The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  Searching for True Hosts, Jack made himself invisible so that he never had to justify his presence. If those he ‘visited’ sensed they weren’t alone – many did – they couldn’t substantiate their suspicions.

  As True Hosts did, Jack Harmon kept watch for those who left their doors on the latch while they put recycling in the bin, or took their dog for a last walk. As well as hunting for a True Host, Bella had once said he was searching for his mother. He should ring Bella.

  Through a partially glazed door, Jack tried to see beyond a corded lattice of cobwebs, but made out nothing. He felt a buzz in his pocket. He had a signal!

  He had heard nothing from Bella since their – her – acrimonious parting outside his house. She had summoned the courage to come to him, so when they made up, he must make the first move. Perhaps she had been trying to contact him and he’d missed her messages. Bella would be drawing in her studio; he should go and see her.

  Jack waited, but nothing downloaded. He keyed in Bella Mob. He couldn’t invite her to the cottage and he was reluctant to leave the area. If you were to understand the signs that were all around, you had to immerse yourself. If he could articulate his feelings about Bella, it would take longer than a text and should be said face to face. He pressed ‘Discard’. The signal had gone. He turned back to the window.

  The pattern of fanning leaves on the frosted pane suggested a downstairs lavatory. There was little putty left and the wood was spongy with rot. Perfect, Jack concluded. Careful to avoid a splinter, he eased up the lower sash. Foul air drifted out.

  If the face he’d seen behind the pane had heard, Jack would be entering a trap. He counted to ten. After a further ten seconds for luck he peered through the opening. A tang of urine stung his nostrils. A lavatory faced the window and beneath the sill was a sink with clunky brass taps. The wooden seat was up, a sign that the occupant was a man, unless there were two people. Jack suspected not. The house had an air of solitude.

  He gathered his coat around him and climbed in. His soles scrunched on the floor. He risked the Maglite. Ceramic tiles were strewn with dried leaves. Oak and sycamore, the trees on the towpath. They must have blown in through the window when it was open. Why hadn’t they been cleared up? He was thinking like Stella.

  He shone his phone into the lavatory pan and recoiled. The water was black. He forced himself to look closer. The porcelain was encrusted and stained, but the water itself was clean. Stella would take a filthy lavatory in her stride. Armed with cleaning astringents, she cut a swathe through noxious odours. Daphne Merry gave her clients light and air and wherever Stella went she left the air fragrant and fresh. He liked to clean, but balked at toilets. Jack wished he’d called Stella. Ridiculous. She would only enter a house uninvited with very good reason. She wouldn’t think Stanley’s interest in the old house or Jack’s curiosity justification. Jack entered many homes uninvited; never had he wished Stella were there, so why this time?

  Jack crept to the door and, with practised dexterity, twisted the handle. The latch shifted, but the door stayed shut. Someone was holding it from the other side. He snatched away his hand. Ten, nine, eight… No held breath, no body warmth. He saw why the door wouldn’t budge. It was locked from the inside.

  Whoever had been in the lavatory must have left by the window. Jack whirled around. The dead leaves at his feet stirred. The open window hadn’t dispelled the stench and he was relieved to stick his head out. The side path was criss-crossed with shadows. If someone was watching, they had taken care to be invisible. Like a True Host.

  Straightening up, Jack lowered the window – against his better judgement, closing off his exit. He unlocked the door.

  The faintest trickle of light allowed him to get his bearings. There was no post by the front door. Someone had picked it up. He was puzzled to find the hall scattered with more leaves and twigs. A True Host was tidy. He turned right and moved soundlessly along the passage. As he’d anticipated, it was the kitchen. His light picked out a jar of instant coffee, a packet of Tate & Lyle granulated sugar, a kettle and a toaster clustered on a wooden work surface. Chunky beige mugs hung from a mug-tree. Jack unscrewed the lid from the coffee and tipped the jar. The granules avalanched forward. They were not stale.

  A driver through centuries-old tunnels on the District line, Jack was expert on dust. From the whirls and drifts on counters – IKEA, early nineties – he guessed there’d been a cursory wipe about a month ago. It wasn’t that someone lived here, only that they existed.

  He smelled an olfactory palimpsest of roasted meats cooked there over years, he estimated. Stella would know. Something caught his eye on the floor. Set precisely at the intersection of four ceramic tiles was a tin bowl. Whoever ‘existed’ here had a sense of symmetry. True Hosts had an eye for balance and detail. Jack nearly dropped his Maglite. It was a dog bowl. Jack made it a policy never to be a secret guest in a house with a dog, or a cat. An animal would give him away. He should leave, but his mission pulled him on. He examined the bowl; the water was clean, which suggested that a dog hadn’t recently drunk from it. Stanley left a silt of grit and specks of soil from his muzzle when he slurped. Jack sensed something dreadful in the house, the walls glistening with animal fat and window sashes strung with cobwebs weighted by dust. There had been no happiness here for a long time.

  In the sitting room at the front, a standby light glowed on a television. Jack’s impression of evil was strong. The steady light indicated someone living in the house.

  He risked his torch. Daphne Merry would approve of the sparse furnishings: no clutter. Two armchairs and a table. An open bureau was piled with papers with compartments filled with stationery, unused envelopes, reels of sellotape, a ball of string, rulers plastic and wooden. A tin labelled ‘Crème de Marrons’ crammed with strips of unused staples and paper clips. The topmost paper was a British Gas bill addressed to Mr Brian Judd. Jack let out a breath; he had a name for his Host. Beneath this a water bill told ‘B. Judd’ he was due a rebate. Brian Judd might be defeated by cleaning, but he paid his bills by direct debit. A chill ran through him. Naturally not everyone on dir­ect debit was a True Host. But, organized and precise, True Hosts never let anything slide. The still house held itself. A True Host lived here and, Jack realized, Stanley had sensed it.

  It took too long for Jack to absorb the sound. The lavatory window had opened. Brian Judd. He would discover the door unbolted and know he had an intruder. A True Host knew anyway. Or did Judd have another guest? Surely he had a key to his own front door. Unless he’d forgotten it.

  Jack knew that he wouldn’t get to the door in time; whoever it was would be in the bathroom by now. He fiddled frantically with the window catch. It was the worst exit: he could be seen from the towpath. The catch was fused by layers of paint. Too much pressure and he could break the glass. He raced out of the room and, avoiding the dead leaves, ran nimbly to the front door.

  He knew without trying it that the door was locked with a Chubb key. He had seen plenty of examples of people assiduously locking their front doors and leaving a back window open. He had never known someone to lock a room from the inside and leave by the window. The dread increased.

  Stay close to the occupant. The closer you are, the less chance they have of finding you. Empty your mind, be at one with your prey. Jack’s nerves were as poised as a mountaineer climbing a sheer face while, his back to the wall, he slid along to the lavatory. The door shielded him as it opened, slowly. Whoever it was knew they had company. A bluff of cold air from the open window blew into the hall, rustling the leaves and ushering in the stench from the lavatory. Whoever had come in had kept the window open. Why would Judd do that?

  The intruder – was it Judd? – moved with the halting steps of the watchful down the passage to the kitchen. The room closest to the bathroom, it was logical to check there first. A burglar would move fast to the sitting room where there could be valuable electrical equipment.

  Jack took his chance. He ducked i
nto the closet and flung himself through the gap in the sashes. He darted down the side of the house to the towpath. Only when he was sure that he had left the dilapidated house behind did he look back. The towpath tapered into blackness. Not reassuring: a True Host would blend with the night. As Jack did.

  There was a person outside Adam Honeysett’s house. A woman in a duffel coat, the hood down. It was a coat that tended to make adults look like children, Jack thought. The woman had a lost look about her. She had seen him. She hurried down the alley. He gave chase. When he reached Kew Green, he couldn’t see her. He meandered on to the grass: if she was behind a tree, she’d have to break cover or be discovered. He circled the trunks of the nearest trees, but she wasn’t there. She must have made it to the South Circular. After that she could backtrack and be anywhere. He returned down the alley to Thames Cottages. If the duffel-coated woman was Helen Honeysett – ghost or not – she had vanished again.

  30

  Monday, 29 February 1988

  Megan had made up her mind to see Mrs Merry. She would be grown up and approach the front door. After she’d told Mrs Merry it was a special day, she could be a De-Clutterer again. When she was being a De-Clutterer, Megan forgot her dad was a murderer.

  A hand yanked Megan backwards, nearly tipping her over. ‘What do you want?’ It was Mr Rowlands from number 1.

  ‘I’ve come to see Daphne.’ His fingers were like twigs.

  Neville Rowlands was thirty-six, but early on had embraced middle age as a place of safety where less was expected of him. He shied away from the big-shouldered, big-haired, brash eighties.

  ‘You mustn’t call her Daphne! It’s rude,’ he told Megan.

  Megan fixed on his salt-and-pepper brush moustache. ‘I’m Daph— Mrs Merry’s Assistant De-Clutterer. I’ve come to assist.’ Megan was convinced her title would impress.

  ‘Listen.’ Neville Rowlands smelled of school soap. ‘Mrs Merry has been nothing but kind to you, and what thanks has she got? Abuse from your brother, from your mother. It’s your fault.’ He nibbled at a finger. Helen Honeysett had called him a sweetie. Megan tried to think so too. ‘When I was your age I was out from under my mother’s feet. Mrs Merry has me if she needs help. Get along with you, hop it!’ He squeezed his twig fingers into her shoulder.

  ‘What is going on?’ Mrs Merry was on her doorstep.

  ‘I’ve come to help declutter. And the thing is today is the twenty-ninth of February. It’s Helen Honeysett’s real birthday, she’d be seven because it’s a leap year, but really she’d be twenty-eight except she’s de—’

  ‘I’ve told the girl till I’m blue in the face that you’re busy, Mrs Merry.’ Neville Rowlands spoke over Megan. He smoothed the strands of hair trained over the beginnings of a balding pate.

  ‘I don’t need anyone’s help.’ Daphne Merry didn’t appear to recognize Megan or Mr Rowlands. The eight-year-old had grown in the past year and her short hair (practical for De-Cluttering) was now shoulder-length. Her father’s suicide and his presumed guilt for Helen Honeysett’s murder had lent her a careworn aspect beyond her years. She was no longer the little girl who had touched Daphne Merry’s heart. She struck her as gawky and unattractive. ‘You shouldn’t be here – your mother will blame me. Go and play.’ She closed the door.

  ‘I did warn you.’ Neville Rowlands gave Megan a tepid smile. ‘Like I said, best you run along.’ He stayed on the doorstep.

  Megan’s legs were heavy. She blundered out of the gate, along the pavement and up the towpath steps. She stumbled beyond the watery light of the lamp-post along the path to Kew Stairs. In the sodium-stained twilight, trees were as insubstantial as wraiths. She plunged down the granite steps, slipping on mud to the river below.

  ‘I don’t need anyone’s help.’

  Thinking she would be decluttering, Megan had left the house without a coat. Her teeth began to chatter. Before her the black water, swaying and swirling like treacle, washed around the toes of her De-Cluttering monkey boots.

  ‘Go and play.’

  She saw herself walking through the water until it went lapping over her head, like Angie and Becky said her daddy had done. It wouldn’t be freezing and full of eels like they’d said. It would be like Richmond swimming baths with her daddy holding on to her rubber ring while she swished her legs like a mermaid’s tail.

  ‘Daddy, it’s me.’ She gave an experimental whisper. ‘Megsy.’ In case, like Mrs Merry, he’d forgotten about her. A year was a lifetime to her.

  Megan was struggling with an obscure sense of betrayal. Her father had drowned himself in the Thames. Mrs Merry wasn’t her friend any more. With the clarity of a child forced to grow up fast, she understood that she would always be alone.

  31

  Saturday, 9 January 2016

  At half four in the afternoon, Stella was on her way to see Jack to discuss their next move. Embroiled with staff interviews and two estimate visits and a pile of paperwork, she hadn’t seen him since Wednesday night. Stella hoisted her rucksack on to her shoulder; with the Honeysett papers under one arm and clutching her keys, she let go of Stanley’s lead. As he shot away, she stamped hopelessly at the flailing leash. He skittered down the alley to Thames Cottages. Hampered, Stella couldn’t run fast. Even empty-handed she couldn’t catch Stanley; at full gallop he went like the wind.

  She reached the narrow pavement outside the cottages. No Stanley. Dismayed, she knew he’d gone to the ramshackle house on the towpath. She allowed herself some relief; it was better than tumbling into the river or tangling with traffic on Kew Bridge.

  ‘Excuse me?’ a voice called. ‘Hello there?’

  An elderly woman was waving to Stella from the cottage at the other end of the terrace to Latimer’s. Stella quelled a burst of impatience; with Stanley every second counted. He could after all be distracted by a squirrel or a bird by the river. She pictured him as she had first seen him, balanced on a branch above the Thames.

  ‘I’ve got Whisky.’ The woman was elegantly dressed in a fine wool cardigan, wool skirt and a necklace that might be pearls. Her grey hair was swept up into a coiled bun.

  ‘I don’t…’ Stanley was sitting at the woman’s feet, a paw raised; he was expecting a treat from her.

  ‘Oh, there he is!’ Stella flushed with relief. ‘Would you mind grabbing his lead, please?’ Although, pertly expectant, it looked like Stanley had no intention of going anywhere.

  ‘Did he run off again? No titbits for you, my man!’ The woman pronounced it ‘orf’. She collected up the lead. ‘Naughty Whisky!’

  ‘He’s not called Whisky.’ Stella took the lead, and then, hearing how ungracious she sounded, said, ‘Thanks for catching him.’

  ‘I could have sworn it was…’ The woman retreated into her cottage. ‘I must go.’

  ‘Thank you for catching him,’ Stella said again. She heard another snippet of Terry’s advice. ‘Maximize the briefest ex­change, that’s how you get information.’

  On his access weekends and when she was a teenager, Terry had struck up conversations with strangers in cafés and pubs. Stella had been crippled with embarrassment at his probing curiosity. After his death, she realized the people he talked to weren’t random strangers. Terry was never off the job. What better way to gain a suspect’s trust or to worm information out of a witness than in the guise of a caring dad treating his daughter to a chocolate sundae?

  ‘He’s called Stanley. I’m Stella Darnell. My friend Jack and I are working at number 1 for Natasha Latimer. I expect you know her.’ Stella was aghast at her temerity. She avoided specif­ics. Some of her clients considered conversing with a cleaner beneath them.

  ‘I do know Natasha. A charming young lady. Her father was a broker.’ Her hand on her door, the woman didn’t offer her name. Stella pictured her spreadsheet. Sybil Lofthouse. Stock Exchange – doing what? Dog? Latimer had said she was unmarried.

  ‘What did you do at the Stock Exchange?’ She shouldn’t know this. However, Sybil Lofth
ouse answered readily enough.

  ‘I was an editor. We collected profit information from com­panies and passed it to the media for when the markets opened at eight. Or lack of profit, as the case might be.’ Her eyes glittered with undisguised pleasure at the memory.

  ‘Fascinating.’ Stella had a ghastly vision of herself flattering an elderly woman to get her on side, just as Natasha Latimer had. She preferred the transparency of cleaning to the subterfuge of detection. However Sybil Lofthouse – more than one person had said Lofthouse kept herself to herself – seemed fired up by recalling her career. She took a punt. ‘The early starts must be difficult with a dog.’

  ‘I got a taxi at five a.m. sharp – no trains at that time – and got home around eight and took Dartie out. There was no one on the towpath then except joggers and dog walkers.’ Sybil Lofthouse frowned and added in a confidential tone, ‘If you reported an incorrect share price they flayed you alive.’ With surprising suppleness – she must be late seventies – she stooped and tore out a weed from a crack in the path. ‘He was creeping past the crematorium, like he does, stalking that poor Mrs Merry. I was the best editor at the exchange. I never made an error in thirty years.’

  ‘It must have made for strong team spirit, everyone looking out for each other,’ Stella hazarded.

  ‘I kept my head down. See nothing, hear nothing. Those who got in trouble were tainted.’

  ‘I see.’ Stella agreed with Jackie that people learnt best from their mistakes.

  ‘Sybil Lofthouse. Next time I see you I might find a little some­thing to offer Whisky, if he’s a good boy.’ She wagged a finger at Stanley.

  Stella didn’t correct her again. She was perturbed at how smoothly Terry’s tactic had worked. Open Sesame. Bringing up the Stock Exchange, as Latimer had known, had oiled the wheels, and Stella capitalized on it: ‘Were you living here when Helen Honeysett went missing?’