‘That’s not a “yes”. If we do agree, it’s “no win no fee”.’ Jackie wouldn’t like that, but Stella would explain it was a trial. She wouldn’t say that she balked at charging anything for detection.
‘Who is this Jack? Are you together?’ Frost startled her. ‘Sorry, that’s not my business.’
‘Jack’s a colleague,’ Stella said sharply. ‘He has a lot of experience.’ She didn’t say that he had been lurking in the cemetery earlier; there was much Frost didn’t need to know about Jack. There was much she didn’t know about Jack. Her mood dropped further. Jack had broken his promise.
‘Will he agree?’ William sounded anxious. ‘I’d be happy with you if he doesn’t.’
‘We are a team.’ Technically, Jack being in the cemetery wasn’t breaking his promise. A graveyard wasn’t a street.
On the roundabout Stella came up with a horrible idea. Dale Heffernan, the man who liked Bruce Springsteen, was Suzie’s Mr Right. That was why she had flown to Sydney at the drop of a hat. Stella overshot the London exit and, circling it again, she told herself this could not be. Mr Right did not exist.
12
September 1987
On a chill Saturday afternoon in London, an insidious fog made wraiths of the lamp-posts and telephone poles in Corney Road, a suburban street near Chiswick House grounds. It wiped out wires slung between the poles and lent the gates into the grounds a ghostly aspect. Emerging out of the grey, traffic on Burlington Lane was a procession of indistinct smudges of yellow.
Built in the 1930s, Corney Road was one line of terraced houses. Even with the tiled roofs and gables wreathed in fog, the houses retained the comforting appearance of a hot-chocolate advert. Threads of smoke wending from chimneys hinted at a crackling grate and leaping flames. Clipped hedges and shingled paths suggested domestic stability. Twenty minutes’ walk from the nearest Underground station, the houses fell within the buying reach of lower-grade professionals: teachers, middle-ranking police officers and council workers such as planning officers and auditors.
The homely atmosphere didn’t extend to the other side of the street where wrought-iron railings bounded Chiswick Cemetery. Angels with broken fingers and chipped wings gazed heavenwards; sublime Madonnas overlooked headstones. A breeze pushed at yew trees and set a chain looped around the gate into a Newton’s cradle motion. Rhythmically it chinked against the post, the lightly pitched sound spelling doom in the quiet.
From Burlington Lane two black shapes clarified to a woman with a pushchair and a boy, belted into a gabardine mac, hurrying along. The boy had one hand on the bar of the pushchair, revealing that much of his middle finger on his left hand was missing. They were talking and joking, lending cheer to the damp and gloomy afternoon. The child in the pushchair, a girl of about two, was asleep, her head lolled to one side, her thumb slipping from her mouth.
They stopped at a house outside which was parked a lemon-yellow Triumph sports car. The front door opened and a man in a black wool suit hugging a battered leather briefcase came out. Strands of over-combed hair were lifted by the breeze. His sallow, gaunt features and stooping posture might look more at home processing coffins into open graves across the road than behind the wheel of a shiny TR7.
‘Off to the funny farm for me!’ The joke was perfunctory. He loaded his briefcase into the boot.
‘Drive safely, doctor,’ his wife replied without humour.
Blowing her a kiss and nodding to his son, the man folded himself into the front seat and drove off towards Corney Reach. When the throaty exhaust faded to nothing, she hugged her son to her.
‘Just you and me, darling, let’s have a cosy “lap” supper!’
‘What larks!’ Simon gave a skip.
‘Ever the best of friends; ain’t us, Pip!’ She completed the ritual exchange and, stroking back his hair from his face, handed him the key to the front door.
Simon’s throat was constricted with joy. His father was away; his sister didn’t count. It was a year since he had left his boarding school and was living at home all the time. Since his first visit on Christmas Eve last year, he had knocked on Justin’s door in the tall house with dark windows every week, but got no answer. He refused to give up hope. Justin had to answer one day.
Tonight his mum had talked to him in their special secret way. It was a sign. For the rest of the evening Simon didn’t let her out of his sight.
13
Monday, 21 October 2013
‘Dale Heffernan, 38 Fisher Ave, Vaucluse. Likes sailing and B. Springsteen. Dislikes having time on his hands!’
Stella reread her mum’s scrawled note for the umpteenth time while she waited for Mrs Carr to answer the door. This was her second visit. She could hear footsteps scurrying about inside and guessed her client was tidying up, as some of Stella’s clients did when she was expected. But given the mess on Saturday, she was surely not bothered what Stella thought.
She was no nearer to discovering who Dale Heffernan was. Her mum had replied to her text asking if she was ‘OK’ with ‘yes’. The name made her think of Engelbert Humperdinck. Her mum often said ‘Please Release Me’ might have been written for her. Maybe Heffernan was a pop singer from the sixties that her mum had Googled. Unlikely.
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.
14
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 s
he 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.
The Detective's Secret Page 6