The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  From the outside Latimer’s house looked like a typical country cottage; it even had roses growing around the door. However, the garden, flagstones set in gravel and three large black marble cubes, undercut this image. Stella, a fan of simplicity, found herself preferring number 2’s scrubby patch in which plastic pots spilled over with dead weeds.

  Stanley tugged on his lead. Feeling apologetic – he had missed most of his agility class – she let him pull her up the steps to the towpath.

  Stella wasn’t prepared for the lack of light and tripped, and just avoided falling on to the shingled path. She unclipped Stanley’s lead. He chased off into the spangled darkness. Stella made out a pale shape before it vanished. This was out of character; she’d presumed that he’d potter about near her sniffing and then lift his leg. He must have smelled a fox or seen a cat. She fumbled in her pocket for her phone to turn on the torch app, but couldn’t find it. She must have dropped it when she tripped. She scrabbled around on the shingle. Gradually her eyes became accustomed to the dark. In both directions, the towpath, a pallid strip, tapered into blackness. Stanley had gone off to the right. Stella nearly shouted with relief as her fingers touched the leather case of her phone. She switched on the torch.

  Stanley wasn’t on the path. She pointed the light over a low parapet to the river below. The wall was about thirty centimetres wide. With his agility skills, Stanley could walk along it. But he was clumsy and one false step would send him tumbling. The tide was in; she could hear water sloshing against the bank. She couldn’t see Stanley, but if he had fallen, he would have been washed downstream. She went numb with dread.

  Dry-mouthed, Stella ripped open her jacket and yanked out the whistle from around her neck. Aware she was near houses, she blew gently. The low hollow sound signalled terrible reality. Stanley had drowned. Reckless of tripping she ran along the path, swinging the torch into scrub either side. The light accentuated the darkness. It was so thick, she felt she would suffocate.

  She stopped and this time blew hard on the whistle. In the ensuing quiet she heard the wash of the river and the hiss of wind in the trees. Suddenly she was in the open. Facing the river was a detached house, double-fronted with a gabled roof. It was dilapidated, guttering hung loose from the roof and when Stella crossed a grass verge and neared the house, she saw cobwebs slung across the window sashes.

  Stanley trotted out of the porch. Stella rushed over to him. He was too quick and her fingers only brushed his collar. He ran down the side of the house. She plunged after him, calling his name in a fierce whisper for fear of waking anyone in the house. Abruptly, as if reminded of his obedience classes, Stanley sat down. She fixed on his lead. He wouldn’t budge. Giving up on a tug of war that Stanley would win because she couldn’t hurt his neck, Stella scooped him up and raced across the grass to the towpath. The back of her neck prickled with the sense of being watched from the dirty grey windows. With leaden legs – Stanley got heavier with each step – she stalked back along the towpath. Blood coursed through her veins like an electrical charge. At last she saw the lamp-post by the steps to Thames Cottages. She broke into a trot, veered off the path and down the steps. She hurried past the little terrace of cottages and into the alley.

  She didn’t stop until she reached her van on Kew Green. Suddenly aware she was panting, she secured Stanley into his jump seat and slid shut the door. The church clock on Kew Green chimed midnight. She had been by the river for fifteen minutes; it felt like forever.

  She reached down to the ignition. There was a tap on the glass. Nerves frayed, Stella stifled a shout. A face was at the window. Pale and gaunt. The ghost. She opened the door, thinking too late that it was the very last thing she should have done.

  ‘Stella Darnell?’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Fifties. Brown suede jacket. Brown polo-neck jumper. A two-day beard. He looked ‘respectable’. And he looked real flesh and blood. She was a poor judge of character. She needed Jack. She needed Jack anyway.

  ‘I saw the name on your van. Amazing coincidence! I was about to call Clean Slate.’

  ‘You need a cleaner?’ His hand was on the door. She couldn’t close it.

  ‘No! Cleaning’s one thing that I’m good at. I want a detective.’ He raked a hand through his mop of greying hair. ‘I want you to find my wife.’

  8

  Wednesday, 7 January 1987

  ‘I’m having one of Topsy’s baby budgies.’ Megan tipped the pudding bowl towards herself and scooped up the last of her banana custard.

  ‘Megs. Manners!’ Bette Lawson was spooning instant coffee into two mugs by the kettle. The family’s nightly routine was in full swing. ‘Tip the bowl away from you.’

  ‘It makes it harder to eat,’ Megan returned placidly. Surrep­titiously she wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

  ‘It’s not definite.’ Her brother Garry was toeing into his shoes by the back door.

  Welling up, Megan dropped her spoon into the bowl. ‘You said I could. Ages ago! Her family doesn’t love her, you said. I will love her.’

  ‘Chick, not “baby budgies” and budgerigars do not have families.’ Garry gave a low whistle as, on one knee, he knotted his shoelace. ‘The mother bird’s hatched lots of chicks and she can’t look after them all. I said perhaps you can look after one. And it’s not about love.’

  ‘You’ll do a grand job rearing the chick, with Garry’s help, Megsy. You’ll make it feel well loved.’ Steven Lawson winked at his daughter as he began clearing the table. ‘Lucky me and your mum only have two chicks. Think of eight of you clamouring for bird seed!’ Passing Megan on his way to the sink, he ruffled her hair. He stacked the dishes on the draining board. His back turned, his expression was careworn as if even two children were too much.

  The Lawsons lived at number 2 Thames Cottages. Built in the 1850s, their house had escaped the gentrification of 1980s London. Then as now, it was a worker’s cottage. The rust-stained geyser above the sink was testimony to Steve Lawson, a plumber, putting business before home improvement. One chair had a broken strut, the table was scored with dents and the wallpaper bulged with damp yet, as on this particularly dark and gusty night, the Lawsons’ kitchen was cosy.

  ‘I’m going to be a De-Cluttering Expert when I grow up,’ Megan announced.

  ‘What happened to breeding budgies and being a plumber?’ Steven handed Garry the dishcloth. ‘The birds can wait, lad.’

  ‘I’ll be those too,’ Megan said. ‘Mrs Merry told this lady called Mrs Crockett to throw out her mother.’

  ‘I can imagine she did!’ Steven Lawson nudged his son away from the sink and filled the kettle. ‘Doesn’t take prisoners, our Mrs M. What does she do with dads?’

  ‘She didn’t say that, lovey.’ Bette Lawson scribbled on the calendar hanging on a cupboard door. ‘That poor woman. She won’t care for dads. I’d have killed you if you’d let anything happen to my two…’ She caught herself and flapped at the January page as if to undo her words.

  ‘I felt a bit sad for the lady. She said her bears and the rabbits were friends. Now she’ll be able to see better. Mrs Merry gave her light and air.’ Megan cheerfully echoed Daphne Merry’s phrase.

  ‘You’re talking rubbish.’ Garry turned on the hot tap. With loud pops, the geyser came to life. He sluiced dishes through the hot suds. Megan grabbed a drying-up cloth from a hinged plastic rail and, positioned importantly beside her big brother, stood ready for the first plate.

  ‘That water’s scalding, Gal. Use gloves.’ Bette Lawson was still scrutinizing the calendar.

  ‘Garry says gloves are for girls!’ Megan announced.

  ‘If she’s blind, why does having clutter matter?’ Garry’s hands were already pink.

  ‘She’s not blind. With no clutter, Daphne says she’ll have straight lines.’

  ‘I hate this fad for having nothing on show. Customers want everything boxed in. All very nice until there’s a leak and you can’t trace it.’ Steven Lawson blew on his coffee.

 
‘It was nice of Mrs Merry to take you to her work with her. Although, like I said, you should have told us.’ Bette finished with the calendar and left the pen swinging.

  ‘She told me,’ Garry remarked. His support of his sister, once solid, now swung between clumsy care and being crippled with embarrassment.

  ‘You didn’t think to pass it on?’ Bette Lawson drank her coffee. ‘I’m on lates tomorrow, Steve, you haven’t forgotten?’ Bette Lawson was a Sister at Charing Cross Hospital’s A and E.

  ‘I told you Betsy, I’ll be here anyway.’ The phone rang in the hall. Rattling aside the bead curtain Steven Lawson went to answer it.

  Later Megan would fix on that moment as when everything went wrong.

  ‘Who was it?’ Bette Lawson asked. Steven Lawson dragged bead strings from around his shoulders as he pushed through the curtain. He snatched up the mug and gulped his coffee.

  ‘Who was on the phone?’ Bette Lawson’s children continued washing and drying. Megan dried an already dry dish.

  ‘That bloke in Chiswick, the one with the two MGs? He’s had a flood from the washing machine. Says I installed it wrong.’

  ‘Did you?’ Bette spoke under her breath.

  ‘Course not. It was second-hand junk. I warned him.’

  ‘Was that the job where the wife called you in saying she was fed up with waiting for him to plumb it in?’ Bette Lawson involuntarily glanced at the geyser. Now was not the time to mention living with a time bomb.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You going down there now?’

  ‘No! He was calling to kindly inform me he don’t ever want to set eyes on me and won’t be paying the bill!’ Steven Lawson crashed his mug down on the table, splashing coffee. ‘He’s charging me for reinstating his neighbour’s ceiling. A full redeck, replastering, painting the lot!’

  ‘He can claim on insurance.’ Bette was unflustered. She dealt with real life-and-death dramas.

  ‘He’s not insured and nor is his downstairs neighbour.’ Steven Lawson knuckled a closed fist against his teeth.

  ‘Kids. Upstairs.’ Bette Lawson waved at her children as if scaring them into flight.

  ‘I haven’t finished drying,’ Megan protested. Her brother aban­doned the sink and, with his hand on her shoulder, shepherded her out of the kitchen.

  Megan heard her dad say: ‘It’s over, Bette, I’m washed up.’ Which was odd because there were the pudding bowls to do.

  Without discussion the children went into their parents’ bedroom at the front of the cottage. Neither of them turned on the light. Megan mooched to the window. The park opposite was too dark to see the swings and the slide. ‘Is Daddy all right?’ Her breath steamed the glass.

  ‘Course.’ Garry sat on their mum and dad’s bed, smoothing and resmoothing the yellow and brown flowered duvet, a leftover from the seventies. ‘He hates cheapskates. So do I.’

  ‘He gets quite cross these days,’ Megan observed as the idea occurred. ‘He was cross with Mrs Merry when we rescued Helen Honeysett’s dog Baxter.’

  ‘No he doesn’t,’ Garry said crossly.

  Megan plumped for safer ground. ‘When can I start rearing my chick?’

  ‘It’s not your chick. You’re going to be looking after it and not on your own, I’ll be watching,’ Garry retorted. He hadn’t changed out of his uniform; his shirt collar was unbuttoned. He sat forward, elbows on knees, tie dangling.

  ‘Yes, but when can I start?’ Her brother’s moods didn’t faze Megan.

  ‘This weekend. Maybe.’ He wandered over to the window and looking up at the sky said inconsequentially, ‘That’s the Plough.’

  ‘It’s Helen Honeysett!’ Megan’s excitement about the chick and her usual interest in stars was subverted by astonishment that it was the very person she had mentioned. ‘She’s running with a torch and Baxter’s there. She’d better not lose him because me and Dad aren’t there to rescue him.’ She added quietly, ‘I’d be scared to go to the river by myself.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ Garry said without conviction.

  The children heard the front door shut; Steven Lawson was running up the towpath steps. A moment later a slant of light fell across the path and their mum was at the gate.

  Megan made to bang on the glass.

  ‘Don’t!’ Garry pulled her away.

  ‘Steve!’ Bette Lawson called into the darkness.

  Garry went to his bedroom. Megan watched her mum come into the house. Then she crept downstairs.

  9

  Tuesday, 5 January 2016

  A sharp wind whipped up from the river carrying with it the smell of mud.

  Midnight. Jack looked along the towpath, beyond the light cast from a lamp-post on the steps to Thames Cottages. He had come to see where he would be living for the next two weeks. Number 1 Thames Cottages was empty. Stella had said Natasha Latimer wanted the ghost got rid of. He didn’t say that ghosts were not ‘got rid of’, they were accommodated. That would sound too much like the sister. He rather liked the sound of Claudia. As for Latimer, scratch the surface and most people harbour a suspicion that the dead walk. She had listened to her sister and come to Clean Slate.

  Latimer’s high garden wall was parallel to the towpath. It was topped with glass, no deterrent for spirits, but it put him off climbing over. He would have to wait until later that day – twenty hours away – when he and Stella were meeting Latimer in the cottage to see the garden.

  Or perhaps not. There was a door in the wall. Natasha Latimer sounded like someone who would cover all points of entry, particularly a door in the seclusion of the towpath. The solid oak door fitted snugly into the wall, leaving no gaps for a foothold. There was no handle. It opened only from within the garden. Jack checked he was alone and switched on the tiny Maglite he kept on his key ring. He shone it on the lock. Jack knew there were few locks that couldn’t be picked. The digital lock – responding to a key pad and recently fingerprints – was his enemy. But luckily there still weren’t many of them around. Despite the apparently state-of-the-art basement, Latimer had fitted a deadbolt lock on her garden door. Or someone had; neither the door nor the lock looked new. A deadbolt could be picked if you had the right tools. He had the right tools.

  Jack switched off the Maglite and waited for the darkness to dissolve so he could make out the outline of the towpath. Experience had taught him there were always others creeping along the alleys and byways of London for whom night was a friend. Few murderers were afraid of murderers. Jack never assumed he was alone. He began to count… eight, nine, ten.

  The breeze had died. Far off he could hear traffic on the Great West Road, but, like the sea in a shell, it might be his blood circulating. He slipped his hand inside his overcoat and was rewarded by a clink. Grimacing at the sound – careless – he extracted his steel lock picks, ‘borrowed’ from someone with no more right to them than he had. He had to work with no light and rely on touch. He must be at one with the lock. He could pick a lock and enter a property without damage. Not even a scratch. If he were a burglar, with no evidence of forced entry, no insurance company would pay up.

  The door opened on greased hinges. Not good: someone used the door regularly. He pushed it to, but didn’t lock it. Never cut off a point of egress. Long grass reached to his knees; buddleia crowded in. Latimer had skimped on the garden; perhaps funds had run out.

  His shoe caught something. He cleared away weeds and grass. A headstone. Jack tore at matted roots around the marble.

  HERCULES 1981–1987

  A FAITHFUL COMPANION

  STILL MISSED

  Confident that the next-door cottage had no view of the end of the garden, Jack swung the light around and saw another headstone. And another. There were five. He had stumbled upon a pet cemetery.

  He cleared moss and soil from the other monuments. All of them only about thirty centimetres high. ‘Max 2000–2012 Lost to us’; ‘Rex 1921–1930 Forever a friend’. Basil had lived from 1966 to 1976 and Bunter (‘Dear one’)
from 1930 to 1941. There was no pattern to the arrangement of the graves: two were side by side, Max and Hercules, the most recent. Latimer must have been loath to dig up the graves of pets belonging to previous occupants of the cottage, but she hadn’t kept them tidy. Given her attitude to rumours of a ghost, he doubted she had much time for death. Still, that she had kept them pointed to a degree, however meagre, of sensitivity. Although thinking about it, the sister – Claudia – was probably responsible for saving them. Were they to meet, Jack fully expected to like Claudia. He supposed Latimer would tell them about the graves later, because surely this, if anywhere, was where a ghost would haunt. Jack had no doubt about the existence of phantoms, but in Latimer’s case, he tended towards the malicious rumour option. Or it could be that, like Rillington Place and Cromwell Street, the backwater of cottages would be tainted beyond living memory by murder.

  He protected his face with his coat collar and edged around a holly bush. Ahead was a sweep of gravel, another enemy. The point of gravel was that it was impossible to tread quietly on it. A rectangular pond was divided by a little bridge to French doors. He progressed over the gravel gingerly, as if avoiding land mines. The room beyond the doors was in darkness, pin-pricks light of what he guessed were standby lights for electrical equipment (TV, hifi etc.) glowed through the glass. The pond was two squares of green glass: skylights. The basement beneath must stretch beyond the extension under the garden. It was a wonder indeed that Latimer had stopped at the pet cemetery. Good old Claudia. Jack hoped she’d be there later. He had no idea if someone was watching him through the French doors. Never assume that no light means no one’s at home. He wouldn’t push his luck. Swiftly he made his way over the gravel, around the holly bush and across the pet cemetery. He closed the garden door firmly, the lock clicked.

  Someone was coming along the towpath. A bright light moved steadily closer. Jack daren’t conceal himself in bushes on the bank: the slope was steep. Besides, a True Host would know he was there. A True Host, Jack’s term for someone who had killed or was going to kill, would find him. Jack’s self-imposed mission was to hunt out creatures of the subterranean night and learn their habits and routines. He tracked men – and women – with minds like his own. The risk was that a True Host got inside his own mind. After his and Stella’s first case, Jack had tried to halt his quest. Stella, strict about means to ends, didn’t approve that, in a bid to prevent murder, he was an uninvited guest in anyone’s home. Yet his mission was the point of living. Long ago he had failed to stop a True Host from shattering lives. He had to atone.