‘The playroom.’ She paused by a large stainless-steel-lined area filled with sand. Against the wall was a tall steel rack on which sat a pristine teddy bear.
Stella was expressionless. She never asked clients personal questions or commented on what they told her about themselves beyond what was polite. Clients could round on her for giving them bad advice or for knowing something they regretted telling her.
Jack sighed. ‘Fancy having your own sandpit.’
‘It’s not mine! It’s to show how to use the space. Claudia wanted a meditation space.’ Latimer flapped her hand at a glass wall and it swished aside. ‘One has to lead buyers by the hand, give them ideas.’ In the second ‘room’ was a bright red sofa – a Salvador Dalí copy, it resembled a lipsticked mouth. To the left of this stood a large galvanized steel box the size of a small car.
‘Ta-dah!’ Showing them her ‘project’ was cheering Latimer up. She pulled a handle and one side of the box swung away. Inside was a home office with a laptop computer, printer, drawers and one of those chairs without a back that forced you to sit upright. She shut the box again.
Black water, thick and sluggish as oil, flowed towards them. Flickers of light caught the surface. Jack stepped back and there was a shriek. He’d trodden on Stanley. The poodle held up a paw and fixed him with a baleful stare.
Stella picked Stanley up again. ‘Did you film this?’
Jack saw that the water was a projected image on the wall.
‘It’s not a film.’ Latimer went to the wall. She merged with the image as if she might float away. ‘It’s real time. There’s a camera on the roof.’
‘Wonderful.’ Jack touched the wall, half expecting it to be cold and wet, to feel the current pulling him under. In the sparse subterranean space, it was like a window.
‘I think so.’ Latimer looked pleased and beneath the profit-margin mentality Jack glimpsed pride in her project. She added grudgingly, ‘It was Claudia’s idea.’
‘Does it show the garden?’ Jack was nervous.
‘No, there’s nothing to see.’ She led them into the last room. This was bare with a white-painted brick wall at the end.
‘Is this the meditation space?’
‘No,’ Latimer responded bluntly.
Jack looked up. Where were the rectangles of green glass that he’d mistaken for a pond? ‘What’s behind this wall?’
‘Nothing.’ Latimer was getting irritable.
‘I wonder, could we see the garden?’ Jack asked.
Latimer glared at Jack. ‘It’s dark. Besides, the squeaking comes from inside.’
‘You didn’t mention squeaking.’ Stella kept her voice level.
‘It’s nothing. Just when I’m in bed. Claudia has heard it, but she imagines things.’
‘The supernatural knows no boundaries.’ Jack saw Stella quail.
‘If you’ve got intruders, it’s a matter for the police,’ Stella said.
‘They did one of their security checks. Gave me advice about window locks and setting my alarm. Patronizing plods!’ She addressed Jack. ‘No visitors. If you’re tied up with a girl and think you can party-party, think again.’ She stalked through the basement, heels clicking on the faux ice, the hiss of sliding panels insidious in the sealed silence. ‘Stay close at all times.’
‘I understand.’ Jack resisted saying that he was always pining for someone and it didn’t interfere with his cleaning. And he hated parties.
When they were on the doorstep Jack remembered Bella. No visitors. He had to keep close to the house. No night journeys either.
‘When can you start?’ Natasha Latimer demanded.
‘We will draw up a contra—’
Jack interrupted Stella: ‘Tomorrow.’
*
Jack and Stella walked up the path to the pavement.
‘That one with the plastic flower pots is the Lawson house,’ Stella whispered. She indicated the neglected garden next door to Latimer’s. ‘Natasha Latimer didn’t mention Steven Lawson.’
‘If he’s in prison that would explain why the son feels protective towards his mother.’ Jack had never had the chance to protect his mother. Or rather, given the chance, he had failed to protect her.
‘If Steven Lawson is in prison for murder wouldn’t Adam have said?’ Stella said. ‘You’ll be well placed for door-to-door interviews. I’ll introduce you to Adam: we need your take on him. There’s something he hasn’t said.’
Jack had the conviction they were being overheard. To their right a tall hedge ran beside the park. He stood on tiptoe and looked over. Across the grass stood some swings and a slide. One swing seemed to be moving but, looking again, he decided it was the shadow of branches. Before Stella asked what he was doing, he said, ‘It could have been a random attack on Honeysett by a stranger.’ In case she was watching, he shielded his face with his collar as they passed Daphne Merry’s house.
‘It’s likely the kind of person who did that would have killed again in the last twenty-nine years. The police would’ve checked for matches.’ Stella stopped outside number 4. The curtains were drawn, the lights out. ‘Looks like Adam’s not in.’
‘Perhaps the killer doesn’t have an MO. Or they’re dead.’ Jack wasn’t in a hurry to meet ‘Adam’. ‘Or the killer’s in prison for another crime.’
‘We have to assume the police considered that. Let’s limit the scope or this will be too big to handle. Honeysett had a predictable routine so let’s start with those who knew it.’ Stella paused outside the last cottage. ‘Sybil Lofthouse will be hard to crack if she keeps herself to herself.’
‘I’ll find a way,’ Jack said.
‘Two of them had dogs. Steven Lawson and Daphne Merry. It gave them a reason to go to the towpath.’ Stella was already well versed with the facts.
‘Natasha Latimer said Sybil Lofthouse had an “ancient mutt”,’ Jack reminded her.
‘That’s now. In 1987 she did early shifts at the Stock Exchange. She may not have had a dog.’ Stella had missed nothing.
‘We only have Adam Honeysett’s word for it that his wife took their dog. He might have killed her and abandoned the dog on the towpath.’
‘True. And there’s Bette Lawson. If her husband was having an affair with – or even fancied – Helen Honeysett, that’s a motive for murder.’
‘With those graves in the garden, Neville Rowlands must have had a dog.’
‘He did. Adam told me he took a dog to the towpath for five minutes and went in the opposite direction to Helen Honeysett.’ Stella stopped. ‘What graves?’
‘Latimer said there were pet graves in her back garden.’ Natasha Latimer hadn’t mentioned the graves.
‘Did you see that?’ Stella was looking back at Daphne Merry’s cottage.
‘What?’ Dizzied by his mistake, Jack was barely capable of seeing anything. In case Daphne Merry saw him, he shrugged into his coat.
‘Something moved by that water butt.’
Jack tried to sound dismissive and made the same suggestion as he had on the towpath: ‘Probably a fox or a cat.’
‘That was probably the sound Natasha Latimer heard.’ Stella continued to the alley. ‘Given Latimer intends to sell I’ve asked Jackie to price up the job based on our “Prepare for Sale” package. Are you sure about starting tomorrow? What about Bel—’
‘Perfectly sure.’ Jack felt weighed down with his secret. If Latimer had showed them the graves, he could talk about them as if that was when he’d first seen them.
‘It seems Latimer’s the only newcomer since 1987. The neighbours might have resented her regardless of her basement. People can be funny about change,’ Stella said as if she herself was relaxed about change.
While they waited for Stanley to lift his leg against a tree on Kew Green Jack remarked, ‘Going by Natasha Latimer’s description of the residents of Thames Cottages, I’d say any of one of them could have murdered Helen Honeysett.’
18
Friday, 27 February
1987
Megan got the swing going, kicking at the tarmac when she swooped down to make it go higher. If her dad was here, he’d push her, but by herself it wasn’t as good. He hadn’t come back with Mum after work. She’d said he was on a job. When Garry asked, ‘What job? I thought Dad wasn’t getting—’ her mum had shouted at him to go and feed his birds. Even though he was in his school uniform. She didn’t see Megan sneak out to the playground. She would wait for her dad. The park was closed so she’d climbed over the gate. All the top windows in the houses were dark; from the swings, no one could see her.
Megan was also hoping to see Daphne Merry. She mustn’t speak to her, but it couldn’t be against the rules to see her. Since the police, her mum wouldn’t let Megan be a De-Cluttering Assistant. She needed to tell Mrs Merry this (Megan didn’t dare say Daphne, didn’t dare say her name at all), but since she wasn’t allowed to speak to her, she didn’t how to let her know. She didn’t want to stop assisting.
Megan had overheard her mum saying to her dad ‘…that Merry woman wants to make us feel as shit as her! I won’t put up with…’ She’d stopped when she saw Megan by the bead curtain. Megan had been as shocked by her mum swearing as she was puzzled by what she’d said because Mrs Merry only wanted people to have light and air.
Garry wasn’t speaking to Megan. Nor was her dad, but he wasn’t speaking at all. Before he went to work with her mum, he’d kissed her goodbye. She wasn’t supposed to speak to Mrs Merry or Aunty El as they called her mum’s older sister. Megan scuffed at the ground and walking the swing, she hurled herself towards the sky, straight legs thrusting her upwards. The hedge reeled away beneath her; to her right she glimpsed the river. She wanted to keep going up and never come down.
Mrs Merry was on the towpath. Megan blinked and looked properly. It really was her. Fleetingly it passed through her mind that her dad wasn’t safely in the bright kitchen where her mum could see him.
Do as you would be done by.
Megan must warn Mrs Merry about being out by herself. She leapt off the swing and fell forwards. Palms stinging, she tore past the slide and the gate by the towpath. Behind her the swing oscillated wildly as if she was urging it on, the squeaking chains an echo of the long-lost soundscape of Thames barges creaking on their moorings.
She clambered over the gate. ‘Mrs Merry—’ Cold fingers clamped her mouth. She was dragged backwards. The park railings pressed into her like a rack.
‘Megan. Come back indoors!’ She smelled the aftershave Garry had started spilling on to himself. It was called Polo like the sweets she didn’t like. She liked the smell, but her arm was really hurting.
‘Actually you should both be indoors.’ Mrs Merry was in front of them.
‘So should you.’ Megan hadn’t meant it to come out cross.
‘It’s far too late to be out and where’s Smudge?’ She stepped closer. Garry jerked Megan away.
‘At home. My daddy – ouch!’ Megan squealed as her brother jerked her again.
‘Megan, I was hoping to see you. We’ve got a decluttering job in Chiswick. An elderly couple are moving into a home. It’s an important job. You’ll be a tremendous help. I wonder if you’d be free to come with me. You can have tea with me as usual.’ Mrs Merry added, ‘We must of course ask your parents.’
‘You do your own work. If you come near her, I’ll, I’ll show you!’ Garry’s speech was blurred. He circled his arm around Megan and, stumbling, steered her on along the path towards the lamp-post light.
At the steps, Megan twisted back. Mrs Merry was where they’d left her. She was standing still as if she had forgotten where she was meant to be going. Woof sat in front of her. For a tiny moment Megan felt a sadness so intense it might be for all the things that had ever made her sad.
Then she was on the pavement outside Thames Cottages. Then she saw the police.
‘Daddy!’
Except he wasn’t there.
19
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
Jack climbed over the park gate from the towpath. Keen to move into his new, if temporary, home, he had come at eight in the morning, twelve hours before Latimer had said he could go into the cottage.
He skirted a climbing frame shaped like a boat, a set of two swings, and a seesaw. One of the swings was moving as if a child had just got down from it. But the playground was empty.
He made for a high hedge that separated the park from Thames Cottages where there were two benches. He wiped droplets of dew from the nearer one and sat down. He remembered his impression the night before that someone had been listening to his conversation with Stella. From the bench, it would be easy to hear anything on the pavement half a metre away.
He hadn’t told Bella about his new job. He was putting it off. She wouldn’t see why, if she couldn’t visit, he couldn’t come to her. The prospect of holing up in this backwater for two weeks, away from his own ghosts and associations and, he had to be honest, avoiding any emotional complications, was attractive. Latimer thought that Helen Honeysett was haunting her basement. Jack, however, wasn’t so sure. Despite saying to Stella that the killer could be a random stranger, he suspected that the answer to the young woman’s disappearance was to be found close to where he now sat. Someone in one of the five cottages – with the exception of Latimer, obviously – was keeping a secret about the vanished woman. Jack didn’t like secrets. Unless they were his own.
There was an inscription carved into the bench. He cupped his hand over his Maglite and switched it on.
‘Mabel Darby, who loved to sit here.’
The wood had bleached. It would be a long time since Mabel Darby had loved sitting here. Inquisitive, Jack made his way to the other bench to see if it commemorated someone. His light caught something in the hedge. He shone it on the leaves. The branches were snapped. It wasn’t ‘something’ but nothing. A hole had been cut in the foliage. He leant over the bench and peered through. He could see the sitting room of one of the cottages. He jumped nimbly on to the bench and popped his head over the hedge. He was directly in front of number 3. Someone had sat on the bench – they’d have had to twist round – and watched Daphne Merry’s house through a peephole. The hole was freshly cut. That someone would be back.
A brass plaque was affixed to the bench. Jack read it twice before he grasped the significance. With clumsy fingers, he took a photograph of the words with his phone and sent it to Stella. It was self-explanatory, no text required.
The message failed. When he’d met Daphne Merry on the towpath the night before last, Jack had unknowingly told the truth. There was no signal. He was in a dead zone.
20
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
By ten to eight on the morning after meeting Latimer with Jack, Stella had been at her desk at Clean Slate for an hour and a half. She had assembled a spreadsheet from the notes she’d taken at Natasha Latimer’s. Aside from cleaning, Stella relished spreadsheets. She was adept at constructing formulas that manipulated totals, attributed discounts and turned cells and fonts specific colours.
For the Honeysett case, Stella had taken Excel to new heights and created a map of the area around Thames Cottages. She divided the rectangles representing the five cottages into two levels. The top was crimson for 1987, the year of Honeysett’s disappearance. She coloured the lower strip – 2016 – sickly peach. The colours clashed but Stella, whose appreciation of art was limited to a couple of Marianne North prints inherited from a friend, was concerned with layout and content. Other colours were broadly faithful: the pavement outside the cottages and the children’s playground was grey. The front gardens were green, as was the grass behind the hedge in the park. Running vertically on the left-hand side of the frame, at right angles to the row of cottages, she made the Thames a turquoise column – in reality at best gun-metal grey – and inserted a grey strip for the towpath alongside.
She typed in the names of the neighbours and, where she knew them, their occupations. What people did
might have a bearing on the case. Whatever Sybil Lofthouse had done at the Stock Exchange – perhaps a broker – would involve confidentiality. Adam had said Lofthouse kept herself to herself. As Stella had said to Jack, Lofthouse might be a challenge because she wouldn’t be a gossip. Nor was Stella, but she heard Terry’s advice, ‘Gossip is the detective’s friend.’
Latimer had said Garry Lawson was married to his mother. That suggested that Steven Lawson wasn’t around. For all her vague sense that he was holding something back, surely Adam Honeysett would have said that Lawson had been jailed for his wife’s murder. She put a question mark next to Steven’s name in the 2016 cell and considered again that contacting him was a priority. She added in Megan Lawson. What had happened to her? She was a child at the time, but in Stella’s experience, even if they didn’t understand what they had seen, children made good witnesses. She typed ‘Budgerigars’ in the peach cell for number 2 Thames Cottages. Terry said even a trivial detail could be a clue.
She flicked back to her list made after reading Adam Honeysett’s file and confirmed her prediction about Lofthouse. ‘Sybil Lofthouse refused to comment’ was next to a reference for one of Lucie May’s articles. Stella felt sympathy: she avoided being grilled by Lucie May herself.
A dog was a reason for being on the towpath at odd times. Stella wrote ‘Smudge’ in the 1987 section of the Lawsons’ house and ‘Baxter’ at number 4. She didn’t know the name of Daphne Merry’s dog then or if Sybil Lofthouse had had a dog. Apart from living with a mother who’d alibied him and owning a dog, she had scant information on Neville Rowlands. She’d reminded Jack that they must keep an open mind about the suspects, but – disregarding the alibi – Rowlands was high on her own list. If, as Natasha Latimer had said, the old man was dead, it was possible that the truth of what happened to Helen Honeysett had died with him.
Stella sipped her already cold tea and reviewed the spreadsheet so far.
Latimer had been unpleasant about Daphne Merry. Stella didn’t need to consult her notes to recall that in 1987 Merry was a professional declutterer. Stella seldom pre-judged; she classified customers according to their cleaning needs. Battling with her open mind, she was conscious of bias in favour of Daphne Merry. Clutter hampered cleaning. Stella would welcome a declutterer working in advance of her arrival.
The Dog Walker Page 11