The Detective's Daughter (56 page)

Terry was cold and his limbs were stiffening, but he dare not shift. He was relieved when Challoner stood up and, retrieving the discarded bouquet, stepped up the slope. Terry waited until he had gone and then clambered over the wall, ripping his shirt, and hastened after him.

He was in time to see Challoner stick the dead flowers in a bin by the gate. Terry let him pass behind the eastern buttress of the church and skirting the path by the beech hedge ducked between the mausoleums. Challoner was fiddling with the chain on the gate. He heard Challoner push it open and close it behind him, replacing the chain.

Terry scrabbled up, his back against cold stone, stretching his legs, bringing them one at a time up to his chest and down again in sketchy imitation of the exercise given to him by the physiotherapist. It eased the tightening in his chest.

On a nearby headstone was the name Edward Challoner: he had died in 1890, his wife Emily ten years later. Terry scrambled to his feet. A son, George, had died twenty years after his mother in 1920 and a Simon Challoner, only son of George in 1957, aged forty-one, ‘his plane lost over the English Channel’. It sounded as if the man had died in action; Terry knew he had been to the races at Deauville and was Ivan Challoner’s father. Although Ivan was Kate Rokesmith’s dentist, he had not been on their radar because they had not needed dental records to identify her. The police did not connect that a Simon Challoner had treated her at his home in Bishopstone when she was three and an Ivan Challoner twenty years later in Kew. Had they done so, a lot else would have fallen into place.

Terry had posted Janet by the lych gate and joined the mourners by the grave. From her vantage point Janet would not have seen Challoner and Terry had missed him completely. Challoner had his own gate and after the funeral had slipped away. But for one photograph Terry would not have known he was there.

While supposedly keeping an open mind, as procedure dictated, the investigation was scaled down: Hugh Rokesmith was the killer and they would prove it.

Within this paradigm Challoner had free rein.

The fluorescent hands on Terry’s watch said it was seconds before five, confirmed by tolls of the church clock as he traipsed up to the lych gate.

He sat in the front passenger seat of his car and scrolled through his photographs. Without downloading them he could not tell if they were in focus, but they appeared to be better than he could have hoped. It was clearly Ivan Challoner by the grave. Terry tucked the camera in behind a toilet roll in the top compartment: in this sleepy hamlet, thieves could operate with impunity.

He got out again. In London, the street lighting made it seem dark, but in this valley in the South Downs, the even light was enough to see where he was going. Terry adopted a stroll, ready to bid a hearty goodnight to anyone he encountered and say that he and his late wife had courted here if he got chatting.

He deliberately went past Challoner’s house and then sneaked back out of view of the windows. If someone did come, he would hide in the garden and pray Challoner would not see him. Hardly ideal, but he had no choice.

A light burned in a downstairs room where Challoner had left the curtains open. Terry could see a green sofa, an ornate wall lamp from which the light came and a mirror in a gold frame above a mantelpiece. There was no sign of Challoner.

He risked a few steps into the front garden, treading on grass patches amongst the gravel to avoid making a sound. The building’s symmetry was upset by a lean-to garage; Challoner had not put his car away. Terry was about to look through the sitting-room window when Challoner appeared. He shrank into the hedge but Challoner pulled shut the curtains without looking out.

Terry returned to the lane. Light from a lamp-post near the church did not penetrate this far and darkness enveloped him. Stars were pinpricks of light in the velvet sky. Terry congratulated himself for remembering his torch. Two dustbins stood by Challoner’s drive. He squatted behind them, his jacket, which had hung heavy on him all day – he flushed with the slightest effort – offered scant warmth, but, huffing, he pulled it around him. He had put on weight and could not do it up.

Terry had the patience if not the stamina for a long wait.

After half an hour the front door clicked, the car’s indicator lights blinked and the locking system bleeped. Challoner was returning to London for work in the morning.

Headlights swept over Terry’s hiding place, raking the bins a fraction from where he crouched. Challoner reversed, a red glow picking out dew on the grass like droplets of blood. The BMW accelerated away.

Terry kissed his palm at the receding car. Challoner had handed him an opportunity. Everyone gets one lucky break in their career; his had been a long time coming.

He brushed himself down and hobbled back to the lane and in through the lych gate. Here he dared use his torch and, keeping to the path by the beech hedge, found the Challoners’ gate. As he had seen, a chain linked around the latch was fastened with a padlock – but the intricately wrought fleurs-de-lis provided ideal footholds. As a younger man Terry would have scaled it like a monkey; in his sixties it took momentous effort to pull himself up and propel himself over. He did not jump down – he could not afford an injury – but gingerly descended on to the lawn where, mopping his face with his handkerchief, he tried to get his breath.

The shadows of the yew flitted over the grass through which the church tower was stark against night sky, its perky cockerel now dark and menacing.

He worked his way along flagstones slippery with icy moss, relying on an incipient ghostly moonlight to see, and tested the windows; all were locked with catches and limiters to prevent the sashes being lifted. A burglar alarm box from a company in Seaford was prominent above the back door but there was no obvious connection. When Challoner had left, Terry had not heard him set an alarm; in the countryside silence he would have heard the keypad bleep. He gambled that it was off. His hands slick with sweat, Terry fished in his pocket for surgical gloves and snapped them on. He still had no idea how he would break in but as he turned the kitchen door handle, to his astonishment it opened. No alarm.

Immediately he tripped over a pair of wellington boots beside a washing machine. He righted them and shone a light on hooks with waxed jackets, stiff from lack of wax, and sagging yellow waterproofs. He was in the utility room. Just in time he avoided a mop in a metal bucket.

Terry’s rubber-soled shoes made no sound on the stone floor, his torch illuminated a passage going in two directions. He chose right and found himself in a kitchen. Given how immaculate Challoner was, how sleek and clean was his car, and according to his website how state of the art his surgery, this room had not been decorated for decades. Pans hung from a wall of crumbling plaster; dishes were stacked on shelves by an Aga on which was a kettle and a pressure cooker. The stove gave off a dying heat welcome to Terry after his vigil in the cold. A couple of plates and a pan stood on a wooden draining rack. Challoner was no interior designer, but he was clean and he too would not leave dishes unwashed. At this moment his own house was spotless and sparkling, and thinking this Terry imagined getting Stella over. She knew about finishing off jobs. She would finish this job with him.

He froze: the table was set for breakfast, a packet of Cornflakes, a jar of marmalade, a butter dish along with plates, mugs and cutlery. For two. Challoner’s sister had given him the impression Ivan lived alone. She had not spoken kindly of her brother so it could not be her. A wave of tiredness engulfed him, making his legs ache. He was losing his grip: besides telling him that another person was in the house or was expected, what the breakfast table mostly indicated was that Challoner was coming back.

His heart was like a piston against his ribs. He should leave, except if he did then Challoner would have won. For the first time since Stella was a little girl, Terry felt alive.

A fire door lined with green baize gave a sigh when he pushed it. He was in a spacious hall with mosaic flooring stretching to the front door and a staircase to his left. Terry braced himself and climbed the stairs.

A carpeted corridor the length of the house had two windows offering a watery light. There were five doors in a row.

Outside a wind was getting up, its rising moan like a wounded animal; somewhere a casement rattled. There was a constant creaking; Terry held his breath trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. The house was adjusting to his presence and the diminishing heat from the Aga.

He switched off the torch, mindful of the lane and thankful that the moonlight was sufficient.

The first room was a bathroom with white ceramic walls that had the look of a morgue. He resisted the need to use the toilet and nudged the second door, which swung inwards. He shut it behind him and shone the torch: the room was crammed with cupboards, boxes, an upended bedstead, a roll of carpet; typical domestic junk. Terry stifled a sneeze; everything was choked with dust. He beat a retreat.

In contrast, the next room was sparsely furnished with a single bed and a wardrobe resembling a coffin. A wooden chair draped with clothes was beside the bed. He lifted up a man’s shirt and sniffed, grimacing at the sickly aftershave. Beneath this was a pair of trousers, folded along the front seam. Was this spartan bedroom, more like a monk’s cell, where Challoner slept?

He saw a movement and, wheeling around, stifled an exclamation. A quilt had slithered off the bed. Sweat broke out on his body again, which at least offset the cold.

He rummaged for a stick of gum in his trouser pocket and folded it into his mouth; the chewing calmed him. In the corridor, Terry turned off the torch before attempting the third door.

The gum did not stop his teeth chattering; he had rarely experienced fear like this. He had relied on the shots of adrenalin that pumped around his body while he counted down to raid a drug dealer’s house, or faced a posse of journalists ready to annihilate him. The reality of coming here without a warrant, without proof, without even being a police officer hit him.

Headlines. Photographers. Disgrace. Failure to solve the Rokesmith case would be nothing compared to being caught breaking and entering.

Bang. Bang.
You’re dead
.

He pictured the little boy aiming two fingers at him with dark, accusing eyes.

He was doing this for the boy and for his father.

Hugh Rokesmith had been a man of few words; his short marriage had blighted his entire life. Terry had been wrong and wished that he could tell him. He felt for the thin, slightly stooped figure whose drawling manner had done him no favours. When Rokesmith died Terry had been angry that he had evaded prison, but now Terry was sorry he could never make amends. At least he could present Jonathan Rokesmith with his mother’s killer and exonerate his father. The prize was within his reach.

The door jolted on its hinges with a thump and Terry was bathed in orange light.

Brown eyes and shoulder-length hair. Eau Savage Extreme: she preferred aftershave to perfume. She didn’t care what people thought.

From such clues as these had the detectives built up a profile of the dead woman, as if knowing her better would tell them how she had come to be murdered.

A pair of trousers and a blouse like those she had been wearing when her body was found were hanging from the wardrobe. It was like meeting long-lost friends. Isabel Ramsay could not describe Kate’s clothes to the police because she had not seen her. A splash of green from the scarf to match the lemon patterned blouse; Terry did not know about clothes, but knew what he liked. His ex-wife had worn the same blouse until discovering it was the taste of a murder victim.

Under a chair, toes pointing out, the scent of perfume acceding to mothballs and damp, were her shoes.

A trickle of sweat ran into his eyes; he blinked and with a punch his chest constricted. Terry had no words to express the sight, yet words were everywhere; newspaper articles, the type small, large, black, white, were fitted around picture after picture: Kate Rokesmith’s image was plastered over the walls.

A book lay on a wooden nightstand:
Wuthering Heights
. He made out an inert lump in the bed.

The second place at breakfast.

Wheels crunched on the drive. Crashing into the door jamb, he plunged along the passage, just remembering to switch off his torch. He stopped at one of the windows: Challoner was getting out of his car, younger, fitter and more agile than Terry, whose muscles were draining strength as if a plug had been pulled.

Terry was trapped. No one knew he was here; he had not told Stella.

He fumbled blindly with a cupboard door, grabbed the handle and found himself at the head of a staircase like the one at the other end of the passage.
Symmetry
. He felt a surge of love for the architect.

At the bottom, the silence told him he had not woken the person in the bed. If there had been a person at all; nothing in this bloody place was what it seemed.

Terry identified domestic sounds: the fridge door opening and closing, drawers slamming, a tap splashing which set pipes clanking. The roar of a boiling kettle, a rising whistle that subsided, water pouring into a mug, two mugs; comforting noises that offered him no comfort. With the scrape of a chair a shadow fell across the passage: Challoner was coming. Terry had no time to go back upstairs.

There was a door.

He tumbled down a step, twisting his ankle. He bit on his hand as hot pain seared up his calf, retaining enough presence of mind to pull the door shut after him.

Challoner must know he had an intruder; the sound of his heels clicking on the stone passage was close. He could have seen Terry’s car, or maybe knew his back door was unlocked. Terry scrambled behind a shelf unit that would not shield him if Challoner put on the light. He curled into a ball and on a childish impulse hid his head in his hands to increase his invisibility.