The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  On the South Circular Stella got a break. Stephanie Benson, bag on her shoulder, was ahead of her. In the stop-start rush-hour traffic, Stella made sluggish progress towards Chalker’s Corner. She beat a rhythm on the steering wheel as Benson dodged the lights and walked briskly between the cemeteries. Seven cars crossed the line and the lights went to red. For a crazy moment Stella had the urge to fling out of the van and give chase on foot. At last she was at the top of the queue. She took stock. It was a simple equation of density of traffic and light-changes. She wouldn’t catch up with Benson.

  The stonemason’s Chalker and Gamble that had given the junction its name had long gone, replaced by a vet’s surgery. A man emerged from the building carrying a cat box. Behind him a woman led out a small dog on a lead not unlike Stanley. Stella’s gaze drifted across the road and she caught Stephanie Benson turning into the cemetery gates. Stella puffed out her cheeks; she was crap at tailing a target.

  The lights changed and Stella was off. In the cemetery she braked sharply beside what had been a greeting lodge with ornate carvings. It was boarded up and slathered with graffiti tags. She sat for a second looking at the serried ranks of headstones – no doubt clients of Chalker and Gamble – blurred by the approaching twilight. As she looked at the stones, many covered with lichen and London dirt, Stella hatched a plan.

  She took a bucket and scrubber out of the back of the van and, Stanley at heel, wove between the plots keeping Benson in sight. She was fifty metres ahead by a line of yew trees. Stella tripped on a plastic vase of plastic flowers and stopped to right it. Rushing on, she suddenly jerked Stanley to a stop. Benson had either doubled back or Stella had unwittingly cut a corner because the operative was only metres away, standing by a grave. Stella crept as close as she dared before Stanley would give her away.

  Stephanie Benson was ripping at weeds on a grave that was a tangle of brambles and tall grasses. No great reader of human behaviour, Stella nevertheless saw the woman was upset.

  Stella put her plan into action. She chose a grave off the path with a clear view of Stephanie Benson. This grave was little better tended, but Stella wasn’t a gardener. She knelt on the cushion of grass tussocks and squirted astringent on to the headstone. She set about scrubbing it. Appearing intent on her task, she kept watch on Benson.

  Although she was ‘undercover’ Stella was gratified to see the difference she was making. The stone was coming up pale in the dwindling light, the lettering almost legible.

  Within the limits of his lead Stanley rootled around, sniffing and snorting as he burrowed into the soil. He unearthed a bald tennis ball, the rubber perishing.

  ‘Leave!’ Stella hissed. She was struck with horror that he might dig up a body. She looked to see if Benson had heard. But she was still weeding, her movements mechanical as if she was in a trance.

  Stella’s phone buzzed. It was Suzie. In the comparative quiet, Stella’s voice might carry. Her mum would be wanting an update. Stella texted I’m undercover and regretted it. Suzie would be fired up. Right on cue, her phone buzzed again. She stuffed the phone in her jacket. There was no one at the other grave.

  Stella clambered to her feet. Benson was carting a bundle of weeds away between the yew trees. Stella gathered up her bucket, tossing in the bottle of gravestone cleaner and the brush, and, Stanley’s lead wrapped around her hand, wended her way between the mounds. In the time she’d been working on the grave, the light had almost gone.

  For all her hard work, Stephanie Benson had made little impact on the grave. Tall weeds grew at the foot of the plot. The epitaph was barely decipherable.

  IN MEM O STEVEN LAWSO , A OOD SBAND AN ATHER. R.I.P.

  It was no great feat to work out what letters were missing. Had she buried her own father, Stella would have chosen a similar message. No birth or death dates. No sentiment or fuss. She gave a start. Steven Lawson was the name of the prime suspect in the Honeysett case. The man who drowned himself in the Thames. This must be a coincidence: the headstone looked a lot older than nearly thirty years. Jack said there were no coincidences.

  Stella walked around the grave. Something was carved at the back, just above the line of the mown grass. Like the inscription, it was eroded almost smooth. Stella sat on her heels ignoring Stanley who, presuming a game, began to bash the ball he held between his furry jaws against her shoulder. Stella traced indentations with a finger as if reading Braille. An eight. A seven. Steven Lawson committed suicide in 1987. This had to be his grave.

  It was dark. No sign of Stephanie Benson. Stella floundered towards a string of lights that must be the South Circular. Stanley coughed as his collar constricted his throat, an eerie sound. Stella was furious with herself; gallivanting in graveyards at night was Jack’s thing. He’d let slip that he went on walks at night with Bella. Stella had hoped that the botanical illustrator might deter him from going out. Now Stella was doing it and without Jack. Idiotic to have listened to her mum. At last Stella saw her van, ghostly white against the wrought-iron gates.

  Her relief was short-lived. The gates were shut. She read the noticeboard by the lodge. Closing time was nightfall. Beyond the gates, the traffic crawled by. The drivers, cocooned in their vehicles, stared ahead. No one would hear her shout.

  ‘You’re trespassing!’ Stella spun round. Headstones and statues floated wraithlike in the semi-dark. Stanley emitted a guttural growl. A sign of danger.

  A man in a hi-vis jacket held a shotgun. Stella backed against the gate. He had an insignia on his jacket. It was the logo for Richmond Borough Council. The gun was a garden rake. Only marginally reassuring. ‘No cars are allowed in without permission.’

  Jack would start speaking and trust to whatever came out. Stella liked to plan and speak the truth. ‘I was tending a grave.’ Being a detective was leading her down ever more complicated paths of duplicity.

  ‘In the dark?’ the man snarled.

  Stella was alone in a locked cemetery with a man with a rake. Contrary to policy in the Clean Slate handbook, Stella had told no one of her whereabouts. Her mum knew she was following Stephanie Benson, but not where that had taken her. Her dad had said that a perfect place to commit murder was in a cemetery.

  ‘It wasn’t dark when I started. The stone was dirty.’ She rattled her cleaning bucket.

  ‘Whose grave were you cleaning?’

  ‘Steven Lawson’s.’

  ‘Why do you care about him?’ The man was sharp.

  ‘He’s… he’s my father.’ Stella clenched the inside of her cheeks between her teeth. A cleaner never lies.

  The man seemed to soften. ‘Never seen you here. It’s a right mess. A disgrace.’

  Stella was taken aback; it had never occurred to her that he might notice who visited a grave or the state of it. Then it came to her. In West London the Helen Honeysett case would be notorious. A hundred years earlier Lawson couldn’t have been buried in consecrated ground. It was likely that even in 1987 his interment had caused controversy.

  Stella kicked herself for not making up a name; the man couldn’t know everyone who was buried here. She was caught in her own trap.

  Her phone buzzed again. Stella delved into her jacket and answered without checking who it was.

  ‘Stella, how’s it going?’ her mum whispered hoarsely.

  ‘I’ve cleaned it.’ Stella spoke loudly into the mouthpiece. ‘Like you wanted.’

  ‘What did I want? Cleaned what?’

  ‘The headstone looks brand new, Mum.’ That much was true.

  ‘What headstone? Listen, Stella, I’ve got something to tell you.’

  The man was gesticulating at her. Stanley growled. ‘I can’t give you special treatment, but seeing as you’re his girl...’ He was unlocking the gates.

  ‘Thank you,’ Stella said weakly.

  On Kew Bridge she called her mum back.

  ‘Since when did we offer headstone cleaning? Good idea, mind!’

  ‘What were you calling about?’ Right then, Stella wi
shed that headstone cleaning was all she did.

  ‘Stephanie is not Stephanie!’ Suzie’s voice boomed out of the speakers. ‘Guess who she is. Hah! You won’t get it!’

  Stella pictured the woman squatting by the weed-choked grave, distraught in a futile endeavour to tend it. ‘Megan Lawson.’

  After a beat of silence. ‘How do you know?’ Suzie sounded deflated.

  ‘How do you know? Tell me you didn’t make up some story to get her talking.’ She had just passed herself off as Steven Lawson’s daughter.

  ‘Per-leese! Terry sneaked around the houses but, like I told him, you get results by being straight. I taught you that.’

  Suzie had got Stella to tail Stephanie Benson. It was always pointless to highlight her mother’s changes of tack.

  ‘I asked what her real name was and she told me.’

  It was no coincidence that Megan Lawson was at her father’s grave. Cause and effect. Cause: Suzie unmasked her true identity. Effect: Megan Lawson returned to her real past. From the state of Steven Lawson’s grave, Stella guessed that his daughter – or any of his family – rarely went there.

  41

  Monday, 11 January 2016

  ‘It can’t be coincidence that Megan Lawson, the daughter of the man considered guilty of murdering Helen Honeysett, is working for Clean Slate.’ Stella was perched up on the JCB.

  ‘No, it can’t. Did Suzie ask her why she applied for the job?’ Jack stood at the mouth of the tunnel. A thin draught chilled the back of his neck. Stella had said she wanted to explore the hidden vault properly, but since she was drawn to gadgets and machinery – usually ones that cleaned – he suspected her keen to go on the digger.

  ‘She said she needed a job. If there’s another reason – and I think there is – she didn’t admit it to Mum. She told her she’d changed her name to escape the press. Mum promised her we wouldn’t sack her for lying. I guess we won’t.’

  ‘Hats off to Suzie.’ With forensic curiosity and a cavalier willingness to cut to any chase, Suzie Darnell would have made a good detective. Perhaps that was part of what Terry had seen in her. ‘We must talk to her.’ His voice bounced off the brick passage. If someone was lingering on the towpath at the other end of the tunnel they would hear every word. He moved away.

  ‘We’ll go tonight in case since talking to Mum she’s consid­ering doing a bunk.’ Stella was examining the controls on the digger.

  ‘We should cancel the locksmith,’ Jack said.

  ‘Why? Latimer never changed the locks. Anyone could have a key.’ Stella was regal on her gleaming yellow throne.

  ‘Exactly. We need to catch them red-handed; that means not stopping them getting in. This is no ordinary burglar.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Whoever started this rumour about the ghost – I don’t buy Daphne’s theory that Latimer’s psyche is haunting her – doesn’t want her to sell the house. We know it’s her sister who believes in the supernatural. This could be a vendetta. Who are her enemies?’

  ‘My dad said start with that question. But most people don’t have enemies, just those who don’t much like them. I couldn’t name mine.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t have any. I bet Natasha Latimer’s spoilt for choice. Only Sybil Lofthouse has had a good word to say about her. A likely candidate, dead or alive, is Neville Rowlands, who lived here with his mother and was kicked out.’

  ‘Beverly’s looking him up.’

  ‘Beverly?’

  ‘Jackie thinks we should establish this detective agency officially. She suggested Beverly as an assistant, she spots things. Are you OK with it?’

  Jack liked being a team with Stella and was wary of others joining in. And of anything official. ‘I guess.’

  ‘I could call Martin. Off the record – Natasha Latimer needn’t know. Get his take on whether someone has actually broken in. There’s no sign of forced entry. It’s an excuse to find out what the police are thinking on the Helen Honeysett case.’

  ‘Cashman will close us down.’ During the Kew Gardens case, Stella and Cashman – her father had been his mentor – had had an affair. The policeman had gone back to his wife. The break was amicable, but even before that there had been no love lost between Jack and Cashman. Jack would accept Beverly on their team but never Martin Cashman.

  Stella had explained why the digger was there. Jack would love to have a big yellow digger in his house.

  ‘Lucie’s written loads on Helen Honeysett. She’ll know about Rowlands.’ His stomach fizzed. A sign that his motive wasn’t pure. He’d brought Lucie May up out of pique because Stella had suggested Cashman. Tit for tat.

  ‘That’s a good idea.’ Stella didn’t play games. She was craning around the lever, peering into the giant claw. ‘There’s a bracelet in there.’

  Jack leant in and, mindful of the jagged teeth on the rim of the bucket, fished out a cracked brown leather ring from the bottom. He tilted it to the light bulb. A tag hung from the buckle. ‘Whisky. It’s a dog collar.’ He passed it up to Stella. ‘It has the owner’s number on it. 0208 948, that’s the Kew exchange isn’t it?’

  ‘Whisky’s the name Sybil Lofthouse called Stanley. Mum said it was probably her dog’s name and she’d got confused. This might be hers. But why is it here?’

  ‘I suppose when the basement was constructed, it got unearthed.’ Jack couldn’t recall seeing it there when they dis­covered the digger. ‘Or it could belong to someone who lived here. There are those pet graves outside.’

  ‘Does one have the name “Whisky”?’ Stella asked.

  ‘No, but it was dark so I could’ve missed it.’

  ‘Why did you go there in the dark?’ Stella asked.

  Jack felt the vault reel. He’d had time to legitimately explore the garden, but hadn’t done so. He hadn’t been there since the night he broke into the garden. He had given himself away.

  However, Stella went on: ‘…Beverly found a story of builders excavating a basement in Twickenham who found the skeleton of a baby that had been there for seventy years. Police traced the DNA via the nephew of a woman who’d lived alone in the house in the 1940s. A church-goer who gave piano lessons, she’d have been disgraced for being pregnant out of wedlock. She had killed the baby and buried it in the garden. They find weird stuff: there was a suitcase of valuables from a burglary twenty years before, Roman coins, several sets of dentures, letters.’

  ‘A garden’s a good burial place,’ Jack said. ‘After that, a dog collar’s a bit tame.’

  ‘Let’s go and see Megan Lawson.’ Stella pulled on a lever. With a squeak – the squeak that Jack had heard in the basement; the squeak that Latimer had complained of – the digger arm rose upwards.

  42

  Wednesday, 8 January 1997

  Megan scurried past the gaggle of reporters crowding around a policewoman with a man, mooching in a wax jacket, on the towpath. Hood up, a scarf wound around the bottom half of her face, hands crammed deep in the pockets of her duffel coat; no one noticed the nondescript woman. This was as well because had they recognized her they would have pursued her. A snap of Steven Lawson’s seventeen-year-old daughter by the river where he drowned – Megan resembled the dead plumber – would have been a prize.

  It was ten years since the estate agent had vanished and the police were holding an anniversary press conference. Adam Honeysett was making what would be dubbed in reports as an ‘impassioned plea to camera’ in the hope of jolting someone’s memory or conscience. It was a cursory affair: everyone believed the detectives had their man. No one had gone missing by the river since Steven Lawson died.

  Megan passed the house where Brian Judd lived. The man with the beard had an alibi for that January night. He’d been seen in his office at Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Everyone was doing something else when Helen Honeysett went missing. Everyone except her dad. Her dad had liked Helen Honeysett. She had liked him. Megan stepped into the tunnel under Kew Railway Bridge.


  *

  ‘This is my one.’ Megan lifted a yellow budgerigar off the perch where it had been preening itself and held it up for Helen Honeysett’s inspection. ‘I hand-reared her. She’s called Mindy.’ She enunciated the words with aplomb.

  Helen Honeysett made a bird-like motion with her head. ‘You shouldn’t have picked it up so fast. How would you like to be swept off your feet unexpectedly?’

  ‘It doesn’t mind,’ Megan mumbled, reddening. Garry swept them off their feet all the time. Did budgies have feet? She thought it was claws. He was at Scouts and he didn’t know she had invited Helen Honeysett to his aviary. He would be livid because, Megan knew, he was secretly planning to ask her to come because he’d accidentally told her. It wasn’t her fault Helen Honeysett was here. ‘I’m desperate to choose my budgies!’ she’d said.

  ‘Remind me of the price?’ Helen Honeysett had insisted on coming right into the aviary.

  ‘Two pounds for blue ones and two pounds fifty for the yellow budgies because they’re worth more than blue,’ Megan inflated the prices she’d told her at the Ewell-tide House-Warming Party.

  ‘He’s enterprising, your bro! He’ll be rich one day.’

  ‘He spends it on more seeds and things.’ Megan scuffled her feet on the dirt floor. ‘I made him promise not to sell Mindy.’ She raised the bird to her lips and kissed it.

  ‘I want her!’ Helen Honeysett made a cooing sound.

  Megan closed her fingers around the bird. ‘There’s others.’

  Helen Honeysett posted the black thing she called a pager into one of the roosting boxes and thrust her hands out for the bird. ‘I want a hold.’

  If she had been Angie, Megan would have said no. But it was Helen Honeysett so in case she got more ‘desperate’ Megan passed over the little bird.