Jazz and Die (23 page)

T
he last minutes of waiting were an agony. I could hear the forty-foot trucks on the street delivering trolley loads of bread and fresh fruit and vegetables. Did they realize how much noise they made? When decent folk were trying to get some sleep?

Footsteps were coming along the walkway. My hearing was needle-sharp. I gasped two words.

‘He’s here.’

James got up, left me and went silently behind the door. There was not a single sound in the flat, only my breathing. Cody would expect breathing. Unless I had died of fright or cramp. Could cramp kill?

We heard a key go into the lock and turn. He came into the hallway, not alarmed by anything. It was as he had left it. An empty hall. Tap dripping in the kitchen. He came into the sitting room and saw me lying awkwardly on the floor, still bound and trussed up. He didn’t look like the sleek waiter any more or like the tousled drunk on the beach. He looked like a cold-faced killer. Yet Sarah Patel had fallen for him, or had she? There was no proof that she had eloped with him. It was all hearsay.

‘They didn’t play ball, Jordan, isn’t that a shame? It was a perfectly genuine gesture on my part. Tell me where Maddy is and I’ll tell you where Jordan is. But apparently they are not too concerned about your welfare.’

He wandered over to the window. My HELP message had been taken down. ‘It’s such a lovely day, too. Your last day,
Jordan. I’m going to heave you into the bath and cut your wrists. Not horizontally but vertically up the artery of each arm. You’ll bleed faster than way.’

We had made a mistake. I had no tape on my mouth. Would he notice? I turned my head slightly and pressed my face into the carpet, as if crying. The drama queen of my schooldays added a few convincing shudders.

‘So, sadly I have no need of you any more. You like the sea, don’t you? Perhaps you’d rather have an early-morning swim? The tide is on its way out. You’d soon be carried into the Channel. I’d like to get it right.’

I made a sort of gasping protest.

‘And I always get it right,’ said James, stepping forward. ‘Roger Cody, I am arresting you for the murder of Sarah Patel, Tom Lucas, the attempted murder of Elsie Dunlop and the abduction and unlawful detention of Jordan Lacey. And I daresay I am going to find a dozen other things to charge you with. Anything you say …’ He rapidly repeated the Miranda warning. Reading him his rights, as they used to say before they changed the words.

The room was suddenly full of policemen. The three officers from the bedroom came charging in, guns at the ready. Roger Cody went white, looked frantically from the door to the balcony as if seeking some way of escape. But the balcony door was locked. He was trapped. One of the officers pulled Cody’s hands behind his back and cuffs were clasped on, metal gleaming.

‘You can’t do this to me. I don’t know what you are talking about. This is outrageous. I don’t even know these people you mention.’

‘Take him downstairs. Put him in a holding cell at the police station, give him a chance to start remembering some names,’ said James. ‘I’ll be along straightaway. Miss Lacey may need medical attention.’

‘I demand to see a lawyer!’ Cody shouted.

‘No problem,’ said James.

I hadn’t moved. I was evidence. If I suddenly jumped up, Cody
would deny all knowledge of kidnapping me as a hostage. I had a mouthful of orange carpet, which was rather unpleasant.

Cody didn’t go quietly. He was protesting violently. It took all three of them to get the man out of the flat and along the walkway.

‘He’s gone. You can sit up now, Jordan.’

‘I might need medical attention,’ I said in a feeble voice.

James took another carton of juice out of the carrier bag, pierced the hole and stuck a straw in it. ‘This will work wonders,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you going to check my pulse or anything?’

‘I’m going to check that your flat upstairs is all right, then take you to the police station for your statement. I’ll need a statement while everything is still fresh in your mind. Is there anything you want from your flat?’

‘Some clean knickers.’

‘Sure.’

‘And mascara, please,’ I said. ‘In case you want to take my photograph.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Heroines expect their picture to be hung on your wall of fame.’

I was seeing too much of the inside of Latching police station. It was as if I was still working there. My favourite desk sergeant, Sergeant Rawlings, had retired a few years ago. They put me in the room with the spider plant pot again. The earth in the pot was as dry as a bone and I gave it half of my bottle of water. We were instant earth buddies.

A different detective took my statement. This was a relief. I did not want to go into details about my time with James at the Travelodge or on the orange carpet. It was too personal.

‘So DCI James took you to a safe house,’ he said, filling in the gap. I nodded. Travelodge could add that to their glossy brochure.
We are a safe house
. ‘Then the fake hostage situation was set up. Kindly tell me your part in that.’

I left out the sleeping together on the floor bit. It was hardly relevant. It happened by accident, you could say. James could have been standing behind the door all night, as far as anyone else knew. He has that kind of stamina.

‘Have we nearly finished?’ I asked. ‘I’m very tired.’

‘Of course, Miss Lacey,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a printout of your statement and if you will sign it, then you can go.’

It’s all computers these days. No handwritten statements, hardly legible, written by people who barely knew punctuation or grammar.

Any minute now I could go home. I gave the rest of the water to the spider plant.

It was the most beautiful day. I wished Maddy was there to enjoy it beside me. I walked along the front, enjoying the sun on my face and the sparkling sea washing the shore. I had no idea whether the tide was going in or out, but it was simply there.

I strolled onto the pier to thank Jack for alerting the police. He went into the brown coffee routine in his cubby-hole. I would have to drink it. My stomach was taking a beating these days.

Even the air was cleaner, fresher. It had been air-washed just for me.

‘I knew the sign was you instantly,’ he said. ‘No one else would think of such a daft idea. Of course, I had no idea how serious it all was. Did they catch the bloke?’

‘He’s under arrest.’

‘Lock him up for life, that’s what I say. Where’s your young friend, the big spender?’

‘I have no idea. She’s on holiday with her father.’

‘Welcome here any time. Great girl. You know I fixed it so she got that pink elephant? No one else ever won it.’

I had to smile. Jack was so generous. ‘I did wonder. It was too big for the chute. But she loves it.’

A woman was waiting outside my shop. She was thin, grey-haired and wearing drab eighties-style clothes that should have
long gone to a charity shop. She sighed with relief when she saw me.

‘Miss Lacey? I’m so glad to see you. A friend of mine recommended you. It’s rather personal …’

‘Of course. Come inside,’ I said, unlocking the shop. ‘We’ll go into my office at the back and I’ll put on some coffee.’

‘My friend said you were really nice and understanding. It’s a very long story. I hardly know where to begin.’

This decent and worried woman, once she had relaxed on my Victorian button-back chair, and drunk some decent coffee, told her long story and became my next case. Quite an involved one. It was a complicated tale about her missing younger sister. And a dispute over a house inheritance. And some missing letters.

Thank goodness I had a new case. I had work at last. First Class Investigations was back in business.

I waited three days for the promised pub lunch to materialize. DCI James had to go back to Swanage to take a statement from the now recovering Elsie Dunlop. James discovered that Miss Dunlop had also taught at Cowdry Private School, then in a male role. Maths was his subject. It was all rather confusing.

‘It’s now obvious why Cody had to get rid of her. She knew him at the school, knew what was going on and knew that he had abducted Sarah against her will. It was not an elopement at all. Cody is denying everything.’

‘So it wasn’t two lovers running away together?’

‘No, Sarah may have had a crush on him but she had been brought up by caring parents and it didn’t ring true that she would elope with him. We have been experimenting with a polygraph lie detector at Scotland Yard and even though his lawyer is protesting, we hope to carry out a test. There is no bruised or torn skin evidence still in existence, but we believe he raped Sarah, forced her to submit to him. There are traces of a street drug in her remains.’

‘She must have been terrified, poor young woman.’

‘He killed her because Sarah showed courage. She fought back.
There’s skin tissue under her nails. He knew that she would go to the police and he would be found guilty, get a long sentence for kidnap and rape of an under-age girl. It was easier to kill her and bury her body in the grounds of Corfe Castle.’

I hated to think of what Sarah had gone through in those few days. The newspapers carried so many stories of similar crimes to girls even younger than Sarah. I hoped they would put Cody away for a long time, never let him out.

‘So Elsie Dunlop had seen Cody forcing Sarah into his car outside the school. Then she spotted them together at the jazz festival soon after. She didn’t know what to do. She was in the middle of a personal identity crisis and decided not to do anything that would draw attention to herself. A decision she now bitterly regrets.’

‘I’m glad she is recovering.’

‘And she identified the knife found buried at Corfe Castle. It’s a school palette knife, the kind used in their art department. It has traces of Sarah’s blood on it. The fact that Cody is refusing to take the lie detector test is in itself incriminating although, as yet, the results are not admissible in court.’

‘And Tom Lucas’s wife? How was she involved?’

‘She’s not into jazz but she came to the marquee to tell Tom that the drunk she saw being thrown out was a fake. She’d seen him, sitting on the beach, smoking, eating a burger and reading a newspaper. Then she saw him go into the public gents but he never came out again which she thought was suspicious.’

‘Of course, he came out of the gents as Carlos, an off-duty waiter from the Whyte Cliffside Hotel.’

‘Exactly. Tom told Ruth Macclesfield his wife’s story. She passed the information on to the station and somehow it leaked and it was enough to alert Cody. He went along to the pig farm to silence them both.’

‘But he killed Tom Lucas. How sad.’

‘Mrs Lucas wasn’t there. I presume Tom refused to say where she was and got brutally slaughtered for his attempt to protect her.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘Recovering. Apparently she’s going to sell the pig farm but is keeping one black pig. She says it’s tame.’

The Falcon was one of West Sussex’s most delightful country pubs, a white and stone-fronted conversion of adjoining farm cottages. We were sitting out in the garden, well away from any eavesdroppers. There were bees and dragonflies darting about, from flower to flower, the rolling South Downs framing the distant view.

James returned from the bar with a cold lager for himself and a glass of good red wine for me. We had ordered from the chalked menu over the bar and were waiting for our food. I hoped we weren’t going to talk about the case any more.

‘Did you see DI Ruth Macclesfield while you were back in Swanage?’ I couldn’t stop that useless green-eyed monster getting a word in.

‘She’s asked for a transfer. Took quite a shine to Tom Lucas apparently. Sad really. It was his wife who was involved, not Tom at all. She was not another of the umbrella ladies, or one of Elsie’s rivals. She spotted Cody on the beach and told Tom .’

‘But poor Tom got killed.’

‘Cody meant to kill the wife, or both of them. We’ll never know. He won’t say. He’s now pleading total amnesia. Still refusing to take the lie detector test. But we have strong DNA evidence that links him to Sarah’s death and to Tom’s death. His fingerprints are on the handle of the palette knife but he says he used it at school. He’s been refused bail.’

‘These lie detector tests. How reliable are they?’

‘They monitor the heart rate, brain activity, sweating, electrical skin response and blood pressure during questioning. If you have six people tested with the same questionnaire and one is a suspect, the difference is beyond question.’

‘What about the threats to Chuck Peters and Maddy?’

‘He’s not admitting that either. Cody thought he had been seen with Sarah at the jazz festival. And as Maddy went to the same
school, he thought Maddy would have recognized Sarah with him. Of course, Maddy hadn’t. A delightful young girl but she can barely remember last week’s soaps.’

‘So where are Chuck and Maddy?’

Our meals had arrived. A large medium-rare steak and chips for the good detective. Vegetable lasagne and salad for the starving private eye. It was the first proper meal I had had for weeks. I hardly remembered how to eat.

James didn’t answer straightaway. He too was savouring those first few mouthfuls. He ate mostly on the run. I wondered where his next posting would take him. When would I see him again, if ever?

‘I told Chuck not to tell anyone, not even me. But I got a text this morning from someone called Summer. It said:
Ask sis about her favourite nut
. Can you shed any light on this?’

‘Brazil,’ I said. ‘That’s where they are.’

‘How do you know?’

I didn’t tell him. ‘It’s a big country.’

‘Big enough. And soon Cody will be behind bars for a very long time. We’ll break him down. He may change his plea.’

‘But I think it will be a long time before Chuck plays again at the Swanage Jazz Festival. Too many bad memories. Still, there are many more jazz festivals. He won’t be short of work. Maddy will probably change schools. It would be good for her. She doesn’t need any reminders of the last few days.’