‘How do you know?’
‘It’s here. Terry’s put it in the margin of his report. It must be recent, he could not have known at the time.
Stella looked closer and, sure enough, there were the words with a date three weeks before Terry’s death scrawled beside them. ‘Flowers by grave, check.’ She had read them before but had made little of it; flowers were often by graves, it was no big deal.
‘Who’s putting them there?’ Jack asked.
‘All we need to do is keep a watch on the grave.’
‘They appear at odd times with no apparent pattern.’
‘Have there been any since the husband died?’
‘I’m presuming so, if you go by the date of Terry’s marginalia.’
‘That doesn’t prove anything. It may not be the killer, it’s more likely to be a cranky well-wisher. I clean for plenty of those.’ Stella stopped. Harmon had not answered her question. How did he know that the flowers were always there? Her mobile telephone rang and this time Stella checked the number; although unfamiliar she risked it: ‘Hello?’
‘Gina Cross. The police in their wisdom say my mother had an aneurism. She was not murdered. My husband says I should sue, but it’s paperwork and bother. So back to Plan A. I want your Platinum package as I see it includes outbuildings and attics. I want you to get going right away. Can you do that?’
‘I can send a team there now, we’ll go into the weekend.’ Stella signalled to Jack to put on his coat. Languidly he slid two more newly made cigarettes off the glass table top into his case.
‘I don’t want to pay double time.’
‘You won’t,’ Stella replied.
The buzzer went as they were leaving. Stella brought up the video and Paul’s contorted face filled the screen, his mouth moving – with the intercom off they couldn’t hear him – like a bloated fish pressing up to the glass of an aquarium.
‘Is there another way out?’ Jack was businesslike.
‘Only the stairs which come out in the lobby.’
‘A basement?’
‘It will be locked.’
‘Let’s not make that an obstacle.’ He shouldered his way through to the stairwell.
Less trouble had been taken in constructing the stairs and, racing down the eight short flights, their feet clattered on cheap tiles. At the ground floor they ducked below the window in the lobby door to avoid Paul seeing them and then took the last steps to the basement.
Jack tried the lever handle on a metal-plated door, but as Stella had anticipated it was locked. He groped under the alcove beneath the stairs and extracted a key dangling from a chain; he turned the key in the lock. When he depressed the handle again, it still did not move.
‘Lift it?’ Stella suggested.
He cranked it up forty-five degrees and the door gave way with a grinding shriek, tracing a rust-coloured curve in the stone. Stella stooped and rubbed it with her forefinger but it made no difference; it would need a stringent agent and could not be done by hand.
Jack removed the key and made the chain a bracelet around his wrist.
‘What are you doing?’
‘We might need it again.’
They were blasted by a fuggy heat when they went in and the dull hum that was ever present in the lobby grew loud. It came from a generator from which sprouted tentacles of pipes, some bare, others swaddled in silver; they were in the building’s engine room. In the centre stood the lift housing with a door giving into the shaft. A grubby notice tucked into a plastic folder listed the date of the last service: five months ago. Judging by fluff and dust coating the pipes, Stella doubted anyone had been down here since. When she moved in she had suggested that the basement be included on the cleaning rota – she knew the value of cleaning what is rarely seen – her request was ignored.
Jack had disappeared. She walked around the lift and found another door. He was already halfway down a breeze-block-lined passage. After twenty yards it turned to the left and stretched ahead to a dead end. Stella fumbled with her anorak and did up the zip; the temperature had dropped considerably.
Recessed into the wall on the right was another door; when she reached him, Jack was unwrapping the key chain from his wrist. He turned the key and cautiously pushed the door. They were confronted by a blast of icy air and dazzled by the glare of snow. An icicle had formed over the doorway, a sharp blade pointing downward; they stepped to the side and found themselves in the garage compound. They crept to the corner of the flats.
They saw Paul attempting to get around the other side of the block, presumably for a view of Stella’s kitchen. Any minute he would try their end of the building.
‘You have to stop him.’ Stella retreated and trod on Jack’s foot.
‘Me? How?’
In the stark daylight, Jack Harmon was paler still, lost within his black coat, puffing and stamping with cold. She worried that Paul would fold him up like a deckchair.
‘Pretend you live here. Take these.’ She stuffed her door keys into his hand.
‘He’ll recognize me.’
‘No, he won’t. It was dark last night and he was upset. He’s crap with faces. Let him inside.’
‘Into your flat?’
‘Of course not. Go into the lift with him and get out at a lower floor. Come out through the basement or he’ll see your footprints. Lock everything after you – and yes, keep the key.’
‘You think he’ll attempt to break in around the back?’
‘Yes I do, he’s not stupid. Now go or he’ll find us both!’
Jack put his collar up and sweeping a hand through his hair walked around the corner.
‘Oh, and Jack?’
‘What.’ He stamped a foot but did not look round.
‘Try to be nice. It’s possible Paul murdered Katherine Rokesmith.’
‘How do you make that out?’ Jack hissed.
‘He was in the area at the time and wasn’t interviewed.’
‘Now you tell me. Anything else I should know?’
‘Hurry!’
Stella watched Paul see Jack when he reached the path, sauntering towards him, kicking up scuffs of snow, the keys swinging carelessly, supposedly deep in thought. She noted that Jack Harmon was a consummate actor, giving no sign of having noticed Paul until he was at the door. Paul in the meantime had adopted the role of someone who had just arrived, exaggeratedly patting his pockets as if for keys. Apparently discovering that he did not have them, he hit the buzzer in the resigned manner of a person who hates to trouble others. He made instant way for Jack to indicate he did not expect to be admitted. Jack addressed him, as Paul must have known he would; in his work suit and staid Aquascutum mac he was every inch the man on legitimate business. Stella tried to hear the exchange. Jack laughed: a low modulated sound in the held silence. Then it seemed to her, peering along the side of the building, that the men walked like phantoms into the wall and were gone.
Stella grew cold and chilled further by creeping doubts; she shivered. She had given Jack her keys – what if he didn’t return? Paul might recognize him from last night, and if he had been following her he would have seen Jack too.
She started towards the lobby. If she pressed all the bells she could get help. Except so few people lived here it was unlikely anyone would answer. Anyway, what would happen next if she did? Panicked, she raced back to the basement door. It was locked. Suddenly the handle shot up. She pressed herself against the wall behind the door desperately hoping that Paul would not see her.
Jack appeared and saw Stella immediately.
‘You’re supposed to be getting the van – he’ll be here any second!’ Jack exclaimed through stained front teeth. Irrelevantly Stella thought he should visit a dentist.
‘You have the van key.’ She snatched the bunch off him and, skidding on the slippery ground, made for the garages. Responding to the remote control, the door rose with a prolonged screech.
Jack took up position by the flats. There was no sign of
Paul.
Stella started up the van and shunted the gearstick into ‘drive’. The door shuddered its way down, narrowly missing the roof rack as she accelerated forward.
‘He’s outside!’ Jack mouthed to her and then more urgently: ‘He’s coming!’
He grabbed the van door, wrenched it open and threw himself in, jolting against Stella. He reached out to shut the door but it slipped from his fingers and swung wide when Stella swung the van to the left. It slammed shut when she veered to the right and sped down the drive, the wheels spinning. Jack pushed through to the rear and fell against a tub of detergent. He crouched out of sight.
‘Stella! It’s me, Paul!’ The shout broke the swaddled silence. ‘Sto-op.’
She squeezed on the accelerator, driving as fast as she dared, the tyres slithering on the ungritted surface. Too slowly the drive gates jerked apart. Paul lumbered down the path, clumsy in his smart clothes, yet he was gaining on them. He cut across the lawn and floundered into the ha-ha. Stella braked, her instinct to help him.
‘Keep going!’ Jack shouted from the back.
She trickled the van through the entrance. In her rear mirror she watched Paul clamber out of the hidden ditch and resume the chase. They had to wait for a break in the traffic. Paul was ten feet away; Jack stretched over the headrest and activated the central-locking system. A lorry flashed its lights and, waving acknowledgement, Stella slung the van out, missing Paul’s car by inches. He had parked it facing the other way and he would never catch up with them.
‘He didn’t recognize you?’
‘He was chatty. Rather a nice man, I thought.’ Jack struggled into his seat and did up the belt. ‘He asked if I knew you. I said only by sight and that you were mostly at work so I hardly saw you. I acted suspicious of him, which shut him up, although he did say “Good to meet you” when I got out. He’s a genuine guy.’
Stella drove on in silence.
Isabel Ramsay’s hedge resembled a gigantic meringue. One end of the police tape fluttered in the wind. There was no one around and the snow on her path was untrammelled.
Stella turned off the engine. The church bells struck quarter to midday. She glanced at Jack, but he was busy with rolling another cigarette. He lined it up with the rest. Nevertheless, she wondered if he was thinking that it was exactly this time when Kate Rokesmith set off for the river with her son thirty years ago.
Stella kept Mrs Ramsay’s keys on her own ring; she never knew when she might call. Chubb in hand she hurried up to the front door.
A bundle lay in the porch. Almost obscured by a drift of snow was a bouquet of white lilies.
24
Friday, 14 January 2011
Stella brought the flowers into the house. The snow on the wrapping paper was melting and soaked her fleece. The hall would have been more of a shock had she not seen it when she met the detective yesterday. The sprinklings of fingerprint powder made the room look dreary. Furniture had been shunted out from the walls; the spindly-legged hall table was in the middle of the room. Stella restored it to its position by the front door; when she lifted it a wave of exhaustion winded her. She listened for Mrs Ramsay’s shuffling footsteps, but there was nothing. The clocks had stopped: with Mrs Ramsay dead and Stella absent for a week, no one had wound them.
She snipped off the stamens to avoid staining her fleece, stuffed the lilies in a water jug – Mrs Ramsay having broken both vases – and placed it in the dining-room grate.
Through the window, she saw Jack was on the path finishing his cigarette. On the way, they had detoured off the Hogarth roundabout to the river where at Hammersmith Terrace Jack had pushed a Clean Slate price list through the letterbox of the corner house. Stella had mined the internet and found that Sarah Glyde, the potter in the police interview, still lived there. If she did not respond to the card – which was likely – Jack said he had another idea. Stella put off asking what it was.
They stacked cleaning materials, rolls of plastic sacks, a box of latex rubber gloves and the vacuum cleaner in the hall. Stella sat at the kitchen table where she used to have her morning cup of coffee with Mrs Ramsay. She ignored the empty chair, unzipped her rucksack and produced a fresh spiral-bound pad with the new Clean Slate logo. Her heart lifted momentarily; she was back at work.
She allocated a room per page and by the time Jack had brought in the rest of the equipment she had a list of tasks with respective timings.
He stopped in the doorway. ‘Where are the flowers? Her lilies? Did the police nick them?’
‘Calm down! I put them in the dining room, where she likes – liked…’ Stella ripped off the page with kitchen tasks and slid it across to him. ‘You start in here.’
‘Shall I make up some flatpack boxes and fill them with crockery and pans?’
‘No, do as I’ve suggested: clean and put everything back.’ Stella was stern. ‘Restore order, then we’ll take stock.’
Jack shrugged in acquiescence and glanced at her pad.
On her way out Stella stopped. Jack was retching. He was going to be sick on the floor. She grabbed his shoulders and shoved him over to the sink. The dead lilies were still there, rotten and foul-smelling; they had smeared the enamel and she scrabbled them out of the way. Jack heaved, gulping in air; he was ashen and blotches of red on his cheeks highlighted a bluish haze of stubble. His fringe swung forward and Stella reached around and tucked the longest strand behind his ear; she supported his forehead.
‘Take deep breaths and look out of the window. That’s it. In. Out. In. Out. Fix on the horizon.’
Eventually Jack straightened up. She poured him a glass of water.
‘Did you eat breakfast?’
‘I had milk.’
‘Breakfast is the most important meal. If you have nothing else—’
‘You’re my mother now, are you?’ He sipped the water. His face glistened with beads of sweat and he shook, spilling water down his wrist. Stella wiped it dry with her sleeve.
‘You should eat.’ She went into the hall and returned with her rucksack from which she produced an unopened packet of Rich Tea biscuits. Whipping the tab from around the top, she lifted off the exposed biscuits, four in all, and handed them to Jack.
She pulled out a jar of tea bags and a tin of powdered milk. Soon they were seated at the table, neither of them in Isabel Ramsay’s chair, eating biscuits and drinking tea and, for Jack, hot milk.
‘If we crack on with this today we’ll get a lot done. I’ll start at the top and we’ll meet halfway by tomorrow evening. You are OK to work, aren’t you?’ She was brisk, filling further pages on her pad with columns and capitalized headings. Jack still had a horrible pallor and was sitting sideways with his face averted.
‘What’s the matter?’ Stella was not good with illness; she did not tolerate it in herself.
‘It’s your stationery.’ His hands were clasped between clenched thighs. She marvelled that he had scared off Paul, a heavily set man with a black belt in judo.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ No one had criticized her branding, not even Jackie. ‘Clients love it.’
‘I hate it.’ He chewed his bottom lip.
She could not bear it if he vomited; he had eaten a lot of biscuits.
‘Don’t tell me my logo is making you sick.’ Stella had chosen the green and blue with the same level of consideration as stabbing a pin on a map; it might have been mauve or red.
‘Pantone 375.’ Jack uttered the words as if in a trance.
‘Green I call it.’ The designer had provided Pantone codes for the printers to be sure the colour was reproduced faithfully in different mediums: the light blue was Pantone 277 and Jack was right, the vivid green was number 375.
‘How can a colour make you ill?’
‘It always has.’
‘You’re going to see my logo all the time when you work for me.’ Stella waved the pad, making Jack flinch. The masthead consisted of rectangles and squares, the green slipstream of one sweeping brush
swishing across blue and green lettering. The logo was on pads for preparing quotes, letterheads, compliment slips and the vehicle livery – one van so far. The others would lose their staid black and white lettering next week.
Jack would have a set of polo shirts in Pantone 375 with Clean Slate embroidered in blue on the shoulders where the number is on a police shirt. If he had this reaction to a splash of green in a notebook, he would go into a coma when she made him wear the shirt. Besides reinforcing the brand, the outfit was precisely for people like him whose dishevelled appearance could put off clients.
‘It’s a phobia. You need to get it seen to because green’s hardly rare. There’s grass, trees, cars; it’s everywhere.’ She glanced out of the kitchen window at the snowy scene. ‘Except today. This must be a gift!’ Stella stifled a wry laugh, knowing better than to make an employee uncomfortable about a physical or mental condition.
‘In fact this shade is unusual.’ It was a portent but Jack kept this to himself. It was a year since he had seen the colour, when he had fainted in a chemist’s and ended up in Accident and Emergency. He had given false details. He had a strategy: he visualized another shade because he could not afford for it to happen while he was driving a train.
Stella left Jack dealing with the lilies in the sink and started in the main bedroom. She opened the wardrobe and Mrs Ramsay’s delicate perfume – like the evening scent of garden flowers – drifted out; she inhaled deeply. The wardrobe was in disarray, clothes off hangers and twisted or heaped on the floor. The hangers had tangled with each other and it took Stella twenty-six minutes – putting her behind schedule – to fold the garments and pile the hangers on the stripped mattress, before she could set to cleaning the wardrobe. Mrs Ramsay kept up a commentary urging Stella to direct the vacuum nozzle into the deepest recesses.
For the rest of the afternoon Jack and Stella worked without stopping or speaking to one another.
Stella had turned off the vacuum and was retracting the lead when she heard Jack’s phone. She crept on to the landing and halfway down the stairs. The fifth stair strained when she put her weight on it; she lowered herself to the next one. Jack was in the hall speaking quietly. She did not risk going lower or he would see her shadow on the wall.
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