The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘It will be false. She’s changed her name and lied on her reference. Tail her!’

  ‘Mum, I—’

  ‘And don’t sack her, she’s a damn good cleaner!’

  Good or not, Clean Slate didn’t employ dishonest operatives. Stella should ask Jackie to let Benson go. Again she thought of Jack; he was not the most honest person she knew.

  As she drove along Shepherd’s Bush Green, it occurred to Stella that her mum had never called her a detective before.

  38

  Tuesday, 29 March 1988

  The tide on the river was on the ebb, receding waters exposing the muddy foreshore scattered with debris.

  On the Thames towpath a girl in school uniform traipsed along, dodging puddles, stopping and peering through foliage at the water’s edge. The distant chime of bells carried on the breeze, four in all, and this appeared to galvanize her. She started running, splashing along the track, hampered by something in her duffel coat.

  ‘What are you doing down here?’

  The voice brought her up short. The firefly light of a cigarette bobbed as a woman emerged from under Chiswick Bridge. In a fur coat with padded shoulders and high-heeled boots, she negotiated the muddy path with confidence, the cigarette held away from her face.

  ‘I came to see you.’ Megan Lawson was crestfallen; had Aunty El forgotten their Secret Assignation?

  ‘Megs! I said on the bridge in the light, not by the river where anything could happen. Your ma would have forty fits. As it is, I’m persona non-fuckwit. ’Scuse the French.’

  ‘When we had Smudge, Dad and me came here all the time. There’s no one to do anything now.’ Megan was briefly taken aback by this fact that she had never before voiced.

  ‘There’s always someone to do something, sweetheart, your dad wasn’t the only badass.’ Swinging into an American accent, her aunt drew fiercely on her cigarette, an eye screwed up against the smoke. ‘There’s plenty more where he came from.’

  ‘You’re here by yourself,’ the girl countered.

  ‘I can take care of myself. It’s my job to walk in the footsteps of the good, the bad and the downright evil.’ She gave a low laugh. ‘How is it back at the old homestead, Megsy? They still giving you a hard time for doing the right thing? Any joy from your saintly brother?’

  ‘Garry still says I killed his birds. Mum is trying to prove Dad is innocent.’

  ‘My sister believed in Father Christmas.’ Her Aunty sketched a circle in the air with her cigarette. ‘Forget I said that, honey-bear!’

  ‘Garry won’t believe it was Helen Honeysett.’ Megan spoke in a whisper.

  ‘Wait a sec. Helen Honeysett killed Garry’s birds? Are you kidding me?’

  ‘No. I didn’t mean that.’ Megan had long ago got truth mixed up with hopes and dreams. Helen Honeysett was supposed to be nice. Everyone missed her because she was missing. Or was she missing because everyone missed her? The little girl tried to square this with a woman who had made her feel strange, but she couldn’t remember why. And anyway she was wrong to think badly of her. She hurried on, ‘Mum says there’s no evidence linking my dad to Mrs Honeysett. Only me telling the police I saw him go after her. Mum says he didn’t know Helen Honeysett was there and he went to “clear his head”. She says Helen Honeysett might not have gone to the towpath, she could have gone somewhere else. She says it might not have been her I heard.’ The girl heaved a breath as the words tumbled out.

  ‘You don’t believe that, Megs?’ She eyed her niece through narrowed eyes and dragged on her cigarette. ‘More likely your esteemed dad planned the quarrel with your mum as an excuse to go after Honeysett.’ She always called her ‘Honeysett’.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Megan was confused. That anyone could plan to have an argument was inexplicable.

  ‘It’s not all about evidence and context. He was your dad, lovey, so it’s hard for you and for Garry to accept he’s done wrong. My father was a shit, so no surprise if he’d done this. Your dad charmed snakes out of their baskets with his baby looks. He charmed my sister. Me, I scare off the baddies.’ Her aunt ground her cigarette out on the path with a pointy-booted toe and lit another. The flare of the match briefly revealed black eyeliner and red lipstick.

  ‘I do except he’s done wrong,’ Megan assured her.

  Her aunt snapped to business. ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘Yes.’ The girl undid her blazer and produced a flimsy note­book. She held it as if reluctant to part with it. ‘Mum would kill me if she knew I took it. It’s her secret. She doesn’t know I know.’ She didn’t say her theft of the notebook was the more terrible because of whom she was giving it to. Her mum said Aunty El was never to be trusted.

  ‘Good girl!’ Cigarette between her lips, her aunt reached for the book.

  Megan hesitated. ‘Maybe I should ask Mum first?’

  ‘Bit late for cold feet. Listen Megs, darling, your ma is my little sister, I’ll walk on hot coals for her, but about this she’s buried her head in the sand. Once I prove that your dad did this thing, then, tough though it’ll be, Bette and Garry can move on. And, more importantly, that poor family can bury their girl. No need to ask your mum.’

  Tremulously, Megan regarded the exercise book clutched to her chest. ‘Mum will kill me.’

  ‘Whatever else she is, unlike Steven pretty-boy Lawson, my sister ain’t no killer. It’s like ripping off a plaster, do it fast.’ She snatched the book from her niece. In the lamplight from the bridge above, she flapped it open and scanned the pages. ‘Mmm. Perfect. Megan, you’ll make a journalist one day.’

  ‘I’m going to be a De-Clutterer.’ Megan’s spirits lifted at the prospect.

  ‘Aim higher than that, kiddo! You sound like my sister. She could have been a doctor like the pater, but settled for being a friggin’ nurse.’ She tucked the notebook inside her volum­inous fur coat. ‘Gotta scram, have to file a story by midnight.’ She went over to the steps to Chiswick Bridge. The little girl lingered on the dark towpath. Perhaps her aunt recalled some responsibility, because she stopped and said, ‘Chop, chop, Megs. I’ll pop you home.’

  Aunt and niece didn’t see a shadow under the arch of the bridge. Nor were they distracted by a dog lead swinging as from a disembodied hand. To and fro.

  On the bridge, Auntie El unlocked a white 2CV parked on double yellow lines with one wheel on the kerb. She swooshed a penalty ticket out from under the windscreen wipers and stuffed it into her coat pocket. She told Megan, ‘Darling girl, each of us has to fight our corner. I won’t let your dad drag his family with him into his grave.’

  ‘Mum might be cross when she sees you,’ Megan mumbled apologetically. She had loved her aunt’s visits. When Aunty El had breezed into the tiny cottage in a cloud of smoke, it meant noise and adventure. It was over a year since she had been. Megan wasn’t allowed to say her name.

  ‘She’d be apoplectic!’ She gave a mirthless cackle. ‘Luckily she won’t know. I’ll land my broomstick on the green and you jump off and whisk away home.’ She tipped her niece’s chin to the lamplight. ‘Smidgen, cheer up, you’ve done the right thing.’

  39

  Tuesday, 29 March 1988

  ‘Have a nippet, darrl-ing,’ she said in a grating drawl.

  ‘Do you know, don’t mind if I do?’ A mouse squeak. ‘Don’t go mad with tonic, darling.’

  ‘Down the hatch!’ Megan raised her tooth mug to her reflection in her dad’s shaving mirror still propped on the window sill in the bathroom and took a draught of tap water. ‘Have a fag,’ her voice grated.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ The voice started low for her Aunty El and soared to a cry as Megan realized this was her line. She puffed an imaginary cloud of smoke at polystyrene tiles on the bathroom ceiling.

  It was three minutes past eight. Megan had said goodnight to her mum and was putting off going to bed. She was regretting giving Aunty El the notebook. Now that she was home, she no longer felt like the brave De-Clutterer assisting where she c
ould. She would be in terrible trouble if her mum found out.

  Garry was in the aviary. In the darkness, unseen by his mother and sister, he was crouched on the ground below the nest boxes staring at the stars. His dad had told him to use Orion as a starting point to identify other stars. The boy considered that the brightest star was his dad. He kept having stupid thoughts. Garry told no one he had seen his dad on the 27 bus, on Chiswick High Road, in men he passed in the street. Some sightings were literal. The media kept alive the story of the baby-faced killer who had cut short a young woman’s life and then drowned himself in the same river where he’d dumped the girl loved by all who knew her. He saw his dad in passengers’ newspapers on the bus, in newsagent windows and on television. The boy had begun to avoid shops and, when he could, people. He’d stopped catching the bus and walked home along the towpath. The only way to get away from accusing eyes and his dad’s happy face was with his birds.

  Clasping his knees, oblivious to the cold, Garry, who jeered at his sister for believing in fairies, willed the stars to turn all that had happened into a dream from which he could wake.

  Bette Lawson never noticed that a job which used to take her son fifteen minutes now lasted an hour. Every night, when the silently eaten meal and washing up was out of the way, her children slipped out of the room and out of her consciousness. She remained at the kitchen table, her gaze resting vaguely on Steven Lawson’s chair opposite. On the table before her were newspaper cuttings. She would scour them, trying to find a key fact to show her husband innocent, to prove her sister wrong. She studied the words and pictures for something she had missed that – impossibly – could bring Steve back. She sorted the paper into piles and then rearranged them into new piles. Hours later, unaware her children were in bed – not asleep – she would shovel all the piles into a carrier bag and hang it behind the ironing board.

  She went to the kitchen drawer and from a jumble of assorted objects – elastic bands, old key rings, washers – she took Steven’s Estimate Book. He had a scribbled note of his last appointment. Fitting a washing machine was a simple job although he’d grumbled about installing it in a tight corner. When he heard it had leaked, flooded the kitchen and seeped through the ceiling below, he had gone to the towpath. Her sister said he’d gone to meet Helen Honeysett or why didn’t he take the dog? Bette had forgotten what her argument for this had been. Why hadn’t he taken Smudge?

  After he died, another plumber reported that the pump in the machine had been damaged so the flood wasn’t Steven’s fault. No one reported that in the paper. Her sister had scoffed, ‘Fractured pump causes washing machine leak. Sensation!’

  ‘Did you find anything?’

  Bette hadn’t heard Garry come in from the garden. ‘No, love, but if I keep at it, I will. Dad was innocent of this business.’ She never said Helen Honeysett’s name. She never said why she was so sure that Steve hadn’t done it.

  ‘I’ll kill the man who did it.’ Garry dashed his shirt sleeve across his face.

  ‘She mightn’t be dead. We don’t know what happened,’ Bette remarked.

  ‘I’ll kill her if she comes back alive. She’s ruined everything.’

  ‘What good will that do? I want no more of that talk.’ Bette shut the Estimate Book and laid it next to one of the piles of papers. ‘Stick the kettle on, there’s a pet, I’ll have a coffee.’

  Garry gestured at the papers. ‘I’ll help you.’

  ‘The best way to help is by staying strong. It’s what your dad would have wanted.’ Bette sounded less confident. Her sister said Steven was a weak man who’d let his family down.

  Garry made his mother a mug of instant coffee. He was leaving the kitchen when she asked, ‘It’s over a year, so a long time, but try to remember. You were in our bedroom with Megan when Dad went out that night. Are you sure you didn’t see him?’

  Garry Lawson didn’t turn around. ‘I said, didn’t I? Megan’s a liar.’

  ‘Yes, love, but you could have forgotten,’ Bette suggested carefully. ‘Like I say, it’s been a long time.’

  ‘Not that long. I won’t ever forget.’ Garry smacked aside the bead curtain and went out. Bette wanted to hold him and stroke his hair to soothe him, like when he was a little boy. She and Garry were the only two in the world who believed in Steven’s innocence. Not that Garry did believe it: he couldn’t bear to think his dad was a murderer. That left only her.

  Her coffee cooling, Bette tried to muster up Steven’s face, but only saw Honeysett’s photo from the Christmas party over a year ago. In the last few weeks of his life, Steven had been bad-tempered. He hadn’t told her he wasn’t getting the work. He’d laughed enough at the party, especially when Honeysett pointed her camera at him. After he was questioned, Lucie put the picture in her paper. Under a headline The Face of a Monster.

  Upstairs, Bette saw light under her daughter’s door. Megan was asleep on her back, her arms above her head like when she was a baby. The tooth mug was beside the bed. It was empty, but for a slice of lemon at the bottom.

  40

  Monday, 11 January 2016

  The church clock struck four as Beverly answered the phone. ‘Clean Slate for a Fresh Start, I’m Beverly, here to help with your query.’

  ‘Bev, it’s me.’ Stella was parked on Kew Green. She had organ­ized for a locksmith to come to Natasha Latimer’s to change the locks. She was on her way to tell Jack. As she was crossing Hammersmith Broadway, Suzie had rung and asked if she’d found out Stephanie Benson’s true identity yet. Stella couldn’t admit she’d forgotten and had rashly agreed that she would. Now she was wrestling with how to get out of this without lying. ‘Is Jackie there?’

  ‘She’s gone to meet Graham. They’re going to IKEA, remem­ber? Jackie said we might never see her again, she always gets lost there.’

  Stella hadn’t remembered. This was a reason not to go through with the plan. Then she imagined telling her mum and said, ‘Bev, would you turn on my computer, please?’

  ‘Your computer! Are you sure?’ Stella was loath to let Beverly near her machine since she’d wiped out Suzie’s database.

  Everything was backed up; Stella decided to take Jackie’s advice and trust Beverly. She grimaced. ‘Yes. I’m sure.’

  ‘I’ve turned it on,’ Beverly hissed as if she had ignited a fuse. ‘I’m leaving your room now.’

  ‘No, stay at my desk. Go into the client database. You’ve done it before.’ Stella put from her mind what had happened in the past as she heard Beverly tapping on the keyboard. She pictured Suzie’s precious database reduced to a blank screen.

  ‘Then what?’ Beverly sounded uncharacteristically timid.

  ‘Look up Stephanie Benson. She’s an operative.’

  ‘Ooh, yes, Stephanie’s lovely.’

  ‘How do you know she’s lovely?’

  ‘She passed my test!’

  ‘What test is that?’ Stella kept her voice level.

  ‘At her interview Stephanie thanked me for giving her tea.’ Beverly was confidential. ‘If interviewees are polite to the lowly office minion, they must be nice. Doesn’t mean they’re great cleaners, but it’s a start.’ She gave a neighing laugh.

  ‘You’re not the office minion.’

  ‘Some people think so,’ Beverly replied simply. ‘They don’t thank me for the tea or look at me.’

  It was the kind of criterion Jack would apply. Stella saw the sense in it. She wondered what test could tell her that clients bringing detective cases were guilty of the crime themselves. Adam Honeysett had lied about seeing livery on her van and about being with Jane Drake the night his wife disappeared. Were that a test, he would have failed. Did it make him a killer?

  ‘Stella?’

  ‘Sorry. What’s Benson’s last cleaning job today?’

  There was tapping and then Beverly reeled off an address that was literally around the corner from Kew Green.

  *

  Stella moved the car to outside the newsagent’s further
along Kew Green. Although she was in a white van and no one – apart from Adam Honeysett – would know it was from Clean Slate, Stella’s photo was on the company website and had been featured in media interviews: she couldn’t risk Benson recognizing her.

  An Evening Standard stand outside the newsagent’s read Bowie dies at 69. Not a music fan – although at school she and her friend Liz had liked Duran Duran – Stella had a soft spot for Bowie’s ‘Rebel Rebel’. She grabbed her phone, but the person she wanted to tell, her friend Tina, was also dead. Stella rarely let herself think about Tina. Then out of the blue something – a newspaper headline – hit her with the force of a sandbag. She couldn’t meet Tina for coffee and chew over business issues with her. Stella got out of the van and took a paper from the stand. Bowie had died on 10 January. Returning to the van she noted it was the same date as Terry’s death. Jack would definitely call it a sign.

  She looked up from the paper in time to see a woman coming out of the house she was supposed to be watching. She couldn’t be sure that the woman was Stephanie Benson. Her Clean Slate uniform must be hidden beneath a bulky parka coat. If she had asked, Beverly would have given her a description. Jackie said Beverly would make an excellent witness, she recalled the most trivial detail. Stella berated herself. Terry wouldn’t have staked out a suspect – not that Benson was a suspect – without knowing what they looked like. Then Stella saw that not only was she carrying a Clean Slate equipment bag, but she was walking towards her. She shrank down in her seat and pressed her nose to the glass on the driver’s side. Behind her she sensed Stanley become alert. She prayed he wouldn’t bark when Benson passed.

  Instead of barking, he was mewing. She understood it. Stanley had met Stephanie Benson when she came for her interview. Mewing meant he’d liked her. Stella’s guilt at tracking her shot up several notches. She fumbled at the ignition and, head low over the wheel, pulled out as Benson reached her. At the top of the street, she flung the van through a six-point turn and returned. She scoured the pavement for Benson. Nowhere. Terry wouldn’t have brought a dog to a stakeout. Nor would he have been distracted by dead rock stars and dead friends. He kept his mind on the job.