The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Great minds!’ Cashman licked his spoon. ‘He said he was listening to the cricket scores. But Pam, my DC, is a cricket fan and she questioned what cricket scores he could be picking up. Turned out it was a sex chat line. Jeez! Terry said we see the seamier side of life. He envied your job.’

  On her eighteenth birthday Terry had left a police application form on the kitchen table. He hadn’t wanted her to be a cleaner. ‘No way,’ she muttered.

  ‘He said if you offered him work, he’d snap it up!’ He swung his leg over the chair and swivelled to face her. ‘You know where you are with a duster. Karen said this job gives us a skewed view of life. No wonder she wants out.’

  ‘I thought you wanted out too.’ Stella blew across her tea although it was no longer hot.

  ‘It’s run its course, but the force helped it along. Terry warned me: Don’t take your eye off your marriage, Marty, or it’ll take its eye off you. I followed most of his advice to the letter. That was one gem I ignored.’

  Marty. There was much about her dad that Stella didn’t know. ‘Mum says their marriage was a “wrong turning” in her life, it didn’t go wrong.’

  ‘She didn’t mean it.’ Cashman was dismissive. ‘She loved your dad.’

  Jack maintained that Suzie leaving Terry – on a cold day in November 1973 – was her wrong turning, not the day she had met him. She talked about Terry all the time; Jack reckoned that Terry was the love of her life. Stella stuck to facts; if her parents had loved each other – whatever love was – they’d have stayed married. Jack hadn’t heard their rows.

  ‘Not all the keyholders have alibis.’ Cashman beamed at Stella. ‘You don’t!’

  ‘I was here. Asleep.’ Not funny.

  ‘With only that dog to back up your story.’

  ‘I don’t let him into the bedroom...’ Too much information.

  Cashman pulled a face at Stanley. The dog watched him with inscrutable eyes, his body tensed. Jackie said that any ‘Mr Right’ must pass the ‘Stanley test’.

  Marty. What had Cashman called Terry?

  ‘I set off for Kew Gardens at about a quarter past five. It takes fifteen minutes to get to Kew from here with no traffic. And I’m not a keyholder; we’re given new codes by the Facilities Manager. I arrived at the gallery at six.’

  ‘It seems unlikely you’d have called it in if you had murdered him.’

  ‘It’s good cover,’ Stella objected.

  ‘Are you trying to be my prime suspect?’ His eyes twinkled.

  ‘Just saying.’ She shrugged. ‘I take it Trevor has an alibi?’ She liked Trevor, but the nicest people were murderers.

  ‘The manager has an alibi, his wife. Not my favourite kind of corroboration, but no reason to doubt it, as with the others. All the staff we’ve interviewed so far have more to lose than gain by killing someone. Job, reputation, freedom. No one has a connection with Hooker or has Australian relatives.’

  ‘My brother’s in Australia,’ Stella said.

  ‘There you go again. At this rate I’ll have to arrest you!’

  ‘Mum’s there now. Look at this.’ She showed him the photo of Suzie in the deerstalker. ‘Actually, it might be worth checking out David Jones; it’s a department store in Sydney. A long shot, but Joseph Hooker could have bought his deerstalker hat there.’

  ‘Cool look for a detective!’ Cashman whistled. ‘It’s afternoon there, I’ll ring them.’ Stella looked up the number on her laptop and he called the store.

  Fifteen minutes later, once Cashman had established his credentials, the woman at David Jones told him that they had one account holder called Joseph Hooker and that the address matched the one on the New South Wales driving licence found on the body. ‘The man purchased a deerstalker three years ago. She went into a sales pitch. She tried to sell a deerstalker to a detective!’ He roared with laughter but then grew serious. ‘She told me that Hooker’s account’s been “dormant” for over a year. That could mean he may have been in the UK some time.’

  ‘With that suntan, I’d bet he just got here,’ Stella remarked.

  ‘We already knew that the address on his licence isn’t current. It’s a house in a district called Crows Nest. The man and woman renting haven’t heard of Hooker. The letting agency said their client is one Jane Church and she’s gone walkabout in the bush.’

  ‘You mean she’s lost?’ Stella felt a lurch of dread. This was a new potential disaster to befall her mum in Australia. Suzie was highly likely to put on a stupid hat and send an Instagram picture of herself lost in the outback.

  ‘She’ll surface for food and fuel, but we need her to surface now and confirm if she knows Hooker.’

  ‘Since he was killed on site, Hooker must have gone willingly with his killer to the North Gallery.’

  ‘You said in your statement that you went out to the yard to fill your bucket with water. Could anyone have been in the building when you arrived and taken that chance to leave?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t go into the room with the body and I left the front doors unlocked.’ She wouldn’t do that again.

  ‘Lucky or the killer might have attacked you to get out.’ Cashman pivoted the chair on its back legs. ‘Pathology report says Hooker was suffering from advanced heart disease. He was stabbed with a short-bladed knife, possibly a scalpel. Anyone of medium strength could have overpowered him.’

  ‘He was stabbed from behind so she, or he, didn’t need to overpower him.’ Stella tried to ignore Cashman’s rocking on the chair; it would make the legs give way. He was acting as if he felt at home. ‘A scalpel would have taken strength because the blade is short.’

  ‘Or someone with dexterity. It was an upward thrust into the lungs: the killer knew what he or she was doing.’

  ‘There was a smell.’ Stella was racking her brains; apart from the fog and the geese there had been something.

  ‘What sort of smell?’

  ‘Stale smoke, but he was a smoker so that’s explained. It made me think of my friend who used to smoke.’ There was something else, but it eluded her.

  ‘What friend?’ Cashman spread his hands out on the table. ‘Driver Dan the Underground Man?’ After the One Under case, Cashman had been tougher on Jack than on her for not telling the police. He had warned him to ‘lay off playing detective and stick to the day job’. Jack had pointed out that detection was his day job, he drove trains at night. Since then Martin referred to him by names such as ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ or ‘Driver Dan’.

  ‘Someone called Tina.’

  ‘You think your mate was there?’ Martin looked incredulous.

  ‘Tina has an alibi, she’s in a hospi— She’s ill.’

  ‘Wait a sec, is this Tina Banks? The lawyer?’

  ‘Yes.’ Stella didn’t divulge clients, but Tina had put a testimonial from Banks Associates on the Clean Slate website so it was no secret.

  ‘She’s your friend? I’m sorry!’ Martin stopped tilting his chair. ‘What a bloody waste.’

  ‘She’ll be OK.’

  ‘I heard she’s riddled with cancer. Terry had a lot of time for her.’

  ‘Dad knew Tina?’ Tina had never said. She had never said she was ill either.

  ‘We all groan if Banks is defending our villain; we know it’s a lost cause. It’s hard enough to get them behind bars, then they get to walk free – look at Harry Roberts.’

  Stella had been frightened to come downstairs to get herself a glass of water in the night in case Harry Roberts was lying in wait for her. She saw with sudden clarity that Martin must have dropped in late at night when Terry was alive. They had sat here drinking coffee – or something stronger – ‘chewing the cud’. Martin laughed mirthlessly and scratched the shadow of stubble on his face. Then as if to underline that he felt at home, he got up and refilled the kettle. He was putting in too much water, it would waste electricity, but Stella stopped herself saying so. Stanley was sitting up, wild-eyed, and she mouthed to him to lie down.

  She caught
a whiff of Martin’s after-shave. Gillette. Stella used to buy her dad the same after-shave every Christmas and birthday. ‘Where was the surprise?’ Jack had asked. But Terry, like Stella, hated surprises. She still caught herself hovering over a bottle of Gillette in Boots.

  ‘What was that?’ Cashman went to the back door. His breath clouded the glass as, palms cupped around his face, he peered out into the night.

  Jack. Stella never knew which door he would arrive or leave by. To use the back door he had to scale two garden walls in St Peter’s Square. If Cashman caught Jack out there, he would arrest him.

  ‘It’ll be a cat. Or a fox, it’s their mating season.’ She had no idea about the habits of foxes.

  ‘Foxes mate earlier in the year; by October their cubs are dispersing.’

  Martin would be an amateur naturalist. She had to hope that Jack had seen him there and gone. Yet she didn’t want Jack to go. She must answer his text.

  Martin gave himself three spoonfuls of sugar. During one of her early-morning cleaning shifts, he had let slip that he had started working-out at the gym. Now she supposed it was the effect of his marriage break-up. Terry’s divorce had done nothing for his health.

  Always consider the unlikely. She heard Terry and then heard her own voice: ‘What if the man isn’t Hooker?’

  Cashman pulled his chair up to the table and his knee touched hers. She didn’t move her leg. ‘Meaning?’

  It was a hunch. She could hardly say it was Terry’s idea. It was the sort of thing Jack would say. She snatched at the idea as it evaporated. ‘The address on the licence is out of date or it might be false. The wallet mightn’t have been his. He might have stolen it. Or the murderer might have planted it on him.’ She expected Cashman to scoff, but he said:

  ‘Good thought. We need to talk to the woman in the bush.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Given where and how he was murdered, it’s looking like an inside job. Scalpels are two a penny in Kew Gardens.’

  ‘I guess that simplifies it.’

  ‘It still means hundreds of people.’ Cashman lifted his cup and saw the coaster. He read the label. ‘This is in the Marianne North Gallery, where the body was found!’

  ‘Terry bought it.’

  ‘Why?’ Cashman was incredulous.

  The obvious explanation was that Terry had needed a coaster. It was typical that he had bought only one – he had rarely entertained. Actually that wasn’t true. There had been Lucie May and ‘Marty’.

  ‘No idea. What was this “we” business? You’ve established that Joseph Hooker was Australian. But what if the man in the Marianne North Gallery isn’t really Joseph Hooker?’

  ‘Until we prove otherwise, we assume so.’ Cashman dangled a desultory hand to Stanley. The dog gave a low growl.

  ‘He doesn’t like that,’ Stella said quickly.

  Cashman kept his hand there a moment longer. With a yawn, he rose and washed up his cup. He put it on the draining rack. ‘Time for bed.’

  It was nearly 4 a.m. Stella hadn’t noticed the time go by. Time for bed. Martin was going down the passage to the hall. By the time she caught up with him, he was on the doorstep shrugging into his coat. In the dull lamplight he looked young and fresh-faced.

  ‘Fancy a drink tomorrow?’ He put his collar up against the biting cold, reminding her of Jack in his coat. ‘Today!’

  ‘Yes.’ Stella startled herself.

  ‘See you in the Ram at eight.’ He leant in and kissed her cheek.

  After Martin Cashman had gone Stella stayed on the doorstep, gazing unseeing into the blackness. Sniffing the night air, she smelled fabric softener. Had she not been distracted, she would have identified the source. Instead she supposed vaguely that it was from washing hanging in a nearby garden.

  Shadows of branches moved across the pavements. One shadow didn’t move. Because it wasn’t the shadow of a branch.

  Chapter Thirty

  October 2014

  We have another case!

  Jack chanted the words under his breath as he bowled along Hammersmith Terrace and went left into Black Lion Lane. The Ram pub was in darkness. He paused on the pavement; the pub was where, in 2011, he had first seen Stella. She had been reading in the corner. She had been working on what became their first case.

  It was five to four in the morning. He had turned up late at Stella’s before, but this was so late it was early. She would be up soon; he would catch her as she left for Kew Gardens. He would have to be sensitive because it would be strange for Stella to see her dad alive in his car on Street View.

  He stopped in the subway tunnel, a tiled passage smelling of piss. Above him came the occasional swish of a car or a lorry on the Great West Road.

  ‘Hello,’ he said as if talking to someone beside him. His voice was hollow. Sometimes when he was in the tunnel – his favourite subway – he fancied that he could hear the chatter of those who once lived there. Not in the tunnel, but from when there had been houses there before the Great West Road was extended.

  He calculated that he was standing in what had been the cellar of number 33 Black Lion Lane. Whole streets, row upon row of Victorian and Georgian houses, had been crushed to make way for the road. Shadows, pools of light, special places, associations and memories smashed by an iron ball. It was up to Jack to hold the facts and dreams of so many lost existences. Tonight he couldn’t hear anything because his own mind was busy.

  He strode up the ramp. As he had expected there were no lights in the windows of the houses in Rose Gardens that had escaped demolition. He took up position in the bushes opposite Stella’s house. There was no light in the street because the only lamp-post – Stella’s lamp-post, he called it – was faulty and was off more than on.

  The blinds in her bedroom were closed and clouds racing across the sky were reflected in the clean glass. Jack didn’t feel good about watching her house. He should go back to his eyrie. He could see her after cleaning in Kew. But if he saw a movement or a light, he would knock on the door.

  Everything happened in sequence. Stella’s hall light went on. The lamp-post came on and suffused the privet hedge outside her house in orange light and the front door opened. Two people were outlined in the hall light. Stella. And someone else. Jack couldn’t believe it. The other person was Cashman.

  Why was the detective visiting Stella at four in the morning? Jack didn’t have to wait for an answer. Cashman was kissing Stella. On the mouth, long and lingering. Jack made up what he couldn’t see. Stella didn’t like Cashman. Did she?

  Cashman was walking out of Rose Gardens North, hands in pockets, sauntering as though he owned the night. He unlocked his car and moments later headlights sliced the dark. Jack knew the cars that parked in Stella’s road. He should have seen the black Audi when he arrived. If Cashman was such a good detective, he should have detected that Jack was there. Anyone could have been hiding in the bushes outside Stella’s house.

  Stella had said that to be an effective team, they must tell each other everything. She hadn’t told him about Cashman. Only when the Audi had driven away down St Peter’s Square, the engine purring like a cat full of cream, did Stella shut the door. Light drifting through glazed door panels went out.

  Jackie had stopped him from going for coffee with Stella and Cashman when the detective had turned up at the office. Jack had supposed that it was because she thought Stella would handle Cashman better on her own. But it must be because they were having an affair and Jackie was giving them space.

  Jack drifted into the cone of lamplight, uncaring if Stella saw him. He wanted to shout up to her window that she was making a mistake, but his voice was mute.

  We’ve got a new case!

  Stella had a new detective. A proper murder case.

  Martin Cashman was a wrong turning. A dead end. Jack took out his phone and dabbed a text. Seconds after he pressed ‘send’, he received a reply.

  Hey Jackanory, get your arse over here!

  Stella’s lamp-post went out. He wa
s in darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  October 2014

  ‘A nippety-nip, honey-bee?’ Lucie May in a short skirt and a shirt that showed her cleavage sashayed before him into the sitting room. Jack was greeted by a peculiar smell. Since Lucie had given up smoking she had tried all sorts of substitutes from e-cigarettes to raw carrots and twigs of real liquorice. The last two didn’t provide nicotine but could be flourished and chewed upon as she worked. Jack hoped she hadn’t succumbed to proper smoking, but the odour pricking his nostrils suggested a noxious herbal mix.

  ‘I’d rather have hot milk.’ They had this exchange every time he visited.

  ‘Goodness!’ Visibly crestfallen Lucie flounced to the kitchen. ‘Find a perch in my nest, cuckoo,’ she warbled to him.

  A nest could probably literally be constructed with the contents of Lucie’s sitting room. Large – when she bought the thirties semi in the nineties, she had demolished the dividing wall (‘My Shirley Valentine moment’) – it was scattered with papers, books and newspapers, discarded cardigans, half-chewed carrots, the pickings of a story written or abandoned. Lucie had an office upstairs, but as far as Jack knew, she worked downstairs. He took up his ‘perch’ in the corner of the sofa.

  Lucie was a reporter on the Chronicle, the local newspaper. She covered anything from school fêtes and lost pets to road-traffic accidents and murder. After the One Under case, she had got several stories syndicated globally. For a while it had seemed as if Lucie was headed for brighter lights than the streets of Hammersmith and Fulham. Jack had expected her increase in income to propel her to a condominium in central London. But nothing changed. Despite her constant complaints about her editor – the holders of the post changed, but Lucie spoke as if the personality was the same – she remained in the job. She didn’t use the extra money to modernize her house, which, apart from ‘the wall’, hadn’t been touched since the sixties. Nor, although she must be flirting with seventy, had she slowed down. She continued chasing stories and meeting deadlines by a whisker. She continued to grumble that her editor took the best stories and, as far as Jack knew, she hadn’t begun the book that had been ‘simmering’ for decades. After her brief success, Lucie’s life had stayed the same.