‘You’ve made a mistake,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any jewellery. I don’t buy or sell silver or gold. This is a junk shop. High-class junk, of course.’
‘Come off it, missus, who knows what you got out the back there? Be a good girl and go get it. And sharpish. I haven’t got all day. And I know how to use this knife. You don’t want me carving my initials on your face, do you?’
‘Oh, what are your initials?’ I asked.
Really, I do have a nerve. It was my WPC tactical training. That same training was sweeping over his features and appearance.
But I did not like the look of the knife, or him. There was a gleam of sweat on his skin and his fingers were moving the knife in a restless way, like he was itching for a cut. ‘Don’t mess with me,’ he snarled.
‘OK, OK,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’ll go and fetch it. I’ve got some stuff out the back.’
I skeltered into my office behind the shop, straight through the scullery and out the back door into the yard. I didn’t stop to even catch my breath. Once outside, I began to run round the block. I’d left my mobile phone in the shop on the counter. I ran into Doris’s shop.
‘I’m being held up,’ I gasped. ‘Phone …’
‘Yeah, yeah and I’m Greta Garbo,’ said Doris, hardly looking up from her shelfstacking.
‘True! There’s a man in my shop with a knife in his hand. He threatened me. He’s after anything silver or gold.’
‘Well, he obviously picked the wrong shop. Some people have no sense at all.’
‘Doris …’ I collapsed against the counter. My asthma didn’t feel too happy. I started coughing. ‘This is not a j-joke. C-can I use your phone?’
Doris looked at my wheezing and decided to humour me. She nodded towards the phone and I clumsily keyed the numbers of the Latching police station. A WPC answered.
I spluttered out the events, briefly, to the point. She said they would send someone round immediately, but there was little hope of the man still being in my shop. Unless he’d started reading a book.
‘But he’ll be out on the streets somewhere nearby. You can’t fail to spot his Queen T-shirt.’ My breathing had steadied now.
‘Elizabeth or Bohemian Rhapsody?’
‘Rhapsody.’
‘Don’t go back into your shop until we’ve arrived. Have you a friend with you?’
‘Yes, I have a friend.’
I glared at same friend who was still looking at me with hovering disbelief. But she was pouring me out a tumbler of her disgusting cooking sherry. It took a high degree of friendship to drink it. The sweetness was cloying, thick as treacle, the alcohol content near zero.
‘Lovely, thank you,’ I said, choking.
A flashing police car drew up, all orange and green stripes and cubes. I went out on to the pavement. A tall figure got out of the car and for a moment I fell apart. I could fall apart just at the sound of his name. But it was not DI James. It was Detective Sergeant Ben Evans, his dishy colleague, younger, attractive in an uncomplicated way, always charming.
‘Jordan,’ he said, smiling. ‘Are you all right? Where’s this villain, threatening you with a knife? I’ll carve him up for you.’
‘He’s in my shop,’ I said, trying to look small and fragile and in desperate need of protection.
He was not in my shop. My shop was empty. He’d gone. My mobile phone had also gone, so had the meagre contents of my cashbox. At this rate of turnover I ought to be buying shares in a phone company. My last mobile got flung into a watermill. I felt in the back pocket of my jeans. At least I still had all my keys and some loose change.
‘Wanna jump in the car and tour the streets? See if you can spot him? He can’t have gone far.’ He held the door open for me and covered my head so I did not bump it. Things were looking up. A DS with manners. ‘Feeling well enough?’
‘Sure,’ I said nonchalantly, settling into the car seat, hoping he couldn’t smell the cheap sherry on my breath. Nothing like a free ride with a good-looking policeman. I waved to Doris.
‘Thanks for the drink,’ I called.
‘You’re turning into an alkie,’ she warned.
We drove around, scanning the streets. They were full of shoppers and early holidaymakers. The robber had disappeared. He could be in any bar, any dive, any joint. I peered out of the window, wondering where he’d got to. Drinking away my money, making calls on my phone. I’d better report it missing before he rang his bookie in New York.
Then I saw him. He was going through the swing doors of the seafront entrance of the Marks & Spencer store. But I stopped myself from calling out. It was like a nut getting caught in my throat.
‘He’s just gone into M & S,’ I croaked.
DS Evans parked instantly, made a quick call for back-up, then ran into the store. But I wasn’t watching him.
Brian Frazer was coming out of Marks & Spencer at the same moment in a fetching lilac trouser suit. His head was covered in a flowered scarf. He was wobbling on high-heeled sandals and his toenails were painted a strident red. His taste was appalling. The varnish didn’t tone with the lilac. He needed guidance.
I got out of the police car. This was guidance time.
Six
But I did not get far. The arm of the law stopped me. Brian tottered off towards the pier, holding on to the scarf. It was blowy. Latching’s favourite weather.
‘Don’t go, Jordan,’ Ben said. ‘I need you to make a statement. Back-up are at the other store entrance in the pedestrian precinct. They’ll get him as he tries to leave.’
I nodded, containing my disappointment. There was no way I could dash off after receding lilac outfit when DS Evans had been so supportive.
He drove me back to the station. No sign of DI James or knife-wielding robber in custody. My friend, Sergeant Rawlings, was on desk duty.
‘I could write a book about you,’ he said, trying to find a biro that worked. ‘We ought to compile a dossier of Jordan Lacey statements.’
‘Dossier? That’s a long word,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you knew such long words. It’s from the French: to file and Latin: dorsum, the back.’
‘Watch it, girl. We don’t encourage anything intellectual in here. You won’t get a fresh cup of tea next time. We have a stewed variety, you know.’
I grinned. I was one of Sergeant Rawlings’ favourites. His rugged face always lit up whether I was marched, dragged or carried into the station. We’d known each other a long time.
‘Wanna bet, Tiger?’
Making the statement took ages. Now I know how an author feels. It took an hour to write four pages down in longhand. My recall of his appearance was excellent.
DS Evans took me over to a bank of computers and sat me down. This was new. I looked with interest at the blank screens, grey and winking.
‘Like to go through mug shots?’ he asked.
‘How long have you had this equipment?’
‘A few weeks. It’s brilliant. We can run through dozens of faces in half the time. Feed in a few basic facts and it eliminates the superfluous, finds a compatible bank. No villain can escape us now.’
‘Except the ones that get away,’ I murmured.
He keyed in white, twenties, medium height, clean-shaven, thin-faced, pointy nose and dyed blonde hair. Then he deleted dyed blonde hair. It could have been a recent fashion statement.
‘He could also have shaved off a recent beard,’ I said, observant.
‘We’ll start with clean-shaven,’ he said. ‘Now what sort of pointy nose? Big pointy nose or small pointy nose?’
‘Medium,’ I said. ‘Pointed as in downwards.’
Ben keyed in lateral slant. ‘Colour of eyes?’
‘We weren’t into eye contact.’
After the first hundred faces, bleak, blank, lost faces, etched in defiance and despair against a white wall, we were both tiring. Sergeant Rawlings brought me a second mug of sweet tea.
‘Gotta keep your strength up,’ he said.
&n
bsp; ‘Why don’t you leave me to this,’ I said, helpful as ever. ‘I can see how to work it. I’ll give you a call if I spot him. You’ve probably got better things to do.’
‘What a thoughtful girl you are.’ Ben Evans grinned, getting up and stretching his lean six feet. He looked clean and wholesome, ironed white shirt, dark tie. Ideal West Sussex CID material. ‘Like to come out for a drink this evening? A nice country pub at Findon.’
It was the Findon that clinched it. No way would I be seen drinking with DS Evans in Latching. Word gets around. I did not want DI James to think I was spoken for. But Findon was out in the woods, nestling under the massive hill of Cissbury Ring with its Neolithic flint mineshafts and Iron Age hill fortifications. With all these friendly ghosts around, I should be mentally safe.
‘OK.’ I nodded. ‘About eight, my place? You know the address, don’t you?’
‘By heart.’
As soon as DS Evans was out of sight, I logged on to a different system, one I was not allowed to access, being an ordinary member of the public. I keyed in Frazer, Brian. Nothing at all. Then Cannon, Phil. It was revealing, some credit card debts and traffic fines. But when I typed in Simons, double-checking on Nesta, it went bananas. She had so many convictions, my pen could not write them down fast enough. I ran out of scrap paper. Mostly soliciting, fraudulent cheques, shoplifting. She had a record.
My luck was holding out but it would not last for long. As a long shot I keyed in Frazer, Gillian. I don’t know what made me do it. My heart stopped with a jerk. Manslaughter: two children. Conviction squashed after unsatisfactory evidence was thrown out of court. Nothing more.
I sat back in the chair, sipping cold tea. Manslaughter of two children. It gave me the shivers. That plain beige woman, pillar of society, decent citizen, one supposed … well, what was decent these days? I was just about to delve deeper into the case when I recognized the footsteps approaching.
In seconds I was out of that programme and back into mug shots. It was dexterity of the highest order. I had once taken a computer literacy course and it paid off.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Looking at mug shots?’ said DI James, sitting down beside me. He leaned forward, peering at the screen with interest.
It always took me several seconds to adjust to his nearness. Delayed madness. If I lost him, I think I would go mad. Lose my grip on life. Every pore of my skin tingled. Without moving an inch, I leaned my body towards him. Quite a trick. The pores of my skin were magnetized by him. He had his usual gritty, sleepless look but was one degree more human. Didn’t he ever go home? Where was home? I didn’t know but he always seemed pleased enough to come back with me, even if it was only for the home-made soup or excellent coffee.
Cooking dinners was not my style. I could-not cook a dinner even at gunpoint.
‘I got held up, at my shop.’
‘So I heard. Running a junk shop is a dangerous business. He had a knife?’
‘Yes.’
‘What sort?’
‘Are there sorts?’
He sighed deeply. ‘I’ll show you some photographs of knives. It could help. They usually get attached to a certain kind of knife. Steel bonding.’
‘I would not want to be attached to this one. It looked lethal.’
‘All knives are lethal. Even your average kitchen potato-peeling knife can do a lot of damage.’
I wanted to touch him but I couldn’t. He was so close I could smell the Comfort rinse in his creased blue shirt. Who did his washing? I had no idea. Perhaps he had found a Comfort-woman.
The thought was devastating. He might have found someone by now. He was a loner. Loners get lonely. My heart screwed up, imagining a loose-limbed, crazy kind of woman who would take on a man who had lost all normal feeling. Maybe she was divorced too. It wasn’t me. But it could have been me. I would have done it.
‘Are you living with anyone?’ I heard myself asking. It wasn’t my voice. This was weird.
‘No,’ he said. He was bringing up pictures of knives on the next screen. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I can smell the Comfort rinse in your shirt.’
‘It was a free sample put through the door. I threw it in the wash.’
He did not look committed. He was wearing his normal, tired, distant, out of touchy-touchy face. A man with deep frowns, whose divorce had shredded him of emotion. He did not know that sitting beside him was a smouldering woman, consumed with lust. He probably did not even know how to spell the word. Roll on some pub at Findon.
I shifted over and looked at knives, hundreds of them. This was difficult but I identified the nearest to size, shape, design. James made some notes, waited with me, took a call.
I kept flicking through faces. It was the least I could do. In answer to a prayer, a face came up, younger, unshaven. White-skinned, thin with hunger, pointed with pain, blank eyes. It was etched on my memory.
‘Be sharpish,’ he’d said to me in the shop. I saw the face, heard the words and the voice. That’s the one. It was him. There was an accent in the echo. North of England?
‘This is him,’ I said. ‘I’m sure. Yes, this is the man.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’ve just said I’m sure.’
James rolled on the detailed information, did a printout and took it to the desk. ‘Circulate this,’ he said. ‘Miss Lacey is 90 per cent sure that this is the man who threatened her with a knife today. Bert Leech is one of his names. Last known at a Newcastle address. Contact Newcastle. Find out what he’s doing down here.’
‘Circulate?’ I queried. ‘But why? You’ve nicked him, haven’t you? Your men were there. He was trapped in M & S in the fruit and veg department.’
‘We lost him. He must have doubled back and gone out the way he came in. He probably saw the police car drive off.’
I got up, stiff-kneed, stiff-necked and speechless with fury at their incompetence. What was the time? Was it time to go to Findon? The inside of the station had no windows, no clue as to time of day. It was rows of cheerless rooms, in need of new paint and some decent furniture.
‘It’s four thirty,’ said James, stretching. ‘Nearly the end of my shift.’
‘Time to go,’ I said, signing my statement and everything else in sight. I probably signed for a month’s consignment of tea bags. I wanted to go home, have two baths, get rid of the day.
‘Like to come out for a drink this evening, Jordan? Police compensation for bungled arrest.’
Was I dreaming? A bit of me sloughed off and died. Was DI James actually asking me out for a drink or was I hearing an instant replay of DS Evans’s invitation? After months of nil social life, I get two invites for the same evening.
‘Would you mind saying that again?’ The words were frosty. I was mad at him. He asks me out for a drink on the one and only night that I already had a date. How could he be so inconsiderate? This was not fair. Some angel was taking a day off.
James was bewildered for a hung second and nothing normally disconcerts him. ‘It’s only a drink, Jordan. I thought you might need a drink after being held up at knife point. No big deal. A glass of wine at the Bear and Bait, that’s all. House red. Sorry, Australian Shiraz.’
‘You know I only drink Chilean or Australian,’ I flared again. The red in my hair was igniting.
‘OK, whatever you like. I’m not an expert. Don’t get so het up. I might not even be able to make it. You know how it is here.’
‘Yes, I know how it is,’ I said, scrambling to my feet. I tried to gather my dignity. I had to scrape together some sort of compensation for my disappointment without letting him know. ‘Can I take a rain check?’ I muttered.
His face was inscrutable. I couldn’t tell if he was mad or not. He started to walk away, back rigid, hands knotted in a fist behind him.
‘I don’t do rain checks.’
Sergeant Rawlings ambled over and collected my empty mug. ‘You didn’t handle that very well, Jordan. DI James never asks an
yone out. That was a first.’
‘I couldn’t go,’ I said miserably.
‘You should have broken the other date.’
‘I can’t do that. I don’t break dates.’
‘Yes, you could. And you still can.’
He was a wise old bird. He winked and patted my arm paternally. I remembered my father with sudden pain. My parents’ accident had been so sudden, so unexpected. I had never really allowed myself to grieve. Too much to do.
‘Do you think I should?’
‘Jordan, I don’t have a clue what goes on inside a woman’s head but I sure know naked desire when I see it. I’ll get you DS Evans’s mobile number. Put him off. He won’t mind. Say you’ve got a headache.’
I did not know where to look. Nothing was private in this place. Naked desire? I ought to wear a yashmak.
‘Thank you, sarge.’
I went after James. He’d gone upstairs to his office, loosened his tie and was immersed in reading a thick file of papers.
‘Changed my mind,’ I said brightly. ‘Bear and Bait, it is, James. What time did you say?’
He barely looked up. ‘Eight thirty. I might be late.’
‘Fine by me. Be as late as you please. I’ll pick up some hunky guy at the bar. No problem. It’s always crowded with hunky guys on the make, mostly firemen.’
‘If you are that easily pleased, then you don’t need me.’
What could I say? I did need him. I wanted him there more than anyone else. But I could not say so. Our communication was dreadful. Wires all crossed. I could not lean over the desk and touch his hand or kiss his face. Nothing. I’d never kissed him except in my dreams.
‘I’d like to meet you there,’ I said, trying to sound cool and professional. ‘But if you are more than half an hour late, I shall come back here to the station and raise hell. Do you hear me? Merry hell. They will hear me from Latching to Brighton. So don’t be that late.’
He looked up, a sardonic smile hovering. ‘I hear you, Jordan. I may obey, but only in part. Work comes first. You know that.’
I said a fifth-century Anglo-Saxon word and marched out of his office but my heart was singing like the Last Night at the Proms. I phoned DS Evans from a call box and took a rain check on the drink at Findon. He was not bothered. Of course, he was not bothered. He had a string of girlfriends, including Leroy Anderson. He would take her out instead.
Hide and Die (Jordan Lacey Series Book 4) Page 6