The Detective's Secret (16 page)

It worked intuitively, like Google Maps. She keyed in Jack’s number and pressed a button unreassuringly labelled
Seek and destroy
. An explosion motif spread across the picture to the sound of glass shattering. It must have reverberated around the pub and she looked to see if William had heard, but he was still chatting. The phone emitted the sound of footsteps, slow and measured, then louder and faster.
Come on!
She cursed Rick Frost’s sense of humour – or drama. William was holding the cups; he was moving away from the bar, still talking.

A crosshair symbol targeted
Chiswick Lane South.
Stella grabbed the handset and guided the cursor to it. The
Seek and destroy
legend changed to
Shoot
. She ‘fired’; the image did a kaleidoscope swirl and up came a shot of a concrete cooling tower. So much for the accuracy of the app. She had no time to check that she had put in the right telephone number because William was coming across the carpet towards her. She dropped the phone; it slid over the table and landed on William’s chair.

‘Sorry about that, the barmaid was telling me her life story.’ William put the cups down and noticed his phone. The backlight was on. Stella nearly fainted as he handed her a coffee. Stella took it, her hand trembling.

‘My mother’s arriving home tonight.’ She dared not look at him. Taking a sugar sachet from a bowl on the table, she ripped it open with her teeth.

‘My app will tell you if she’s in flight this time!’ William picked up his phone, seemingly unsurprised that it was open, the icons ready. Stella went ice cold. ‘What’s her flight number?’

Her mouth dry, Stella read it from her diary, the numbers and letters swimming before her eyes. Frost was playing her; he was letting her know he had seen her with his phone.

He had said it stored previous searches. Stella hadn’t erased her search. She went into a flop sweat and it was all she could do not to fling her coffee at the phone.

Seek and destroy!

‘Last sighting was at Sydney Airport. She’ll have turned her phone off. I think you can be confident she’s coming this time!’ He laid the phone down in front of her as if it were a gun.

‘Thanks.’ Something was escaping from the folder in her Filofax. It was the sheet of pictures from the photo booth at Stamford Brook station. On an impulse she pulled it out and laid it on the table.

‘Do you recognize the person in this picture? I realize it may be difficult.’

She had forgotten to tell Jack about the pictures. Looking at them now, even upside down, Stella was surprised to see the back of the man’s head bore a resemblance to Jack. Was that what he was doing when she was talking to the man on the platform? It was horribly likely.

‘Is this a joke?’ Frost’s friendly manner had evaporated.

‘It’s a bit of a punt. I found it where your brother died.’ She didn’t say where. Terry would say, ‘Keep something back.’

‘He’s facing the wrong way. How could I?’ William pushed the sheet back to Stella and pocketed his phone.

‘Did you enjoy your brother’s company?’
What did you enjoy about your brother’s company?
might elicit more. She was sickened. By searching for Jack on
Stalker Boy
she had revealed to William – and to herself – that she didn’t trust Jack. She had exposed them.

‘Not one bit.’ William eyes were like pebbles.

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

Jack closed the door and the quiet was instant and profound.

His desk and chair were bathed in sharp sunshine; a rectangle of light shone on his bed. Through the north-facing window he could see only sky. It was so high up, nothing interrupted the view. The kelim from his parents’ hall lay beside the bed. He had never noticed that it matched the bedspread; his parents had probably bought them at the same time. There was so much he didn’t know. His cupboard was set between the flat door and the north window.

The removers not only worked to a short lead time – it was a mere two days since he had answered the advert – they had had an acute sense of space – it was a prerequisite for transporting furniture in confined areas – but this was different, they had put everything where he would have put it himself. Someone had a mind like his own.

He crossed to the south-west window. From there he could see all of Chiswick Eyot. He could also just see his meandering path into the centre of the eyot, but was relieved that his garden was hidden. He could follow the Thames in both directions: towards Barnes and past Hammersmith Bridge.

The window sill was the thickness of the tower wall, over a foot in depth. Jack settled into the alcove. As the leaflet said, the views were detailed.

He hadn’t visited the tower before signing a six-month lease with Palmyra Associates. As well as being able to move in so quickly, Jack had been astonished to get a reply within the hour accepting his request. He had offered references, Stella as his employer and Lucie May, his journalist friend, for character. The second was foolhardy; Lucie wouldn’t know if he was trustworthy and nor would she care. Isabel Ramsay had known him from when he was a baby, but she had been dead two years. The email said references were not necessary. Jack had never rented a property. After his parents died, he inherited their house and when he stayed with Hosts he did so in secret.

The lease had arrived that morning. When he posted back the signed copy to Palmyra Associates, he’d noticed that the PO Box on the ‘return’ envelope had a West London postcode. Their website was a holding page which, considering Palmyra Associates only operated online, was surprising. But then, he had found the tower through a flier so maybe they didn’t need one.

They had forgotten his stuff. Jack leapt off the sill. The removers had not brought his photograph albums, newspaper cuttings, Host notebooks, journals mapping his train journeys: the record of his life. At some stage he would have to put his mother’s clothes, paintings and papers into storage. Jackie had sourced him a self-storage unit the Great West Road. Time enough for that. Stella – who was being tardy in selling her dad’s house – would at least understand that.

Stella didn’t understand that he believed inanimate objects – like clothes, books, furniture, even his owl door knocker – had feelings. He was in no hurry to pack up his house. He couldn’t bear to think of the suitcases, his mother’s clothes and pictures locked in a cell with no light or sound, abandoned. Jackie said he would have a key and could visit any time. She had assured him he could rent a unit with an ambient atmosphere, free of damp and insects. It might be rather better than everything remaining in his unlived-in and unheated house, she had carefully suggested. Jackie was the Queen of Tact. If she was here now, she would retrieve all his things with no fuss or bother.

Jack ran around the partition. The table from his playroom and two of the kitchen chairs were under the south-east window. The logical place for these was against the partition, leaving a route to the bathroom. Jack would also have put them by the window so that he could watch. He looked out through the reinforced glass. He could see the detail on the turrets of Hammersmith Bridge; over in Kensington, a cluster of green would be the trees in Holland Park. Far off, the North Downs morphed into a bank of pink-grey clouds like a snowy mountain range. It would be too late to fetch his things tonight.

Jack slid aside a panel and revealed a large space, the quarter of the circle. Were he not upset, he’d be excited by the shower. Tiny nozzles in the ceiling would send out powerful jets of water. In an old water tower, there would be ample pressure.

Jack had chosen the removers recommended by Palmyra Associates because they knew the tower. Few firms would be willing to negotiate the stairways outside, even less the spiral stairs to the flat. Clean Slate offered attic clearance and Stella wouldn’t balk at a tower, but he had been keen to do the move alone. Although Stella would have arranged the furniture according to logic rather than spirit, at least his stuff would be here.

Jack plodded back to the main living area and sat on the end of the bed, nursing an ache in his chest. It was a kind of homesickness, although he had only briefly known a home to be sick for when he was very little. The door to his cupboard was ajar so he got up and to shut it.

Every shelf was full. Cardboard wallets, file boxes, bundles of letters, notebooks in a row, spine out. At the top, exactly where he would have stowed it, was his biscuit tin of particular treasures. Beside the cupboard by the north window to the right of the door was the clay bust of his mother set on its square plinth. How had he missed it?

So quick to panic, he had missed his laptop, his street atlas, his green-glass lawyer’s lamp. The removers had stocked the kitchen cupboards with his pans and the hot milk mug Stella had given him. In a drawer they had stowed his parents’ cutlery. On a shelf above they had arranged the blue enamel tins labelled ‘Tea’, ‘Coffee’ and ‘Sugar’ that Isabel Ramsay’s daughter had given him after the house clearance. They had left a litre of fresh milk in the fridge, semi-skimmed as he liked it, and thought to leave out his pot of organic runny honey beside the cooking knives.

Jack stifled any disquiet that strangers had handled his personal things and read his mind and set about heating some milk. After years of searching he had found a home.

He sat in the kitchen, sipped his milk and watched a man walking his dog along the towpath on the south side of the river. On Hammersmith Broadway, cars moved with more order than was perceptible at ground level. Before him was the city in miniature; he was floating above London as if on a magic carpet.

His elbow jogged a leather case tucked into the corner of the sill. It wasn’t his. He prised open the lid and inside found the most beautiful, elegant pair of binoculars he had ever seen. Chrome and black, substantial but not heavy, with a soft leather strap. He had planned to buy a pair, but it seemed that they came with the tower. Palmyra Associates had thought of everything. He put the strap around his neck and raised the binoculars.

Jack trained the glasses on the river, inching it over the eyot, along the mall to the Ram pub. Tilting the sights a fraction to the right, he hovered at the bottom of the Bell Steps. In the dwindling light, Hammersmith Bridge was a watercolour sketch, lights reflected in the water. Rush hour had started: headlights and brake lights on the Great West Road, the Hogarth roundabout and the flyover were broad sweeps of a paintbrush, red and white streaks. Holding the binoculars steady, Jack surveyed London. He saw without being seen. He had found his panopticon.

He swung back to the bridge and focused on a double-decker bus creeping south. On the top deck, two women sat on the front seat. One was laughing as she glanced at her reflection in the window and adjusted her hair. Her companion faced ahead. Behind them, a lad in his teens was wearing the neutral stare of disinterest typical of passengers travelling alone. Headphones on, he chewed gum mechanically. Jack felt the engine’s vibration and heard the laughter and the tinkly chatter of music escaping from the headphones as if he were there too.

Jack’s scrutiny was diverted to the footpath on the bridge. There was someone leaning on the railing. He craned forward, thinking that if it was someone contemplating suicide, there was nothing that he could do to prevent them. He could call the police, but they wouldn’t get there in time.

The man was wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his brow. Abruptly the man stepped back from the balustrade and, looking towards the tower, he shifted his cap as if in greeting. Jack was in an unlit room a quarter of a mile from him, yet the man was looking at him.

The binoculars hit the table with a crash. Jack tried to apply Stella’s logic. Without binoculars he couldn’t see the bus, so the man couldn’t see him. Stella would say guilt that he was spying had convinced him that the man was looking at him. She wouldn’t like him secretly watching people. This was the second time a man had been drawn to his gaze. There had been the man on the bus outside Stamford Brook station the night Rick Frost had died. He too had worn a baseball cap. Plenty of people did.

The binoculars were undamaged, but had dented his table. He looked again at the bridge and adjusted the focus. It was hard to keep a steady sight on a target or track a moving one because with the slightest twitch of the wrist he travelled hundreds of metres. The bus had gone. Jack felt no guilt that he was watching unseen. The tower gave him 360-degree surveillance.

Jack returned the binoculars to their case, relishing the musky scent of the leather. It was dark, so he felt his way around the partition to the main room and found the light switch. A gentle glow revealed dips and grooves in the concrete wall.

Under his desk he spotted four blue lights: a Wi-Fi router. There had been no mention of Wi-Fi connection in the leaflet or the contract, and Jack had been content to do without it.

He fired up his laptop and was presented with a choice of two routers. This high he hadn’t expected to pick up other connections. ‘CBruno’. Unwise of the owner to use their name; it gave easy advantage to True Hosts, murderers or would-be murderers who stopped at nothing to catch their prey. His own router identifier was a mix of letters and numerals. Jack typed in his password and seconds later saw he had an email.

It welcomed him to the tower. They had sent a workaday list of instructions: where to find the fuse box, spare light bulbs and window locks, how to work the boiler and the thermostat and when it was bin day. It wished him well in his new home and was signed ‘on behalf of Palmyra Associates’. The company might be large, or perhaps, given the lack of website, was small posing as large. Jack didn’t care. Typing a ‘thank you’, he reflected that the tower was perfect and he had the perfect landlord.

He was preparing for bed when he heard a glug from the sink in the kitchen as if liquid was being poured down it. He tiptoed to the doorway. Of course there was no one there: it was one of the sounds of his new home.