The Detective's Daughter

by Lesley Thomson

  The screen returned an incorrect password.

  ‘Told you.’ Stella flung back in the chair, pushing it away from the desk, just missing Jack’s feet.

  ‘Three of his colleagues were killed on that day and his daughter was born. Terry cared all right.’ Jack frowned. ‘One, two, zero, eight, six, six.’

  Password incorrect, press return for a retry.

  He shook his head. ‘What time were you born?’

  ‘How would I know? You know that too, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you know what time you were born?’ Jack repeated.

  ‘No.’

  Stella swivelled the chair back and forth. She could get crates like Gina’s to store Terry’s stuff until she had time to deal with it. Gina-Ware offered good rates.

  ‘Where’s your birth certificate?’

  ‘Certificates only have dates.’

  ‘Do you still have Terry’s files here?’

  ‘The case files? You know I don’t, they’re at the flat.’

  ‘His personal files, the stuff you’re meant to be giving to the lawyer.’

  Stella tipped a languid hand at the buff concertina file on the floor where she had left it the night she had fled Terry’s house. That seemed a lifetime ago.

  ‘You’ve already been through that. This is a waste of time, Jack.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Eight six six!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My set number on Tuesday was your birthday. See? It’s a sign!’

  To humour him, Stella typed in the numbers.

  ‘No luck.’

  Jack wasn’t listening. He spilled the papers on to the carpet tiles and, cross-legged, scrutinized each paper, giving a running commentary: ‘His dad’s death certificate, his leaving certificate – exemplary service – meant to show you this, not that bad a detective then. You should display this. His mum died four years after you were born, do you remember her?’

  ‘Four is too young to remember anything.’ Nana.

  ‘Quite possibly.’ Jack bit the side of his thumb.

  Hunched over the papers, Jack Harmon – or Jonathan Rokesmith – could have been playing cards or arranging his toy cars. With a shock Stella saw why she had taken the risk of allowing this shabby man who looked in need of a meal and older than thirty-three into her flat and on to her cleaning schedule. She understood why she was prepared to be alone with him in a succession of empty houses late at night. She had a new reason for finding who killed Jonathan Rokesmith’s mother. Against her better judgement, she liked Jack.

  Her mobile rang.

  It was Ivan. She answered, pretending she did not know the caller so that he would not guess she had programmed his number into her handset.

  ‘I am so sorry but I will have to postpone dinner for a bit. I’m at a conference in Paris. Paediatric dentistry is not really my thing, but one has to show one’s face. I’ll be away until next week. May I call you when I’m back and see how you’re fixed? I feel rotten, I should have rung earlier.’

  Stella assured Ivan that she did not mind. Privately she was rather relieved: eating in a restaurant twice in one week was a challenge she did not relish. She enjoyed the fact that the dentist’s receptionist had got it wrong; she had said he was in Rome.

  ‘Here we are!’ Jack waved a faded pink card. ‘Stella Victoria Darnell – Victoria was his mother’s name by the way. Born in Hammersmith Hospital, weighs ten pounds, one ounce – that’s heavy – on Friday the twelfth of August 1966 at two minutes past midday. Your adoring parents sent this to their friends and relations announcing you were here!’

  He crawled over to the desk and kneeling up, tapped in the keys like a pianist picking out a melody.

  ‘One, two and a zero, then another two. A one, a two and zero-eight. I’ll bet he dropped the nineteen so lastly six and six. Voilà!’

  Nothing happened. Then the hard drive light on the left of the keyboard flickered, the screen went blue and up came the Windows password request. Jack repeated the sequence of numbers. They were in.

  ‘Most important day of his life,’ Jack said under his breath.

  [I. Ramsay Statement, T Darnell 11092010.docx]

  Isabel Ramsay, 77. Flirts like a girl. Complimenting her jacket got me indoors despite my being police and her not liking Hall. (Looked up: D. I. Hall – Howland case 1968.). Mrs Ramsay appears demented, talks as if kids still young and husband still alive. Could be shamming.

  Showed her local paper piece on village hall opening in Sussex (Charbury). She admitted lying. Didn’t think it serious, ‘silly mistake’. Possibly acting. Was in Sussex until mid afternoon. Thinks husband (Prof. Mark Ramsay, fifty-six at time of 29/7/81, died 1999, likely suicide but coroner ruled Acc. Death) saw Kate R. Doesn’t know and never asked. Could be covering for him. ‘He is a doctor. He has signed the Oath.’ Became animated and insisted the husband did not know she had ‘made stupid mistake’. I told her she was compellable to give evidence against her spouse: she tried to end conversation. When I pushed the point that Ramsay had not come forward to contradict her evidence she said: ‘He loved me.’ Said this phrase several times, her lie possibly because she can’t remember and not hiding evidence.

  NB: Saw Clean Slate card on IR’s fridge. Ring S.

  Tried to contact D. I. Richard Hall, passed in 2001.

  Talk to SD then MC.

  ‘Terry was good with people,’ Stella remarked after they had both read the document on the desktop. ‘So she did speak to the police.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Jack admitted.

  Mrs Ramsay had not shared all her secrets with Jack, Stella noted.

  ‘Terry seems to have assessed her correctly: he wasn’t taken in by her charms,’ Jack said. ‘He didn’t speak to you.’ He jabbed a finger at the ‘SD’.

  ‘He had the wrong number,’ she admitted. She cleared her throat. ‘We need to look into Mark Ramsay. Something’s not right there.’

  ‘I don’t feel that was where Terry was going.’ Jack was gnawing at his thumb.

  Nevertheless Stella underlined Mark Ramsay on their list of suspects, which numbered four: Hugh Rokesmith, Mark Ramsay, Paul (who surely did not count but she left him there anyway) and the wild card: the ‘nominal’ in police-speak.

  They spent the next fifteen minutes exploring Terry’s computer but found nothing else. According to a receipt in his files, Terry had not had the machine long before he died. He had not created any other documents.

  Jack clicked on the browser to find out the five-day weather forecast.

  ‘What do you care? You’re underground most of the time.’

  ‘Not when I’m walking.’

  ‘Walking! Where?’

  ‘It depends which page I’m on.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stella looked at her watch. It was only thirty-five minutes past eleven. She was sorry not to be meeting Ivan; she could do with a glass of wine at the end of the day.

  ‘I found a London street atlas on a Richmond train. It has pen marks on every page. I thought at first they were a child’s scribbles, but when I looked properly I found that the lines trace a journey. They are a sign.’

  ‘A sign of what?’ She had thought it was going too well.

  ‘Only if I complete all the journeys will I find out. I trace each one on Street View before I go in real life. It’s not cheating, it’s another way of seeing.’

  ‘Why would it be cheating? It’s not just a sign that someone forgot their A to Z?’

  Jack groped in his coat and produced a filthy battered copy of the A–Z. Stella thought again about a therapist. She would not like Jack to go off the rails. Literally.

  ‘I’ll show you.’ He clicked on Google maps.

  Stella grabbed his wrist: ‘Stop! It’s showing what was looked at last. Why didn’t I think of that? We can see the history of Terry’s searches.’

  ‘I’m walking this last page tomorrow.’ Jack was gazing at the book. He paused, then: ‘Isabel loved my
tales.’

  Stella found that hard to believe. Mrs Ramsay was not a good listener. She pulled the monitor towards her.

  ‘Pay attention, Jack. Where is Bishopstone?’

  ‘East Sussex. It’s where my mother grew up. She’s buried in the churchyard there. You know this; it’s in the notes. It’s near a town called… um what’s it called?’ Jack looked up and ran his finger down the screen. ‘There, Seaford. Anyway, when I’m not working I go on these expeditions following—’

  ‘Seaford. Are you sure?’

  ‘It says so there.’

  ‘Seaford is where Terry died.’

  Jack jerked his head. He crammed the book back in his pocket and clutched at the desk to steady himself. He grabbed the mouse from Stella and enlarged the window.

  ‘You’re a star, Stell.’ He batted the arm of Stella’s chair.

  No one but Terry or Jackie called her ‘Stell’.

  Jack switched to Google Street View. ‘Your dad must have gone to see her grave or the house where she lived. Why did he do that?’

  ‘Like the jury going to see where Diana died?’ Stella ventured.

  ‘No, it was something else.’

  ‘His car is still in Seaford – I meant to go and get it!’ Stella exclaimed.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Jack leant on the desk to get to his feet, making it tip forward. He did up the few remaining buttons on his overcoat.

  Stella typed ‘Broad Street’ into the Street View search. A picture of the high street where Terry had died came into focus out of a cluster of pixels. She manoeuvred the cursor along the road to the Co-op store on the left. Most pictures for Street View were taken in brilliant sunshine, giving the scenes an upbeat unreality, but the weather the day these images were taken had been overcast, cold and spitting with rain. Somehow she expected to see Terry going into the supermarket to buy his breakfast. The cursor swooped out of control and she was in the next street: a figure was heading towards the camera. Stella thought it familiar, but in the course of her job she met many people; they merged into types. Most people looked like other people.

  ‘Terry’s car might hold a valuable clue!’ Jack was on a treasure hunt. Ever since she had learnt his real identity Stella could not shake off the impression he was a small boy treating everything as a game. Despite bags under his eyes and lines around his mouth that made him look nearer forty than thirty-three, Jack could seem four years old.

  Jack looked over at the screen and divined Stella’s motivations for looking at the Co-op better than she did herself. He spent as much time in Street View’s static landscape as he did walking the actual streets, searching the pixellated faces on sunlit pavements for the parent he had lost. Since 27 July 1981 his life had had only one purpose. He brushed Stella’s shoulder: ‘Terry had a massive coronary and wouldn’t have known about it. It’s the memory of pain or trauma that makes it bad. It’s worse for those left behind.’

  Stella turned off the machine. ‘We’ll take the train so we can come back in Terry’s car together and debrief.’

  Stella did not add that she wanted Jack’s company.

  48

  Saturday, 22 January 2011

  Bishopstone was less than half a mile from the A259 – the route from Brighton to Eastbourne – but with no through road and any road markings or signs lost beneath the snow it was remote and timeless. All the way from Seaford Stella had kept the fan on, but Terry’s car had not warmed up by the time they found the church.

  In Seaford they had searched the car, squatting down by the door sills to peer beneath the seats, but Terry had been a tidy man and there were no used tissues or chewing-gum wrappers; they found nothing.

  It was late afternoon; they had been travelling for two and a half hours. Their journey had begun with an Upminster District line train to Victoria station. To avoid fuss Stella had waived expense and proposed they hail a taxi, but Jack was reluctant. He had a staff pass for the Underground and Stella, thinking it would do him good to feel in charge, agreed. He insisted they face forwards in the front carriage and had sat with his left hand clenching and unclenching, his eyes on the door to the driver’s cab at the end of the gangway like a child steering. Stella understood; her left foot would depress a phantom brake at junctions and bends whenever she was a passenger in Jackie’s car.

  They had changed trains at Lewes for Seaford. There, they struggled along icy pavements, past a church, a police station and a post office, to a wide street called the Causeway, to the sea where Stella had left Terry’s car. The cars were covered with snow and Jack stomped ahead clearing registration plates until he found the Toyota.

  Neither of them had considered the risk involved in moving the car. Snow had banked up around the wheels but they found a small shovel in the boot – there was also a hazard triangle and a first-aid kit – and dug around the tyres. The street was as slippery as an ice-rink and when Stella finally started the engine and manoeuvred out, the wheels spun and they slid gracefully over the camber stopping just short of the smaller shape of a motorbike. Stella coaxed the vehicle forward; the brakes were spongy and the wheels’ response to the steering approximate. They missed a parked car by inches, knocking the wing mirror, making it spring inwards, which Jack insisted on getting out to correct. At last they reached the Bishopstone junction.

  The village was at the end of a long winding lane. Stella was relieved to turn off the engine and dared not contemplate the drive back. She got out of the car and leant on the front wing. The air was fresher and colder than in London and she took a long breath.

  Despite their speculations on the train, they were no closer to finding out what had brought Terry to Bishopstone.

  ‘Why would he come here?’ she mused out loud.

  ‘Perhaps he had wanted to visit her grave; remind himself why he was doing it.’

  ‘How often do you come?’

  ‘Hardly ever.’

  Jack had told Stella about the set numbers and knew she had found it hard to contain herself at the idea that he made life decisions on the basis of a train’s identification number. He would not admit he had come to the grave two years ago, on 6 December, because on that day his first train’s number had been 612.

  ‘How far are we from Charbury?’ Stella was speaking.

  ‘About ten miles, maybe a bit less. Why?’

  ‘It’s where the Ramsays have a house. Maybe we should move Mark Ramsay up the list.’

  A gust of cold wind blew in from the open car door and something fluttered out from the sun visor on to Jack’s lap. He held it up to the interior light.

  Newspaper had been torn roughly with no care for the text; it was probably rubbish and he was about to stuff it into his pocket, when he caught the words ‘vacuum cleaner’ in the fragment of headline: riticize lazy security guards for failing to check vacuum cleaner.

  Until he worked for Stella, Jack had not realized how much there was to know about cleaning: the equipment, cleaning agents, solutions for specific stains, hazard signs, buckets with wringers and wheels, brushes for every kind of dirt. He had stumbled upon an art form. He knew he was a good train driver but received any praise and promotion with stolid indifference. He did not care. Stella had not told him she admired his work, but let it slip to his mythical referee on the phone. He was pleased.

  The article was dated 30 September 2008. The story was about the fire on the Cutty Sark the previous year. The incident was the major news story on the day his father had died. Jack had sat in the hospital watching the BBC lunchtime news on the monitor opposite the bed. Once, such a report would have gripped Hugh Rokesmith, who considered every eventuality when designing a bridge or a tunnel, but the world had diminished to an irrelevance and he did not respond when Jack reiterated the events of that early morning in May 2007.

  Now it seemed that a Planet 200 industrial vacuum cleaner had been left on and overheated, causing a fire on the nineteenth-century clipper. Jack knew the vacuum, set on a platform with braked castor wheels
at the front and a guiding bar at the back. Stella used them for commercial jobs. There had been one in the back of the van when they visited the plasterer and he had sneaked a look. Made in Italy, its stainless-steel cylinder with a little gauge was like a steam engine, although it operated on different principles. He longed to touch it, polish it and hear its motor; it was a feat of engineering. Unfortunately it wasn’t necessary for Ivan Challoner’s flat or Sarah Glyde’s house, despite its years of neglect.

  Jack had been shocked to see tears running down his father’s cheeks. He wasn’t looking at the television but out of the window at the sky. Jack had never seen him cry and had walked out of the ward. He kept walking, out of the hospital, on and on until he reached the sea. He ended up in Scarborough’s Grand Hotel where he bought a coffee. While he was drinking it, a call came from the hospital. His father had died.

  It was a sign.

  He flipped the paper over. In jagged blue biro was a string of letters and digits in the margin: ‘CPL 628B. Does this mean anything to you?’

  Stella floundered through ankle-deep snow and leant in through the open door. ‘Nope.’

  ‘A serial number.’ Jack handed her the paper. ‘Or a password?’

  ‘It’s a registration plate.’

  ‘Foreign maybe.’

  ‘No, in the UK the suffix series started in 1963, the last letter is the age of the vehicle. This is 1964. What with your number thing, I’m surprised you didn’t know that.’

  Jack got out of the car and slammed the door. The sound startled rooks in the graveyard, their clattering wings and a burst of cawing broke the quiet.

  ‘Me too! Good work, PC Darnell, your time on traffic paid off.’

  ‘Terry told me.’

  Jack could have said he treated numbers as a coded instruction; he dwelt on the message that they carried. His set numbers might tell him which train to pick up, but their meaning was deeper. He rarely considered numbers in the context of their own system; that was mundane.

  ‘Terry had a string of stolen cars in his head, he’ll have spotted this and written it on the nearest thing, no doubt while driving.’ She crumpled the paper and stuffed it in her anorak pocket.