Jazz and Die (12 page)

‘I’m going swimming,’ Maddy called out as I helped with the clearing up. The bigger lads were stacking chairs ready for the removal van tomorrow morning. Others were dismantling the electrics and the stage. The marquee was hired by the day, so every day saved was extra money for the kitty.

‘I have to go,’ I told Tom. ‘I have to keep an eye on Maddy. Thanks for the wine.’

‘Thanks for all your help, Jordan,’ he said. ‘See you at the party?’

He looked eager and hopeful. I nodded cheerfully. My response could be taken any way.

Maddy was hurrying down the steep path with the crowd. They crossed the road in a jostling swarm, halting the traffic. Some of the younger members of the audience had joined in, hoping to gatecrash the party later. They knew there would be impromptu jazz till the small hours. They didn’t need sleep.

Maddy was already peeling off her gold lamé top and stepping out of her skinny jeans. She was going to swim in her bra and pants. I had no wish to join her. I scooped her clothes off the sand, shaking them free of sand. She’d be the first to complain if they itched.

The moonlight lit the waves with silver streaks as the baby waves brushed the shore. It was idyllic. Further out anchored boats bobbed on the water. I could not tell if the tide was coming in or going out. At Latching I always carried a tide timetable.

The beach was crowded with laughter, cans popping open. I was drained. I sat on a pile of folded deckchairs and watched the boisterous youngsters like a tired old lady. I was killing time. Time was killing me.

Someone had spotted something on the beach. Not many people took any notice. They were too eager to get into the cooling water. I wandered over, wondering what he was pointing at.

The rest of the beach was empty apart from this noisy crowd from the marquee. But a few feet from the lapping sea was a small, dark, square-shaped mound. It was a pile of clothes, neatly folded so all the edges lined up like towels in a linen cupboard. On the top of the pile was a brown tweed cap, the peak facing towards the horizon.

The drunk’s clothes. I recognized them instantly. He had been turfed out of the marquee and deposited on the seafront. He had fancied a bit of a swim too, to swim off the cider. But that had been some hours ago.

Ross was sauntering over the sand, pulling off his black cotton shirt. He’d had to stow away his precious percussion set first. ‘Maddy OK?’

‘Sure. She’s dancing about on the edge of the sea where the
sharp pebbles are. She probably wants you to carry her over to the deeper water.’

‘She’ll get dumped if she does.’

‘Look,’ I said, drawing him aside. ‘These are the drunk’s clothes, aren’t they? The man who disrupted your gig this morning. You saw him, didn’t you?’

‘Sure. They look the same.’ He looked at the neat pile with disgust. ‘You don’t suppose he’s walking around stark naked, do you?’

‘Hope not. I can’t stand any more shocks.’

I shouldn’t have said that. The shock goddess was having a laugh with another one up her Grecian sleeve.

There was a scream, all the more terrifying because it was carried over the water. It was a woman. Some swimmers were thrashing round an anchored rowing boat. No one could see anything in the dark water.

‘It’s a body!’ she was screaming. ‘A b-body.’

‘He’s topped himself,’ said Ross knowingly. ‘That’s what drunks do.’

I
t wasn’t the naked, dead body of a drunk floating face down on the water, bloated and glassy-eyed, that had alarmed her.

The distraught woman was brought ashore. I think she was one of the umbrella parade but without her umbrella it was difficult to tell. She had got caught up in a fishing net, left over the side of the boat for a morning catch, tangled herself in it till she thought she was going to drown. Perhaps she had touched a fish also caught in the net.

So it was not a dead drunk. If he had topped himself, then his body would have been washed out to sea. Perhaps he had swum far out, as far as his strength could take him, before letting go. They might find him in Poole harbour or Portsmouth, depending on the tide.

‘Can someone look after this lady? She needs dry clothes and a cup of tea,’ I said. There were several willing helpers. They’d had enough of swimming, their enthusiasm evaporating. The night air was cooling rapidly. They wanted a beer and sandwiches and crisps. Maddy was only wet up to her knees.

‘What a fuss,’ she said, climbing back into her clothes which I’d left safely on the deckchairs.

I made sure that the other pile of clothes was not touched. I texted James again. I was getting the hang of this stuff now. Drunk’s clothes found on beach, I texted. He may have topped himself? Identity vital? (The spelling was improvised text-speak. It suited me.)

I hoped that would entice James to the party. It was being held in a pub, of course, as the marquee was now a cold, desolate wilderness. The dismantling had to be done fast. The helpers wanted to get to the party too.

James replied almost immediately. He wrote: Cordon clothes for forensic.

With what? I don’t carry round a roll of scene-of-crime tape in my bag. I dragged a tarpaulin cover off one of the saucy beach paddle boats and put it over the neatly folded clothes, anchoring it down with the largest pebbles I could find. It would have to do till the uniformed arrived.

I hurried to catch Maddy. She was flagging, trying to keep up with the lively musicians who had adrenaline coursing through their veins. She was tired from lack of sleep, too much jazz, her emotions running high. Jazz is exhausting music for both players and audience.

‘Hold on, Maddy,’ I said. ‘I’m not wearing skates.’

‘My feet hurt,’ she said. ‘Those pebbles were nasty and sharp.’

‘Yes, beaches do have pebbles, very nasty and sharp sometimes.’

‘Not in the Caribbean.’

‘It’s different here. This is the Dorset coast, UK.’

‘You could have warned me.’

I gave up. I was not going to argue with her. I didn’t have the breath. My sympathy was in short supply at this time of night. The crowd were converging into the same pub as we went to a couple of nights back, the Bull and Horn. Was it only two nights ago? It felt like years.

It was already three deep at the bar, a melee of people shouting orders to the overworked staff. Chuck wasn’t drinking. He had a couple of bottles of spring water on his table with a plate of corned beef sandwiches. He grinned up at me.

‘Hard work, isn’t it? Keeping that young minx in order.’

‘We get on quite well, most of the time,’ I said.

‘Ross is giving her the cold shoulder. He doesn’t want a fourteen-year-old following him around. He’s showing a bit of sense
for once. She could cause trouble.’

‘Sad,’ I said. ‘We can all remember what it’s like being fourteen and having a crush on someone.’

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I was ever fourteen.’

Nor could I, to tell the truth. My parents had been killed in a car crash just before my twenty-first birthday, but before that tragedy, it had been a normal childhood. So normal it was a happy blur of school and holidays. It was as if their deaths wiped out all previous memories. All I could remember was that I had thick plaits and it hurt when my mother brushed my hair. And now I wished that I had not protested so much.

‘Does my employment finish when the jazz festival is over? You’ll be going home tomorrow,’ I asked, before I forgot. ‘Sorry, but I have to know.’

‘I want to ask a favour, Jordan. I need some decent shut-eye before travelling to my next gig. It’s in Wigan, I think. That’s a long way up north. We thought we might stay on an extra day to relax and unwind, leave on Tuesday morning. Is it asking too much, to ask you to do an extra day?’

I tried to look as if I had a dozen urgent appointments that would have to be cancelled. Terribly inconvenient, etc.

‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll take Maddy around all the historic parts of Swanage. It’s got so much history. It’ll be a culture tour.’ Including a culture tour of the best charity shops. Maddy could buy herself some more skimpy tops.

He breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You’re a darling,’ he said, biting into a sandwich. ‘Corned beef, my favourite. I’m starving.’

Tom Lucas appeared with a bottle of Merlot and two glasses. ‘Come and join me, Jordan. Let the maestro relax and talk to his fans.’

I would far rather have stayed with Chuck Peters but I could see a gaggle of women wanting him to sign their CDs. It was money, after all. Selling CDs was a business.

‘Lovely,’ I said brightly. Chuck winked. I had a feeling that he could sense my reluctance to join Tom. No one could play jazz the way he could without knowing how people felt.

It was an assault course getting to Tom’s table. Maddy was draped over Ross’s table, drinking more Pepsi, eating salted peanuts. He looked bored. There were dozens of pretty girls, almost wearing mini-skirts, cruising the room. He was eyeing them all, mesmerized by the long hair and long legs.

I could not be rude to Tom. He was essentially a very pleasant man, probably lonely, on the lookout for female company. But he was twenty years older than me, overweight, did not share my taste in food, lived over a hundred miles from Latching. At least, I think it was a hundred miles. Still, no mileage in this as a long-range romance.

Fate has a lovely way of serving up the goodies. I looked up from Tom’s table and there was my saturnine James in the doorway. He was in a casual black polo-necked sweater and dark jacket. He was scanning the room for a disordered mass of tawny red hair. Then he saw me and shouldered his way over. People parted for him, like the biblical Seven Seas.

‘Jordan,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to you. Urgently. Outside.’

‘Business or pleasure?’ I was going to make him pay for all those months we’d been apart. When I had suffered. I’d bought my vertiginous flat on my own, my wasp car on my own. Where was he when all this was going on?

‘Would you like to sit down?’ I was still in polite mode.

‘No, thank you,’ he said coldly. ‘Come outside, please.’

DI Ruth Macclesfield slipped into my chair like a skinny eel. She must have been standing right behind James. ‘I’d love a glass of wine,’ she said to Tom, eyeing the bottle and the untouched glass. ‘I’m off duty now.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘My pleasure.’

Although I knew I shouldn’t, I followed DCI James outside onto the pub balcony. It had a balcony but it only looked onto darkened back streets and alleyways, the haunts of smugglers and villains of the past. No view of the sea. Balconies should always have a view of the sea.

He pulled me into his arms and before I knew what was happening, he was kissing me. Now, this was such a shock, it was
some moments before I could respond. He was taller than me and my arms crept slowly round his neck and felt the softness of his skin and his hair. I did not question what I had done to deserve this. It was enough that we were together, wherever that was, on whatever balcony. It could have been in Timbuktu or New Orleans.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, relaxing his grip.

‘A little shaky,’ I said. ‘But I could get used to this.’

‘I’ve been worried to death about you. There’s a lethal killer out there who kills anyone in his way. I thought he might target you and not Maddy.’

‘I think he has drowned himself, this art teacher who ran away with Sarah Patel. She was one of his students. He thinks Maddy spotted him at the jazz festival and that’s why he’s been threatening her. Of course, Maddy never saw him or Sarah. She was only eleven, a mere baby, under her father’s wing. Not into jazz drummers at that age.’

‘The clothes and the cap are secure?’

‘Under a boat tarpaulin on the beach, pinned with pebbles.’

‘We need them for forensics. See if Elsie recognizes the cap.’

‘You’ll get them.’

We heard the sweetest sound coming from the pub. It was a strong, resonant voice but with undertones of innocence. I knew who it was and steered James back into the pub so that he could listen. I took his hand so that I would not lose him. This moment was mine.

Maddy was singing with the Ross Ensemble. She was in her gold lamé top, hair tousled, make-up smudged, barefooted. She was singing her father’s old standards but with a totally different interpretation, as if they had been written for a different decade.

Chuck was mesmerized. He had never heard his daughter sing before outside of the shower. Ruth was sitting close up to Tom Lucas. She had taken off her severe jacket and loosened the top buttons of her shirt. She was becoming almost feminine.

Maddy could sing. She had a future ahead of her and no doubt would be a truculent and turbulent star. I only hoped that
she would not be spoilt by fame too early. Maybe Chuck could restrain her from wasting this talent until she was ready.

‘That’s your Maddy?’ James breathed into my ear.

I nodded. He moved some of my hair out of his face with gentle fingers.

‘She’s a handful,’ he said into the same ear, his breath like a whisper of air. ‘Nice top,’ he added. I didn’t know if he meant mine or Maddy’s.

‘I need you,’ I said. ‘Please don’t leave me.’

‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, easing away from me as the crowd broke into clapping. Maddy, on the small stage, looked flushed and excited. Ross nodded and they began another standard, a swinging up-tempo number, from the thirties, something from a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film, long before Maddy’s time. But she sang it as if she had been there as the legendary couple danced across the ballroom, Ginger’s pale swansdown gown flying in the wind machine.

‘James?’ But he had gone. It was more than I could stand. Here one minute, standing close to me, and the next, he’d gone. Had I imagined that kiss? No, my lips were still tingling.

My middle name was now wallflower. I was propping up a wall, not even holding a drink, which was even worse. Ruth was merrily getting through my glass of wine. Still, I had all of tomorrow. Shopping list: copper tray, Wade figures, piece of rose quartz. And I’d spotted a couple of Jacob sheep which might be Royal Crown Derby.

Ross suddenly broke Maddy’s vocal spell by launching into ‘Bass Drum Boogie’. He had offloaded all his percussion extras: xylophone, tubular bells, Chinese gongs and tam tams. It was a wonder he didn’t have a set of military side drums as well. He leaped around like someone possessed, bashing anything that moved.

Maddy went back to her father’s table, still smiling. Chuck was speaking to her, probably telling her to rest her voice, not to overdo it. He knew voices were vulnerable, especially one as young as hers.

Tom was talking to Ruth. They were swapping life stories. She looked enthralled. Perhaps I had missed out on a self-made multi-millionaire. Dorset has a few that don’t need digging up.

This wallflower was wilting in the heat. I dashed out onto the pub balcony to get some fresh air, not to relive recent memories, but it was fully occupied by other smooching couples who had discovered its relative privacy.

‘Sorry,’ I said but no one was listening.

My head was ringing with Ross’s onslaught so I escaped downstairs and out onto the open street. The pavements were glistening. It had rained while we were upstairs. I could not see James’s Saab or any police cars. Had he brought Ruth along or had she brought him?

James was returning. I could recognize his footsteps anywhere. He had a peculiarly different stride. Rain was spattered on his shoulders.

‘I had to get uniformed to move the pile of clothes before the tide came in,’ he explained. ‘High tide is at twenty past midnight.’

‘I don’t know the tide times along this coast.’

‘How could you? It isn’t Latching.’

‘Are we getting somewhere with this investigation?’

‘Yes, it’s moving. Thanks to you. I hadn’t made the connection before. That’s been a great help.’

I was being thanked. Was this the first time ever? Should I get a banner made?
CID thanks Private Investigator
. Vistaprint do them very reasonably. It would look great hung outside my shop in Latching.

‘Do you want to go back inside? Chuck Peters is playing now. You should hear him play at least once in your lifetime. Everyone in the world should hear him play. It would transform their lives.’

‘OK,’ he said, taking my arm. ‘He must be good.’

‘He is more than good. There isn’t a word in existence for him.’

Chuck Peters was on the small stage now and the room had grown quiet; not even the clink of glasses. He was playing the soul out of songs. The man had music in his veins. Angels were gathered there, dripping notes down from heaven.

James was standing behind me. I could feel his height and his warmth. His arms were somewhere, not quite sure where. But we were as one, together, a grafted fusion of bodies, listening as one.

As the clapping swelled, James bent and whispered again: ‘I agree. More than good.’

Then he was gone. The man was ephemeral. He could transform himself into sea mist. I sat down at Tom’s table, traitor that I was.

‘So how are you, Ruth?’ was my opening gambit. ‘Did you enjoy that?’

‘Tom owns a farm,’ said Ruth, her face flushed with triumph. ‘He’s going to teach me to ride.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘A farm? That’s brilliant. What do you farm?’

‘Pigs,’ he said modestly. ‘I’ve a thousand pigs.’

Perhaps he was eating his own produce in all those burgers. I was glad he had a horse. Ruth would look good on a horse. That upright, legs-astride look. I would be all over the place, probably fall off into a cow pat.