The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Adam Honeysett.’ Stella saw no harm in telling him. ‘He wants to move on. It will be thirty years next January.’

  ‘It will indeed be. I still wonder why now.’ Rowlands inter­locked his fingers on his knee and appeared to cogitate. ‘It is possible that the man who could help died weeks after Helen Honeysett disappeared.’

  ‘You think Steven Lawson did it?’ Stella was prepared for this. If Rowlands was the killer, he would want to keep the focus of guilt on the plumber.

  ‘Once upon a time it was “No body, no murder”, but that principle was abolished in English Law in 1954. Until then you couldn’t be tried for murder without the corpse. As I remember it, the evidence against Lawson was circumstantial, no DNA or cross-contamination, nothing sufficiently compelling for him to go to trial. A sad business. The public were quick to apportion blame. To my mind we have too many armchair detectives.’

  Whether Rowlands counted Stella as an armchair detective was unclear. His knowledge of criminal law and forensics suggested he’d done his fair share of sit-down detection. She wrote, ‘No body, no murder.’ Nowadays police had a choice of ‘proofs of life’: CCTV, mobile phone and broadband usage. In 1987 they’d have been reliant on whether Honeysett’s bank account had been accessed or passport renewed. Witness sightings were unreliable. ‘What do you remember about that night?’

  ‘It was dominated by my mother’s illness. She was in pain. I couldn’t bear to leave her, but had to walk our dog. I told the police, I didn’t see Helen Honeysett. I went out earlier than she did and towards Kew Bridge. She always jogged the other way. That girl brimmed with energy.’ He gave no hint as to what he thought of this. ‘Daphne found the Honeysetts’ dog. That alerted the police to the fact that something was seriously wrong. Poor Daphne. She’s a kindly lady.’

  Daphne. He was on first-name terms. Adam Honeysett had said that Rowlands and Merry were not friends, indeed that no one in the street were friends. Maybe it was that no one was friends with Honeysett. ‘Are you still in touch with Daphne Merry?’ Stella was casual.

  He darted a look at her. Anger, annoyance, Stella couldn’t tell. His reply was ambiguous. ‘I see her often.’

  ‘What about Sybil Lofthouse…’ Stella’s question was lost amid a terrible grinding as if the walls were caving in. Instinctively she ducked and her Filofax fell to the floor. ‘What was that!’ she exclaimed when at last it stopped.

  ‘I do apologize for not warning you. They’re digging a base­ment next door. Incredibly, one gets used to it. And then I’m not here much of the time.’

  Stella knew where he was much of the time. She was tempted to tell him that Latimer was getting the locks changed. Perhaps he knew.

  ‘I wondered about Sybil Lofthouse.’ She kicked her Filofax under the divan and bending over, retrieved it. The action would explain to Rowlands why his photo had been shunted so far back. No, it wouldn’t. Coupled with the shirt in the cupboard door, it told him that she’d searched his room while he was making the tea. She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth chattering.

  ‘Miss Lofthouse did something at the Stock Exchange. I read that in the papers; she would never talk about herself to me. She is an intensely private lady. We’d exchange pleasantries if we met on the towpath, always about our dogs. There was no love lost between her and the dead girl. At the Honeysetts’ Christmas drinks party the girl had wheedled away at Miss Lofthouse to give her inside trading knowledge. She seemed to be joking, but Miss Lofthouse didn’t like it one bit. Nor do I think that Helen Honeysett meant to be funny. Miss Lofthouse left the party. A day or so before the disappearance, I was with Miss Lofthouse by the river and that young madam came galloping up as she did. She started up again about Lofthouse keeping secrets. What else did she know? Please tell!’ He did a high voice in imitation. ‘Miss Lofthouse looked fit to kill. Pardon the expression. That girl didn’t notice the effect she had on others. It started with the Christmas tree.’

  Stella would not ask. She waited.

  ‘She took pictures of all of us without us knowing. Her husband made an invitation card with all our faces stuck on the tree. No one liked that.’

  ‘Did you mind?’

  ‘Me? No, it was a bit of fun.’ Rowlands smiled blandly. ‘It all came from wanting to be liked. She went the wrong way about it and she paid for it. It takes years to join a community. My family moved here – there – during the Great War.’ He clenched his hands together. ‘Those Honeysetts thought they could waltz in and woo us all. Poor Daphne had been through enough.’ Neville Rowlands had reddened; he sat forward on the divan, suddenly animated. Was Daphne Merry the reason Rowlands had been reluctant to leave home and the reason why he went back?

  ‘What had she been through?’ Stella asked innocently. She wanted his take on the car crash story.

  ‘A moment of carelessness cost her everything. She abhors carelessness. She came to Thames Cottages to put her life together. When that Megan Lawson befriended her, it was like a second chance. It wouldn’t bring back her little girl, but it was a salve of sorts. I encouraged that. Such a sweet little girl she was. But after Daphne called the police to talk to the girl, that family wouldn’t let her see the girl any more. Damn near destroyed her.’ He got up and adjusted his parents’ picture frame. Noticing Stella’s mug, he remarked icily, ‘You haven’t finished your tea.’

  ‘It was lovely,’ Stella assured him, although it was too strong.

  He sat back again. Stella noted he was ‘fidgety’. Jack was good on body language.

  ‘Honeysett didn’t mince her words. In front of the neighbours at the party, she urged Daphne to have another child, said it would heal the pain. Daphne took it graciously of course. I agreed with her, but you have to go about these things care­fully. Daphne is fragile.’

  ‘It does seem that Helen Honeysett upset several people.’ Stella wasn’t sure she would have liked Helen Honeysett. She told herself that didn’t matter. Her job was to find out why Helen had been killed. Stick to facts. Stella did wonder if her mum’s comment that a victim wasn’t implicated in their death was right. Had Helen upset someone so much they had wanted her dead?

  ‘Oh yes,’ he agreed readily. He seemed oblivious to the poss­i­bility that he was one of them. ‘Like I said to that reporter, the smallest thing can cause the nicest person to snap. And then there’s no going back.’

  Had he really not minded Honeysett’s clumsy advice to abandon his mother? Stella wouldn’t like Suzie to be likened to a vice. Did nothing provoke him?

  ‘We’ve met before.’ Stella touched the phone in her pocket ready to ring for help. What had her dad said about not antagon­izing a suspect in a small space?

  ‘I don’t recall.’ Rowlands was studying her with surprise. ‘I am sorry…’

  ‘You were walking your dog on the towpath.’ His surprise looked genuine. Stella felt a ripple of doubt.

  ‘I don’t have a dog.’ He looked around the little room as if to check.

  ‘Is this yours?’ Stella fished the dog collar from her pocket.

  Neville Rowlands took it from her. ‘Whisky. Where did you find this?’

  ‘In Natasha Latimer’s basement. I assumed it was yours.’ She watched him closely. ‘I thought you’d left it there.’

  ‘My mother’s terrier was called Hercules.’ He was as smooth as silk. ‘Sadly he passed in 1987. My last dog, a spaniel, went a few years ago.’

  ‘I’ve seen your pet cemetery,’ Stella said. Max 2000–2012. Lost to us.

  Rowlands brightened. ‘Are the graves still there? I presumed the woman who bought the house would have dug them up.’

  ‘It must have been strange to move after all those years. Having to give back the key...’ Stella looked at him. He looked back at her. She looked away first.

  ‘It was.’ Neville Rowlands’ face was a mask. He stood up and, brushing down his trousers, said, ‘I wonder if too much water has passed under the bridge since 1987? As I said to that Lucille May from the
paper, Helen Honeysett has taken her secret to the grave.’

  On the doorstep, Stella thanked Rowlands for his time and, driving away, considered that the impromptu interview had told her nothing. Would Jack have got him to admit that the collar belonged to his dog? Honeysett had been rude about his mother: it was hardly a motive for murder, but as Rowlands himself had said, people snap.

  She’d hoped to come away from the meeting certain that Neville Rowlands had murdered Helen Honeysett. She was far from certain.

  Was Lucie May right and it was Steven Lawson? After all, she had known him well and she had spent years since his death researching the case. She had been subjective, her mind tight shut, but that didn’t stop her being right. Jack had once said a stopped clock was right twice a day.

  Stella saw she was on Aldensley Road. Eyes steadfastly ahead, she drove on. The last person she wanted to see right now was David Barlow.

  *

  Stella opened Bette Lawson’s box file. It contained stapled papers, each labelled with the interviewee’s name. Used to writing up patients’ notes, Bette Lawson had stopped short of noting blood pressure and temperature. On top was Neville Rowlands ‘aged thirty-six, psoriasis on lower arms, mother recently deceased’. She wondered if he still had the condition.

  Bette Lawson described him as gentle. As he’d told Stella, Rowlands had gone briefly to the towpath with his dog and then returned to nurse his sick mother. Perhaps the fact that he was a carer had warmed Bette to him, because her notes were kindly. ‘Mr Rowlands is worn out with caring and bereavement, but was good enough to talk to me…’ ‘I’m sorry to say I saw Steven going in the same direction along the towpath as Helen Honeysett…’ He had seen Daphne Merry walking her dog towards Kew Bridge, ‘…the opposite way to your husband and the dead girl’. Stella consulted her map of the towpath. Rowlands hadn’t seen Megan and she hadn’t seen him. He hadn’t told her he’d seen Daphne Merry or Steven Lawson. This meant Rowlands must have gone back into his house before Megan came out since she hadn’t mentioned seeing him. Or someone was lying.

  The afternoon passed in a blur. Stella worked her way through Bette Lawson’s file, pausing to tap notes into her spreadsheet. Beverly and Jackie brought her tea at intervals that Stella, deeply absorbed, vaguely supposed were minutes apart. They removed the mugs of cold tea without comment. When she emerged from her office they had gone, their screens blank, chairs tucked in. Stanley was curled up in his bed by the filing cabinets. He made to move when he saw her, but she stayed him with a hand. It was dark outside. Lights from the top deck of buses passed across the office wall.

  She returned with a cheese sandwich from the mini-mart. She’d been disappointed not to see Dariusz Adomek; since expanding his business to two shops, Dariusz was often at the other branch. Her anglepoise trained on Lawson’s papers, Stella continued reading.

  As the clock on the wall reached five past six, Stella, scrutinizing additions to her spreadsheet, gave a start. She found Bette Lawson’s notes for number 5 Thames Cottages. Sybil Lofthouse was fifty when Honeysett vanished. Working early shifts at the Stock Exchange, she told Bette Lawson, and the police, that she’d been in bed by eight. She hadn’t gone to the towpath. Stella flipped to her Filofax for her own account of meeting Lofthouse. She was dumbfounded. When she had transcribed her notes on to the Excel file, she had missed something out.

  By the time the big hand reached quarter past, Stella had set the office alarm and was running down the stairs to the street, Stanley leaping after her.

  Jack was in the dead zone; it was no use texting. She must see him.

  Stella had reached the street when she got a text from Suzie. Don’t forget agility. At 6.30. Mum. X. She stopped beside the mini-mart’s fruit and vegetable stand, lurid in the neon red of the Coca-Cola sign. It took her only a moment to make the choice.

  56

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  ‘Hey, my kitten, my kitten,

  And hey, my kitten, my deary!

  Such a sweet pet as this

  There is not far or neary.’

  Jack heard his mother’s voice singing to the dance – manic and joyful – that they did every day. Had she sung it to him? Had they danced? The jigging figures dwindled like gossamer.

  The air in the garden was still and cold. In the light of his Maglite, the headstones were like rocks among the rough grass.

  ‘Hercules 1981–1987’. ‘Max 2000–2012 Lost to us’. It had been kind of Claudia to give Neville Rowlands a key. Were Stanley Jack’s dog, he couldn’t abandon Stanley’s bones to strangers who cared nothing for his memory. He would find a way to visit.

  Jane Drake told Stella that she’d seen Neville Rowlands and Daphne Merry on the towpath on the night Helen Honeysett vanished. Hercules had died in 1987. He must have been the dog Rowlands had taken for a last walk. There were no reports that suggested that Merry or Rowlands had seen Drake.

  Jack caught a movement. He swung his torch round. There was a bird on Max’s headstone. He made out blue plumage, bright in the torchlight. There were parakeets all over West London, descendants of escapees in the twentieth century, but parakeets were green. It was a budgerigar. ‘Hello, you!’ he greeted the bird as he stealthily moved towards it. It too was an escapee and he knew exactly where it had escaped from.

  *

  ‘Is this yours?’

  A dull-eyed man regarded Jack through a gap in the half-opened door.

  ‘He – or she – was in the pet ceme— in the garden next door.’ Jack held out his cupped hands to the man and opened them a fraction. He felt a fluttering of feathers, the faintest warmth on his cold fingers.

  ‘I keep the aviary locked.’ The man made no move to take the bird off Jack.

  ‘Are you Garry Lawson?’

  ‘What if I am?’

  ‘I’m staying next door. Doing the cleaning, looking after the place.’ Jack tipped his head back and forth in a lame attempt to appear jaunty. Lawson gave no sign that he’d heard.

  Jack was adept at moving through rooms, tunnels, under bridges, as intangible as a shadow. Deception served its purpose. Stella preferred a transparent approach. If she were here, he knew what she would say. He launched into his speech: ‘I’m also working for Adam Honeysett. He wants me and my friend to find out what happened to his wife. We’re talking to everyone who was living here in 1987. You’d have been about nine – do you remember that time?’

  ‘I was twelve. Nearly thirteen.’ Lawson made to close the door.

  ‘Twelve. Your sister Megan was seven.’ Hoping to soften Garry, Jack clicked his tongue at the budgerigar. The ploy only appeared to rile the man. Hurriedly Jack went on, ‘You didn’t see your dad go to the towpath. Megan says she followed him to the towpath.’

  ‘My dad didn’t murder her.’ Lawson thumped the door jamb. The change in tempo made Jack jump.

  ‘Very likely not,’ he agreed. ‘Murder shines a spotlight on other lives and reveals secrets unrelated to it. The evidence against your dad was entirely circumstantial. It’s why he wasn’t charged. If you’d seen him going to the towpath, that wouldn’t mean he was necessarily meeting Helen Honeysett.’ He raised his cupped hands. ‘Shall we return your budgie to your aviary?’

  ‘Budgerigar.’ Lawson reached out. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘I’d love to see it. I had a budgerigar once.’ His mother had said Jack would be allowed one when he was old enough to care for it, so this was nearly true.

  Garry Lawson frowned at the darkness of the park opposite. He was a thickset man, black hair combed back and thinning at the temples: Jack could tell he was Steven Lawson’s son. Garry was in his early forties – a bit older than Steven Lawson when he died – but he lacked his dad’s boyish charm. His expression was stolid; he was getting a second chin and had a slight paunch.

  Garry took the bird off him and went to close the door. Jack bounded inside before he could stop him, a fixed beam on his face. ‘Brilliant!’ He rubbed his hands together
as if now, after the boring old chat, a truly exciting task awaited. Appearing to admit defeat, Lawson pushed through a bead curtain hanging across a doorway. Untangling himself from the beads, Jack followed Garry into a kitchen. It seemed that Bette Lawson was out. Jack was mildly relieved: he had wanted to see Garry on his own.

  Jack had expected the Lawsons’ cottage to be languishing in a time warp. Their lives had stopped in 1987 and the décor would reflect this. It would be neglected, shabby and outdated. Yet the kitchen was sleek and streamlined. White cupboards, oiled wooden surfaces and grey floor tiles. Bette Lawson’s family might be fractured – Steven was dead, his daughter lived in self-imposed exile and Garry was a zombie – but her home was spick and span.

  In the light from a lantern on the house wall, Jack saw a trim rectangular lawn with a path down one side. Frost had settled, giving the grass an uncanny whitish gleam. Jack sized up the situation. No exit. If Garry Lawson attacked him, Garry would win. He was shorter, but well built and, his life shattered by tragedy and hate, had nothing to lose. Stella would avoid antagonizing a dangerous man in a dark garden with no one nearby to help. No, she wouldn’t. Twice in the last few days she had put herself in danger. Now it was his turn.

  ‘What sort was your budgerigar?’ Garry unfastened the door to a flimsy-looking structure that was lit inside by a bulb. Chicken wire ballooned out from a wooden frame, crudely reinforced with lengths of wood at angles like a child’s frenzied crossing-out of a drawing. Plastic toys dangled from struts and were suspended from the mesh ceiling.

  Jack hadn’t realized there were ‘sorts’ of budgerigars. ‘Yellow,’ he said, looking at one of Garry’s yellow birds.

  ‘You can’t hurt my dad now, but if you hurt my mother or my sister, I will kill you,’ Garry said suddenly.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Jack hadn’t protected his mother, what right had he to tread on this man’s thin ice? Lawson, like him, had lost a parent in a needless death: they were brothers of a kind. ‘Garry, I think you saw your dad follow Helen Honeysett, but were scared to say so because, like your sister, you think he did it. You are protecting him. But what if he didn’t murder her?’