She was startled by the door buzzer. No one but Jackie and Paul knew where she lived. She trod softly down the carpeted hall, an unnecessary precaution for no one could hear her four floors up, and pressed the intercom panel: a video screen flickered to life, the camera trained on the front doors. There was no one. Then she saw a shadow to the side of the screen: someone was outside the range of the lens. Rationally she was confident that with the lobby doors of reinforced glass, held fast with solid locks, she was safe. With few residents there was little chance anyone would let in a stranger who claimed to have a parcel or lost their key. Her own door had a five-lever lock and the frame was reinforced with a London Bar. Nevertheless she rolled her shoulders, quelling a mounting panic.
Whoever it was knew she was in. Stella checked the intercom to be sure the volume was muted and heard rapid breathing. It was her own.
The shadow had gone. She stepped up to the monitor to be certain – maybe she had imagined it. She squinted through the eyehole in the door: corridor and a strip of blue carpet tapered to the end window.
Had someone been let in? In the kitchen the microwave pinged; her supper was ready. Already it was past seven, she was running late; she turned off the entry camera and hurried back to the living room.
Her mobile phone was flashing with a text from Paul.
I am outside.
The same message as when she was at Terry’s house the night before. She grabbed her keys from the dining-room table and went into her study, with a desk on which was a laptop docking station, a dictionary and a lamp. On the walls were a calendar and a map of London. She plugged the phone into a socket by the desk and laid the keys next to it so she didn’t forget them in the morning. Stella had many such tricks and ruses to ensure she met deadlines and objectives.
She shut both the study and living-room doors so that she would not hear the phone or see it light up with a call or a text. Finally she switched off the ringer on her main line, congratulating herself for not yielding to Paul’s pleading and giving him a key to her flat. He could not get to her now.
She munched her way through the toad in the hole, many minutes behind schedule, and eyed the rusting barbed wire spiralling along the perimeter of the demolished works. Through the gloom, between the coils of wire, was the hulk of a low-slung barge moored beneath her window. Paul had wanted them to live on a barge on the Thames. Stella had said it would be impossible to keep clean, but that was not the real reason; she knew now it was because Kate Rokesmith was murdered by the river.
Through the air vent came the rhythmic slapping of water against the wall. Somewhere over the river a flock of geese honked, the noise eerily plaintive as they made their way upstream to Barnes.
‘You can tell they’re geese because they’re flying in that “V” pattern, see?’
Stella followed the line of his finger.
‘No one knows why they do it. Maybe it gives them better visibility. Every bird has a clear view with nothing in front. They keep together – it’s nicer than flying alone. Birds and animals are sociable creatures. Like you and me.’
Paul would presume she was watching him from the study; he would imagine she cared. Stella chewed, slicing the sausage, cutting the batter into squares, forking each mouthful precisely. She wished Paul could be more like her and understand it was over.
Terry had never been to her flat. She dismissed this thought.
After washing up her plate and speedily wiping down the tops she had caught up with herself, but instead of looking at her emails she pulled out the chair at the head of the dining table – bought because the room required one, she did not have guests – and tipped the papers from the first box on to the glass. Before shredding it would do no harm to check what Terry had taken trouble to keep. She set aside what she had read at her office. A couple of sheets floated to the floor: one was an interview with an ‘internationally acclaimed medium’ in the Sydney Morning Herald – the case had gained international coverage – who divined that ‘the murderer spends time dressed in white beneath the ground beside a bubbling fountain’. Stella could not understand why such crackpots were given attention.
She turned to a clean page in the note section of her Filofax and testing her new Clean-Slate ballpoint, out of habit, made notes as she read.
The other piece of paper on the floor was page two of a transcribed interview. She licked a finger and flicked through the pile, but could not find page one. She was about to put the sheet aside, thinking that she would come across the rest in another box, when the name ‘Ramsay’ caught her eye.
‘…you confirm that you saw Katherine Rokesmith leaving her house with her son at eleven forty-five on the twenty-seventh of July?’
‘I told you.’
‘How can you be sure of the time?’
‘The church clock struck the quarter as I was getting out of the car. I notice these things, ever since… My children say I have a good eye. Ear in this case.’ [Laughs.]
‘Did you engage in conversation with Mrs Rokesmith?’
‘She was in a hurry. I waved.’
‘How did you know she was in a hurry?’
‘I didn’t. I meant, I was in a hurry, I was late home so… anyway… we didn’t speak.’
‘So Mrs Rokesmith wasn’t in a hurry?’
‘I couldn’t say. Aren’t we all?’ [Laughs.]
‘How did Mrs Rokesmith seem to you?’
‘She looked lovely, such a stunning girl. Reminded me of me as a… anyway, I’d been at our place in Sussex. I was shattered. I had to open the new village hall – a silly shindig shoved in to make way for this wedding. Frankly, Sergeant Hall…’
‘Darnell. Detective Inspector Darnell.’
‘I’m muddling you up. Victoria sponges are all the same: one has to keep one’s wits about one at these frightful barneys so as not to offend. I was desperate to get up to town and have a small drink and put my feet up. So, yes, I was in a hurry. The whole thing is bloody and of course now I wish I had stopped to talk.’
‘Did you see the boy?’
‘Isn’t he a poppet! I think I did.’
‘You are not sure?’
‘Yes. I did see him.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘I waved. He waved. At least he may have. I’m hopeless at this, when you have to trawl back it’s so diff… It was just another day.’
[Interview with Isabel Ramsay ends 10.01 a.m. 29 July 1981.]
Mrs Ramsay had initialled each section of the transcribed speech with bold loops of the pen. Stella knew her handwriting; despite her apparent frailty she pressed hard, indenting the paper. Her voice came off the page: Mrs Ramsay in her sitting room clinking a gin and tonic, a pen substituting the cigarette held up by her shoulder.
Stella laid down the statement. It was extraordinary that Mrs Ramsay was the last person to see Kate Rokesmith alive. Terry had interviewed her client years before she had known of her existence. Mrs Ramsay was a key witness in the Rokesmith murder and had never told her. Stella could not ask what she had thought of Terry or how much she remembered of Katherine Rokesmith because, unbelievably, Mrs Ramsay too was dead.
Stella had lost the only client whose cleaning had been a challenge: she would never deep-clean for Mrs Ramsay again.
Busily, using the edge of a box lid, Stella ruled columns in her notes: one for a description of the event, one for the date and one for the file number. The night wore on; fortified with coffee, she filled the columns with neat script. At 3 a.m. she rested her head on the plastic-covered sofa intending to close her eyes for a moment, and fell into a dreamless sleep.
The river flowed sluggishly past the solitary block of flats, its opaque surface absorbing the ghostly squares of light from Stella’s living room and kitchen. At the front, sightless windows reflected a car in one of the visitors’ spaces. Had the estate lights been working it might have been possible to see if someone was sitting at the wheel.
13
Wednes
day, 12 January 2011
Jack stepped on the crack in the paving. He blamed the man in the car waiting at the zebra. For a moment their eyes locked and Jack thought here was a man like himself, at home in the night-time streets. The darkness was his friend; like Jack he had nothing to fear.
Jack had stared at him – or where the man’s face should be because when the car trickled closer, its headlights dazzled Jack – and this was his first mistake. He should have paused to get his bearings, instead he took a step and that’s when he stepped on the crack.
He knew the walk to Earls Court off by heart and should not have been gulled into the stupid error. Every paving stone was part of his plan but the car made his concentration slip and with it his boot.
A crack was not a real line but his dictum covered gaps between paving slabs, edges and boundaries of objects and buildings, so had to include cracks. He stared down, teetering on a high wire; in the light of the lamp-post the paving slab was a map of London, the crack being the river and the fissures and runnels rat-runs. He was hot with shame: the driver would know the extent of his mistake. The car had gone.
Night, when most of London was asleep, was Jack’s best time of day. At the end of the rush hour, faces made way for lines: pipes and guttering, eaves and roof slopes, wavy lines of bunched cable and stubby lines of the sleepers beneath his cab. The line in the pavement straddled life and death and by trying to see the car driver he had tempted mortality.
If Jack’s colleagues liked him, and this was an overstatement, it was because he was prepared to do the ‘Dead Late’ shift that finished after midnight. Most drivers hated the endless tunnel hours, claiming the silence and continual darkness killed their social lives and their ability to be polite. Jack drew comfort from the overarching brickwork with its mutely held secrets of over a century and a half; he resented having to come above ground.
He had a social life.
The street was silent; once grand houses sunk to shabby hotels with plastic signage clamped to crumbling stucco. They highlighted the banality of his blunder. This awareness thrilled up his leg, making his heart flutter like a bat trapped in his chest. His instinct was to jump off, but he refused to side-step – literally – his responsibility. He remained on the line, taking in the significance. He must learn from his mistake; he made few, so such opportunities were rare.
The driver was out of sight so he would put him out of mind. Jack hugged into his coat and, walking, tried to retrieve his rhythm, relieved that at this late hour no one else had witnessed his transgression.
A young man slouched in the portico of a hotel, the firefly glow of his cigarette giving him away. There were no security cameras here; it was a blind spot. Jack wove between the parked cars, taking care to avoid splits in the camber and the lines of the drain grille. He flicked up a cigarette from the packet he carried for these eventualities; he preferred roll-ups.
Jack wore a pleasant smile. His polished brogue mounting the bottom step, he asked for a light.
14
Thursday, 13 January 2011
The WPC on ‘scene guard’ behind the ‘Do Not Cross’ police tape impassively eyed a woman in trousers that showed off a flat stomach stepping out of a cleaners’ van. Her loafers were polished to within an inch of their life and she was, the officer reckoned, too smartly dressed for a cleaner. She was the boss come to collect her winnings, or in this case, cut her losses. She obviously knew the wisdom of running a spotless Peugeot Partner slapped with company details rather than a Lexus or Merc that advertised to customers that she knew how to spend their money. The officer allowed a sliver of respect for the woman, who like herself looked to be early forties. She raised her eyebrows in enquiry, ready to state it was ‘no entry’ whatever Ms Clean Slate said.
A car glided to a stop at the kerb and the passenger door swung out, clipping the woman’s natty leather rucksack, but she did not break her stride. The WPC recognized the detective inspector’s Volvo. Doing up his jacket, he bounded out of the passenger seat like Action Man and, just a fraction too late, she raised the tape to let him pass.
‘All right, sir?’ Of course he did not reply.
‘Are you in charge here?’ the woman called after him.
‘Contact our communications people. You know the score, no press.’ D. I. Cashman rapped on the front door, studying his shoes while he waited for it to open. The police officer did not move, underlining his authority.
‘Do I look like a journalist?’ The front door remaining closed, Cashman had to acknowledge her. ‘I cleaned for Mrs Ramsay.’ The woman fidgeted with branches on the straggling hedge, ripping off leaves. ‘Stella Darnell. Clean Slate.’ She gestured a thumb at her van. ‘Maybe you knew Detective Superintendent Darnell?’
There was a beat.
‘Terry? Terry bloody Darnell?’
Stella took in the female police constable with a slight nod and played a never-used card: ‘He was my father.’
‘You know what?’ The detective was coming down the steps. ‘Your dad taught me more than I’ve forgotten.’ He jumped the last two. ‘It’s a hellish thing. I was totally gutted.’ Panting, he gave her a clumsy handshake across the hedge. ‘Martin Cashman, Detective Inspector.’ He hesitated. Maybe like Terry he was happier with the evidence-bag aspect of death than with cups of sugary tea and a few well-chosen words.
Stella saw that he was the Terry look-alike of the day before, dressed in a serviceable Marks & Spencer’s suit, like the one she had put into the dry cleaner’s below her office in readiness for charity. He had Terry’s mousy hair combed in a side parting, tipping over his collar; it was, Stella knew, due a cut that he would not make time for. In his pudgy vein-flecked features were the beginnings of Terry’s double chin and his slight paunch had loosened his shirt from his waistband. He hastened to tuck it in, emitting a tang of Gillette aftershave. In no time at all, Stella reflected coolly, the doppelgänger effect would be complete.
With a look to the WPC, Detective Inspector Cashman beckoned Stella through.
Fixing the tape back into place, the officer observed Stella Darnell stalk up the steps as if she owned the place, and grudgingly envied how she had the boss eating out of her hand.
‘He rang me last week… he was on form, cracking jokes. Still on the job!’ The front door had been opened and upstairs Stella could hear voices, heavy footsteps and guffaws of laughter. Instinctively she was annoyed; Mrs Ramsay did not encourage visitors.
‘I was sure retirement would get to him. Some can’t hack having no reason to stress. Mad, isn’t it? We’ve had blokes doing the conga on the Friday and a couple of months later I’m listening to a eulogy at their…’ With scene-changing swiftness he wiped his hand over his face and made a show of shuffling his shoes on Mrs Ramsay’s doormat. Stella did the same.
Mrs Ramsay would have been distressed to see her dilapidated but pristine hall a mess. Gone was the ratty rug that skidded and chalk marks outlined the stains it had hidden. The acrid smell of ninhydrin, used to lift latent prints, extinguished the lavender fragrance Stella encouraged Mrs Ramsay to spray throughout the house and a dusting of fingerprint powder greyed the coiled end of the balustrade polished so recently.
‘Those were there already.’ Stella indicated the stains.
‘Our guys said that.’ He loosened the knot on his tie as if she was depriving him of breath, as Terry did when she challenged him.
Sensing advantage Stella pressed the point home: ‘I couldn’t get rid of them. Mrs Ramsay didn’t know what they were.’ She cast around. The rug slumped drunkenly in plastic wrapping beside the antler hat stand, which was also in the wrong place.
‘Blood, SOCO think. Forensics’ll confirm.’ He rubbed his hands together vigorously and stepped over the marks to the stairs. ‘You didn’t do the cleaning yourself? Big shot these days, your old man says – said.’
Stella detected sarcasm.
His shirt – blue cotton with pencil-thin brown stripes – was identical to
the one Terry was wearing when he died.
‘Sky’s the limit,’ he told her and kissed her forehead. In his best shirt, he waved her off through the gates, tracing a big rainbow arc with a sweep of his arm to egg her on but she did not look back, already Miss Independent. He stayed until she had gone. It would be three whole hours until dinnertime. He had promised to be in exactly the same place when she came out. They were going to have sandwiches in the park as her reward for being such a brave girl.
The detective’s brogues could do with a buff, but like Terry he would blend into a crowd. Terry’s death was a detail; there were more detectives where he came from. One day D. I. Cashman too would be substituted; maybe by the woman at the gate. Stella roused herself.
‘No actually, I did handle this. Mrs Ramsay was particular and I knew her ways.’
Sunlight slanted in through the landing window at the turn in the staircase, highlighting nineteenth-century Punch cartoons framed in gold wood hung in step formation. Glittering particles of dust flittering in the light reminded Stella of how Mrs Ramsay would snatch at them, opening her fist like a child to examine her empty palms. She had once found Mrs Ramsay vacuuming the air, she waved the nozzle like a fire fighter putting out a blaze. Mrs Ramsay kept her curtains shut to avoid seeing what she could not remove or wipe away and was fond of saying that what was out of sight was not out of mind.
‘When did you come here last?’
The hall was as chill as a church. Mrs Ramsay did not heat rooms she only passed through. Her skeletal frame clad in fraying layers of fluttering silk, cotton and cashmere, she claimed not to feel the cold.
‘Last Friday for three hours. I finish at one. Sometimes I have a cup of tea, but I had a meeting in Chelsea at one thirty so had to rush.’ Mrs Ramsay had been hovering by the hat stand, flapping an overcoat, smoothing the fabric. She was annoyed Stella could not stay and Stella had half expected her to bar the way. A mad notion in retrospect, but lately her behaviour had been more erratic. Busying herself rummaging in the pockets of the coat, she did not say goodbye.
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