The Detective's Secret (17 page)

His phone was glowing.

Need to see you. Where are you? Stella D.

Unlike Stella to write so late and to put the ‘D’. There was only one Stella.

He texted the address of his tower and went to the kitchen. Palmyra Associates had left him a packet of Brooke Bond tea, Stella’s favourite.

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

Stella found a space in the short-stay car park by a column marked ‘3D’. Jack would like that. She regretted refusing his offer to come with her to the airport; why had she thought she should meet Suzie’s new man on her own? She told herself that Stanley, a good judge of character, would sniff out this Dale bloke. With the dog trotting at her heel, she crossed to the lift lobby.

‘Excuse me.’ A stocky man in a hi-vis jacket cut her off at the lift. ‘No dogs allowed in the airport.’

‘I wasn’t thinking.’ Rattled by William Frost, Stella had completely forgotten to leave Stanley with Jackie. She gave a tight smile and, ‘tssking’ at Stanley as if he was there without permission, she returned to the van and, with the dog on her lap, paws resting on the steering wheel, texted Suzie:
In car park with Stanley. 3D.

The airport’s website told her the plane had landed half an hour ago. Stella told herself that Jackie had a point; it would be good for Suzie to have someone special. Maybe she’d stop complaining about Terry as if he were still alive.

She turned her attention to the case. They had three suspects, not counting anyone Rick Frost may have exposed through his surveillance techniques. Tallulah Frost, William Frost himself and thirdly whoever had been at the station when Frost died. Being stringent she should include the man she had met when she and Jack were there. Although there was no reason to suspect him. He might have been doing exactly what she had assumed he was doing, inspecting the line. She dubbed him the inspector. Finally William himself. He had been strangely unwilling to help since bringing them the case and at lunch had seemed oddly nervy. He wasn’t all he seemed. Stella put aside her antipathy towards him for using his brother’s app to find her and returned to the question about Frost. Why commit murder, disguise it as suicide – and then persuade them it
was
murder? Jack thought it was warped vanity, Frost wanting credit for his cleverness. It was less gratifying to clean houses for sale after a death with no client to appreciate dazzling surfaces and germ-free crevices. The wife stood to gain the most by Rick Frost’s death even if his specific policy didn’t pay up for a suicide. They needed to meet Mrs Frost and see the house she had shared with her husband. Try as she might, Stella could think of no honest way to do this.

Stanley scrambled off her lap on to the steering wheel. He stood on the horn; his furious barking was drowned out by its deafening blare.

Stella saw Suzie weaving between the vehicles towards her, gesticulating with great sweeps of her arm. She wore her old macintosh, with the red scarf Jackie had given her for Christmas wound around her neck. Nothing indicated she had returned from an Australian summer – she didn’t even have a sun tan. Stella got out of the van. Stanley was straining towards her mum, choking with the effort.

Her mum wasn’t beckoning to her. At the end of a line of concrete supports (3A, 3B, 3C), a man was wrestling with a wayward trolley, mountainous with luggage. As if tacking a sailing boat, he leant out and slewed the trolley full circle. He pushed it into a pool of bleak lamplight.

It was Terry.

Suzanne Darnell took the man’s hand and, grabbing Stella’s, she pushed them together. ‘Stella, Dale. Dale, Stella!’

October 1987

Before he went into the cage, Simon checked the alley behind him. There was no one. On his way through the cemetery he had hatched a plan. He would form his own unit, and the tower would be HQ. He wasn’t scared. He would recruit Justin and Nicky. His little sister could be the mascot. He would let Justin be captain. The old Captain would be the enemy. After what happened the last time they were in the tower, Simon considered the Captain as good as dead.

It was a week since Simon’s picture had been in the newspaper, together with an article about the brave little boy who had saved his mother from a mugger. Nicky had been impressed, although she hadn’t said anything at their last meeting back in the old HQ. The Captain hadn’t said anything either.

Simon forced himself on to the semi-circular walkway at the top of the staircase. He had forgotten how high it was; the ground far below tugged at him, urging him to leap – it was like walking the plank. The wind was much stronger up here; it, too, goaded him. He held on to the guard rail tightly, his woolly gloves slipping on the metal. Justin warned against leaving fingerprints. Not true – Justin had said, leave no trace. With no suspicion, there would be no reason to look for fingerprints. Simon heard the other boy’s voice as if he was beside him now. Simon didn’t trust himself to leave no trace. He let go of the guard rail and, hands and back flat to the concrete, shuffled to the door and crept inside the tower.

He swept his torch beam around. Its light bounced off the triangular metal stairs. This time, regardless of safety, Simon shut the tower door. He listened: Justin advised entrance to a property only after all sounds had been identified. The rumble of traffic and the harsh wind couldn’t penetrate the thick walls. Simon believed he was alone. The door to the chamber where he had hidden with the Captain was set into a recess behind the staircase. It was closed.

His torch picked out something on the floor. Two black leather gloves. Simon’s gloves had been knitted by Mrs Henderson to match his sister’s mittens, but these gloves were for grown-ups. He didn’t need to read the name in the lining. He guessed that the Captain had dropped his gloves when he’d run away and left Simon to die. He had complained they had been stolen; he would be too scared to come back for them.

Simon put them into his coat. When he placed a foot on the spiral staircase, he wanted to poo and had to clench his bottom until the cramps subsided. His heart smashing against his ribs, he began to climb.

This time the door was shut. He crept over the landing and put his ear to the metal. His bowels stirred again. Silence wasn’t good, Justin said, better to hear the enemy and locate them. He craned over the rail; the steps wound off into the dark. No one knew he was in the tower. He could go. He went down four steps, spiralling this way meant he was facing the door, his nose at floor level. He ran up the stairs again and before he could change his mind, twisted on the ring handle. The door opened with a groan.

The boy was hit by a terrible stench of lavatories, potties and nappies, and thought that after all he had messed his pants. He felt himself. No, his trousers were dry. He took a step inside.

Dark streaks, dried and crusted, were smeared on the concrete floor. Simon went further into the room and saw that, after all, he wasn’t alone.

Thursday, 24 October 2013

A figure was on the metal walkway, tall against the London skyline. Fleetingly it occurred to Jack that, with no security camera, he could have no idea who was outside until he opened the door.

‘He’s my brother!’ The voice was muffled within her hood; but for the dog glaring malevolently at him from her shoulder, Jack wouldn’t have known it was Stella.

‘Who is?’

‘Dale Heffernan is not my Mum’s new man, he’s my brother.’

‘Sugar?’ He pulled forward one of Mrs Ramsay’s blue enamel tins and lifted the lid. It was empty. They were in the kitchen. Stella sat with her back to the south-east window. The binoculars were behind her on the window ledge. Jack didn’t know why he’d rather she didn’t notice them.

‘I don’t take sugar.’ He knew that.

He sloshed milk into his mug. The carton was light; he would need to buy more. Shopping involved a long descent, then a climb back up – a tiny price for living in a panopticon.

‘Are you sure?’ He handed Stella a mug of milky tea. ‘Suzie had two relationships with Terry? Like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.’

‘Yes.’ Stella smiled wryly as she took the tea. At her feet Stanley emitted a guttural growl. Jack had forgotten about the protective force field the dog erected around his mistress. Stella didn’t need protecting, and if she did, an animal the size of a tea towel couldn’t do it. He led her through to the main room. Indicating she have the chair by his desk, he retreated to his bed a distance from the dog.

‘They went out with each other for six months and split up. Eighteen months later Mum went back to him. She calls Terry her “wrong turning”. Seems she took it twice.’

‘That would put her back where she started.’ Jack traced the journey in the air with a finger. ‘Actually, no, if you turn right instead of left, then you would—’

‘Jack! It’s complicated enough.’ Stella was still in her anorak, despite the effective heating. Jack hadn’t worked out how to turn it off. ‘Her parents didn’t want her to marry a police constable. I never knew my grandparents, but she says they were snobby and interfering. When she found she was having Terry’s baby, they made her give him up for adoption. She’s regretted it ever since. The way Mum told it tonight, you’d think Terry was the love of her life.’ Stella sipped her tea and shot him a look of gratitude: he’d got it right. ‘They met the first time when Terry pulled her over one night for speeding in her Mini Traveller on Holland Park Avenue. He said he wouldn’t charge her if she went out on a date with him.’

‘I told you that.’ Jack had found that out during the Blue Folder case. Stella hadn’t believed him. Now he felt petty and was relieved that she hadn’t heard. She had insisted that her mother had met Terry Darnell, then a spruced-up Mod in two-tone suit and winklepickers, at the Hammersmith Palais. Jack couldn’t help himself, ‘So they didn’t meet while dancing?’

‘Yes, the second time around. Terry taught her to do the bossa nova and she claims she never looked back.’

Stanley was sniffing along the wall by the door, pattering back and forth across the floor, his claws tapping on the wooden boards. Jack wished Stella would stick him back on his lead, he didn’t trust him.

‘Are you sure this Dale is Terry’s son?’ Nor did he trust Dale Heffernan. He recognized he was disappointed that Suzie hadn’t confided in him. Had he known, he could have warned Stella. Except Suzie would have told him in confidence so it would have been another secret to keep from Stella. Better she had not told him.

‘Are you listening?’ Stella seemed jumpy. She clasped her mug of tea as if to warm herself, although she must be sweltering. ‘Yes, I
am
sure!’

‘I was thinking, Suzie can be impressionable. You hear stories of parents reunited with lost children and it turns out it’s not them. People believe what they want to.’

‘He’s the spitting image of Terry, he must be his son,’ Stella mused into her mug.

Jack didn’t know how to help her. ‘Shall we ring Jackie?’

‘What for? Dale’s not a client and it’s past midnight.’ Stella looked up abruptly. ‘How come you’ve moved?’ she asked. The words ‘without telling me’ hung there.

‘It was a snap decision.’ Stella didn’t take action without meticulous planning, backed up by contingency plans. ‘It was time for a change.’ He couldn’t say he was escaping his ghosts or that the tower was perfect for finding True Hosts.

‘Are you leaving Clean Slate?’ Stella addressed the question to the dog, who was still sniffing about by the door.

Lucie May would call her question self-serving, Jack knew it was as close as Stella could get to asking if they would no longer be friends. He sought to reassure her. ‘A change of where I live, not of whom I know.’

Stanley began to bark, the volume increasing with each one.

‘Sssh!’ Stella put a finger to her lips. ‘Good guard dog.’

The barking subsided to rumbling. Jack followed the animal’s steely gaze to the door. There could be no one outside; he had made sure he’d shut the door downstairs.

‘He doesn’t need to guard. We’re at the top of a tower.’

‘He hears stuff we can’t.’ Stella looked about her. ‘Who owns this place?’

‘A company.’ Jack didn’t know anything about the owners. ‘Their email said I am their first tenant. It used to be a water tower. We’re in the tank.’ He jumped up. ‘Would you like a tour?’

Stella signalled for Stanley to ‘heel’. Jack didn’t want the dog prowling about his new home. The dog was recriminatory: his bark told Jack he should have asked Stella to help him move in; she was at her best when being practical. Yet she wouldn’t have arranged everything as perfectly as Palmyra Associates. Stella cleaned houses; she didn’t create homes.

The kitchen sink made the glugging noise of earlier. He leapt on an opportunity to get Stella’s advice. ‘It keeps doing this. Should I call the landlord?’

Stella turned on the tap. With the rush of water, the glugging stopped. Stanley tottered on his hind legs, reaching up, front paws skittering along the edge of the cutlery drawer trying to see. He was like a toddler, constantly wanting to be involved, grouchy if attention wasn’t on him. Jack just prevented himself from saying, ‘Shoo!’

‘It’s an air lock. Happens when water is drained from two sinks, or a bath and sink, at the same time. It’s caught in the reservoir of one sink and when you drain one, air gets pushed up the pipe of the other one.’ Stella visibly cheered up.

‘I see.’ Jack clasped his hands together. The world was uncertain and mostly he dealt with it – he was unafraid of darkness, literal or in the soul of a True Host – but sometimes nothing but the warm bright glare of Stella’s practical attitude would do.

The tour took less than five minutes. Stanley barked when Jack slid aside the partition between the kitchen and the shower room. He was a nervy creature, more like himself than Stella, Jack observed. Stella noted the lack of frosted glass in the window and the toilet right beside it. He reminded her that no one could see in. She appeared to approve of the functional chrome lavatory with water-saving cistern on the criss-cross metal flooring, commenting only, ‘You prefer baths.’ She was still tetchy. He did like a soak in a bath, to the light of one candle, where he floated free and unfettered. Lucie May said he was trying to return to the womb and she was right. He couldn’t explain that to live in a panopticon, he could forgo a bath.