Various valuable artefacts also disappeared from Patcham House, including a Tokyo School ivory group by Yoshida Homei, circa 1910. Last sold for £12,000 just before the war. Its value now was incalculable.
The old newspaper report quoted the witness:
“I saw Miss Keates walking along the road towards the station,” said 58-year-old Fred Pierce.
“She had a case with her. In the afternoon, I saw the bomber overhead. The engine was making a funny noise. Then I saw it crash into the sand. It was a dreadful shock.”
Linda Keates… was she the unknown woman found on the wreck? Who was she? And what was her connection to the dead councilor? Perhaps it was a red herring. For some reason, Mrs Drury had fed me a pickled herring.
I found the Fenwick file and took out the newspaper photograph of the councilor and wife waving from the council offices after the last election. I had learned such a lot about the man since that photo was taken. His face was beaming with a political smile, eyes frank and voter-honest, wave presidential, his high forehead only faintly glistening with sweat. He looked happy and pleased with himself. He had no premonition how close he was to waving goodbye to life.
My body shivered to remind me to dress dry. It would have to be the charity box. None of my clothes lurked in the shop. I stripped off, showering sand on the floor, noted a bloodied rock scratch on the mound of my right thumb, had a quick wash down in a bowl of hot water. It felt good.
The cat used the litter tray, which was a sign he felt at home. I opened a tin of sardines which he appreciated with small rapt rumbles in his throat.
“I suppose you’ve got a name but I don’t know what it is,” I said, stroking his soft head.
The charity box was short of stock. Mrs Barbara Hutton lay crumpled at the bottom, all creases, no style, flattened. It would have to be a bag lady again. A good surveillance outfit. The decay of these garments was authentic. They smelt of cheap gin and cider and sleeping in the beachfront shelters.
No way could I rinse the world clean.
I kept on my own undies and trainers. There was a limit to my search for validity. I tucked my hair under a tea-cozy beret and tightened the string belt of the dirty raincoat, smeared my face and hands with coffee grains. Yuck.
I shut the shop.
“Still starving, ducks?” said Doris as I passed her doorway. “Want a stale bun?”
“Yes, I do, but how do you know it’s me? It’s a brilliant disguise. My mother wouldn’t recognize me.”
My mother would have known me anywhere. She would have recognized the baby smell, the soft baby touch. A woman born to mother. I missed her.
“Details,” said Doris, surveying me from all angles like an haute couture designer. “You’re wearing your own trainers, first giveaway; you’re wearing your own teeth and your nose is clean.”
“It’s the teeth,” I groaned.
“Boot polish, that’s the answer. I’ve a tin of dried-up Natural Tan. You can have it for half price.”
“I’ve no money on me.”
“I’ll add it to your next bill.”
I smeared a bit of dried-up polish over my teeth. It felt and tasted revolting. But effective, as I checked the look in her shop window. A gruesome sight. I felt like a corpse. Shopping list: dental floss, mouthwash, hygienist appointment.
I trudged along the road, picking up a few smelly bags of rubbish for props. The whole scene soon depressed me. Give me some Prozac quick, someone. I took up station at the beach shelter opposite Horizon Views and waited.
“Hello, ducks,” a wino said, reeling by.
The shelter was occupied by a group of homeless men and women, already high on cheap booze, cider, methylated spirits, glue, anything with an alcohol content, noses rosy with veins, their belongings bundled into supermarket trolleys. They were falling about, chortling and pissing themselves. The smell was revolting. I sat nearby on a bench, but not too near. My £50 a day fee was not enough. No one could pay me enough for doing this.
“Wanna drink, darling?”
I moved away pretending not to understand, trying to keep my boot-polish smile in place. Yet I had to feel sorry for them. Where had we gone wrong? These were people. Not aliens. They had once been sweet-faced children. Somebody’s baby.
I moved off and huddled down beside a black litter bin. It reeked bad too but it was the smell of rotting takeaways and oily chip paper. But it was better than the boozy party going on in the shelter. It seemed like hours that I waited. It was hours.
Snow White came out. Immaculate as ever, skin-tight white jeans, cream leather boots, white suede jacket, fox-fur collar. Straight from a car wash. She got into her BMW. Had the fried councilor paid for that too? I waited a while until she had driven out of sight, then paddled over to Horizon Views. I had no idea how to get into her flat again but I took off the beret and tousled my hair to near normality.
“Come in,” said the caretaker. “Having a bad day?”
“Fell into the sea this morning and got soaked. Had to borrow a few things from an old friend. Sorry if I smell.”
“No problem, miss. I know you, don’t I? From the council, aren’t you? Miss Shaw is out for ten minutes. I’m a bit busy at the moment. Washing machine leaking at Number One.”
“That’s a pity. I need a quick look again. Two seconds is all I need. My fault. Forgot to write it down.”
He took a key off a ring. The man deserved the sack. I wouldn’t employ him. “Here’s the key. I haven’t time to show you in. Damned washing machine, too mean to buy a new one.”
I nodded, clucked in sympathy. “Washing machines can be the devil.”
I went up to the fifth floor in the lift, hoping I wasn’t leaving a trail of dirt. The key opened the front door easily. She really ought to get a security system installed. Anyone could walk in.
Someone had. Someone had been there before me. The flat had been turned over. I heard a minuscule noise, the faintest click. The intruder was still there.
Twenty
It took less than two seconds to grab the item I had spotted among the piles of strewn belongings littering the floor. A turnover is no fun. I’d seen enough burgled homes on my beat days and I knew the trauma and pain it caused.
The intruder was still in the flat. Somewhere. I had to get out before I was caught. An intruder detaining an intruder? Not in my book. More like a sharp head impact.
Backing out without a sound was a feat of muscle control. Both feet, in fact. They behaved in unison. My breathing went into reverse. It was like slow motion through water.
Out on the pavement, I remembered I still had the key to No 5. They would think I had ransacked Pippa’s flat if I didn’t go back and return the key.
“Sorry, haven’t time today after all,” I said, finding the caretaker at No 1, on his knees, spanner in hand. “Urgent call on my mobile.”
Not exactly a lie. Not exactly the truth. Don’t have a mobile, as yet. Spontaneous fabrication.
“Know what it’s like,” he grumbled.
“See you some other day.”
“Bye.”
I crammed my hair under the knitted beret and waited at a distance, slouched against pedestrian crossing lights, faking a color-blind walker waiting for the green man to appear. It was easy, slipping into the body language of a bag lady. No one came out of the flat who didn’t look as if they lived there. I was almost on the point of heading for a bath when a woman appeared from the entrance to the flats, her heels tap-tapping on the pavement. They were tapping out her name in morse.
Leroy Anderson. Perhaps she’d called for the rent.
I ambled across the road, veering between cars, not looking back. Leroy Anderson. What the devil was she doing there? How could she possibly be involved? Seeing her had thrown me. I couldn’t think straight. It must be the hat. I tossed it into a bin.
Latching police station was some distance from Horizon Views but I kept walking despite the curious stares. Sergeant Rawlings was on dut
y behind the desk. He looked up and shook his head in disbelief.
“Jaws. Have you sunk so low? Business must be bad. I think we could manage fifty pence out of the poor box. It would buy you a cup of tea at the Sally Ann.”
“I’ve been on surveillance. There’s not a lot of career guidance around,” I said through gritted teeth, remembering same teeth smeared with Natural Tan shoe polish. “Can I see DI James? I’ve some new evidence.”
“But will DI James want to see you, Jordan? I doubt it. He has a keen nose.”
“I’m not asking to be sniffed at. DI James can keep his distance. This evidence is important.”
Someone was coming down the stairs. Those footsteps had to be his. Funny how I could recognize the rhythm of his walk, the way he placed his weight, the even tread of noise. He took one look at me and shuddered.
“Heaven preserve us. Do you have to come in here looking like that? It gives the station a bad name.”
“I didn’t know this was now a four-star station. Do we have to pass a dress code before being allowed in? If so, what about your socks?”
This floored him. “What have my socks got to do with anything?” He’d found a heavy black sweater to wear, washed without being pressed, creased into his body shape.
“That’s for me to know and you to decide,” I said enigmatically. Let him work that one out. I took a bright yellow armband out of my disgusting pocket. “One luminous armband as worn by unknown person pretending to be me, riding my bicycle. Said armband found in flat belonging to one Ms Pippa Shaw, ex-daughter-in-law of Councilor Adrian Fenwick, recently perished in the alleged arson attack at Fenwick Future Homes.”
“You’re talking like a policeman,” said DI James, picking up the armband and turning it over. “I believe these armbands are on sale in numerous Latching shops, including the one where you hired your Raleigh Sunrise.”
The discovery of the armband in Pippa Shaw’s flat, plus the red hairpiece, was decisive evidence as far as I was concerned, but to DI James it proved nothing. My heart rate fell in relation to the disappointment. I didn’t show my feelings. It was necessary to maintain some control.
“But,” Dl James went on, twirling the band round with his forefinger, “A certain CCTV positioned on the wall outside a Latching bank, and directly opposite the estate agents’ showroom, shows footage of a woman riding a bicycle, looking not unlike you, with a bulky object, possibly a can of petrol, in a bag tied to the handlebars. Although the picture is indistinct, as CCTVs often are, there are a great many similarities between you and the person riding the bike.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that it wasn’t me?” I was tired of saying it.
He ignored me. “The footage was timed five forty a.m. At the very time you were seen leaving your flat by an observant postman. It seems you know how to be in two places at the same time. We also verified the postman’s check-in time at work. It all ties up.”
My mouth nearly fell open. I kept having to remember the Natural Tan. It took some time sinking in. Did this mean he nearly believed me?
“I’m not going to apologize,” he said, handing back the armband. “I was only doing my duty but I don’t think even your versatility could have managed riding a bike, leaving your flat and setting the showroom on fire, in three different places and all within minutes. So I suppose you are no longer our main suspect.”
He was on my side. I would have hugged him if it had not been for the smelly raincoat. I flashed him a Natural-Tan-hued smile and he cringed. “Thank you, Detective Inspector,” I grinned. “I owe you one.”
“Not immediately,” he said, backing off. “I’ll wait till you’ve cleaned up.”
Sergeant Rawlings handed me a miniature tablet of soap as I left the station, the kind the Travelodge give away free. “Go celebrate,” he said.
At home, I stuffed the bag lady outfit into a bin liner and scrubbed myself clean. I used my own soap. I am very particular about good soap. The Natural Tan was difficult to remove. I might have to swallow it as new teeth enamel is hard to come by.
I couldn’t quite get myself to throw Marlene away (Latching’s newest recruit bag lady) as she had her uses. A salad with torn Chinese leaves, green peppers, goat’s cheese and garlic croutons cleansed the inside of my mouth.
It was a luxury to be sitting on my moral sofa, the black and white switched to a muddy programme on digging up fields for bits of Roman floors. I was soaking up the comfort of my home and glad I was not going to spend the night in a sea-swept beach shelter with drunks for company. The phone rang. It was Mrs Edith Drury. She sounded awful.
“Jordan, my dear, I wouldn’t ask you,” she croaked, “But I don’t know who else I can ask and I know how resourceful you are. And at least I can pay for your time… so it’s not like asking a favor.”
She was wasting valuable energy in talking so much. I interrupted her. “What’s the matter?” I said quickly. “You sound as if you need a doctor.”
“No, no, I don’t want to see a doctor,” she said faintly. “Hate doctors. They ask too many questions. But I do need some of those holiday pills, you know, the kind people buy in case they get an upset tummy. Can you find some sort of all-night chemist that sells them and bring some round to me? I do feel very ill indeed or I wouldn’t ask you.”
“Ah, the runs? A stomach bug?”
“Er… yes, I am doing a lot of running. Oh dear, I’d better go. Can’t stop. ‘Bye, Jordan.”
Poor Mrs Drury. I put the phone down, heaved myself from the sofa and switched off the television. Now I would never know who ran away with whom in the particularly riveting soap about to follow. How could I survive life without knowing?
I wrapped up warmly and cycled to the nearest Safeways supermarket. I couldn’t get used to having a car. It was still open, the last shoppers pushing round laden trolleys like zombies. The assistant in the pharmacy was very helpful, thinking I was the sufferer and hoping I wouldn’t stay around for long and become a problem. I bought a packet of Diocalm tablets and some apricot-flavored oral rehydration sachets. She’d need them to replace the fluid she had lost.
As I cycled against the wind to Mrs Drury’s villa, I wished I’d used the car. The ladybird was parked in the yard behind my shop. There was nowhere to park it near my flat even though I had bought a resident’s parking permit. Too many double yellow lines. Owning a car was already a headache. All possessions were a burden. I was glad I didn’t have many.
The front door was on the latch. Hello, burglar, come on in. I went in and peered into the front room and the kitchen. Empty, though the lights were on. She was obviously upstairs. I filled two glasses with cold water and put them on a tray with the medication and took them upstairs.
“Hello, it’s only me. Jordan,” I called out.
It was a solid and spacious house with a wide landing and six doors leading off – bathroom, loo and four bedrooms. One door was ajar, a dim light coming from it. I went in. The room reeked of illness. Mrs Drury was huddled under a plump rose-strewn eiderdown on a sturdy double bed with carved mahogany headboard. Heavy Edwardian pieces of furniture overpowered the room like sentries guarding the walls. I wondered if she had inherited the suite from her parents or Mr Drury’s family. It had been in service a long time.
“Jordan… you’re an angel,” she croaked. “I knew I could count on you.”
She looked awful, her skin a bad color. The sooner she got some morphine hydrochloride down her the better. I checked the dosage under the light and broke the seal.
“You’ve obviously eaten something that was off,” I said. “Been out for a curry recently? They are often suspect.”
“No, no… nothing like that,” she moaned, “I just had a boiled egg for my tea and then I got these awful griping pains, was doubled up. It’s ghastly. I’m so sorry, my dear, you having to see me in this state.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve seen ill people before. Chew these two tablets, Mrs Drury. They’ll help. Take ano
ther two in a couple of hours’ time. Now don’t forget. But if this goes on longer than forty-eight hours then you must see a doctor.”
I emptied two glucose sachets into a glass of water and stirred. “And this is even more important. You must drink this. It’ll help you replace all the fluid you’ve lost. And here’s some more water for another lot later on. You’ll soon start feeling better.”
I helped her wash her face and hands. I’m not nurse material but I tried. Then I tidied the room a bit. It seemed safe to leave her. I didn’t want to stay the night. She was less agitated and might sleep for a bit now.
“You go home, Jordan dear. I’m feeling better and I’ve got all this medicine to take. I’ll be all right.”
“I’ll come by tomorrow morning, just the same,” I said, relieved. Coward… I felt ashamed.
I went downstairs and threw the empty sachets away in the bin. I caught hold of the lid before it snapped shut. Something gold shone in its depths, catching the light. I peered closer. There was a wedge of scalloped white icing tipped with gold. Several other pieces of broken icing. At least three slices had been cut and the fruity part eaten. I took them out carefully using a big spoon, shaking off the broken eggshell.
Mrs Drury had omitted telling me all that she had had for her tea. The slices were only partially eaten, too sweet perhaps. I wrapped the fragments in some cling film, not sure what I was going to do with them. Take the specimens to Mrs Fenwick and get her to identify the artwork? It would hardly do either lady any good.
I went back upstairs. Mrs Drury was sleeping, her face aged and sunken. Her secret was safe with me. I’d call again early next morning.
The Public Health department at the council office were intrigued by my request for tests on a half-eaten slice of wedding cake.
“Mouse-droppings? Gonna sue the baker?” they asked.
“Something like that,” I said. “Mickey Mouse land.”
“You’d be surprised how many rats there are in Latching.”
Wave and Die (Jordan Lacey Mysteries Book 2) Page 20
