Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die

by Stella Whitelaw

  By the time I got to the back, the figure had gone and a window was banging. I whipped the curtain aside and saw that it lead out onto a narrow, railed ledge. It had begun to rain and the wind blew a fine spray into my face, blinding me for an instant. Down below, I saw a dark figure running along the pier towards the deep sea.

  I checked quickly on Cleo. She was looking around, disturbed, either aware that something was going on behind her or chilled by the sudden draught from the open window.

  If he’d climbed down, then so could I. Without thinking, I legged it out onto the ledge and saw that there was fire escape ladder pinned to the wall. I shinned down the metal rungs, relieved that I did not have to do anything heroic.

  The figure had a start on me but I could run faster. My leg muscles responded and I surged forward with all my old power. The figure was darting between the glass partitions that stood centrally along the length of the pier.

  He plunged into the amusement arcade. Would I recognize him among that crowd of punters? He merged immediately into the throng of fruit machine, slot machine and race track addicts. He could be any of those feeding coins into machines.

  But he would be breathing as heavily as me and I reckoned I was in better condition. He couldn’t normalize it in the few seconds he had ahead of me. I scanned the arcade quickly, moving down the aisles, the racket of coins and pop music and exploding missiles loud in my ears.

  I couldn’t see him. Had he gone straight through the players and out the far exit? That’s what he must have done. A commotion started right behind me and I swung round. A youth in jeans and dark bomber jacket with hood was whacking the glass sides of a roll-a-coin machine with a length of wood and a cascade of silvery ten-pence pieces was shooting down into the metal scoop. For a second, I was distracted.

  His pals whooped with joy and began shovelling up the money. People fled as the youth began hitting the glass windows along the row of machines. Glass splintered and money flew in all directions. People screamed. The manager strode over, muscles bulging and bursting buttons, shouting at the youths.

  The thug wasn’t my fleeing dark figure, I was sure of that. This youth was shorter, puny in every way except in violence and greed. I reacted automatically. I still remembered how to do a flying tackle and we both went down on the floor, knocking the breath out of both of us.

  Jack added his considerable weight. I felt like the filling in a sandwich. We rolled over, panting. Some orgy. All heaving and pushing and no passion. A couple of bouncers arrived and added their twenty-four stone’s worth. The youth didn’t have a chance of escaping though his pals had scarpered with pockets bulging with cash.

  “Cor,” said Jack, eyeing me with admiration. “That was some tackle. Ain’t you the girl who was here the other day, asking questions?”

  “That’s right, Jack,” I said, getting up and dusting down my clothes. I was looking a mess and there was a rent on the shoulder of my best shirt. “Look, I can’t stop. You can deal with this moron now. Call the police. You may catch the others. There were plenty of witnesses.”

  “Thanks a lot. I owe you.”

  I grinned. “No need. You gave me a teddy, remember?”

  A couple of bright-eyed old ladies start to clap as I went out. That gave me quite a thrill. The rain was coming down steadily, blown by a north-easterly that chilled the marrow. I trudged back to the pier theatre, hearing echos of jazz music on the night air. I had lost the man altogether. He had vanished.

  I slipped back into the theatre by the legitimate entrance, showing my ticket again. They looked curiously at my disheveled appearance.

  “Just went out to get a breath of air,” I said. “The music, you know. Too much.”

  At first I couldn’t see in the dark and stood at the back to accustom my eyes. They were playing Mile End Stomp. Lewis had loosened his bow tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt. Sweat shone on his face. He did not look at the audience. He played from somewhere within himself.

  I gazed over the crowd. Cleo was not in her seat.

  I stared at the empty place at the end of the front row. I realized now that the man had not run towards the Amusement Arcade. He had back tracked round the side in the other direction and come into the theatre again through the front entrance. I had been following the wrong figure.

  Then I heard a cry, a small sound from somewhere below. A cry tinged with panic.

  The only places situated below in the theatre were the staff rooms, the two cloakrooms and the loos. I flung open the door of the ladies and ran along the narrow corridor which lead to stairs down to the basement.

  Cleo was on the floor at the bottom of the steep stairs. She was sprawled in an unnatural position, arms across her face as if she had been protecting herself. One of her shoes lay about half way down, a dainty black patent leather pump with gold stripes across the front.

  I felt for a pulse. It was faint but there, and she was still breathing. I daren’t move her in case there was any injury to her back. Her legs looked all right. No bones sticking out at funny angles.

  “Cleo, Cleo,” I whispered close to her ear. “Can you hear me?” There was no response. She was out cold. “We’d better get you to hospital. And fast.”

  The concert had ended and most of their equipment had been loaded onto the coach and was ready to leave. The band were either going out to eat or had started their journeys home. Lewis was waiting outside the theatre, pacing the top step. He was wearing jeans and a denim shirt. Our clothes were physically mirrored, only his shirt was minus the embroidery. He had my leather jacket over his arm.

  “Jordan, I was worried,” he said, not a word of reproach. “They found your jacket on your seat. I knew something had happened.”

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” I said, getting my breath back. “I saw someone in the auditorium and thought they were stalking my client, or rather the daughter of my client. I chased them out onto the pier but caught somebody else instead trying to steal cash from the Amusement Arcade. Then I came back to the theatre and found that Cleo had fallen down the stairs to the ladies cloakroom and knocked herself out, so I went to hospital with her in the ambulance.”

  “Hey, hey, slow down,” he said, taking my arm. “I can’t take all that in. Could you explain it again in words of one syllable for a simple musician?”

  I did explain again but although he nodded occasionally, I’m sure he didn’t really understand what had happened. He only knew that I had gone harebrained around the pier in the dark and missed half the concert.

  “So you missed most of the second half,” he said.

  “Yes.” My voice was almost inaudible.

  “I have to drive home now. It’s too late for supper.”

  “I know…”

  “But I’ll walk you home. You’ve got mud on your face.” He carefully wiped it off with the corner of a handkerchief. He was caring, kind and paternal.

  The rain clouds had scudded away and left a perfect night sky studded with stars, but I couldn’t enjoy it, knowing I had ruined my evening. He talked about the show, winding down, and I tried making intelligent remarks but I was shattered and my shoulder was beginning to hurt.

  “And you’ve torn your pretty shirt,” he said, stopping under the yellow glow of a street lamp outside my home.

  “I fell on the pier, in the arcade. The floor was slippery. Lots of broken glass. There must have been some nasty jagged bit of glass lurking.”

  “It’s not bleeding,” he said, inspecting the rent. “I’ll see you again sometime, Jordan. The next time we play in Latching.”

  He took a flat plastic box out of his pocket. “This is the band’s latest CD. I want you to have it. When you listen to it, Jordan, remember that every time I play the trumpet, I’m playing that top note for you.”

  He kissed me briefly and then he was gone, disappearing into the night. I stood holding the cold CD disc, the door of my mind closing on the pain. He had no way of knowing that I didn’t have a CD pl
ayer. But I did wonder if James had a player.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  They kept Cleo in hospital overnight as she had slight concussion. When I went to see her she was sitting up in bed looking small and frail, her cheek discoloured, stained mauve and yellow. She said she had slipped and fallen down the stairs.

  “I don’t really remember much,” she said. “There seems to be a blank area in my memory. I think I fell, caught my shoe on something. They were new and the soles slippery.”

  I didn’t say what I thought. There was no point in frightening her. The hospital smell was overpowering, a mixture of antiseptic, body odours, urine and boiled greens.

  “How are the bruises?” I asked.

  She grimaced. “A bit tender. But they’ll fade.”

  “Do you want me to tell Ursula where you are?”

  “No, thank you. I doubt if she’d be interested.”

  “But your own mother?”

  “She doesn’t care about me.”

  “I don’t understand her.”

  “She wouldn’t bother to send me a get well card.”

  “Can I get you a magazine or a book from the kiosk downstairs?” I was starting to feel I ought to make tracks. I’m not good at this sick bed thing.

  Cleo began to shake her head then stopped abruptly as if it hurt. “Don’t think I could read a word,” she said. “A bit of a headache.”

  “How are you getting home?” I wished I had four wheels so I could offer her a lift. I went to the window. This wing of the hospital was one of the few tall buildings in Latching and the rooftops spread below like a tumble of fallen Lego. The sea glinted in the distance in a low line of shallow waves. A gang of gulls wheeled and dealed, fighting over the tide’s incoming flotsam of dead fish.

  “They’re laying on a hospital car. There’s a rota of voluntary drivers who ferry patients home. Everyone is being very kind. And thank you for coming in the ambulance with me. They told me it was you who found me. So we both missed the second half of the concert. What a shame, Jordan. It’s such a good band.”

  She looked too tired to talk any more so I said good-bye, said I’d be in touch. I had a word with the young ward sister on my way out. She was a prim miss with rigid brass hair who looked too young for all the responsibility.

  “Is Miss Carling going to be all right?” I asked. “She looks very poorly.”

  “Are you a relation?” She was suspicious.

  “Her sister.” I didn’t actually say yes.

  “Miss Carling has a concussion but the X-rays show no fracture. We’re letting her go home tomorrow on the understanding that if she feels sick or the headache gets worse, she’s to contact her own doctor immediately.”

  “Cleo’s very sensible. I’ll keep an eye on her,” I said, all sisterly.

  “You were very lucky to find her awake. She was fast asleep just now when her other visitor came.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “You say she had another visitor? Who was that?”

  “I don’t know. He slipped in when I was busy with a patient. He only stayed a few moments. Stood at the end of her bed and stared at her.”

  “I wonder who it was. Can you describe the man?” I asked, overly casual to cover my apprehension. “I’d like to thank him for making the visit.”

  “I hardly saw him. Only a glimpse through a gap in the curtains. Tall, thin, middle-aged, dark clothes.”

  “Thanks,” I said brightly, nodding. “I think I know who it was.”

  I no more knew who he was than she did, but there was a good chance it might be the dark figure stalking Cleo at the jazz concert. The thought was chilling. Whoever it was, I wanted to know how he knew Cleo had been taken to hospital. The only way he could have known was if he was at the pier theatre last night too. Perhaps he had pushed her down the stairs.

  I shivered, pushing the creepy thought away. I had to stop thinking like this.

  Back at the shop, I opened up, dusted my display windows and did some paperwork. I made a mug of black coffee and unlocked the filing cabinet. The lower drawer needed turning out. It was full of dog-eared and stained beige files and paper going brown with age. There might be something I could sell to a dealer. People bought old letters and documents. There was a tiny shop down a side street in Latching that was stacked to the ceiling with boxes and albums of Victorian and Edwardian postcards and letters. Enthusiastic collectors climbed over each other and the resident guard dog to comb through the stock of goodies in the cramped space.

  At first I couldn’t make head or tale of the correspondence and papers. There were a lot of minutes of meetings covering the years from 1941 to 1948. At first it looked like some sort of club or association. Then I noticed a badly duplicated and smudged official looking logo at the head of each sheet of paper. Photo copiers had not yet been invented. The paper was poor quality stuff.

  The minutes had been meticulously kept, littered with obscure references, initials, oblique cross-references. One word leapt out in flashing lights. Trenchers.

  4.5 The management at Trenchers are not happy with the situation.

  4.6 JD to contact.

  Not happy about what situation? My senses were suddenly alert. During the Second World War, several Heads of State sought asylum in Great Britain and were given plush accommodation at Trenchers. It was supposed to be a military secret but everyone knew.

  I sorted the minutes into date order and began reading them more carefully. It dawned on me that the official logo was some kind of government department. The civil service jargon was like a foreign language. My eyes felt they were crossed with the strain. The lines of feint, stenciled typing began to blur.

  The upper drawer of domestic trivia seemed to have nothing to do with all these papers from the war. Yet there must have been some reason for keeping them.

  3.1 The BMA has affirmed the necessity of this action.

  3.2 The Western Desert, Tripoli, Libya and Greece will be the main areas of distribution.

  3.3. This is regarded as a matter of supreme urgency by FC. (Note: section 4.12b)

  3.4 Minimum run 100,000,000. Suggested maximum 259,600,000. Confirm.

  I blinked. Two hundred and fifty million what? Helmets, packets of chewing gum, condoms? There was nothing to give me a clue.

  There was another mention of Trenchers.

  11.1 The management of Trenchers refuse to have military camouflage painted on exterior walls.

  11.2 This could draw unwanted attention to its use.

  11.3 Latching is not of strategic importance and sources confirm that it is not a bombing priority. (Note: section 17.1a)

  Well, they were wrong there. Latching did get bombed during the war. Incendiaries, high explosives and the odd stray doodlebug. The Germans had been targeting the railway line and the gasometer but missed.

  My coffee had grown cold. I was mystified. How was Trenchers linked with Ellen Swantry apart from the fact that these files came from The Beeches? And how come she was murdered in the same hotel so many years after these incomprehensible minutes were taken, typed on a stencil skin and copies roneoed off on a cranky machine. Why were they stored at The Beeches any way? Surely they should be in some dusty Whitehall basement?

  I picked an answer out of the air. Supposing Ellen had been present at these meetings? Supposing she had been the young shorthand-typist patiently plying her Pitmans, then typing and duplicating the lot afterwards for distribution? The list of people present at the meetings was signified by initials only. O.S. could stand for Oswald Swantry or Oscar Swantry. Or Oliver.

  Supposing our Ellen had fallen for Oswald/Oscar/Oliver and eventually married her boss? She could have taken an extra copy of the minutes for her own keeping or as some kind of insurance for her husband’s future. Maybe he instructed her to make extra copies as a precaution.

  Maths are not my strong point but I could work out ages. That would make Ellen Swantry over ninety now and the nun on the hook had been in her sixties. No, Ellen hadn’t bee
n a love sick shorthand typist who married her boss. She had come along much later and married Mr. Swantry. But she might still have married her boss, a much older man, long after the war.

  The solicitor’s letter which had led me to Cleo was in the Carling file now. I reread it again for any light.

  “Dear Madam, having perused the Land Registry’s records, we are of the opinion that this dispute has no founding in law being a purely non-verbal agreement. It might, of course, be possible to pursue a byelaw but we would advise you that this procedure would be costly and with no guarantee of success.”

  The letter was addressed to Mrs. Ellen Swantry, The Beeches, Lansfold Avenue, Latching.

  Ursula Carling also lived in Lansfold Avenue and the house next door to Ursula’s tidy Tudor box was shrouded with beech trees. This was a dispute between Ursula and Ellen Swantry. No disguise necessary this time. I was going to check on Ellen Swantry/Beeches/boundaries in that order and Ursula Carling’s involvement. But surely no one would kill a neighbour over a domestic dispute? A boundary was no motive for murder.

  So how did Ursula come into all this? Or perhaps she didn’t. Buying the filing cabinet along with my other furniture had been a fluke. Perhaps the only connection was that Ellen, widowed and vulnerable, simply couldn’t wait to get away from her difficult neighbour and into the peace of the nursing order.

  I quickly tidied the files and stacked them away in a big manilla envelope. It was none of my business but I knew I ought to mention them to DI James, in a roundabout way. I could hardly go into the station with the files and say: “Look, sir, something weird was going on at Trenchers during the war and Ellen Swantry, the murdered nun, had copies of wartime files connecting Trenchers and a government department.” He’d laugh me off the premises. Usual irritating chorus of Jaws theme from the bystanders.

  The house next door to Ursula’s in Lansfold Avenue was indeed The Beeches. The great trees blocked all the light from the double-fronted bay windows and a heavy branch looped over the wall and shadowed Ursula’s front room. She’d probably complained about that too.