Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die

by Stella Whitelaw

  It had been an exhausting day but I had nothing to show for my labour. My head ached with all the close work. Perhaps I ought to have my eyes tested.

  The shops were closed as I walked along the pedestrian only streets. It was creepy with so many boarded up shops and derelict sites. Latching was dying. It would be a nebulous resort by the turn of the next decade, housing the homeless, the deranged and the terminally ill.

  I found myself in front of Trenchers. Although the police had boarded up the basement door of the hotel after removing the body, it looked to me as if the hooligans had already been back. The door was swinging on its hinges as the evening wind gusted off the coast, creaking and protesting at its loss of status as Latching’s premier hotel.

  I went into my Girl Guide mode and climbed over the wall, went down the steps, intending to shut the door. There was a lot more rubbish in the front yard, undoubtedly turned over by the police in their search for a weapon. I peered into the depths of the kitchen for no good reason. I knew what it looked like. Why should I want to go into it again?

  As soon as I was inside the gloomy old place, I changed my mind and turned to leave. Something felt wrong. I shivered. But at that same moment, the door closed with a sonorous clang.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Don’t close the door. I’m in here.”

  I expected to hear size ten boots crunching over the debris but whoever shut the door did not answer. I banged on the door panels.

  “Let me out. Don’t play around. Open the door.”

  I thought the wind had swung shut the door. Then came the sound of hammering. Someone was nailing planks across the door. I yelled out, thumping and kicking at the door. It must be the police making the place secure.

  “Officer! I’m inside. Let me out. OK, I know you’re only doing your duty but get me out first.”

  It was no joke. He must be totally deaf. Don’t they have medicals these days? I got out my pocket torch and flashed it around hoping to find a crack in some window where the light would show. I continued yelling, my language deteriorating. “Let me out, you moron. I’m getting sick of this and when I get very sick, I also get very mad. Hey, cloth ears, this is no joke. You bastard. Open the bloody door.”

  Suddenly I was very frightened. The hammering had stopped. I didn’t like what I wasn’t hearing. There was no human sound at all, only the reptile hissing of wind through the cracks. I listened intently. The derelict hotel was empty yet it breathed. I heard something. Was it my own heartbeat? My pulse rate soared. I had to get out before uncontrolled panic set in.

  I remembered there was a flight of stairs at the back of the kitchen. I swept the beam from the torch across the floor, taking care where I stepped. As soon as I found the stairs, I made sure there were no gaps or broken treads, then switched off the torch to conserve the battery.

  Keeping one hand on the wall, I climbed carefully, testing each step before putting my weight on it. I kept thinking how the nun had been found upstairs and that’s where I was going. I knew the elaborately pillared main entrance was securely boarded but I was hoping that some shoddy workman had cut corners on a back window or better still, overlooked one. The stairs led to a labyrinth of passages. Those long-ago waiters and waitresses must have cursed the miles they totted up in the course of their work. The passages led to some kind of servery before a wide archway opened out into the main dining room.

  Through the gloom I could just make out a platform where an 8-piece orchestra had played light classical music for the diners. Wrecked tables were piled up in a corner like a funereal of animal bones;. The carpet under my feet was torn and damp, riddled with silver fish. The rain had got in and smelled like a rotting cabbage forgotten at the bottom of a fridge.

  I stood listening again. So far so good, but was I alone? My senses were beginning to play tricks. I could hear scuttling on the boards … rats? Oh my God, I hated rats. I switched on my torch and flashed it around the room. The shadows darkened and grew in size as the light picked out the ornate ceiling, the ruined drapes, the tipped over chairs.

  The tall windows of the dining room were securely boarded. It was beginning to get chilly, windows rattling and curtains blowing. There must be gaps somewhere if the wind could get in. I found my way to the ballroom. It was even more depressing though I could see it had once been a large, beautiful room. The proportions were still elegant under all the grime and squalor, but there were no stocks of smuggled alcohol or cigarettes, racks of pirated designer clothes or stolen leather jackets. One theory out of the window.

  I felt around to find where the draught was coming from. It must be somewhere. Then I froze. I definitely heard a movement. A footstep … nothing like a rat scuttling about. I shrank back against the wall, dousing my torch, trying to control my breathing. I didn’t know how long I waited. Someone had to move but it wasn’t going to be me. I’d stay there till dawn if necessary. Very carefully I eased down and picked up a broken chair leg. I couldn’t see how I was going to get out of this without a weapon.

  My eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark. I could pick out shapes and none of them were moving. I was starting to shake and there was little I could do about that.

  This was all my own damned fault. I should have left the basement door open, let the police do their own dirty work. Why should I bother to check on their procedure? Now I was incarcerated in a derelict hotel and no one knew I was there. Unless there was someone else in the building … and it might be the murderer.

  My held-back breath escaped in a long gasp and a flashlight blinded me in the face. I stared into the beam, eyes wide, mouth gaping, waiting for one petrified second for a knife to plunge into my chest.

  Then I moved. I was like lightening but someone else moved faster, pinning me against the wall with his weight, knocking the breath out of me. I gasped loudly.

  “Jesus! Jordan Lacey. It’s you. What the hell are you doing here?” The flashlight wavered and I caught sight of a tall figure and dark face looming over me. I knew that stooped look, the shape of the head.

  “Oh, God, it’s you. Detective Inspector James…” I said weakly.

  “I saw a light and thought there was an intruder.”

  “I thought you were the murderer… that poor n-nun.”

  I felt like throwing myself into his arms with the sheer relief of being alive but he was not the sort of man to throw yourself at. I needed his arms around me. For a second it almost felt as if his arms were round me. They should have been holding me closely, comforting me. But I could hear the disapproval grating in his voice as if I was an irresponsible schoolgirl.

  “Didn’t you hear me yelling and banging on the door?” I said, turning to the attack instead. I was getting mad. It was perverse. I should have been overflowing with gratitude. “You locked me in, you fool.”

  “I did not lock you in,” he said coldly. “I’ve only just arrived.”

  “Go and look,” I said hysterically. “Someone has hammered planks across the basement door. It could be the murderer. How are we going to get out?”

  He looked at me with pained resignation. “Grow up. I’ve got a key,” he said.

  It was more than I could stand. My nerves were shredded. I needed sympathy and understand, not this rank disapproval.

  As I turned away, I felt an arm go round me and he was pulling me against his chest. His coat was wet, smelling faintly of a roomful of smoke. I felt his fingers pushing my hair from my face.

  “I should arrest you for trespassing,” I heard him say. But I could think of nothing except his closeness, his breathe fanning my cheek and his masculine scent. I wanted the moment to last forever. My senses were clamouring for more, feeling the hardness of his body against mine.

  “And will you please put down that chair leg?” he went on, letting me go, almost reluctantly. “It could be classed as an offensive weapon.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The first thing I did when I got home was to make myself a strong tea and slurp in a
generous tot of 12 year old malt whisky. The warmth went straight into my veins. Then I threw together a tuna, cheese, lettuce, tomato and chutney sandwich, about an inch thick and ate it like a starving refugee. It took me ten minutes to calm down.

  DI James and I had stood glaring at each other on the pavement outside Trenchers, buffeted by the bitter wind, lit by headlights and the yellow sodium overhead street lamps. We were wind-lashed, rain-lashed. You’d have thought I would have been grateful, being rescued from a night in that damp, rabbit-warren of a mausoleum; I was fast going off the place. But, oh no. I was furious that he’d scared me rigid, that he’d discovered me in such humiliating circumstances.

  That he’d done things to my insides I haven’t felt in six years.

  He, quite rightly, decided I didn’t deserve rescuing but he put me in his car just the same.

  “You’ll never find your own way home,” he yelled over the wind. His eyes were blazing. But even though I was mad, I liked the blaze in his eyes. I knew he would never sponge off me.

  I was completely disorientated by the experience.

  I took another tea laced with whisky to the bathroom and soaked the damp out of my bones in piping hot water. By the time I rolled into bed, I was relaxed enough to read a few pages of Victor Hugo. I was reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame. With 280 close print pages, it was taking me a long time. I don’t remember putting the light out or closing a marker into the book. The next moment it was morning and the gulls were kicking up a racket for their breakfast on the roof outside my window. A thin sun peaking round the curtain cracks. I leaned over and pulled back one curtain. The sky was cloudless, azure blue, washed over and fresh for a new day. How I loved early morning. It wasn’t going to rain for a few hours.

  The cocoon of warmth in the bed was for reflections with no man within reach.

  Memories of last night—being locked inside Trenchers, DI James’ rescue, his all-too-brief embrace and what he did to my insides—shot through me all at once, making my breath catch.

  What I wanted was one normal, red-blooded man who would love me deeply and tenderly, make me laugh, try to understand me and my needs. I wanted to love someone. To make him the joy of my life. Was this asking too much?

  I dismissed these futile thoughts. My day was full. Perhaps the neighbours would throw some light on the situation. I’d phone Cleo to confirm Ursula’s previous addresses and go visiting. Ursula might consider it snooping but private investigating was a stylized form of snooping.

  Cleo was helpful again. She took my new telephone number in case she thought of anything. I didn’t tell her about the doctored carrot cake.

  “By the way,” she added. “I did think of one thing that might be useful.”

  “Shoot,” I said, the phone piece tucked between chin and shoulder. I was thumbing through the street map of Latching, looking up the two addresses I’d written down this time. It seemed the Carlings had lived around Latching all their married life.

  “My Dad, my real father. Ted Burrows, that is. He died in suspicious circumstances. It was never really sorted out and my mother would never talk about it. I was quite small when it happened. It’s probably got nothing to do with this but … well, I thought I’d better mention it.”

  “She gets more interesting by the minute,” I said, making another note. “When did he die? What were the funny circumstances?”

  “Some time in the early Seventies. I was only a little girl. I hardly remember him. Something to do with a river and a car. Sorry, I haven’t any more details. Perhaps you could ask her.”

  “I doubt if she’d tell me. Ursula has a handy knack of developing amnesia when she doesn’t want to talk.”

  Probably a red herring. I couldn’t be sidetracked by every aspect of Ursula Carling’s life. It was much too far back to be of any consequence today. Only if it was pouring with rain and I was within a stone’s throw of a Births and Deaths Registry would I do anything about Ted Burrows. Then I would look up his death certificate.

  The first address Cleo had given me proved a complete dead end. I was not surprised. There had been so many changes in the developers’ pull-‘em-down happy hour. I hoped those bureaucrats who’d been in the planning department were turning in their graves. They’d given permission for the most beautiful house in Latching, right on the sea front, to be pulled down … for what? A multi-storied car park and a bowling alley. There were dreamy sepias of the house, all creamy and gracious, photographed at the turn of the century. The planners should have been strung up.

  The Edwardian house, back of town, where Ursula and Arthur started married life in a ground floor flat had disappeared too, making way for an ugly purpose built red-brick block. The house next door had been demolished for the same commercial reason. So there were no neighbours to ask.

  Address number two was more fruitful. A semi-detached in a leafy grove, outrageously bijou. Ursula’s previous half was in good condition with mature shrubs and a mature lilac tree. Perhaps lilac trees were her trade mark wherever she lived.

  I went to the house next door. Before the door even opened, I knew it was a time warp sort of place. The net curtains were of the faded Forties, green painted tubs sat with sad geraniums, flaking and blistered magnolia paint clung to the window frames. The sparrow-like woman who opened the door was clearly in a time-warp with her cross-over floral pinny, her tired fawn hair in a blonde net, the blank expression of one whose life had ended in a different era. When I explained who I was and that my investigations were connected with Mrs. Ursula Carling, her face came alive.

  “Good heavens. Ursula Carling? Is that woman in trouble? I wouldn’t be at all surprised. She was trouble. The best day of my life when she moved out.”

  “Really… Mrs…er? I suppose you wouldn’t have time to tell me a little about when she lived next door,” I began.

  She couldn’t invite me in fast enough. “Of course. Come in.” She spoke in jerks. “I’m Mrs. Yarpole. I was just making my elevenses. Would you like a coffee? Instant, I’m afraid. Nothing fancy here.”

  “Instant will be fine, Mrs. Yarpole.”

  She showed me inside and we passed a closed door to the front parlour, one of those hibernating rooms used only on special occasions. I glimpsed a back sitting room still strewn with the debris of the evening before, needles stuck in rolled-up knitting, magazines, newspapers, a pipe in an ashtray, two Horlicks mugs. There was still a Mr. Yarpole about and I was glad.

  Mrs. Yarpole made coffee in two sturdy mugs with heated milk and set them down on the green-topped kitchen table. The whole kitchen was painted that intense wartime green. No fancy tray-clothes in this house. She took the lid off a tin of malted biscuits and pushed it towards me.

  “Now, what do you want to know?” She took a biscuit, broke it in two and began some expert dunking. “My, I could tell you some stories.”

  “What do you remember about her? What was she like to live next to?” My dunking was not so successful. Half a biscuit broke off and sank soggily to the bottom of the mug. I fished the goo out with a spoon. Why do we do this to perfectly good biscuits?

  “Well, now. She was a very smart looking woman, nicely dressed, regular at the local hairdressers. So pernickety though. That poor husband of hers daren’t put a foot wrong. I’ve heard her, many a time, reminding him to take his shoes off as he came into the house. She always did her washing on a Monday, regular as clockwork. Got quite sharp with me if I hung out washing later in the week and if it was a Sunday! Well, bless me, you’d think I’d broken all God’s laws.”

  I gave up dunking and drank some coffee. “Did you ever have a row? Did anything really get up your nose?”

  “I’m not easily upset. She was just a pain in the arse, ‘scuse my language, Miss Lacey. It was the television on too loud, my son’s pals staying late and leaving on noisy bikes, the weeds blowing over the fence. Could you believe it? As if I’d do it on purpose. I’m not a gardener but she said the weeds were blowing over. She
was never happy unless she was complaining about something. I was glad when they moved.”

  She chattered on for another ten minutes, getting into the swing of talking but there was nothing definite. I suppose she didn’t have many visitors. Nor did I think Mrs. Yarpole was sending Ursula hate mail or dead cats. She did not seem to know where the Carlings had moved to, nor did she care. I finished my coffee and rinsed the mug out in the sink.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Yarpole. You’ve been very kind and helpful. Not quite what I’m looking for but it all builds up an interesting picture of Mrs. Carling.”

  “Come back any time,” she said, nodding from the door, her hair escaping from the careful net. “I expect you really ought to talk to the Adels. They live the other side. She set fire to their house.”

  I was back in an instant but the door had closed. “Mrs. Yarpole, please. What do you mean?” I shouted through the letterbox.

  “You’d better ask them,” she said and switched on the vacuum cleaner to end the conversation.

  I went straight round to the Adels. It was a tidy house, neat and precise. I introduced myself and Mrs. Adel told me the whole story on the doorstep, her gaze not moving. Ursula had complained about her dog, Rusty.

  “Always on about Rusty, she was. Bee in her bonnet.”

  “He seems a lovely dog,” I said, stroking his head.

  “Yes, he is lovely, isn’t he, but this is my second Rusty. The first Rusty didn’t bark. He was very well trained. But Ursula insisted he was leaving his you-know-whats all over her garden but it wasn’t true. I’m very particular. My dogs don’t run around loose. Anyway, one night, I smelled this awful burning and Rusty was barking this time and there was good cause. Someone had pushed burning rags through the letterbox. But I had time to call the fire brigade and we got out the back way.”

  “And you thought it was Ursula Carling?”

  “She was the only one who ever complained about Rusty. But it could have been any of the slobs let out from the pub up the road. I’m not saying it was her. There was no proof. But she moved soon after.”