The Detective's Secret

by Thomson, Lesley

  Where was Stella? Jack dropped the binoculars, flung off his coat and rushed out of the flat. He leapt recklessly down the spiral staircase and heaved open the lower door.

  On the walkway, he was again blasted by the wind: it lashed at him and pushed him centimetres shy of the edge. He inched along, paying the slender rail through his hands like a rope, his skin burned by the ice-cold metal. At last he reached the cage. Wind harassed the grille, shaking it violently.

  ‘Stella!’

  His shout was whipped up and away. As he struggled down the stairways, Jack was bounced against the sides of the cage. Stella had come to the tower, but with no means of telling him she was outside, she must have gone away. She had gone to his Garden of the Dead. She had missed her footing and been washed out into the river. A vicious current had pulled her down. Stanley was searching for her. This dreadful narrative could not be true, Jack told himself.

  ‘Stella!’

  On Chiswick Mall the wind roared about his ears; it scooped tiny stones and flung them at him. Head down, he slithered down the steps and on to the foreshore. His shoes sank into the mud. He raced along to stop it pulling him down, using rubbish strewn at his feet as crude stepping stones. He knew the terrain; forcing himself to calm down, he found the causeway.

  He reached the steep bank of concrete-moulded sandbags and pulled himself up to the path. Without his phone he had no torch. He felt his way over the land, touching the branches, the reeds. At last he arrived at the place where he had seen Stella’s pet. The dog wasn’t there.

  ‘Stanley? Here, boy.’ Stella said that dogs sensed uncertainty; it made them less likely to respond. He lowered his voice and commanded, ‘Here, Stanley.’

  In his hurry, Jack hadn’t brought any food. He had nothing with which to entice the dog. He was overtaken by tingling panic. Where was Stella? The river was oily black; he could see nothing.

  ‘Stanley?’ The sound was parcelled away by the wind. The St Jude storm had arrived.

  He reached the place where Rick Frost had tried to throw Simon Carrington into the river. He had stopped him. Did Simon remember that Jack had saved his life? Jack clambered up the bank into his garden.

  The line of white stones had light of their own. To him, disorientated by the storm, the place was strange. The rush of reeds and the scrape and rasp of leafless trees, their branches lashed by the storm, were not the sounds of his garden.

  Jack tripped and fell. A remorseless squall tore at his shirt.

  ‘Stella!’ he sobbed, kneeling in his Garden of the Dead as if in prayer.

  Something pushed at his pocket, and then tugged. He felt a cold snout and, peering down, found Stanley beside him. The dog nuzzled up to him and licked his cheek with a warm tongue.

  Jack grasped the dog around the waist. Struggling to his feet, he grabbed at flailing branches. He couldn’t go back the same way, he might fall into the river. He risked the inner path where he might meet Simon. He inched forward, feeling for compacted ground that defined the path. He pushed through reeds and brambles and emerged opposite Chiswick Mall. The street lamps were out – there was a power cut. He couldn’t see his tower.

  The dog was quaking, his woolly coat sodden. He had been in the river. Had Stella tried to save him? Jack lowered the little dog to the ground.

  ‘Go find Stella!’ he whispered. Like his mistress, Stanley had a powerful sense of smell. He would lead Jack to her.

  Stanley stood at his feet shivering, unclear what Jack wanted from him.

  ‘Go find!’ Jack shouted.

  A gust of wind hit the dog and he tottered against Jack’s legs. He hadn’t sniffed a scent. Jack picked him up and the dog burrowed into his neck. Stella couldn’t be out there. Jack began a perilous journey across the mud.

  Had anyone looked out from a window in one of the houses, their eyes accustomed to the dark, they might have made out two figures, tall and of similar build, wending their way over the mud. An onlooker might have assumed them to be of one party, for their pace was synchronized as if their walk was choreographed. When the man in front paused to locate a stepping stone, the other, twenty yards behind, paused. He moved only when the first man resumed his journey to the shore.

  No one was watching.

  The storm was deafening, wind whistled about his ears, the banging and crashing of loosened casements was underpinned by the relentless thud of a barge smashing against its mooring.

  Jack regained the camber and, slipping and sliding over debris chucked up by the river, the wind swirling around him, struggled past St Nicholas’ church. A clanging jangled in his head, like discordant bells, although the actual bells were silent. He ducked into the alley and saw he had left the cage door open. It swung back and forth, the clanking resounding in his ears.

  In the dark Jack couldn’t see his feet. Numb with cold, he was in a dream where limbs are lead and air is water. He chose his moment between the furious slamming of the gate and pushed into the cage, clutching the dog.

  On the third stairway, Stanley cocked his head. Jack made it to the platform and looked down. A shadow moved. It was his imagination. There were shifting shapes and shadows everywhere. Nevertheless: ‘Who’s there?’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the name, to admit his existence.

  You denied you knew me. Three times.

  A splitting tore the air. One of the rivets on the cage sheared. The structure was adrift from the wall. Jack ran up the last two stairways and flung himself on to the metal walkway.

  Time telescoped twenty-six years to the night in 1987 when the man had been trapped in this tower. Scared and alone, his voice drowned by the roar of the wind. Jack imagined that the wind he heard now was a scream of terror. He pressed his back to the cold concrete as the walkway lurched like the deck of a ship pitching on stormy waters.

  London was chaotic. The storm battered trees and tore up fences, tossing them like kindling. On King Street, a 27 bus rocked and tilted against a shop front, wheels a metre from the road, a ship on a reef. On Hammersmith Broadway, a lorry slewed into a railing and coarse sand spilled over the road. Cars and houses were crushed by branches and blocks of masonry. No planes flew in the sky; no trains travelled along tracks engulfed by soil when embankments gave way. Drains blocked and roads flooded. Power lines down.

  Jack saw there was no point in turning the clock back. Wherever it stopped, someone would die.

  You denied you knew me. Three times.

  His tower had survived over seventy years; it would withstand the storm. He pushed his way inside the little lobby. Simon couldn’t reach him here. He held tight to Stanley and navigated the spiral stairs. He whispered to the trembling animal:

  ‘This is the house that Jack built.

  This is the malt

  That lay in the house that Jack built.’

  Jack placed Stanley on his bed. The dog’s saturated fur soaked into the duvet and a damp patch spread around him. Streaks of mud flattened his whiskers and plastered down his chest. He was a scrap of a thing, his button-brown eyes wide with fear. Intermittently he was gripped by an immense shiver; like a Mexican wave it travelled from his head to his toes. Stella said it was threatening to stare at dogs so, affecting nonchalance, Jack sauntered into the kitchen and filled his cereal bowl with water.

  He studied the meagre contents of his fridge for something Stanley might like. There was a lump of stale cheddar on the top shelf. Jack felt shame he had so little to offer. Stella would want him to feed Stanley. His throat caught: he was thinking as if she would never come back. He pulled himself together and pared off the hard rind and the top of the cheese and cut it up. Cupping the cubes in his palm, he returned to the front room.

  ‘Here you are, Stan—’

  Stanley was beside the bed, sitting bolt upright. Jack chucked him a bit of cheese and resumed his rhyme.

  ‘This is the rat,

  That ate the malt

  That lay in the house that Jack built.’

  Stanley didn’t
move.

  ‘Yeah, good boy, no reason you should trust me.’ Jack tried a bright tone. The dog was circumspect. Like his mistress.

  ‘This is the cat,

  That killed the rat,

  That ate the malt

  That lay in the house that Jack built.’

  He tossed a cube of cheese a little closer to the dog. Stanley looked at the cheese and then at the partition wall as if choosing between them. Jack threw another cube, further away from him this time. The dog looked at the wall. The dead man had been found on the other side of the room, by the door. Why was Stanley here?

  The dog began to dig furiously at the partition wall as he had on the boards where the body was found. The animal was distressed; he was missing Stella. Confounded by the wind, he had confused the wall with the door. Jack couldn’t make it better – he too missed Stella. He should not have come up here; he should have gone to the police.

  Jack squatted down to see what Stanley was fixated by. A line had been drawn, straight as if with a ruler, but it was so faint that, if it weren’t for the dog’s fuss, he wouldn’t have seen it. It did a right-angle turn and went vertically up the wall and stopped centimetres above his head. It continued horizontally a metre and came down again. It was the outline of a doorway.

  Jack strode around the partition wall to the kitchenette. The wall came out in a ‘v’, about sixty centimetres at its widest point. Diverted by the curving walls, Jack hadn’t noticed that the wall was on a slant.

  Jack had always wanted to live in a panopticon like Jeremy Bentham’s nineteenth-century concept: a tower that observed prisoners from behind slatted windows. The prisoner could never be sure how many officers were up there. There need be none. Thinking they were being observed, the prisoners, Bentham believed, would behave.

  When pipes hissed or the sink glugged or his internet connection switched to a router labelled CBruno, Jack had found explanations for the anomalies. ‘How Soon Is Now?’ was only his mind soothing him, as his mother used to do. Simon had sent him signs, clues and messages, but, intent on keeping watch on the city, Jack had dismissed them.

  Simon didn’t want to be his friend any more. Of all the places Jack could be, the tower felt the least safe.

  Stanley shrank away from the wall. Jack picked him up. Cold air drifted into the room. The line was a crack. The crack was widening. Jack heard a whisper:

  ‘This is the dog,

  That worried the cat,

  That killed the rat,

  That ate the malt

  That lay in the house that Jack built.’

  61

  Tuesday, 29 October 2013

  ‘Come on, Stella.’ Lucie May was wrestling into a red woolly coat that covered her like a tent. She wound a yellow scarf around her face, muffling her voice. ‘Would you mind doing the driving? I never learnt.’ She asked as if Stella had an option.

  Outside the storm was wild. Wind hit the windows and roared about their ears. As soon as Lucie was in the van, Stella accelerated away from the kerb. The passenger door swung out.

  ‘Steady on, Officer Darnell. If we are the cavalry, can we at least stay on our damned horse!’

  Neither woman spoke as, keeping to the speed limit, Stella drove through deserted streets, littered with smashed fascias, glass, sheets of roof felting, tiles and branches. The wind rocked the van as if it was being attacked by an angry crowd.

  On King Street, Stella swerved to avoid a car’s exhaust pipe and slammed into a recycling bin, dragging it several metres under her fender. Jack was in the tower believing he was safe from Simon, but instead he was a lamb to the slaughter. Simon had taken Stanley.

  Overwhelmed by a hopelessness that was unfamiliar to her, Stella drove under Hammersmith flyover and on to the Great West Road. Her phone lit up with a text.

  ‘What does it say?’ she shouted at Lucie.

  Lucie fished her glasses out from a voluminous leather handbag, taking a maddeningly long time to extract them from the case and fit them on to her face. She extracted the phone from the dashboard cradle and frowned at the screen.

  ‘It’s from Jack!’

  ‘What does it say?’ Stella yelled, her foot squeezed the accelerator pedal.

  ‘The cock has crowed. Oh Lordy-lou, that boy!’

  ‘What does that mean?’ For once Stella was inclined to agree with Lucie about Jack.

  ‘No idea. Does he have a pet hen?’

  ‘He has an owl – no, that’s a door knocker.’

  ‘You’re worrying me, darling.’

  ‘Is it in the Bible?’ Stella didn’t know where her question had come from.

  ‘Damn right! It’s the Last Supper. Jesus says that Peter will disown him three times, before or after the cock crowed, can’t remember. Anyway, Peter’s adamant he won’t betray Jesus, but he does. Three times!’

  ‘Jack wouldn’t betray anyone.’

  ‘Jack refused to be Carrington’s friend. I think in this scenario, Carrington is Jesus.’ Lucie May pulled her scarf away from her mouth. ‘We’re dealing with a madman!’

  ‘Simon sent this text. He’s got Jack’s phone!’ She smacked the dashboard. It occurred to her that Jack put a kiss after a message and this one had no kiss. She berated herself for dwelling on irrelevant detail while missing the key issue. Simon Carrington had Jack’s phone. What would he do next?

  She signalled left into Church Street, bumping the van over debris strewn over the road from bin bags and chucked up from the riverbed, and braked opposite the passage to the tower. She tried to open the van door. It was stuck.

  ‘It’s the force of the storm.’ Lucie made no move to get out. ‘Do a three-point turn so we’re facing the other way.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ Stella pushed harder and opened the door five centimetres, then stuck her arm into the gap to stop it closing. Excruciating pain took her breath away. She was caught in a giant vice. She pushed with all her might and managed to release her arm.

  Lucie was puffing placidly on her e-cigarette. Giving in, Stella started the engine and did what amounted to a ten-point turn, revving the engine and stamping on the brake.

  With the wind blowing against the back of the van, the door was snatched from Stella’s grasp when she opened it. They both clambered out of the van easily, sheltered from the gale by the bonnet of the van. Only then did Stella notice Lucie’s shoes. Slip-on pink high heels.

  ‘You can’t wear those, you’ll fall,’ she shouted against the wind.

  Lucie delved into the huge handbag and produced a pair of pink Hunters. Leaning on Stella’s arm, she hopped about on each foot and swapped her high heels for the boots.

  Stella pulled her phone out of her pocket, looking in vain for a text – any sign – from Jack. All she saw was a pair of staring eyes at the top of the screen.

  Stalker Boy.

  Who was watching her?

  Stella stepped out of the shelter of the van, and a powerful rush of wind felt as if it would rip her hair from her scalp. She reached up to pull up her hood and saw the tower.

  Someone was on the roof.

  ‘JACK!’ she yelled. She tried to point him out to Lucie, but the journalist had crossed the road and was stomping off down the passage.

  The cage door crashed open and then shut, harassed by the wind. Above the clamour of the storm, Stella heard a high-pitched humming as if some choir was singing. It was the wind whistling through the grille. She wrenched open the door. Her little finger bent back; distantly she registered that it might be broken. She hustled Lucie into the cage and on to the first stairway. As they climbed, the frame shook, the force of the wind increasing with each step. Fixed on Lucie a few steps above her, Stella had no sense of making headway.

  Lucie staggered on to the walkway and leant recklessly on the flimsy guard rail. All that stood between her and a plummet of several hundred metres was a length of rusting iron. Stella waved at her to come away, but Lucie was shouting and gesturing. Stella turned and saw what she was
pointing at. In a freak lull in the storm, she heard Lucie: ‘Rivets. Gone! If rest go, it’s curtains!’ Her telegrammatic words rang out above the wind.

  As if to illustrate this, the frame swayed out from the wall: another rivet had snapped. The walkway shook. Stella took Lucie’s hand and lunged at the door. Already open, it gave way and they fell inside, stumbling at the foot of the spiral staircase. Lucie shut the door.

  In the sudden quiet, Stella heard music. She recognized the Smiths.

  ‘I never could bear that band. Enough to send you back to take a jump.’ Lucie stuffed her cigarette in her coat pocket and clutched her handbag.

  ‘It’s Jack’s favourite,’ Stella said.

  ‘Get away!’

  ‘It’s a sign.’ Stella clattered up the staircase, shouting, ‘Jack, it’s me, Stella!’ Her words reverberated against the concrete wall. ‘And Lucie.’

  Jack’s flat door was closed.

  ‘He’s on the roof.’ Stella continued up the staircase.

  ‘We’re coming!’ Lucie’s tone implied she was playing hide and seek.

  At the top of the spiral staircase was a flat ceiling in which was a glass hatch of a metre square. Stella stretched up to slide the bolts. It was open. Of course it was – Jack was up there – but why shut the skylight?

  Stella slammed her hands against the glass, but it didn’t shift. She pushed harder but it made no difference – she lacked the strength to lift it; the glass alone must weigh thirty kilos.

  Stella went up to the penultimate step, until she was so close to the skylight that she had to crouch. She flattened herself against the curving glass, her feet either side of the stair, grasped the handrails and, pushing, manoeuvred herself to half standing. The hatch didn’t shift.

  ‘Wait!’ Lucie inserted herself into the gap between the top step and the skylight above Stella. She raised her hands above her head and splayed her fingers on the section of glass beside Stella’s back. ‘Say “when”!’ she gasped.

  ‘One, two, three. Push!’

  Stella and Lucie began to straighten their bodies, the action like two levers. There was the crack as the rubber seals parted and the frame lifted a centimetre, three, five centimetres. It stopped.