Jordan Lacey Mystery 01 Pray and Die

by Stella Whitelaw

  “I suppose I should have brought you some flowers.”

  “Working DI’s don’t do flowers,” I said, letting him off the hook.

  “We get sent on sympathy courses.”

  “You forgot to go.”

  “Does any bit of you not hurt?” he asked, peering closely at the dressings. His eyes lingered on mine a second too long,

  Tricky question. I touched the curve of my left cheek. “Up here.”

  It was the lightest kiss like a butterfly alighting for a sip of nectar. His lips were fleeting. The action took me by surprise. I held my breath. It was almost worth all the pain.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  “Homeopathic remedy. Not on prescription.”

  He left soon after, the nurses fluttering around him like antiseptic moths in the doorway, being small and feminine beside him.

  They let me go home three days later. Funnily enough it was the insides of my elbows and behind my knees that hurt the most. The skin there is especially thin. It felt odd going back to my bed-sits, as if I had been away years. They didn’t seem mine. The rooms smelt stale and stuffy and I threw open all the windows and then had to sit down to catch my breath.

  While I was sitting, I opened the mail. The usual bills, circulars, junk. But one piece of junk was junkier than the rest. On the back were the words: MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. YOU’LL GET MORE THAN YOUR NOSE BURNT NEXT TIME.

  This was Ursula’s mad junk mail writer. My stomach contracted with fear. How did he know? Had he shut me in the steam room, fiddled with the thermostat? I thought of the man who had attacked me two nights ago - or was it three nights ago? - was he something to do with the lost fortune in currency? Or Ursula? I scrutinized the writing with a magnifying glass. It seemed different.

  But he knew who I was, what I was doing and where I lived. That gave me a bad feeling. But which one was he? Ursula’s persecutor or Ellen’s killer? It would help to know which man was which. If only I could find out, I might be able to untangle this mess.

  Then came a chilling thought. Maybe they were the same person. I picked up the phone and dialed the Latching number that had been on the Hilton Hotel booklet of matches that I found in Ellen’s bedroom. It rang a few times and then someone picked up the receiver. The voice was West Sussex, casual.

  “Weston Secondhand Furniture.”

  “What?”

  “Rick Weston. Did you like the desk?”

  “The desk?” It seemed like long ago that an office desk had turned up on my shop doorstep unannounced. “Oh, yes, Rick, thank you. It’s great. Nice wood. I haven’t paid you yet.”

  “Four hundred pounds.”

  “What?”

  “Forty pounds.”

  “I’ll come round soon.”

  I put the phone down. Rick Weston. It followed. Mrs. Swantry had sold pieces of furniture to Rick several times in the past and then asked him to empty her house when she left it. Of course she would have written his telephone number down somewhere.

  I turned the hate message over. It was printed on a winter advertisement for the Amusement Arcade on the pier, giving revised hours of opening. A new advertisement, one I had not seen before. I was back to square one again and I couldn’t think straight. My skin hurt everywhere. It was time for a painkiller.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The sea had been refrigerated by a sudden deterioration in the climate from hostile isobars. In the days I had been in hospital, winter had swiftly crept along the coast. No one sat on my rock now. The last of the small birds had emigrated. Only the hardy gulls stayed to squawk from the rooftops and skim the icy seas. Even the fishermen only took their boats out on calmer days. I wondered what Mavis was doing for fresh fish. Perhaps she had frozen the excess summer catches and was entertaining her bold, dark-skinned man in the back parlour.

  The Thelma Rose and Shirley Dean were pulled high on the shore, their dan flags fluttering like black mourning, nets piled under bits of sodden carpet. Customers arrived by car to buy fresh fish for their freezers but had to go to the Iceland supermarket instead.

  I wore layers of loose, floppy clothes because my skin was tender to the touch. The dressings were still on the insides of my elbows and behind my knees. And to my acute embarrassment, on my cheeks, chin and nose. I had burned my face. Looking in a mirror was a meeting of monsters.

  The pier was empty except for a few intrepid anglers and boys fishing from the lower level. They huddled into their anoraks and woolly hats, munching beef burgers and chips, clutching thermos flasks of strong hot tea, watching their rods and lines.

  Tears of Allah swept in from the sea. The tide was high and the sea was choppy, brown and cream, churning up sand from the bed, swirling mud and pebbles.

  Despite my medical disguise, Jack, the manager of the Amusement Arcade recognized me as his heroine and slapped me heartily on the back. I flinched. He was wearing his usual assortment of sweaters and T-shirts.

  “Hello there, ducks,” he said heartily. “If it isn’t my Saint Joan, my shining Lady of the Lamp.” He’d been watching too many late night films on TV. “Come and have some coffee. You look a bit flushed. What have you done to your face? Been overdoing the sun bed?”

  “Someone tried to cook me,” I said, following him into his little office. It was a chaos of paper and rubbish and take-away dishes. He found an electric kettle and two mugs and a dribbling jar of instant coffee. I doubted if he could find anything else.

  “Tell me who it was and I’ll bash ‘em in,” he said, scowling.

  “I wish I knew,” I said, trying to find room to perch my bottom. “Tell me, Jack, when did you put out these advertisements? The ones about the pier in the winter?”

  “Oh, those are new,” he grinned. “Do you like them? Got to bring in the business. People think that when the winter comes the pier closes down. We’ve got to tell them we’re still open.” He flicked through a pile of freshly printed leaflets with pride. “Pretty good, aren’t they?”

  “Are your staff putting them out?”

  “I hope so. I haven’t paid good money to have them sitting in my office.” He stirred the coffee with a stained spoon and added a sprinkling of powdered milk substitute. Not exactly wonderful, but I drank it. He was a kind man despite the rough exterior. I actually trusted him. “The deck chair men are glad of a bit of cash off season and there’s Alf. They push them around the town.”

  “Who’s Alf?”

  “You must know Alf. The train driver. He takes the mini train up and down the promenade in the summer. He can always do with a bit extra in the winter.”

  “Where can I find Alf?”

  “I’ve no idea. Nobody has addresses. They appear and disappear. I don’t ask questions. Look, miss, I’m sure you know what you’re doing but it seems to me whatever you’re involved in is getting nasty. Why don’t you pack it in? I’d give you a job any day. You could be my part-time manager, then I’d take the odd day off at the races. I like the horses and cars. Y’know, Goodwood.”

  He was looking at me with a sort of anxious beached-whale look. I saw the gleam in his gooseberry eyes and was sorry. I finished the coffee and put down the brown-stained mug.

  “Thank you, Jack. I’ll remember that. I might give it a try. Like the new wall notices.”

  Jack grinned. Round the walls were notices: “Don’t Spend More Than You Can Afford. We’d rather a 100 people Spent One Penny than One Person Spent a Pound.”

  I went out on the pier and wondered why I always attracted men I didn’t want, even when they were nice. The day was fading fast, the lurid promenade lights coming on in strings, headlamps flashing along the coast road, wing-tips winking green and red making for Gatwick Airport in a slice of dark sky.

  I walked easily, gaining strength from the clean sea air and the bracing wind. Some stranglehold was breaking up inside me; senses lately blunted were suddenly sharpened. I was no longer trapped. I tried to wash myself empty of all the excess information I had be
en carrying around. Trenchers, The Beeches, Ursula, Cleo … they were only accidentally caught up in the same web of intrigue because they were neighbours. Whispers echoed in the vaulting halls of my head even if I could make no sense of them yet.

  In the town, it was late night shopping. People were already getting ready for Christmas. They shopped in preparation for the coming siege. I only needed an extra carton of soya milk, some luxury bread … garlic or sun-baked tomato or granary special crusted with cheese.

  A man thrust a leaflet into my hand. ‘COME to the pier,’ it read. ‘Forget WINTER. Have FUN in the Amusement Arcade. Open daily till 9 p.m.’

  I looked up at him. He was tall and stooping, a weather-beaten face lined and weary, wearing a navy woolly hat pulled low on his forehead.

  “Hello,” I said. “Don’t I know you? You drive the mini-train along the front in the summer, don’t you? Sometimes you wave at me.”

  “I wave at a lot of people,” he said with resignation. “It’s part of the job.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “Sorry,” he said, turning away. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “You can do that tomorrow,” I said, catching his arm firmly. “I know a decent cafe near here. We’ll have a cup of tea. Just a cup of tea and a chat. Surely that’s not a worry?”

  “No, of course not, miss.” He seemed thrown, on edge, looking along the pedestrian shopping street as if wondering if he could make a run for it. He was reluctant to stay. He shifted his weight from one foot to another. “I got things to do.”

  “They’ll wait.”

  I marched him into Maeve’s cafe and sat him at a table in a far corner, putting him in the seat against the wall so he would have difficulty getting out. I nodded at Mavis behind the counter and she knew exactly what I wanted. She held up two forefingers in the shape of the letter T.

  He was sweating. Funny that because it was not especially warm in the cafe. The door kept opening, letting in a draught of cold air. He was ill at ease and longing to escape.

  “I’ve seen you lots of times, driving the mini-train,” I said. “All those kids and the drunks. They seem to have a great time on the ride.”

  “Don’t talk to me about the drunks,” he said, moistening his chapped lips. “The women are the worst. A day out at the seaside for them is a boozy pub-lunch and a noisy ride along the promenade. I don’t think they even look at the sea.”

  “Have you been driving the train for long?” I asked. Mavis appeared with a big pot of tea and a plate of toasted tea cakes, dripping with melting butter, which I hadn’t ordered. She winked at me and I let it go. I poured out the tea and let the man help himself to sugar. He was into the teacakes without any prompting. Dear God, the man was hungry. My smile folded itself away in pain.

  “Only this summer,” he said, his mouth full of teacake. “I had another job once, office job, before that. This suits me. The freedom, you know. Nobody bothers who you are.”

  “But it’s getting cold now. It’s going to be a bitter winter. Not much fun in the winter, is it? Not having a proper home.”

  “You’re right there,” he said, spooning in more sugar and stirring energetically. “The winter is going to be hard. Still, I’m fit. I’ll survive. There are a lot worse off than me.”

  There was something about him that was gentle and mannerly. He had a pleasant voice. His chin was coarse with grey stubble and he needed a shave, his clothes shabby and ill-fitting. The grey pallor of his face spelt cold and hunger. No way was I going to offer him a roof for the night but I felt like it. I couldn’t house all the homeless of Latching. It was his decision. I wasn’t cut out for St. Jordan of the Homeless.

  He had once been good-looking. I could see a different man behind the pallor of poor feeding and despair. His voice had roughened from the company he kept but there were still the roots of a suburban upbringing in the vowels. He had learned to speak in the days when families spoke proper English, when it was necessary if you were to get a decent job. Nairadyes henyfink goes. And I don’t mean regional accents. The rich variations of the British accent is part of our culture.

  He was pretty nervous. His hand shook lifting the big white cup, slopping the tea. Homeless men seem to lose their confidence in being able to talk to women. I suppose it shatters them, wondering if they smelt, needed a bath, knowing where they had slept the night before and the night before that. It might be oozing out of their skin.

  There was something about his face that nagged me. I didn’t know him just from driving the mini-train. From the beach, the driver had been faceless. I waved to the peaked cap and the gold braided uniform. The man himself was blurred.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t, but it’s Alf.”

  “Alf?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  He looked uncomfortable. If he hadn’t been hemmed in by all the chairs, he would have got up and gone. The last teacake was temptingly sweet in front of him and he wanted it. It confused him. If he could have sprouted wings, he would have flown.

  Suddenly his shoulders slumped. It was as if he was tired of the deception, drained by the hard life of living rough.

  The mask fell away. I knew exactly who he was.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Arthur Carling,” I said.

  He did not need to reply. Relief and panic swept over his face in waves of contradiction. His blank, mourning eyes lit up for a second then sank back into his own personal pit—his suit of sorrow.

  “Not dead then?” I went on.

  He put down the cup and lifted his hands from the table in surrender. He tried a smile, fleeting, but it was a nice smile. “Only half dead,” he said, dryly. “How did you know?”

  “Ursula gave me a photograph. You’ve changed a bit.”

  “Yes, of course I’ve changed. But there’s still something left of the man I once was, is that it?”

  “Did you send me this?” I asked, taking the Mind Your Own Business threat message out of my pocket. He nodded and looked away, burrowing down some dark corridor. “And how did you know about my nose?”

  “Sorry, it was a mistake,” he mumbled. “I’ve been following you. I thought you were going to ruin everything. I was desperate to make you back off. But I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to you in that health place.”

  Ruin everything? I could see I had to tread carefully with this wounded man. Chloroform, carbon-monoxide poisoning, all the hate mail, a dead cat. He might be a very dangerous person under that numb exterior. Somebody tampered with the steam room door.

  “I don’t want to talk about that or Ursula,” I said, trying to gain firmer ground. “Let’s forget her for the moment. But I’d really like to know how you did it, you know, disappear? After all, you’ve had a proper funeral and been cremated. You’re supposed to be dead. Quite an achievement.” I tried to infuse some lightness into the conversation. “Ursula thinks she’s a widow and Cleo grieves for you.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. He groaned like a tortured animal, pushed at the air as if warding off a knife in the ribs. I knew straight away that he cared about Cleo, that she was the one bright light in his life and that Ursula had been right about his feelings. It was too late to retrieve the words.

  “But Cleo’s all right, really, I promise. You were a patient in Latching Hospital, weren’t you?” I probed quickly. “A heart attack or something, wasn’t it?”

  Arthur Carling dragged his mind back from wherever it had slipped. He impaled me with a look that was pure pain. He stirred more sugar into his syrupy tea. Then he started drawing circles on the oilcloth with the base of his spoon. He had no idea what he was doing. Mavis would go ballistic if he ripped it.

  “Yes, I was in hospital in Latching. But it wasn’t as serious as a heart attack. More a warning. Angina, they said, that’s chest pains. I had tests and a chest x-ray. I have to take medication to prevent any further attacks. I get a doctor in Shoreham to prescrib
e them.”

  “So how come the hospital authorities thought you had died?”

  Arthur Carling shrugged at the memory. “It was too easy. I was in a two-bedded side ward with this other chap. He was a vagrant who had collapsed on the street and been brought in. He was in a bad way. On the Sunday night, he had a massive heart attack. I tried to find someone to come and help, but no one ever came. God knows where everyone was. Perhaps there was an emergency elsewhere. It was while I was wandering round the hospital, trying to find a nurse or a doctor, I realized how easy it would be to walk right out. No one would ever know.”

  “But the vagrant had died?”

  “Oh yes, he was a goner. No chance.” He hesitated. “You’ve met my wife, Ursula. You know what she’s like. It was a heavensent opportunity I’d never get again. I had to get away from her.”

  “Ah, opportunity makes the thief … How can we resist?” I said.

  “I lifted him over and put him in my bed. He wasn’t stiff or anything. We were both wearing hospital issue pyjamas. I put my watch and hospital name tag on his wrist. The stud fastening on mine was faulty and it was a simple matter to remove it and fasten the strap on him. His name tag, I just cut off and threw away outside. They’re only thin plastic. We were near enough the same height so I put his outdoor clothes on over my pyjamas and walked out. They smelt disgusting. They’d thrown away his boots so I went barefooted. Ursula had taken home my shoes. They were brown, well polished, I remember. Nice pair.”

  “But what about identification afterwards?”

  “I knew Ursula would never agree to identifying a corpse. Far too squeamish a procedure for her. Cleo was on a skiing holiday. And faces change when they’re dead, don’t they? They drop or something. Ursula would identify the watch and that would be enough with their documentation. The chart was there and their hospital records. No autopsy was needed because I’d seen three different doctors earlier in the day. None of them would remember my face. I was just another grey-haired, middle-aged man.”

  “What did you do?”