The Tapestry Bag: A gripping mystery, full of twists and turns (A Janie Juke mystery Book 1)

by Isabella Muir

  Contents

  Title Page

  Published by

  On a summer's evening

  Ch 1

  Ch 2

  Ch 3

  Ch 4

  Ch 5

  Ch 6

  Ch 7

  Ch 8

  Ch 9

  Ch 10

  Ch 11

  Ch 12

  Ch 13

  Ch 14

  Ch 15

  Ch 16

  Ch 17

  Ch 18

  Ch 19

  Ch 20

  Ch 21

  Ch 22

  Ch 23

  Ch 24

  Ch 25

  Ch 26

  Ch 27

  Ch 28

  Ch 29

  Ch 30

  Ch 31

  Ch 32

  Dedication

  About the author

  THE TAPESTRY BAG

  A JANIE JUKE MYSTERY

  By Isabella Muir

  Published in Great Britain

  By Outset Publishing Ltd

  First edition published October 2017

  Copyright © Isabella Muir 2017

  Isabella Muir has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN:1-872889-09-3

  ISBN-13:978-1-872889-09-2

  www.isabellamuir.com

  Cover photo: by bady qb on Unsplash

  Cover design: by Christoffer Petersen

  On a summer’s evening in 1969, in a quiet seaside town in Sussex, Janie Juke hears something that will turn her life upside down…

  Chapter 1

  There had been times when I hardly thought that Poirot appreciated me at my true worth. ‘Yes,’ he continued, staring at me thoughtfully, ‘you will be invaluable.’

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie

  It was the last item on the news. As the newsreader spoke Zara’s name we both stopped breathing for a few seconds. It was a moment and then it was gone. Perhaps we’d imagined it, as now the weatherman was standing in front of a map of the British Isles, pointing and waving his hands, telling us a bitter wind would arrive from the north-east.

  The news report had given us so little and yet it changed the intensity in the room. Minutes ago, we were relaxing after an ordinary day. Now it was as though a magnetic force had entered the room, drawing us to that snippet of news. We were both caught in our own thoughts. Mine were for Zara. Did the report mean she was still alive? I prayed that it did. My head was bent and my gaze focused on my knees. In truth I was seeing nothing, just the images that had been repeating in my mind since the day Zara disappeared. We’d made a connection as adults that was so much more than our schoolday friendship and her disappearance left not a gap, but a chasm.

  I flinched as Greg put his hand on my leg.

  ‘It’s good there’s news, Janie,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ I said. Both of us knew the implications.

  It would be pointless now trying to sleep. The television was still on, the black and white images flickering, but we had turned away.

  ‘Tea?’ I said, needing to focus on something to fill the void.

  ‘Hot milk maybe.’ We moved into the kitchen and Greg stood, shuffling his feet, watching me pour the milk into the small saucepan and light the gas.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do, you know that don’t you?’ he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Don’t get angry with me, I’m just saying.’

  ‘What are you saying? You know as well as me the police have lost interest. We did more to try to find her than they did.’ Opening the fridge, I took out butter and cheese, although I wanted nothing to eat. ‘Do you want a sandwich?’

  ‘No, do you?’

  ‘I need to do something, I can’t just sit around here.’

  ‘There’s nothing you or anyone else can do right now. The police have it in hand. If they didn’t then it wouldn’t have been on the news, would it?’

  ‘We both know our local constabulary does not exactly have Zara high up on their list of missing persons.’

  The manner of Joel’s death was a shock to us all, but for Zara it was as though her world had ended the day a police officer explained to her, as gently as possible, that her boyfriend had been killed in a hit and run accident.

  She was in my thoughts every day, even though Greg had persuaded me to give up on our search for her. Since the day Zara went missing I was determined not to believe what many others did; that she’d had enough. More than one person suggested that a year of grief may have been as much as her body and soul could bear.

  I’d left the spare room just as it was the day she disappeared. I regularly aired and dusted in there, foolishly imagining one day she would walk back into our lives and everything would be right again.

  ‘Early start tomorrow?’ I asked Greg, just for the want of hearing a voice that might dull the sounds in my head.

  ‘Same as usual,’ he said and we sipped our hot milk in silence.

  The newsreader’s words were on a repeat loop in my mind, ‘There has been a new development in the police case regarding Zara Carpenter, the young woman who went missing three months ago in the seaside resort of Tamarisk Bay.’

  I had to force myself not to grab my coat and march down to the police station, demanding to know more about this ‘new development’. I went back into the sitting room where the television was still entertaining two empty chairs. A late-night news programme had come on and the presenter was reporting on the latest events in Vietnam; thousands of young men dead.

  ‘What are you doing? Don’t watch, it’ll only depress you.’ Greg stood at the doorway and held out his hand. ‘Turn the stupid thing off and come to bed.’

  ‘I remember now why I avoid the news. I’ll come in a minute.’

  I turned the television off and put our mugs in the sink. I heard Greg use the bathroom, brush his teeth and then pad through to our bedroom. I climbed the stairs purposefully, pleased to be moving, hoping any action might distract me from my thoughts. Instead of going into our bedroom, I opened the door opposite and walked into the spare room. I smoothed down the bedspread and plumped up the pillows. The curtains were open, letting the light from the lamppost across the road shine onto the simple wooden furniture. A room that had offered my friend a comfortable sanctuary now felt bare and empty.

  I had looked through the chest of drawers many times since she left, wishing I would find something that she had left behind, a clue to where she had gone and why. Now I opened each drawer again, the emptiness mirroring a hollow sensation I couldn’t shake off. Running my fingers over the empty spaces, I tried to picture Zara starting a new life somewhere. But the image was as vague as an early morning fret, blocking out the sun and chilling the air.

  Greg was already asleep by the time I got into bed. I wished for the instant switch he seemed to have, to go from waking to sleep, with no t
ossing and turning in between. I took a book from my bedside table. I was half-way through it, but now I couldn’t even recall the storyline. I read a few lines and then read them again. The letters jumbled up in front of me and for the first time in my life the words were just ink marks on the page.

  It was Zara’s face I saw when I closed my eyes much later that night. Zara who had come back into my life unexpectedly, only to leave again in such strange circumstances.

  Chapter 2

  Surely her face grew a little paler as she answered: ‘Yes’.

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie

  I first met Zara when she joined our school in the fourth year. We were inseparable for those last eighteen months of our schooldays, meeting up at weekends and hanging around coffee bars and record shops. Shortly after she finished school she moved away with her family. We wrote to each other for a while, but soon the letters dried up and we lost touch. Then, nearly six years later, I was strolling through the town centre and noticed something familiar about the person I was following. Seeing her back view made me pause as I ran through a mental checklist. The willowy figure ahead of me reminded me of someone. It was only when she paused to glance in a bookshop window and I saw her profile, that everything fell into place.

  ‘Zara,’ I called out. I walked towards her and put my hand on her shoulder. She turned and for a moment I couldn’t tell if she was choosing to ignore me, or if it was just that her memory wasn’t as sharp as mine. Then her face transformed into a beaming smile and she held her arms out to me.

  ‘Janie,’ she said and we embraced. We strolled arm in arm as we caught up on the last few years. I told her how our English teacher, Mrs Frobisher, had got me a job looking after the mobile library van. She laughed when I reminded her how we used to joke about Mrs Frobisher’s hairy chin, while in truth we both wished she could have been our grandmother. She asked about dad’s physiotherapy practice and told me how she had fond memories of Charlie, dad’s German Shepherd. I flashed my wedding ring at her and told her about Greg. She said how thrilled she was for me.

  Later when I was at home, recounting my chance encounter to Greg, I realised she’d said little about her life. I’d been so busy chatting away, I hadn’t even asked her why she’d moved back. I didn’t even know then whether she had moved back, or if she was only passing through.

  We arranged to meet the next day for lunch and a proper catch up, so when I arrived at the café I was armed with all the right questions. I was taken by surprise to find Zara was not alone. As I approached the table she stood up.

  ‘Janie, meet Joel,’ she said. She blushed as I went to hug her and sat down next to Joel, taking his hand in hers.

  Joel’s chiselled looks made me wonder if he was a male model. His hair was neatly styled, his perfect teeth shining white, in contrast to his bronzed skin.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said and shook his hand, feeling rather stupid about my formal greeting.

  ‘Joel’s a photographer,’ Zara said.

  ‘I thought there was something familiar about you, but I couldn’t put my finger on it,’ I said to him. ‘You’ve held exhibitions at the Elmrock Theatre, haven’t you? Quite a talent by all accounts.’

  ‘Did you have a chance to visit? They’ve promised me another slot, maybe next year,’ he said, with enthusiasm.

  ‘I didn’t go, but I saw the reviews in the Observer. You’ve got a star there, Zara.’

  She beamed and couldn’t have looked prouder if she had been chosen for the front cover of Vogue. They were the perfect match. A beautiful couple. Zara’s olive skin and almond-shaped eyes had always been the envy of all her classmates. At school her thick dark hair was cut into a chic bob, but now it flowed loosely over her shoulders and down her back.

  She explained she’d recently moved back into the area from Brighton.

  ‘How did you two meet?’ I asked.

  She told me how she wandered into Joel’s photographic studio to hand in a roll of film and came out with an invitation for a date.

  ‘My lucky day,’ Joel said. He told me Zara had moved into his flat over the studio and was looking around for work.

  ‘What kind of work?’ I asked her. ‘What were you doing in Brighton?’

  ‘Zara wants to change the world,’ Joel said.

  It was inevitable that the relationship Zara and I had as adults felt different to our earlier friendship. We were no longer a couple of schoolgirls fascinated with the pop and fashion scene. The intriguing side of Zara, that had been there in its embryonic form when we were fifteen, had developed. Now when we met I would chat away, while she listened intently, probing me with questions. When I mentioned dad and how busy he was with patients, she’d ask me which type of patients he preferred, ones with physical ailments only, or ones who benefitted from his counselling.

  ‘He just chats to them, it’s not really counselling,’ I explained.

  ‘He gives them time, someone to relate to; we all need that,’ she said.

  She asked me how dad felt about the war.

  ‘He was just a boy when he joined up. He never talks about it,’ I said.

  ‘So many young men killed, a whole generation.’

  ‘They had no choice though. Hitler was mad, he had to be stopped.’

  ‘All fighting is mad,’ she said.

  Our conversations didn’t just help me view the world differently - it was more than that. It was as though she was always looking outside the confines of her own life and it fascinated me. She questioned everything, always trying to establish the reasons for actions and showing concern for the potential consequences. Looking at the world through Zara’s eyes I could imagine layers of meaning I had never considered.

  The times we spent together were limited. It was natural she’d want to spend her weekends with Joel, after all, they were in the early throes of their relationship. Occasionally we met up as a foursome, but the men soon got bored as they had little in common, which meant Zara and I had to work hard to keep the conversation flowing. Greg loved his football, but it appeared that Joel wasn’t interested in any sport. He’d introduced Zara to art galleries and museums, which was Greg’s idea of the worst possible tedium.

  So, Zara and I met up on our own, although Joel tended to be the main topic of conversation. She was enthralled by him and it was easy to understand why. He’d taken over the photographic studio a couple of years earlier and made a huge success of it. She explained that he was self-taught, even though his dad had had more than a passing interest in photography. Having met Joel, I started to watch out for his name among the photo credits in the local paper. He’d built up an impressive reputation as a wedding photographer. His style was quite distinctive. Rather than the traditional approach, with the happy couple posing in front of the church door, he wasn’t afraid to try out something new. One of his trademark shots was a head and shoulders of a bride, looking in a mirror at her groom, who was looking over her shoulder. Clever.

  When it was just Zara and me, and the weather permitted, we walked along the seafront and chatted, stopping en route at one of the new coffee bars that had opened at the bottom of London Road. My favourite was Jefferson’s. Richie, the chap who ran it, was really into his music and he installed a juke box. Zara and I took turns to choose a record, pleading with Richie to turn the volume up loud, which must have delighted the poor couple who lived in the flat above.

  Sometimes we met in town and wandered around clothes shops, window shopping, drooling over everything we coveted, but couldn’t afford. Mary Quant’s designs had filtered down from London, with local boutiques offering decent copies, but without the label. Even copies were outside our budget. We spent hours browsing through fashion magazines featuring Twiggy, with her big eyes, close cropped hair and boyish figure. Zara dared me to get my long dark hair cut and coloured, but I would never have been brave enough. Instead we used to practise posing like Twiggy, in front of shop mirrors, ignoring the dubious glares fro
m the shop assistants.

  During our schooldays we’d jigged around to Elvis and Adam Faith, but now we had new favourites. We still loved our music and had followed the meteoritic rise of the Beatles, dreaming about the day when we could hear them live. Like thousands of other fans we were mortified over the rumours that they might disband and frustrated that we couldn’t have been in London for their impromptu live session on the roof of the Apple building. We found a record shop in King’s Road with booths where you could listen to the record of your choice, without having to buy it. We got to be regulars, so the chap running the shop would have Beatles’ singles lined up for us as soon as we came in.

  It was easy enough for me to get a few spare hours in the week to meet her. Dad remembered her from when she used to be a regular visitor at our house during that last year of school.

  ‘It’s great you’ve met up again,’ he said, when I told him. ‘What’s she been up to all these years?’

  I tried to raise the topic a few times with Zara, asking her what type of work she was looking for, what she’d been doing in Brighton.

  ‘You should work in fashion, you’d be brilliant,’ I told her. ‘You could start off in one of the boutiques in town, learn all there is to know. Imagine all those beautiful window displays you could create.’

  ‘It’s a thought,’ was all she said. I wondered how she was managing for money. I guessed Joel was helping her out. He was certainly doing well enough and from everything Zara had told me, he seemed to be a generous sort.

  ‘She’ll find something when she’s ready,’ Greg said, when I raised the subject one evening over dinner. ‘Perhaps her parents are subbing her.’

  ‘I doubt it. She never mentions them. I might ask her, see what she says.’

  ‘Don’t interfere. She won’t thank you for it in the end. Enjoy her company and let her find her own way. If she’s not worried about money, then accept she’s okay.’