“Some coke cave?”
There had been a lot of talk and newspaper stories about illicit drug taking in Latching recently. I didn’t like it. Not in my half-asleep seaside town. It didn’t seem right. We didn’t have that breed of youngster surely, but apparently we did.
“There’s a close-up of a newspaper, taken at the same time, so you can check the date,” I added.
“It could be any day’s newspaper. Means nothing.”
“No one can get hold of tomorrow’s paper. It’s the same date as the accident.”
“So then they were eating at Miguel’s,” said James, shredding duck meat on to a sliver of pancake, adding spring onions and hoisin sauce. The second course had arrived. I nibbled a spring onion.
“It was Derek Brook and Nina Deodar who were at Miguel’s,” I said, wondering if I could find room for the Chinese idea of a pancake, so paper thin you could see through it. “They were together. The connection is odd.”
“Maybe they’re having an affair?”
Did James know anything about affairs? Would he have an affair with me? I’d go along, pretending. I wasn’t proud. He could share my bed anytime and I would massage his back, sinking my fingers into his flesh, take away the pain, ease the sorrow. But that was pillow fantasy. Dream on, dunderhead.
“It looked more like business than an affair,” I said, hoping I knew the difference. “They weren’t looking at each other in that way, that special way.”
“What way?” He was looking at me keenly over his duck pancake. I felt my cheeks becoming warm.
“That way. The way people look at each other when it’s something special. You know, into their eyes.” I was faltering over the words.
“I wouldn’t know.” he said.
“They could be cooking up records. X-rays.”
“Maybe. Anything else?”
“They would need doctors’ reports for an insurance claim. Perhaps this woman could supply them.”
“Can you falsify reports?”
“Of course. Go to A and E with a bump on your head and give a false name and address. It’s then recorded on computer. It’s never deleted because no one knows if or when you get better. Any insurance company would accept that as a genuine injury. Or Nina Deodar might be simply creating an entirely false record out of nothing.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of this.”
James was on to his third duck pancake. I was sipping the pink wine. I’d drink pink lemonade if it was in his company. I was almost enjoying this. An array of Chinese dishes arrived on hotplates, a bowl steaming with egg fried rice. There was no way I could manage more than a beansprout.
But James was hungry. The Chinese food vanished down his lean body in minutes. I found room for a few cashew nuts and a slice of water chestnut. I wondered if he would take me for a walk along the beach. It would be cold but bracing. The pier was laced with lights all the way to the nightclub. The promenade would be deserted except for a few dog walkers and late-night clubbers. We could find an empty shelter. Sit fora while, admiring the crescent moon. The beach would be too lumpy to sit on, all those cold pebbles.
“You look tired,” said James, noticing my face.
“It’s been a long day,” I said.
“Perhaps I should take you home,” he said, calling for the bill. “You didn’t eat much.”
I didn’t want him to take me home but he did. No seductive walk along the promenade, arms entwined. No coupling on the pebbles under the stars. But he did put his coat over my shoulders. My body ached with longing for him, like floating on a silver-streamed tide. It was the worst kind of slap in the face. To be walked home and left on the doorstep.
“You need some sleep, kiddo,” he said as I fumbled for my keys. I couldn’t care less about sleep. And I hated being called kiddo. It was so patronizing. I tried to think of a hurtful reply but nothing came. Police slang would pass over his head. Nobody used it much these days… gumshoe, mob squad, the Sweeney… these words were being replaced by newer insults.
“Thanks for the seaweed,” I said. “Pity about the pebbles.”
James did not have a clue what I was talking about. He took my key with a kind of old-fashioned gallantry and opened the street door for me. He put the key back into my hand.
“When you can remember where that photo was taken, give me a ring,” he said. “Night, Jordan.”
“You’d better have your coat back.”
*
I set my alarm for four a.m. I had other things planned, like wrapping up in old clothes and camping out under the deck of the pier. This had come to me suddenly during a forkful of seaweed. The workmen were putting new decking on to a section of the pier and they had erected a steel fence round the replacement area, so that tourists etc. would not fall down the hole. I planned to climb down and find myself a nook or cranny under the girders of the pier, wait for high tide and the anglers. Maybe I’d catch a rod disappearing. Bingo.
I checked the tide timetable. Four point six was not too high a tide. I did not want to be swept out into the English Channel, to be found clinging to some blinking beacon by a boatload of grinning coastguards.
I force-fed myself a bowl of lukewarm porridge, packed a torch, radio, camera, mobile and a flask of black coffee into a rucksack, and set off for the seafront. Dawn can be beautiful. The pale gray sky was streaked with a wash of pink and gold as night gave way to the next day. An off-sea easterly wind was testing the palm trees along the front. The palms were still wearing their winter hairnets.
They never close the pier, which is really trusting, nor do they charge admission. One day they will and I’ll have to buy a season. I’m a pier freak. My daily walk is a must.
There was no one about at this time of day, or was it still night? The sea air was fresh and uncontaminated by any other breathing. Even the gulls were still asleep. I’d heard their dawn chorus many times and it could awaken the dead.
The workmen had not reckoned on anyone wanting to jump down a gaping hole, and the steel fencing was only loosely fastened together. It was easy to force two segments apart and slip through the gap. I climbed down the girders and eased along, under the decking, to the area most favored by the anglers. There was not a great deal of purchase for my rear end, and I was glad I had brought along a wedge of Dunlopillo from the shop so I could lean against an upright, with my legs astride one of the beams. It was not comfortable. It required a great deal of positive thinking through the pain.
Sleep was the other problem. My body was telling my brain, or vice versa, that I had not had enough sleep and it was time to nod off again for another couple of hours. Nodding off on a girder under a pier was not a good idea. I might easily become fish fodder.
My tiny cheap pocket radio was the salvation. I plugged it into my ears and listened to nameless DJs rabbiting on in the small hours about totally unknown people and bands and gigs, but their voices kept me awake. I nearly phoned in a couple of times as I knew the answers to their quiz questions. I could have won a holiday to Bermuda. I mean, everybody knows that the Vatican is the palace of the Popes in Rome, don’t they?
The strong coffee was rationed. I was glad when the anglers began to turn up. They gave me something to focus on and listen to. They were early risers, so was the sea. It was washing round the legs of the pier, dark and foamy. I hoped four point six was as low as I thought it was. The wind off the sea was not helping and the waves were starting to run big below my perch.
Now that there was fishing going on, I had something visual to watch apart from waves. If you like watching paint dry. It seemed an endless wait before a line began to twitch. Someone said that a fishing line had a hook one end and a fool the other. It was someone famous, like Samuel Johnson. Don’t blame it on me.
A line twitched and almost flew into my face. A slim, wriggling silver fish was impaled on the hook. It looked very small, used as I am to a plateful of succulent while-flaked fish at Maeve’s Cafe. I hoped the angler had a hea
rt. He did. The tiddler came flying back into the water, its mouth ripped.
This was not a good moment for me.
Workmen arrived above, stamping about, cursing the fencing, starting to bang and hammer. It kept my brain awake. I was so stiff. I had to flex my aching legs, my sore bottom, my arms, which had nowhere to go but up or out, or carry on clinging. I massaged my neck, drank more coffee, tried to concentrate on the music, desperate not to fall off this precarious perch.
The tide was rising. It was rising far higher than I had expected and faster. That damned wind had whipped up the tide. Rollers were rolling in, groaning with the weight of pebbles and sand that they were carrying. I was horribly exposed yet no one could see me. I was a dark mass huddled under the decking, clinging to a rusted iron girder. Even if I shouted no one would hear me.
Waves were starting to thrash against my legs. I was getting wet, not something that usually bothers me. I can cope with a bit of wetness. There must be more than twelve foot of water under me now. I would have welcomed a boatload of coastguards.
A huge wave splashed halfway up the girder, drenching me. The radio went dead. The thermos was wrenched from my hands and went spinning down into the swirling depths.
I clutched my mobile to my chest, protecting it from the waves and clung to the upright girder as the tide surged in. This was no four point six. I started to shout but no one could hear me. They were using a noisy drill to put the new decking in place. I was underneath, shaken by the vibration. This surveillance had gone drastically wrong and I was some kind of pig in the middle.
Monster waves were surging diagonally across the beach, foaming and churning. They could sweep me away in seconds. I found some rope in my rucksack and looped it round myself and the girder. I might drown but I would not be swept away. My watch said it was six twenty a.m.
On second thoughts, the rope might not be so clever. Drowning was an awful death. They said Dick Mann had drowned. Perhaps I ought to swim for shore while I still had a chance. Someone might see me and launch a boat.
No one had taken a fishing rod. I had not seen any activity except lines occasionally being reeled in. It was a hobby without drama or trauma unless you were reeling in a shark.
I thought I ought to let someone know where I was. in case of the worst. I ran through the phone list keyed into my mobile and wondered who to alert. A wave washed over me and, in the lurch to save the mobile against my chest, I accidentally pressed the ring pad. I heard a call ringing, pressed on my wet ear.
“Maeve’s Cafe,” came Mavis’s voice.
“This is Jordan,” I shouted, water dripping from my face. “I’m under the pier. Roped to a girder. I’m going to drown.”
Bless her, she asked no questions. A sensible, fish-frying person. Her response was instant.
“Of course you’re not going to drown. Hang on there, Jordan. I’ll ring the coastguards.”
Mavis did better than that. She rang her bronzed fisherman friend, who was nearer, and, through the spray of water, I saw a sturdy fishing boat put out from the shore, tossing on the waves. Then when it was over the surge, the boat turned right and chugged in a straight line towards the pier.
I thought I recognized the tall, burly figure at the tiller. It was Bruno, the latest in her line of lovers. He didn’t like me. Yet he was coming to rescue my skinny bones from under the pier. Mavis must have a powerful hold.
I was knee-deep in sea now, teeth chattering, every new wave a personal battering. The workmen above were still rivetting everything in sight. The fishermen were swopping tales and burgers. No one noticed me at all.
It was a turquoise fishing boat with a broad hull and two masts, fore and aft, a spluttering engine in the stern. The boat was piled with nets. Bruno was leaning on the tiller, steering the boat between the legs of the pier. Once under the pier, he switched off the engine. He was standing proud in yellow oilskins, a knitted cap covering his curls.
“Jump!” he shouted. He was holding on to the girder with both arms, taking the pull of his boat on the waves with every muscle in his body. “Jump now.”
My fingers were frozen, trying to undo the knot in the rope. The boat was tossing beneath me, almost in danger of crushing my legs. Bruno’s eyes were glaring. He still didn’t like me.
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” I gasped.
He couldn’t wait much longer. That boat was his livelihood. He could not afford to have it damaged. Selling fresh fish was his living.
The rope slithered through the loop and without thinking I just leaned over the girder and dropped. I didn’t care where I fell. But Bruno had turned the hull of the boat and I fell straight into a pile of wet and smelly nets, into the mess of seaweed and spider crabs and bits of torn plastic bags. I got a mouthful of wet.
“Thank you,” I said, the breath knocked out of me.
“Don’t ask why I’m here,” said Bruno, putting the boat into reverse. She barely moved at first against the strong oncoming tide, but slowly she made some distance from the pier. When she was a good way out, he turned the boat, then we were running with the tide, heading for the shore. It was a glorious, exhilarating feeling.
His thick lashes were spiked with seawater. It was dripping off his tanned face. No friendly hand offered to pull me up off the nets.
“Take this,” he bellowed. “You might as well start making yourself useful.”
He handed me a mallet. “Smash the crabs,” he said.
Twelve
Bruno was not my idea of a friendly rescuer. No sympathetic cluck-cluck or shoulder patting. He barely said a word. His attitude was of disapproval and he made it quite clear that he had only put out to sea on the insistence of Mavis. I think she had now paid off any debt she thought she owed me.
I sat on the wet nets, shivering with cold, not making any attempt to hammer spider crabs. They were very little crabs, some no larger than a fifty-pence coin, not doing any harm. I pretended not to hear him.
It was a rough journey back, tossing on huge waves. I could not see how we were going to make the shore, let alone how I was going to be able to climb out of the fishing boat in such water. Perhaps I would have to stay with the nets until the tide turned and the sea receded, leaving the boat high but not dry.
“What the hell were you doing under the pier?” Bruno shouted eventually, curiosity overcoming his hostility.
“I was on surveillance,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “One of my cases.” I could have said one of my many cases, but that would have been an exaggeration. I had learned nothing from the last few hours except always to check the wind force as well as the tide timetable. I would probably be laid off the anglers’ missing rods case as the disappearances seemed to have stopped. No more had been reported as missing.
Dick Mann’s life had also stopped. I wondered if it was a coincidence or not. But there was no reason for Dick Mann to have been involved. Witness protection or not. I wanted so much to find out why he was being protected. Yet his home had been devoid of anything personal. Except that one small item which I had purloined. And I had no idea if it would lead me anywhere.
DI James had told me nothing about their investigations into Dick Mann’s death. He would never tell me what routes he was following or who were his suspects. Perhaps it was time to probe a little more. Did I have any information to barter? It always worked better if I had something to give him. Time to return to Dick Mann’s cottage and carry out an in-depth search. But why? It wasn’t one of my many cases…
The fishing boat had reached the shingle but the churning waves made it difficult to beach the boat. She tossed and slewed. I stood up to see if I could help.
“Sit down!” Bruno yelled. “You’ll tip her over!” He sounded like a dictator. I wondered if he shouted at Mavis. Perhaps he shouted in an extremis of emotion.
Bruno leaped down into the water, thigh-deep, hauling a rope over his shoulder, actually pulling the boat up on to the pebbles, using the energy of the o
ncoming waves to help lift a two-ton weight up the shore. It was an exhibition of physical strength of awesome proportions. It made me feel quite puny. Sometimes, I couldn’t lift my laundry.
The bow of the boat crunched deep into the sliding pebbles and refused to move any further. She was high up. water swirling around her bow as the tide was still coming in. I thought I was marooned.
It all happened so quickly. Bruno appeared at the side of the boat, still thigh-deep in water. He leaned over and wrapped his arms round me its if I was a sack of something disgusting. He lifted me into his arms and over the side of the boat. My face was against his wet oilskins. He staggered on the shifting shingle and carried me through the sea and on to the beach.
For a moment, one brief moment in time, suspended in disbelief, I actually enjoyed the sensation. He was strong, smelt so masculine, and I could imagine I was being rescued by a knight on a white fishing boat. I did not look at his face.
It was not the face I wanted to see, even if the arms were all right.
He dumped me on the pebbles, thump, dump, knees giving way. And the romance disappeared as the pebbles crunched into my aching flesh.
“Count yourself lucky,” he growled. “I could have dumped you overboard with the crabs.”
“Thank you,” I said, catching my breath. “My mother taught me good manners… so I’ll simply say thank you and… my thanks are genuine. Mavis is a good friend and I will always help her out, even if she chooses the oddest of friends. You must have some talent I know nothing about.”
He was momentarily without a blunt retort, eyes shuttered. Then he turned his back on me and his attention was on making his boat fast with anchors and tarred boards slid under her belly. He attached a winch wire to the prow. I no longer existed. Somehow, I had to make my way home. His pitch was on East Latching beach so I had a long walk along the front.
My rucksack was full of water and I tipped it out as I clambered up the slope. Everything was soaked. My wet clothes rubbed and chaffed. Time for the talc and Nivea cream. Time for a coffee that was not diluted with seawater. My mobile had gone again. No wonder these companies make huge profits.
Ring and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 6) Page 11