Turn and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 7)

by Stella Whitelaw

  I tried to tell DI James everything. He listened, taking in all my ramblings. I talked and talked, trying to remember every little detail that James could latch on to. He was the brains in a body that wasn’t working for the moment.

  “This morning, she was obviously upset, trying to make some deal with some man. There was a jewelery box passed to him. One of those flat things that contain a necklace or a bracelet. Very posh.”

  “How would I know?” James said. “I’ve never given anyone a necklace.”

  “And I have never been given one.”

  He grinned. “That makes two of us.”

  I did not know what to do or say. Again, this was a moment when we were in tune. We were sharing the same feeling. In that moment, it came to me. I knew where Holly had gone. She had not gone upwards or sideways. She had gone downwards.

  “There could be one of those traps in the pavement and she went downwards,” I said. “Like outside old pubs for delivering barrels of beer. A sort of chute. I hope she didn’t get hurt.”

  “You said this was a bank.”

  “It could have been a pub in the past. Brighton is teeming with new pubs and old ones from smuggling days. There’s practically a pub per person. And how do I find out if Richard Broughton made a 999 call?”

  “I’ll check if you give me the date. And go into Latching police station and look at some mug shots. That man’s face – shouldn’t be too difficult. It could be a lead.”

  “Anything else you want me to do?”

  “Get some sleep. You look worn out. You’ve been doing too much. It’s early days yet and you are not fighting fit.”

  He actually sounded as if he cared. My imagination was rioting. Was my luck about to change? I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve no one to sleep with,” I said, getting up to go. Usual idiotic, brainless comment. He closed his eyes, retreated. I’d blown it again. I need to go on one of those personality courses: How to Captivate Your Man By Not Saying the Wrong Thing.

  “Buy a teddy bear,” he said, closing his eyes. Other thoughts swam around as I went on a tour of the multi-storey car parks to find the ladybird.

  1. Had Richard Broughton set up his wife?

  2. Was Holly setting me up?

  3. Had she set him up?

  4. Or were they in this together, setting up some as yet unknown third party?

  The permutations were endless. I passed by the bank. Yes, there was a two-door trapdoor in the pavement right outside. It could have been opened. Holly could have opened the flaps. The latch was loose. I opened the trapdoor gingerly. It was ringed with dust and cobwebs. There was a chute, but no one was lying helpless at the bottom. And it looked as if it hadn’t been opened for years.

  I went inside and queued along the rope. “Excuse me,” I said. “But did you used to be a pub? Perhaps a smugglers’ pub?”

  The cashier looked at me in alarm. “Excuse me, madam; if you’ll kindly wait, I’ll fetch the manager,” she said, disappearing fast. This brief encounter with a maniac aged her. She would talk about it for weeks, keep buying the Retinox.

  The manager was out in an instant, his hand clasped round a mobile in case he needed to call for help. No, this had been a bank for twenty years. He knew nothing about a pub. Mrs Broughton had not come down the chute and entered the bank from the basement.

  “Why don’t you go home and have a nice cup of tea?” he suggested.

  “Great idea,” I said, backing out with dignity. I still had to find my car.

  A gang of skateboard kids were swarming round the ladybird, inspecting her. I smartened my step. She was vulnerable, crimson-red with nine black spots, and I loved her to pieces.

  “Hi there,” I said, striding forward, voice full of authority. “Do you like my car? Do you know what she’s called?”

  The kids stopped swarming, not used to friendly overtures, baseball caps back to front, baggy pants, loads of piercing. “Herbie?” one said.

  “Ladybird,” I said. “She’s like that spotted insect that flies around in the summer. Although they are being killed off by insecticides. Come and have a look at her.”

  “Did you do the spots, miss?”

  “No, I was lucky. Someone else had painted them on. Isn’t she fun? Cars should be fun.” They mixed around, temporarily interested. “Is she a proper car or a toy car?”

  “Of course she’s a proper car. Petrol, brakes, gears and everything. Now, will you show me the way to get her out of this concrete concentration camp? She has to breathe. Which is the best way to go? Round there, or down that ramp? You should know.” The gang of truant school kids saw me out of the multi-prison. They waved goodbye, then went back to skateboarding up and down the ramps. It was their playground.

  James had said sleep, but I knew I had a lot to do. It was hard without him. He was still in charge but I needed his physical presence. He was fastened to a bloody hard bed, fed by nurses, his every need accommodated. Well, I hoped not every need.

  There was a woman customer waiting outside my shop. I waved to her and parked the ladybird in the yard at the back. It only took a few minutes to unlock the shop and rush to the front door and open it for her.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m late. Urgent business.”

  “I’ve come twice,” she said.

  “Then you deserve a bargain,” I said.

  She was after the Chinese blue-and-white chinaware. They were copies, not the valuable and sought-after Chinese ware. Plates, jugs, vases and sauce boats, all with the distinctive blue rural pictures on a white background. She was starting a bed-and-breakfast place along East Latching and wanted a theme in the breakfast room. Apparently, it had a good shelf under the cornice and it could show off a lot of ornaments.

  She liked them all. There were about twenty pieces. She wanted the lot. Twenty times £6 was a lot of money. She was hesitant and so was I. I didn’t want to lose the business.

  “How about all twenty pieces for a hundred pounds? And I’ll throw in a couple extra. Well, not exactly throw in… but if at some time in the future – and please understand it may never happen – could you give me a bed for nothing and no questions asked? And never mind the breakfast.”

  “Done,” she said, smiling. “The Anchorage, Welborne Road. My name’s Mrs Holborn. I’ll give you the phone number. Come, any time. How about a password, so I’ll know it’s you?” She’d been reading too many spy books.

  “Great idea. How about ‘ladybird’? You can remember that.”

  “Ladybird. Sure. But if we are full, it might be pretty basic accommodation.”

  “I understand.”

  I wrapped every item carefully and packed them in a big box. I wished her well with her new venture. It all depended on the weather. Latching has wonderful summers but cool springs. It was a hazardous profession, dealing with holiday-makers who came and went.

  “Tell your guests about the theaters and the cinemas,” I said, as she left. “A show on practically every night.”

  “I didn’t know there were any theaters,” she said. Where had she done her research before buying the place? I gave her a town map and marked the best venues for shows and films, and Maeve’s Cafe and Miguel’s restaurant.

  I sat down and wrote up my notes. Time was passing and I was losing track. James was right. I was tired. I wanted to sleep, somewhere, somehow, with anyone, anyhow. It was in these moments that I thought of Ben, felt him near. Dear lost man, anywhere, somewhere. It had not been fair. A stupid accident. It had never been meant to be for us and I had not loved him. He’d deserved better.

  It was pouring with rain as I went home and climbed upstairs to my bedsits, the old-fashioned sash windows rattling. As I closed the curtains, I caught sight of a man standing on the corner under a big golf umbrella. He was getting drenched. I hope she turned up soon.

  Six

  DI James had been right. I did need sleep, and the pattering rain was my lullaby and I slept deep as a well, despite the us
ual upside-down and turbulent dreams, none of which I could remember when I woke up.

  My appetite was returning slowly, if you could call the minute amount of food that I was consuming an appetite. Breakfast was a spoonful of muesli with a slice of apple or banana chopped on top. Lunch was two leaves of lettuce. Supper was a mouthful of home-made broth. Where are the calories in all that? Floating in the washing-up water?

  Go back to the Medieval Hall pub, James had said, have a look at the plinth on which the suit of armor sat. He was suspicious but had not told me why. It was some kind of police instinct, beyond me. I couldn’t go by myself. The circumstances were too harrowing, the memories too vivid.

  But he had said again that he wanted me to go with the kind of authority that was difficult to ignore. If I phoned them, perhaps he would consider that I had made some attempt.

  I dialed the number after checking it in the phone book. I don’t carry pub numbers around. A male cleaner answered, coughing passive smoke fumes.

  “There’s no one here at the moment, miss,” he said. “The manager won’t be in till about eleven.”

  Funny how I knew that. “How silly of me,” I said. “Of course, their hours are different from everyone else’s hours. But you are in, working.”

  “I’ve been here since six o’clock, clearing up. You should see the mess. This is a big place, restaurant and all. There’s only me. I do the lot. But not for long now. Half of it’s going.”

  Half of it’s going? Now, that’s odd, for a pub. “What do you mean, half of it is going?” I asked.

  “Well, they’ve sold it – the Medieval Hall bit.” The cleaner was pleased to have a chatty break. “It’s going to be moved quite soon. All the talk, that is. Going to lift it up on a hydraulic whatsit and put it on trolleys or trailers or something. Tricky job. Costing a bomb, I expect. The police are going to close off all the roads.”

  “But where is it going?”

  “I dunno, miss. Some Russian millionaire has bought it and wants a Medieval Hall to put next to his mansion. I know the boss is pretty pleased — lining his pockets no doubt.”

  “Do you know when this is happening?”

  “No idea. Going to make a lot of dust, I reckon, which I’ll have to clean up.”

  “And who is the buyer?”

  “Dunno. Rockafellar.”

  “I don’t think so. He lives in America.”

  Would James have known about this? Had he been approached to close off the roads, provide a police escort, waste public money? More than likely. And he would not have been too pleased.

  “What about the suit of armor? Is that going as well?”

  “That bloody suit of armor. It’s here now, on the floor, looking like a stuffed dummy. I had to clear up the mess, you know – blood everywhere. I never seen so much blood. Had to wear me wellies. And rubber gloves. Infection, y’know.”

  “You mean, you know where it is?”

  “Yes, it’s in the boiler room. Nobody wanted to put it back over the bar, being all bloody and bad luck to boot. And off its perch, as you might say. So we left it in the boiler room.”

  “Is it still there, now?”

  “Unless it can walk about by itself. Part and parcel of the Hall, so to speak. I hope the ghost is going, too. Both been in the wars, again. Well, miss…”

  The cleaner was starting to tire. It was easy to tell when someone was not used to talking. This conversation had probably been a week’s worth of verbal exchange.

  “You’ve been very kind,” I said slowly, giving him a breathing space. “I do appreciate it. I won’t keep you from your work any longer.”

  “Righto, miss.”

  “’Bye.”

  I rocked backwards and forwards, reliving the moment when I had flung myself towards DI James, seeing him standing there, our drinks in his hands. A therapist would say that you should relive bad times to purge them from your memory. But this wasn’t helping. The muesli sat untouched. I could not eat or drink anything. This was purgatory, like those tortured medieval pictures of horned devils prodding bodies with forks.

  I went and showered, but blood seemed to run down the walls instead of water. I soaked my hair, but it still smelled of blood. His blood, my blood. No amount of herbal shampoo could rid me of the smell. Even now, weeks after, I could still smell it.

  It was a blustery east wind along the front, whipping my anorak, the unguarded sea a frothy coffee color, stirring the sand as the tide went out. The tide would go out for a quarter of a mile. It crashed on to the pebbles, taking its pennyworth of payment in rage. Why didn’t the sea fall off? No one had really answered that one.

  Maeve’s Cafe was open. She didn’t do breakfasts, preferring a bit of a lie-in. But Mavis came out of the kitchen in a new pinny and immediately pushed me into my favorite window seat with a sea view.

  “I can see you’ve had nothing to eat, so no arguing. I’m making you a mug of milky coffee with honey, scrambled eggs on toast and a chocolate muffin. And I shall sit here until you have eaten every crumb.”

  “I couldn’t eat a thing. Especially not a muffin.”

  “I said no arguing. Here’s today’s papers. Read about other people’s heartbreaks and feel lucky you’re still alive.”

  Mavis knew how to ram it home. Her hair today was a russet red, frizzed in all directions, different from her usual plum. Perhaps Superdrug had run out of her preferred shade. I dared not ask about Bruno, her current bit of rough.

  He and I were not on speaking terms, even though he had rescued me from the pier and I had paid for the damage to his fishing boat. He distrusted female detectives.

  She put a mug of coffee in front of me and a jar of honey. Honey was my absolute cure for everything. The monks used it. The Romans used it. Jesus used it. No one wrote down if cavewomen used it. Who had time to write in those days? Bring me an axe-head, mate, I want to chip a recipe on a rock.

  “Bruno sends his thanks, but not verbally, if you understand. He’s never said thanks to anyone in his entire life. But I know he was stunned when you paid for the damage to the keel of his boat. He’s been able to keep fishing and that’s his livelihood.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m glad he’s pleased. So I don’t owe him anything now for getting me off the girders. We’re quits.”

  “You could say that,” said Mavis, serving her perfect scrambled eggs. She placed tomato sauce, salt and pepper in front of me. “Now I’m not feeding this lot to the seagulls. So eat it up.”

  Many times I had eaten here at this window table with DI James. He liked cod in batter and chips with lashings of tomato sauce. He rarely ate anything else. It was an odd diet, apart from the occasional station-canteen menu. What sort of mush did they give him in hospital? I felt an urge to take him a cod-and-chips takeaway in a box and feed it to him with my fingers.

  Mavis made her scrambled eggs in a microwave but I didn’t know the secret of its fluffiness and perfect taste. A dollop of cream, perhaps? Yoghurt? Skimmed milk? Sea salt? She wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  She brought me the local paper. “Have a read,” she said. “Seen the dead guillemots on the beach yet? It’s a crying shame. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t seen any. My head had been elsewhere and I was hardly listening. A prominent news item had grabbed my attention. The Grade II listed Medieval Hall was on the front page. It had never had an ancestral name, was simply known locally as the Medieval Hall. If there had once been a manor house attached, that had long since gone and the stone been recycled. Some time in the seventies the restaurant had been added. There was a photo, too, of the Hall. It was two-storeyed, brick and timber with exposed cross-beams and arches.

  MEDIEVAL HALL LIFTED TO NEW HOME

  Latching’s most prestigious Medieval Hall is to move to a new home. The Hall, built in 1464, is to leave its present site and will be moved two miles to the home of football millionaire Sven Rusinsky.

  Costing thousands of pound
s, the operation will mean hoisting the Hall off its original foundations and stabilizing it on to giant trailers. A great many spectators are expected to line the route to see the Hall on its record-breaking journey.

  “It has taken months of planning,” said the site manager, Rik Henderson. “The police have been wonderful. The roads enroute will be closed and we shall have a police escort all the way. We may even have to remove a small bridge.”

  The vacant site will become a new shopping precinct with cafes and a bowling alley.

  It stank. The police had probably opposed the move from the start. It would cost the ratepayers thousand of pounds and tie up valuable resources for hours. The 70 ton Hall would move like a giant snail. The traffic confusion would be horrendous, costing time, money and maybe even lives.

  And who wanted another shopping precinct? Latching had enough shopping centers and even more huge retail outlets spreadeagled either side of the main Brighton road. How much was the pub owner getting for the Medieval Hall? And for the shopping site? He’d probably already bought his villa and pool in Spain.

  Remove a bridge? Even a small one would cause chaos to train services for months. Passengers would be diverted. And who was paying for that?

  I felt like marching on the Russian football millionaire and demanding that he leave the Medieval Hall on site. What did he want it for? Parties? A gymnasium? I was sliding into banner-and-protest mode.

  If the Hall was moving soon then I only had a few days to find out what James wanted to know. Jordan Lacey could not go. It would be too cruel. Her mental state was fragile. But how about some bumbling history student, someone who was writing a book, or a ghost buster, digging out Sussex ghost stories? Jordan need never say a word. She could stay at home.

  “Where does this Russian live?” I asked Mavis. She was sitting opposite me, checking every forkful.

  “I shan’t tell you till you’ve finished that scrambled egg.”

  “I can’t eat the muffin,” I said. “I truly can’t.”

  “It’s a big white house, on the South Downs. Used to belong to that rock singer. The group was always throwing things around the stage.”