Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die

by Stella Whitelaw

  Someone has to investigate the sleepy streets of Latching, West Sussex – and that someone is Jordan Lacey, ex-policewoman, now advertising her services as a private investigator in the local paper and working out of a junk shop in the quiet part of town. Will there be enough crime in Latching to keep her in business? Errant husbands, runaway pets… it looks like there might be.

  When Jordan discovers the body of a dead nun in an abandoned hotel, along with clues to a hidden WWII fortune, she realises she may have found more than she’d bargained for. Trouble is, she isn’t exactly popular with the local constabulary. So when her life appears to be in danger, the police – in the shape of the devastatingly attractive DI James – want more proof that she’s at risk than a slice of poisoned carrot cake sent to her by a “friend”. It will take an altogether more dramatic attempt on Jordan’s life to make DI James sit up and take notice.

  PRAY AND DIE

  A Jordan Lacey Mystery

  {book one}

  Stella Whitelaw

  Published by Tirgearr Publishing

  ISBN:

  Smashwords Edition

  Author Copyright 2012 Stella Whitelaw (http://www.stellawhitelaw.co.uk)

  Covert Art: Amanda Stephanie (http://www.tirgearrdesign.com)

  Editor: Kemberlee Shortland (http://www.kemberlee.com)

  Proofreader: R. L. McCoy (http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com)

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please log into the publisher’s website and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Pray and Die was originally published in 2000. This version of Pray and Die has been rewritten and includes scenes and situations not included in the original story.

  DEDICATION

  To Diana and David

  for their loving support

  PRAY AND DIE

  Stella Whitelaw

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Look, is this really necessary? You know who I am.”

  “Jordan, you can’t go breaking and entering premises and pretending it didn’t happen when you’re caught.”

  “But I used to work here.”

  “As far as the law is concerned, you are one of the peasants now,” said Sergeant Rawlings, slamming the Custody Record shut. “You were found straddling the windowsill of the offices of Hemsworth & Co, Solicitors, Dayton Street, Latching. Don’t tell me you were comforting a seagull with vertigo.”

  “I hadn’t broken into anywhere and I hadn’t entered,” I protested, focusing my gaze on the familiar bleak walls of the station.

  “Do you want a cup of tea?”

  I nodded, wondering how I was going to get out of this one. It was humiliating. My first day working on my first case and I get arrested by a fresh-faced puppy probationer who should have been patrolling the streets looking for the real villains.

  “Thank you,” I said when he handed me the cup. It was canteen brew in the same thick cups which the Admin Officer thought appropriate for both law keepers and breakers. It wasn’t my high profile Earl Gray but I needed the liquid and the caffeine. “Can I have a biscuit?” I added.

  “Still not eating, Jordan?”

  “Not the point. Show me food which isn’t murdered, poisoned with chemicals or stuffed with additives and I’ll eat it. I eat fish from the sea but it does have a chance of getting away.”

  Sergeant Rawlings produced some ancient digestive biscuits rimmed with fluff from the depths of his desk then showed me the way to the cells. I knew the way. He didn’t have to show me.

  “You’ll have to wait in here, Jordan, until someone comes downstairs to interview you. Sorry, it’s hardly the Hilton.”

  The cells hadn’t improved. Still narrow, rectangular cubicles with half-tiled walls, scuffed lino on the floor and a bunk bed with a thin plastic-covered foam mattress. The blue plastic had unmentionable stains. I didn’t want to sit on it. I was pretty fastidious.

  “I’d like some paper and a pen,” I asked, knowing my rights.

  “Want to write a letter?”

  “No, my memoirs.”

  My name is Jordan Lacey and I live in a bed-sit in Latching, West Sussex.

  No, that’s not exactly accurate. I live in two bed-sits; a side-by-side arrangement, like Siamese twins. It means I have two kitchens, two keys, two numbers and two doorbells. It can be confusing. On the other hand, not many people know and it could be handy in an emergency.

  Sometimes I think I’ll knock a hole through the joint wall to save me putting on a robe every time I have to go out onto the landing to get to the next room. And since I only have one kettle, that means a lot of commuting between rooms. I’m saving up for a second kettle.

  Latching is a faded seaside town, its glory lost in the past. It became fashionable to take the waters at Latching about 1798 when Princess Amelia, long forgotten sister of the infamous Prince Regent, came for a holiday visit. The building of the railway brought more visitors, but a cholera outbreak and then a typhoid epidemic sent the visitors scuttling back again.

  It’s a mixture of soaring Regency terraces, charming crescents with elegant Georgian houses, boat-porched fishermen’s cottages, ghastly Thirties semis and even more horrendous Sixties to Eighties concrete developments. The powers that be even demolished a gracious Edwardian mansion and garden to put up a deformed multi-storied car park. Right on the front, overlooking the sea, blocking the view. Brother, have they got tunnel vision.

  Although solvent, I’m not exactly rolling in the stuff. I had a good job with the West Sussex police, working in the Criminal Justice department. CJ deals with the prosecution process, conviction service, court liaison, the tape library, warrants, licensing, the Coroner’s office and the Police Service solicitors. I had originally worked with Crime Management which does all the interesting things: drugs, special investigations, special branch, fraud. But when I developed asthma, they swiftly moved me off the polluted streets and into a cramped office with mountains of paper work.

  After shuffling documents for a few months, I began reading them. Unfortunately, I found it necessary to tell a certain Detective Inspector what a prat he was (not the exact word I used, but near enough). He was not amused, although the vicious rapist who’d just walked free due to the same DI’s incompetence was laughing fit to split his black leathers.

  Since I would not retract my statement—in fact I broadcast it around the station with maximum impact—I was suspended and then asked to leave.

  It was while suspended on full pay that I got this idea of starting out on my own. I would become a private investigator.

  Okay, Latching is not exactly a hive of criminal activity but it has its statistical share of adultery, fraud, insurance claims and contested wills.

  And up the road is walled Chichester, a beautiful medieval town which has been there since Roman times. You can’t tell me that Chichester hasn’t got its share of missing people/money/dogs/cars/antiques. I was prepared to tackle anything.

  It was not easy to finding the right accommodation for an office. I did not want to work from my bed-sits. They were my bolt hole. But I needed a place with class and style, a cross between a lighthouse and a theatre. It had to have space. No poky and damp basement dump with areas curtained off for privacy for me. My clients would have the full treatment. Armchair, coffee, carpet, desk. The client in the armchair; me
at the desk; coffee seductively percolating in the corner, wafting out the aroma of exotic Brazilian plantations.

  The retail trade in Latching is gradually being eroded by the big boys; the supermarkets on the outskirts of the town eat trade and the huge DIY stores sell everything from rawlplugs to complete kitchens. Shop after shop are closing, being boarded up and hung with estate agent signs.

  The corner shop on the junction of Rex Street with the old High Street had been empty for over a year. I’d walked passed it a hundred times, taking the short cut down Rex Street to the sea front.

  Suddenly I saw it with different eyes. I liked the rich maroon paint and the step up to a corner entrance with carved overhang. It was at the end of its lease and they were glad to let me have it at a rent I could afford. It was the perfect front. I would operate as a shop. Clients could browse without attracting attention then gravitate to the back office for the real business.

  It had once been an up-market opticians so the two bowed windows were small. Spectacles don’t need acres of plate glass and I didn’t want a big display window to fill. But what was I going to fill it with anyway?

  The first thing I did while thinking about my shop’s purpose was to make three smart signs with black plastic stick-on letters: OUT TO LUNCH. BACK SOON. CLOSED FOR REDECORATION. They would cover any length of absence.

  The shop was at the oldest end of the original High Street where commerce petered out into a residential area. Opposite stood solid, three-storied semi-detached Victorian houses with pillared porches and tall windows which cost a fortune to curtain. Few were left to single occupancy. The rows of tenant bells indicated the number of flats these once sturdy and spacious family residences had been carved into.

  Next to my shop was a drab hairdresser with plastic flowers in front of net curtains, then a Mexican restaurant that did not open until the evening. A peculiar youth cult place occupied the other corner site, selling huge posters of unshaven pop stars, secondhand videos and DVDs. It belted music all day long.

  I now stood in the general store nearest my shop. It stocked a bit of everything from postage stamps to a dusty tray of rose quartz.

  I was weighing a chunk of heat-generating rose quartz in my hand when the idea for a shop came into mind. I would sell junk. Not a lot of junk, only high class pieces. I did not have a lot of money for stock and I did not want to be bothered with suppliers, deliveries, VAT and all the other time-consuming rigmarole of genuine shop-keeping. A few really nice pieces of junk could stand in my discreet windows, a couple of shelves of jumble sale books for browsing and some cheap Monet reproduction prints on the walls. It would look intriguing.

  “Do you want that rose quartz?” The shop assistant was a frowzy blonde with ragged hair, long red fingernails and a wrap-over apron protecting her short skirt and blouse. “They have healing properties, you ‘know.”

  “And boy, do I need healing,” I said, putting the quartz back on the tray. “But I’ve only come in for Ajax, Flash, J-clothes and a good scrubbing brush.”

  “Planning a spring clean?”

  “Moving into the corner shop.” I pointed in the direction of my shop.

  “Welcome to Skid Row.”

  I cleaned the place as if it had an infectious diseases court order slapped on it. There were just the two rooms inside—the front shop and a back room—and an outside loo. Eventually everything was whistle clean but still empty. Where was I going to get my high-class junk? And office furniture. I needed decent furniture.

  What about advertising? I had to advertise but discreetly. The problems of being self-employed sent me back to the store for a wrapped tuna sandwich and a carton of soya milk.

  “My name’s Doris,” said the blonde when I went to the counter. She offered me a squeeze out of a tube of hand cream which she kept under the counter. “The local paper gives readers one free advert. You ought to advertise your shop. Make ‘em curious. Otherwise nobody will come. This end of town’s dying anyway.”

  I grinned, handing back the cream. “Thanks for the tip, Doris. What the hell, I’ll have a bar of walnut chocolate too. They say we eat 350 lbs of chocolate in a lifetime and I’m way behind.”

  I sat on the floor of my shop, composing my advert. Doris had given me a back copy of the local paper so that I could use the ad form. By the time I’d finished my tuna sandwich, it was ready to post.

  HIGH CLASS JUNK - INVESTIGATE THE POSSIBILITIES BUT DISCREETLY - HIDE AND SEEK ME - I’M THE BEST PI IN THE BUSINESS

  Those who needed a private investigator would understand.

  My first client was a woman called Ursula Carling. She was tall, thin and dressed in a pale lilac suit, broach and scarf. Her grey-tinted hair was set to last. Her eyes were cold behind the thick lenses that were like milk bottle bottoms.

  Ursula had seen my advertisement and I was what she wanted. She said she thought her husband had been playing around. Although they had talked about divorce, Ursula was convinced the other woman was sending her hate mail and making nuisance phone calls.

  “It sounds distressing. Please tell me about the mail.”

  “It’s such awful stuff,” Ursula said, pacing my empty shop like a grieving panther. “Enquiries from undertakers about the measurements of the coffin required for my funeral. She’s put my name on a mailing list for sex aids. I even got a call from an escort agency, wanting to know what kind of boy did I want. This woman hates me so much, it’s unbelievable.”

  She tipped out a carrier bag full of junk mail and crudely printed hate messages. Paper spilled everywhere. “Look at all this. Disgusting, absolutely disgusting stuff and it’s driving me mad.”

  “How unpleasant,” I said, turning over a few of the messages. They were repulsive. Nasty stuff. “What did you ask for? A six-foot Swede or a small Italian number?”

  Ursula looked at me blankly.

  “Why haven’t you been to the police?” I asked quickly.

  “I didn’t think they would be interested. All I know about this woman is that her name is Cleo and she works for a firm of solicitors locally somewhere. I want this persecution to stop and this woman warned off.”

  “Have you made any enquiries yourself?”

  “No, of course not.” Mrs. Carling looked round the sparse room. “I don’t want her to think this rubbish upsets me. That’s what she wants, isn’t it? She’s a nasty, vicious piece of work.”

  “Do you know who she is?”

  “I’ve just told you. Her name is Cleo and she’s a secretary with a firm of solicitors. That’s all I know. I want you to find her. Give her a scare, a warning. Then all this will stop.”

  “I’m sure I can find her. It can’t be too difficult. There are not that many firms of solicitors in Latching. It won’t take long.”

  “But don’t let her know what you’re doing. Not at first. Just find out where she is and let me know.”

  I nodded sympathetically. I’m good on sympathy. Junk mail is bad enough but hate mail is enough to give anyone a nervous breakdown. Ursula looked near to it.

  “But surely if you are discussing divorce with your husband, it doesn’t really matter what he does,” I added, without thinking.

  “We’re not divorced yet,” she said indignantly. “So it’s still cheating.”

  I was not so sure but she was paying. I’d take the money, find this Cleo and point out to her that it’s an offence to send offensive literature through Her Majesty’s mailing system. Her Majesty was not amused.

  “Ten pounds an hour, plus expenses.”

  She seemed taken aback.

  “Or, if you prefer. Fifty pounds a day plus expenses.”

  “I’ll pay the day rate,” she said quickly, probably thinking it would work out cheaper. I knew it didn’t. A day was a day, an hour was an hour. I could probably find this Cleo person in five minutes flat if I put my mind to it. I’d put a stop to the whole thing.

  “Next time you come, I’ll have a chair and some coffee,” I said, feeling so
rry for her. It was no fun being asked for the size of your coffin.

  I needed surveillance gear. My wardrobe could fit into a plastic bag. I began combing the charity shops, and there were dozens of them in Latching. I bought a few felt hats, crimplene suits and crumpled raincoats. Then I spotted abandoned junk. The heavens opened, revealing the glory. Such beautiful old things, vases, ornaments, fans and jewellery.

  When I opened my shop, the north facing window displayed a china chamber pot covered in flowers and over-printed in gold letters that said “God Save the King”. The east facing window had a lacy shawl and a faded hand-painted fan so old and fragile I dare not even breathe on it. I had found an unending source of supply in that abandoned junk box. It just needed a discerning eye.

  The bolt slid back and I jolted awake. The door opened and Sergeant Rawlings grinned, noting that I was sitting on the writing paper I’d asked for earlier.

  “Come on, Jordan. Someone will see you now.”

  “Who?” I stuffed the pen in my jeans pocket, hoping he wouldn’t notice. I also hoped I wouldn’t be seeing the DI who had got me sacked.

  “Detective Inspector James. You don’t know him. After your time. He transferred from London, East End.”

  I followed Sergeant Rawlings to the interview room, wondering if I’d get another cup of tea though he could keep the mouldy biscuits. My neck hurt from dozing off in a cramped position. I sat down on the chair indicated, removing the pilfered biro when it poked me, then planted my elbows on the table. Something had to hold up my head.

  DI James came into the interview room and sat down, stretching his neck. Perhaps he’d been trying to sleep too. He was tall, craggy, with dark crew cut hair, and piercing blue ocean eyes, granite-jaw, broad shoulders and a chest bursting his shirt like the Incredible Hulk. I bet he worked out. There was a disheveled arrogance about him.

  He switched on the tape, hardly looking at me, and went through the usual procedure. Full name, date of birth, home address. I yawned. The standard police caution, verbally.

  “Do you understand?” he asked laconically.