The Detective's Secret (8 page)

Vaucluse sounded French. She had put Heffernan into Google and got a restaurant. She had tried Vaucluse. Unsurprisingly there was one in France. Scrolling down, she had found one in Sydney, Australia, and her dread crystallized into pricking dismay. Her fear escalated. Dale Heffernan would empty her mum’s bank account and there was nothing Stella could do to stop him.

‘I’m on to him!’ Mrs Carr flung open the door. Stella pushed the paper back into her pocket, picked up her equipment bag and struggled inside. Her client was perkier than on Saturday. She seemed to have forgotten her displeasure with Stella for not following her instructions. Stella had long ago decided that some clients were enlivened by disaster. Their homes were a battlefield; it was her job to clean up for the next skirmish.

‘Where should I start?’ Stella laid her bag at the foot of the stairs. Last time Mrs Carr had taken up half the shift complaining about the unfaithful husband.

‘I’ve found out where he was when he texted he was working late and couldn’t see me.’

Stella gave in. ‘How?’ Why did working late mean her husband couldn’t see her? Best not to ask that.

‘It’s clever. You can see where someone is by their texts. Don’t switch your location on if you’re leading a double life, I will find you!’ Mrs Carr breezed into the sitting room.

Reluctantly Stella followed. With an imperious motion of her hand, Mrs Carr indicated for her to join her on the sofa where, with the clothes and clutter gone, there was now room.

‘Look.’ Mrs Carr was waving a phone. ‘You press this key symbol and up comes a map with a blue dot pinpointing his exact location.’ She jabbed at the screen. ‘
Voilà!
’

Stella knew it was possible to track a user’s whereabouts; she had done it during the Blue Folder case.

‘He was here, look.’ Mrs Carr enlarged the map.

‘On Chiswick Eyot?’ Stella knew the scrub of land. She had ridden her bike there as a child.

‘Of course not! Chiswick Mall. It isn’t far from here and, I tell you, it’s not for the faint-walleted. Whoever she is, she’s got money. I can’t match that.’ Mrs Carr slumped back, apparently deflated.

‘He could have been walking along it.’

‘You don’t pass through Chiswick Mall, it’s out of your way unless that’s where you’re going.’ She glared at Stella, seeming a hair’s breadth from blaming her for her husband’s betrayal.

‘He told me he didn’t see her anymore.’ Stella tried deflection. ‘Where does he work?’

This seemed to perplex Mrs Carr. She hesitated and then, as if repeating something by rote, said, ‘Wherever people want CCTV fitted and all the other surveillance paraphernalia.’ She shook her head as if the question was superfluous.

‘He could have been visiting a client then.’ Stella wondered at herself for finding innocent explanations for Mr Carr, who had undeniably left his wife. She had cleaned in houses on Chiswick Mall; Mrs Carr was right, no houses there would give change from a million pounds. Odd, since he was in security, that Carr had gone to so much trouble to hide from his wife and made such a basic mistake.

‘So you’ll help.’ Mrs Carr placed her hands on her knees as if a deal had been struck.

‘With what?’ Distracted, Stella hadn’t heard her.

‘You’ll find out the truth.’

‘We don’t…’ Finding estranged spouses might be the bread and butter of most private detectives, but it would not be the route for Clean Slate. Stella must leave; Jackie could parry any fallout.

‘You will sort it, you’re a cleaner!’

Stella was as certain as she could be that Mrs Carr was mad.

‘I have more of these, so don’t run away.’ Stella undid the dog’s lead, holding his collar, and gave him a biscuit from the pouch dangling from her belt. ‘Re-lease!’

The poodle sped away over the grass and just as she thought he wouldn’t stop he tumbled to a halt and faced her.

A gust of wind smacked her fringe across her face. She dragged her hood up and another blast smacked it down again. She had no hat. Stanley had upset her routine; she had to take him out come rain or shine. Jackie had suggested she employ a dog walker, but Stella had promised to mind Stanley; she had to do it herself.

‘Stanley, come.’ She spread her arms. The dog raced back and, full tilt, crashed against her leg, finishing in a sketch of a sitting position. Stella gave him a biscuit.

The afternoon was gloomy, strata of greys in the sky; there were darker clouds over the turrets of Wormwood Scrubs prison. Stella had wandered far on to the common; Braybrook Street was in the distance. She knew the area. Jack and she had interviewed a suspect in the Rokesmith case who lived in the street. Her dad had grown up around the corner in Primula Street and been a policeman in Hammersmith most of his life. She had seen a newspaper photo of Terry with other officers on his hands and knees doing a finger search on the grass where she stood.

Another gust of wind. Jack would say Terry was giving her a sign. She zipped her anorak up to her chin.

She remembered the buzz of that interview, the thrill of a solid lead. They had planned the questions and their approach. Good guy – her; bad guy – Jack. Like a real detective, she had written up the details afterwards and filed them. It seemed easy, looking back: they had boxes of paperwork to go on, salient information to pull out. With William Frost’s case, all they had to go on was his conviction that his brother had been murdered. Suzie would say they shouldn’t touch it and she’d be right. Or she would if she were here. Stella frowned. In reply to her message to him the day before, Jack had texted saying he was driving all day. She didn’t want to talk to Jackie while she was in the office, or indeed when she was at home, as she would be telling Jackie there was nothing she could do for Frost.

Stanley had met another dog. Stella headed towards them. She had learnt that dog owners’ etiquette required humans as well as their dogs to interact.

‘How old is he?’ An elderly man in a baggy rainproof jacket, a hand-knitted scarf knotted around his neck, was regarding the dogs as they sniffed each other’s behinds. In the dog world, this was apparently polite.

‘About two.’ Stella wanted to explain that he wasn’t her dog and that she wouldn’t have him much longer, but that was giving too much away.

‘Molly’s submitting for a change! What’s his name?’

Stella blinked, resisting the temptation to say she didn’t know, which would appear ridiculous. ‘Stanley.’

The man exclaimed: ‘Same as me!’

‘Ah.’ For a wild moment, Stella wondered if he was David’s father, Stanley’s namesake. ‘What’s – um – what’s yours called?’

‘Molly.’

‘That’s nice.’ He had already said. Stella scuffed her boots on the grass.

‘Good to have met you, lad.’ The man addressed Stanley; another thing dog owners did was channel conversation through their animals. Stella approved of this. She preferred being at one remove. The man melted into the shadows, his dog with him.

Her phone buzzed.

Can we speak?

Stella deleted the text, the second in a week. No need to speak; David wanted the dog back. Fine. She would ask Jackie to sort it. A drop of water stung her cheek. The dark clouds were now overhead; she heard a rumble of thunder. She whipped Stanley’s lead from around her neck and cast about for him.

He was cavorting towards her with the skittish leaps that she had understood meant he was up to something. Front legs up then hind legs, like a rocking horse. What might look enchanting to others filled Stella with foreboding. She spied two dainty paws poking out of one side of his whiskery mouth, a long rubbery tail dangling from the other.

A Londoner, Stella had grown up with the adage that she was never more than six feet from a rat. Right now it was a lot closer than that.

While Stella was becoming accustomed to the dog’s unquestioning presence, regarding hygiene they were poles apart.

‘Drop!’ she hissed, although there was no one to see. His capering accelerated into joyous leaps. The rat was hardly smaller than the dog. It must have been dead when he got hold of it.

She headed off towards Braybrook Street without a backward glance, a newly acquired ruse which worked. Frustrated by the loss of her attention, he abandoned the rat and, tail down, disconsolate, fell in by her side. Inwardly congratulating herself, Stella clipped on the lead and joined the pavement by the memorial to the three murdered policemen.

‘Here fell…’

She could recite the names and date carved in the marble. The date the police officers were killed in Braybook Street – 12 August 1966 – was the day she was born.

When she was eight, Terry had brought her to the remembrance ceremony held by the Metropolitan Police on each anniversary of the shooting. Her mum said it was typical he should think it a treat. In fact Stella had appreciated listening to the speeches and being solemn. Someone had said she was lucky to have a daddy, not like the children of the three policemen whose lives they were commemorating. The voice, Stella didn’t remember now who had said it, had also said that ‘life had better mean life.’ Stella had liked Terry holding her hand as if, like Stanley, she might scamper off. For no obvious reason, Stanley barked sharply. Jack believed dogs could detect ghosts. If Terry were to haunt anywhere, this was a likely spot.

Another buzz of a text.

Where shall we meet?
Jack.

Ram. 7.30? New case.
That should whet his appetite. Seconds later she was proved right.

I’ll be there! Jx

Perhaps thinking of Mrs Carr’s check on her husband, Stella pressed the symbol beside Jack’s text. She was taken aback. Jack was in the same place as the elusive Mr Carr, on Chiswick Mall near the eyot. Jack said there was no such thing as coincidence. She shut her phone, vaguely ashamed to have looked.

The dog was sitting at her feet. She rewarded him, thinking absently how she would be handing back a well-trained animal.

‘Heel.’ Stella and Stanley headed along Braybrook Street to the van, away from the memorial and its ghosts.

September 1987

‘Ready for hunting and gathering!’

‘Ready and willing!’ Simon stood to attention. It was his job to forage for items on his mother’s shopping list. They were in Marks and Spencer’s on Chiswick High Road.

‘We leave the trolley here and bring stuff to it.’ His reiteration of the instructions was part of their ritual; his method was quicker than pushing the trolley through the shop. He had parked it in a recess beside the dairy cabinet and the back entrance.

‘I’ll be back in record time.’ Everything was back to normal. Last week his mum had gone shopping without telling him. She had said she would take less time on her own, and he had been dismayed. Today was about proving her wrong. He peered at the list she was holding and memorized the first three items. ‘A packet of water biscuits and eight ounces of brie. Daddy’s off cheese.’

‘It’s not for Daddy,’ she snapped.

‘You don’t eat cheese.’

‘It’s for guests.’ She ruffled his hair and the boy allowed himself to breathe.

‘Are there going to be guests?’ Simon hung over the trolley handle. He hoped it was the woman who had just moved in next door.

‘See how many you can get in, say, ten minutes.’ His mother gave him the entire list.

‘I shan’t need that long,’ Simon asserted. Although he relished the challenge, the change in operation worried him.

‘Do it properly.’

‘Synchronize watches.’ He consulted his watch with luminous hands and markings for seeing on night expeditions, or in bed. Mr Wilson and Justin both had Timex watches.

She was looking over at the door to the car park and not listening. The boy sped off to the frozen section where, rootling around for crinkle-cut chips, it struck him that without the list she couldn’t hunt for anything.

Simon minimized journeys to the trolley by collecting armfuls of food. He dropped a bag of lentils reaching up for cornflakes. This was awkward, but lots of short trips took longer. He would explain this; she loved his theories.

With four minutes to go, she still wasn’t by the trolley. Simon unburdened himself, mindful not to crush the lettuce, tomatoes, eggs and butter with cans and bags of vegetables as instructed.

The automatic doors to the car park swooshed aside and Simon was hit by a draught of cold air. A woman with a girl about the same age as his sister perched at the front of her trolley entered. His mother was in the car park. The door shut and he saw sense. It wasn’t her. He fetched six cartons of milk from the cabinet, the last items, and trotted along each aisle in search of her.

The list finished in twelve minutes and thirty-five seconds, he returned to base camp. It wouldn’t have occurred to Simon to pretend he had done it in the allotted time. He and his mother told each other the truth; they had no secrets. Justin would be impressed because the ten minutes was meant to include his mum doing some too. Simon recorded each feat so that when he met him again, he could tell Justin.

Gingerly Simon went over to the back exit. The door opened when he stood too close to it. He looked out. The woman was his mother and she wasn’t alone.

‘Could you either go out or come away from the door? You’re letting in all the cold,’ an old man clutching a wire basket rasped at him.

Taken by surprise, Simon went outside.

His mother had parked their car by the entrance; there was no need for her to be by the pavement. Simon inched around the car, reassured by its solid familiarity, and crept along the gap between the cars and the wall. He got as close as he dared, but couldn’t hear what she was saying. Blindly he turned and ran back into the shop.

He drifted mechanically along an aisle, supported by the trolley. He joined a queue, imagining he could pay, pack the shopping in the boot and drive away. He bottled sudden rage that being nine he could do none of these things. Simon felt as he had when Justin had left the school and Simon was no one.

‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you!’ She wrapped her arms around him, cutting out the light. He inhaled her perfume and another smell – smoke. She didn’t smoke.