The Detective's Secret (32 page)

There had been a man on the top deck of the bus that stopped at the zebra crossing on Goldhawk Road that night. Jack had been unable to see his face; he had a cap pulled low over his eyes. With no evidence, no proof or reason, Jack was quite sure that it was the man he called Stella’s ‘inspector’.

The Piccadilly train had come down the line from Hammersmith. Clark had seen a man step out from behind the staircase housing. Looking behind him, Rick Frost had seen him too and had started to run. The last person he had looked at, with his hazel eyes flecked with green, was Jack.

‘You didn’t murder him,’ Jack said again to Darryl Clark. He wished he knew who had.

Saturday, 26 October 2013

Stella drove around the corner into Corney Road and pulled in by the cemetery when she remembered it was a one-way street and she was going the wrong way. She was about to turn the van around when she saw she was outside Jackie’s house. She had a sudden longing to knock on the door and invite herself in. But it was nearly four o’clock and Jackie would be at the office. Instead, she must drive to a village fifty miles away in pursuit of a woman who misguidedly wanted vengeance on her husband’s mistress. Liz had urged her to call the police, but Stella wanted to hold off. She didn’t think Lulu capable of violence: she was all theatre and bluster.

She had turned down Liz’s offer that she come too; she had also refused to leave Stanley behind. Hazily she supposed that having a dog with her would be a good thing in a remote village in the countryside. Her recollection of Mrs Ramsay’s description of Charbury was that it was in the middle of nowhere.

She did want Jack. If Lulu Carr had found Nicola Barwick, he’d know what to do. She tapped out his number on her phone on the dashboard. At the same moment a woman’s voice reverberated around the van.

‘It’s me.’

There was a huff from the jump seat: Stanley was preparing to bark. ‘Sssh.’ Stella put a finger to her lips. She had answered an incoming call.

‘What?’ It was Lulu Carr.

‘You took the address!’ Stella snatched the phone from the cradle and clamped it to her ear.

‘You would have done the same. She was being jobsworthy not giving to me.’

‘That doesn’t mean— Oh never mind.’ Lulu was unrepentant, but Stella should have bargained for this. Lulu operated on a different plane, one where her own needs dominated all others. Perhaps a good detective couldn’t afford to put honesty and respect for privacy before the case. Jack would agree.

‘Did you find Nicola Barwick?’ Stella pictured blood, mess, flashing blue lights. She should have called the police.

‘Stella? I can’t hear you! You’ve gone dead!’

The oldest trick in the book was to pretend the line was bad if asked an awkward question. Stella’s mum did it all the time.

‘Stella, hello?’

Stella took the phone from her ear to give Lulu a moment to decide to play it straight and saw she had pressed the phone too close to her ear and activated the mute button. She sighed and switched the call to the van’s speaker system. ‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘Thank God. I thought you’d been attacked.’ Lulu sounded as if she was inside a metal box.

‘Did you find Nicola Barwick?’

‘She escaped minutes before I arrived.’

‘Escaped? You mean she had gone?’ Stella tried to keep it real.

‘Liz Thing tipped her off.’

Stanley made a stuttering noise in his throat. Stella looked around; he was staring at her, his pupils dilated. A spooked dog was all she needed. ‘Good boy,’ she mouthed.

‘She wouldn’t do that, and anyway, she didn’t have her number.’ Stella shook her head as if Lulu could see her. ‘I was with her the whole time,’ she added as a sliver of doubt inserted itself. Liz could have warned Nicola Barwick… but no, Liz wouldn’t have lied to her.

There was a light on in Jackie’s sitting room. Perhaps the dancing son was at home?

‘Do you actually have a brother?’ she heard herself say.

‘Yes! I texted to say I had her address and he texted saying “You won’t rest until you’ve been there.” He watches out for me.’

‘Would he have gone there?’

‘I didn’t exactly give him the address. I want to fight my own battles.’ Lulu’s voice quavered. Perhaps she recognized that texting her big brother didn’t fit with her new-found independence from him.

‘What does “exactly” mean?’ Stella felt she was clutching at straws. Terry had said, pay attention to the words people use, just one word can give them away.

‘I said it was Charbury. I said I’d used Google Street View, Rick was always on that. I said the house was next to the village stores. He wasn’t interested. My brother’s a busy man.’

Lulu Carr spoke as if Stella might dispute this. Stella had enough to deal with, with her own newly acquired brother, so she wasn’t about to tackle someone else’s.

Stanley began to sing, an insistent mewing that was almost human. He had been on a cushion in Liz Hunter’s kitchen for hours. Stella was cross with herself; he needed to pee. She reached around and unfastened him. He plunged through the seats and landed on her lap.

‘When did Nicola Barwick leave?’

‘A neighbour said about an hour before I got there. Serves me right for stopping off for some lunch. I posted my number through the letterbox to ask the owner to ring me. Doubt they will. I said there’d been a death in the family, which is true!’ Her voice was sibilant, and the consonants popped like small arms fire. Stella adjusted the volume on the dashboard. ‘Nicola guessed I was on to her.’

Stella opened the door and Stanley scrambled on to the pavement. He pulled her across the road to the cemetery. With a balletic sweep of the back leg, he hopped along the verge, spraying the railings as he went. The droplets of pee glistened in the lamplight.

‘Lulu, to stop you barking up the wrong tree, Nicola Barwick told Liz she was being stalked by a bloke who can’t accept their relationship’s over. Was Rick like that?’ Not unless her stalker is a ghost, she nearly added.

‘He was exactly like that. I told you. He had me on twenty-four-hour surveillance.’

‘But he’s dead. If it was him, it means that Nicola could come back to London,’ Stella said. Not, however, if the man was someone else entirely. Or, indeed ,with Lulu in her present mood. Up until now Stella had thought of Nicola Barwick only in relation to Frost’s death. Liz had described her as nervy, and someone had driven her to leave her home and go into hiding. Now she had moved on. Liz was right; they should ring the police. Stanley was straining on his lead.

‘I spend a fortune on a taxi haring down to some godforsaken place in Sussex on a wild-goose chase and you tease out the answer over a lunch. Stella, you are a great detective!’ It was impossible to tell over the phone if Lulu was being ironic. Stella was inclined to think not – it wasn’t her style. It was the second time in twenty-four hours she had been praised for doing pretty much nothing. Jack had been ridiculously happy that she had found out about Lulu being Mrs Frost. Then, as now, Stella didn’t have the energy to disagree. She ended the call with a promise to see her on her next cleaning shift.

Stanley pulled her through the gates of the cemetery. Stella was surprised it was still open: it was hardly practical to tend the grave of a loved one in the dusk. Her mind on Nicola Barwick, she let Stanley lead her off the path towards a wall that she realized was the one opposite Liz’s house. She would have been tempted to go back, but as she was leaving Liz had received a text from her new man so she wouldn’t be there. Stanley lifted his leg by a danger sign that warned of open or sunken graves, unstable memorials and uneven ground.

In the distance was the church. High above the spire Stella made out Jack’s tower. Splashes of sodium-orange light illuminated a track winding between the graves. It was not sensible to be alone in a cemetery after dark. Stella promised herself they would have a quick walk, then return to the van and she would ring Jack. She increased her pace.

Women were murdered by stalkers. Stella had heard of a case on the news recently. The police had ignored more minor bullying until the day the man had smashed his way into the woman’s flat and strangled her. Nicola Barwick could be in danger. She stopped by a Madonna and got out her phone. The signal was down to one bar, but she got a connection.

‘Cashman speaking.’

‘Martin, it’s me, Stella Darnell.’

‘There’s only one Stella! I hoped you’d ring, I just heard about your brother.’ His voice reverberated: he was on speakerphone. ‘About time he turned up! Be good to meet him.’

‘My brother?’ Stella was momentarily blank.

‘Darren, David—?

‘Dale. How did—’ No need to ask. Suzie, so hot on privacy she disliked coffee shops recalling she liked a double espresso, had been telling the world that her son made ‘soufflé as light as gossamer’.

‘Shot me back twenty years to when I first met Terry.’ There was a click as he took the receiver off speakerphone. Sounding more intimate, he continued, ‘Fancy a drink? I told Terry I’d be there for you if stuff ever came to light and Terry was… hmm… wasn’t here.’

‘Thanks, it’s fine.’ Stella was about to ask what Martin meant when Stanley tugged hard at his lead. Concerned that he might drag her into a sunken grave or an unstable monument, she unclipped him. Why did Martin think she needed to talk about it? Dale was here and then he would go.

Terry had been Martin Cashman’s boss and his best friend. After Terry died, Martin had made it clear he was ‘there’ for Terry’s daughter. At the time Stella had rebuffed his help; later she had asked him a favour and he had turned her down. Now she was circumspect: Martin had been Terry’s friend; he owed her nothing. Since Terry hadn’t known he had a son, by ‘stuff’ Terry couldn’t have meant a situation like this.

‘Brothers! Mine borrowed my Lexus last week, to impress some new woman he’s conned into dating him, and he pranged it on a post box!’

Jackie had said it was a shame Cashman was married with kids – a chip off Terry’s old block, he would be perfect for Stella. Solid and practical, he would take no nonsense. Stella didn’t believe in ‘perfect’ and didn’t ask what ‘nonsense’ from her it was that Cashman wouldn’t take.

She was buffeted by a gust of wind.

‘Blimey, where are you?’ Cashman exclaimed.

‘I’m by a grave – on a path – I’m outside,’ Stella said. She told him about Nicola Barwick, leaving out that Lulu Carr suspected she had killed her husband. Terry’s daughter or not, and despite her track record in solving cases, Martin wouldn’t like her turning detective. ‘Leave it to us,’ he had said.

Tapping on his keyboard, he breathed loudly into the receiver, as loud as the wind. ‘Nothing on the system – she hasn’t put in a complaint. I can check with Sussex, though there’s not much we can do if she hasn’t come forward and with no hard facts…’

‘She can’t come forward if she’s missing.’ A patch of white that she had thought was Stanley was a headstone. Hearing herself, Stella added, ‘But I see what you mean.’ Were it not for Liz Hunter, Stella might doubt that Barwick even existed.

‘The neighbour told your friend that Nicola Barwick said she was going away.’

‘Something must have happened to make her leave,’ Stella said.

‘Trouble is, unless she tells us, or fails to turn up where she is expected, our hands are tied. My guess is that she’ll ring your mate when she knows her new location. When she does, encourage her to give us a call. We can slap an order on this bloke – he may already have a record. Get me some information and I’ll see what I can do.’

Stella thanked him. About to end the call, she was hit by another squall and staggered into a dip in the ground.

‘Stella?’

‘Yes.’

‘Up for that drink anytime, OK?’

Right now she could do with sitting in a pub with Martin Cashman, swapping information about latest cleaning products with ‘stop and search’ stats.

‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘Martin, what do you know about that man, Rick—’

A busy man, Cashman had gone.

Stella wandered deeper into the cemetery, peering into the spangled darkness in search of Stanley. The street lamps on Corney Road were dots. The pale shapes of headstones mingled with shadows of trees, created Stanleys everywhere. She heard a scuffling and blundered off the track, furious with herself for letting the dog off his lead.

‘Stanley!’ She was loath to shout, though there was no one alive to mind.

She tripped on tussocks and clods of earth and, at last coming upon a path, found the source of the noise. A plastic bag caught on a bramble was not Stanley.

‘Stanley!’ Stella dared raise her voice. Wind smacked at the plastic bag and whooshed through the branches. No dog.

Flitting blobs of beige danced and goaded her amidst darker shapes. She was fooled by finger-pointing angels, more Madonnas, and laughing cupids with dimpled cheeks. Row upon row of headstones, half hidden by grass and brambles where light didn’t penetrate: none were Stanley.

Stella fumbled inside her anorak for the whistle. Sickened, she pictured it in the glove box with the spare poo bags.

A stick cracked, a scurry of footsteps. Stella plunged on, keeping the wall on her right as rough navigation. Her ears attuned, she shouted ‘Biscuit’ and ‘Chicken’: anything to lure him to her. Twice she tripped on sunken masonry, heedless now of falling into a coffin-sized hole. The ground dipped and she fell on to one knee and made herself listen.

Nothing. Her mouth dry, she put her fingers to her mouth and gave a long low whistle. Her heart lurched when the sound was repeated. She did it again. Again there was a whistle, long and low, longer than hers had been. It wasn’t an echo. Someone had whistled back. Stella fought the impulse to run. Jack said running gave the enemy your location. What enemy?

Trees outlined in the gloom swayed as one, leaning eastward as blusters ripped at the last of their leaves and tore at their branches. In gaps between gusts, Stella heard rustling. It came from the darkest section of the cemetery. She walked purposefully towards it, skidding on loose stones, her boots crunching on the hard, but even surface, giving away her location.