The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘It’s not what you think.’ Jack was horrified to find himself resorting to the clichés used in such exchanges. Bella had been low recently, but he had no problem with that. She’d also been lethargic, too tired to come on night walks, which was disappointing, but he was used to going on his own.

  ‘What do I think?’ Bella asked sweetly.

  ‘I’m doing a job for Stella.’

  ‘Lucky Stella! I bet you’re good!’

  ‘I have to live in. I’m not allowed guests…’ He was no good at this.

  ‘How convenient.’ Bella’s shawl slipped, releasing a mass of curly dark hair. He moved to touch her, but checked himself. Bella didn’t ‘do’ placation.

  ‘We were having fun.’ He saw from Bella’s expression she had noted the past tense. It was a slip of the tongue. Or was it? When Bella wasn’t there, he couldn’t conjure her up any more than he could his mother. He had told her about his mission to find True Hosts – those who had murdered or will murder – and stop them. Instead of trying to keep him indoors, she had wanted to join him. He had stopped her. Now he was in a boat drifting away from Bella. Soon she would be out of reach.

  ‘You know your problem, Jack?’ Bella tossed her mane of hair. ‘It’s you who should lighten up. You think you’ve got a calling to rid the world of True Murderers or whatever you call them. Well, get this Batman, you’re dirt human like the rest of us.’ She hugged the shawl around herself.

  ‘I don’t think I’m Batman.’ He rather liked the notion.

  ‘I won’t keep you from your mission. I will not chase you, Jack. I loathe this grasping person you’re trying to turn me into.’ Bella moved out of the circle of light. ‘Tell you what. Call me when you’re up for having fun. When you’ve got that woman out of your head.’

  Jack protested weakly, ‘Stella and me, we’re just friends.’

  Bella gave a mirthless laugh. From a dim shape in the darkness, her voice rang out strong and clear: ‘Who said Stella Darnell? I meant your mother!’

  23

  Wednesday, 6 January 2016

  Her mum’s injury had altered Stella’s routine. She arrived at Suzie’s flat at 6.30 p.m. to make supper so that her mum could eat it with The Archers. Suzie could hobble, and insisted she was quite able to provide for herself, but Stella feared this would lead to a more serious accident than a sprained ankle. She would do the cooking.

  That night Stella had heeded Jackie’s advice about fresh food and planned to make them both an omelette. It would save her microwaving a shepherd’s pie when she got back to her house. She had remembered that her brother Dale’s omelettes – he ran a posh restaurant in Sydney – contained cheese and a garnish of parsley. She didn’t see the point of parsley, but was going to serve it with a bag of salad from the mini-mart. She was not a cook; this was a leap into the unknown.

  The omelette wasn’t entirely down to healthy eating. Stella wanted to offer a something to soften the blow for Suzie that Jack wouldn’t be coming for a fortnight. Besides supper ingredients, Stella lugged in a bundle of Clean Slate client files for Suzie to add to the client database until she could return to work.

  Pulling closed the concertina gate of the lift, Stella pressed the top-floor button. The panel of buttons was grey with dust. Despite her mum’s urgings, she refused to pitch for the build­ing’s cleaning contract. Suzie would be even tougher on her than with the present substandard cleaners. However, Stella was becoming progressively frustrated by the smeared brassware and stained carpet.

  She was preoccupied by the image Jack had texted her that morning. He hadn’t rung her back. Tonight he was moving in to Natasha Latimer’s. She’d go round there after she’d finished at Suzie’s. Adam Honeysett hadn’t told her that Lawson was dead. There was nothing in the file. Beverly had combed the internet and printed up information for Stella. One piece was from a Murderers Who Got Away website that Stella thought must be libellous. The plumber was seen going to the river on the Wednesday night before Helen Honeysett went missing. Why was Lawson a suspect? Adam told her that he’d left his wife asleep on the Thursday morning. Stanley was staring up at her. The lift was at her mum’s landing.

  Outside Suzie’s flat, Stella was again troubled by Adam Honeysett. Why hire a private detective and keep back key information? Perhaps she should bid for the contract in her mum’s mansion block. It was simpler being a cleaner than a detective.

  *

  ‘I felt sorry for that poor fellow.’ Suzie was sitting by the gas fire already reading the client files Stella had brought. ‘The press killed him. Particularly that friend of yours.’ She pursed her lips and enunciated, ‘She ripped him to shreds.’

  ‘What poor fellow and what friend?’ Stella peered through the kitchen hatch. She was puzzling over when to add cheese to the omelette and had begun to regret passing up the frozen lasagne on special offer at the mini-mart. She had expected that her mum would become immersed in her database and let her concentrate on cooking. Instead Suzie was going to give a running commentary on the clients.

  ‘Lucie May, the Chronicle’s old retainer.’ Suzie picked up the file and hobbled across the room. Stella didn’t see why her mum minded about Lucie May, since she was the one who’d left Terry. The animosity was mutual; neither woman missed an opportunity to snipe at the other.

  ‘She’s not my friend.’ Stella cracked four eggs into a bowl. Two yolks broke and ran into the white. Sweat prickled on her forehead; it was ruined at the start. She reread Dale’s email and saw that she would be whipping the eggs with a fork so it didn’t matter if the yolk was broken.

  ‘What a dish,’ her mum murmured from the living room.

  ‘What dish?’ Dale’s instructions were to serve directly on to one plate, slice in half and slide one half on to another plate. This struck Stella as tricky enough, but she had a greater problem. She was perplexing over a ‘knob of butter’. The knobs on her mum’s cupboards were a third of the size of the door knobs. Stella sliced a corner off the new pat of butter that was a compromise between the two sizes and dropped it into the frying pan. Instantly it sizzled and scooted across the hot surface. She raised her hands at this minor success and set about whisking the eggs, the fork blurring as she picked up speed. Belatedly she took in what her mum had said: ‘What’s Lucie May got to do with it?’

  ‘Lucie May, Raving Reporter, good as murdered that man. I told Terry Lawson wasn’t the only person to take his dog to the towpath. What was his motive? The chap had a family and his business was on the rocks: he had more to lose than to gain by murdering that woman. Terry had the grace to agree.’

  Stella reread Dale’s recipe. Grated cheese went in after the egg. She tipped in the mixture. Suzie wasn’t talking about a client. Lucie May would never have Clean Slate in to do her house. She craned through the hatch. ‘Did you did speak to Dad about the Honeysett case?’ Suzie had spread the customer files over the table, covering the mats and the cutlery. One paper was propped against the salad bowl, another against the bottle of dressing.

  ‘Terry depended on my theories.’ Suzie rattled a paper in her hand. ‘We were a team.’

  The eggs were browning at the edges. Stella grabbed the cheese and teased it off the plate into the frying pan. She saw a similarity between cleaning and cooking. Both were time-sensitive. For cleaning a bath, her cleaning manual advised, Squirt the liquid on the surface and work briskly to lift grime then sluice with hot water. She slid the non-stick fish slice beneath the omelette, easing it upwards.

  ‘Who did Dad think did it?’ Jack didn’t believe in coincidences, but it was astonishing that her mum was talking about Helen Honeysett’s disappearance two days after Stella had accepted the cold case.

  Her mum harrumphed. ‘Terry never told me anything.’

  The egg was brown in patches like countries on a map. Just like Dale’s photograph of one of his omelettes. Stella cut it in half and transferred one half to the other plate. She carried the plates through to the living room and wait
ed for Suzie to move the client papers. Suzie seemed unaware of her. Stella glanced at the papers and met the smiling face of Steven Lawson. She tipped the plate and the omelette shot towards the rim. ‘Mum! What are you reading?’

  Absently Suzie took the plate from Stella. She delved beneath the papers for her knife and fork and, still reading, mechanically began to eat. ‘You were twenty-one that year. I wanted a party, but – naturellement – Terry was for a boring old scoff in a steak­house. Neither happened in the end.’ Suzie pushed aside the folder and Stella saw her own writing on the card cover: ‘Helen Honeysett 1987’.

  ‘Mum, how come you have that?’ She had left the Honeysett file in the van.

  ‘Mmm, delicious, nearly as good as Dale’s.’ Suzie scrutinized another document. This was high praise, but, her appetite gone, Stella was impervious to compliments. She had given Suzie the Honeysett folder instead of the client file. She groaned, ‘Mum, that’s confidential.’

  ‘How is anything in the Chronicle confidential?’ Suzie Darnell munched serenely on her omelette as she read one of Lucie May’s articles. ‘Whatever Loopy May says, Lawson was innocent.’ Far from open, Suzie Darnell’s mind was a sealed vault. A trait Lucie and her mum shared. Pragmatic, Stella opted to make the most of her mum’s knowing.

  ‘Who did you suspect?’

  ‘The husband. Look at Terry!’ Suzie Darnell popped the last forkful of omelette into her mouth and clattered her cutlery down on the plate. She waved at the salad bowl. ‘It’s too cold for that, but nice thought.’

  ‘Dad wasn’t a murderer!’ Suzie’s disparagements of Terry hadn’t lessened with his death, but she’d never gone this far. ‘He was a detective.’

  ‘Murderers and detectives are two sides of a coin,’ Suzie said sagely.

  Stella felt, as she often did around her mum, overwhelmed by a rolling fog. She tried to track back to the point. ‘Why did you suspect Adam Honeysett?’

  ‘The killer is usually someone close to or known to the victim. There was something else, but it’s escaped me.’ Suzie snatched up another article by Lucie May. ‘Ooh, I’d forgotten this!’

  ‘What?’ Stella chopped off a square of omelette. It was cold and the cheese had solidified. Assiduously chewing it, she carved out another square. She didn’t want salad either.

  ‘Lucille mentions a Daphne Merry who called the police and made the girl confess she’d seen her dad stalking Helen Honeysett.’ She frowned. ‘Poor thing, that would have taken some doing. I’d like to hope you’d have been as honest about your dad’s misdemeanours.’

  ‘Do you suspect Daphne Merry?’ Stella swallowed the last of the omelette and resolved to microwave lasagne the following evening.

  ‘I told you it’s the husband. Says here she was a declutterer.’ Suzie waved at the papers strewn over the table. ‘I want one of those.’

  ‘Mum, you have a cleaner.’ Not true. Stella had yet to break this to her.

  ‘This woman isn’t a cleaner. She strips out the inessential so it’s easier to clean. Do you offer that?’

  ‘You know we don’t.’ Stella leant through the hatchway and put their plates on the counter. ‘She’s probably retired.’ She must find out.

  ‘Declutterers, like cleaners, never retire.’ Bundling up a sheaf of papers, Suzie lurched back to her armchair. ‘You should have her in to declutter and pick up some tricks.’

  ‘That’s not honest.’ Although she hadn’t cleaned that day, Stella felt exhausted. In the kitchen, she snapped on marigolds and filled the washing-up bowl.

  ‘Since when was a detective honest?’ Suzie was arch. ‘Take Terry.’

  *

  Stella was driving over Hammersmith Flyover when her phone rang, the sound resounding through the speakers. The dashboard screen read Jackie Home.

  ‘Hi, hun, did you tell Suzie about Jack not cleaning?’

  ‘Yes.’ Preoccupied with Helen Honeysett, her mum had taken the news in her stride. Stella whizzed past the statue of the Leaning Lady and Rose Gardens North, the cul-de-sac where she lived. Bollards prevented access from the Great West Road, but tonight she was going to see Jack in Kew.

  ‘Bev told me the name of that cleaner who I think would be great for Suzie. Stephanie Benson. She’s patient and, like I said, super-efficient. Clients are giving her glowing feedback.’

  ‘OK,’ Stella said. After all, there was nothing to lose.

  24

  Wednesday, 1 April 1987

  ‘Do not touch my birds!’ Garry prised open Megan’s curled fingers. He bent her forefinger back, the stretched skin like a burn, and wrested the now fully grown budgerigar from her and tipped it into the nest box. ‘Get out!’ he stormed.

  ‘I was feeding her.’ Megan’s voice wobbled, but she wouldn’t cry because Garry had hated it even before their dad…

  Megan Lawson couldn’t remember how it had been before Helen Honeysett went missing and her dad became the Monster. Angie and Becky and everyone said he’d killed her and drowned her body in the Thames.

  ‘Go to the river and jump in!’ Garry’s voice, on the verge of breaking, cracked. He sounded funny and before Megan would have teased him. Even if he had been cross, she wouldn’t have been scared because whatever he said wouldn’t have been true.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Bette Lawson was at the kitchen door. Behind, Megan saw Aunty El. Garry had seen her too because he whispered: ‘Take her with you!’

  Like her, Garry had loved Aunty El. When she turned up in her red sports car, smelling of perfume, they were guaranteed fun – scary fun, but fun all the same. But since Helen Honeysett went missing, her aunty was the Bad Fairy and she and her mum had hissing conversations and banged doors. Aunty El was the only one who was nice to Megan, but her visits weren’t worth it for that because after she left, her mum would cry and Garry was horrible. Her eyes pricking with tears, Megan hazarded, ‘Maybe if we could find Helen Honeysett it could be a bit normal.’

  ‘You’re an idiot!’ Garry shoved her out of the aviary. ‘Dad’s dead. It will never be normal. You killed him.’

  ‘Garry!’ Bette Lawson’s call was the scream of a rook. ‘Stop!’ She didn’t say it wasn’t true.

  ‘Megan didn’t kill your dad, Gaz.’ Aunty El rattled the mesh on the aviary. No one did that, not even her dad. Aunty El was brave. ‘I’m afraid your dad managed that all by himself.’

  *

  ‘Most people can’t face the truth. You stand firm, lovey. Good will out.’ Daphne Merry ruffled Megan’s hair and gave her a glass of chocolate Nesquik. ‘I won’t criticize your mother, but she really shouldn’t let your brother speak to you like that. Still, it’s nice she let you come and see me. She did let you, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’ Megan dipped her face over the Nesquik. No one knew where she was. She would never ever go home again. Megan hadn’t properly thought this. The brown liquid floated before her, a spot of powder eddying on the surface. ‘Mum agrees with Garry.’

  ‘I’m sure she doesn’t. What your father did, he did on his own, as your aunt said.’ As Megan had hoped, Mrs Merry took her up to her De-Cluttering Office. In Megan’s cottage the equivalent room was her mum and dad’s bedroom. It was still her mum’s, although she slept in the spare room with the ironing board. Several nights, Megan had crept downstairs, squinted through the hinge crack in the door and seen her mum with a mug of tea staring at the kitchen stove.

  After she had done a De-Clutter, Mrs Merry brought back a haul of clutter from a person’s home. Balanced on a stool, Megan contemplated a stack of photographs. The top one of a man with his arms around two girls and a lady who might be his wife made her queasy. There were packets of letters and exercise books with sums all over the covers and a shoebox of pebbles.

  ‘What are those for?’ She was intrigued.

  ‘Neither useful nor beautiful: what are they?’

  ‘Clutter!’ Megan called with triumph.

  ‘Quite. My client’s daughter collected them when she was a girl
. She’s a grown-up, but her mother has kept them. We will dump them on the riverbank where they belong.’

  ‘Do they have pebbles there?’ Megan was doubtful.

  ‘These come from Brighton; the girl took them in 1966. If we all did that, there’d be no beach.’ Mrs Merry nudged the box with the toe of her sturdy De-Clutter lace-up shoe.

  The pebbles were round and shiny and Megan wondered about asking to take them home. But they were clutter so she couldn’t. De-Clutterers didn’t keep what they took; Mrs Merry said that would be wrong.

  ‘Did you tell the police that your brother lied about seeing your father going to the river?’

  ‘Yes.’ Megan gazed out of the window. The view mixed with the reflection of the clutter was ghostly. It was the same view as on the night when she had stood with Garry looking at the stars and they had seen their dad going to the towpath after Helen Honeysett. ‘Garry said he wasn’t watching. The police believed him.’

  ‘The two of you as witnesses would have weighed against the circumstantial evidence and reduced cause for doubt. Especially when you and your brother had every reason to lie to protect your father. You are braver than your brother. Your aunt told me she had never approved of Steven Lawson marrying her sister.’ Daphne Merry appeared to have forgotten she was talking to Steven Lawson’s daughter. The girl gripped her drink with whitened knuckles and watched Mrs Merry empty a box of detached dolls’ limbs into a black sack. A decapitated head rolled on to the floor and came to a stop by Megan’s foot.

  ‘What does circumstantial mean?’ Megan decided to ask.