‘Thank you,’ I said to Samuel. He was out in the garden now, pulling up dead plants and throwing them on to a wheelbarrow.
‘I suppose it’s too late to find out anything about this now?’ he said, waving his arm towards the garden.
‘Maybe, probably. But don’t give up hope. You never know, the unexpected could happen.’
I drove home, wondering where to go and what to do with my finds. There was a chill in the air, a breeze disturbing the trees with feathered fingers. Summer was definitely over. I could not remember where I had put my two vests. In two bedsits, it’s essential to keep the current clothes at hand and hide the rest. There was a batch of bin bags tossed behind my moral chair. Another month and I might be needing one of them.
There was a message on my answerphone.
‘Jordan, I want to see you right away.’ No name, no pack drill, but I knew who it was. I doubted if it was an urgent lunch date or he was gasping for a pint at the Bear and Bait. No need to dress up. I’d go as I was.
DI James had either spotted my arrival from his office window or had been waiting for me downstairs. He grabbed my arm the moment I came through the doors of the station. They had recently installed automatic entry doors. They thought it would ease in any reluctant visitors, especially those handcuffed to an officer.
He marched me upstairs to his office, propelling me towards the inquisition chair. I sat down opposite his desk, out of breath from the rough handling. The surface was piled with files as usual. On top was a copy of the Sussex Record.
He picked the newspaper up and shook it in my face. I flinched back. This was not in the least like the normal remote and cool DI James. He was spitting mad, like a bull in a ring.
‘And what do you mean by this, Jordan? Tell me. I want to know and I’d prefer an intelligent answer.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said faintly. ‘What do I mean by what? I can’t give you an answer when I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘Don’t go all fragile on me, young woman,’ he snapped.
‘Read this.’ He thrust the newspaper at me. ‘Front page. Read it, damn you.’
I did not care to argue with language like that. I took the newspaper and read the front page. It was obvious why I was not the flavour of the month.
VITAL POLICE DOCUMENTS GO MISSING
LOCAL PI LOSES EVIDENCE
The enquiry into the murder of Mrs Anne Steel, wife of well-known local butcher, ground to a halt yesterday when it was discovered that valuable evidence has gone missing. The police will not disclose exactly what is this evidence but our sources say that it was in the hands of local private investigator, Jordan Lacey, when it went missing. Miss Lacey was unavailable for comment.
The story went on to describe the discovery of Mrs Steel in the garden and the vandalized lawn and shrubs.
I calmly folded the newspaper and handed it back to him.
‘I have no idea what they are on about,’ I said. ‘It sounds like a load of rubbish to me. I haven’t spoken to any reporters and I don’t have any vital evidence. Of course I wasn’t available for comment. I don’t know anything about this.’
‘So what’s this then?’ said James. ‘What do you call these?’ He produced three A4 sheets. They looked horribly familiar. ‘You asked DS Evans to get these dusted for you. Didn’t you realize what they were?’
I was one hundred per cent confused. No, I did not know what they were. No, I did not know that I had lost anything. I did not know that I had anything in my possession which could be lost. My main concern at that moment was that Ben Evans might be in trouble.
‘The dusting was just between friends,’ I said, trying to cover him. ‘Nothing heavy.’
‘I am not the slightest bit interested in who is friends with whom in this station,’ James said. ‘But I do want to know where the rest of the spreadsheets are. Where are they, Jordan?’
‘Ground,’ I repeated. ‘They put ground in the story. That wasn’t a very nice word to use. Mince and all that. Reporters have no sensitivity.’
DI James’s face was packed in ice. His ocean blue eyes had darkened and he was a million miles away. My blood freezes in my veins when he looks like that. I am undone and my head empties. Sometimes I think my fingernails will fall off. I wanted to get out of the room but my escape was blocked.
‘Where are the rest?’ He was sitting on the edge of his desk, using his height to intimidate me.
‘Rest of what?’
‘Have you completely lost what little sense you normally have?’
‘The rest of the spreadsheets? Is that what you mean? Well, I don’t exactly know how many more there were. Can I sue the Sussex Record? That story is libellous. I haven’t lost vital evidence. This could affect my livelihood. Clients won’t come to me if they don’t trust me. Confidentiality is prime.’
‘You’re dead right, Jordan. No one will hire you now. You might as well hang up your shades. First Class Investigations is finished.’
I didn’t like what I was hearing. It was starting to sound serious. Where had the Record got this story? How many people knew I had the spreadsheets in the first place?
‘I’ve never heard such pessimism. Finished indeed! Of course, FCI isn’t finished, because this ridiculous story isn’t true. I demand that you issue a denial. And I’m not leaving till I hear you on the phone to the editor saying just that.’
I put a great deal of indignation into that speech. It was Churchillian. On the beaches stuff.
DI James slid off the desk and went to look out of the window. This was a familiar trick when questioning a suspect. The pregnant pause. Let them sweat. Me, a suspect? Suspect of what, I wanted to know.
‘I might just do that if you conveniently start remembering where the rest of the spreadsheets are. You do have them, don’t you? Your shop is probably wall to wall with spreadsheets.’
‘I don’t know exactly where they are. DS Evans just took a sample as a favour. I don’t even know what they are. Perhaps she was an Avon lady. You know, ding-dong Avon calling.’
‘Did you read them?’
‘I read some of them. They didn’t make sense.’
‘And what did you think of them?’
‘Someone’s buying a lot of lipsticks.’
‘To the tune of half a million pounds? If you had done a little research, some adding-up, you might have realized that these spreadsheets are big business. Unusual for the wife of a local butcher. We think we have been looking for her for years. We checked Anne Steel’s bridge friends. They haven’t seen her in months.’
‘Half a million pounds?’ That’s a whole lot of noughts. No wonder her wardrobes were full of designer clothes. ‘What sort of business?’ I asked faintly. I wondered if there was an opening for me now that Anne Steel had more or less, and against her will, relinquished the job.
‘Smuggling, Jordan. We’ve known for a long time that there’s smuggling still going on. Just like in the 18th century. Only now it’s not casks of rum and brandy, but cigarettes, laundered currency and hard drugs.’
The list made me feel weak. ‘Drugs, here in Latching?’
‘Mostly Ecstasy and anything new that is going to sell to the kids on the street.’
‘You think Anne was running a drug ring? I can’t believe it.’
‘I didn’t say that. I think she controlled the money side, shipping money out to suppliers and seeing that bills are paid for goods delivered.’
‘Like an accountant?’ I offered.
‘I’m not putting any name on her involvement but I don’t think she dirtied her hands any further than dusting her laptop. Those spreadsheets are vital. I must have them, Jordan. I’ll apply for a search warrant if I have to. I don’t know how the Record got that story but it was not from this office.’
‘I’ll do a deal with you,’ I said, my courage returning. ‘You get them to print a denial, in big bold letters, on the front page and I’ll find the rest of the spreadsheet
s and let you have the I’ll also let you have something else which I found today, in Anne Steel’s bedroom.’ I paused for dramatic effect.
‘OK,’ he groaned. ‘I’m asking. Have your pound of flesh. What did you find?’
‘A three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk. Funny thing to keep in your bathroom behind a bottle of witch hazel.’
‘I want it now,’ he said. And he meant it.
As I went out of the door, a thought occurred to me. ‘Perhaps whoever pumped George Hill with Ecstasy tablets also told the Sussex Record. Perhaps they want to discredit my work. Maybe I’m getting too near the truth.’
‘I doubt it, Jordan. You couldn’t solve a case even if you took a photo of a man with his hand in the till.’
*
I walked home via the beach after parking my car behind the shop. I swung the gold trimmed carrier bag in my hand. Samuel had said that I could take anything that I fancied. I had not fancied anything that much. Her clothes were not my style, and anyway, she was dead. I did not want a dead woman’s clothes.
But this was different. It was still in the original bag, wrapped in tissue. She had not worn it. The belt was packed separately in a smooth piece of tissue paper. Spare buttons and spare buckle were inside a plastic drawstring pouch.
My conscience was troubled that it was part of her ill-gotten gains. Should it go back to the shop in Moulton Street? Should I hand it over to the police? Did Samuel know what his wife had been doing in her spare time? I didn’t think so.
It was a big worry.
Like Scarlett O’Hara, I would decide tomorrow. In the meantime, I thought how warm I would be when winter came and I was wearing a full-length, soft black leather coat with collar turned up against the wind and the belt pulled tightly round my waist. A bit like an olde-tyme smuggler running in the shadows down a twitten.
A glamorous smuggler, of course, nothing remotely shabby.
Fifteen
Almost immediately my conscience went into a double reverse take. I could not keep the coat, even though it was classy, dramatic and teasingly beautiful. The leather was as supple as silk. Unless I kept the coat in lieu of future fees … maybe I could live with that.
I would mention it to Samuel Steel at the first moment. Meanwhile, I hung it behind my bedroom door, so that I could admire it on waking. It did not remind me of Anne Steel. She had never worn the coat. I knew I would feel Russian every time I put it on. Perhaps I ought to learn a few words. Slovenavitch that would do for a start.
It was time to unlock my shop and start shopkeeping. My last trawl of the charity shops had not yet been unpacked, sorted and washed or dusted.
My answerphone was unblinking and silent. No one had contacted me about anything. None of my various avenues had come back with new information. They had not remembered a single vital fact after I had gone. So much for my investigations. Anyone tapping my phone would be driven to euthanasia.
A woman was peering into the window, showing a passing interest in some miniature china cottages, the kind that people collect. I recognized her instantly. She was smartly dressed in a well-cut trouser suit with a silk scarf thrown over one shoulder. Her brown hair was pulled into a tidy French pleat with a gold comb catching the stray ends. It was the intermittent hand washing that caught my attention.
But would she recognize me? In the seconds before she entered the shop, I ducked under the counter, pulled on a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and tucked my hair into an oversized man’s beret.
‘Yerse?’
It came out without thinking.
‘Those little cottages, they’re so very sweet,’ she said. She was like a Monet painting. From a distance she looked impressive, but close up she was a mess. She reminded me of pictures of dandies in the late 18th century, their faces encrusted with lead-based cosmetics. And she had Elizabeth Arden on her side.
‘Ducky, ain’t they?’ I said. ‘D’yer collect them?’
‘Oh yes. I have a big collection but I don’t think I have these two. What are they?’
I turned them over. They still had the maker’s round gold labels on their undersides. ‘The cobbler’s cottage and the smithy’s.’
She had not recognized me. No snazzy red dress. But I knew her. Every word she spoke confirmed that she was the woman who had gone for me with her nails after the show.
‘No, I don’t have those,’ she said, occasionally rubbing her hands and moulding her fingers. If she used hand and nail lotion at the same time, there might be some point. ‘How much are they?’
‘Six pounds each.’
She looked taken aback. ‘Each?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Collector’s items, ain’t they?’
I wanted her name, her address, her life history, any previous convictions for stalking. But George Hill was dead. He was not bothered by his stalker any more. He was entertaining a new audience and I hoped his jokes were a lot cleaner. St Peter would not be amused.
She obviously wanted them. If she cut down on buying makeup, she could afford them in an instant. ‘Do you take plastic?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. Then I realized that I didn’t. But I took her card all the same and pretended to do some innocuous swiping under the counter. In fact I was noting down her name and account number plus expiry date. I turned it over to look at her signature. It was signed Sheree Lechlade in bold biro.
‘I’m afraid yer card isn’t being accepted,’ I said, straightening up. ‘Is it outta date?’
‘Nonsense, of course it isn’t,’ she snapped, taking it back. ‘There must be something wrong with your machine.’
I nodded like one of those glass-eyed puppy dogs in the back of a car. ‘It’s the machine,’ I agreed. ‘Always playing up. Bubble and squeak.’
‘What?’
‘Greek to me.’
‘Could you put them by for me?’ Sheree Lechlade was about to lose her patience. This time there was no handy soda syphon.
‘I’ll do better than that,’ I said. ‘Gimme yer address and I’ll bring ’em round to yer this evening. These cottages get snapped up pretty quick.’
‘Number four Chapel Court,’ she said. ‘About seven?’
‘On the dot,’ I said.
‘Thank you.’
She swept herself out of my shop Cunard-style and I wondered if she had killed George Hill. It was no fun selling china to a murderer. But George was still paying me (although he did not know it) and I would honour that payment. My word was my bond even to a dead man.
Sheree Lechlade was not exactly a few chips short of a fish dinner but there was something wrong with her. Hand washing was a serious dome doctor problem but I did not know or understand what it meant. Perhaps my good friend, the bottle-collecting retired doctor, would enlighten me. I must ask him sometime.
Number four Chapel Court. As I thought, his stalker lived on his doorstep, foxing his every movement. But no more. She would have to find another victim.
A tinge of fear invaded my thoughts. Who would be her next victim? In a second I had guessed. Who else? It would be Miguel. I had seen her at his restaurant on one of my wine swilling visits. She’d eyed me with seething resentment. It was enough to turn wine sour in the cask.
As soon as she was out of sight, I wiped off the beret and rumpled my hair to its normal state. I locked up the shop and hurried round to the Mexican restaurant. It was closed, of course. I went round the back of the shops and climbed over a few walls, finding the Mexican more by the spicy smell and delinquent seagulls searching the food bins in the yard.
‘Jordan, my beauty, why are you here, climbing like a gazelle over my wall? Is something bad happening?’
Miguel never changed. He was as handsome as Omar Sharif, liquid brown eyes full of messages of love and admiration. He took me through to the kitchen. It was spotless, of course, piled with fresh vegetables, lemons and limes, waiting for the arrival of the evening staff. The restaurant was empty but already laid up for tonight’s diners.
One table was strewn with papers and bills. Miguel had been checking his takings and sorting out his accounts. He automatically went for a bottle of wine from behind the bar and poured me one of his full-blown mega-sized glasses.
‘It was already open, Jordan, so the flavour will now be perfect.’
It was perfect. Miguel always gave me the best. He was the most generous man on the planet. Correction. Jack was the most generous man ever, especially when he could expect nothing in return. Miguel did get my devoted company on rare occasions.
I sipped the wine. Juice of summer raspberries and a hint of blackberry swam through the grape to the back of my throat. I don’t know where I get these fool ideas.
‘You like the wine?’ he asked, his eyes tasting the pleasure on my face.
‘It’s lovely,’ I said. ‘Perfect.’
‘Tell me why you are climbing my wall.’
‘Do you know a woman called Sheree Lechlade?’
His face lit up with mischief. ‘Ah yes, Mrs Lechlade, the lady with the fulsome attributes in front. She eats here often. She would eat my best waiter too, if she had half a chance and less years.’
I tried not to smile. This was serious.
‘I have reason to believe that Mrs Lechlade could be a dangerous woman,’ I said in my best officer of the law voice. ‘You should be very careful, Miguel. Don’t give her the slightest encouragement.’
‘My little bird, don’t you worry,’ he laughed. ‘Miguel can look after himself. I am, as you say, the dabbed hand, at warding off advances from amorous customers. So sad, when the only lady for my heart makes no advances.’
He put his hand over mine and it was warm and friendly. Nothing to get alarmed about. Only a frisson of regret.
‘She might stalk you,’ I warned. ‘Become a nuisance. Pester you for attention.’
‘Waste of time,’ he grinned. ‘I am too busy for this stalking lark. I work too late and much too long hours. She would soon be home for the cocoa.’
I had to laugh. The thought of Sheree Lechlade with a cup of cocoa was ludicrous. It would definitely be laced with rum or brandy.
‘I hope you’re right,’ I said. ‘But if she does start to annoy you, please let me know. I might be able to help.’ I did not mention George Hill or his unsolved death.
Jest and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 5) Page 15