Fold and Die
Stella Whitelaw
© Stella Whitelaw 2009
Stella Whitelaw has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2009 by Severn House Publishers Ltd.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
ONE
‘You’ve got to come with me. Someone is trying to kill me. If you don’t come with me, I’ll be dead by next week.’
The woman was hysterical, her face contorted with fear. She was an attractive-looking woman with well-cut light blonde hair that would cost a weekly fortune at the hairdressers. Her eyes were blue, eyebrows finely plucked, mouth framed in glossy strawberry lipstick. But no pretty smile now. Her lips were puckered with distress.
‘I’m really sorry, Mrs Carter, but I’m far too busy to get away.’ It was a total lie. I hadn’t had a new case for weeks but there was something about Joanna Carter that gave me the creeps. I don’t accept work from people who give me the creeps.
We were talking in the cafe on Latching pier, the sea lapping its legs. Joanna Carter wanted to meet in a public place. She wouldn’t come to the office behind my shop. She said she wouldn’t feel safe. What could be safer than a shop full of first class odds and ends, shelves of books and harmless junk?
My detective agency was called First Class Investigations and my shop First Class Junk, both were brilliant titles. I had a job living up to them. My reputation for self-induced catastrophes was well known around Latching. Latching was a West Sussex coastal town, four miles of beach and churning sea, a delightful, eccentric resort, with beautiful Georgian and Regency buildings side by side with disastrous multi-storey car parks and other hideous Sixties monstrosities. Shoot the planners who pulled down the old houses. Fortunately most of them were already dead. Maybe they’d turn in their graves, shift the turf.
‘But, Miss Lacey, I’m willing to pay for your protection. You must come as my bodyguard. I shall die if you don’t come with me.’
‘I really don’t see what I could do.’
‘You’d be there, at my side, every minute of the day and night. You’d be my visible protection. No one would dare to kill me if they saw that I was never entirely alone.’
My heart sank. That never alone bit was ominous. It was awkward enough being in the company of Mrs Carter for the time it took to swallow a cup of coffee. And the heat was scalding my mouth.
‘I’m not a trained bodyguard,’ I said. ‘I’m a private investigator.’
‘I know,’ she said, her face momentarily lightening. ‘That’s what’s so perfect. You don’t look like a detective. You look unusual and eccentric. They would never suspect you. They’d think you were some friend tagging along.’
‘I’m great at tagging along,’ I said. ‘And what if they found out that I was a private detective and they bump me off first?’
‘But then, at least I’d have a chance of getting away. Don’t you see?’
Nice one. I liked her even less.
Mrs Carter’s story was a fairly normal one. She had been separated from her husband, Oliver, for some years, it seemed. No reason given. She clammed up each time I tried to extract a little more information out of her. Incompatibility or something, she said. He liked Marmite and she didn’t? Or some difference of opinion that was equally inane? They had no children.
However, now she was convinced that he had hired an assassin to finish her off. There had been unexplained accidents and incidents. Someone had put a burning rag through her letterbox. It might have been the newspaper boy who was sick of her complaints? She had been nearly run over by a speeding car. Maybe she stepped out into the road without looking? She had received something horrid in the post but she wouldn’t say what.
‘It was enough to have frightened the life out of me,’ she added, shuddering. Probably dead road-kill. ‘And there have been phone calls. The empty kind with nobody there.’
It happens to all of us. Some financial company in China or India, cold calling all the numbers in the book.
She had rung me almost immediately after the something nasty in the post. That’s how we came to be meeting in the cafe on the pier. I made sure that I got the window seat with a sea view. I’m partial to sea view healing. I daily walked the pier, eight minutes round trip, my tawny hair streaming, face lifted to whatever wind force was being thrown at me. Force nine hurls me back, has me grabbing the railings.
‘But why do you think someone is out to kill you?’
‘I know, I just feel it. Sometimes I know there is someone in the garden or prowling round outside the house. That’s why I’ve decided to go away for two weeks on a cruise. I need a break from being watched all the time.’
‘Why don’t you talk to the police about your fears, get them to post someone outside your house?’
‘I don’t want the police involved,’ she gulped, her voice rising, hands trembling. ‘They would definitely kill me if they thought I had been to the police. I mean, no one wants to get involved with the police, do they?’
‘Thank you very much for the coffee, Mrs Carter,’ I said. I’d had enough of these hysterics. ‘But I really do have to decline your offer. Perhaps you should go to the police and report your suspicions. Now, I have to go back to my office, I’ve a pile of paperwork to get done.’
‘Fifty thousand pounds,’ she said.
It was quite difficult to restart the leaving process after that announcement. I metaphorically picked myself off the floor of the pier cafe, my legs refusing to obey explicit moving instructions. That morning I’d had a letter from both my landlords saying that the rent on my shop and my flat was going up yet again. The current spiralling inflation and credit crunch wasn’t helping my financial situation. The odds on my refusing this job were suddenly dramatically reduced.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. I’d think about it for about three minutes and then find myself some more salubrious work. Like stacking shelves.
‘Well, don’t take too long about it, Miss Lacey. The ship sails at four p.m. the day after tomorrow. And I’m going, whatever you decide. If it’s yes, then you’d better be at Southampton docks by two p.m. And bring some decent clothes. They have a very strict dress code.’
‘Dress code?’ Whatever was the woman talking about? MI5?
‘Yes, four formal, six semi-casual and four casual.’
I went cold even though the weather was a balmy fifteen Celsius in Latching, West Sussex. I didn’t have a dress code. My code was jeans and shirt, jeans and sweater, jeans and vest top. Call me an impulsive dresser. I only own two dresses. A second-hand frothy blue one that was given to me to wear to a party, and a plain black from my shop assistant surveillance job. My box of gear at the shop was great for disguises but I doubted if the cruise company would class a bag lady as formal.
‘Formal is very smart,’ she said. ‘For the captain’s cocktail party and various other events that need dressing up.’<
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‘Dressing up,’ I repeated again. Surely dressing up was for six-year-olds in their mother’s high heels?
‘I’ll leave you to sort out your wardrobe but I’ll see you at the Queen Elizabeth Terminal at Southampton docks at two o’clock. Be on time. I’ve hired a car but I’m sure there is a good train service from Latching.’
‘I haven’t said that I’m coming,’ I said, dredging up some degree of independence, determined not to be dragooned into this job. I’ve done a lot of funny cases, finding lost tortoises, stolen puppies, disappearing husbands, and a night-watch up a tree to trap a garden desecrator. ‘I have several other commitments.’
‘It’s only two weeks,’ she said. Joanna Carter suddenly looked vulnerable. ‘And this is life and death. My life, my death. You do have a passport, don’t you?’
Fortunately my years in the police force had provided me with an up-to-date passport. It was my let-out clause. I could say no. I could pretend that I didn’t have one of those maroon covered booklets with a photo of a bug-eyed female Dracula.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘That’s all settled, then,’ said Joanna Carter, gathering up her Gucci bag and stylish trench coat. The weather in Latching was up the creek. The seasons had gone haywire. It was early June and no one had shed a layer yet. Where was summer hiding? Was it behind one of the newly painted beach huts?
She was gone before I could repeat my lack of interest in her proposition. Fifty thousand pounds was a ridiculous amount of money to pay for two weeks’ work. I had never earned so much, even when I had solved a case and occasionally received a surprise reward for a lost this or that.
I sat in Maeve’s Cafe with another coffee. I needed the caffeine to calm my nerves. Latching was a seaside town in West Sussex nestled in a valley with the rolling South Downs curving a benevolent arm round the outskirts. I loved every inch of it, especially the sea. A cruise would be acres of bonus sea, huge waves and sparkling wake. How would I cope with so much sea?
And how I loved the sea. Not every inch of it as that’s the wrong measurement for liquid. But every wave, every trough, every drop, every speck of foaming white horse. I loved its changing moods, could stand for hours, buffeted by the wind, watching the great coffee-coloured waves rolling diagonally on to the beach, churning the sand, washing the pebbles, lashing the legs of the pier and the groynes. The sea mesmerized me. I was its slave.
I had this corner shop, First Class Junk, which sold practically anything. My stock was bought from charity shops or house auctions. It was a front for First Class Investigations, my detective agency. FCI rhymed with FBI which seemed to give it resonance.
Some distance away I had two bedsits, side by side, but I knew they were going to have to go. The landlords were talking about renovating them into posh holiday flats and charging higher rents. They did no repairs. But they had been perfect for me in the early days. Two rooms, two keys, two kitchen units, two bells that didn’t work. No one knew where I was. Very convenient. It would soon be time for me to move on. Perhaps two weeks at sea would give me time to rethink my life.
And there was DI James. The man who was the love of my life. He had been posted to Yorkshire eventually, to the city of York in fact. That historic town with walls you could walk on and a river that regularly flooded. He emailed occasionally but it was not the same. My skin was slowly unfolding for lack of him.
So there I was, lots of things going wrong in my life, empty and purposeless. I was half minded to up and move to York but the sea held me back. And my shop and my agency and my friends. I had a lot of good friends.
‘So why the long face?’ Doris asked as I went into her nearby grocer’s shop for some Soya milk and a couple of apples. I was not a big spender.
‘I’ve been offered a job as a bodyguard,’ I said.
‘So what weapons are involved?’ she asked, practical as ever. ‘Guns, knives, garrottes, poison, a hefty push?’ ‘That’s the trouble, she doesn’t know. This woman is being threatened and thinks she would be safer with me around. It’s not a clear-cut scenario.’
‘So it might be a piece of cake,’ said Doris, adding a couple of yogurts without being asked. ‘It could all be in her imagination. Lots of women get funny ideas. Think they are being stalked. Is she menopausal?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, pushing some money across the counter. ‘She’s not an easy woman to get along with. It could be two weeks of purgatory.’
‘Go for it, Jordan. Two weeks is nothing. Fourteen days, over in a blink of an eyelid. Where does she live?’
‘It’s not where she lives, it’s where she’s going.’
‘Where’s she going?’
‘She’s going on a cruise to Norway, to the Arctic, to the North Cape to see the midnight sun.’
Doris stared at me as if I was mad. ‘The midnight sun? Jordan, don’t be daft. It’s the chance of a lifetime. If you don’t go, I’ll shut shop and go in your place. I’d guard a horde of maniacal criminals for a chance like that. You can’t say no to an offer to go to the North Cape.’
‘I can say no and I probably will. I’ve got a very strange feeling about her and I don’t like it.’
‘How much is she going to pay you?’
‘Fifty thousand.’
Even saying it out loud was a shock. I swallowed hard. Doris fell against the counter and broke one of her long Russian Red nails. Her nails were her pride and joy. They were never chipped or broken. But for once the news had stunned her and she didn’t notice the damage.
‘You are taking this job, Jordan Lacey, if I have to drag you to the ship by your long red hair. That’s an order. Now, what have you got for clothes?’
‘Nothing suitable. One blue chiffon dress. Worn twice. She says there’s a dress code. What’s a dress code?’
‘I’m taking you in hand. Shopping.’
‘I haven’t any money.’
‘Did I say couture? We’re going charity shopping.’
Now I often go charity shopping but it is for goods for my shop: antiques, books, odds and ends that might dress the two small optician-sized windows. But Doris was into top gear clothes shopping. She presumed that I had enough decent undies and personal garments. My undies are perfect. I have an excessive washing disorder.
‘Take your own nighties or pyjamas,’ she said. I was a T-shirt sleeper. They would have to do. ‘And your good anorak. It’ll be cold in the Arctic. You’ve got thermals, haven’t you?’
‘Two vests.’
‘Take both of them. You’ll need two.’
It was going to be cold in the Arctic so winter woollies were necessary as well as all these formal and semi-formal outfits. It was quite fun once you got the hang of it. Straight to the rails of black dresses in the shop for the formal. There were lots of bargains in fleece and warmer clothing. Everyone thought summer might be round the corner and were throwing out layers.
‘I didn’t say I was going,’ I said, as we struggled back to my bedsits with carrier bags of all sizes. Yet I had spent less than forty-five pounds. I had the four formal and semi-formal was a variety of striking tops to go with my best black trousers. One of the formals was a vintage dream.
‘You’ll look lovely,’ said Doris, as we climbed the stairs to the first floor. ‘People throw out really smashing stuff. They say that eighty per cent of clothes are never worn. That long black ruffled evening dress is stunning. Pity, it doesn’t fit me. I’d have it like a shot.’
‘You can have it,’ I said. ‘Let out the seams.’
I’d picked up my post at the front door, shuffling through it as I put a kettle on for some tea. Doris deserved a rest. She looked knackered. I’d often thought she was a lot older than she made out and running a small grocer’s shop single-handed was not easy.
There was a card from DI James. It was a picture of York Minster, the majestic cathedral that dominated the city.
‘Very busy,’ he wrote. ‘Crime never stops. Going on a course next week, very hush-
hush. Take care, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. James.’
He had signed it with his Christian name. His parents, in a fit of post-birth dementia, had christened him James. He was James James. It took some living down. I didn’t blame him.
I opened another envelope with one hand as I made tea with the other. It’s a skill I had acquired. It was a letter from my landlords, computer printed, Courier New type face, font 12.
Dear Miss Lacey,
We regret to inform you that we are giving you one month’s notice to leave your two bedsits. We have been given the required council permission to turn the building into residential flats.
Yours sincerely, etc.
My hand shook as I poured the tea. The teapot was a sweet, old-fashioned flowered shape that held only two cupfuls. It had once belonged to a grand family, probably served the lady of the house with her breakfast-in-bed morning cuppa.
‘I’ve been given notice,’ I said. ‘One month.’
‘Then you have got to go on this cruise,’ said Doris, adding a sweetener to her tea. She was always on a diet. ‘You’ll need that fifty thousand for a deposit.’
‘Deposit?’
‘You’ll have to buy your own place now. No more bedsits, my girl. You need a real home. A proper kitchen and a proper bathroom.’
I suddenly thought about having a real home, a bathroom and a cat. Not about a place of my own, but of having a cat around. I’d always wanted a cat, had several surrogate feline friends, but never had one of my own. Mavis had a cat who liked me, hung around. Perhaps I could endure the coming two cruising weeks for the sake of owning a cat. It was almost worth it.
‘But supposing Mrs Carter does get killed?’
‘Make her pay you in advance. Fair’s fair.’
‘But if she is killed, then I haven’t done my job properly, so I wouldn’t have earned it.’
‘Jordan Lacey,’ said Doris, with emphasis on each syllable. ‘You have more morals than a saint. And saints always come to a sticky end.’
Fold and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 8) Page 1
