The Detective's Daughter

by Lesley Thomson

  Jack did what he liked when he liked; he smoked, questioned her decisions and was not available at short notice. She was about to call out to remind him of the deadline, but then reminded herself that Jack Harmon was the best cleaner she had ever had and instead of berating him, she strayed back to the hall, fractious and forlorn. Gone was the grey powder: Jack had washed the walls, the skirting and cornices using bleach and polish, but he had done what she said and kept the doors open so the smells were faint and the air fresh. He had vacuumed the rug and laid it exactly in the centre of the boards as it had been. She did not have to lift it to know that the stains she had laboured over, which for a time the police had thought were Mrs Ramsay’s blood, would be gone. He had buffed up the hat stand till the antlers shone.

  Jack’s coat was hanging in the hall.

  The last day she saw Mrs Ramsay, the old woman had been fumbling with a coat when Stella was leaving. She had given the impression of sulking, but now Stella realized her mood was agitated. Mrs Ramsay had been pulling at the pockets, trying to get her hand inside. The cloth was rough, like the blankets. Stella sniffed it: an outside smell that somehow lessened her anger. What had Mrs Ramsay been looking for?

  She swung the coat around and found a pocket containing Jack’s packet of tobacco. The coat was weighted by a lump in the other pocket. Stella ran to the back door and confirmed that Jack had not moved.

  Stitches were broken in the seam and she pulled two more, manoeuvring out a compact booklet encased in brittle plastic which, like his tobacco, was held with an elastic band. She pulled off the band and flicked through the spiral-bound book. Each page was filled with columns of printed numbers: 20.02.15, 21.04. It might have been a timetable, but for three digit numbers under a heading: ‘Set No.’ On the cover was a London Underground train, like in a child’s story book, retaining only the main features: headlights, wheels, windows. One of the pages was marked with a gold paper clip. Stella manipulated the scruffy volume to that page and, holding it at some distance to accommodate her growing long sight, tried to make sense of the numbers.

  The fire escape shook; Jack was coming back from the garden. She shut the book. It would not close properly and when she tried to bind it with the elastic band, running it off her grouped fingers, the band snapped and flew towards the garden door where any minute Jack would appear. She rammed the book into the pocket, tearing another stitch, and hurried to the stairs where she did an about-turn as if descending when Jack came in. He paused and wiped his feet on the mat, which he had made look new. He was trembling with cold and did not see Stella.

  ‘Hi there. All right?’ she enquired brightly, jumping off the last step, one hand on the newel post.

  He eyed her with surprise. ‘I went for a smoke.’

  He did not smell of smoke.

  ‘It’s lunchtime, I thought we might wander along to the Ram.’ Only on special occasions did Stella offer staff lunch; she preferred to eat alone.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll work through.’ Jack indicated the plastic bags. ‘Do you want help bringing down the rest?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Stella had completed the upper floors. She stood in the back bedroom on the top floor. Gina Cross had instructed her to be ruthless in the bedrooms; if her siblings wanted anything they would be in touch. If she didn’t hear, she should ‘dump the whole caboodle’. Good, clear instructions: Gina Cross was Stella’s kind of client.

  Why did Jack have a driver’s timetable in his pocket? Why had he bought Mrs Ramsay flowers?

  Once the vacuum had started up in the basement, Stella checked her mobile to find no messages. Jackie had taken her at her word and was not disturbing her. She would be grateful that Stella was back on the job, but had made several hints about progress on Terry’s house such as grieving could not be swept under the carpet. This was precisely where Stella thought it could be swept, but had instead agreed that time was a great healer.

  Jackie picked up on the second ring.

  ‘You tell me not to answer the phone, where’s thingy?’

  ‘Beverly. She’s at the dentist – I sent her to your man. She broke a tooth on a pear drop, would you believe!’

  ‘He’s not my man.’

  ‘No, I meant… Why are we whispering?’

  ‘I’m not.’ Stella cleared her throat and raised her voice as much as she dared. She could still hear the vacuum. ‘Could you give me the numbers for Jack Harmon’s referees?’

  ‘Oh-kay, tell me what’s happened.’ Jackie’s tone implied she had expected a problem and here it was.

  ‘Nothing, I want to confirm them. Normal procedure.’

  ‘I have already, I told you. One was lukewarm but basically good and the other man, if I remember rightly, was impatient, though he said he’d have Mr Harmon back.’

  If a person wanted to fake a reference they would be clever enough to avoid fulsome praise; Stella kept this to herself. If she were asked, she would have difficulty not raving about Jack. She took the numbers down on an old laundry list of Mrs Ramsay’s, airily enquiring if Jackie had heard from Paul.

  ‘Not a dicky bird. I’m taking it that he’s not your man either?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘So you’re out if he calls?’

  ‘I am.’

  The vacuum motor went up to a pitch; Jack was using the nozzle on the stairs and would finish soon. Feverishly she stabbed at the buttons, squinting at the digits on the tiny screen. She got one wrong and had to start again, mouthing the numbers as she dialled and pressing the green button with only moments before Jack would appear because the vacuum had stopped.

  No one was answering. Downstairs she caught the sound of a standard Nokia ringtone. It was Jack’s phone. That would delay him, and if he was talking he would not hear her.

  ‘Nick Jarvis.’ The deep voice was clipped and irritable: the sort in too much of a hurry to give a decent brief for a job, but with plenty of time to complain if objectives omitted were not met. She leant on the sill ruminating at the overgrown lawn. The man was breathing as if he was running. Downstairs she heard the back door open.

  ‘It’s Stella Darnell from Clean Slate Cleaning Services. You offered to give a testimony on a former employee, Jack Harmon. Is now a good time?’ His breathing was irregular and she could hear what could be the shuffling of shoes. Jarvis must be outside somewhere.

  Jack was in the garden, tracking his own footprints back to the wall, this time looking back at the house. Stella ducked out of sight.

  ‘If you’re quick, but I did speak to someone from your company.’ Stella checked her watch: it was nearly five. If Jack turned out to have been sacked from his previous job, it was unwise to confront him alone in a client’s house.

  ‘I need his dates of employment and the reason why he left.’

  ‘Has he embezzled the petty cash?’

  ‘Would you expect that?’

  ‘Best cleaner we had in the whole wide world. Aren’t you pleased with his work?’ Jarvis sound rather belligerent. Why should he care?

  ‘Yes, very.’

  St Peter’s Church bells struck the hour. The sound came through the phone. How was that when Nick Jarvis was in Muswell Hill?

  ‘No good on timings, I’m afraid. My advice is that you trust the guy.’

  Stella hung up. At the same moment Jack lowered his arm and was off the phone.

  It was not coincidence.

  Nick Jarvis did not exist. She felt desolate. Confident he could fool anyone, Jack had faked his references. He had fooled Jackie and if Stella had not heard the bells he would have fooled her.

  Now he would know she did not trust him.

  Stella crept out on to the landing.

  ‘Be here same time tomorrow, yeah?’ Jack called up.

  He was leaving.

  ‘I’ll ring you.’

  The door slammed. She remained where she was, contemplating the drop down the stairwell. The plastic bags behind her rustled, easing and settling. More sounds. This was how it f
elt to be Isabel Ramsay when Stella was not there to keep the ghosts at bay. Out they came from their hidey-holes while Mrs Ramsay tried to manage what was left of her life.

  She brought another bag down to the hall. The broken elastic band was on the newel post. Jack must have found it. She stood on the spotless rug and breathed in the lavender fragrance. She knew what to do next.

  29

  Wednesday, 19 January 2011

  Jack was breaking London Underground rules: he had left his phone switched on in the cab. He would not answer it, but he had to know if she called. It was fifteen minutes past midnight and his phone had remained silent. Stella was making him suffer.

  He did not know if Stella had guessed it was him being Nick Jarvis. But calling the referees when her PA had already done so was proof enough that she did not yet trust him.

  She might believe she did not need him. Yet again he combed through their conversation in the summerhouse for something that had caused her to verify his references just when he thought they were getting on. Perhaps she had always doubted him? No, something specific had prompted her. He suspected it was Isabel’s lilies.

  Mike Thorpe and Nick Jarvis had been adequate Hosts: he had modelled their ruthless and dispassionate approach; even down to how they boiled water for tea or tied their shoe laces. Jarvis’s brutal disregard for space, pushing through crowds, taking up more room than necessary; Thorpe, unaware of anyone, never getting up for anyone on a bus or a train. Their utter lack of empathy had been gratifying and staying with each of them he had been sure he had found men with minds like his own. Until the facts belied this.

  A good liar believes his own lies. By making the men his referees Jack had given them new life.

  ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name…’ he muttered, the words comforting although Jack did not think of himself as religious.

  Jack had stayed with Nick Jarvis in his Barbican flat for two months and could not pretend it had been pleasant. He did not have a cleaner because he did not want snoopers prying into his business. Jack had known Nick Jarvis as soon as he saw him on the platform at Sloane Square; there were too many Nick Jarvises, standing where the doors would open, pushing their way in, taking the last seat, they projected respectability and belonged to the Rotary Club and Neighbourhood Watch while behind the scenes they were getting away with murder.

  This afternoon Nick had stepped out of character to give Jack a good reference, but Stella had seen through him; she had not called Mike Thorpe. Jack had been ready, knowing he would have to work to get Thorpe’s voice right. On the other hand, maybe it was a positive sign: Nick had convinced her.

  Stella was taking her time.

  Tonight’s set number – he had done a short shift so there had only been one – was 242. Jack tried to divine the answer from the rails and the cable bundles strapped to the walls and gantries but on this journey they too were impervious. All he could see was all there was: no signs, no messages; he had been abandoned.

  Above ground, triangles of snow, bisected by silver lines hatching off across Chiswick to Ealing and over to Ruislip, were translucent in the London-dark. On a segment of land between the District and Piccadilly route track-side workers had built a snowman and dressed him in a ‘hi-viz’ jacket with a woolly bobble cap and sticks for arms, but no face.

  Jack had not noticed Ealing Common. He must have stopped there, would have operated the doors and seen who boarded and who alighted; he was not concentrating.

  Stella should not have let him leave without going through the rooms he had cleaned. To assert authority she should highlight any blemish: a forgotten corner, a wisp of cobweb. Not liking to praise, she needed to catch him out. She had not done so; she was avoiding him.

  Stamford Brook was the next stop. He imagined himself as static while the world outside his cab passed by in rolling scene changes: a line of lights, a canopy, the London Underground roundels; the passengers.

  The platforms were deserted; few travellers went up to town at this time. He was steering his train through a deserted city; cheered he began to sing:

  ‘Incy-wincy spider climbing up the spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out…’

  There was someone on his platform; involuntarily Jack jerked the handle, jolting the train like a novice. His fingers clammy with sweat, he gripped the lever. The man was close to the platform edge and Jack imagined him getting ready to execute a perfect dive – on your marks, get set – right in front of Jack’s cab. Instead the man turned away and went down the steps; Jack let himself breathe. He loved trains, the engine, the cab, the carriages for their stolid intent: so oblivious to the frailty of a single life. Flowers were laid beside roads where ‘loved ones’ had died, but none were put on tracks. Death was better glimpsed from cars than contemplated by waiting commuters who might get ideas of their own.

  Waiting passengers took no notice of the driver, although they stared at the cab; it was the train they eyed impassively as it entered a station. He saw the same expression on hundreds of faces. When he was a boy Jack had not grasped what, if people had eyes, noses, mouths and chins, made them different from one another. It was not true that under the skin we are all the same because, as he had learnt, only some had minds like his own.

  Pick a face, any face. He could enter a tunnel and wipe them out.

  A person was looking straight into his cab.

  Stella Darnell had no need to call his mobile. She knew where to find him.

  30

  Wednesday, 19 January 2011

  Snowflakes were swirling; the church tower was a pencil sketch, its lines indistinct. Stella had lost sight of Jack and thrust aside rhododendron branches, tipping snow on to her head. Ahead, lit intermittently by traffic and what lamplight penetrated the dense foliage, was the statue.

  They had not spoken on the drive to Terry’s house and Jack had got out of the van as soon as Stella turned off the engine. He had not seemed surprised to see her at Stamford Brook station, nor had he avoided her on the platform at Earls Court where she waited while he took the train to the depot. Implicitly they had both known where they were going and why: Stella could not return by herself to Terry’s house for only the second time since his death. She had to take Jack with her.

  Wind had blown snow into the clearing; bushes and the spreading sycamore offered scant protection. It covered the Leaning Woman’s head and shoulders like a shawl. Stella tramped around the sculpture and found Jack, his knees up to his chest, curled in a ball. He clasped his hands as if in prayer, perhaps in an attempt to keep them warm. Stella resolved to find Terry’s gloves. She would heat up a shepherd’s pie because in the half-light, despite all the milk he drank, Jack looked more malnourished than ever.

  ‘You didn’t mention a “day job”.’ Her voice was level.

  ‘Night job, to be accurate. I do the Dead Lates four times a week. Tonight I finished early because I was a relief driver.’

  ‘This is early?’ Hampered by manic flurries of snow, Stella could not see the time on her watch. In the van, it had been about midnight.

  ‘The night is young.’

  Stella lowered herself beside Jack. ‘Where do you live?’ She raised a gloved hand. ‘Don’t bother making it up. I contacted the address on your form. A Michael Hamilton and his wife Ellen – who actually live there – had never heard of you.’

  Jack lit a cigarette; he had taken a risk putting a real address on the form; the best lies were mostly truth. The Hamiltons had been his family for longer than was wise since they were not part of the main task. They had not given him what he was looking for, but he at least had found what he had lost: a home. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Have you any idea what paltry issues can form the basis for a catastrophic rift in a relationship? Which way a lavatory roll is fitted in the holder, pulling from the top or from underneath, can be a reason for murder.’


  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  ‘This is the subject. In the afternoons, I’d hear the gabble of kids’ voices from the gardens, that way they talk, excitable and dramatic, then it goes wrong and they’re quarrelling. “It’s not fair”, “It’s my turn” and so on. I’d want to join in.’ It was upsetting to hear that the Hamiltons claimed he was a stranger.

  ‘One more time and then I am going. Where do you live?’ Stella’s back was numb and she zipped up her anorak to cover her chin.

  Jack blew on his hands. ‘There are so many secrets.’

  ‘Here, take these.’ Stella gave him her gloves.

  She balanced on her haunches trying to avoid the cold and wet, which was already seeping though her trousers. ‘How can you expect me to trust you when you come out with this stuff?’

  ‘I don’t expect anything. However, you do trust me, or you wouldn’t have me cleaning for you.’

  Stella considered the truth of this and kept it to herself. ‘Did you steal anything from these Hamiltons?’

  ‘No. I gave them back their lives.’

  ‘How exactly?’

  ‘So much is hidden in homes: affairs, private hurt, injustice. I shone light on some of it and moved events along. I am a catalyst.’

  ‘So where do you live?’ She pulled her hood over her head.

  ‘Why do you care? I do the work and you have my number.’

  ‘I care if you break into people’s homes, I know you were in Mrs Ramsay’s. You claim she invited you, but why would she do that? And why were you sending her flowers?’

  ‘I told you, Isabel was my friend.’ Jack struggled to his feet. The statue had vanished beneath snow and he brushed it off, his actions frantic, as if her smothered state was distressing to him.