The Detective's Secret

by Thomson, Lesley

  St Peter’s church bells chimed midnight. Jack and Stella had been awake most of the last twenty-four hours.

  Finally he told her about the boy called Simon who had wanted to be his friend at school. The boy was dead. Jack said he had made himself forget that time long ago. Until the toy train brought it back. Suffused with shame, he found the words to tell her that at his boarding school he was for a time a bully. He had been bullied too, he said, wondering suddenly if that bit was true. Was what Simon did to him actually bullying? Huddled in his coat, his milk gone cold, Jack told Stella all about Simon.

  When he’d finished, she took the carriage on another round of the table, stopping at his mug, then at hers, berthing it at the honey pot. She said, ‘School can be a tough place for kids. Jackie says it was hard on you being sent away after your mum—’ She set the carriage off on another circuit of the condiments. ‘Are you saying you think this boy – man – called Simon killed Frost and left you these bits of train? He’d surely have got over you having a go at him by now. Could he be the inspector I met on the station?’

  ‘No, Simon’s dead. He’s been dead for years.’ Jack put his hands to his ears. He heard the pounding of the sea crashing on some far-off shore. More and more he felt his mind wasn’t his own.

  ‘How did he die?’ Stella was examining the wheels of the carriage; Jack could tell she was trying to be tactful.

  ‘He was mugged. Actually in that cemetery you were in tonight.’ He used ‘actually’ to imply it was a coincidence, so as not to worry her. ‘He died later in hospital.’

  ‘So these toys were left by a ghost?’ She betrayed no sarcasm.

  ‘No.’ Yes. ‘Simon was only trying to help me.’ Simon had wanted to be his friend. Jack had never let himself think this before. He had punished him for liking him – perhaps because he didn’t like himself.

  ‘Anyone could have found the carriages or the engine. It wasn’t your usual route, you drive the Richmond to Upminster line, and I certainly didn’t plan on going into the cemetery.’

  ‘Someone could have followed you and left the carriage where you’d find it.’ Jack spoke as his thoughts unfolded. ‘Did you hear anyone while you were there?’

  He could see from Stella’s expression that she had.

  ‘I thought it was the wind,’ she admitted. ‘How would anyone know I would go in or that I’d find the hut?’

  ‘He – or she – could have lured Stanley away from you. Did you happen upon the hut by accident or did Stanley lead you there? The most potent of plans are plotted in chunks and put into action as situations occur. This person didn’t lure you to the cemetery, but if they were watching you, they’d have seen you go in. Cue to set the plan in motion. If you had gone after Lulu Carr to Charbury, they would have left the carriage on Isabel Ramsay’s grave.’

  ‘I was following Lulu, I mightn’t have visited the grave. How would they even think I might?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ Jack said levelly. Mrs Ramsay had been Stella’s favourite client.

  Stella reddened. ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘Such a person will do their homework. They enter someone’s mind and alter the course of their actions. When the time comes, they end their life. We are dealing with a merciless professional.’

  Stella grabbed a brush from the corner of the kitchen and began sweeping the floor. ‘Have we now got three cases to solve?’ She didn’t sound fazed by the prospect.

  Jack stroked his chin. ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Could this Simon from your school have a relative he told about you?’ Stella scooted a minute scrap of onion skin and a stale dog biscuit into a dustpan, and banged it into the swing bin. She gripped the brush handle like a spear. ‘Is someone out to get revenge?’

  ‘There was a sister.’ He was impressed at Stella’s lateral thinking – detective thinking.

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘No idea, although I’m sure he told me. I tried to block him out.’ He had tried to disappear Simon. Simple Simon. ‘He made us prick our thumbs and press them together so we’d be blood brothers.’

  ‘That’s silly nonsense – it didn’t make you brothers. What did you do exactly? Why was it such a big deal?’ Stella leant on the brush handle.

  The distance that divided them was a metre of lino. It might be a yawning chasm.

  ‘I said I didn’t know him.’

  ‘Was that all?’

  He didn’t want Stella to understand. He wanted to keep her opinion of him intact.

  ‘If someone was out for revenge, and quite honestly I doubt they are, then this is a weird way to go about it. Anyone who knows you would see that a train is the perfect present.’

  ‘True.’ Pleased by Stella’s observation – she knew him – Jack resumed his drink, although it had cooled. ‘Their intention would be to unsettle me. In fact – well, I have to say it’s working.’ He didn’t look at Stella.

  ‘OK, so this is what we do. I’ll return this carriage to the cemetery; you can hand in the ones you found to Lost Property. We’ll show him or her that we don’t care. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.’

  Stella washed her mug, scrubbing vigorously inside it with a scouring pad. She put it on the draining board. The cereal bowl and spoon were back. She had cleaned and put away the empty stew pan after supper. Jack was faintly reassured: Terry’s kitchen was restored; it was as if Dale had never been there.

  ‘That wouldn’t work.’ Jack couldn’t say that though Simon was dead, he lived on in his head. Getting rid of the train wouldn’t expunge him. Stella’s straightforward and honest solution belonged to a cleaner, sunlit world. ‘You shouldn’t go back to the cemetery on your own. I’ll do that.’

  ‘Why would that be better? At my primary school a girl stuffed me in the cleaning cupboard. I got Ajax powder in my hair. I haven’t been minded to drop expensive toys around London for her nor can I see anyone doing it on my behalf.’ She looked at Jack.‘She worked for Clean Slate a few years ago. I gave her the top clients; she got into corners and sanitized stainless steel sinks to a sparkle.’ Stella seemed cheered by this recollection. ‘My friend Liz rescued me from the cupboard.’

  ‘Was that why you launched Clean Slate?’ Jack wanted to steer Stella off cupboards.

  ‘No.’ Stella cast him a look. She flipped open her Filofax and wrote ‘Rick Frost’ on a blank page and put today’s date. Subject closed. Case meeting open. ‘That text you sent me about asking Lulu Carr about the glove Stanley took?’ She clicked on her ballpoint. ‘What with the drama of Barwick’s disappearance, I forgot. What’s the significance?’

  Jack couldn’t say his calculation of the West Hill tunnel had led him to make connections that were intuitive with no basis at all in everyday reality. Stella had been patient when he explained how working out the length had opened up his mind; he wouldn’t tax her patience further.

  ‘It’s tenuous. Lucie May said that the dead man in my tower was found face down with a black glove placed his back.’

  ‘You think it’s the same glove?’ Stella was doing her very best to go with him.

  ‘I know, it’s tenuous, but because of the 26666…’

  Stella would consider herself honour bound to contradict any information given by Lucie May. Now was not the time to say that Terry had told Lucie about the glove. As she so often did, Stella surprised him.

  ‘Tenuous is us. Black gloves are common, but not ones with crowns on them.’ She wrote ‘black glove with crown motif’ in her Filofax and looked at him. ‘Are you thinking the cases are linked?’

  ‘One connection is Terry, but since he was a police officer, no surprise there.’ Jack silently blessed Stella for the open mind she must have resolved to keep.

  ‘Jack, if you seriously think there is someone out there looking for you, come and stay in my flat, just till we gauge the lie of the land. There’s CCTV, a London bar and three mortice locks.’

  ‘I live in a tower, how much safer could I be!’

/>   Jack squinted in through the Pullman carriage windows and gave a yelp.

  The dog leapt from his basket and bounded about the kitchen barking, head thrown back. It was the same sound he had made in the tower, and it struck a note of dread in Jack’s chest. Dogs sensed more than humans.

  Stella had dropped her pen. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘The man has gone.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘The man who was waiting for his brandy, the one looking—’ Jack gesticulated at the empty table in the carriage window.

  ‘Oh for goodness— He – it – must have fallen out. Shake the carriage.’ Stella puffed out her cheeks. She shooed the dog back to his basket and fed him another treat. She retrieved her pen from the floor.

  ‘Found him.’ She handed Jack the plastic man. ‘That glove is for a child, but Lulu does have small hands. I’ll confirm it with her. OK, so back to our suspects. Lulu, William Frost, the inspector, Nicola and Nicola’s stalking ex. I really do think we can rule out Lulu Carr. The woman’s impetuous, but I don’t see her harming anyone.’

  ‘What if she had found Nicola Barwick and is pretending she didn’t?’

  ‘She’s not that wily. I’m not even sure she believes they were having an affair. I wonder if she’s made it up. She strikes me as inauthentic.’ Stella folded her arms as if pleased with her idea. ‘Mind you, I do think she’s hiding something. She did lie to me about her husband leaving her, but even so I don’t think that makes her a murderer.’

  ‘And William Frost?’ Jack asked.

  ‘I don’t trust him. Ever since he brought the case to us, he’s been evasive and unhelpful.’ Stella added William Frost to her task list.

  ‘What about this man your friend Liz is seeing? He claims to be a close friend of Nicola Barwick’s, but she never told him about moving from Charbury. Nor did she give him her Charbury address in the first place. Now he’s involved with her lodger. Fishy, don’t you think?’

  ‘People can’t help who they like,’ Stella said. ‘Liz wouldn’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘Whom.’ Jack said before he could stop himself.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘People who make mistakes rarely think they are making them.’ Too late Jack realized that Stella would think he was referring to her past; in fact he was thinking of Dale. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked hurriedly.

  ‘I’ve forgotten.’ Stella looked annoyed with herself. ‘I’ll ask her more about him.’ She noted ‘Liz Hunter’s man’ down on her list.

  ‘What about this brother of Lulu Carr’s? If Frost was cheating on her, the brother might be unhappy – that’s a motive.’

  ‘It’s a big step from being unhappy to killing a man.’

  ‘That’s the kind of thing brothers do. Goodness knows what Dale Heffernan would do on your behalf.’ Jack was being sarcastic. Immediately ashamed, he wished the words unsaid.

  ‘Dale isn’t my real brother,’ Stella said in a small voice.

  ‘Yes he is.’

  ‘I know you better than I do him. Blood isn’t everything.’

  Jack hid his pleasure. He opened the carriage door and slotted the little figure through and tipped up the carriage until he was back at his table awaiting his drink. He took the carriages around the ‘stations’ again.

  ‘Lulu Carr says he’s protective,’ she said. ‘That means he might do anything.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ Jack heard himself repeating the question. ‘The inspector, the brother, the boyfriend: we need names and faces for these people.’

  ‘Is he a suspect?’ Stella was arch, although he hadn’t meant it as a dig.

  ‘Until we cross him off.’

  ‘Lulu didn’t say. I might ask William rather than make her curious.’ Stella noted this down and sat back contemplating the growing list with evident satisfaction.

  ‘After what Darryl Clark – the driver of the train that hit Frost – said, we need to focus attention on your inspector at the station,’ Jack said.

  ‘I keep forgetting to show you.’ Stella fiddled in the pocket in her Filofax and brought out a square sheet. ‘What do you make of this? I found it in the photo booth the night we went to Stamford Brook. Someone must just have left the booth before we came down from the platform. You’d gone to get your train.’

  Jack stared at the four images. They were of the back of a man’s head. His hair, thick and brown, fell just below his collar. He was wearing a white shirt. He looked at all four pictures although they were repeats of the same shot.

  ‘His back is to the camera,’ he said at last.

  ‘Er, yes!’ Stella was impatient. ‘Who does that? I wondered if it was the inspector-man I met? I heard the machine going just as we were going up to the platform. I thought then it was an odd time to get your picture done. The timings would fit. He probably dived into the photo booth to avoid us seeing him.’

  The corpse in the tower had been face down. When Simon had come to say sorry about the things he said in the room below the library, Jack had turned his face to the wall.

  You denied me you knew me. Three times.

  Stella was still talking. ‘—I thought at the time it was a funny mistake to make. I’ve had duds in those machines when the flash goes before you’re ready but I always face the right way! It does look a bit like him.’ She held up the pictures.

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t see the man’s face.’

  ‘I didn’t, but as we’re keeping an open mind—’

  ‘I didn’t see him at all.’ Jack pushed the pictures back. ‘We need to see him from behind.’ He was thinking out loud now. ‘There’s an Agatha Christie story in which the murderer is seen from the back, in fact it’s on a train—’

  ‘Jack.’ Stella’s patience had run out. ‘Would you go back to Lucie May and ask her what else Terry told her?’ She called Stanley out of his bed and fastened on his lead.

  Another of Stella’s surprises. While he’d been worried about upsetting her, she was concentrating on the case. He was sure she didn’t know there had been anything serious between Lucie and her father. She was able to put aside personal feelings for the bigger picture. He could only dream of being like her. Inchoate with emotion, Jack could only nod.

  ‘What shall we do about the toys, since you don’t want to hand them into Lost Property?’ Stella asked. ‘You shouldn’t go back to the cemetery on your own.’

  ‘Let me check a few things.’ Jack wasn’t ready to share the idea he was forming. He wasn’t ready to take it on himself. He jumped up and rattled at the handle of the back door. ‘Where’s the key?’

  ‘Same place as usual, with the forks in the cutlery drawer.’ Stella slung on her rucksack. She knew him well enough not to ask why he was going out the back way.

  ‘Lock up after me.’

  On the patio an icy blast stung his cheeks. Stella stood by the door, the dog at her side. Behind her the kitchen looked cosy; an aroma of stew lingered. Hauling himself up onto the wall at the back of the garden, Jack imagined going back with her to her flat and drinking hot milk on her spotless cream sofa.

  ‘Be careful.’ But his words were flung away by a powerful gust. Balanced on the garden wall, he turned to wave. The kitchen was dark.

  He caught the distant slam of the van door, the engine firing, the sound drowned by the howling wind.

  49

  Sunday, 27 October 2013

  The south-east window in Palmyra Tower looked out on to the looping spans of Hammersmith Bridge. On the sill were sticks and coils of twine that Jack had collected from the riverbank as a child. These were shored up by flint and limestone washed smooth by the Thames. On top of the ‘embankment’, Jack had laid the steam engine.

  He took out the two carriages from his workbag and coupled the new rolling stock to the engine. He repositioned everything on the ballast. He had a train. He contemplated his tableau.

  He heard the sneeze of the funnel and shaded his eyes from the smoke. The hot furnace
made his skin smart and his arms ached from heaving shovelfuls of coal. At full pelt, pistons racing, the engine could do fifty-four miles per hour.

  The sink glugged. He went over, ran the hot tap and chased out the airlock. Yet again the water was cold – he must email the consortium – but then it went warm again, and the issue lost its urgency. He returned to his train and became aware of the buzzing he heard intermittently and had vaguely attributed to a trapped fly or wasp. A red light winked on the burglar alarm sensor above the window. The instrument should be pointing to the front door to catch an intruder at the only possible point of entry. It was pointing at him.

  Jack was about to reposition it, but it was delicate, he could break it. It would be there for insurance purposes. As he had told Stella, the tower was safer than anywhere. Elbow resting on the table, chin on his cupped hand, he imagined tucking into Dale Heffernan’s lamb stew in the Pullman car.

  This fantasy was shattered by the memory of earth and stones raining down. The tunnel had caved in on the train. Jack had blamed himself for the miscalculation of width and roof strength. But he never made stupid errors.

  He fetched his binoculars from the north window sill. He trained them on the beach by Black Lion Lane where he had gathered the flotsam and jetsam. No one there. He swung the glasses away and tracked the towpath along through Furnival Gardens to the bridge. A lone car was making its way across to the Barnes side.

  Jack lowered the instrument. He picked out a cotton bud from a pot on the table and dipped it in a pot lid filled with steam oil. He loved the delicate smell of the oil. Holding the engine steady, he travelled the bud along the coupling rods and over the crosshead and sidebars. In a hoarse voice he spoke to Glove Man’s ghost: ‘Dust is the enemy of wind-up clocks and steam engines. It must be kept out of the mechanism. Oil enables smooth working, but the paradox is that it also attracts dust.’