Perhaps David had gone to tend to his wife’s grave. She felt a stirring in her gut. He had not told her. She pulled out the bag before the tea got too strong. If she was the jealous sort, she would mind. After finding Mrs Hampson’s body by her temple, coming across Marian Williams in the police station toilet that morning and, this afternoon, discovering the stuff under David Barlow’s bath, she could do with his company. She wouldn’t even mind the dog.
In the brooding silence of Terry’s kitchen, Stella got the blue folder out of her rucksack, unclipped the spring binders and extracted the photographs. She laid them on the table in number order and sat sipping tea contemplating the fifteen images. The mug was hot so she rubbed her fingers on her trousers. The bruises on Marian Williams’s arm were fingermarks. Four fingers gripping so hard they bruised.
Marian had not fallen. Her husband or partner was violent. She worked in a police station; she could easily have him charged. She must be afraid her colleagues would find out. Ashamed even. Stella had seen enough of Marian Williams to guess that she would keep her troubles to herself. She must have been mortified that Stella had found her. Stella decided that when she saw Marian next, she would act as though it had not happened.
She heard a tapping. An irregular drip. The kitchen tap hadn’t dripped since she replaced the washer. Stella ignored it and rummaged in her rucksack for her Clean Slate sticky notes. She flicked through her Filofax to the grid. Jack had found a second collection of glass in Marquis Way, but had no idea who, if anyone, had died there. She filled in the line for the photograph indexed six and wrote ‘Marquis Way’ in the ‘Street’ column, then scribbled ‘Hit a telegraph pole’ in the same line. She printed each street name – on sticky slips and fixed them to the photographs. She was a detective.
All the men had died in crashes, most of them into trees. At each crash site they had found seven green pieces of glass.
No such thing as an accident.
The dripping was insistent. Two clicks then two close together in a steady beat. No leaking tap did that. Stella got up and crept down the passage. Her heart tumbled in her chest. A shape filled the frosted glass door panels. The letterbox flap lifted slightly and dropped. Her back to the wall, Stella edged along the passage. A neighbour would press the bell. Someone was trying to frighten her. They had succeeded. Her body was liquid with fear. Call the police!
Stella flung open the front door.
41
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Jack was dog-tired, but he couldn’t stop dwelling on Amanda. Her death had astonished him. She was misguided and obsessed, but sure of herself and so determined. To die in such a prosaic, even ridiculous way was more than he could bear.
He was in his dormitory when he heard the door to the flat upstairs open and close. He ran down the stairs and hid in an alcove behind the staircase by the basement steps. Opposite was a door with a sign saying ‘Dining Hall’. He had to assume that at this time of night his Host had no reason to go in there.
Her shoes made no sound on the linoleum. Up until now Jack had relied on intuition to detect her proximity. He was alert to minute changes in temperature, a stale odour of food from the kitchens when she opened a door or the car fumes she brought in from the street. His luck must have run out. His Host was preparing to act and he must save her and her victim. After a week as a guest in her house, Jack had not got his book and did not know where she went at night. Tonight he would forgo working on the streets in the attic and concentrate on the Task.
By the time his Host reached the hall, Jack was racing along the warren of concrete passages in the basement. He was rewarded for familiarizing himself with the topography because the luminous fire-exit signs guided him now.
He was about to run up the area steps into the yard when he saw her. She could move faster than he expected from her bulky frame. She was by the back gate. He heard the clink of the chain when she locked it behind her.
Jack ran to the end of the alley between the house and the street to where an ancient twisting apple tree grew up the wall, the branches gnarled and bunched. He pulled himself up and, flailing an arm, hoisted himself on to the wall, avoiding the shards of glass sunk in the mortar. His Host was nowhere to be seen. She had not had time to disappear so effectively, so she must be hiding. It was a trap.
He belted up Weltje Road and looked up and down King Street. Nothing. He doubled back down to the Great West Road. Something brought him up short. He wheeled around. At a topmost window of the dark mansion was the silhouette of a figure.
The old man was watching him. Despite the distance and the dark, the man – he had not learnt his name – knew it was he. Jack had missed their appointment. This was not how it should be. He should follow his Host as if attached by a thread, invisible and at home in the night streets. But it was the old man who had him in his thrall. Jack retreated along the Great West Road and stopped. She was by St Peter’s Church. She was willing him to follow. He did as she wanted.
Jack considered the statue of a reclining woman a friend. Draped in loose cloth, she was sculpted from concrete by Karel Vogel in the late 1950s as a commemoration of the extension of the Great West Road. ‘The Leaning Woman’, her arms folded, body tipping forward, reflected the curve of the six-lane road. Nowadays daubed with graffiti, her surface pitted by the weather, she was screened from the road by thick foliage. She no longer signed a warning to motorists speeding into London from the West and was a secret known only to locals. Jack touched her gown. His Host was not there.
There was no one on Black Lion Lane or walking towards St Peter’s Square. The simple portico of the church was in shadow. The time on the clockface above was twenty past nine. The gate was ajar. Jack eased through and mounted the wide steps. She was not behind either of the Palladian columns. He felt an icicle chill; he had ventured into the open with nowhere to hide.
He edged around the church to the graveyard. Wedges of lamplight broke through the branches. Shadows flitted and shifted, giving him the crazy impression of figures dancing.
She was by a grave in the far-most corner holding something in her arms. It looked like a baby, but could not be. Jack hurried back to the street and took up position by the subway entrance to watch for when she left the church.
She did not come.
He broke cover and, keeping in the shadow of the trees, dodged across grass planted with cherry trees, their blossom ethereal in the lamplight, to the church. She wasn’t in the graveyard. That was impossible, there was only one way out. He stumbled over to where she had stood.
STEPHEN PARSONS
20TH JANUARY 2001 – 8TH JANUARY 2009
‘A LIFE TOO SHORT, OUR LOVE ENDURES’
The name was familiar. But Jack collected many snippets of information, so many facts. There was a Derek Parsons at work; he had a son, possibly called Stephen. When Jack drove the Wimbledon route he passed through Parsons Green.
He felt a sick lurch. Murderers returned to the graves of their victims. This death was relatively recent, there were fresh flowers beside the headstone, and the grave was well maintained.
He felt a prickling at the back of his head. His Host had not left. She was here somewhere.
Jack flung himself on to the ground. Damp seeped through his coat. He crawled forward on his tummy. There was a crackling. He had squashed a bouquet of flowers placed on a grave. He fluffed them up and gingerly snaked around to the rear of the church. Here the darkness was absolute. There was an alley between the church and the next-door house; halfway along he realized that he was doing what she expected him to do. He stopped. Stopping was what she anticipated too. Whatever he did he could not surprise her. He had met his match. He had two choices: she would expect him to go part-way and double back, then think again and go forward. He returned to the cemetery.
He zigzagged between graves to the street. The gate was as he had left it, but he felt sure she had passed this way and was ahead of him, not behind him.
He skirte
d the bushes, shielding the Leaning Woman and darted through the cherry trees to the tangled bushes that formed a boundary to the scrap of leftover land. He pushed through the branches, his coat protecting him from thorns. He vaulted over the railings and found himself in Rose Gardens North. He was opposite the house where Stella’s father had lived. It was in darkness and although he could not see Stella’s van, Jack was positive she was inside. He crept up the path to the house. Dustbins at the right of the bay window were an inadequate hiding place; he was taking a risk. His Host didn’t take such risks; this was his advantage.
Through the bars of the gate he caught sight of her by the subway moving briskly towards the Great West Road instead of following his path through the trees. She was returning to the school. Jack felt a flicker of disappointment: the game of cat and mouse was over before it had begun.
Her singing was soft and lilting. She was in the street. How had he missed her? Jack could bear it no longer and put his hands over his face. Despite the threat, the tune, a song of the sirens, filled him with peace and caressed his cramped, stiff body.
‘Mary had a little lamb,
Little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go…’
The singing was louder as she passed his hiding place. The church bells chimed ten o’clock.
Jack crept up to Terry’s front door. He tilted the flap on the letterbox and let it go. Once, then quickly two more times so that Stella did not mistake it for movement caused by the wind.
‘…And so the teacher turned it out,
Turned it out, turned it out,
And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near.’
The singing grew louder still.
Jack lifted the flap and it took all he had not to bang it and scream out for Stella. He tapped again and pressed his face to the cold glass.
‘“Why does the lamb love Mary so?”
The eager children cry…’
*
The door opened and Jack pitched forward. He put hands out blindly in the darkness and, grabbing the door, silently closed it.
‘What the—’
‘Sssssh!’
Stella felt herself propelled along the hall. She stumbled on the step into the kitchen and lost her footing. A fusty cloth smothered her; everything went black.
‘Keep still and don’t speak.’ More a breath than a whisper.
Her pulse was racing. There was trembling that was not her own. ‘Jack?’
‘Sssssh!’ The trembling increased.
The chill of the floor penetrated Stella’s polo shirt. She could not move: Jack was lying across her and his coat was smothering her. This was not why she could not see. The light was off. Beyond her heart’s feathery beat, Stella heard the letterbox. It was lifted. It did not go down. Someone was looking through.
Jack was shaking. He was scared.
The letterbox shut. Stella strained for the slightest sound and heard the Terry’s gate click shut.
‘OK, safe to move.’ Jack did not move.
Stella felt the length of his long frame along her body. His soft coat brushed against her cheek. It smelled of Ecover non-biological and Jack. She let herself relax.
Abruptly Jack was up and she was dazzled by the overhead strip. Stella struggled to a sitting position and collapsed against the dresser, rubbing the back of her neck to ease the numbness.
Jack was sitting at the table. The shadow of a beard was stark against his ashen features. His fringe flopped, hiding his eyes. With his coat collar up, he looked like an overwrought hero in a black and white film.
‘What was that about?’ Automatically Stella took down a mug from the pine dresser.
‘Nothing.’ He was fiddling with the photographs on the table.
‘Funny nothing.’ Stella flicked on the kettle.
‘Please could I have hot milk with honey?’
Stella poured the remainder of the milk into the mug – so much for it lasting a week – and placed it in the microwave. ‘Jack, what is going on?’ She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
‘Thought I was being followed.’ Jack straightened the row of prints. ‘Terry is numbering these chronologically. That second crash on Marquis Way was more recent than the first one in 1977 when Paul Vickery died. He’s numbered the two shots as ‘6’ and ‘6a’, which suggests it’s later than the Markham crash which Terry’s numbered with a series of fives.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t walk about at night, there’s all sorts out there.’ All sorts included Jack. The microwave bleeped. ‘You’re lucky I opened the door.’
‘Weren’t you expecting me?’ Jack asked reasonably.
It was true, Stella had asked him to come, but he hadn’t said yes. ‘I said come to my flat, at around eight,’ she said firmly, unsure this was true.
‘I’m glad I didn’t then.’ Jack peered at the pictures.
Stella had seen him distracted like this before. It was due to Amanda Hampson. ‘Would you like more shifts?’ He needed structure.
Jack scratched his cheek, leaving marks down his cheekbones like a Red Indian. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Why did we have to keep quiet?’ She glared at him. ‘Who is out there?’
‘I told you, some weirdo.’
‘Actually you didn’t say they were weird. We should call the police.’
‘This is London. It’s nothing.’ Jack swallowed his milk down the wrong way and was overwhelmed by a cough.
‘Promise me you’ll be sensible.’ Stella had no right to exact anything from Jack and he would say so. Nor would he be sensible.
‘I promise,’ Jack said.
Stella joined him at the table and tried again: ‘Are you OK after, you know, after Mrs Hampson?’ Saying her dead client’s name brought back the smell of congealing blood.
‘Yes. You?’
‘Me? Definitely.’
They scrutinized the roads stretching into the distance.
‘I’ve been wondering what Amanda wanted to tell your dad,’ Jack said finally.
‘We know. She told Marian Williams her husband had passed his advanced driving test. Naïve to suppose that prevented him having an accident, as Marian pointed out.’
Jack sipped his milk. ‘She wasn’t naïve. She wanted to save her nugget of gold for Cashman if she couldn’t tell Terry. I think Amanda was fobbing her off, she didn’t want to waste it on a lowly civilian employee.’
‘She got that wrong,’ Stella huffed. ‘Marian is hardly lowly. Her job is vital and she takes pride in it. She’s Cashman’s gatekeeper so that tactic meant Mrs Hampson didn’t speak to him.’ Stella saw something of herself in the rigorously organized administrator.
‘Are you sure she didn’t say anything else to the clerk?’
Stella told Jack about Marian’s arm and her own conviction that Marian was a victim of domestic violence. She had appreciated Marian’s tact in not telling Amanda Hampson that she was Terry Darnell’s daughter. Luckily Hampson had paid her so little attention she had not noticed her Clean Slate uniform or the bleach issue might have come up.
‘Bruises don’t darken that quickly,’ Jack agreed, sipping his milk.
Stella mimed wiping milk off her upper lip but Jack appeared not to notice.
‘Any more thoughts?’ He gestured at the photographs.
‘The streets look the same.’
‘We know they’re not because we’ve been there.’
‘But they are!’ Stella pulled her chair forward. ‘They are the same kind of street.’ She jabbed at the second shot of Marquis Way where Paul Vickery had died. ‘They have no bends or side roads and are long. No houses. All of the three streets we have been to were in a no man’s land – clapped-out industrial units and businesses shut up or run down
, cemeteries. No ordinary person would go there after dark.’ She glared at Jack. ‘That man at the laundry would have called out if he was there legitimately. As you said, he legged it when he saw the van.’
‘You’re right.’ Jack traced his finger along Marquis Way. ‘There are no cameras. CCTV didn’t exist in 1977, but it did in 2002 when James Markham slammed into that horse chestnut on Britton Drive.’ He spiralled a lock of hair and said ruminatively, ‘It’s terrible for the tree. No one thinks of that.’
‘Sweet.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It was a sweet chestnut, not horse.’
‘Fancy you knowing that!’ Jack brushed back his fringe. ‘What a dark horse, or dark horse chestnut you are!’ He eyed Stella gleefully over his mug.
Looking at her grid, Stella saw something that should have been obvious. ‘Every man drove into a tree!’ She put down her tea. ‘Jack, there’s no way these are accidents.’
‘You’re right!’ Jack slumped back. ‘How do you make three and possibly four men, if we count the telegraph pole, die on impact? Law of averages means it’s not possible.’
‘That’s the “how”. Let’s keep to the “why” for now.’ Once Stella knew why there was a stain, she knew what had made it and could decide what agent to use to remove it. ‘There were no cameras on Phoenix Way where Charlie Hampson died either. So for each of these incidents there was no CCTV and no witnesses.’
‘Amanda saw the Collision Report Book for Hampson’s accident. Weather conditions were dry, but there was thick fog. The police told her it’s likely he got disoriented.’
In the beat that followed, the fridge sprang to life, its hum loud in the hushed quiet. Again Stella had the sense Terry was in the room with them. If David’s dog was here, he would know. She picked up her phone. No message from David.
‘Where’s your back-door key?’ Jack got up.
‘Terry hides it in the fork section of the cutlery drawer. Why?’
Jack rattled around in the drawer and found the key. He unlocked the door and went out on to the patio. ‘Lock up after me.’ He buttoned up his coat. ‘A small thing: when you leave, try to look normal.’
Ghost Girl Page 24