The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  If Steven had seen Sybil Lofthouse, he would have asked her to shore up his story. Stella was there with Daphne Merry: a bystander was little better than a murderer. Lofthouse had effectively killed Steven Lawson.

  Sybil Lofthouse, Adam Honeysett and Megan Lawson had all seen Neville Rowlands and Daphne Merry on the towpath. Sybil Lofthouse’s words echoed in her head. ‘He was creeping past the crematorium, like he does, stalking that poor Mrs Merry.’ Some­thing didn’t make sense. Then as if a fog rolled in, the glimmer of thought was gone. Stella took off her rucksack and dug out her Filofax. She leafed to her notes from their interview with Megan Lawson. Megan had said Daphne Merry found the Honeysetts’ dog near Kew Bridge. Not Mortlake Crematorium. A seven-year-old, upset about her dad, who shouldn’t have been out in the first place, was more likely to get a detail wrong than a woman in her thirties who abhorred carelessness and would, as Lofthouse had said, flourish at the Stock Exchange. She stuffed her Filofax back in her rucksack and set off along the towpath.

  Adam Honeysett claimed to have walked all night – crossing London – battling with how to end his affair with Jane Drake. Merry couldn’t have seen Adam or, a stickler for the truth, she would have told the police that his alibi – that he was with Drake – was false. Of all their suspects, Adam Honeysett remained the one with the strongest motive for murdering Helen Honeysett. He had got the house and eventually, when his wife was declared dead, her death-in-service benefit and life insurance.

  Deep in thought, Stella didn’t notice the Thames Cottages lamp-post. She trudged on into the darkness, passing Latimer’s long garden wall and the concealed entrance to her secret passage, and continued along the shingled path, desolate and bleak although it was barely eight o’clock in the evening, her footsteps hollow in the suspended silence. Below her the river was filling, water chasing into gullies, washing over bottles and cans, shifting and dislodging them. By now familiar with the riverside path, Stella gave no heed to the extraneous sounds, some explainable. Some not.

  She was only jolted from her deliberations when Stanley brought her to a stop. They were outside Brian Judd’s house.

  Whisky. Stanley sensed Brian Judd’s dog. The windows were dark. Sybil Lofthouse hadn’t seen Judd or his dog for some time. But without Timothy Trot, she’d no reason to walk on the towpath after dark, when the article by Lucie that Jack had seen had said that Brian Judd came out. Lofthouse had told her that she’d taken Judd’s mis-delivered post round to him but, unwilling to get involved, she’d have been unlikely to have knocked on his door to check on him. A recluse, Judd might not have answered. People baffled Stella. She knew someone could lie dead in their home for years and not be missed. But in Judd’s house she hadn’t smelled the tell-tale stench of decay; there were no fat bluebottles dotting the walls and windows. And Stanley would have rooted out a body. Judd hadn’t been there, but someone had picked up his post. They’d not swept up the leaves or cleaned, but Stella had seen that scenario before.

  She let Stanley lead her over the grass to the house. He scrab­b­led at the door with his furious cycling motion. She was disbelieving as the door drifted open with a spine-chilling creak. Stella was no bystander. With Stanley at her side, she stepped inside.

  64

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  I feel like a small boy on the first day of school. Worse, because on that day Mother took me. Mother is in my heart, willing me on. I’ve rehearsed the words. Not that I need to. I know them off by heart. You will appreciate my meticulous care. It is what you love about me. Love. I dare to use that word. You love me. The time has come for us. I am ready and waiting.

  The moon is full. I’m not a romantic, I won’t bother you with the crude theatre of flowers and chocolates, but tonight all the signs are here. My beloved Thames flows like the blood in my veins. I can be poetic, but I won’t be. You are a no-nonsense lady. I will tell you all I have done for you. The river that has watched over me all my life is my witness. I am your True De-Cluttering Assistant. I clear up for you. I keep you free.

  The dog knows me. The cleaners could spoil everything. I will not let them.

  65

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  The chill penetrated Stella’s jacket and chilled her bones. The air was musty. A decayed body wouldn’t smell once the flesh had rotted. She dismissed the notion. There was a smell, faint and overlaying the damp. Not a corpse. Stella’s bloodhound nose identified it as Nivea shaving gel for sensitive skin. Sybil Lofthouse had described Brian Judd as having a beard like a Victorian. Stella hadn’t known what she was talking about, but guessed that it didn’t involve shaving.

  ‘Hello?’ Alerted by her call, Stanley growled.

  The scent of aftershave was fresh. Gillette. The aftershave her dad and Martin Cashman had worn. And Neville Rowlands.

  Stella crossed the hall; the floorboards groaned beneath her tread. ‘Mr Judd?’ She crunched over the dried leaves and tapped on a door by the staircase. Without waiting, she went in. She found the light switch and a glass lampshade in the centre of the ceiling dully illuminated the room. ‘Anyone here?’ Her voice was flat in the deadened air.

  Stella’s practised estimating eye took in the room. The only piece of furniture that looked like it was made later than 1950 was a boxy Hitachi television with a bunny’s ears aerial on top and a telephone that lay on a small hexagonal inlaid wood table. A light on the phone was blinking with a message. Someone had called Brian Judd, but either he had decided not to answer or he wasn’t in. Or he couldn’t answer.

  ‘Mr Judd?’ Stella called up the stairs. Silence.

  On the landing, her torch app picked out four doors, all open. In the first was a vast free-standing bath, lime stains tracking down the enamel from gigantic brass taps. The wooden toilet seat was up; beside it a basket-weave laundry basket doubled as a stool. No aftershave. No razor. Who wore aftershave? Stanley was straining on his lead.

  ‘Heel,’ she muttered absently. She let him nose on into the next room. He yanked her towards a tartan dog’s basket that was at the bottom of a narrow bed so high Judd risked breaking his collar bone if he fell out. Had this happened? She checked either side of the bed; no one was sprawled unconscious on the floor. The bed – made with blankets and sheets – didn’t look recently slept in. Stella bent to the candlewick counterpane and gave an exploratory sniff. The musky odour of a man who rarely washed. She knew it from deep cleaning houses of the deceased in preparation for sale. A phantom smell, Jack called it.

  Stanley grabbed at the bed and clenching it in his jaws, gave it a shake. Stella knew it was his preamble to nesting. On an instinct she let go of his lead and took a few steps away, her back to the door. He leapt into the bed and, circling one way and then the other, flumped down as if perfectly at home. He shot her a dark look, daring her to challenge him.

  ‘Whisky,’ Stella said softly. Stanley shot up, ears pert, head cocked. ‘Whisky!’ He bounded out of the bed over to her. He trotted around her and arriving at the front, sat down. Distantly Stella registered Stanley had executed a perfect English Finish.

  She didn’t need Kirsty the behaviourist to tell her that Stanley was behaving as if he was perfectly at home in this dirty ramshackle house, because he was at home. It wasn’t that he had smelled another dog. This was where he had lived.

  Clumsily, Stella clipped on Stanley’s lead. By now she wasn’t expecting to find Brian Judd alive. She checked the other rooms on the landing but, as Jack had said when he had come before, there was no one there. One room was given over entirely to stuff to do with dogs. There was no sign of a dog, no smell, no hairs. Return­ing to the landing, she felt vaguely bad for doubting that Jack had looked. Yet she knew why she doubted him. He had known his way about the house too well. He had been there before.

  Downstairs a cold draught made her shiver. The downstairs toilet door – the way Jack had come in – was open. Inside, the sash window had been raised.

  Stella pushed the door aga
inst the wall. No one was hiding behind it. A creak. She spun round. Thin whisperings of light in the hall seem to shift. Stella shivered. A disparate collection of assorted circumstance and supposition fell into place. Rooted in rationality, Stella wasn’t the fearful type. She felt fear now; stealthy and treacherous, it threatened to paralyse her. Stanley began to mew.

  She fumbled in her pocket for her phone. Something fell out. It was the sweatband Stanley had unearthed in Latimer’s base­ment. She went cold. Joggers wore sweatbands. She tried to summon up pictures of the police reconstruction of Helen Honeysett’s last run. Was the policewoman wearing a sweat- band? Jack had the photographic memory. All she saw was a blur of shadows and lights. It was freezing. January. Night-time. Surely Helen wouldn’t have needed a sweatband?

  She opened her phone to Contacts and, bungling it the first time, swiped through to Martin Cashman. Their affair didn’t make him an ex: he was her dad’s young colleague, so Stella had kept his number. She dictated her text, a trick learnt from her mate Tina who had dictated everything except her survival from cancer. Stella’s voice shook and hearing it her fear escalated. She was staccato: ‘Martin Full Stop Me Comma Stella Full Stop Did anyone report a dog missing on the Kew towpath in 2012 Question Mark’. About to send Stella saw she had no signal. She jabbed at the button, but the message remained red. Your message has not been sent. Retry?

  The leaves and twigs littering the floor stirred in a breeze. Stella forced herself to think. Stain by stain. She had got phone reception near Jane Drake’s, but the estate was ten minutes away along the towpath in the opposite direction to Jack. Jack was with Bella; she couldn’t see him.

  Someone had got into the house through the bathroom window and left by the front door or the other way round… She let herself breathe. There was no one here. Yet although the house was cluttered and dirty, it didn’t look burgled. There wasn’t much to nick; the burglar hadn’t even bothered with the telly or the phone. The telephone.

  Stella led Stanley back into Judd’s lounge. As she snatched the handset off the cradle she was so certain that the line would be dead that she was momentarily puzzled by the buzzing. Whatever had happened to Brian Judd, his telephone still worked. It was an old plastic dial phone with the number in the centre and the emergency number of the police. Was there ever a time when people didn’t know that? She froze. Although it was Jack that was good with numbers, Stella did remember those she had called. 0208 948… She had called this number before. It was the number on the dog collar that Jack had found in the digger. Had Brian Judd had been in Natasha Latimer’s house after all? Yet Claudia had told them that the intruder was Neville Rowlands. With a shaky hand, she dialled Cashman’s number.

  He answered on the first ring. ‘Hey, Stell, you all right, love?’ Jackie said he called her ‘love’ because he loved her.

  Robotically she repeated what she’d tried to text, talking as if dictating. ‘…towpath in 2012 Question Mark.’

  ‘Eh? You sure you’re OK?’ He sounded worried.

  ‘Yes.’ If she said more, he’d know she was far from all right.

  ‘Hold on, I’ll check.’ She’d steeled herself for a knock-back. He shouldn’t be doing a private search and she shouldn’t have asked him to. Jackie said Martin would walk a million miles for Terry Darnell’s daughter. This wasn’t true.

  Cashman was still at the station. Dimly Stella recalled that the reason his wife had left him in the first place was because his work hours were silly. She’d said he was obsessed with the job.

  ‘You there, Stell?’ Martin was back.

  ‘Yes.’ There was rustling in the hall. The dead leaves, she told herself.

  ‘Lost iPhones and iPods, you name it. Scarves, sunglasses, a copy of the London A–Z – why the fuck hand that in? No dogs found. Or cats.’

  Stanley barked, sharp and shrill. He was looking towards the lounge door. Stella reminded herself he was alert to the most trivial sounds. It meant nothing. ‘Are you sure no one reported finding a dog on the towpath in 2012?’

  ‘Not a one. Sounds like it’s not the answer you wanted!’

  David had lied to her. Whisky. Fragments were coming together. She gripped the receiver with both hands.

  She knew what was coming next. ‘Stell, is this a cold case? Why do you want to know?’ He’d be considering warning her off. It’s a matter for the police.

  ‘No, just wondered.’ This much was true. Thanking him and non-committal about his offer of a ‘quick drink sometime’, Stella rang off.

  The rustling had stopped. If the leaves were being blown by a draught why would the sound stop? Someone must have closed the toilet window. Stella felt her insides cave in. She’d been really bloody stupid. Martin was police: he would know about the sweatband. Joggers get hot whatever the weather. She should have told him everything. Stella pressed redial.

  The line was dead.

  66

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  ‘Bonsoir, Garry darling. It’s your Aunty Luce-the-Goose!’ Cigarette smoke coiled blue-orange in the lamplight. ‘How are the little birdies? Tweet-tweet!’ Lucie May croaked nervously.

  The man, in a hooded fleece and jeans, gaped bleary-eyed at the woman in a film-star fur coat. Then he snapped to. ‘Piss off!’

  Lucie mashed the half-smoked cigarette on the path with her boot. ‘Your mum in?’

  ‘She doesn’t want to see you.’ Garry jutted an unshaven chin.

  Lucie rocked on her heels. ‘Bette’s my sister.’

  ‘She’s my mum. Go away. And it’s after ten o clock.’ Garry Lawson tried to close the door, but his aunt jammed her boot into the gap. If Lucie had been wearing her beloved glittering Jimmy Choo Nude Shadow Pointy Toe pumps with stilettoes the force would have broken a metatarsal, but her Dr Marten boots – reserved for door-stepping – were ample protection.

  ‘What happens after ten, you turn into Prince Charming?’ She kept her boot in place. ‘I have to see her, it’s important.’ Lucie was tired of being nice. Garry Lawson was taller and broader but, listless and dismayed, was no match for her fierce intent. ‘Bette!’ Lucie called. She thrust herself at the door with the velocity of a ground-launched cruise missile.

  Garry stepped back, pitching her into the hall. His mouth twitched as if with shame at the trick and he muttered diffidently, ‘Mum’s out.’

  ‘At this time? Where is she, Garry?’ Lucie was properly cross. Shite merchant.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Listen, Birdman, you’re going to tell me, or so help me, I’ll open your cage and release all your fine feathered friends as a feast for our feline friends,’ Lucie hissed with heat-seeking alliteration.

  ‘She went to the towpath,’ Garry Lawson muttered. ‘She’s putting flowers on the steps where…’

  ‘You let her go to the towpath at this time of night by herself?’

  ‘She wanted to go on her own.’ He was sullen.

  ‘And you do what Mummy wants!’ Despite the years of enmity, Lucie had expected her nephew to be as susceptible to her charm as most men were. But Garry was like a sulky teenage boy and she had no clue how to work one of those. She decided to be placatory: ‘Damn right, kiddo, wish I’d listened to my mum. And Bette come to that.’ She treated him to a smile that did full justice to her expensive dental work. ‘Shut the door – don’t let in the nasty cold air! Don’t want you getting a chill.’ Turning on her heel, fur coat billowing, Lucie sauntered down the path, trilling the tune for ‘Feed the Birds’.

  ‘She never wants to see you again and nor do I!’ Emboldened by the distance, Garry marshalled his courage.

  ‘Never say never, Gazza-pops!’ With the agility of a caffeine-fuelled gazelle, Lucie took the steps to the towpath in two bounds.

  *

  Lucie May had wanted the advantage of surprise when she met her sister but, baffled by the dark and the shifting shadows, she had to use her torch.

  She had often come to the towpath in the last thirty years, hunti
ng for proof of her brother-in-law’s guilt. But apart from the reconstruction after Honeysett’s disappearance, it had been in daylight. She had planned to sort stuff out with Bette in her cosy sitting room, hopefully – when things were patched up – with a gin and tonic. She had not reckoned on stumbling about in the dark at the shrine to the Drowned Hubby. But for Garry lurking in his lair, she’d go back and wait for Bette there. Lucie styled herself an intrepid reporter, but within reason.

  Since meeting Stella Darnell in the court car park, Lucie had been mulling over what Stella had told her. Adam Honeysett had not been doing press-ups with his mistress as he’d claimed. Grudgingly, she had acclimatized herself to the crazy idea that Steven Lawson was innocent.

  At different times and in very different situations, Terry and Stella Darnell had urged Lucie May to keep an open mind. Lucie argued that the engine of a good story was driven by emotion. It was the raw shit that made people buy papers. It was love, death and betrayal that kept the world turning.

  Earlier that evening, Lucie had mixed herself a nippet and, with no immediate deadlines, retired to her Murder Room. She reread each paper, every article and all her notes. She pored over photographs and her hand-drawn maps of the towpath and the cottages. Her material was arranged chronologically and cross-referenced. Her access to Terry Darnell and other police contacts had netted witness and character statements, timelines of Thames Cottages residents, dog walkers, cyclists; all those nearby when the estate agent went missing. Lastly she had opened Steven Lawson’s diary. She had discovered the diary missing as soon as Jack and Stella had gone. She’d assumed it was Jack; Stella Darnell was too much of a law-lady to steal. Lucie had more than one copy of all her material. Plenty more where that came from, she’d muttered to herself as she assembled a particularly potent nippet.