Hide and Die (Jordan Lacey Series Book 4)

by Stella Whitelaw

  Jazz is my music so I found the rock and rollers hard going. They were an enthusiastic group, leaping about the stage, and occasionally I recognized a tune, with difficulty, hiding somewhere underneath the thump, thump of the percussion. It would be different if it was a play. I’d be enthralled in the plot, forget about selling ice cream and programmes, be showing people to the wrong seats.

  I wandered about the corridors of the theatre, wondering if I would catch sight of Mr Frazer in a dress. But I never saw him at all. The door marked Private was very private.

  Selling ice creams was demanding and fun. Except for those who could not make up their mind which flavour before they joined the queue. Surely they knew which kind they preferred? Some couples hesitated and pondered, the interval ticking away while they argued over chocolate or vanilla. I’d sold out before the second half began. Obviously charming smile plus elegant skirt worked. I had to count the money and put the coins into plastic bank envelopes. I was now an accountant.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ said Maggie afterwards. I’d found a lost glove, too. ‘I’ll give you a call when we’re short. We could use you.’

  ‘How about tomorrow?’ Could I charge for this time? I was still on surveillance.

  ‘OK, tomorrow. 7 p.m.’

  I stood outside waiting for Mr Frazer to leave. He walked home with a carrier bag that he had not arrived with. Interesting. But it did not look as if it carried a dress. More like a takeaway supper. Perhaps Mrs Frazer did not feed him late at night.

  I followed discreetly, stopping in shop doorways to stay out of sight. It was drizzling, a sort of early April shower. I hurried into another doorway, not wanting to get valuable skirt wet.

  A car drew up alongside. It was a police car without the flashing lights. A window slid down.

  ‘Mini … You are supposed to wear a mini, Jordan, preferably made of latex or leather. Long skirts don’t give out the same message.’

  It was DI James, a look of amusement on his stern face. I was not amused. The grey in his crew cut was gleaming like silver under the neon street lights. His ocean-blue eyes were hidden. He did not look as tired as usual. Perhaps he had got some sleep recently. I had not seen him for days.

  ‘I’m not giving out any message. This is not what it looks like,’ I said. ‘I’m on surveillance.’

  ‘It looks like loitering to me,’ he said, still leaning out of the window. ‘But you’ve got the gear all wrong. Granny skirt and hair scraped back in a granny bun? Unless this is a new trend. A granny-hooker?’

  ‘Excuse me, officer, but this is Latching, West Sussex, not Soho or Shepherd’s Market. We have a different class of nightlife on the coast.’

  He was leaning over and unlocking the passenger door. ‘Get in, you idiot, before you get mugged. There’s a lot of villains around. I’ve just locked up a couple.’

  ‘I hope they didn’t spit on you,’ I said, climbing into the passenger seat with as much elegance as the tight skirt would allow. ‘I’m particular who I travel with.’

  ‘Not any more than usual, I hope.’

  ‘If you’ve been spat at, then I don’t want you coming in for a coffee and dripping on my carpet.’

  ‘I wasn’t coming anyway,’ he said, throwing the car into gear. ‘I’ve better things to do. Have an early night, girl. You look as if you’ve been dragged up.’

  He left me outside the front door of my two upstairs bedsits and drove off. I stood on the pavement and watched the tail lights of the car disappearing into the night drizzle. I had loved every minute of being with him. It was quite pathetic. Even insults went to my head.

  Two

  The man waiting outside my shop, pacing the pavement, looked like a client who could not make up his mind whether to come in or not, wanting to do a runner. A bit like Gill Frazer yesterday pretending to inspect a fan. Instant replay situation.

  He had a honest-looking face if honesty can be deduced from the shape of a face. Receding brown hair revealed a furrowed brow and the sheen of the skin told me he was nervous. A quick flurry of window dressing gave me a chance to throw a reassuring smile in his direction. It seemed to work because he opened the door, letting in a spray of pre-April shower at the same time.

  ‘Can I speak to the lady detective?’ he asked.

  His voice was pure Sussex. Born and bred, schooled and slippered, coated and coasted. I would have liked to tape his voice and decode the vowels.

  ‘I’m Jordan Lacey. If it’s First Class Investigations you are interested in, then my office is through the back.’

  ‘You’re a bit young to be a detective, aren’t you?’ he said, following me. ‘I thought detectives were always a bit older.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a minimum age,’ I said, going for the jugular. ‘You’ve either got it or you haven’t. Have a seat.’

  No coffee. Twenty-seven, knocking twenty-eight, is not old enough to make coffee. I might have missed a year somewhere. Women do that. Kettle far too dangerous in such youthful hands.

  I opened my notebook and uncapped a pen. Note the joined-up writing. Quick learner. ‘May I have your name, please?’

  ‘Phil Cannon. I’m an electrician. I could fix that doorbell for you. It doesn’t work.’

  ‘No one ever uses it.’

  ‘They might, you know. You get post, don’t you?’

  ‘It has been known. Well, Mr Cannon, how can I help you? Perhaps you’d like to tell me in your own words. Take your time.’

  Debt collecting? Difficult neighbour? Dispute over a hedge? It was not easy to classify Mr Cannon. It could be anything.

  My deskside manner was not putting Mr Cannon at ease. He looked as stiff as a board, rigidly perched on my button-back. I bet his pulse rate was up.

  ‘I’ve got this son, see. His name is Dwain. Only I don’t think he’s mine.’

  I waited patiently. There must be more to it than this. Mr Cannon was having difficulty in finding the words. Had he being doing some calculations on a calendar and found he was out of the country at the crucial time of Dwain’s conception?

  ‘And how old is little Dwain?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Twelve!’ How long had it taken him to decide that his son was not his? Wasn’t he a bit slow? How long did it take to notice colour of hair, eyes, skin? ‘He’s almost a teenager,’ I added lamely.

  ‘And I’ve been paying for him all these years,’ Phil added bitterly. ‘It’s cost me a fortune. Thousands.’

  ‘Ah … perhaps you’d better start at the beginning. I’m not quite sure what situation we are talking about or what you want me to do.’

  ‘I met this woman — I wouldn’t call her a lady — nearly thirteen years ago. We had a brief affair, very brief. Just a long weekend in fact and I don’t remember much about it. It was all over before it began. Too much to drink at some party and I woke up the next morning with this skinny blonde flaked out in bed beside me. It was tacky all right. We didn’t get up much. We stayed in bed all weekend. Only got up for another beer or a pee.’

  My face stayed straight as if I was used to hearing about entire weekends spent in bed.

  That my clientele are always sexually active. Latching’s underworld is seething with rampant sex. A whole weekend? I’d be lucky if I got as much as thirty seconds of DI James in range of a duvet.

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘A few weeks later she phones me, all upset and crying, and saying she’s pregnant. Well, I believed her. I hadn’t used … you know … one of those. I thought she was on the Pill, when I was sober enough to think of anything, that is.’

  ‘But now you don’t think that Dwain is your son. What’s made you suspicious?’

  ‘I’ve found out that about that time she was going out with some other fella. Some chap that kept hopping off abroad on jobs. That weekend, the weekend of the party, he’d gone to Amsterdam.’ Phil Cannon was getting really worked up now. He clenched his hands. ‘She might have known she was already pregnant
and fitted me up for the daddy role.’

  I swallowed a sigh. I could see where this was going. An old trail, thirteen years cold. He was going to ask me to find out if Dwain’s mother had been sleeping with another boyfriend just before said weekend of illicit joy. Brilliant as I frequently am, this was asking too much.

  ‘That’s very difficult to find out, thirteen years on, Mr Cannon,’ I said, paving the way for a regretful no thank you. ‘There’s hardly likely to be any evidence.’

  ‘Dwain’s the evidence,’ he snapped.

  ‘True. If you say so.’ I drew a stick picture of Dwain with twelve fingers.

  ‘And I’ve been paying support maintenance all these years. Some weeks it’s been bloody hard. Bled me dry, she has. And that damned Child Support Agency. They follow me around wherever I go. I couldn’t escape if I tried. It’s been driving me mad. Sometimes I wanted to kill myself. Finish it all. Drive off Beachy Head.’

  This sounded genuine. ‘Have you ever seen Dwain?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I thought it better not to see the kid. I didn’t want to get involved. I’m no father figure. Next thing she’d have me taking him to football matches.’

  I finished writing up my notes. I needed the mother’s name and address, also boyfriend’s, if he knew it. Lucky I had the ladybird. Have spotted car, will travel.

  ‘I shall need names and addresses, also any photographs of you as a child and about aged twelve, the same age as Dwain.’

  ‘I expect my mum’s got some.’

  ‘Will you get them, please? Names and addresses now. Mother of Dwain first. You must know her name at least.’

  ‘Her name is Nesta Simons. And I know where she lives. Down East Latching way. A ground floor flat in a terrace. Near a duck pond. I followed her home one day. Nearly pushed her in the sodding pond, pardon my language.’

  Near a duck pond … I couldn’t be that lucky, could I? My friend Mavis, she of the Oscar winning fish cafe and bronzed lovers, lived in a first floor flat in a small terrace of villas near a duck pond in East Latching. But East Latching could be teeming with duck ponds, a positive duck sanctuary. I’d visited Mavis a couple of times, once after her face had been bashed in and secondly to take her a doggy gift (the untrainable Jasper). ‘Boyfriend’s name?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Date of party and Dwain’s date of birth?’

  ‘Don’t know. I was drunk, I told yer.’

  ‘Is there anything at all you can tell me?’ He was not being much help. Yet it sounded like a real story. He was obviously fed up with paying support. It must run into thousands of pounds over twelve years and an electrician would not earn that much.

  ‘Are you married, Mr Cannon?’

  ‘No, couldn’t afford to, could I? But I’ve got a girlfriend now. And no, I ain’t telling you her name. She’s got nothing to do with all this. I want to keep her out of it.’

  But I did see a connection. He wanted to stop paying support now that he had a girlfriend to take out. Perhaps they wanted to get married or go on holiday. Perhaps the girlfriend was pushing him to take these steps.

  I pulled out a contract form, filled in a few details, explained my rates of pay, and asked Mr Cannon to sign on the dotted line.

  ‘Hourly rate,’ he said. ‘I can’t afford any more.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Of course, you could solve all this quite simply. Have a DNA test. You have to provide two samples … one from you and one from Dwain. It can be anything. Blood, saliva, hair. The genetic profile is accurate to a millionth. But it’s a complicated procedure and takes a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Can I get it done on the NHS?’

  ‘No, you have to pay. It costs about £200. There are several private diagnostic firms which do it. Would you like me to find out for you?’

  He shook his head, pursed his lips and got up. I looked at my button-back quickly to see if his depression had left signs on my chair. Note: keep an eye open for second-class chair for second-class clients. Cancel note: Jordan, you are a snob.

  ‘£200? I’m paying out enough already,’ he muttered. My sympathy was evaporating. How come it had taken him so long to do anything about the situation? Any man with guts or doubts would have challenged Nesta a long time ago.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said insincerely. ‘I’ll phone you as soon as I have any news.’

  ‘It had better be good. And I want reports. Written reports. I want it in writing.’

  I put on a tape of James Last as soon as the morose Mr Cannon had gone out of the door. I needed some brass. Soon ‘Perfidia’ shook the gloom out of my office and the confident trumpet dusted off the cobwebs. A few Latin steps had my circulation bouncing in time.

  ‘Dancing with yourself again, I see,’ said Doris, passing my open door, her arms full of shopping. Her general grocery store was two doors down from me. She often looked in, mainly to check on my state of health. ‘You’d better see someone about it. Could be catching.’

  ‘I’ve got two cases,’ I said cheerfully. ‘I’ll be able to eat this week. Stock up on food. Frugally.’

  ‘Do you ever eat any other way? My shop’d go bankrupt if all my customers lived on tinned soup and soya. Seen Miguel recently? He’s your best bet, you know. Hasn’t he been feeding you in his classy restaurant?’

  I shook my head. ‘He’s gone away, taking a holiday in South America. Checking up on the old homestead. Didn’t you know? I thought you knew everything.’

  Doris sniffed, rearanging her heavy bags.

  ‘You forget, the Mexican only opens in the evenings. I’m closed by then. Too late for the likes of me.’

  ‘I’ll carry those,’ I said, following her.

  ‘No, you won’t. I’m not an invalid.’

  I let Doris go on ahead and open up her shop. I gave her time to empty the bags of bargains bought at the cut-price supermarket at the back of town and put them out on her shelves with a new price. I’m sure it was illegal.

  ‘Two cartons of soya milk, two tins of lobster soup and three apples and three oranges,’ I listed as I sailed in.

  ‘Lobster? What do you think this is? Fortnum and Mason? I got tomato, vegetable, mushroom.’

  ‘One of each.’

  ‘That makes three tins, not two.’

  ‘I’m feeling extravagant.’

  ‘There’s a fine line between being extravagant and being plain wasteful. You’ll never touch the mushroom. It’s all listed chemicals.’

  ‘If you say so,’ I said meekly. Doris and I got on well. It was a benevolent friendship. She said what she thought and I agreed.

  ‘So what are these two new cases?’

  ‘Sorry, client confidentiality. Like a doctor.’

  ‘Doctor, my foot. You are the one who needs to see a doctor. Get a proper job, girl. That nice man, Francis Guilbert, would give you a job in his store any time.’

  ‘Excuse me, didn’t I solve who bashed up Mavis’s face? Aren’t that unsavoury pair coming up before the Old Bailey any month now? At present residing behind bars, en suite, smoking, playing snooker and watching television. Even the wife is up for GBH.’

  ‘One of your few successes, if I may say so, and more by luck than deduction, Jordan.’

  This was not one of my days for deep discussion. I paid for my purchases, sent Doris a cryptic smile and departed. I was hungry. I ate an apple, unwashed, on the way back to my shop. How I loved my shop, the feel of the place, the old things full of memories and people long gone. They were still with me, something of them lingered, intangible. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do.

  I didn’t know where to start. Surveillance, surveillance. I’d got two lots of surveillance, fortunately not overlapping. The theatre manager and the single boozy mother. DI James … please help me. Give me a clue. Lend me two minutes of your professional mind. Give me two seconds of your personal attention. Let me use the computer unit. Hold my hand. Touch my face. I don’t care which. Anything.

  The apple ma
de me feel even hungrier. I put up the CLOSED FOR LUNCH sign and made tracks for Maeve’s Cafe. It was beginning to feel mild. She grinned at me as I went in, Jasper thumped his tail. I stroked his head. He looked a happy dog now.

  ‘Look who’s over there,’ she whispered out of the side of her mouth. ‘Your detective friend.’ I did not need to look. I already felt his presence. I could see him without looking.

  DI James had my favourite window seat. He was staring out of the steamy glass, a chip halfway to his mouth. He did not know I was there and I could watch the way his vulnerable mouth took the chip in a sweet, pleasurable curve. He would kiss like that. A curve that would seek sweetness from your lips, like a honey from a flower.

  ‘Hi there,’ I said, keeping my voice steady, sitting on the spare seat at his table. ‘How’s Latching’s most famous cop? Still hitting the headlines?’

  He had been mentioned in the arrest of the Sussex gang who’d been targeting the big stores, Guilbert’s being one of them. I could not resist reminding him that I had given the police their first lead.

  ‘Hi there, Jordan. No more headlines. How are you? Been taken hostage recently? You haven’t phoned me.’

  I couldn’t answer. I had to look at him first. Drink in that chiselled face, those ocean-blue eyes, the cool look, the granite chin.

  When would he ever look at me properly? See the real Jordan Lacey, my tawny hair, windblown and unfussed, the woman who loved him to distraction but never let on. Always a lady hiding the tramp within. My knees buckled.

  ‘Not recently, James. It’s been pretty quiet. Latching has gone into its pre-spring conception lullaby. You know, little things planted and growing, like babies and bulbs. Watch the birth columns later in the year. And you know I never phone you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘Those chips look nice.’

  ‘Try one. Be my guest.’

  I had not seen him since the lift home. Where had the time gone? Had he even noticed? There was never a day when I did not think of James. But the time kaleidoscoped into now as I chewed one of his chips and Mavis brought me a plate of today’s special: scampi and chips. Real scampi, not bits scrounged from other fish, golden and delicious flesh of the sea.