The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  For the last years, Lucie had spent her scraps of spare time twisting and bending conjecture to fit her story. Steven Lawson had brutally murdered Helen Honeysett. This morning outside the court, the cleaning detective had zoomed her vacuum cleaner through a lifetime’s work.

  Beside Lucie on her desk was a little clay model of a dog, ears pinned back as if in a high wind. It had been Bette’s when they were kids. Lucie had nicked it. She stared at the dog and the dog stared back.

  One way to recall something or find a solution to a tricky problem is to walk away from it. Lucie rarely did this. If she forgot a fact or couldn’t work out how to obtain information, she made it up. As she reread Steven Lawson’s diary, her finger traced each line. She stopped and looked up at the dog – at some stage it had lost the tip of its tail – and everything fell into place.

  Lucie rushed out of the Murder Room, then ran back and snatched up the clay dog. On King Street, she found a black cab decanting passengers and leapt in through the other door before the driver could turn the ‘For Hire’ light off. Fifteen minutes later she was arguing with Garry Lawson on his doorstep. Despite the rift between the sisters, it hadn’t occurred to Lucie that Bette wouldn’t see her. As she picked her way along the towpath, she felt creeping doubt.

  ‘Bette!’ Her torch lit up a figure on the towpath. Pulling the clay dog from her pocket – a gift would sugar the pill – she stumbled forward.

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ She didn’t hide her exasperation. ‘I can’t talk now. Have you seen Bette? My sister.’ He was of those bit-part players who wants a starring role.

  ‘She’s gone.’ He was reassuring.

  ‘What do you mean “gone”?’

  ‘Are you all right, my dear? You seem flustered.’

  Lucie shook her head impatiently. ‘I must find my sister.’ A glimmer of culpability in her brother-in-law’s death dawned. Her fingers tightened on the clay dog. ‘I’ve got to make it up with her.’

  ‘I’m still your “man at the scene”!’ In the watery moon­light she couldn’t see his expression. ‘That Miss Latimer is moving out. Our little plan worked! I was hoping to see you. I had a visit from a private detective. I was careful not to give any­thing away.’

  ‘Good one, Nev.’ Lucie clutched the top of her fur coat together. ‘Not now though. I need to see my sister.’

  ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No. Yes. Tell me a thing. When that girl Honeysett vanished, a witness on the towpath reported hearing a woman say “Oh, it’s you!”’

  ‘Megan said Honeysett was talking to a man.’

  ‘Steven Lawson,’ Neville Rowlands said comfortably. Then, as if reciting a poem in class, said, ‘Who am I and what have I done?’

  ‘What was that? Why did you say that?’

  ‘You told me. It was Lawson’s confession. Our little secret!’

  ‘And let’s keep it that way!’ Lucie snapped. ‘Megan never actually saw Lawson.’ She scoured the dark, dismal footpath. Where the hell was Bette? ‘Megan jumped to that conclusion because she saw her dad leave the house after Helen Honeysett.’

  ‘Best not detain yourself, my dear, there’s nothing you can do now.’ Rowlands sounded peevish.

  ‘I must do something. Where’s your dog?’ She cast about her. Nothing moved on the dark towpath.

  Rowlands said nothing. Slowly he took the dog lead from around his neck. The clasp flashed silver in the moonlight.

  ‘The police were wrong. I was wrong.’ Lucie fretted. ‘I’ve reread Lawson’s diary and something he wrote… I know who Honeysett was talking to— Arrghuphmm…’

  Lucie May felt searing-hot pain and then she was aware of nothing more. Unconscious, she fell down the river stairs on to the snatch of beach below. Her body lay sprawled beside a bunch of flowers, the message already soaked by the incoming tide.

  ‘Happy Birthday, Steve. Still fighting for you. Your loving Betsy x.’

  67

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  Stanley lived in Brian Judd’s house by the river. BJ not report missing because dead?

  Jack had heard the buzz of Stella’s incoming text as he reached the lamp-post by Thames Cottages. He had a signal! He fumbled for speed dial, before the temporary reception dropped.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t come to the—’ He spun around on the spot, his hands to his mouth. There was one other person. Jack rang her number.

  He was startled by music, tinny like a transistor radio, some metres away. Gingerly, watching signal strength bars, he edged along the bleak towpath towards the sound.

  It came from the river. Max Bygraves was singing ‘Happy Days are Here Again’. Jack felt a whisper of dread.

  Max Bygraves cut off mid-flow and the ringing in Jack’s ear switched to voicemail. ‘Keep trying. If I’m not picking up I’m on a scoop!’ Lucie May cackled.

  Pale moonlight etched a bundle of fur, half submerged, by Kew Stairs. A drowned dog. A light glowed. A mobile phone. Water lapped around it and as Jack watched, the light was extinguished. He was thrust aside. A man blundered down the river stairs, skidding on slime and falling on his knees by the fur thing.

  ‘Mum, no!’

  Jack swung his Maglite beam down. It wasn’t a dog. A woman lay face down on broken bricks and stones, her legs washed by the rising river. It was not a trick of the light on the River Wall. Short blond hair, sodden fur coat, polished Dr Martens. It was real.

  ‘Garry, it’s not your mum.’ Jack’s tongue was thick. ‘It’s Lucie!’

  ‘Call an ambulance!’ Bette Lawson was beside her sister. ‘I can’t feel a pulse.’

  68

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  ‘I love you, Daphne. I have always loved you. You were the girl my mother meant for me. A cut above, she always said. She told me she could leave this world content because I have you.’

  I stroke your hair and, unused to my touch, you tense. It is a shock when what you have wanted for so long comes true.

  ‘My dear girl, you are safe. I have kept you safe.

  ‘Sit back, make yourself comfortable. I will tell you who I am and what I have done. I did it all for you.’

  Daphne is listening. Her eyes never leave mine.

  ‘You remember how that Honeysett girl upset you…’

  69

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  ‘One day they’ll get themselves in real trouble. Honestly, Gray, I worry more about those two than I do about Mark and Nick.’

  ‘Stella and Jack have already got themselves into trouble.’ Graham, Jackie’s husband of thirty years, was scrutinizing an instruction sheet. ‘Stella can look after herself. I’d say Jack’s the worry. You said he wanders the streets in the middle of the night. If he doesn’t get attacked, he could be picked up by the police for acting suspiciously. Perhaps you should have a word? He’d listen to you.’

  ‘Jack listens to no one on that subject.’ Jackie took a hammer from a concertina tool box on the sofa amid boxes of books and ornaments. ‘He once stopped the walking for Stella, but she felt bad for setting what amounted to a curfew and “released him”.’ Laid out on the carpet were the components of an IKEA ‘oak-veneer’ bookcase. Jackie knelt beside a length of wood and with clean strokes, hammered a dowel into a hole.

  Graham frowned. ‘There’s a screw missing.’

  ‘No! Jack’s just quirky. He’s sensitive – he feels everything. It makes him caring and empathetic, but means he suffers over the smallest thing. He’s done well to get over his mum.’ Tweaking the dowel, Jackie confirmed it held fast. Graham handed her another one. ‘Not that he has got over it. He sees death everywhere.’ She whacked in the dowel with one hammer stroke. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to them. I love Jack and Stella like they’re ours.’

  ‘They are ours.’ Graham got up from the carpet and, grimac­ing, arched his back. ‘I meant there’s a screw missing from this pack.’

  ‘I wonder if this time they’ve bitten off
too much.’ Jackie positioned another plank of wood. ‘Helen Honeysett was mur­dered in 1987. People’s memories can be inaccurate at the time, but now must be very hazy. They’ve never found that poor young woman’s body – if she was murdered. Only a clairvoyant with the forensic patience of a saint could solve it.’

  ‘A cleaner and a train driver, a crack detective team, who knew!’ Graham lifted up a shelf board and regarded it with res­ig­nation.

  ‘And all the time the murderer might still be out there.’ Jackie cradled the hammer head, frowning.

  ‘The plumber’s dead and the police aren’t looking for anyone else.’ Graham pressed his thumbs into the small of his back and groaned. ‘It’s nearly midnight, let’s call it a night and finish this tomorrow.’ A surveyor for Hammersmith and Fulham Council, Graham Makepeace had considerable attention for detail, but it had been a long day and he had no patience with the incomprehensible instructions.

  Jackie ignored him and with a free swing hammered in another dowel. Had she missed she would have dented the oak veneer. But as Graham was fond of saying Jackie hit the nail – literal or metaphorical – on the head every time.

  ‘My money would have been on that Brian Judd in accounts.’ He yawned. ‘Talk about a screw missing: he used to scurry about the corridors like the White Rabbit. He always wore black even in summer. Saying that, he was a whizz with budgets, he once found me an extra—’

  ‘I forgot he worked at your place!’ Jackie gave the dowel a last tap.

  ‘More than that. I was his alibi,’ Graham said with faint pride.

  ‘Oh course! You saw him in his office at the time Helen Honeysett was jogging on the towpath. You saved him! Living in that house on the river by himself, he was an obvious suspect.’ Jackie scrabbled under the sofa and retrieved the missing screw.

  ‘Barry says he did the IKEA shelves in his office on his own without using these. But my brother thinks he’s Superman.’ Graham shook his head at the instructions sheet.

  ‘Don’t knock him. Your brother is Superman. Barry’s saved Clean Slate thousands in car and office insurance,’ Jackie said. Graham’s older brother was an insurance broker.

  ‘I didn’t see Brian Judd in his office. The light was on, his case was on the desk and his cardigan on the chair, so he was obviously there. Fancy a cuppa?’

  ‘You told the police that you saw him.’ Jackie held the hammer in her right hand, the screw in her left.

  ‘I as good as did see him.’ Graham Makepeace was studying the instructions.

  ‘Graham, you’re kidding me! “As good as” isn’t seeing! Did you actually see Brian Judd there?’

  ‘Well, no, but—’

  Graham was interrupted by the peal of the doorbell. ‘Who’s calling at this time?’ A shadow passed across Jackie’s face. Late callers meant bad news. She had been saying she dreaded something bad happening to their sons or to Stella and Jack. Not superstitious, it occurred to her she had provoked the very thing she feared.

  Graham went out to the hall. Heart thumping, holding the hammer, Jackie followed him. Her foreboding increased when she saw who was on the doorstep.

  ‘Stella and Jack are in trouble.’ Brandishing a decorated walk­ing stick, Suzie Darnell narrowly missed Graham as she carved the air. ‘Come now!’

  ‘How do you know?’ Jackie grabbed her coat.

  ‘Mother’s intuition.’ Suzie thumped her chest. ‘Stella’s not answering her phone.’

  ‘There’s no signal down by the river…’ Jackie stopped. She never doubted mother’s intuition. ‘Gray, ring the police.’ She ushered Suzie down the path.

  Jackie fired the remote key at the car and called out, ‘And tell them Brian Judd no longer has an alibi for Helen Honeysett’s murder!’

  70

  Wednesday, 13 January 2016

  Jack raced along the towpath towards Thames Cottages, all the while willing signal bars to appear on his phone. He didn’t let himself think that there had never been a signal there before, so why should there be now? There had to be. He pictured Lucie’s body, her fur coat soaked by the rising river. Already it was too late. No!

  He ran up the path of number 1 and, as he reached the front door, a bar flickered on to the screen.

  ‘Ambulance. Police. The Thames towpath by Kew Stairs. Now!’ he shouted.

  ‘Are you with the injured—’

  The screen went black. His battery had died. He heard barking, faint, almost as if it was in his head. A week ago he’d heard a dog when he was outside Thames Cottages. He’d thought it sounded like Stanley. This time he knew it was Stanley. It was his distress signal.

  Stella!

  Jack scratched his key in the lock and flung the door wide. Pin-pricks of light on the staircase danced as he ran down to the basement. The River Wall swirled with the cold black water that was closing over Lucie.

  All the glass panels were open. There was a rectangle of light at the end. Stella was in the brick vault.

  ‘Do come in.’ A genial host. Bathed in dingy light spilling from the bulb, the man was ethereal. Black suit, hair oiled and combed over his balding scalp. It was the man from Helen Honeysett’s Christmas party photograph. Brian Judd. The True Host.

  Jack’s heart contracted. Daphne Merry was sitting on the digger. Jack had the wild idea that she was posing, then he saw the nylon cord binding her hands to the lever. Trussed up on the big yellow machine, Daphne Merry looked frail and confused. He went towards her.

  ‘Jack, don’t!’ Stella was in the shadows by the passage, Stanley at her feet. He knew the expression in her eyes as if he could read her mind. Don’t try anything or he will kill us all.

  ‘Untie her.’ Jack had to help Daphne.

  ‘Leave her!’ Judd’s voice was metallic.

  ‘Daphne wouldn’t hurt you, Mr Judd.’ Jack found he was fight­ing back tears. ‘It’s OK, Daphne. You’re safe. I’ll keep you safe.’

  ‘Oh dear. I think there’s been some mistake, young man. Jack. I may call you that. I feel we are old friends. Mr Judd is out there. Neville Rowlands, pleased to meet you. How nice you could join us.’ His cold expression didn’t match the warmth of his words.

  ‘What?’ Impressions tumbled around him. A black suit in a dry-cleaning bag. The atmosphere of evil in the house by the river. Brian Judd had a black suit.

  ‘Jack, I should have told you. Lucie told me that the man in the photo with Steven Lawson wasn’t Brian Judd. This is Neville Rowlands.’

  Before he could answer Stella, Jack saw the knife. Stupidly he noticed that it was one of Natasha Latimer’s Sabatiers. Rowlands was holding it to Daphne Merry’s throat. Jack moved forward.

  ‘Don’t touch her!’ Stella’s voice was absorbed into the bricks.

  ‘Daphne hasn’t done anything,’ he protested.

  ‘She has.’ Stella was deathly calm. Whose side was she on? Stanley’s lips were pulled back in a snarl. He growled up at Daphne as if she was his mortal enemy.

  ‘Daphne Merry murdered Helen Honeysett,’ Stella said quietly.

  ‘What?’ Jack couldn’t make sense of her words.

  ‘She strangled her on the towpath. Helen never said hello when she jogged past her. And let her dog poo on the towpath. On top of everything else it was the last straw. She snapped,’ Stella said.

  ‘Your lady-love is ahead of you, chappie!’ Rowlands gave a snuffling laugh.

  ‘Then in 2012 she killed Brian Judd when he was walking his dog by the river. David and I rescued the dog. David named him Stanley.’ Stella spoke mechanically. ‘Brian Judd had called him Whisky.’

  ‘They deserved it. They were lackadaisical, uncaring. Judd dropped litter, he put his rubbish out early and the cats and foxes ripped the bags open. That Honeysett girl didn’t understand what Daphne had been through. She thought you could start again at the drop of a hat. I ensured Daphne didn’t pay for her actions.’ Rowlands was gazing up at Daphne Merry on the digger. ‘I decluttered for you.’

  ‘What did h
e do?’ Stella was keeping Rowlands talking.

  Jack moved closer to him, but Stella’s expression warned him off again.

  ‘If he had let that spoilt rich girl buy his run-down house on the river, I’d still be here. My greedy landlords sold my home to her instead. I enjoyed consigning Brian Judd to the cold earth.’ Rowlands clinked the blade against the digger.

  ‘Max died in 2012,’ Stella said. ‘You buried Judd in his grave?’ Neville Rowlands was right. Jack felt his heart sink, Stella had got there before him. ‘You buried Helen and Brian Judd in your pet cemetery.’

  ‘That ground is sacred; they don’t deserve to be there, but I had to keep Daphne safe.’ Rowlands was chatty as if going over the pros and cons of a knotty problem. ‘When Honeysett came back along the path, she didn’t thank Daphne for clearing up her dog’s mess. “Oh it’s you!” She didn’t even stop to talk. I was watching, I saw it all. Who did that bitch think she was? Daphne had to kill her.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’ The voice didn’t fit the fragile woman tied to the JCB. Jack’s blood went cold. Her eyes were blank. Merry said, ‘Max died in 2014 and your other dog called Hercules didn’t die until the nineties. You lied.’

  ‘Yes, dear. I did lie. I did it for you.’ Rowlands was congenial. ‘How lucky that I was nearby when you killed that girl. Your DNA would have been all over her. Without a body, our venerable con­stab­ulary were stumped. But then you went and took Honeysett’s dog back. You had no care for yourself. That was stupid.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’ Daphne repeated the phrase. Seated upon the gleaming yellow digger she was an automaton. ‘There was no body. There was nothing. I looked over at the seat and it was empty. She wasn’t in the car. Gerald was still asleep, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. My baby wasn’t in the car. She was the most beautiful girl in the world. Not a scratch on her.’