The Detective's Daughter (21 page)

Jack sang softly to himself:

A time to be born and a time to die…

The piano music had stopped; Ellen would come upstairs to check for texts. He clambered into the wardrobe. The change was fractional; someone had added the tartan anorak with frayed elasticated cuffs and a rip in the hood that should be on a hook in the porch. Who had brought it here? He examined the anorak’s stiffened fabric and found Ellen’s flip phone was in the pocket. She kept her phone on her so there must have been a development for her to have hidden it here. Any minute she would come in. He shifted until he was concealed amongst the clothes.

The message icon was flashing.

‘
Miss u. Can we mt Snsbrys CrPk. Usual time. For 5min?

The text had just been sent. Ellen had put the phone on silent; he had yet to see her make a mistake. For the first time it occurred to him that only a particular kind of mind could retain such varying levels of being. But he was looking for a man.

A time to kill and a time to heal…

The phone’s Inbox was empty. Ellen left nothing that might implicate her and had dubbed the man ‘Dentist’. Michael knew the name of their dentist and could check the number in her address book and see it did not match. In one of the coincidences that made life so good Jack had seen that their dentist was Ivan Challoner.

So far Michael had not got hold of Ellen’s phone, but it was a matter of time. Placid and patient Michael Hamilton would one day wield the claw hammer he stored in the toolbox under the stairs. Unless Jack could stop him. Most of the time he liked to blend into his Hosts’ households; sometimes, like now, he must intervene and bring matters to a head.

Jack could not play the piano, but his texting was dexterous and swift.
I’m going to leave. Ring on main line in 5. Ellen xxxxxxx.
Jack pressed ‘reply’.

He dropped the handset back into the anorak pocket as the bathroom pipes swished. Right on cue, the main-line telephone clanged throughout the house. Ellen burst into the room, making for the cupboard. Jack hugged his knees. If she pushed aside her anorak and looked behind the boxes it would be over.

She gasped. She had seen that the text had been opened.

Jack nearly cried out. Michael was standing in the doorway. He had not heard him come up the stairs and Ellen had not heard him either. She jumped when he spoke.

‘Phone call for you.’ His voice grated; he was holding out the receiver.

He knew.

‘Say I’ll call back.’ Ellen slammed the wardrobe door, stuffing her phone into her back pocket.

‘Why?’ Michael allowed himself a tinge of irony.

‘Oh, OK, pass it.’

Through the coats Jack could see Michael’s fish stare and his cheeks pink and puffy from wine. He handed Ellen the phone and moved aside for her. He was looking at the louvred cupboard doors.

He knew Jack was there.

‘Hello? What? What are you doing ringing … no, I don’t need any. I don’t take sales calls.’

Silence.

‘Who was that?’

Ellen elbowed past him. ‘Double-glazing.’

‘He asked for you by name.’ Michael spoke softy, remaining where he was.

‘I must be on a list.’

‘We have the telephone preference service. You should report it.’ For some reason tonight Michael was pushing it. Jack felt sick.

The piano resumed.

Michael walked over and shut the cupboard door properly, slipping the catch into place. Jack could see him, looking about the room, before he too returned downstairs.

Jack felt his own phone vibrating. He did not recognize the number.

‘Hello?’ He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece.

‘Stella Darnell.’

Stella Darnell. Her voice was tremulous; she must be on her way somewhere; working even when she was walking. She would hate dead time.

‘Can I call you back?’ he whispered. ‘I’m on a train.’

‘That’s better, I can hear you now.’ She was irritable, as if it was Jack’s responsibility to be audible. ‘It’s just to say you’ve passed the probation.’ She was pausing for him to be pleased. Jack had to work out how to lift the catch on the cupboard door from the inside before Michael returned.

‘Mr Challoner wants you to clean every week. Come into the office tomorrow to sign a contract and collect your schedule.’ Stella did not ask if he was free. Jack liked that about her.

Through the receiver came the chimes of bells; he would know them anywhere. There was background chatter: a pub, he guessed; there were three near St Peter’s Church.

He knew where Stella was and why she was there. Jack pushed at the wardrobe door and it gave way with a crack. He had broken the lock.

‘
Thank you for having me
,’ he whispered to his Hosts, stowing his trophy tin in his bag.

He was almost disappointed not to find Michael on the landing.

The piano filled the gaps between speech blaring from the television. Both doors were shut; light bleeding beneath them allowed him to creep to the understairs cupboard. He opened the flap on the concertina tool box. The claw hammer was heavy and split a couple of stitches in his coat when he crammed it into his pocket.

The front door made no sound – he had oiled the hinges – and he stepped outside. It was snowing and he kept to the edge of the path although flakes were falling fast and soon all sign of him would be erased. On the street, he paused to look back at the house that had been a home, its windows gold squares of welcoming light then strode away humming:

A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.

Jack disliked goodbyes.

Thursday, 13 January 2011

They were alone. The chilly receptionist, a woman in her late fifties, had gone for the night and in a casual tone Ivan Challoner invited Stella up to his flat for a drink. They were, he said, both off-duty.

That afternoon Stella had hired a recruit without vetting him to clean a space she had not seen; it would be sensible, she told herself, to inspect Jack Harmon’s work, so she broke the handbook rule of not socializing with clients, and accepted.

She would not call him ‘Ivan’, despite his invitation to do so; she did not forget that clients were not friends however well she got on with them. If Terry had taught her anything it was to keep her distance. Mrs Ramsay had been no exception, she had assured Jackie.

As they mounted polished wood stairs, Stella tried again to identify Challoner’s aftershave but could not. While he fetched drinks, she dabbed the surface and underside of a coffee table, traced her forefinger along the picture and dado rails, the skirtings and the rim of the door. Quickly she inspected behind the sofa: there was not a fibre, crumb or hair. With short dog-like sniffs she detected beeswax and tea tree. She did not imagine Ivan Challoner allowed dirt to accumulate. It was obvious that every object had its place: the gilt-framed mirror replicated a jade figurine of a winged horse set on the centre of the tall boy and on the walls paintings and etchings were positioned beneath discreet down-lights. Jack Harmon’s skill had been to maintain this elegant precision.

Jack was the best cleaner Stella had ever hired and she reminded herself not to tell him this.

An unlit chandelier hung from a rose plaster moulding, droplets of glass trembling in the light of two Chinese table lamps. Stella disliked dim lighting: it hid bacteria and stains; however, tonight she was soothed by the crimson velvet curtains pooling to the carpet eliminating the hum of the South Circular. As in Challoner’s surgery, the world beyond was far away. She sank among silk cushions on a sumptuous sofa and forgot about Paul. Her gaze took in dark green walls, plump plaster cherubs plucking mandolins or clasping single blooms emerging from the shadows. She forgot Terry too.

Rousing herself she got up and peered at a painting of fuzzy blocks. A label on the frame named the artist as a Mark Rothko, which meant nothing to Stella for whom art was a trap for grime and germs. The rectangles of mauves and black did not justify the beautifully polished frame although the indistinct shapes found echo in her throbbing jaw as the painkiller loosened its grip. As she retreated to the sofa once more she knew she would avoid offering comment on anything in the room. She was wise enough not to pretend expertise, and anyway, Clean Slate’s handbook forbade staff to remark on a client’s premises beyond a non-committal: ‘This is nice’.
Cleaners are
, it instructed,
Agents of Change. A client does not want Clean Slate operatives to apply judgement, taste or prejudice while in their home or office. Cleaners are visitors. Do not forget that clients are our Hosts.

No client wanted his or her life filtered through the wielder of a steam cleaner or carpet sweeper. Stella confined her assessment to how much a place cost to clean. Estimating the complexity of the work required to keep Ivan Challoner’s plush sitting room intact, she fretted she had undercharged.

Ivan Challoner reappeared bearing a tray clinking with an array of glasses, bowls of pretzels and olives and a dusty bottle of Sancerre in a silver ice-bucket. He twisted out the cork, flourishing the bottle-opener like a practised barman. He held the bottle by its base and poured equal measures into sparkling glasses; then he proffered crackers that smelled of fresh baked bread and tasted deliciously of herbs and garlic. Stella was hungry but, anxious not to reek of garlic, had only one.

Ivan Challoner folded his long frame into an armchair facing the fire and crossed his legs at the ankles, displaying a glimpse of white skin beneath creased trousers. His shoes were polished like a police officer’s. Stella drank the cool wine and deliberated whether a conversation opener would be to ask if he cleaned them himself.

Their conversation was in fact easy and flowing, any silences comfortable, as they swapped views on running a business, acknowledging the truth of the cliché that it was hard to find reliable staff. Nevertheless Stella was scrupulous in letting Challoner know that she succeeded. She snapped up the chance to assure him that circumstances allowing, he would have the same cleaner each session. He had remarked that he would be with patients when Mr Harmon called so would not meet him. Stella faltered: naturally he would not concern himself with cleaning. Perhaps Challoner sensed her discomfort for he added: ‘However, it is reassuring to hear this. My receptionist was terribly taken with how your people bring their own vacuum cleaner. It saves battling with the temperament of our equipment.’

Placated, Stella remained vigilant; clients who kept a distance from the process tended to be disappointed and were not worth the nuisance they would become.

She gathered his children had grown up in this house when he mentioned a son’s friend had been hit by a car outside the gate. There were no wedding or graduation photographs, which Stella guessed he would consider vulgar.

Challoner wore a thin gold ring better suited to a woman. She concluded he was a widower and that the ring must have been his wife’s, which explained his reserved manner; it was grief. She had seen it in other male clients who had lost their partners. There were two kinds of grieving man. The first sort grew beards and lived in squalor and Clean Slate only encountered them when a busybody friend or relation hired them to restore order. She liked these jobs. The difference made was stark: month-old dishes were washed, carpets shampooed, sheets laundered and put back on beds in rooms light with air freshener within which the clean-shaven client could begin again. Stella used a rota of staff for these types because they were liable to propose marriage to anyone who ranged into their orbit. The other sort were more businesslike, demanding a seamless existence in which the hole made by the absent partner was filled by a continuation of the cleaning routine. They must step on shiny vinyl or varnished floorboards without disruption or distraction, barely aware of their loss. Armed with an anti-static cloth or a stringent stain remover, Stella believed that with her team she nullified death’s impact.

Ivan Challoner was in the second group. Jack Harmon had maintained the order to the standards of his wife. Stella could not bear to think how he had managed until Jack’s visit.

Set in a recess was a nightlight that had been burning when she came into the room. She had not seen Ivan Challoner light the candle. Jack Harmon must have done it. She felt a flicker of unease.

Ivan Challoner proposed a toast to Clean Slate and clinked glasses. He made a remark about Harmon being as ‘elusive as the original’ which Stella did not understand. Flames flared in the grate, sending sparks up the chimney; the room smelled of burning chestnut. In the pause as they drank, pockets of gas hissed and popped.

Stella was reluctant to return to the freezing streets.

Thick flakes were quickly settling by the time she gingerly made her way down the path. She struggled to her van, feathery shapes floating and spinning around her.

Fortified by the wine – she had kept to one glass – and once more lulled by Ivan Challoner’s unruffled presence, Stella felt courage enough to attempt Terry’s house. If she stuck at it, she reckoned she could complete it in a week. From Kew, she could be there in twenty minutes.

When she pulled into Rose Gardens North, the streetlight was out and the weather had deteriorated further. Butterfly flakes swirling against the windscreen disorientated her and she shielded her eyes from flurries that stung her cheeks, balking at going inside even for shelter. She could not face Terry’s grey suits and starched shirts, the toe-to-toe shoes worn with the uneven tread that had given him back trouble.

There were footprints on the path.

Stella jumped back in the van and, skidding at the corner, parked it in a space out of view on the north side of Black Lion Lane. She would go to the Ram; it was Terry’s local and in her mind was the illogical notion that her father would be there and she could give him back his keys.

Snow overlaid every horizontal surface casting a translucent light. Like death it was a leveller; time telescoped, changes and distinctions were lost under a white shroud. The footprints outside Terry’s house must be the postman’s, the one person who after death continued to visit. She hurried on, keeping away from the graveyard where black headstones trimmed with white recalled the gloomy rectangles in Ivan Challoner’s painting.