He flapped his hand. ‘Labels.’
‘Of course. Labels. Karen said. For some special plants?’
Much nodding.
‘Ah. So people can tell what they are and respect them?’
He nodded again and she breathed a sigh of relief. The point was made and they could move on.
‘I get the idea. You’ll be wanting something easy to read and quite robust.’ She sorted through the selection of plant labels while thinking how she might turn the chance meeting into something more. ‘These might be just the thing, don’t you think? They’re on tall metal spikes, so you’re not tying anything to the plant.’
‘They’ll do.’
‘But you may like to see some others.’
‘How much?’
He wanted to get out fast and it could only be because of shyness. The opportunity was slipping. ‘But they are a bit expensive,’ she told him. ‘How many do you need?’
‘Hundred and fifty.’
‘That’s a big order. I’ll see if we can get a reduction. Look, the manager will have to okay it. He’s expected in ten minutes or so. Would you mind waiting? I can get you a coffee.’
He took a step backwards. For a privileged customer he was giving a fair impression of a trapped animal.
The garden centre had its own cafe, used mostly by the staff and known unofficially as the Down Tools. She sat opposite him at a white wrought iron table, hardly believing her luck. ‘I was in Selsey recently.’
‘I saw.’
She was confused again. ‘Really? I didn’t see you.’ Then it dawned on her. ‘Oh, you read about me in the paper? Horrid. That experience has put me right off the place.’
A look of rejection came into his eyes, as if she was blaming him for what happened.
‘I don’t mean that,’ she added at once. ‘What a wimp. I’ve got to get over it, haven’t I? Actually, I like the beach a lot. I’m sure it has some of those plants you were mentioning.’
The brown eyes still looked as if there was no hope left in the world.
She wasn’t giving up. ‘In fact I was thinking-before I found what I did-it was a pity you weren’t there to point out some of the features. You must know the beach well, being local. It even crossed my mind that you might have been out that morning, but of course you weren’t.’
He was silent.
This was awfully hard work, but Jo persisted. ‘Are you sometimes down there for a walk?’
‘Depends.’
‘Oh?’
‘Some weekends… ’ His voice trailed off.
She widened her eyes and smiled in encouragement.
He cranked himself up again. ‘… I have to work.’
‘Like me. We do most of our business at the weekends, but I can usually switch with someone if I need time off.’ She took a breath. She was about to push harder at the door than she ever had with a man. ‘Jake, I enjoyed being with you that time at the film. I’d really like to know you better.’
Too hard.
He uttered a loud, ‘Ho,’ and looked away, towards the exit.
She fingered her hair, coiling some and then releasing it, wishing she hadn’t spoken, but what else could she have tried?
It seemed that the ‘Ho’ wasn’t a putdown, because he turned his eyes back to her and said, ‘For real?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me?’
‘That’s what I meant.’
He raked a hand down his face and the fingers made pale lines in the flesh. The guy was under terrific stress. The dire possibility crossed Jo’s mind that he might be gay and hadn’t come out yet. Finally he managed four pitiable words. ‘Not much company, me.’
‘Jake, that’s for others to judge, isn’t it?’
A long pause followed. ‘Where, then?’
‘How about a walk on the beach?’
He tugged at his shirt collar as if it was too tight.
‘I was thinking Selsey, in spite of what I said. I don’t want one bad experience to spoil it for me, so I ought to go back as soon as possible. Having you for company will make it so much easier.’
After more work on the collar he gave a nod.
She turned a mental cartwheel. ‘Cool. And I’ll try not to stumble over a body this time.’
He gave the novocaine smile.
By the same painstaking process they worked out that they would both be off work on Friday. She went to look for Adrian, and negotiated a reduction on the plant labels. Jake paid for them, muttered his thanks, and was gone.
There was excitement of a different sort after lunch. Over the public address she was called to Adrian’s office. Unusuaclass="underline" it was his custom to seek people out on the shop floor, see what they were up to. Mystified, she checked her appearance before obeying the summons.
A young man in an off-the-peg suit that didn’t hang well was standing just inside Adrian’s door. Also, seated on the opposite side, a woman better dressed, in a navy two-piece. They didn’t look as if they’d come to buy flowers. ‘This is Miss Stevens,’ Adrian told them without addressing Jo at all.
The woman spoke. ‘Perhaps you’ll leave us for a while, then.’
Adrian quit his office like a greyhound from the trap.
Jo understood why when the woman said, ‘We’re police officers. DCI Mallin, Chichester CID,’ and showed a warrant card. The rapid way she spoke made the DCI sound like a forename. The card showed she was a detective chief inspector.
The guy in the cheap suit-plainclothes in an extra sense-was evidently playing the nice cop. He introduced himself as Gary Pearce, Detective Constable, placed a chair for Jo and said as if she had done the police a great favour, ‘You found the body on Selsey beach and reported it, right? Would you mind telling us about it.’
‘I already told-’
‘No you didn’t,’ DCI Mallin cut in. ‘Not to us. Sit down, please.’ She was a small woman with a substantial presence.
Jo was glad of the chair. This sudden face-to-face with the law had thrown her. Her legs had gone wobbly. She’d been trying to move on from that gruesome business. ‘There isn’t much to say. I drove to Selsey and went for an early morning walk along the front.’
‘Any special reason?’ DCI Mallin asked.
‘Exercise, I suppose.’
‘Why Selsey?’
She wasn’t going to tell them about Jake. He had no conceivable connection with what had happened. ‘I like it there, that’s all.’
‘Many people about, were there?’
‘A few. Some in cars, some walking dogs. Not many. It was early and quite breezy down there.’
‘See anyone you knew?’
‘I don’t live there.’
‘We know that, Josephine,’ DCI Mallin said in a withering tone that made Jo even more uncomfortable. ‘If you simply answer the questions, you’ll help yourself as well as us.’
‘It’s Jo. My name. No one calls me Josephine.’ But my mother does, she thought. No wonder the name humiliates me.
‘Jo it is, then. I have the same trouble,’ the chief inspector said as if she realised she’d been a touch too severe. ‘I was named Henrietta and that’s a mouthful I don’t care for. People close to me call me Hen. Not him, though.’ She tilted her head at DC Pearce but she didn’t smile and neither did he. ‘My question, Jo, is did you see anyone you know on Selsey beach?’
‘No.’
‘That’s all right, then. Carry on with your statement.’
She hadn’t thought it was anything so formal as a statement. She was just telling what happened that Sunday morning when she found the dead woman. ‘I don’t know how much you want to hear.’
‘Start from when you first got there,’ DC Pearce suggested, seating himself quite close to her on the edge of Adrian’s desk.
She found it easier speaking to the young constable. She cast her thoughts back. If they wanted the entire story, they could have it. ‘I parked the car at the bottom of the High Street and walked all the way along the front, past the lifeboat station and the fishermen’s huts. I’d been on the path for some time, at least twenty minutes, and I wanted to get closer to the waves before I turned round, so I picked a section of the beach at random. After I’d been at the water’s edge a few minutes I turned and climbed up, and that was when I saw her against a breakwater. Well, at that point I didn’t know it was a person. I saw her pale skin under some seaweed and wondered what it was and went to investigate and had the biggest shock of my life.’