Spin and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 3)

by Whitelaw, Stella

  ‘Sure, come in. It’s not often I get an amateur to instruct. It’s important not to abuse your equipment and most people don’t know how to use them, sling their cameras about as if they are egg whisks.’

  ‘I won’t. The camera is only on loan to me.’

  ‘So you don’t know the make?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’ll know tomorrow when I get it.’

  ‘No problem. We’ll go through several different leading cameras and I’ll explain how they work.'

  William Rushton was a thorough instructor. I learned enough to handle any camera, with luck and a good memory. I offered some kind of payment, but he refused. I would have to drop in with an inspired gift of Highland origin.

  ‘Thank you again,’ I said, leaving.

  ‘Anytime. Come back if you have a problem. You know, after the wedding.’ Mr Rushton was keeping a straight face. I don’t think he thought it was a wedding either. Perhaps Sergeant Rawlings had dropped a hint when he phoned through for me.

  As soon as I left the camera shop, I sat down on a municipal bench and made copious notes. It was customary. I write everything down, always. My memory is like a colander and sometimes all the best bits slip through.

  It was almost too dark to write. A sodium street lamp shone on the page of my notebook, making it shiny like wax. It was also too cold to stay out long. The wind sliced between my hair and my collar. I shivered and headed for home. I hoped no one would call on me, particularly not spongers, the amiable Joshua looking for pre-Christmas dinner nor the ferret-faced Derek looking for more than a meal. Supper was a bowl of homemade vegetable soup with all the leftovers thrown in to simmer. Lettuce, radishes, beetroot … I wasn’t fussy even if the colour was a bit odd for soup. A few handfuls of herbs and the brew was thick and nourishing. I curled up on my moral straight-backed sofa and switched on the black and white television. The programme was wallpaper. Surveillance needs planning, venues, timing, luck.

  *

  My first sighting of Sonia Spiller was from the health club car park. I’d pencilled in Sunday morning for a personal Christmas treat of steam and sauna. The steam room is good for my asthma. If I could think of a way of earning a living from a steam room, I would. The only option is a life of sin which is hardly my style, bearing in mind my low success rate with men, that is, any decent men.

  Only misfits lust after me. Must be something in my genes. But I yearn for two men. My jazz trumpeter, who is out of bounds because he is married, and DI James, who is out of bounds, full stop. Don’t ask me why. It just hasn’t happened. He’s built a ten-foot wall around himself, topped it with barbed wire, a high-tech security system and two Rottweilers to guard it.

  The health club has not been one of my favourite places since I got locked in the steam room by an over-protective mother some months back. Steam burns are painful and leave sore memories.

  It was as I parked in the yard of the health club that the penny dropped with a clang. This was Luton Road where Sonia Spiller lived. I sent up an instant prayer that number eight might be in view from the car park and not obscured by the West Sussex pebble-faced wall. It was in sight. Cover: ironpumping fanatic. It would not attract her attention. I could use my ladybird, park at the health club, all hours of the day and night. I just had to make sure I got one of the three parking spaces that had an unrestricted view.

  The car park had once been the playground of the old school. The health club was the inspired conversion of a nineteenth-century charity school building. Its walls were hung with sepia photographs of rows of children in long skirts, pinnies and bonnets. A ramrod teacher in black bombazine stood like a sentinel over her brood. The yard had, a century ago, been filled with the laughter of children playing hopscotch, skipping, bowling hoops — a window on childhood. Nowadays, it was filled with BMWs, Hondas, MGs and Jags. Grunts and groans leaked from the windows, drowning the echos of long-gone laughter.

  Despite the law of averages, I checked the door of the steam room at least four times as I sat on a wooden bench, inhaling the warm wet steam. More strategic planning: 9-12 am watch number eight Luton Road; 12-2 pm open shop to catch lunch-time shoppers; 2-6 pm number eight again; 6-7 pm catch late-night shoppers; 7-12 pm number eight and any follow-ons. It sounded a barrel of fun. Twelve hours surveillance as per contract. I was going to have some late nights. Goodbye social life. What social life? All those Christmas parties DI James was not going to take me to. Christmas was on the way and my party diary was void.

  As the toxins oozed out of my skin, my brain listed gear: several hats, aviator specs, half-specs, old raincoat, unfashionable winter tweed coat, shopping bags to carry video camera. To stave off boredom and insanity: books, puzzles, fruit, water. Shopping list: cheap flask from Woolworths. Rating of first visit to steam room after last death-imminent episode: partial success.

  Number eight was at the end of a row of fishermens’ cottages, gutted and modernised by successive owners, but the outside untampered as it was built around 1840 and protected. The walls were a pale apricot wash, front door flanked by hanging baskets of last summer’s flowers, a paved front yard for the family car. The car was a modest white Toyota. The cottage was a narrow two-up, two-down, both front windows being angular bays. The stable-style front door had heavy black hinges. It was the kind of place I’d like to live in. Mr Spiller was probably something in computers.

  It seemed a good time to start my surveillance. I checked my watch. I would keep a log, date/time/type of activity. My first hour was zero. I decided to polish the ladybird with J-cloth. Second hour: zero. Ladybird now had the cleanest wheels in Latching and immaculate carpet picked at with spare toothbrush. Third hour: just about to pen in zero when woman emerged. My first sighting.

  Sonia Spiller was in her late thirties, about 5 ft 4 in tall, slimmish build with long flowing black (dyed?) hair, parted centrally so that it fell either side of her face. She had a wide, down-turned mouth. Petulant. She was wearing cord trousers and a smart grey sheepskin jacket and trying to get a demented black and white puppy into the back of the car. Puppy thought this was game of the day and bounded around everywhere except into the back scat. He preferred to drive.

  ‘Jasper! Please, really! Bad dog!’ I heard a sharp, penetrating voice. Nothing sweet here.

  Jasper tried licking her face.

  ‘No! God! Get down. Sit, SIT!’ Jasper needed to go to classes. Sonia Spiller was losing her patience. Any second now and Jasper wouldn’t get his ride and walk. But, suddenly he tired and lay down on the back scat. I noted he wasn’t wearing a seal belt. Oliver had been right. Handling that dog took some doing.

  She reversed carefully into Luton Road before turning seawards. I started my car and followed at a distance. Perhaps I was going to get lucky and catch her gambolling on the beach with Jasper, flinging a ball on a rope high into the air with dislocated shoulder. Except I didn’t have the camera with me. Blot on hitherto spotless report. But dogs need daily walking and there was always tomorrow.

  After half an hour of watching Sonia Spiller walking listlessly along the beach with Jasper rushing in and out of the waves chasing seagulls, I was rigid and cross-eyed. Normally I love walking the beach. My kind of walking. There are a hundred different things to look at and observe: the mood of the sea, the changing colours, the vast arc of the sky. But this was work and I could not take my eyes off the woman for a second. Her hair blew blackly. She had a habit of constantly flicking it back, completely useless whatever the force. It was a childhood habit. She’d been one of those teenagers, forever flicking.

  ‘How much longer?’ I asked a passing seagull. He squawked and flapped his wings in disgust.

  Her hands were dug deeply into her pockets. I was cold, having forgotten my WI pattern gloves. I tried brisk arm swinging to keep the circulation going. Eventually she decided Jasper had had enough. I’d had enough. She climbed the slippery shingle slope and bundled damp dog back into the car. He was tired, too, and ready for food. I found some bro
ken polos in my pocket. They had no taste. Did mint evaporate? Perhaps it was time to graduate to a stronger version.

  Back at my shop, I flung myself into work, rejoicing in activity, music, noise, bustle, coffee, freedom to take my eyes off one boring, slow-moving object. This surveillance was going to be excruciating. I had to liven it up. I could dig up, sweep or patrol roads (traffic warden gear); do market research (clipboard); double-glazing salesperson; lost old lady; researcher writing book on nineteenth-century cottages. Still, I had the cleanest car in the whole of West Sussex and been paid whilst doing it.

  The shop door opened and DI James came in. He immediately filled all available space. His heavy trench coat was buttoned up. He felt the cold. His ocean blue eyes were frost hard.

  ‘I thought I could smell coffee,’ he said. ‘Black please, Jordan.’

  I recovered quickly. ‘Is this a social call or official?’

  ‘Half and half. An official social call,’ he said enigmatically, following me through to my office, leaning on my desk. He noticed its lack of clutter. ‘Business slow?’

  ‘Seasonal. It’s Christmas. Hadn’t you heard? Ding, dong merrily on high and all that. No one wants anything done over Christmas. It might spoil the season of goodwill.’

  ‘Then you have time to do me a favour?’

  Do him a favour? I’d do anything for him. Didn’t he know? Lay down in front of a bus, cut off my hair, shift shingle. I was taking in the dark crew cut, tinged with grey around the ears. My fingers did not know how it felt. I had never run my fingers through his hair. Those penetrating blue eyes, scanning me now like laser beams. There was always this fear that I might never see him again. He might get mown down by ram-raiders, shot in a hostage situation, promoted and moved north to a different patch.

  ‘Do I get paid?' I asked, pouring coffee steadily.

  ‘No. You owe me a favour. Several actually.’

  ‘Name one.’

  ‘Rescuing you from hermit hole.’

  ‘That wasn’t a favour. You were working on a call out. What a nerve, calling that a favour.’

  ‘We could have left you there.’

  ‘Then you’d have had another corpse on your hands. Starved and suffocated. Very unpleasant. Plenty of ID. Found in the middle of the next service when they went to fetch the hymn books. So, OK, tell me. What is this favour?’

  ‘You may have seen the story in the papers. Some kids took a JCB and wrecked Latching bowling green. They did two laps of the green, churning up the grass and leaving deep tyre marks, an expensive wrecking spree. We’ve nothing to go on except a gaping hole. We do have the JCB which they left half in and half out of the pavilion, though. The trail of destruction began when they drove through the wire fencing and then the park before getting onto the bowling green. There are huge seven-inch tyre marks.’

  ‘So it’s a bad day for bowlers. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘The vandals fled when the JCB got wedged in the debris. They got away. I don’t have the resources to tour the clubs, the pubs etc. It’s Christmas. I thought you could do it, cruise the clubs, more your scene. They’re bound to drink too much and start boasting. The cost of the damage is £140,000. That could go to any thick head.’

  ‘What about my alcohol units? You could be damaging my health.’

  DI James smiled. It was the sweetest sight, lit up his stern face, enough to melt any woman. He used it rarely. ‘I know you’ll switch to juice, Jordan. You can’t become an alcoholic in a few days.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘And it’s Christmas and what you drink over Christmas doesn’t count.’

  ‘So you do know it’s Christmas. Are you going to send me a card?’ Or give me a present, kiss me under the mistletoe?’

  ‘Doubt it. No time for cards. Archaic custom.’

  ‘Now about this favour, firstly, it’s not “more my scene”. The Bear and Bait is my only pub and that’s for the jazz. Secondly, I’m busy. I do have a case. A big time-consuming case. Nothing that I’m going to tell you about.’

  He looked genuinely disappointed. ‘Jordan … what can I say? I thought we had some kind of give and take going? All I want is the gossip. Nothing dangerous. Just mooch around and listen. Is that too much to ask?’

  I couldn’t deny him anything. Except he did not ask for the right things, like can I stay with you tonight? Will you rub my back? Can I sleep on your shoulder?

  ‘Oh, all right,’ I said, tired of fighting him off. ‘I’m a fool. I know it. Don’t bother to tell me.’

  ‘Thank you, Jordan.’ He put down the empty coffee mug and started to move. He laid a tenner on the counter. ‘Have the first couple of rounds on me.’

  It wasn’t fair. He wasn’t to know that I would never spend it. I’d used the note to mark a page in a book of old Scottish love poems and put the book in the top drawer of my desk. Only the direst emergency would force me to part with it.

  *

  Tatters of rain ran down my shop windows. My £6 price labels were switching between items at an astonishing rate. Half of Latching was doing their Christmas shopping at First Class Junk. I sold a couple of old maps of Sussex, a massive silver candlestick (tarnished) and a pair of his and hers embroidered hot-water bottle covers. Weird … I mean, if you were a his and hers type item, you wouldn’t need a hot-water bottle.

  A middle-aged woman came in. She was drenched, tinted brown hair dripping, beige trouser suit with matching waistcoat. No umbrella or raincoat. She was a ripe case for arthritis or rheumatism.

  ‘Have you got a soup tureen?’ she gasped.

  ‘A soup tureen?’ I knew what a soup tureen was, but my mind was racing through the boxes of china stacked out the back.

  ‘I need it for serving punch. I’m having a party and they drink like fishes, all of them. Damned club. My turn, of course. So, it’s going to be hot punch, pints of cheap red wine and orange juice with a few cloves stuck in an orange thrown in.’

  ‘Sounds lovely,’ I said.

  ‘Well … have you? Have you got a soup tureen?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I do have something much better. 1 have a Victorian washstand set. A deep washbowl, jug for the hot water and small soap dish. All matching. Probably white earthenware, maybe ironstone Mason, blue and red pagodas. Very colourful.’

  ‘May I see it?'

  It took some rifling through my stock. I’d forgotten that I’d bought it in a mixed box of china oddments from a local house auction. £10 the lot, I’d paid, and I hadn’t even unpacked it.

  ‘Yes, the washbowl is perfect,’ she said instantly. ‘I’ll have it.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t split the set. The price is £20 for the three items. Quite a bargain and you could use the jug for topping up glasses or serving juice.’

  The woman was doing calculations in her head. She was planning to serve cheap punch but my pagoda washbowl was steep at £20.

  ‘OK,’ she said at last. ‘Perhaps my guests will be too busy admiring the bowl to worry about the strength of the punch.’

  ‘Style is always more important,’ I said.

  I wrapped the items carefully in tissue paper and then packed them into a recycled carrier bag. She handed over the £20. Diamond solitaires sparkled on her fingers. She could afford it.

  It was still chucking it down. She looked outside the shop apprehensively, her unsuitable suit clung like cling film.

  ‘Would you like to borrow an umbrella?’ I offered. ‘Just drop it back anytime you’re passing.’

  She spun round, her face a wreath of smiles. A bit like the Queen. ‘How kind,’ she said. ‘Thank you. I don’t drive, you see.’

  I lent her a decent umbrella from my props box. It didn’t matter if it came back or not. But it did come back, the next day, and attached to it was an invitation to the party. My first. Christmas was looking up. She was Mrs Brenda Hamilton, secretary of Latching Bowls Club … now that was interesting. They were having a party despite the demolition of their clu
bhouse. Bowlers had stamina.

  Three

  Sonia Spiller was starting to invade my dreams. It was weird. I saw her everywhere, long black hair blowing in the wind like a Hallowe’en witch. I spent all the next day watching her to no avail. She did nothing to arouse suspicion, nothing worth filming. Guilberts Department Store might have to pay out compensation.

  Nor did she act as if she was in agony. No ouches.

  I was developing sympathy vibes for her puppy. Sonia was not the right person to own a dog. Shouting doesn’t earn respect, love, affection or obedience. I could have told her. Jasper the puppy wanted a playmate. She didn’t play with him. As yet I had not seen Sonia’s husband. He commuted to London at times outside my surveillance and had not appeared.

  The long afternoon of nothing, watching number eight, was boring me rigid. What did this woman do? Nothing much. Watch soap after soap? Knit, crochet, cruise the internet? Or was I watching the wrong place? This thought kept pricking my brain. Perhaps she was not inside.

  Had she slipped out the back? Her back garden was narrow and led onto a fisherman’s alley, a twitten an escape route for smugglers and short cut to the sea. There was a gate in the wall, but it was overgrown with weeds. I stood for an hour at the end of the alley, immersed in a free newspaper till my eyes glazed over. I ate two Twix bars, but forgot to taste.

  In sheer desperation for entertainment that evening, I coasted bars as asked by DI James, clutching glasses of St Clements (orange juice topped with bitter lemon), deafened and jaded by inaudible conversations and the inane ringing of mobiles. This was another purgatory.

  But in the din some overheard words shone out. They’d seen an old geyser driving a JCB, a man laughed. I edged towards the group. Then I pin-pointed the man talking, a security guard. Talk about luck. He was still being treated to drinks on the story.

  ‘My goodness,’ I said, all girly-eyed. ‘So you’re the security guard at the building site where the JCB was, I mean, from where it was stolen. Wow, is that right? Were you there at the time? Do tell me what happened.’