Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die

by Stella Whitelaw

  “Bless you, my dear,” said one of the nuns, touching the shoulder of my dirty raincoat. She didn’t mind the chilis. I sniffed. I was horribly moved and tears sprang to my eyes for no good reason at all. How could some people be so good and so kind? DI James strode passed, glancing at Ursula.

  There were cars waiting for the disabled to take them back to St. Helios. Perhaps they would have tea and special cakes now, something to warm them up and remind them that it was not their turn yet. Ursula was shaking hands and leaving, obviously not invited back to the hospice. I was tired of following her but the day wasn’t over. She didn’t go home but headed towards the centre of town. Where was the dratted woman going now?

  She steered a course straight for Trimpers. I should have known. The hairdressers. The rain had rearranged her careful styling and she was going to have it fixed.

  I sat outside on a refuse bin, eating the apple. There was only one bruised bit of skin which I spat out into the gutter. It’s not difficult to deteriorate.

  An hour later, she emerged, not looking much different. She then began an afternoon of serious shopping. I was bored rigid, trundling after her from one fashion store to another. Latching was well served with dress shops. I collected disgusted looks and turned up noses.

  Enough was enough. The smell of synthetic shop perfume clogged my nostrils. I tossed the refuse sacks into a bin and headed for the pier. I needed some fresh air. Once on the pier I pulled off the hat and scratched my hair into its usual tangle. The wind immediately tangled it some more and I began feeling like my old self, shedding the raincoat and straightening my back. Now I looked like everyday teen-age grunge. I was so lucky. I was doing what I wanted to do and today, somehow, I had made progress. Nothing connected yet but it was all there. Oh yes, it was there. I only had to put it together.

  An angler pulled in an elongated, slithery silvery fish with lethally pointed sharp-toothed jaws. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Garfish or garpike.”

  “Surely you’re not going to eat it?”

  “My cat likes it.”

  “But all those bones.”

  “One long bone down the back. You can soon rip it out.”

  I shuddered and moved on. As much as I love cats, they are voracious animals with their consumption of meat, fish and anything that moves. First I had to rid myself of the taste of funerals and the smell of chilis. I leaned over the rail at the end of the pier, drinking the ozone from the churning sea. Sometimes you could see the hump of the Isle of Wight on the horizon, but not today with the low rain clouds pulverizing the sky. The Channel was rushing in, slapping at the structure, plumes of spray drenching the lower levels and a cluster of dedicated anglers. The remains of the day drifted like departing guests over the horizon.

  “Jordan?”

  It was my trumpeter’s brown-sugared voice. I dissolved into a pool of female confusion. He’d found me with my face stained with coffee dregs, hair like a bird’s nest and I was wearing charity throw-outs. His smile reached his eyes, dark and mysterious as the deep sea beneath the pier.

  “Hello Number One fan,” he said. We leaned against the rail together in a silent hello and I could feel his solidness against my side. He was my height, warm, rounded— a real person. I stared out to sea, to disguise the pleasure of seeing my trumpeter.

  “This is coffee on my face,” I explained. “It’s a disguise. I’ve been on surveillance.”

  “You look wonderful. I’ve always wanted to meet an undercover Indian woman. They have such beautiful manners. Have you got a diamond in your nose?”

  “No. Why are you here in Latching?”

  “We’re doing a concert tonight at the Pier Theatre. Didn’t you catch the posters? Are you coming?”

  How could I have not seen the advertisements? The near-miss gave me the shudders. He might have played his magic and gone and I would never have known.

  “Of course. Try stopping me.”

  “Join us for supper afterwards. A few of the boys.”

  “But don’t you have to go home?”

  “I am allowed to eat.”

  A slight emphasis was on the word eat. I understood. That was as much as he allowed himself to stray. To eat a meal in a public place with some of the band.

  “I’d like a tuna and anchovy pizza with warm red house wine and salad piled high in a bowl,” I said, suggesting a cheap meal. Musicians did not earn much.

  “So would I. Bet I can pile my salad higher than yours.”

  “I’m an expert. Years of practice. I’ve been following a client today, to see what she gets up to. And she went to the funeral of a nun who was horribly murdered.”

  He was a man of music and melodies and soaring sound. This cushioned him in a different world and he wasn’t exactly listening. I don’t believe he knew I’d left the Police Force. “Poor little girl,” he said vaguely to all five-foot-nine of me. “How awful for you. Try not to think of the nun.”

  “I found her body,” I added, glad to unburden the guilt and tell someone.

  He groaned. “You’re much too young and sweet for such sordid experiences. We’re having an early rehearsal, Jordan, and I have to go. I’ll leave a ticket for you at the box office and see you after the show.”

  He planted a kiss somewhere behind my ear and was gone. I stood quite still so I could pretend he was standing beside me, so I could feel the person he saw in me, young and sweet and vulnerable.

  I wandered back to my shop and opened it up belatedly. I washed off the coffee in the basin at the back and changed into my jeans and sweat shirt. A woman came in, interested in the framed picture of pressed flowers. All my price tags were now £6. It simplified life. But she did not look as if she had any money to spare.

  “My mother used to press flowers,” she mused nostalgically, her mind wandering back to running as a child across a sunlit lawn with daisies threaded in her hair. “We used to do it together on a big table with sheets of blotting paper. Do you know, you can’t get blotting paper now.”

  “This has just been reduced,” I said, rather enjoying the power. “Sale price of £3.”

  “I’ll have it,” she said.

  I replaced the framed flowers with an amber goblet, big enough for a pint of brandy. What did people use these things for? It was too big for anything sensible. Just a dust collector.

  The general store was near to closing so I whipped round to get some food. Another forgotten meal day. I went along the shelves at the speed of light and took the last loaf of granary bread, some creamy goat’s cheese, a bag of tomatoes and a jar of green olives.

  “Looks like you’re making another pizza,” said Doris, totting up my bill on a calculator. “Did you enjoy the currant bun?” she added without a bat of her false lashes.

  “It was stale,” I said.

  “What did you expect, Jordan? An Oscar nomination?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I put away the food I wasn’t going to eat and got ready to go to the jazz concert. While I scrubbed off the bag lady, I mentally surveyed my wardrobe. This didn’t take long. At least everything was clean. I never put away anything that needs a wash. A good massage of medicinal shampoo got the itch out of my hair. That knitted hat was suspect. I took more care than usual which showed how seriously I was taking this night out.

  I put on clean jeans and a blue denim shirt that had blue flowers embroidered on the yoke, cowboy style. It had been a bargain in a sale and bought for its hard wearing qualities not the fancy yoke. I staggered about in leather boots for a few minutes, then remembering my trumpeter was the same height as me, changed into my best trainers. My hair was dried and tamed into a tawny rope. I poked at my lashes with black mascara which was a token beauty routine on special occasions.

  Just as I was thinking of leaving, the doorbells rang. It was Derek. His eyes widened with approval. “Hey gorgeous,” he said, moving in fast. “This is my lucky day.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “I’m just goi
ng out.”

  “Anywhere interesting? I could come along.”

  My reply needed careful wording. I didn’t want him tagging along to the jazz concert with me, a possibility if he knew I had a free ticket and he’d only have to pay for himself.

  “It’s the Mayor’s Charity Gala at the Cumberland Hotel tonight,” I said smoothly. True, it was, but I didn’t say that was where I was going. “The tickets are £25 at the door. Bound to be plenty of room. They won’t turn anyone away.”

  His face hardened as it did when confronted with the thought of actually spending money. “A bit pricy,” he said eventually. “Twenty-five pounds is a lot.”

  “It’s all for charity.”

  “Charity begins at home,” he trotted out predictably.

  His indecision hung in the air. I gave him a cup of tea and a couple of Grandma Wild’s home-made cookies to calm his nerves while I did some fast tidying-up. Perhaps I was half hoping to bring the band back with me after the show for a coffee.

  It was difficult to remember what the attraction had once been with Derek. I suppose I had been lonely, feeling vulnerable. He had an immaculate clean-cut English look, the result I knew now of hours of self-preening and primping and steaming at an ironing board. His profile was good with a classical nose. But a nose is an accident of birth and not the result of character building.

  He tried to finger my waistband as I put the biscuits on a plate. I side-stepped the embrace.

  “Don’t you like me anymore?” he asked plaintively.

  “Of course I like you.”

  “You don’t go out with me anymore.”

  “You don’t ask me.”

  He’d liked it fine when I had cooked supper, rustled up a picnic for the beach, paid for my own ticket to a show. I couldn’t forget that tea-bag, gift of the century. It made me curl with laughter. Had he ever bought me flowers? No. Chocolates? Not even a Mars bar. Perfume? Not a whiff. OK, I’m not a chocolate person. But I love flowers. I even have a vase. There are always flowers and plants in my two rooms in various stages of mortality. It’s hard to throw away flowers before the sap has finally dried up. I’ve kept two cyclamen corms in the dark from last year to plant again this winter. That’s a flower person.

  For years I’ve nursed this longing to fall deeply in love and to be loved in the same wonderful way, to cherish and be cherished. I wanted to be courted by a man with a warm and generous heart who’d spend his last pound without saying it was his last, who didn’t count his change in front of me, who left tips that reflected how much he enjoyed my company.

  The atmosphere cooled. Derek didn’t know how to handle it. I put on my black leather jacket, a twentieth birthday present from my parents. It still looked good. The pockets were silk lined and I remembered finding inside the loving card from them. “To our dearest daughter. Love Mum and Dad.” I tried not to think about them. It was their last present to me.

  “Time to go,” I said. “Coming?”

  He pretended to think about it but he’d made up his mind a long time back. “No, Jordan, I don’t think so. I’ll see who’s down at the pub. Might be someone I know in The Bull.”

  He tried kissing me outside on the pavement but I wasn’t having it. A fast manoeuvre made it look as if I was heading for the Cumberland Hotel, but then I back-tracked down Field Alley, a narrow 18th century path between high brick walls, and cut along the sea front to the Pier Theatre. It was a narrow escape. Field Alley was supposed to be haunted. Tonight there was only me slipping through the shadows.

  The ticket was waiting for me in the box office. It was in an envelope with my name in his bold hand-writing. I kept the envelope. It was a good aisle seat, about half way back, with an excellent view of the stage. I settled myself into the plush warmth, savouring the pleasure ahead of listening to great jazz.

  It was an old theatre, recently refurbished with comfortable dark red seats, modern lighting and sound equipment. The bar and cafe were really part of the pier complex and had not received the same face-lift. The dome above the auditorium let in an eerie green light. I could see the shapes of seagulls sitting on the structure. Just before the show started, the shutters would clatter over the dome, scattering the birds but the light would still filter through the cracks. I don’t know why they bothered.

  The Carling case was a long way from being solved but I’d made a deal of progress since Ursula’s first tearful arrival at my office. Perhaps I’d spend some of the Joey cheque on a decent print for the office wall. If I was going to stick to the name First Class Investigations (FCI - close to FBI) then the image had to improve.

  I pushed thoughts of work aside. This was time off and I could relax. The music would refresh my soul, wash out the stale rubbish. Finding the nun and being imprisoned in Trenchers had put the taste of fear in my mouth and that had to go too.

  It was nearly a full house. People of all ages were still coming in. There were those that remembered the BB Brown Band at its height in the nineties and others, younger fans who were just discovering its music. A few instrumentalists had grown old with the band, others were recent transplants like the trumpeter.

  As I gazed round the auditorium, I caught sight of a small, oval face peering over the edge of the balcony front row. Her cap of polished dark hair shone in the artificial light. It was Cleo Carling. It gave me a start. She was the last person I was expecting to see. But why shouldn’t she like jazz? Lewis was internationally famous and people traveled miles to hear him. Why not come along the A27 from Chichester? But she said she rarely came to Latching. This was one of those rare occasions.

  Cleo was doing what I’d been doing, looking around the theatre and drinking in the atmosphere and excitement. But I shrank back in my seat so she wouldn’t see me. I did not want her to think I was following her. It was essential to maintain her confidence in me.

  The balcony at the Pier Theatre was a narrow affair reached by two staircases from either side of the auditorium. It went back six rows. Cleo had an end seat in the front row and was leaning over like a child at an outing.

  My attention was instantly hooked by the band ambling on stage, carrying their instruments. They arrived in the casual, relaxed way that jazzmen do, chatting, eight of them; four went to the standing microphones at the front of the stage, the string bass and drummer to the back, two electric guitarists to chairs at the side.

  The trumpeter stood left front of stage. Although he was not that tall, he had immense stage presence. His evening suit was perfectly tailored, sat easily on his shoulders, a sharp crease in his trousers, his dark hair flopping over his brow, boyish and unruly. They always teased him about his immaculate appearance during the show, calling him unflattering names. It was part of the camaraderie of the band. Everyone got ripped off about something.

  There was a high buzz everywhere like champagne bubbles. I could not stop the bubbles fizzing through my veins.

  BB was getting old now, slightly stooping, a mane of silvery hair down to his hunched shoulders, but he still played with all the old magic.

  As the clapping died down, I glanced across and up to the balcony. Cleo was sitting back now. At the rear of the balcony hung heavy red velvet curtains. One of them stirred as if a window had been left open. I was distracted by the curtain and missed the first announcement.

  “A-one, a-two, a-three,” Lewis said, foot tapping, forefinger beating. He brought his trombone up to his lips and they swung into Sweet Georgia Brown. I was carried away by the haunting sound and great beat.

  The trumpet soared with a voice of its own. I hope his wife knew how lucky she was. She didn’t go to jazz concerts. “She has enough of it at home,” he’d told me once. A long time ago I would have followed him to Tibet and back.

  A movement at the side of the auditorium caught my eye. Someone was hovering in the dark, moving silently and slowly, pausing every now and again, to peer. It was a tall, thinish figure, trying not to draw attention to himself. It was not a member of staff. T
he theatre attendants wore black and red jackets. I timed the pauses. He stood still long enough to look along the row of faces. He was searching for someone. I felt a flutter of disquiet.

  I’d been in the business long enough to have a sixth sense about such things. And I knew he wasn’t looking for me. My ticket was a last minute gift, lodged in the box office just before the show started. No one knew I was coming.

  He had to be looking for someone else. My skin crept and it wasn’t from the magic of the music. Something was wrong. An uneasy feeling stirred my stomach like migrating spiders.

  Then I lost sight of the figure. He was behind me now and I could hardly swivel round to watch. The band were now playing Tin Roof Blues, one of my favourite tunes, and the plaintive sounds from the four soloists found chords within my body. Usually this piece would carry me away on clouds of sound but tonight I was distracted.

  The figure appeared again on my left. He was still moving slowly, inspecting each row, still searching. His clothing was dark, face and hair in the shadows. But my whole body was alert and it wasn’t because of the blues. Something weird was going on and I didn’t like the smell of it.

  I froze in my seat. A quiver of fear gripped me. He was easing up the stairs, towards the balcony, not making a sound. No one else seemed to have noticed. I decided to speak to one of the attendants. I got up during a wave of applause, not wanting to cause a disturbance, and moved silently to the back of the auditorium. They began playing Down By the Riverside, a perennial favourite of every foot-tapping jazz fan.

  But before I could speak to anyone, I suddenly saw that the figure was right behind Cleo. The curtain was moving round him like a cloak. I saw a tiny flash of steel - it might have been a knife, mirror, screwdriver, anything. I sprang into action, my heart pounding, and raced up the stairs two at a time towards the balcony. One of the attendants spoke to me sharply. Someone in the audience hissed, others glared. It was pure reflex.