in need of energy. Mavis, please open up!
Then, suddenly, I lost the stalker, the Vauxhall. I was following the white Toyota but the man had gone, taking an earlier turning towards Gatwick. I never saw it happen. Damn. Still, I was following Sonia and that’s what I was (hopefully) being paid for.
She slowed down and took a left turning down a lane, then another, bumping over an unmade road.
‘Sorry,’ I said to the ladybird. She was not built for bumpy lanes. The leafy track, meandering under arches of branches, led to an idyllic spot. Sweeps of green grass, weeping willows wept over the water, ducks and swans paddling about, shaded by ancient trees. And there, lording it over all, was a watermill.
The wheel over the water was a ten-foot-high steel structure, the lower slats immersed in the river. The eighteenth-century part of the building was built of dark wood. I was not sure which bit of what river we had reached. Sonia parked but I couldn’t do the same. I reversed back and left the ladybird in a secluded copse. What on earth was Sonia doing here? Only a few people were wandering about. It was a tourist spot in the summer. One of the last working watermills in Sussex. There were bags of stone-ground flour on sale in a small shack. I tried to look like a tourist, taking pictures.
Sonia was walking determinedly towards an area where a few valiant souls were trying to have a winter picnic. Soup in thermoses, sausages in foil. She stopped at a wooden table where another woman was sitting.
The other woman was huddled up in a sheepskin coat, close — knitted cap pulled down over her hair, thick scarf wrapped round her neck. She seemed vaguely familiar in an odd way. I thought I had seen her before. She greeted Sonia tersely as if she had been waiting a long time.
Sonia and the woman began talking. She poured Sonia a drink out of a thermos. It looked like coffee. She had some packets of sandwiches and they unwrapped them. They seemed to be on reasonable terms, yet Sonia was tense, not that at ease.
I took some video shots, at a distance, in case Sonia started to climb a tree. I did not know what I was doing here or where I was. The people who paid me money were so trusting.
The two women seemed to be having some kind of argument. Their voices were raised. Sonia turned white with anger.
‘I never said anything of the kind. Why should I give you half? You’ve done nothing special.’
‘Come on, Sonia, we wouldn’t be where we are now if it hadn’t been for me,’ said the other woman, her face like thunder. ‘And don’t you forget that.’
This was too good to miss. I crept nearer, taking a roundabout route so that I was never in direct view. Everyone else seemed to be going home. I was far too close to the slippery edge of the river bank, but the risk was worth it. I held onto some overhanging branches. The veined leaves brushed my face with wet fingers.
‘But I never said half, Sara. You’re being plain greedy. You always have been greedy. You wanted the nicest clothes, the best bed, the front seat in the car. I’ve always come second, but not this time. I’m the one dictating the terms.’
There was a moment’s silence but I could feel the tension in the air between the two women. Neither of them were eating now, sandwiches left on the table.
‘My dear Sonia,’ said Sara, the other woman, smoothly. ‘You should mind what you are saying and how you put it. Just you remember, I could blow the lid off the lop of this whole unsavoury scheme and then you’d get nothing, zero, zilch without my skiing injury …’
The next words chilled me. I even shivered and the branches sent raindrops flying. Sonia’s voice dropped low.
‘And you should be very careful what you say, Sara dear. You might have an unexpected accident, something quite out of the blue, something unexplainable.’
An unexpected accident like Oliver’s? Surely not? A woman could not have inflicted that arm-hold on Oliver, unless she was combat trained. Had Sonia been in the armed forces? Check a.s.a.p. She looked more like a witch than an army officer.
Part of my mind was aware of footsteps. Suddenly I went flying. I just had time to register the swift hard thump of hands flat on my back that knocked me off balance. I slithered down the bank, trying to grasp at anything, weeds, stones, mud. I plunged into the river and the coldness of the water took my cry for help out of my throat.
‘You’ve stalked me once too often,’ came a female voice from above. I couldn’t see anything but I knew that voice well enough. ‘Perhaps a ducking will teach you a lesson.’
In seconds the fast-running current swept me away from the bank. Last night’s downpour had filled the river to capacity. I struck out but my clothes hampered me and the water was full of swirling debris. I hung onto a broken branch, gasping for air, paddling with my legs. I knew how long people lasted in icy cold water. About ten minutes.
I tried to call out but no one was around. Even my arguing aggressor had disappeared. The dark waterwheel loomed ahead, thrashing the water, the slats of the wheel turning and slicing. If I could catch hold of one of them, it would lift me out of the water, taking me high enough so that I might be able to jump from it onto the safety of the bank. So I thought. It was worth a try. I’d be dead long before the river washed me ashore on some low bank near the coast.
The timing was not easy and I’m no athlete. I might get only one chance. The noise of the wheel became louder and louder. I could feel its pull. The slats were above me now as they came out of the river, cascades of spray sliding off them in a series of waterfalls. I caught hold of the slippery wood, half expecting my hands to be flung off. But
the opposite happened.
It happened with the speed of sound. Only I didn’t have time to make a sound.
The momentum of the wheel tossed me up into the air, legs flying, and I fell against the next rising slat, shattering the rotten wood. I remembered falling into churning water. My feet were being taken away from under me by some force that I could not control.
I was being tumbled round and round in the drum of a washing machine. I was being battered by slats. It was minutes before I could get up, stumbling, struggling.
Above me was the slate sky, dissected by movement. I tried to find something to hold onto while I gathered my wits. There was some kind of central rod, a sort of spindle, which was turning more slowly, slow enough for me to hold onto if I kept a hand over hand movement going. Somehow I forced myself to stand up, dragged myself to my feet but there was nothing to stand on.
Then I saw where I was. To my horror I realised that I had landed (if landed is the word) inside the waterwheel. If I did not want to become sliced meat, I had to keep running. I had to keep up with the wheel. By linking my arms over the rod and keeping a rhythmic leaping stride from slat to slat. I could just about stay upright and alive. I had to jump from one slat to the next one coming up. It was exhausting, beat ten visits to the gym. The alternative was to drown or be cut in half. No choice really.
The sky was darkening with more rain clouds. Spatterings hit my face. I was already soaked so another couple of pints made no difference. But I put my tongue out to catch raindrops. There was water everywhere but I needed some inside my body. Fear had dehydrated me. Exhaustion was fast catching up. This was one marathon that I was not going to finish.
Then I remembered my phone. God bless the mobile moguls. Would it be wet-proof? Without letting go of my hold, I twisted my hip up so that I could manoeuvre the phone out of my zipped-up pocket and into my hand. I could barely see what I was doing. My lashes were soaked and glued. The DI James number was on memory. I pressed the right code. He wasn’t there. Damn the man. I got his answering service again.
‘James …’ I shouted against the noise. ‘I’m … trapped. I can’t … get out.’ My voice jerked, words incoherent, disjointed. He would not be able to make anything of it. I tried again. ‘The old watermill. Sonia … pushed me in. James! James!’
My voice rose to a shriek as I almost lost my balance and the phone went flying out of my hand. The river sucked it up. I was gasping, hanging onto the rod grimly, legs numbed with cold now, trainers shredded. Had he heard enough? When would be listen? Did he check his calls regularly? He might be the other side of the county, on some case, concentrating on something else, not checking calls. There was nothing more I could do except hold on, pray, try to think straight.
I could see it all now, although it was almost too dark to see anything else. Half of my brain was working. Sonia and Sara were sisters, maybe even identical twins. They looked very alike. Sara was the one with the genuine shoulder dislocation; she’d attended the medicals, got the doctor’s certificates. I might even have followed her at times. She was the woman wearing the neck collar at the funeral. But Sonia was the one claiming the compensation, walking Jasper, playing squash, decorating her listed house.
What had happened that day when Oliver called at number eight Luton Road? Had Sara been there? Or Sonia, or both of them? Had Oliver put two and two together and come up with one hundred and fifty thousand? There must have been a very nasty scene. Perhaps it was then that Sonia decided that Oliver had to go, via Hell’s Revenge. Perhaps she suggested a walk to the front to the Christmas Fair to talk things over, down a lonely twitten. Perhaps she bought some parcel tape on the way.
My hands were becoming raw but there was nothing else to hold onto except this turning rod, my feet running beneath me.
I tried lifting a foot at a time and holding it up, to give the muscles a rest, so that I was not pacing each slat, but every other slat. It was some relief. My breathing got regulated so that I did not waste energy. Sergeant Rawlings once told me that energy is breath.
Sergeant Rawlings … his unreturned torch was in my pocket. I needed light. So I still had some means of attracting attention. I removed it with slow-motion carefulness and turned it on with my nose. I did not want to look around at my predicament but kept the thin white beam pointed straight upwards to the sky. Surely the watermill had some sort of keeper/miller type person? Someone had to lock up, shut the shop, count the money. At least once a day … or night … I’d lost track of time. It might be afternoon now or evening.
If someone came, they’d see the light, even if it was too dark to see me. A small figure, shrunken with cold, half-submerged in water. I was not simply half-drowned. I was sodden, drenched, saturated, waterlogged. My fingers were numb. I would not be able to hold on much longer.
I didn’t hear the voices or people running. I was vaguely aware that the waterwheel was slowing down or had my feet fallen off? Then the wheel stopped turning. I still hung on to the rod. even when arms were lifting me and trying to prise my fingers away. Several figures were sloshing about, balancing on slats, swearing, holding me up. I wouldn’t let go of the rod or the torch.
‘It’s all right, Jordan. You can let go now. We’ve got you.’
But I was still dreaming, lost in a mist. My brain had let go of reality and taken me to another world. Perhaps I had died and was drifting away and it was safe to give in. I let go.
They wrapped me in anything, coats, blankets, towels. The relentless movement had stopped, though my head was still going round. I was being carried somewhere.
‘I always wanted a hamster,’ said DI James. ‘But not one this heavy.’
Nineteen
They thawed me out and dried me out in hospital. Thank goodness it was not my best tracksuit. It was ripped to pieces. Could I charge it to expenses? My feet were in poor shape, too. Couldn’t charge for feet. Flowers arrived from Francis Guilbert, freesias and spray carnations, shades of pale yellow and mauve. I was touched. How did he know where I was? DS Evans, I suppose.
I didn’t remember being carried from the watermill by DI James, which was a shame. Such a unique experience ought to be indelible on my memory. But I barely knew who it was. The A & E doctor said I was in pretty bad shape but it was only cuts and bruises in the end. My feet and hands were the worst. Both were bandaged and sans sex appeal. They kept me in overnight, then lent me some huge plastic slip-ons to wear going home. I was a cloddish monster, clumping about, feet about a foot long, all white and crackling. I needed furry doggy slippers with cuddly faces. They ordered a taxi.
‘Don’t say anything,’ I said to the driver, clutching my Bowers. ‘I got caught in a meat mincer.’
‘Rather you than me,’ he said, averting his eyes.
I felt as if I had been away years. Hospital always does this to me. There’s a sort of mental cut-off point. Hospital is a no-man's-land where time does not exist. They said I could go home on condition I washed my feet and hands in salt water twice a day and put fresh dressings on.
It took me half a day to write up my notes, seeing as I could barely hold a pen. I was convinced now that Sonia was involved in Oliver’s death. If she and her sister were together in this compensation fraud and Oliver had found out, it followed that Sonia had to get rid of him. I re-read my two lists of reasons for paying out and not paying out.
I hobbled over to the window, looking at the rain-filled sky, watching the clouds. The scent from the freesias was gorgeous. I ought to buy more flowers. A familiar red and black spotted shape was parked outside, roof glistening with rain. My ladybird! Some kind soul had returned her to me. I must have left the keys in the ignition. All the pain of the last hours was wiped out by that generous gesture. I had to go out in her.
It took a bit of negotiation. My oversized feet were not meant for foot pedals. I only managed a sedate drive as far as my shop. I parked carefully outside, got out and hopped along the road.
‘Got any dressings?’
I said to Doris. She immediately shut her shop and sped down to Boots (now open on Sundays) where she bought mountains of surgical dressings, all shapes and sizes. Then she made me sit down in my office and put my feet up while she tut-tutted and lectured me on the dangers of my chosen profession.
‘I think she has already murdered one person, so one more wasn’t going to make any difference,’ I said cheerfully.
‘Jordan, this just won’t do. It’s all right chasing up people about lost tortoises, trivial sorts of things, but not murder. It’s not for you. Leave that to the experts. Detective Inspector James and his lot. You keep to chasing errant husbands and serving writs. At least you won’t get half-killed in the process.’
‘Divorce can be just as dangerous.’
‘Nonsense. This woman tried to kill you for £150,000. Now bath your feet, put some fresh dressings on and I’ll phone Mavis for a table this evening.’
‘Is she open?’
‘Re-opening today. She’ll do you a supper to die for.’
Not quite the right words but I got the message. I had nothing to wear. I was still trailing the borrowed hospital dressing gown. Hopefully my charity box would produce something wearable for supper. Cinderella’s fairy godmother never had a name, but nevertheless I called on her for help. I slept most of the afternoon in the Victorian button-back chair, my feet up on a cardboard box of books.
Maeve’s Cafe was festooned with balloons. Jasper was on guard by the door. He gave me a foolish grin and thumped his tail. There was a long table, draped with streamers and crackers and bowls of nuts. Red candles stood in holders, their lights wavering uncertainly each time the door opened and more people came in.
I could not believe it. There was Leroy Anderson and Mrs Fenwick, Mrs Drury and my book expert, Mr Frazer, Cleo Carling and her stepfather, Arthur Carling, both looking prosperous and content. How had Doris and Mavis managed to get in touch with all my friends? Except no jazz trumpeter. He had been missed out. They wouldn’t know about him. Nor Jack, the owner of the pier amusements, or maybe he had to work nights.
Spin and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 3) Page 18