At first, I drove anywhere, taking right turns, left turns, losing myself, making distance. I was not being followed. Then I realized I was on the road towards Marchmont Tower on some kind of homing instinct. It felt like coming home. I recognized the overhanging trees, whispering with rain. I began to slow down, feeling calmer, fastening the seat belt, my hands loosening their manic grip on the wheel, the moon sliding behind a cloud, out of sight. I had got away.
Marchmont Tower loomed ahead, straight-stoned, shadowed and medieval, flat crenellated roof etched against the sky. DI James might not be at home. DS Ben Evans would never be home again, with his warm arms and even warmer kisses, welcoming me with fondness and ardor. The grief came back, musty and dry.
I drove round to the back of the tower, to the parking space. Lights were on in the tower. I did not know if this was a good sign. Maybe James always left them on for security. I parked, ran to the back door, rang the bell and hung on to it.
It was like waiting a million years. I crouched back, in suspense, dying by inches, expecting the knife man to appear at my side, blade glinting. But it was Janies who opened the door, light streaking behind him.
“Jordan?” he said, peering out. It was like seeing him for the first time. Tall, gray-tinged crew cut, eyes deep as the ocean. He was in casual slacks, black polo-necked jersey.
I fell apart. He was still unsure, looking surprised. My Dusty Springfield outfit was only a lash short of a full makeover. I pulled off the wig, crumpled it in my hands, my own hair springing out. “It’s me, Jordan. Can’t I come in?”
“Of course it’s you. I know it’s you.” He pulled me inside. The big kitchen was familiar, still untidy, still a bachelor’s den. He had not washed up for days. It smelled of ancient bangers and beans. “You look awful.”
“So would you if you’d been threatened by a man with a knife. It was not funny. I had to run and run. I don’t know how I managed to drive here.”
I was still shaking. I pushed my hair back, feeling a dampness on my skin. Something warm smeared my cheek. James took my hand and turned it over. There was a cut across the fleshy part of my palm. The knife man had caught me.
“Not funny at all,” he said, leading me to the sink. He turned on the hot-water tap, first letting it splash over the plates and mugs. “He cut you.”
It was not a deep cut. just a slight slice. I remembered his hand flying up. The blade must have nicked me. I didn’t want to have it stitched. I was sick of hospitals.
“I’m not going to hospital,” I said firmly.
“No need,” said James. “I think we can cope with this. It doesn’t need stitching. Hold your hand here, under the water. Wash out the germs thoroughly. Don’t worry about the blood. Let me make a phone call first. Which pub was it?”
“I didn’t say it was a pub. The Sow’s Head.”
“It’s always a pub. I’ll make you a drink in a minute. You’re still shaking.”
I allowed him to cosset me. It was an unknown pleasure to watch him administering TLC. He phoned the station, giving the bare details, then made some tea, remembering the honey.
He put stinging antiseptic on the cut and a whacking great plaster that looked like a pink tarpaulin.
“You’ll live,” he said.
“Yes, but for how long?” I was beginning to wonder.
“Perhaps you had better tell me what has been going on and why. Start at the beginning.”
He guided me up the narrow stairs to the first-floor sitting room. It was as untidy as the kitchen, but chock-full of his personality. Newspapers and cuttings, magazines, tapes and videos, unopened mail. I longed to be his secretary, his housekeeper, his anything. Pass me a notebook and a magnetic duster.
He sat me down on the long sofa, as if I was incapable of sitting down by myself. There was more tea on a classy wooden tray, and a tin of digestive biscuits for dunking. From a hidden wall cabinet, he brought out a bottle of Bell’s whisky. He’d thought of everything. He tipped a small dram into my tea.
“Feeling better yet?” he asked.
I nodded. Normal words had disappeared. I hoped I was not going to say something I would regret. My feelings had been bottled up for so long, like the genie in the bottle. If they all came whooshing out in a purple mist of passion, DI James might run for cover. He would hide in some primeval cave on the South Downs, the Cissbury Ring Iron Age Fort probably, where I would never find him again. He might fall down the shaft of a flint mine.
“Very kind,” was all I managed to say. I was starting to feel warmer. I shed my shoes and tucked my feet up on the sofa.
“Do you mind?”
“No. Feel at home.”
He sat on the other sofa, loafing, at ease. It was a big, octangular-shaped tower room. He returned to a glass of pale gold liquid, which he had been drinking when my arrival interrupted a quiet evening of rest and recuperation.
“Feel like telling me about it now, Jordan? Take your time. I want to know what happened. I’m listening.”
It took quite a time, like gathering a dream that was in shreds. I had forgotten what James knew and what he did not know. We were talking both fishing and puppies. I told him about my newspaper advertisement for a puppy and the callbacks, going to the Sow’s Head, and the man who sat at my table, who suddenly turned nasty with a knife hidden in the palm of his hand.
“Nothing to do with fishing? It might not be connected.”
“No, not fishing, I’m nearly sure. But I’m confused. Does anyone kill, maim, cut, threaten, for the sake of stolen puppies? James, I ask you. Is this some sort of international crime? What have I gotten into? Are you keeping something from me?”
I was starting to shake again. The whisky-laced tea had been comforting but the effect was not lasting. It was a combination of lack of sleep, lack of food, total down-the-drain feeling. James fetched a fleecy blanket, daddy syndrome. All I wanted was to sleep in his arms but he did not know that. James, please, come alive and recognize this longing that stems from within me. But he had his own problems and I couldn’t solve them.
“I’ve sent a patrol car out there but I think we ought to report this more fully, Jordan. He’s still out there with a knife.”
James noted down my description of the man. A guess at height, age… it wasn’t a lot. I couldn’t really remember much about him. It was more a feeling, an impression of his malevolence. His words were imprinted on my brain.
“Can’t you remember anything else?” said James, tapping his pen with irritation. “The color of his eyes…”
“I didn’t look at his eyes. I didn’t have time. Eyes are small in a face. You don’t really see the color of them unless they are very bright or very dark. Or special in some other way.”
Special like deep ocean-blue. James had these amazing ocean-blue eyes. And deep velvety brown. Miguel had the velvety eyes. I could remember them but I had no idea of the color of Doris’s eyes or Mavis’s eyes, and yet I see both of my friends on most days. And I’m a detective. Pathetic.
We went over the facts time and again, getting nowhere.
He was being paid a regular salary. I was not. I fell asleep on the sofa while he went to phone again. Someone tucked the blanket round me. I could only guess that it was James.
*
Marchmont Tower was dark and empty but for me… James had gone. I could feel the emptiness. He had left a note on the table. I wanted to keep the note, put it under my pillow like a love-sick teenager.
“Called out to Shoreham. Someone tried to steal a plane. Make yourself at home.”
It was nearly morning. I hurried round Marchmont Tower, locking every door with a deja vu feeling. I had done this once before. He wasn’t getting in. that man, whoever he was. I was slightly, ever so slightly nervous. This was not like me. Perhaps I was sickening for something. Flu, shingles, bubonic plague. I took a quick look for spots or blisters.
There was no more sleep for me. I did the washing-up to take my mind off the silence.
I switched on the radio and found the Jazz FM band. The building was high enough to get the frequency. I went into housework mode and put all the cereal packets and pickle jars away, cleaned the surfaces, scrubbed the table, polished the taps. James would not be able to find anything for weeks. So much for breakfast, if I was still here.
There was no way I could sleep if James was not somewhere in the tower. I did two-thirds of the crossword in yesterday’s paper. I started writing up my notes, including now the man with the knife, in case he was connected. I didn’t know. And yet, why me? Was he stealing puppies to order? Maybe he was into fishing rods. Nothing seemed right. He’d been on the lookout for a woman on her own and I fitted the bill.
The tower was four rooms, each one on top of the other, with a spiral staircase going up an inner wall. It was a folly built by a nineteenth-century landowner wanting to spoil his neighbor’s view. James paid the rent and DS Ben Evans had been his lodger. I had slept in Ben’s bedroom, once, but he had not been there at the time. I did not even peep into the other bedroom though my curiosity longed to see where James slept.
Meanwhile, I was getting older, crabbier, starved of love in every sense. I could feel my juices drying up. Ben had been so right for me, as second best. Miguel would be happy to accommodate my other needs, anytime, but I couldn’t use him as a sex toy. He was too nice, cooked like an angel, always gave me the best wine.
Miguel. I had my spare mobile. Not lost today. It still worked. I phoned his Mexican restaurant, a few doors down from my shop. Even though it was early, he was already there, probably working on last night’s accounts.
“Miguel? It’s Jordan.”
“Ah, bellissimo. La belle Jordan.” His voice was as deep and velvety as his eyes. He launched straight to the point. “You eat with me tonight, yes? I cook something very special. It is quiet. The bookings are down. I shall sit with you and listen to all your troubles. Maybe I shall solve them for you.”
“I’m not sure you’ll want to hear them,” I said.
“I would listen, as they say, to your talking down the phone book,” he said with a deep chuckle.
“Reciting the phone directory.”
Life lifted itself a few notches with incurable optimism. Miguel always had this ability to lift my spirits. It was something to do with his one hundred per cent admiration of my talent, my nonexistent looks, my femininity. It never failed.
“I should like that,” I said cautiously. “But I shall also want to ask about where you get your fish. And some other fishy questions.”
“Anything. I am an open book. I keep no secrets from you. All I ask is to sit with your beautiful face and your sparkling eyes.”
This was too much for me at this time of the morning. My hair was looking a wreck and my eyes were bagged and shadowed. I needed quite a bit of restoration. Cold tea-bags and a friendly herbal shampoo.
“This evening then? Eight o’clock?” he suggested.
“Nine o’clock. I am an owl.”
How was I going to last till then? I needed a quick fix. There was no sign of James returning but I could not stay cooped up in Marchmont Tower like a chicken. I roamed restlessly, plumping up cushions that did not need plumping, reading old newspapers. It was capitulation time. I showered in the downstairs bathroom, put on yesterday’s unwashed, unclean clothes and went out, closing the door carefully, the latch down. No getting in again. I looked like a tramp who had slept in a shed.
The ladybird would not start. She whined and moaned and shuddered to nothing. She was stone cold. It was either because water had got in, the battery was flat or she was out of petrol. Perhaps the getaway had been too traumatic for her.
This time, I did not go to the windmill. I’d had enough of being locked in a windmill, especially when the steel shoe catches fire. I set off for the downhill trot to Latching. Why James lived so far out, I didn’t know. The isolation suited him. He isolated himself from everything except work. I remembered then that I had not left a reciprocal note. Not even a thank you. Ah, well, etiquette was not high on my CV.
It was an unexpected morning with a hint of spring. The waysides had the thin spiky leaves of daffodils thrusting through the grass. Birds were fluttering about, gathering fluff and moss for their IKEA home-built nests. Spring in Latching is wondrous. Some enterprising counsellor a long time ago, now under some cold slab, sanctioned the planting of the bulbs everywhere. The dual carriageways were transformed with carpets of yellow. The lanes were banked with golden glory. The Beach House gardens were glorious until the late-night drunks staggered by, crushing the blooms, breaking slender stems of tulips. It was enough to make you weep. Yellow heads strewn everywhere like soggy cornflakes.
I alternated walking and jogging, eating up the miles. The distance narrowed and I could smell the sea. It sparkled far away, a sheet of shimmering silver, mirroring the sun. Another half an hour on the road and I should be home. They say the average walker covers two point three miles an hour and I was faster than average.
No one was paying for running time. I couldn’t charge for thinking. But my cases were still unsolved. I was no nearer to finding the puppies or who stole them, nor to solving the mysterious disappearance of the fishing rods. Dick Mann was dead and no one seemed to be concerned about the rods anymore. No one had reported him missing or come forward to identify him.
My calves were aching by the time I let myself into my bedsits. I shed my clothes, wrapped myself in the duvet and rolled into bed. I was asleep in moments. I slept for some hours, being woken by my phone.
It was DI James. His voice was controlled. “You got home all right?”
“Yes.”
“I told you to stay where you were.”
“I couldn’t stay. Sorry, I had to get out. I needed air.”
“Open a window.”
“I don’t wish to be lectured,” I said. “I’m home and I’m safe. It doesn’t mean that I am not grateful for you allowing me to stay at Marchmont Tower last night. But it was only temporary. Sorry about my car. It wouldn’t start.”
“Will it help if I tell you that we were both right about Dick Mann?”
I did not understand what I was hearing. I shook off the blur of sleep, hoping my brain would start to function. “Right about what?”
“You wrote it on a piece of paper. Remember? Some initials, WPP.”
“Oh, that. It was a hundred years ago.”
“Well, it was spot on.”
“Does this chalk up favors for the future?” I asked. “This was definitely assisting the police in their enquiries.”
“It was my line of enquiry, too.”
“So?”
“We were both right. Dick Mann came to live in Latching under the Witness Protection Program with a new identity. And, as yet, no one will tell me who he once was. It’s true. No one will give me a name.”
“Perhaps they will when you tell them he’s in a morgue.”
“But why is he there? Is it murder… or suicide?”
Ten
Witness Protection Program. Thye provided a new face, new home, new occupation but maybe not a new hobby. He could not give up his fishing. Whoever Dick Mann had once been in another life, he couldn’t give up his fishing.
“Would you tell me who he was if you knew who he was?” I asked but I already knew the answer.
“No.”
“Then I don’t believe you. Why should they keep his identity from you? No way, Inspector James. You know, but you aren’t going to tell me, and why not?”
“We’re not joined at the hip.”
“Thank goodness. How very inconvenient and most uncomfortable. That suits me down to the ground. Don’t ask me any favors.”
I put the phone down. I was on my own again. Detective Inspector James had gone officious. It was not the first time. I never knew where I was when it came to James. He had crept into my heart and was destined to stay there. Sometimes, it hurt and the pain was like a window in my head. When we were workin
g together, as occasionally happened, then I could live with the rejection.
Rejection? I was not sure that it was a rejection. Sometimes, he did not even notice me. It seemed that his marriage and his wife’s actions had damaged him forever. Maybe one day he would tell me what had happened.
But what if he died on duty, like DS Ben Evans? I would churn in a sea of sorrow. I could not imagine ever getting over it. Work would be my solace… if there was any work around. At my present rate of success, I would be stacking shelves.
The phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“Suddenly I’ve found this funny attachment to my hip. Sort of Jordan-shaped.”
I was stunned into silence. I tried to imagine where he was, sitting at his new desk with his new computer. Piles of files and papers. A black coffee within reach, already cold.
“Jordan? Are you still there?”
I nodded into space. “What do you want?” I said.
“Derek Brook came into the station today to make a statement about the accident in which you were involved.”
“You sound like a policeman.”
“Flippancy will get you nowhere.”
“Okay. Tell me something about the statement that I don’t already know.”
“There was a passenger in the back seat. And the passenger was also injured.”
I gasped on a short intake of breath. “No, that’s not true, James. Totally wrong. There was just the two of them. I ought to know. I was there. I looked.”
“They claim that their fourteen-year-old daughter, Miranda, was a passenger in the back seat, lying down, asleep. She was apparently hurt and had to have medical attention.”
“No way, there was only the driver and the front-seat passenger. The back of the car was empty. Oh, maybe a few carrier bags on the seat full of shopping.”
“Are you sure you’re not making a mistake? Memory lapse due to trauma?” James asked cautiously.
“A girl doesn’t look like carrier bags full of shopping. There was no one in the back, I swear it. This is an extension of their scam. More injuries and more claims. It’s disgusting. And now involving a child. I don’t know how people can do it.”
Ring and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 6) Page 9