The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘We’ve met your niece.’ If Stella intended to break Lucie May’s light mood, she succeeded.

  ‘What niece?’ Lucie hugged her knees, the pose of a girl. She suddenly looked old, her hands bony and trembling.

  ‘Megan Lawson. Although she goes by the name of Stephanie Benson.’ Stella unzipped her jacket and settled back in the chair. ‘She’s your sister’s daughter,’ she reminded her. Jack could see Lucie didn’t need reminding.

  ‘Nothing wrong with changing your name, especially when it’s tainted.’ Lucie snatched up her glass and took a gulp, grimacing as if it was medicine. She drank some more. ‘I told her to go to Clean Slate. She’ll raise the bar on standards and turn your business around.’ She gave Stella a gladiatorial glare over the rim of her glass. ‘So, Miss Prissy-Poos, did you sack her for changing her name?’

  If Stella was surprised by this news, she was the perfect poker player. ‘Megan suggested we talk to you about Helen Honeysett. We’ve been asked to investigate her death.’

  ‘By my niece?’ Lemon oil notwithstanding, Lucie’s mood had become as dark as an impending storm. Jack tried to catch Stella’s eye; it was time to leave.

  ‘By Honeysett’s husband.’ Stella eyed Lucie, unblinking. ‘Megan said you’d shed light on the background.’

  ‘Actually, Stella, we should be—’ Jack tried to get up, but the squashy sofa had swallowed him and he couldn’t get purchase.

  In record time Lucie assembled another gin and tonic and had left the room. They heard her call from above, ‘You want background? I’ll give you fucking background.’

  *

  Jack had never been upstairs at Lucie May’s. Although she had decorated the sitting room, the landing had not been touched since at least the 1960s. Wood chip wallpaper, orange above the dado, cream below. Neither colour, stained by nicotine, likely to be the original.

  ‘Where’s she gone?’ Stella indicated three doors, all shut.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Jack whispered. ‘This was a mistake.’ Recently he’d made a lot of mistakes. He’d left his home and his memories and Bella had left him. Now they were mired in Lucie’s very private life. He backed down the stairs.

  Stella tapped on the nearest door. ‘Lucie?

  ‘Come.’ The voice didn’t sound like Lucie.

  Jack had no choice but to go with Stella. Keeping close to her, when she stopped abruptly, he banged into her. He saw why.

  The walls were papered with photographs of a woman, posing in a graduation gown and cap, leaning on railings with a river behind her and smiling into the lens. Some in black and white, others in lurid colour, on newsprint and glossy photographic paper. One wall was given over to a vast whiteboard ribboned with yellow and pink sticky notes and scribbled observations. Coloured arrows spoked out from a name circled in red and hatched in black as if behind prison bars, ‘Steven Lawson’.

  Jack had once stumbled upon a murderer’s shrine. There too were images of a young woman, raising a glass of wine in a toast, eyes bright, perfect teeth pearly white. Here was another young woman bathed in summer sun, her hair glossy as a shampoo advert. Helen Honeysett laughed into the lens as if she might confidently evade her fate.

  Jack had always supposed Lucie’s ‘Captain Kirk Bridge’ was on her sofa within reach of a nippet. He’d picture her, fingers flying over the keyboard, churning out bread and butter stories for local newspapers, always chasing the Holy Grail of a scoop and the syndicated big time. But her true sanctum was her spare bedroom.

  All around them, under headlines such as Cold-Blooded Killer, The Quiet One, The Towpath Monster, Steven Lawson’s baby-faced features beamed out. Jack recognized the seven-year-old Megan Lawson with an older boy – her brother Garry – and Bette Lawson at Mortlake Crematorium. In the girl’s tight features, he saw the woman they had met earlier that evening. Garry Lawson clutched his mother’s arm. Megan was a pace apart from them. From the set of his shoulders, Garry wasn’t just supporting Bette Lawson, but ensuring Megan couldn’t get near her.

  ‘Sit down. Stop hovering like a pair of lily-livers!’ Lucie barked.

  As he shut the door, Jack went cold. A sheet of paper was stuck to the back of it with four drawing pins. ‘Who am I and what have I done?’ The writing was jagged, in thick red felt pen, and the letters, larger with each word, gave a different sense on the question typed in Courier font that had floated on Natasha Latimer’s screensaver. Was Lucie the intruder? He tried to sound hearty: ‘So, this is the nerve centre!’

  Seated at a table heaped with newspapers and files, used mugs and foil takeaway containers, Lucie span around in her chair to face them. ‘Welcome to the “Murder Room”.’

  ‘Lucie, we ought to lea—’ Jack began.

  ‘Steven Lawson lured Helen Honeysett to her death.’ Lucie might have been reading a bedtime story. Jack felt a creeping chill down his back.

  ‘You know he did?’ Stella appeared unaware of Lucie’s strange controlled state.

  ‘He had motive, opportunity and means. Done deal.’

  ‘What was his motive?’ Hands behind her back, Stella strolled around the room examining the walls as if she were in an art gallery.

  ‘He was terrified Helen Honeysett would tell his wife – my baby sister – he’d made a pass at her. He needed Bette’s money, his business was down the pan – pun intended – and he needed the respectability of a family. Besides, Honeysett didn’t want him. He was desperate. She had to go.’ She spoke with the same certainty as Megan Lawson, although their theories about what had happened differed. Megan assumed her dad had wanted to be with Honeysett; Lucie was saying he’d killed her because she threatened his status quo.

  ‘And the means?’ Stella asked.

  ‘A plumber has an armoury of murder weapons at his disposal.’ Lucie grabbed a bag of crudités from a drawer in her desk and ripped it open with her teeth. Carrots spilled across her papers. She snatched one up and began sucking on it furiously.

  When Lucie was chasing a story she was tenacious. She had provided them with leads and on more than one occasion was present at a crucial moment. But this mystery involved her own family and it seemed she couldn’t be impartial. Jack knew she would dislike them talking to her niece; Lucie liked to hold all the cards. He was shaken. In the past he’d relied on her ebullient if dark humour, but tonight there were no jokes. Lucie May was a stranger. Time to go.

  ‘Helen Honeysett’s husband had a motive too.’ Stella was steadfast.

  ‘He had an alibi. His mistress vouched for him. Crap for the “heartbroken hubby” routine, but it got him off the hook. He couldn’t be in two places at once. Everyone in that street had an alibi except Stevie baby.’ Lucie crunched on a carrot. A piece dropped on to her shirt and she bashed it off with a violence that unnerved Jack.

  ‘Adam Honeysett could have hired a contract killer,’ Stella said.

  ‘This isn’t James Bond.’ Lucie was chilly.

  ‘Honeysett and Jane Drake could have done it together. They had joint motive.’ Stella still had her back to Lucie. Jack was relieved she couldn’t see Lucie’s if-looks-could-horribly-kill expression.

  ‘Jane Drake was seen buying cheap plonk from an off-licence at Kew Gardens station at the time Honeysett left the house. Another witness saw her returning to her flat minutes later. She had no chance to get to the towpath and do away with fair Helen. Face it, PC Clean-Up, they’re in the clear.’

  ‘The murderer might not have lived in Thames Cottages?’ Stella was tenacious too. ‘Anyone could have killed Helen Honeysett. A customer or a colleague at the estate agent’s. A perfect stranger.’ She had obviously abandoned her method of working with limited suspects.

  ‘Top marks, Inspector Clouseau! I never thought of that!’ Lucie snarled. ‘No one reported seeing strangers on the towpath. Only dog walkers go there at night. Whoever it was had an intimate knowledge of the girl’s routine. Means: Lawson lived two doors down and walked his dog with Honeysett. Motive’ – she thumped her fist
on the desk – ‘the chap was a sex maniac. Method: Lawson attacked her on the towpath, weighed her down with lead piping and chucked her in the Thames. She sank without trace. My brother-in-law ticks all the boxes.’ Lucie’s ferocity had gone up a notch. ‘I told my sister to steer clear of him. She looked OK, she could have had anyone. Bette has no self-esteem, so she went for the first man who batted his eyes.’ She seized another carrot. ‘Ma and Pa had me, but they wanted a boy. Second go – and that was a miracle, they couldn’t stand each other – was another friggin’ girl. The poor kid had failed before she was out of nappies. Mr Ballcock comes to mend our boiler and wham bam! My blokes have been disasters, but at least I never fell in love. Pater wouldn’t as much as speak to my “beaus”, but with Bette he didn’t care. I’d come home and find Pipe-Cutter slouching on the sofa scoffing my mother’s nasty parrot-seed cake. Next thing, Bette’s prancing down the aisle and having his babies. Seventeen she was when she had Garry. A bright future flushed down the toilet.’ Lucie could be blunt, but Jack had never heard her so vicious. He hugged into his coat in an attempt to disappear.

  ‘The evidence against Lawson is circumstantial.’ Stella was positively serene.

  ‘As your daddy said, Ste-llah, feel the truth there!’ Lucie thumped her stomach so hard Jack winced. ‘Mine tells me Lawson murdered Honeysett. Ask yourself, has another girl disappeared by the towpath? Have other dogs been found wandering there? No! Lawson topped himself and since then no one’s copped it.’

  ‘Dad also said, “Don’t let a hunch blind you to the evidence.” Whoever killed Helen Honeysett may have killed again, but they got even better at concealing the evidence. The victim may be someone who’s not been reported missing.’ Jack could have hugged Stella.

  ‘Get real!’ Lucie gave a wintry smile. ‘Even Lawson’s own daughter knows he did it. Doesn’t that tell you something?’

  ‘Megan was a little girl. She may have been wrong or she mis­understood what she saw. Her brother doesn’t think his father was guilty.’

  ‘Garry has the brain of a budgie. Thank God for Widow Merry, that old dame has her head screwed on, unlike the other weirdos in that street. She’s known real shit in her life, her man took their seven-year-old kid on a ride to oblivion. She bothered with Megan before Mr U-Bend drowned himself and Bette went to la-la land. The Merrys lived in Hammersmith; that crash in Sussex was my first story.’

  ‘What year was that?’ Jack asked. Lucie frequently claimed news events as her ‘first story’: it was impossible to pin down her age. Daphne Merry had been thirty-eight in 1987.

  ‘Nineteen eighty-five.’ Lucie tossed the remainder of her carrot at an overflowing wastepaper basket and missed. Shrivelled bits of carrot, dried and curling, encircled the wired basket along with screwed-up paper and chewing-gum wrappers.

  ‘You have to be prepared to abandon a theory, follow the evidence.’ Stella was looking at a picture of Steven Lawson being mobbed by a nasty-looking crowd and reporters outside Richmond Police Station. ‘Avoid reaching a conclusion too soon and passing up a vital clue.’ She moved towards the door; any moment she would see the question stuck there. Jack was suddenly certain that they mustn’t tell Lucie where they’d seen it before. ‘Your sister’s convinced Lawson didn’t do it.’

  ‘That shit-bird plumber cruised through life scot-free. He won’t get away with murder.’

  ‘Steven Lawson’s dead,’ Stella observed benignly. ‘He hasn’t got away with it.’

  On the window sill was an ashtray heaped with butts. Although the ceiling was nicotine yellow, there was no odour of stale smoke in the room. As far as Jack knew, Lucie had given up smoking a good while back so the ashtrays must have been there a while. She must have spent years in her ‘Murder Room’ sifting through amassed information in search of the magic bullet that would finish off her brother-in-law. Bitter loathing had corroded objectivity. The focus of her investigation wasn’t to find who murdered the estate agent, but to prove it was Lawson. Ordinarily Lucie was an effective – if judgemental – reporter, but venom had consumed her. With sickened gloom, Jack pictured her dead body slumped over her desk, Lucie having died in the attempt.

  ‘Your sister says here she knew Steven Lawson loved her. He was a family man.’ Stella was reading an article under the headline Wife of Cheating Plumber Haunts Towpath.

  ‘Didn’t Terry teach you about hiding in plain sight?’ Lucie was nasty. Jack was miserable; this wasn’t the Lucie that, for all her ruthless ability to snake and ladder to the finish, was his friend. ‘Stevie had the face of a landscape cutey, but the saw-teeth of wolf!’

  ‘No one can help their teeth,’ Jack remarked. ‘You never suspected anyone else? What about Neville Rowlands?’

  ‘He’s harmless. Poor bloke was stuck with his witch of a mother, never had a life. At her beck and call day and night. Daphne Merry saw him on the towpath; he’d sneaked out for a breather. Before you run with that one too, Rowlands was coming from the opposite direction to Honeysett.’

  Stella had reached the door. Jack willed her to look at him before she saw the sentence that had been on Natasha Latimer’s screensaver.

  ‘What is this?’ Stella demanded.

  ‘They’re the last words in the plumber’s diary before he drowned himself. Guilty as sin!’

  ‘I don’t see how they prove Lawson killed Helen Honeysett.’

  Wonderhorse! Jack stopped himself doing a jig. They were a team.

  ‘That doesn’t sound like the profile of the man you’ve been describing,’ Stella continued.

  Jack had kept quiet. Stella’s composed manner was the ideal foil for Lucie’s high-octane state, but his curiosity took over. ‘You have to be a tad reflective to keep a journal.’

  ‘Not a journal, Jack-Puss!’ Lucie jabbed her carrot at him. ‘He was as reflective as a shit-spattered mirror. After the police let him go, Lawson wrote a minute-by-minute account of each hour of each day to show he wasn’t out on the towpath stalking innocent girls and murdering them. Pathetic!’

  ‘Sounds like he tried to protect himself,’ Stella said. ‘After Helen Honeysett vanished, Steven Lawson must have expected to be questioned every time there was an assault or reports of a suspicious-looking man in the vicinity of the river.’

  ‘Stevie was stupid, but no fool. He bent the truth, like he did his pipes.’ Lucie sent her chair spinning again, this time sticking out her legs like a child on a roundabout. Jack felt mild relief; this was more like the old Lucie.

  Stella turned to her. ‘How come you’ve seen his diary?’

  ‘My niece gave it to me after his death.’ Lucie had the grace to look shifty.

  Stella said, ‘I’ve seen no mention of it in the press.’

  ‘It’s not in the public interest,’ Lucie proclaimed piously. Jack guessed she shouldn’t have the diary and with a book somewhere in the pipeline, didn’t want its existence known. A moment later Lucie confirmed this: ‘When I write my book, his diary will show the lengths Stevie went to get away with murder.’

  ‘Technically the diary must belong to your sister.’ Go Stella!

  ‘The diary belongs to anyone willing to speak the truth.’ Lucie grimaced horribly. ‘Get this, Marple and Morse, take the advice of a seasoned investigative journalist. Don’t go hunting a phantom murderer; save Honeysett’s cash.’ She glared at Jack. ‘Yes, I know who’s feathering your nest. Adam Honeysett’s wife’s murderer is mouldering in Mortlake Cemetery. Tell him to go piss on Plumber Lawson’s grave!’

  46

  Monday, 11 January 2016

  ‘Lucie May seems intent on proving Lawson did it,’ Stella said. ‘She wasn’t herself. She never sees us to the door.’

  ‘Maybe she was in shock. She’s carried a family secret for nearly thirty years, it must have cost a lot to talk to us.’ Jack knew about keeping secrets. They were in Latimer’s basement, the dead space a respite after Lucie’s Murder Room. Exhausted by the encounter, Jack was grateful when Stanley chose to snooze on hi
s lap. Settled on the sofa, next to him, Stella booted up her laptop.

  ‘It’s hardly secret. It was a high-profile case and she wrote articles about it,’ Stella pointed out.

  ‘Lucie never admitted her connection to Lawson.’ He fluffed Stanley’s handlebar moustache. ‘If my brother was suspected of murder, I’d keep out of it.’

  ‘Even if you believed he’d done it?’ Stella was rummaging in her rucksack.

  Stella was a police officer’s daughter, she wanted villains apprehended and crime prevented. She wouldn’t make exception for her family. Or him. ‘I’d say nothing.’

  ‘That would be illegal.’ Stella laid a school exercise book on the sofa between them.

  ‘That’s Lawson’s diary!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘I didn’t see Lucie give it to you.’

  Stella opened the flimsy book. ‘It wasn’t Lucie’s to give.’

  ‘You took it without asking?’ He pulled on Stanley’s ears, kneading them through his fingers. ‘Isn’t that illegal?’

  ‘No.’ Stella was firm. ‘And if I’d asked, she’d have refused.’ She slid the diary towards him.

  Jack tried to focus. Within two columns, crabbed printed letters flattened at the base suggested Lawson had used a ruler. Like Lucie had said, it wasn’t a journal, but a list of activities and precise times.

  Time

  Activity

  6.34 a.m.

  Showered.

  7.15 – 7.32 a.m.

  With Bette, walked Smudge on Kew Green. Mrs Merry by pond with dog. She said ‘Good morning’.

  7.32 – 8.30 a.m.

  Breakfast with B, G and M.

  8.30 – 9.01 a.m.

  Went with Bette and took M to school.

  9.01 – 9.55 a.m.