There was no energy left for distributing bags around the neighbourhood. I stacked them outside my place. The refuse collectors could think there had been some wild street party.
I was going to spend another night cruising around in my car, picking up bin bags. We’d have to go through a car wash to get rid of the smell. I did not feel guilty. It was their fault for putting rubbish out where it could be stolen. And as for private documents … their lawyers should be sacked.
My second trawl was more successful. I stacked the bags in my backyard and leaned on the ladybird, exhausted, eyes drawn and dark. I waited until the dawn arose, half asleep on the floor of my office, stiff-necked and cold. When had I last seen DI James? It seemed like months. I made a lot of coffee but it made me feel sick. Water was the answer but it did not warm the bones.
Time to trawl through bags. It started to rain. In no time I was soggily soaked. The bags were slippery and several had split and spilled their contents.
If only I was still working for the Guilberts, my previous case. I was fast going off this game. There must be easier ways of making a fast buck. I thought with longing of my little black dress and wearing it around Guilbert’s store, pretending to be a shop assistant. The dress and shoes were being saved for that date with fate when DI James sought my company socially and carnally.
If ever.
The pieces fell out like confetti, a chuck of torn-up bank statements. I love bank statements. Read this life. I recognized the printout and familiar logo on the heading. Jigsaws are the occupation of residential homes but I guess I could put my mind to it. I might manage to co-join the scraps if the information was riveting enough.
Bottles, bags, yogurt tubs, banana skins, rotting food, torn tights … I cringed with disgust. My own rubbish was bad on a good day. And this was the middle of the night. A wet night.
It was time to call it a night. The ladybird stank. I stank. We both needed a carwash, inside and out.
I sat on a crate in the yard, searching for soggy bits of paper. They could belong to the Frazers or the Fontanes, the part with a glimmer of a name was essential. Some people tore off their name and address. Please, no, not this time …
A lot of the scraps were stuck to a wet shirt. It was pretty messy. One of the sleeves was half ripped out of the shoulder seam, slashed cut marks. In lust or rage, it had been given a wrench and the stitching had snapped and torn.
Then I smelt the wetness and saw the stain darken. It was not rain. I knew the difference. Rain has a lightness, a sweetness fresh from the clouds.
This was blood. Fresh blood. Human blood. And the man who’d worn the shirt had fought hard. I followed the rents with my eyes and imagined the scene. The cuffs were bloody and torn where he had fended off the knife, fighting for his life, wanting to live, needing a life.
Did I rush back and knock on doors and say, ‘Excuse me. Have you got someone who is bleeding to death?’
I didn’t want this. No more deaths, please. I’d had enough. The town had its spring face on, the way I liked it. Make it stay that way while I dry my feet. Especially now that my feet were getting better.
*
‘I had the strangest feeling it was going to be you. A good citizen who shall be nameless, suffering from insomnia, reported a scavenger going through bin bags in the middle of the night. She thought it might be one of the car boot gang who steal from the charity shop bins for resaleable goods.’
‘As if I would,’ I said.
Detective Inspector James was leaning over the Sussex cobbled wall that flanked my back yard. He was tall enough to do this in comfort. Rain spiked his short hair like pearls on sticks. His lashes would be spiked too only I couldn’t see them in the early morning gloom.
‘Who else could it be trawling bin bags at dawn, I thought? None other than Latching’s intrepid PI. And I can see you are completely unrecognizable in grade four surveillance gear. Well done, Jordan. Like the gloves touch.’
I swallowed the mockery. James was laughing at me. ‘They are my own clothes,’ I said. But I was still glad to see him, lust rising in my loins at the mere sight of his face. That old black magic, he had me in his spell. And he did not know it. He would never know. He thought I was that slightly mad, always irritating female who blighted his life, on and off duty.
I held up the torn and bloodied shirt. It flapped against my face, leaving a smear on my cheek.
‘Know anyone who’s been knifed recently?’
The banter slid from his face. He opened the yard gates and strolled in, hands in pockets, wondering what I had for him now to complicate his already overburdened life.
‘How do you know it’s a knife?’ he asked, taking the shirt from me.
‘Clean cuts,’ I said. ‘Nothing else makes straight incisions.’
DI James’s face seemed grey and drawn. His expression withdrew as if remembering some scene he did not want me to know about. Sometimes he had an old-fashioned gallantry.
‘A circular saw does,’ he said. ‘An underwater saw that rips up cables from the seabed. And we’ve just found the body of a diver who got in the way of one. Not a pretty sight, Jordan. Especially a body without a shirt. It might just be his shirt.’
He dropped the shirt into a plastic bag. ‘Thanks, Jordan. That’s called cooperation.’
Five
Everyone knew the dead diver. Word spread along the shingle faster than a seagull could swoop and fly. The fishing fraternity were shocked, lost for words, weatherbeaten faces stony.
‘I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it,’ they said, shaking their heads. ‘He was here yesterday, right as rain, working on the beach.’
The victim was the youngest son of a family that had fished off the coast of Latching for over eighty years. They had a string of boats and lockers along the shingle. Dinglewell & Sons was a well known name in the fishing industry. Their burnt orange lockers were a signature marking the coast, blooming like cubic art.
Roy was the youngest son. He was a playboy fisherman, a man that spent as much time sunbathing on the beach, flexing his muscles at the girls, jiving at dance clubs, drinking in pubs, as he did working his boat far out in the Channel, hauling in nets overflowing with bass and pollack, spider crabs and seaweed.
He also dived. That was his other hobby. He liked wrecks, old, submerged, abandoned by man and sea. He spent hours in a wetsuit, mask and flippers, searching the murky depths.
But Roy had gone for his last dive. He’d come ashore sprawled in a trawler’s net.
I didn’t ask James for details. I did not want to know. It was not my case and all the facts would be in the papers. The nationals took the story to its extremes. No prizes for which paper used which headline:
Sawed Sussex Fisherman In Net
SAW RIPS WRECK DIVER
DIVER DIES IN TREASURE WRECK
NET NETS CORPSE
And how come the shirt, torn and newly bloodied, was in a bin bag? My labelling system had come apart and I no longer knew which bag was from which house. But I could narrow it down. I could still count to four on a good day.
Second thought: was it his shirt? My blood chilled at a third thought. Mavis. Supposing Roy Dinglewell was one of her ardent suitors? Could be. She seemed to have no age barrier in her affairs. Anything with a pulse.
Anyway, who said it was Roy’s shirt? That was an assumption. It could have belonged to anyone from the Frazer household, the Fontanes, Phil Cannon or the girly girl Nesta Simons. The options were open. My nightly collections had spread. DI James might have been distracting me from some core truth and he could do that easily. He had only to breath in my direction and I was confused.
I lay back in a lavender oil bath, in easily distracted mode, letting the warm water and the thought of James wash the night’s detritus from the pores of my skin. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that he was laying alongside me in the water, hip to hip, legs entwined, toes touching, his arm cradling my head away from the hard sl
ope of enamel. It was an old style bath from the Dark Ages, no hollow plastic shell for me, washboarding in and out.
He had taken the shirt away in a clean plastic bag. Forensic, he said. But a diver would not wear a shirt. He wore a wetsuit. I’d seen the muscular Roy Dinglewell in his wetsuit many times and it left nothing to the imagination. Many females swooned. I was not the swooning type. My emotions were more sensual. I’d seen enough nude males, one way or another, alive and dead.
I dried off, ate muesli and sliced banana, changed the bottom sheet on my bed, walked to my shop, put up the CLOSED FOR LUNCH sign again and went on to Maeve’s Cafe. At least it was still open. No signs of protracted grief.
It was nearly empty. A few early tourists were trying a fish and double chips breakfast, one of Mavis’s new ideas. She was serving tea and slices of bread, so thick with butter she ought to be prosecuted by a health act.
‘Hello, Jordan,’ she said. ‘Come for a cuppa?’
‘Please. It’s sunny outside but the wind is lethal.’
‘I know. Spring in Latching is an old man’s last breath.’
That was colourful but depressing. She’d made it up. I sat at my favourite table for two, sea view, eye on the door. No one came in. Mavis wandered over with a mug of weak tea and honey.
‘I ought to charge extra, you know,’ she said. ‘Honey’s dearer than sugar.’
‘But you only show it a tea bag. That’s a saving. And think of the custom I bring you,’ I said, nodding her into the vacant chair opposite. She sat down, mascara immaculate, hair in place. ‘I don’t know how to say this … but are you heartbroken by the latest news from the beach?’
She was obviously a little bit heartbroken, but not your howling, wailing, deeply distressed type of fractured organ. She put up her hand, shielding her eyes for a moment.
‘I knew Roy, of course. I’ve known him for years. Dishy young lad, real one for the girls. But, of course, he was far too young for me. Well, he was too young for me then, but later, I mean, he grew up, didn’t he … What am I saying? It would have been baby-snatching. I preferred his father.’
‘But you did know him?’ I probed.
‘Yes, of course. A sort of a late-afternoon stand, if you can forgive the coarseness. He’d come off the beach, dripping with suntan oil and such a glorious colour. We’d nothing else to do. I wanted to make sure he didn’t burn.’ My mug of tea cooled. Mavis, Mavis … lend me your hormones.
‘Ah, yes, naturally. So you knew of him?’
‘Carnally, yes. Intimately, yes, gloriously yes. But nothing else. No emotional bond.’
‘Mavis, I can’t cope with this language at ten o’clock in the morning.’
‘Then you ain’t going to make no great detective, my girl. You tell that hunky detective friend of yours that it was no accident. There were a lot out to get that boy, mark my words.’
‘Why? Who was out to get him? What for?’
‘I ain’t saying no more.’
‘Get him for what? What do you mean?’
Mavis clammed up. She rose, spotting a new customer hovering in the doorway. She could not afford to let anyone get away. On went her counter smile, even if her brain was spinning with memories of an afternoon making sure the boy didn’t burn. No one came to me with that sort of problem.
I reeled back. This was not my case, I reminded myself. Finding the shirt had been accidental. I finished my tea, paid for it and went down on to the beach. It was the first time that I had felt brave enough to strip off my trainers. Summer was coming, at least I hoped it was. Not much sign of warmth yet. I tied the laces together and walked barefooted along the wet sand and rivulets of waters. The cool feel was marvellous. My toes tingled with the deliciousness. Gulls wheeled above me, well aware that I had nothing for them. Get going, girl, clear off, they screeched in orchestrated greed, you ain’t brought nothing for us.
The tide was washing in, more debris and dead fish swirling with every encroaching wave. The face of the beach was desolation. People threw everything into the sea: bottles, bags, nappies, tampons … the sea was becoming the big dump site of the world. Heaven help the fish.
‘Help! Help me! Someone help me!’
A very thin voice hung in the air.
I looked around. I could see no one. The empty beach was vast, not a soul, only me and the seagulls. But I had heard a voice.
I went on walking but still the voice was calling. Serious now, I stopped and looked around. A long, long way away I saw a stick figure. Waving. Boy, girl, man, woman … no knowing which.
Arms were waving. There was an urgency about the movement. I recognized a degree of panic in the windmill agitation. The hermit’s cell I’d been trapped in during a previous case had generated the same panic in me. But there had been no one to see me wave except the spiders.
I changed direction, giving a casual signal back but not hurrying. There did not seem to be anything apparently wrong. We didn’t get snakes on Latching beach.
I veered towards the slim figure. It was standing at the end of a long blackened wood groyne. The sea was coming in. I had been wrong about the times. It was racing in, like a horse with long legs. Translucent waves were washing round my feet. I hurried diagonally towards the figure, waved again so that she knew I had heard and was coming. It was a girl and she was frozen with fear.
Then I saw the cause of her panic. She was ankle deep in sand at the end of the groyne. The last post always generates a pool of sea water that sucks itself downwards. A puddle no bigger than a baby’s bath but ten times as lethal. In a few minutes the sea would be washing round the post. In twenty it would be halfway up. In thirty, the post would be submerged and half the groyne would have disappeared under the water.
‘I’m stuck,’ she screamed. ‘I can’t get out.’
‘I’m coming,’ I called, not feeling brave. ‘Help me! Help me!’ the girl screamed again.
As I got closer, I saw her more clearly. She was about eleven or twelve, skinny, wearing shorts and T-shirt, long fair hair. Her face was wet with tears and her ankles were deep in swampy mud and sand at the end of the long wooden groyne. She was sinking deeper with each struggle. Her legs were being sucked under. She was frantic with panic which did not help.
‘I can’t get out,’ she gasped. ‘My feet are being sucked in. I can’t move.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll get you out.’
I skirted the pool. No point in both of us getting stuck. The hardest firm sand was two feet further up. I stood there, braced one arm round the post and leaning out as far as I could stretch, hooked my other arm firmly under her elbow.
‘Now, both together,’ I said. ‘One, two, three … pull hard on me. Use me as a lever.’ I used muscles I didn’t know I had. Her feet surfaced violently like corks out of a fermented bottle. The combined effort was so forceful that she fell over, flat on her face, splashing across the pool. But her feet were free. She was crying again but with relief.
I helped her get up. ‘All right, now?’
She nodded a lot, not speaking, covered in sand.
‘Are you alone?’
‘My father’s somewhere.’
But not here obviously. Gone off for a quick one. She seemed embarrassed. Perhaps she had come down on to the beach against his orders.
‘OK. Are you sure he’s around? You’ll go back to him?’
She nodded again, so I left her. She was safe now. I walked out to the edge of the waves, paddling about, deep in thought. The beach was still empty. She could have drowned. The slope of the shingle was steep and people on the promenade might not have seen or heard her cries above the noise of the constant stream of traffic.
A rare philosophical thought emerged. What if I had been put on this planet for this solitary moment of lifesaving? Perhaps this young girl was a rare creature with a high IQ who was destined to discover some immensely valuable cure for human ills. Cancer. Aids. Could be possible. Every genius was once small enough to be s
tuck in the sand.
I heard her voice again and turned round.
The girl was climbing, halfway up the shingle, waving both arms, crossways, over her head.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ she was calling.
I waved back, hoping it conveyed my pleasure for the now public thank you. Gold star, humane medal, Brownie points.
*
Both of my cases were at a standstill. I had followed Brian Frazer until I was glazed with boredom. Apart from that one instance, his behaviour was normal, as normal as any theatre manager might be. He worked long hours, going home when he could. There was obviously a shift system because his times varied.
I decided that a different tactic was required on the cards. As yet I did not know what it was. Something moderately drastic but not too dangerous.
Phil Cannon and Nesta Simons were equally unproductive. But I guess that walking Jasper in the hope of seeing something monumental happening was a poor effort.
It was pulling-up socks time.
And my shop was not selling much. Had some sort of recession set in whilst I was otherwise occupied? I laid out the scraps of roughly torn bank statements on the floor and ironed them flat. I had never liked jigsaws and I did not enjoy piecing this lot together. There were too many figures and the picture wasn’t up to much. One scrap had ‘dollybird baby’ written on it in poor handwriting. Now which bin had that come from? No idea. I threw it away.
A customer came into my shop, browsing around. No whooping, please or Japanese-style bowing and scraping. I maintained a dignified distance, pretending to sort books into alphabetical order. Fat chance. I had got as far as H for Higgins, when the customer came to the point.
‘I want all your jewellery, silver and gold, and be quick about it,’ he snapped harshly.
I looked at him in disbelief. He was a very ordinary-looking guy in jeans and Queen T-shirt. He had not bothered with a mask. I suppose he did not have to when a very sharp knife was nestling in his hand.
Hide and Die (Jordan Lacey Series Book 4) Page 5