The Detective's Daughter

by Lesley Thomson

  Terry had no idea about children. Stella’s gammon, egg and chips arrived.

  Behind her plate she propped up pages Terry had stapled together from a newspaper dated 12 October 2007, inadvertently adding a squirt of ketchup to the stains already there. In the centre of the front page was a photograph of the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, closed for the ‘Diana’ inquest jury to visit her crash site. They had arrived in a three-coach convoy flanked by police outriders. Stella had thought the exercise a waste of time and money. What could they find after ten years? The jurors were: ‘as ordinary a bunch of people as you might find on any station platform’. A line of suited men descended into the ‘Tunnel of Death’ like an imported rush hour. Terry would not have been out of place, she thought, searching the text for a clue as to why it was in Katherine Rokesmith’s murder file and finding none.

  The door opened and this time a man in a black pea jacket like Paul’s shouldered into the bar. His hair glistening with snow was darker than Paul’s and he was thinner. While the barman poured him a whisky he looked at Stella. She returned to her food.

  The jury had visited the bedroom in the Ritz where Diana ate her last meal and had gathered in the tunnel to examine the dents made by the Mercedes on the thirteenth pillar in the central reservation. Stella cut out a square of gammon; loaded her fork with two chips mopped in egg and, as she chewed, appreciated how reproduced images and faded type were a poor substitute for being on the spot. The media attention, quick-fire camera flashes lighting up bystanders, the hum of halted traffic and clatter of helicopters must have whipped up a sense of the frenzy ten years before, helping everyone to step back in time.

  She slid aside her half-eaten meal and found her Filofax in her rucksack. Jackie was no longer managing Stella’s diary; Stella herself had cancelled two appointments with potential clients, three with suppliers and hopeful reps. In a short time, her business had stopped being Stella’s entire concern and she had turned her attention to the cold case. In addition to the columns in her notes about the Rokesmith murder, she had created sub-categories (suspects, victims, neighbours, geography) into which she put key points and timings, alive to any inconsistency, error or vital nugget that Terry had missed or a significance he had not appreciated. Once she had finished the boxes she had brought from Terry’s, she would have to return to his house if she wanted to read more. She dismissed this thought.

  A chair scraped. The man with a jacket like Paul’s had sat at the next table. He had the pick of the pub and could have gone anywhere. Stella returned to her reading: she had guessed what the Diana article was doing in the file. Kate Rokesmith was murdered two days before Diana married Charles. Both women had died violent and premature deaths leaving young sons motherless. Kate died hours before Diana was apparently beginning a happy-ever-after existence and Diana had died on the day that Terry became Detective Superintendent.

  Stella had placed her examination of the files at the level of proving a point, an achievement to wave at Terry. I’m a better detective than you. But as she studied Kate Rokesmith’s smiling face, the even features and perfect teeth unstained by wine of any colour, she was overtaken by a determination to bring Kate’s killer to justice as once, years ago, Terry had promised to do. She would avenge the murder of a woman who was not after all a rival for Terry Darnell’s affections. Kate had not known or cared about Terry and had not hurt Stella. Blameless and unknowing, one sunny morning in London, Katherine Rokesmith had gone for a walk with her toddler in tow and died at the hands of the husband she trusted to love her.

  An obsessive, Terry had duplicated the huge file, determined to prove Hugh Rokesmith guilty even if it killed him.

  It had.

  She finished the orange juice and stuffed the documents in her bag. On this snowy night, like the fateful day itself, there would be no one about. The beach beside the River Thames where Kate’s body was found was two minutes away. Despite the late hour Stella would go to the river to see for herself where Kate’s life had ended.

  19

  September 1985

  ‘Now it’s my turn,’ Justin breathed.

  Simon’s eyes stared at something behind Justin’s head. His shirt was hanging out, his black cat hair slick with sweat and dust; in the watery light his face was a skull.

  ‘No one will find you.’ Justin might have been attempting to reassure him.

  Simon lay, a collapsed doll on the flagstones.

  Justin clasped him, cradling his head on his lap. He tugged on the cord digging it into the skin and pressed the heel of his palm on the cartilage in Simon’s throat, making him gurgle like a drainpipe. Justin was impressed so he did it again.

  ‘Don’t tease me.’ He was elated by the success of his hastily concocted plan. Simon’s head was heavy on his thighs. Fact: a human head weighs between eight and twelve pounds. He deliberated telling Simon he reckoned his head was nearer six.

  ‘You will get into trouble.’

  Justin thought that was what Simon said.

  ‘I won’t. My mummy and daddy are taking me away. No one will suspect me.’

  Simon’s right shoe had wrenched off and a big toe poked through his sock.

  ‘Your mummy is dead.’ Simon’s voice was thick as if his mouth was full of rice pudding.

  Justin’s arms were aching from keeping the cord tight; he relaxed.

  Simon jabbed his elbow into Justin’s ribs and wriggled like a snake out of the loop.

  The side of Justin’s thumb was bleeding, the cord dangling from his fist.

  ‘I write to her.’ This closed the matter.

  ‘They keep the letters in your file, the man told me.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘The man I spy for.’

  Simon had a red line on his skin like a necklace and looked like a girl. Observing this, Justin was unprepared when Simon lunged at him and too late tried to swerve. The Chinese screen folded over him like a dragon’s wings.

  Simon had the librarian’s scalpel.

  Jonathan knew the drill: remove all weapons or instruments likely to be employed in combat in advance of the approach of the enemy.

  Simon was victorious in battle. Justin scooted back on his bottom until his shoulder jarred against Sir Stephen Lockett. At first he could not trace the source of the water. It pumped in an arc from the gap in Simon’s trousers splashing on to his face. Too late he put up a hand to protect himself.

  His legs apart and his shoulders back, as he shook off the last drops, Simon looked nothing like a girl.

  Justin stumbled, slipping on puddling flagstones; in the passage he bashed against the tiled walls and lost his bearings.

  She writes back! he yelled but heard no sound.

  The glass in the back door was yellow from the lamp-post in the clearing beyond the wardrobe door; the hiding place where his mummy would find him once he tucked himself within the folds of her soft sable coat. He crunched on crisp snow, his cheeks stroked by the soft ferny branches of a fir tree; he was in Narnia.

  I will get you.

  Justin repeated the words to make them true.

  I will get you.

  Fumbling with the bolt, he could not block his ears and Simon’s voice echoed along the tunnel.

  ‘Your mummy was murdered and you ran away and let her die.’

  20

  Thursday, 13 January 2011

  Jack comforted himself: despite the rushed departure from his Hosts’ house, he had not put a foot wrong. Around him houses were dark – many people went to bed early or drew their curtains against the elements and to keep out those with minds like his own. Only like-minded souls would be out tonight.

  He dodged over the A4, between the pillars of the Hogarth flyover where snow blew like polystyrene pellets along the ground. The structure thundered above his head when cars trundled over it. Jack had no fears; he lived with the sense of abandon a tourist has in a foreign landscape that feels insufficiently real to be dangerous.

  He stop
ped by a drain and pulled out his Hosts’ door keys and the hammer. He wiped them clean of prints and posted them through the grille; far down he heard a plop when they hit the water. It was nearly ten.

  He hurried by St Nicholas’ Church where on other nights the sprawling graveyard tempted him in.

  Not tonight.

  Chiswick Mall had changed little in the last 150 years: from the mansions set back from the road, behind their walls came the smell of wood-smoke; outside, the muffled grind of carriage wheels and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves seemed to carry on the wind along the riverside road. At high tide the river lapped on to the camber, strewing it with mud, splinters of wood and other debris. Not tonight.

  It was low tide and the eyot at Chiswick, temporarily abandoning island status, was linked to the Chiswick Mall by a ragged causeway of stones. Jack’s boots sank in dry snow and with difficulty he walked as fast as he could to the Bell Steps.

  A door slammed on Hammersmith Terrace and a man limped up the middle of the road, leaving dragging prints. Stopping by a car, he pushed snow off the windows, front and back, and eased himself into the driver’s seat. The engine purred into life and the car accelerated out into Black Lion Lane.

  Jack stood in a dark patch of road left by the car. He was at the end of Hammersmith Terrace and on cue came the swell of voices and then quiet as the door of the Ram opened and creaked shut. A woman paused by the snow-topped picnic tables to do up her jacket and pull up the hood on her anorak, which would, Jack noted, hamper her side vision.

  He shrank into a porch when she turned towards him, away from the subway. Although she braved solitary paths at night and took gratuitous risks, Stella Darnell was not like him or Michael Hamilton; she did not consider herself beyond harm. Like her detective father, she could not resist a challenge, so it would be with trepidation that, having checked no one was behind her, she made her way down the Bell Steps to the bank of the River Thames on a winter’s night.

  Jack gave Stella two minutes, then he went after her.

  21

  Thursday, 13 January 2011

  Stella had made her decision; she steeled herself to leave the pub. The man and his parents had already gone. The empty bottle and glasses took her by surprise; she had not seen them leave. Terry missed nothing, however trivial. The barman had disappeared and the three men had moved to a table.

  In 1981 the doors and windows were open and the place filled with punters, but no one had heard Kate’s screams or shouts from the river – if she had called for help.

  Stella picked up her rucksack and passing the man in Paul’s jacket glanced back to find he was looking at her.

  It was still snowing and sharp gusts of wind were bitterly cold. Across the road was the house that she had read once belonged to people called Glyde. The mother was unlikely to be alive, she would be about ninety and the potter-daughter had probably sold up. Stella would check the phone list in the morning and if the Glydes were still there she would get the admin assistant to do a card drop in the street. It would be a way to get in, see what was what. Plus the potter might say something new. Jackie would approve, supposing it was for marketing purposes. If a job came out of it, all the better.

  She paused to do up her coat and against her better judgement – for it felt tantamount to sticking a bag over her head – raised her hood.

  A footpath along the bank was edged by a wall of arched windows draped with ivy heavy with clumps of snow. The wall was all that remained of a wheatgerm-processing factory demolished around the time Stella was born. Terry had complained about the smell of yeast in the mornings. Or had he? Stella had heard a radio piece about a study that found many childhood memories of events that adults hold dear have never happened. She had wondered how they could know this. She did not know what in her past had or had not taken place; she did not have cherished recollections, real or otherwise.

  The pub sign – a ram with curling horns – was buffeted by the wind, the high-pitched squeaking eerie in the snowbound quiet. The clock on St Peter’s Church’s spire read ten forty. If she left now Stella could be home in twenty minutes; she could process Jack Harmon’s details, compile tomorrow’s To Do list, answer Jackie’s queries – they had not had their morning meeting since Terry’s death – and do her emails. Tomorrow she could cold-call the new mailing list and compile a recruitment advert. She could forget about Terry’s unsolved case.

  The steps to the river were muddy and unlit; it would be more sensible to come in the light, but that would mean a special journey. Since she was here she might as well take a look.

  There were three steps up as a flood defence: an odd feature that Stella had seen before as if in a dream. The streetlight did not reach beyond them, so, edging into the inky darkness, she relied on her key-ring torch to make out terrain that although familiar from the photographs was quite different at night.

  The tide had ebbed. This was lucky: she had not considered it might be in; she almost wished it had been so that she could legitimately leave. The torch beam did not extend to the shore. Out in the blackness water lapped, in and out, and the odour of river mud filled her nostrils.

  She put the same boot down each time, nervous of falling, not moving until sure of her footing. In the daytime Kate would have had more confidence, oblivious of the danger awaiting her.

  A hollow whistle, long and steady, carried out across the river. It reminded Stella of the sound she had heard on the motorway the night that Terry died and it chilled her to her bones.

  Unsteadily she raked the beam in a lighthouse sweep across the beach. It caught the sundry detritus of snaps and splinters of wood and plastic, frayed and knotted coils of rope bound by a veil of scum. A muffled shape on the surface of the river drifted through the light. She heard the whistle again. Wind was passing over the neck of a bottle sunk in mud; Stella let herself breathe.

  Seconds later a rush of wind unwound her scarf and ripped it from her and in a bid to catch it she teetered, sploshing in icy water, mindful that beneath its soupy surface the current was strong and unpredictable. She struggled up the slope and fell on to something that yielded beneath her palm: a car tyre trapped her foot.

  ‘That’s it. Lift it so it’s under your arms. There. That was easy, wasn’t it? Come over to the edge. When I say “Jump”, you jump, OK? The ring will keep you floating. I’m here to catch you.’ Stella held the ring obediently. It was the only one in the shop, and was for an older child. Her thin arms just reached over the sides. She jumped exactly when he said the word.

  Behind her the wall seemed to pitch forward; the driving snowflakes were disorientated her. At her feet her torchlight caught stones, beer-bottle tops and drink-can rings. Here the lack of snow and sodden ground told her that the tide had not long been out. On a plank of rotting timber she distinguished ‘KE P TO TH RI HT’ in red where the paint had not flaked, the instruction fading as the snow fell faster. Too late she pulled the cord in her hood tight, for water had got in and was trickling down her neck.

  She forced herself to focus on her surroundings. Behind her was the garden wall of the house where the two Glyde women had lived in 1981. It was about fifteen feet high and fringed with foliage, a bulbous white in the darkness. Next door a glass panel reinforced with metal replaced the trellis described in the report. There were no footholds on the wall; Kate would have had no means of escape. The Sergeant’s report had stated that from the garden it was only possible to see the beach by leaning far over the wall. Stella was determined to see inside for herself; Terry had the right to go into the house but she had no such right. She would have to find a way.

  Kate Rokesmith’s body had been found close to the wall, hard by the steps. Stella had read how, other than the towpath on the south side, it was only possible – assuming there had been no one with binoculars on a boat – to see the beach from public gardens towards the bridge and from the yacht club pontoon. Except no one had.

  The area was secluded and few people would know
of its existence. The killer had to be local: with his flimsy alibi everything pointed to Hugh Rokesmith. It must, Stella guessed, have infuriated Terry that a guilty man was living his life unpunished.

  She stepped out of the shelter of the retaining wall and was hit by a squall; snow blinded her and stung her cheeks. Her hand could not find purchase on the slimy brick and she dropped her key-ring torch. The wind made a sound that was almost human and smacked at her anorak.

  With her hood up, Stella did not hear the scrape of shoe leather on the Bell Steps.

  At just after ten o clock, the flood tide began at London Bridge. In a few hours the river would fill and water would wash over the snatch of land near the Ram and engulf the first five of the Bell Steps. The snow would slide off smooth granite and float off in the icy water.

  Not all movements were tricks of the eye.

  A crunch of stones. A tin was kicked. A dark shape glided over the mud; there was the sound of shoes squelching and releasing with a voluble sucking.

  A light swooped down and was extinguished.

  Stella fumbled for the torch, her hands slathered with snow and mud. Her fingers grazed the spindle of a key. She snatched for it, missed, tried again and grabbed the bunch. It jingled and gave away her position.

  She was out of sight and earshot of the lane where there were few passers-by anyway; by now the pub had closed. The three men, heading for the subway, would not give her a thought. If she shouted, her voice would be lost in the wind.