“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “When’s the tea coming? I’ve got a throat like the bottom of a pond.”
“I must inform you that the right to legal advice includes the right to speak to an independent solicitor. Do you wish to speak to a solicitor?”
“No, I don’t, thank you,” I said. “I don’t have a solicitor and if I had one I wouldn’t want to speak to him. This is all a mistake and I want to go home.”
He looked at me as if I was something from outer space. I knew my uncombed hair needed washing and my clothes were creased and my stomach rumbling. The rumbling was their fault. They are supposed to feed prisoners.
“I’m making enquiries into the alleged breakin at Hemsworth & Co, Solicitors, Dayton Street, Latching. I now propose to question you about the matter. Do you understand?”
I liked his brilliant blue eyes. They were clear, but fathomless. I have a thing about blue eyes, although none of the men in my life have had blue eyes. It must be this sea addiction. The sea has me hooked. I walk the pier every day of my life. It takes exactly eight minutes to the far end and back. Sometimes its legs straddle the sea and the waves send spray into my face. Sometimes the pier is stranded on the sand and I can peer down into the strange life scuttling about on the sandy bed.
“Do you always talk in that funny way?” I asked, conversationally. “It’s not natural, you know. Perhaps you should see a psychiatrist. They can help you to relax. After all, if you were in bed with the love of your life, would you say: I now propose to question you about whether you love me. I’m making enquiries into our alleged relationship. Will you be giving me the glass-eye in the morning?”
DI James flinched. Perhaps I had touched on a raw spot. He was new. I should have been gentler. I leaned over and tapped his hand with the borrowed biro. It was leaking. It left a blue streak.
“Only joking,” I said.
He choked back a remark and spoke into the tape. “On being cautioned, Miss Lacey leaned over and marked my hand with a pen.”
Excuse me? Did he have an undetected sense of humour?
“Where’s the tea?” I went on. “I shall feel faint any moment now. It’s hours since I had anything to eat.”
“It’s coming,” he said, recovering. “Can we get on with this interview? I’ve never known anyone waffle on with such a load of rubbish.”
“Fun though, isn’t it?” I gave him a sweet smile. I could also do a sweet smile when necessary. I practice several times a day.
He looked down at his notes for support. “You were found breaking and entering the premises of Hemsworth & Co, Solicitors, Dayton Street, Latching at 19.14 hours. When apprehended, you said: “Get lost, buster.”
“Did I really? I don’t remember. I was too upset at the time. It was terrible, Inspector. I’d never been arrested before.” I put on my frail and hurt, little-woman look which is difficult at a looming five foot nine. It was acting. I didn’t get the part of the courtesan in Comedy of Errors at school for nothing.
“So, would you like to say what you were doing there?”
“Of course.”
The tea arrived. I stirred in two packets of sugar, though I prefer Sussex honey. DI James was cool, professional … a dish. He had a bold face, a cleft chin and stubble shadow, like it had been a hard night. And a deep voice with undetected accents. East End? Oxford? Where?
“You see, Detective Inspector James.” I gave him his full rank and leaned forward. They like their full name. “It’s all been a mistake. I wasn’t breaking and entering the premises of Hemsworth & Co. Oh no, never. I was actually trying to get out. They’d locked me in. They didn’t know I was still in the loo. Don’t people check these days? After all, it could have been a little old lady with her knickers in a twist.”
“I beg your pardon?” He looked distant and bored.
I sighed. I thought I had made myself clear.
“I wasn’t trying to get in, DI James. I was trying to get out. Not entering into… but emerging… out of. Get it?”
CHAPTER TWO
The usual duuun dun … duuun dun … dun dun, dun dun, dun dun of the Jaws signature tune followed me out of the police station. Jordan is a river in Palestine not in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Juvenile humour has not improved since my previous forced departure.
I told DI James I’d been at Hemsworths to make a will. They employed three secretaries and I’d really called in to see if one of them was Cleo or knew of a Cleo. But I wasn’t telling him that. I’d spent all day cruising solicitor’s offices and one clerk had a vague notion there was a Cleo who worked in Chichester. It was a start. The five minute boast stuck in my throat.
DI James looked incredulous as well he might. What had I got to leave to a cat charity? An ancient collection of Simply Red tapes, some decent reproductions and books, a clapped-out mountain bike.
“I had to go to the Ladies, couldn’t unlock the door and the staff apparently forgot about me and went home.”
I could see he didn’t believe it. “So how did you get out?” he asked with a pained expression. “Pick the lock with a hair pin?”
“Not exactly. I had to unscrew the lock fixture off the door.”
“Had a screwdriver with you, did you?”
“I used a metal nail file. The rounded end. Then I opened a window and was climbing out when your intrepid officer arrested me.” I did not mention my handy pocket kit - torch, miniature screwdriver, plastic specimen bags, various keys and hairpins and bits of wire.
It was such a ridiculous story; they had to let me go. I didn’t say I’d slipped into the Ladies in the hope that I could have a sneaky look round when they were otherwise occupied. I hadn’t reckoned on getting locked in the loo.
On the way back to my bed-sits, I called in at Rick Weston’s secondhand store. He was unloading a big lorry in the forecourt. He had obviously finished a house clearance. Furniture, pots and pans, chipped china, lampshades, books, blankets, towels and tablecloths littered the pavement. It was the sad debris from the end of a life.
“Death, eviction or mortgage repayments?” I asked, wandering round the various piles of goods, my eyes sorting like laser beams.
“She’s gone into a nursing home,” said Rick with no expression.
I spotted the fringe of a rug rolled up like a giant brandy snap. The reverse was all muted blues and reds of old Persia.
“How much for that tatty old rug?” I asked.
“Twenty pounds.” He didn’t even look at it.
“Ten.”
He nodded, throwing a torn orange satin bedspread on the linen mountain. I stuffed the ends of the rolled rug into carrier bags before Rick could change his mind. He unloaded a small button-back Victorian nursing chair onto the pavement. It was upholstered in deep rose velvet, worn and shabby from years of burping babies.
“Twenty pounds,” I said, choking back my desire.
“Don’t be silly,” said Rick, still without looking. “Genuine Victorian button-back. A hundred and twenty.”
Rick was a solitary young man. He never said much. His mother, Betty Weston, had met his father on a package tour to Tunisia. She got more than a wonderful tan. She tried to claim on her holiday insurance but the company read her the small print. She became a single mother long before it was the norm.
I knew this because his mother lived in a new bungalow on the Fareham Estate. I was sent there once when I was in the force. A prowler was spotted on the estate. My enquiries were sidetracked by her obvious pride in Rick’s achievements.
“Rick’s turned out a really good boy, he has,” she told me. “Started the business himself. Works hard.”
Rick liked hauling furniture around, driving his old van with one hand, constantly switching stations on his iPod with the other till he found something to suit his mood. Sometimes he wore a big Stetson, pulled down low, which he found at some house sale. I don’t think it had occurred to him that his surname suited the head gear. He used it as a kind of screen.
“How about that two-drawer filing cabinet,” I mumbled, mouth dry as a stale Weetabix. I wanted that too. Then my office would be almost furnished, except for a desk and that could wait. “Oh dear, the lock doesn’t work.”
He turned the key with one hand while writing out my bill with the other. “Works. Do you want it?”
“Yes, but I’ve no more money. You’ve skinned me.”
“Pay next month. On tick.”
“I’ll give you a free investigation if you ever need it, although I’m sure you’ll never be that desperate. If there’s another prowler.” I knew I was gabbling but his kindness had thrown me.
He smiled, his white teeth as dazzling as no doubt his father’s had been many sunny years ago. I nodded.
I couldn’t wait to unroll the rug in my office the next morning. Fortunately, Rick Weston was in a hurry. He dumped the stuff and drove off at a rate to some auction. I didn’t want him to see it in all its glory. The rug was beautiful, a bit worn and threadbare, but the colours still glowed richly. It would out-last me. My magic carpet; dream weaver, weave me a dream.
The chair stood on the rug as if they were made for each other. Perhaps they had been companions in some turn of the century nursery. I brushed the fabric lovingly and then dusted the yard of books and put them on the optician’s display shelves. I left the filing cabinet till last but I didn’t even get a chance to turn the lock. Someone was urgently knocking on the door of the shop.
Ursula Carling stood on the doorstep, trembling, her careful grey hair all awry. She was carrying a Marks & Spencer green carrier bag well in front of her as if it was about to blow up.
“Look at this! Look at this! She’s gone too far this time. I’m going to the police,” she shrieked, nearly hyperventilating. “I can’t stand it. This is driving me … insane.”
I took her by the arm and led her to the Victorian button-back and sat her down with a comforting pat. She couldn’t go to the police. I needed her fifty pounds a day.
“There, there, Mrs. Carling,” I said, plugging in the coffee percolator with one hand and taking the carrier from her with the other. It felt moderately heavy but not particularly angular. Not a bomb, I decided hopefully. “Come and tell me about it. I’ll make some coffee.”
“It’s quite dreadful…” She covered her face with her hands and shook. I needed a supply of tissues, aspirin, brandy. I made a mental shopping list. “This … thing was on my doorstep. I found it this morning when I went to get the milk in. That woman is horrible, a devil.”
“How can you be sure it was her?”
“She shops at M & S.”
“So does half the population of Great Britain.”
“No one else would do such a dreadful thing to me…”
I let her cry while I made some coffee, her blue eye shadow streaking like frayed sky. Fortunately, I’d brought some bone china mugs from my kitchen. I didn’t tell her it was soya milk. Some people have a problem with soya. She stirred in a lot of sugar which disguised the taste.
I took the carrier bag out the back and opened it. I reeled against a wall. Inside was a cat, a very dead cat. Stiff as a board, glassy eyes, a nasty congealed head wound. A hit and run case. My heart thumped wildly. I liked cats.
I put the poor moggie in the shade and went back indoors. I needed a coffee now. Ursula had recovered.
“Have you found that woman yet?” She glared at me.
“I’m tracking her down. I have eliminated certain firms where she is not working. You didn’t give me much to go on. Are you sure you don’t know her surname?”
“The letters were just signed Cleo.”
“What letters? You didn’t tell me about any letters.”
“You didn’t ask me.”
I stared at the rug hoping the intricate colours would give me patience. “Perhaps you’d like to bring the letters in. They could be helpful to me in my enquiries.”
“I don’t want anyone else to read them.”
“My only interest in them would be to see if they hold any clues. You do want this investigation to be concluded quickly, don’t you?”
Her eyes registered cash signs and she nodded. “I’ll bring them in. What about the… er?”
“I’ll see to everything. There’s some very worried owner in Latching, wondering why her cat hasn’t come in for breakfast.”
“Thank you. You’re very professional.”
It was the first time a softer expression had touched Ursula’s face and I glimpsed the conventional prettiness that had once been there, long before this Cleo arrived on the scene to breed bitterness. I meant to ask where the husband was now. I didn’t even know his name.
“You didn’t tell me your husband’s name.”
“Oh, didn’t I? Arthur. Arthur Carling. I’ve a photo here.”
The photo was of the two of them, arms entwined, standing at the end of Latching Pier. They were both much younger, much happier, wind-blown. Arthur was a tall, handsome man with twinkling eyes. They looked a good match.
“Arthur looks very nice.”
“A charmer,” said his wife dryly, tucking the photo back in her wallet. “And real lady’s man.”
She went then and I locked up, putting BACK SOON in the window. I took the moggie round to the police station. DI James passed me in the entrance hall. He had his dead tired, haunted, up all night face on.
“Has anyone reported a lost cat? Black, one white ear.”
“Why?” He hardly had the energy to say that one word.
“I’ve got him here. Hit and run.”
“Put it in the bin.”
He was elsewhere. A man on a different planet. I had to bring him back.
So I rounded on him. “How can you say such a thing? This cat was special to some family. The owners are worried stiff right now, calling, searching. When they know the cat is dead, they are going to be overcome with grief. Don’t you know that a cat that’s loved is part of a family? How can you be so callous and insensitive? Where are your feelings? I suppose they’ve been destroyed by years of inhuman police work.”
“I’m too tired for a lecture, Jaws.”
“Jordan, please!” I practically yelled the word at him. I was sounding more like Ursula by the minute. I hated that nick-name. It came from opening my mouth too often, and my love of the sea. I calmed down with effort. “May I report one feline corpse in a procedural manner? Name unknown. Breed indeterminate.”
I went round to Doris at the general store and bought tissues and aspirin. She couldn’t oblige with the brandy. She suggested apple cider.
“Not quite the same alcoholic impact but I’ll take a bottle. I might need it for myself.”
I sat on the button-back and unlocked the filing cabinet. The top drawer had green metal-slung files marked Gas, Electricity, etc. I looked through them all. They were of little interest but I learned that the house was called The Beeches, Lansfold Avenue, Latching and the owner was a Mrs. Ellen Swantry. She was now encased in a three by six foot single bed with a flowered duvet in a nursing home and no hope of escaping except inside a coffin. I hoped I didn’t end up that way. Take me out quick. I don’t care about the pain, God, but make it quick.
The lower drawer was stuffed with old brown files stacked on top of each other. The papers were curled and stained, coffee, tea, mud. They looked as if they went back to the Crimea.
I bundled the gas and electricity correspondence into a neat pile for the recycling bin in the car park. I caught sight of a letter from a solicitor’s firm in Chichester, Messrs. Rogers & Whitworth. It had been typed for a Mr. Rogers by a secretary who referenced herself at the top as CC and was about some boundary dispute with a neighbour. There were few details and Mrs. Swantry seemed disinclined to discuss the matter.
That solicitor’s clerk had said something about Chichester. His memory bank had been hovering on vague but it was worth a chance. I dialed the Chichester number, prepared for zero response. “Do you have a secretary called Cleo?”
“Oh yes, Cleo. Just a moment. I’ll put you through.”
I waited, amazed, searching for a pen, a pencil. Born lucky, that’s me. By the time they put me through I had pen and paper ready.
“Hello, Cleo Carling speaking.”
It took me three seconds to take in the name. I repeated it like an idiot. “Carling? Cleo Carling did you say? Are you related to Arthur and Ursula Carling?” I got their names out with difficulty.
“Yes, I’m their daughter.”
“Are you sure?” At times the truth can throw you.
“Of course. Who is this, please?”
She sounded pleasant, normal, not the kind of person to leave dead cats on doorsteps. What was going on? Was Ursula completely round the bend? This was her daughter.
“My name is Jordan Lacey and I’m a private investigator. I’m doing some work for your mother, Ursula Carling.”
“Good heavens. What sort of work? I don’t understand.”
“I’m afraid I can’t explain over the telephone. Can I come and see you? When would be convenient?”
“I don’t want to sound unhelpful, but is this really necessary? Surely I’m not involved?”
“In a funny sort of way, you are. I’m not really sure of anything at the moment and I would be grateful for some clarification. I’d like to talk to you. Can we meet?”
“Well… I suppose so. Would this evening suit you? I finish work at five. You could meet me outside the front entrance of the cathedral.”
I liked that. It had style, like a medieval pilgrimage.
“Thank you, Miss Carling. That would be fine. Five o’clock then. It won’t take long.”
I needed a breath of fresh air, something to wash away the smell of the police cell and my depleted sleep. I took the short cut down Rex Road and braved the cruising cars that were searching for parking spaces along the front and crossed the sea road to the shore. There were steps up onto the promenade but I climbed the grass bank in silent protest. I hated all the poured concrete that was gradually suffocating the spirit of sea-lashed Latching.
Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die Page 2
