Hide and Die (Jordan Lacey Series Book 4)

by Stella Whitelaw

  I nodded, quite definitely a nod.

  ‘Good job we pumped her straightaway. There’s no antidote except immediate pumping.’

  James could see the panic return to my face. He smiled reassuringly, ocean eyes bright with encouragement. ‘You’re going to be all right, Jordan. This is Dr Sprightman. He’s been taking care of you since you were brought back. Thank goodness you did not know you were having your stomach pumped. Not a very nice experience but it has saved your life. It got rid of the poison.’

  I was tired of blinking. The concentration was beyond me. ‘Poison …?’ I managed to whisper.

  ‘Hemlock, we think. Conium is the other name, a very poisonous chemical. The stuff grows wild. It can be used to make a salad. It even looks like salad. The leaves resemble parsley. Did you have anything like that to eat?’

  I nodded. The delicious supper, which I had finished up to the last shred. I should have left the parsley.

  ‘You had a salad in the nursing home? Was it brought to you by a nurse? OK, we’ll make some enquiries. Don’t worry, Jordan. You are going to be all right now.’

  James got up to go. This was a man going back to work. James was going to leave me. It was unbelievable. He couldn’t go. I would not let him.

  ‘Why …?’ I croaked.

  ‘Why? We are not really sure. You obviously know too much about something, but what sort of something we don’t know. There’s a police officer outside the door of your room now, so don’t worry. No one can come in here and whisk you off again.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to rest,’ said Dr Sprightman. ‘There’s a bell on the end of this cable. Can you press the buzzer? Excellent. Don’t worry, the feeling is starting to coming back.’

  There was no light in the room now, only some slants of late sun penetrating the blind. I did not want the harshness of electric light. My eyes ached. I did not want James to go but he was preparing to leave. With my one-word vocabulary, how could I make him stay a little longer?

  ‘James …’ The name made him stay for a few moments. It was sheer willpower. He sat down by my side and smiled. He smiled so rarely. His eyes glinted like sapphires, not coldly but with a new warmth. I wanted to say more.

  ‘Thank …’ I began.

  ‘I know,’ he grinned. ‘Thank you, Detective Inspector James. You are wonderful. You are Superman himself. I shall make gallons of home-made soup for you, get out my best soup bowls and old-fashioned soup spoons and we shall sit together on the floor and have second helpings.’

  He had remembered that time, last year. He had remembered my big white, gold-edged soup bowls and the antique silver soup spoons. They were all that were left from some magnificent dinner service from a big Edwardian house. And I tried a smile back. My mouth was moving again.

  ‘Soup,’ I said, nodding.

  ‘It’s a date,’ he said.

  Shopping list: mushrooms, celery, swede, parsnips, lentils, garlic, herbs, crusty bread, Stilton, French butter.

  ‘And Jack? Is he a boyfriend?’ The man was curious.

  ‘Arcade,’ I said, shaking my head again.

  ‘Of course, I remember. The amusement arcade on the pier? You threw yourself on to a robber in the arcade and made the headlines. Overnight heroine. That was the Jack, the owner, who moved you from the hospital? I suppose he thought you deserved more comfortable surroundings. That makes sense. He’s a very generous man. He gives a lot of money to charities, including the police benevolent fund. Nice guy.’

  Nice guy. Yes, Jack was a straight A guy. ‘How … you?’ I began.

  He was on to my thought wave immediately. ‘How did I find out you had been moved from here? It wasn’t me. It was DS Evans. He came to visit you and went ballistic when he found you had gone. We found the doctor who had discharged you, then we tracked you to The Laurels Nursing Home, stormed in and found you in a coma. Hemlock causes paralysis of the muscles. You had to have your stomach pumped out immediately, sorry. They had to get rid of the poison. You’ll be all right now. But don’t go anywhere for a while and be careful what you eat.’

  A nurse bustled in and I recognized her from one of my previous fleeting visits. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked. ‘You must feel horrid after that wash-out. I’ll also bring you a mouth rinse.’

  ‘Could I …’ I began.

  ‘I know, weak with honey. That’s the way you like it.’

  James had told her. I knew instinctively. I made to thank him again but he had gone. I suppose he had better things to do than sit with a woman who couldn’t tell parsley from hemlock.

  *

  But DS Evans had rearranged his shifts so that he could visit. He pulled up a chair, leaned over and kissed my cheek. It was the most I could expect after a stomach pump, hemlock and mad dog fever. It would be a wonder if anyone ever kissed me again.

  ‘How are you, darling?’ he said, looking at me fondly.

  ‘Getting better,’ I croaked. ‘Thank you for setting off the red alert.’

  ‘I thought you had been kidnapped by the Gibsons.’

  ‘Just as well you found me or I would have been a goner.’

  ‘But you are not and that’s what’s important. You are going to be fine. Back to your old self in no time. You’ll need a nice long holiday after all this, somewhere sunny. Fancy coming on holiday with me?’

  ‘Heavens,’ I sidetracked. ‘I don’t remember when I last had a holiday. It was years ago.’

  ‘Then all the more reason to take one now. Where do you fancy? Barbados? Bermuda? Bahamas? You can choose. Somewhere hot and interesting, eh?’

  ‘It’s hot enough here. We’re having a lovely summer now. A late start but it’s improved. They say the high temperatures might go on into the autumn.’ Speaking was suddenly normal.

  ‘Don’t start talking like a weather forecaster. I’ve just asked you to come on holiday with me. You don’t need to pack much. Just a bikini and a nightie.’

  ‘I haven’t got a bikini.’

  ‘All the better. Just pack your nightie.’

  ‘Don’t rush me,’ I panicked in seconds. ‘Let me think about it.’

  ‘Take all the time in the world. But make the answer yes, Jordan. We could have a great time together.’ His eyes behind his glasses were sparkling with enthusiasm.

  I nodded. This was fast tiring me out. All this emotion and decisions to be made. I did not want to have to decide about anything.

  ‘Tell me about the Gibsons,’ I said. ‘Have you been round to their house?’

  ‘Sure. Bonzo is now wearing a very attractive leather face mask. Should keep him out of trouble. Nearly took a bite out of the leg of my WPC. Mrs Gibson had hysterics and started throwing things at me. We found a few interesting items which we took away, but the rest was junk.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Hey, Miss Lacey, you know I can’t tell you.’

  ‘I told you about the box of brand new electric toothbrushes in the bathroom.’

  ‘OK, toothbrushes, hairdryers, food mixers. We believe they are a couple of fences, handling stolen goods.’

  I enjoyed Ben’s company. He was so easy to get along with and there was no tension, at least not on my part. A holiday would be nice but I could not afford it and I was not into sharing some two-bedded identikit room with basic shower. Not yet.

  ‘Darling, I think you should try and get some sleep,’ Ben said. ‘You’ve been through an awful time. Rest all you can.’

  Two darlings in one visit. This was heady stuff.

  ‘If you say so,’ I murmured.

  He kissed me again, vaguely, somewhere on the cheek. We might have been married for years. Marriage. I’d never thought of marriage with anyone, not even with my DI James. I doubted if Ben Evans had such thoughts. People didn’t marry much these days.

  I was too afraid to sleep in case something else happened to me. Yet I could see the figure of a police officer sitting outside my door. Who could I trust? Had the young doctor been invol
ved or the young dewy-eyed nurse? I did not know who I could trust now. I was sure I could trust Jack, yet he had some dodgy friends.

  My feeling was coming back. My legs and arms belonged to me once more. I wanted to try them out, walking, but it was scary. I moved my legs cautiously to the side of the bed and rolled them over. My feet felt the coldness of the floor. That was reassuring. It was an effort but I pulled myself up into a sitting position and eased into being upright.

  I was standing. But not for long. The effort was too much and I fell back awkwardly, sweating profusely. But I’d done it! And so I could do it again. It was a question of getting stronger. And I knew I could handle my recovery.

  I had little idea if it was day or night or what was the time. My body clock was not working. It needed winding up. Now that my brain was starting to function, there were two more things I wanted to ask James. Who and why? Who had decorated my salad with hemlock? And why did they want to get rid of me?

  Eighteen

  The hospital eventually let me go home. They did a series of tests, confirming that my system was clear of the poison and that I was out of danger.

  They lent me some casual clothes to go home in. I did not dare to think where the skirt and shirt had come from. At least they were clean. They had been through the hospital’s laundry thrashing machines, boiled to extinction. My own clothes were at The Laurels Nursing Home. I did not fancy making a call to pick them up. I could bump into the wrong person. They might try the poisoned dart routine next time.

  The taxi dropped me outside my shop. I had been forty days in the desert. It was important to check my answerphone and mail. Hopefully a client might have paid. A cheque would be nice. My bank manager would be pleased.

  There were two cheques. Phil Cannon had sent me a postdated cheque; Gill Frazer had sent a cheque for fifty pounds on account. A note said she had not received an invoice but thought she must owe me something. It seemed an odd thing to do. Perhaps she thought I would never get round to cashing the cheque.

  Someone had fed me hemlock. Gill had been under the same roof. Who else knew I was there? Young doctor, young nurse, Jack, the Gibsons? Maybe they had tracked me down.

  Doris put her head round the door. She had brought a bag of apples, a carton of soya milk and a bar of chocolate. ‘Been in the wars again, have you? What was it this time?’

  ‘Hemlock.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Pass me the belladonna.’

  ‘No, I’m serious. Someone tried to poison me.’

  ‘Killing you off type poison …?’ Doris looked dubious. She did not know if I was kidding her. ‘Jordan, have an apple. It’s not poisoned. I’m your friend and you’re no Snow White.’

  ‘I don’t know who my friends are any more.’ I sounded scared. And I was. I was out in the big world, on my own. No burly Sussex policeman on guard outside my door, no Jack to rescue me, no DI James, no DS Evans to hold my hand. No, it was James who had held my hand. I was still confused.

  I thanked Doris, went back into the shop and locked the door. This was no way to carry on. I had got to sew myself back together. I threw off the hospital clothes, stuffed them into a bag, put on my own jeans and a red T-shirt, trainers. The ladybird was parked in the back yard. I got in and drove her to Findon, parked on the ridge road, then climbed the steeply stepped path to the top of Cissbury Ring.

  The verdant view of the Downs and the distant sea sparkling with summer sun was amazing. The fields were ripening with acres of corn and rape seed and wheat. The colours rolled from dew pond to hedge, from barn to cottage, from clump of trees to chalky path. A light breeze rustled through the crops and my nose was filled with their essence. The windswept trees and overgrown bracken on Cissbury Ring moved in the breeze, resident ghosts from the Iron Age peered through the branches. Rabbits darted back into their burrows, whiskers twitching, tails bobbing.

  The Iron Age fort was steeply double-ditched for massive, unscaleable protection. I walked along the top ridge letting the clean air blow away my fears, taking care I did not fall down one of the Neolithic flint mineshafts. No way was I going to hide away, wrapped in cotton wool. Fear was suffocating. I had my job and I had to get down to doing it.

  Shopping list: courage. Where could I buy it?

  I’d find it from somewhere. This episode was not going to dominate my life. I’d been in scrapes before but no one had actually tried to kill me. Locking me in a hermit’s cell had not been in quite the same category.

  It took a while to walk the mile round the highest ridge of the sixty-acre site of Cissbury Ring. The formidable timber of the original fortifications had long been laid to waste but the hill-top site was still impressive. People had lived there in compounds, been born, bred children and died, living short, harsh lives in a tribal group.

  I hoped I might find a bit of pottery, a bent coin or link of broken jewellery, some sort of Iron Age goodwill token, but no such luck. Walking downhill is always more difficult. Slipping and sliding on the dry grass, I slithered back towards the car park, life and work.

  *

  One cheque was banked and my balance rose. I brought my notes up to date and restarted my card system. I wrote everything down on separate cards, put them on the floor and moved them around into different configurations. Sometimes it worked or sent my brain off into a direction that had not occurred to me before.

  I made a sandwich of Leicester cheese, spring onions and mayonnaise. I’d gone right off salads.

  It was time to have another chat with Phil Cannon. I called him on his mobile and made an appointment for that evening. We were going to meet at a pub that I had never been in before called The Fox in Hand. It was a few miles inland from Latching and away from my normal patch.

  It was a pub with a legend. Seventeenth-century history decreed that during a hunt, a panting fox had taken shelter in the pub and its life had been saved. I’d heard a similar legend from Lincolnshire, when a hunted fox, fur bedraggled, had leapt into a farmhouse oven, only emerging when he had dried out.

  It was an old L-shaped pub with worn red bricks and creeper, low ceilings and beams, tables outside in a flower filled garden. It was relaxing. Phil was already sitting at a table. He had a half of beer in front of him and he’d bought me an orange juice.

  ‘Oh, is that for me?’ I said, sitting down. Such generosity. How could I ever thank him?

  ‘I knew you’d be driving.’

  ‘Right. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ve done what you said. Got the DNA, like you told me. And I’ve got the results.’

  ‘That’s good and you’ve got the results already? That’s quick work. But I’m very glad that you’ve had it done. What’s the result or can’t you tell me?’ He did not look upset so it must have been the result he expected and wanted.

  ‘Like I told you, I ain’t the father. Look, I’ve got the results here from the laboratories. Paid the bloody cost and all, I did,’ he said. He looked more upset about having to pay up.

  ‘It was the only way,’ I said, sipping the juice. ‘I’m really pleased. OK, so you’ve had to pay for the tests, but look how much money you are going to save now. You won’t have to pay a penny more to Nesta.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said smugly. ‘She won’t get another penny out of me. She can go to hell. Dwain ain’t mine. She can look after the brat herself. Not me.’

  ‘Well, that settles it, doesn’t it? It’s what you wanted so you must be happy,’ I went on, grinding the organ.

  ‘Course I’m happy. Won’t have to pay you any more either. That’ll be even nicer.’

  What a charmer. My favourite kind of client. He could have been a dab more pleasant. He had got what he wanted, after following my advice. If he had had the test done earlier, he would not have received further bills from me. There was no way I was going to give him back the money. I had earned it. And he’d sent me a postdated cheque — tricky. Sometimes these had a funny way of being cancelled.

  ‘Perhaps I should have a copy of
the results from the laboratory,’ I said. ‘It would be safer to keep them on file, in case Nesta makes a fuss at some future date.’

  ‘As long as I don’t have to pay storage.’ He did not look completely convinced. ‘You mean, photocopies?’

  ‘That’s right. They cost ten pence a copy at the library. Better safe than sorry. You might lose them. They could get mislaid or, worse still, stolen.’

  ‘Wotcha mean? Nesta might steal them?’ This had obviously not occurred to him. He digested the outlay at the library and decided ten pence might be worth it.

  I got up. As far as I was concerned, the case was closed and I was not sorry. Phil Cannon was a difficult client. It would be a pleasure to put his file at the back of my filing cabinet and mark it ‘CLOSED’.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Cannon,’ I said. ‘Just drop the photocopy in at my office any time. No need to make a special journey.’

  He seemed surprised that I did not want to linger in his company. I bet if I had offered him a drink he would have ordered a straight malt whiskey and a double.

  ‘OK. Right. I’ll do that.’ He finished off his half pint. No offer of another drink. No thank you. He swivelled off the seat and made track for the bar. He was obviously celebrating. He was going to be pounds in pocket now that the payments could stop.

  I drove carefully on my orange juice. There might have been a double vodka concealed in it. A sudden moment of generosity by client in celebratory mood.

  I would have to go back to The Laurels Nursing Home. They could hardly feed me hemlock a second time. It took half an hour to drive back to Latching, my mind pondering imponderables. It was luminously light, that still magic of a summer’s evening with a sky like a Turner watercolour.

  I parked outside the nursing home. The front entrance looked like open jaws. Think Cissbury Ring and courage.

  The receptionist nurse was surprised to see me. She was willing to talk. Yes, they had been quite upset when I was taken ill. Yes, Dr Marshall worked for them in a private capacity as well as at Latching hospital. The young nurse? Oh, yes, that was the new Mrs Marshall, sweet young thing.

  ‘And Mrs Frazer … is she all right?’