Ghost Girl

by Thomson, Lesley

  Stella could not equate the taciturn overweight woman squeezed into her chair with the friendly Marian who had thrust a bouquet of flowers into her arms. It was this kind of erratic behaviour that had prompted Stella to write the section in her manual on avoiding being overfriendly with clients. She scrabbled on the floor for the pens, a stapler remover and some paper clips that had scattered across the carpet tiles and poked them back into the pot.

  ‘They have no idea of the damage they cause.’ Williams wheeled backwards. ‘They think only of themselves.’

  Stella gave the briefest of nods. Clients may engage you in conversation and later complain you are slow. Marian would shake her head to Cashman: Not a patch on her dad. She wadded her duster, squirted spray on it and gave the desk a vigorous polish.

  ‘Take this.’ Marian indicated her screen to Stella, pecking at the keys with an index finger. ‘This chappie cut his hand escaping from the garden of a house he had burgled. He told my colleagues that broken glass on the top of the wall was a “disproportionate response”!’

  She hit ‘return’ and dense columns of words and dates filled the screen. Stella feigning interest, read Marquis Way. ‘What’s this?’ she demanded. Then, to cover up the urgency of her question: ‘It looks complicated.’

  ‘He’s what I was talking about the other night. He is no longer with us, I am not sad to say. Harvey Gray died on Marquis Way. We put the date there, see?’

  Marquis Way was the street with two crashes. The screen swam before her eyes. In 2003, 17 March had been a Monday. Stella forced herself to memorize it in case that was important. ‘Did he crash into a tree?’ She kept her voice level.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Marian Williams angled the monitor so Stella could no longer see it.

  ‘A joke really. Well, not a joke obviously…’ Stella swished her cloth over the desk. She knew it wasn’t a tree.

  ‘No. A telegraph pole, which is as good as a tree. Despite the negative tox report, he was drunk. Had to be. Don’t shed a tear, Stella. Hanging was too good for him. Robert Smith – his dad called him Rob; I make sure to find out, using a formal name underlines the family’s loss – would have been eight two days after he was run over. His parents split up a year later. Mr Smith was drinking and his wife was found dead in bed from an overdose of paracetamol.’ Marian clasped her hands either side of her face. ‘Not her own bed. She was curled up in Rob’s bed clasping his teddy-bear pyjama case.’

  Stella suspected that while Marian was genuinely upset, like Suzie she got a certain satisfaction from being the bearer of bad news. ‘So he died on Marquis Way,’ she said despite herself. So Harvey Grey had killed a child. She wanted to put it in her grid there and then.

  ‘So what?’ Marian got up. Stella had to move away from the monitor.

  ‘I know the street,’ Stella prattled. ‘I had a client there.’ She retreated to her cleaning trolley. Marian might be well aware that few lived or worked on Marquis Way, a road so mired in the recession a cleaner was unlikely to be required.

  ‘There’s a natural justice in Gray’s dying. Poor Rob died outside the Hammersmith and City Underground station. Gray bleated – the man was a teacher, believe it or not – that the little chap dashed into the traffic. No doubt he did, children are impulsive creatures, but we drive to legislate for that, don’t we?’ She was severe. ‘Gray got whiplash. Months later took the coward’s way out.’ She nodded as if she herself had administered it. ‘They say all sin will out.’

  Under the pretext of scribbling on her job sheet, Stella jotted down the boy’s name, the date of his death and the street.

  ‘We had a “jumper” off Stamford Brook station in January. Family were devastated.’ Marian was talking almost to herself. ‘I can’t say I shed a tear. He didn’t think of the tube driver.’

  For the first time Stella considered the hazards of Jack’s job. He never talked about driving on the District Line. ‘Horrible for you too,’ she ventured.

  Marian shook her head. ‘I’m not important.’

  ‘The other night, you mentioned that a David Lauren hit a beech tree on Tolworth Street. He had run over a boy and killed him.’ Too late Stella realized that Marian had not told her how David Lauren had died or what type of tree he crashed into. ‘Or a bollard or whatever… that’s a coincidence, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ Marian looked bemused.

  ‘Two men knocking down children and then dying?’ There was no way out of so deep a hole.

  ‘Not really. They couldn’t live with themselves. If I killed a child I would accept whatever punishment was meted out.’ She gave a start as if she had not meant to be so frank. ‘So many don’t.’ She flopped down at her desk again. ‘Terry said, “We can’t solve the problem, but we can clear up the mess.”’

  Stella would not tell Marian about the blue folder. She was in love with Terry and wasn’t objective. She liaised with bereaved families, filed autopsy reports, collated accident details and supported officers who had attended horrific scenes and seen dead children. While Jack and Stella played detectives, this was her daily life. She would not welcome their interference; she might even resent that Terry had effectively left his unsolved case to his daughter when she was the obvious person. Above all Marian would have no truck with their murder theory. She was convinced that the drivers had ended their own lives. The green glass would not change this. She needed to think they were weak men. It was men like Terry who were strong.

  Jack had once said Stella was a bad judge of people, but this time she had it on the nose. Terry had not shared the blue folder with Marian, nor, Stella resolved, would she. ‘I’ll leave the vacuuming until Friday.’ She moved away from the desk.

  ‘Do it now. Joel’s parents want to go back to where he died. I’m taking them. I’m popping out to get flowers.’ Marian slung her handbag strap over her chest and stood aside to let Stella wheel the vacuum cleaner in from the corridor and then left the room.

  Stella plugged the machine into a socket under the window. A patch of condensation on the window blurred the reddish brickwork of Hammersmith Library beyond. Stella rubbed it away. Shepherd’s Bush Road was familiar from this angle: Terry’s office was along the passage. She left it to last. Cars and lorries were bumper to bumper. Two buses at a stop held up a van, its long wheelbase allowing for a string of writing on the panelling: ‘Bridge Cleaning Services… Medical Hygiene… Cleaning… Kitchen Deep Cleaning’.

  Competition. The van edged around the buses and squeezed through the corridor between a motorbike and the oncoming traffic. A yellow notice on its rear asked: ‘How’s My Driving?’ Stella’s staff must not make slick moves like this to save seconds. She made a mental note to put it in the manual.

  It was easy to have an accident. The surprise was that more people had not died. Marian and Terry dealt with evil that was mostly below the line of everyday vision. They had looked after each other.

  Jack said people themselves were not evil. For Stella it was simple: she too delved into hidden places, her mission to expunge filth and grime that people had allowed to build. It was always down to people. Stella felt sorry for Marian – Stella would not want to take parents to see where their child had been killed.

  She recalled Marian’s phone conversation and hoped it had been with someone who cared for her. She hoped it was not the man who had given Marian the ugly bruise on her arm.

  The Bridge Cleaning van found a traffic break. Stella should have put ‘Deep Cleaning’ on her fleet’s livery. She would do so on the one van left to paint. This made her think of David Barlow. She brightened; she was due there later.

  Stella unreeled the vacuum cable with great sweeps of her arm and set to work on the carpet, keeping straight lines as if she were mowing a lawn.

  Marian was right: children were impulsive. They were less able to judge distance or speed than adults and made sudden decisions or no decision if they blindly chased a pet or a ball. Bewitched by new toys, they raced out in front
of buses and cars, stepped on live rails or drowned in a swimming pool too soon after eating a bag of chips. Suzie had peppered Stella’s own childhood with dire warnings and pithy commandments. Terry too had lamented what he called ‘the failure of the human element’. Evil was a breath away.

  She guided the vacuum out and took a last look at the office. Marian Williams was tidy so it took little to keep it spick and span.

  An hour later she had finished in record time and texted Jackie to confirm their recruitment meeting. Thinking it would be politic to say goodbye, Stella returned to Marian’s office and tapped on the glass. No answer. She popped her head around the door, a bright smile ready. Marian was not there. Her computer glowed in the empty office.

  Stella was about to go when she saw that Marian had left the database open her screen. She couldn’t have long gone or the screen would have blacked out into sleep mode. Stella stared at it as if at the barrel of a gun. Jack’s voice whispered in her ear, urging her on. Stella gripped the door jamb; a strong wind might have been pulling at her, she held it so tight.

  Leaving a computer unsecured was a serious oversight. Confidential information was there for anyone to see. Members of the public were not allowed up here without an appointment, but Amanda Hampson had slipped through. Stella should make herself scarce. Marian was upset; when she returned, she would see her mistake and assume Stella had too. First she had left files on her desk and now this.

  Stella could close the database and then Marian would never know. Armed with this justification she advanced on the desk. She halted. Was this the pit into which the last cleaner had fallen? Her mouth was dry and every muscle in her body thrilled with the imperative to get away from the computer and its whirring fan.

  She heard Jack: Just a peep: dates, streets, victims’ names, drivers’ names: everything we want and more. Stell, it’s all there…

  Marian’s chair faced her. The velvet cushion, patchworked like some needlework exercise, was moulded into the seat. It might be Marian Williams herself.

  There on the screen were the figures and columns Marian had shown her. Stella had the vertiginous sensation of looking down at herself from above. She scanned the ceiling: no cameras. She blundered to the door: no one outside.

  Fatal road traffic accidents in Hammersmith between – ooh, say 1980 and 2012?

  The shame would be unbearable. Clean Slate would be finished. She would be finished. Stella’s hands were ice-cold and clammy. She dashed them on her trouser legs. Marian would be back any minute.

  Stella was a policeman’s daughter. She had never done anything dishonest or illegal. She was sliding into a drab and dreadful land from which there was no escape.

  Her fingers were perfectly steady as she typed in the parameters: ‘Road traffic accidents between 1966 and 2011.’

  ‘Enter’. By mistake, she put in the year she was born. The screen went blank. Jack’s voice made way for a distant ringtone. Shirley Bassey’s ‘History Repeating’ was cut short when the call was taken.

  There were over fifty entries, covering date, location, vehicles involved, time of day, victims, officers. Terry was at her shoulder.

  You are no daughter of mine.

  Now she was shaking and she clamped her hands under her armpits. The search delivered all road traffic accidents for the period, not only fatal ones. Too many; she did not have time.

  You should not be here.

  Mafeking Avenue. One of the streets in Jack’s song. The entry on the grid where they had no child’s name.

  Monday, 7 September 1970. Denis Atkins. Collision with tree approx 22.30. Weather conditions dry and cold. Driver thrown out of Ford Consul Capri; found dead at scene. Neck broken, skull fractured in three places. First officer in attendance: Sgnt T. C. Darnell (No.130253) See: Coleman, Colin, deceased 15/3/70.

  Atkins was the councillor who had hit the plane tree opposite the converted warehouse flats. Connections hovered just beyond Stella’s grasp. She keyed ‘print’ and thwacked the return key. If Marian came in now she would have to explain what she was printing, that she was printing at all. Time concertinaed. Too slowly the machine spewed out page after page.

  At last it went quiet. Stella grabbed the loose leaves, pulled out the plug on the computer and shoved it in again. Marian would think Stella stupid for using it for her vacuum. Stupid was preferable to criminal.

  She pulled the duster from her back pocket and wiped the keyboard. An unnecessary precaution: Marian Williams would not do a fingerprint check. Or would she?

  Only after she had signed off the sheets for Donette and Wendy and was in her van outside the police stables did Stella breathe properly.

  Jack’s ramblings about time being fluid usually frustrated her – punctuality was essential – but now Stella wished it were fluid. If only she could go back to the moment when she saw Marian Williams’s vacated desk and walk away. She had crossed a line and could never go back.

  She turned on the engine and at the same moment, her phone buzzed. It would be Jackie. She had missed their meeting. It was Jack. Stella considered not answering; she knew it was unfair, but she thought he had done enough damage for one morning.

  ‘Yes?’ she wheezed.

  ‘I’ve got it!’

  ‘Don’t shout, I can hear you.’

  ‘That’s because I’m shouting.’

  ‘What have you got?’ It was illegal to use a phone with the engine running and must be more so on police property; she switched it off as if this would redeem her far larger transgression.

  ‘A pattern for the deaths—’

  ‘I’ve got another name,’ Stella interrupted, and then regretted it. She could not mention the computer printout.

  ‘What?’ Jack yelled.

  ‘Where are you?’ Stella adjusted her mirror and caught sight of her eyes. They were wild, the pupils dilated, her mascara smudged.

  ‘Outside Suzie’s flats.’

  ‘Why are you there?’ Stella had the sensation of slithering down a steep hillside. She had forgotten to phone her mum.

  ‘She’s mislaid something.’ Jack’s voice was drowned in a series of pops like distant gunfire. Belatedly Stella recognized an Underground train.

  ‘It’s not your job to find Mum’s things. She loses stuff all the time, mostly her marbles.’ Stella was shouting. She shot a brief smile at a young officer carrying a saddle to the stables. ‘How do you know anyway?’

  ‘Jackie call— I mean… er, I was passing… oh well, it’s no trouble. I won’t charge.’

  ‘Yes you will, you’re not a charity and more to the point nor is my mum.’

  ‘We have a breakthrough.’ Jack’s voice was muffled. He would be in the foyer. Stella tried not to picture the glossed Anaglypta wallpaper. She heard the lift gates clang and was hit by the clinging odour of damp mixed with the smell of meals cooked by people long dead as if she were there with Jack.

  ‘Stella?’

  Jack must know she had spent the last fifteen minutes committing a crime. ‘I’ll come over,’ she said, but no sound came out.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ Jack bellowed.

  Stella was hyperventilating; the windscreen was fogging up. She drew a heart, clumsy and misshapen, on the glass. She put the initials ‘DB’ in the middle and then scrubbed them out, furious with herself. She was not a teenager.

  ‘…I’ve cracked the code!’

  ‘What code?’ Stella addressed the sheaf of database results on the seat beside her. Evidence of involvement in the commission of a criminal offence.

  ‘Your mum’s answering the door.’

  ‘She won’t answer.’ When Stella visited, her mother expected her to use her key as if she lived there.

  ‘Hey, Suz!’

  The line went dead.

  50

  Thursday, 3 May 2012

  ‘Jack!’ Stella bellowed. Through the steamy windscreen she saw the stable door open and the same man as earlier, a ghost in the fug, lead out a horse decked in the M
etropolitan Police livery; the gigantic animal dwarfed the tall officer. The thought – a bad joke – occurred to Stella that it was too late to shut the stable door.

  Jack would be raking through her mother’s rubbish searching for an item Suzie had lost years ago or never owned. Stella should rescue him. But despite the acrid whiff of urine-soaked hay drifting into the van, she didn’t move.

  ‘Mary had a little lamb,

  Its fleece was white as snow.’

  A memory of her dad singing her to sleep floated like gossamer across the misty screen. Terry had taken her to see the horses. She had said the raised squares on the stable floor were like chocolate. Something was nagging. She got the blue folder out of her bag and opened it at the first photograph.

  Stella was startled by a rap on the window. Marian Williams was outside.

  You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned…

  About to start the van and drive away, she forced herself to press the window button. Nothing happened. She fiddled with the ignition key and the glass slid down.

  ‘Did I frighten you?’ Marian Williams enquired.

  ‘No.’ Stella held the folder to her chest to hide how frightened she was.

  ‘I hoped you’d be here.’

  ‘I have forms to complete, calls…’ Stella gabbled. Marian had come to lead her back inside.

  ‘I really hope I didn’t upset you the other night, talking about fatalities, suicides and all. Terry and me, we used to say we’d learnt to deal with terrible things. With you being his daughter, I forgot that these things upset ordinary people.’

  The printout was inches from Marian. Stella snatched it up and crammed it into her rucksack, tearing a page. ‘Not at all. I mean, it’s upsetting, but…’ She bounced the folder on her knee. She didn’t relish being called ordinary, but being called a criminal was far worse.

  ‘Do you fancy going over the road for a coffee? I’m owed some time.’

  If Marian planned to arrest her for breaking into the police system, she was choosing her moment. Her kindly smile gave nothing away. Hemmed in by guilt, Stella could not refuse. ‘Perhaps the office could spare me.’ She gathered up her rucksack and stumbled out of the van. They went at Marian’s slower pace around to Hammersmith Broadway.