Wave And Die
Stella Whitelaw
© Stella Whitelaw 2001
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 2001 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
One
There were only a few minutes left before closing time. I didn’t want to spend the night huddled on a bench, shivering and hungry, and alone on the deserted pier. Yet I was still walking the pier at ten minutes to ten because I knew something was wrong. My seventh sense told me that all was not kosher, correct, genuine, legitimate.
“I know I’m right,” I muttered.
Today was Latching Pier’s seventieth birthday. Happy Birthday, pier. The pier had in its time been wrecked by a storm, damaged by seas, blown up in the war. A display of faded sepia photographs and mementoes were on show by the entrance. Elegant Edwardian women with parasols and little dogs strolled the decks, now transfixed in time; jagged scraps of shrapnel from wartime shells were fixed on a board; newspaper cuttings of the fire that gutted the kiosks and booths in the fifties were pinned to the back.
The council had made it a jolly day for the kids with clowns and jugglers, roundabouts and face-painting. Cockle and whelk stalls provided grown-up nibbles. The mayor and mayoress, festooned with regalia, paid a regal visit, doing the eight-minute circuit out to the sea end and back. The mayoress was visibly frozen in an unsuitable suit and tottering along the boards in strappy high-heels. She didn’t come to the pier often, that was obvious.
“Aren’t you too old for that kind of stuff?” I said to Sergeant Rawlings. He grinned at me from behind bright orange tiger-stripes and white whiskers painted on his ruddy face. He was out of uniform, fawn windcheater zipped to his throat.
“Grandson dared me. If anyone asks, I’m on surveillance.”
I’d known Sergeant Rawlings a long time. He’d been one of my silent supporters when I’d been kicked out of the force for criticizing a superior officer’s dubious tactics in a rape case that got off. My outspokenness got me suspended on full pay. I saved like mad for the future so when the Disciplinary Board, in their united wisdom, finally dispensed with my uncomfortable presence, I had enough capital to start my own business. First Class Investigations. The first private eye in Latching.
“How’s Latching’s most famous private investigator, Jordan?” Sergeant Rawlings asked. “Found any more dead nuns on meat hooks?”
“Very quiet in the fatalities section, I’m glad to say. Rather too quiet in other areas. The highlight of the week has been a lost King Charles spaniel, neutered, called Fergie.”
Sergeant Rawlings cocked a tigerish eyebrow. “Strayed?”
“Not far. I found it at a neighbor’s house. Shacked up with a better class of dog biscuit. Followed the paw prints. Have you looked at the photographs of the pier taken seventy years ago? Someone dug them out of an attic and put them on display at the entrance.”
“No, I haven’t. Should I? Are you trying to tell me something?”
“There’s something wrong there but I’m not sure what.”
“Did you spot a corpse moldering under one of the girders? Shall I radio for DI James? He’d love a corpse on the pier especially if you found it. He keeps a box file of your lost causes under his desk. Puts his feet on them.”
The wind at the end of the pier was making it hard to stand upright. I hung on to a rail and turned my head away to catch a breath. The fight was glorious. A skinny nine stone of human bone structure was battling against a Force 6 gale. The bunting strung from lamp posts streamed ferociously, the plastic flags crackling like army percussion.
The sea was a dinosaur, thumping its mighty tail against the girders. How the seagulls flew in this degree of force was a minor miracle.
The mayoral party made a quick exit in an official car. Force 6 wind had not been on the itinerary for the day. Someone got it wrong.
I didn’t want to talk about the subject of lost causes. DI James made loss seem like a big well and I was deep down inside that well, unable to climb out or find any kind of hold. No one wanted to give me a helping hand. Unkind people, remembering various mishaps, might say I was safer down a well or a mine, less prone to accidents and unfortunate coincidences. The kind of accidents that follow me round without the benevolent scales of the Chinese Dragon. Least, I’m told they are benevolent.
“So what’s wrong with the photographs?”
“I don’t know. That’s what’s so irritating.”
“Come on, Jordan. They’re closing the pier. Look, the band’s going home.”
His words were like a stab in soft tissue. The band had gone home from my life long ago. My musician – a top jazz trumpeter – was always making tracks for his slippers and king-sized duvet. He had a wife too. I watched the bandsmen from the local Salvation Army packing away their instruments, the street lights glinting on the brass and the braid of their uniforms.
“Okay. Let’s call it a day. Nice to see you, Tiger,” I growled realistically.
He tapped his nose. “Undercover. You won’t get a word out of me, even if you torture me with your cooking.”
“Fat chance,” I said, combing my hair with my fingers. “I don’t entertain married men.”
Liar, there was one married man I would go for if I’d got the slimmest chance. I had nearly said older married men but I might need Sergeant Rawlings’ help some day. My friends in the force were my secret weapon in the tough world of private investigations. Not that DI James could be called an old friend, more like a Holmes-type antagonist. He just about tolerated me on a good day and I could take a lot of him in any kind of weather, any hour, coming or going.
Tiger Rawlings strode off to his semi-detached at the back end of Latching’s residential sprawl, his heavy beat-boot tread giving away his profession. I lived a pebble’s throw away from the beach. I know the seagulls by sight. They take turns harassing me. The sea was my lullaby at night; the sand my endless carpet for walking; the waves my own brand of Prozac. If I lived any nearer, I’d be camping out inside one of the upturned fishing boats drawn up on the shingle.
Cancer folk love the sea. I’m a July person. I get withdrawal symptoms if I don’t get to see waves for a few days. My skin starts to dehydrate and my eyes itch. Perhaps I ought to carry around a bottle of sea water to sniff on the quiet.
I was seriously looking for wheels. It was quietly humiliating to turn up to cases on my bicycle, even if it was a mountain bike with all the gears and right accessories.
*
This lack of transportation was brought home forcibly the next morning when a one in six hill climb up the South Downs had me gasping for breath. Exhaust fumes aren’t good for asthma either but my sticky airways couldn’t cope with uphill cycling.
Most of Latching is flat and I can zip round the streets without any trouble. But cycling doesn’t look professional and I was keen that First Class Investiga
tions should look as good as its name.
The call that morning at my office behind the class junk-shop cover was from a Mr Terence Lucan, owner of Latching Water Gardens out at Preston Hill. He sounded very agitated and upset.
“The police are not taking this seriously, Miss Lacey,” he said. I knew the feeling. “I want them to send someone out now, immediately, but they say they can’t come until late this afternoon. All the clues will have dried up.”
“What is the nature of the crime, Mr Lucan?”
“My flowers have gone. Stolen. My beautiful flowers.”
I could understand why the police were not sending a fleet of pandas, sirens blaring, lights flashing. A few flowers might be precious to flora and fauna-loving Mr Lucan but they hardly had priority status.
“This is a life-threatening situation. Can you come at once?” I caught on. The flowers would die. “I’ll be with you right away. Give me your address.”
Right away turned out to be an hour later. I had closed the shop, put up the GONE FOR LUNCH sign, pushed my bike up that damned hill.
Mr Lucan was waiting at the end of the entrance drive. I half-hoped he would be dapper, silver-haired, neat moustache, distinguished-looking, and I would have solved the disappearance mystery of the century. But he was small, wiry, red-haired and freckled. No amount of plastic surgery could have turned that trick.
“Hello, Mr Lucan. I’m Jordan Lacey, First Class Investigations.”
“You took your time.”
“I didn’t know I’d have to climb Mount Everest.”
He grunted, taking in my hot appearance. “It is a bit steep. Would you like a drink?”
“Thank you. That would be very kind.”
He turned to walk back down the drive. Trees of all kinds lined the way, their branches dipping and rustling a rural welcome. The sheer density of leaves isolated the gardens from the rest of the world. “And don’t ask me if I killed the nanny,” he added briskly.
“Never crossed my mind,” I said, wheeling my bike after him.
His office was a rustic portacabin, festooned with hanging baskets of flowering busy Lizzies, still sporting tiny red and pink flowers. I needed an oxygen-giving plant for my office. At least the thieves hadn’t taken his busy Lizzies. Mr Lucan went over to a fridge in the corner of a chaotic office. There was so much stuff everywhere. Piles of catalogues, box files, spiked invoices, ledgers, stacks of addressed envelopes for mailing. I approved of his industry if not his disorder.
“Diet Coke?” he asked, waving a frosted can.
“Perfect,” I said. After a drink, I shed my helmet and took out my notebook. “Tell me about these flowers.” I wondered if I was going to have trouble with the spelling.
“Nymphaea, they’re called. The thieves must have come in the night. They knew what they wanted, and wore diving gear. It looks like they parked a van the other side of the wall.”
“Mmn… diving gear?” Diving gear for gardening? My pen stopped in mid air.
“They went under the water to select the best plants. Not easy in the dark. Professionals, they were. Took all the best varieties. Known all over the world, my water lilies. International reputation.”
“Ah, water lilies,” I repeated, picking up the dropped penny. “Could you put a value on your plants?”
“Every plant is worth between five pounds and thirty pounds.”
“And how many did they steal?” I asked, confident that he would not know.
“Something over three thousand. I’ve checked how many ponds they have cleared. It’s heartbreaking. All that work. All that stock. Ten different varieties, all my best.”
I tried to look cool at the cost of lilies. Quite a haul in the middle of the night. Even I could multiply 5/30 x 3,000.
“Will the plants survive?”
“Only if they are transplanted back into water immediately. They need sunlight and quiet water, otherwise they’ll die.” Mr Lucan stared at an ancient photocopier in his office. On it stood a pot of African violets, the deepest of blues.
“Major lily murder,” I murmured.
“Sacrilege if they let them die. These are rare and exotic plants.”
“I don’t think they will neglect them,” I said encouragingly. I don’t like seeing potential clients upset. “These aren’t your usual out-the-pub, let’s trample the council flower beds, type yobbos. They sound a professional bunch of thieves and they probably have a customer waiting. Maybe an Arab sheikh with a new pond to fill.”
“A pretty big pond. But an Arab sheikh could afford to buy them straight from me, and several do. Why buy them from a shady source? Do you think you’ll be able to get them back for me? You’ll have to work fast.”
“May I have a look around? I might spot something.”
“Feel free. I need some coffee. My nerves are shredded.”
I thought he deserved to feel shredded. A loss of nearly £90,000 was not exactly the petty cash. I wondered how I was going to work fast. Type quicker?
He said I was to call him Terence. I suppose he was sick of Lucan jokes. He made a good mug of coffee. Instant but nothing cheap. I wandered round the nursery, hugging the mug, enjoying the flowering shrubs, not sure what I was looking for. There were a few varieties of exotic lilies unfolding their waxen petals on the water of a display pond near the entrance. They were beautiful. I almost forgot why I was there but then I spotted tyre marks near the decimated ponds and the marks of a make-shift ramp which had been used to lift the sodden plants over the wall.
I scoured the damp ground but there were so many overlapping footprints, it was impossible to find a single print. I found a squashed shred of tobacco the kind some men and young girls roll for themselves. Disgusting habit. Then I found several more, very Sherlock Holmes. The bits went into a clear plastic specimen bag. I pressed the strip fastening. They could go far with DNA these days.
It was a mess. A lot of water had been sloshed about and ragged weeds and roots lay everywhere. All shades of petals had been trodden into the mud. How was I ever going to find a van dripping with wet plants?
Mr Lucan was looking upset, his face working horizontally, his hands clenched by his sides.
I told Mr Lucan my fees to cheer him up: £10 an hour or £50 a day plus expenses. He went for the day rate and signed one of my client contract forms which I had brought with me. This efficiency would be my ruin. I thanked him for the coke and the coffee and asked him if he rolled his own cigarettes.
“Never smoke,” he said. “Too much pollution in the atmosphere already.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. As I was leaving the water garden, an emotion hit me that I hadn’t felt for a long time. It was solar plexus, mouth-drying, head-rocking stuff. I was shattered, earthquaked. I fell in love, totally.
DI James faded from my heart, lodged somewhere at the back, despite my, at times, desperate longing for the man. This was different. The love object was a small, crimson-red car, beetle-shaped, with shiny black mudguards and huge lamps. It also had spots. Seven huge and perfect, black spots.
It was an old classic Morris Minor, 1,000, J-registration. I stood and stared in complete adoration, hungry for possession, longing to touch the spots.
“Want a car?” said Terence, strolling around the love object. Words escaped me. “She’s for sale. Cheap, tough, good-looking. Runs like a dream. Only one owner, careful, like me.”
“I’ll take it,” I croaked, not even asking the price.
“Lord Nuffield hated the design. Called it a poached egg. But it still sold a million. Stirling Moss had one; so did the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
“If it was good enough for Stirling, it’s good enough for me.”
“Only one condition. You must never remove the spots.”
“Never,” I said. As if I would.
The altitude of Preston Hill must have made me light-headed. I’d bought a car I couldn’t afford and taken on a case that would be impossible to resolve. Those water lilies might b
e half way to the Middle East by now.
Two
“This ladybird must remain a ladybird,” Terence Lucan insisted. “The spots should never be removed. She’s absolutely unique.”
I swallowed. I wanted that car so much, a happy little red ladybird with bold black spots painted all over her bodywork. An eye-catching vehicle, hardly ideal for detection work, I groaned inwardly. I’d be spotted a mile off. Joke.
“The Minor is a piece of history. Designed by a Turk, Alec Issigonis. The first one cost £358 10s 7d.”
“I can meet that,” I said weakly. “The criminals would never spot me on a dark night.”
Terence was not amused. Not many people do see my jokes. I know a very funny story about a rabbit wanting to buy a lettuce in a butcher’s shop but no one ever laughs. Perhaps it’s the way I tell it.
“How much do you want for the car?” I added, praying for a miracle. It was not forthcoming.
“Two thousand, three hundred and fifty pounds. Worth every penny. Lord Nuffield was furious when he saw the first designs. He called it a poached egg,” he said again.
Two thousand. He could have said two million and the despair would have been the same. My bank balance only registered in hundreds and even that was a strain. My income regularly ran into one figure.
“I can give you the three hundred as a deposit,” I heard myself saying. Had I gone mad? Were the men in white coats waiting at the end of the drive? “The rest will have to be by instalment.” Very small instalments. It would take me about twenty years.
“If you find my water lilies, I’ll give you the car.”
It was a challenge. “I’ll find them,” I said with confidence. I’m such a fraud.
*
I didn’t know where to start with Mr Lucan’s stolen water lilies. Following stray husbands and wives was much easier. You just keep them in sight and pray that they would do something stupid like pay for a room at a Travelodge with their credit card.
Cycling back to Latching was downhill and a breeze. The air was peaceful and car-free. Hardly a fume wafting. Not far away a treeful of speckled thrushes (rare) were practising to take on the three tenors. I had long ago planned to die with the voices of the three tenors soaring in my ears. I had bought the Rome video, all that silvery moonlight, and was saving up for the machine. It was not as if time was running out. You could not find a healthier asthmatic in the whole of West Sussex.
Wave and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 2) Page 1
