The Detective's Daughter

by Lesley Thomson

  The calor gas heater ticked as it cooled. The clay heads were silhouetted in the glass of the French doors. Mother and son faced each other in wordless communion as they never could in life. The knife was on the table between them. The quiet in the deserted studio was broken by the call of geese flying over the water, wings beating the night air. Their honking died to nothing as the birds headed towards the wetlands out at Barnes.

  Beyond the garden wall the ebbing tide of the River Thames and traffic on the Great West Road marked the passing of time.

  61

  Monday, 24 January 2011

  Ivan lit the candle and placed it on the dressing table where she could see it. The flame flared and steadied, triplicated in the three-way mirror and the room came to life. She was watching. He loved how she observed him, her expression unchanging, taking him in. In her presence his simplest action was witnessed. The flame nearly went out; shadows jumped and danced on the walls. The room was busy, but she had eyes only for him.

  There was a draught; he had promised to locate it and block it up. She felt the cold. The house was old; there were cracks in the skirtings and gaps in the floorboards; seams ran through the plastered ceilings and sashes were swollen so that windows did not shut properly. She minded less than him about the state of the house; she agreed it would be disruptive to have workmen crawling all about the place. However, this was the room in which she spent her time and he had promised to keep it perfect. Tonight he would tell her about Stella Darnell and she would have good advice to give him.

  No one had ever said no to Ivan before and he did not like it.

  He risked another look and found he was right: her eyes were boring into his back, undressing him, caressing him. These days he rarely felt desire; he felt it now.

  As this was her room, so the house was his special place. He had shown her his boyhood carvings in the tree, helping her so that she could climb up to the next branch and sit in the hollow. She had been more agile than him; he had not dared climb, telling her he was frightened of heights. She had laughed. She was not laughing at him, he told himself. Unlike Stella she had jumped at the chance to come.

  She would not betray him.

  When she had asked for his news, he had been reticent. Oh, where to begin, he had prevaricated, instead going to make her a cup of tea. Now he was putting off talking about Stella Darnell, repositioning the make-up on her dressing table, which in a minute would annoy her. Not yet; her smile was genuine. He had wanted her from the first moment he had seen her, he told her again.

  It was the smile. People’s mouths were his first impression and how he judged them. He had wanted to disappear into hers.

  Ivan turned from the mirror, his arms outstretched. It was his job to do what he could to keep her safe; he could say nothing of what he was thinking.

  Her smile was warm, her teeth whiter than white and not once did she blink. Her hair was flaxen in the mellow candlelight as if bathed in summer sunlight.

  The church bells struck eleven times. The night was young. After so long, neither of them needed to speak to communicate with each other.

  Ivan knew what she wanted him to do.

  62

  Monday, 24 January 2011

  Jack followed the instructions on the van’s satellite-navigation system until, coming out of Newhaven, he recognized where he was and switched off the relentless voice. He travelled the remaining miles in silence. At the sign for Bishopstone he checked his rear mirror but there were no headlights. Indicating left, he flicked down to sidelights and bumped slowly up the lane.

  He was looking for the silver BMW four-wheel drive. On the seat beside him was a printout map of the area. After he had left Sarah Glyde’s studio, his instinct had been to come straight to Sussex but he had forced himself to prepare. He had returned to his parents’ house in St Peter’s Square and brought up Broad Street in Seaford on his screen. There it was, a silver four-wheel drive, fixed in time, making its way towards the Co-op supermarket in the sunshine, its driver a shadow behind the wheel. He had clicked the magnifying glass icon and enlarged the image; cropping the surrounding street from the frame, he pressed Print screen. He confirmed that the vehicle was the X3 model on a dealer website.

  There was always a silver X3 outside the surgery when he came to clean and on his last visit it had been missing.

  As he remembered from when he had come with Stella and from his journey in Street View, the lane wound for a long way, with no dwellings, hedgerows overgrown; the van’s sidelights accentuated the density of leaves and groping branches. Fullwood House was remote; Ivan Challoner did not want neighbours.

  Outside the churchyard his phone rang, and he fumbled for it, sending a blue light over the dashboard when he hauled it out of his coat slung over the passenger seat. Stella had left another voicemail: ‘Jack? Stella. Where are you? Ring when you get this. You’ve taken one of the vans. Why were you in my flat?’

  They were no longer a team. Jack told himself Stella had abandoned him. He had her van; she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. She had not answered his calls. He mounted the verge where they had parked last time and cut the engine. He would not tell her where he was; she would find out soon enough. Jackie would have told Stella she had spoken to him.

  It was over.

  He turned off his telephone and dropped it in the handbrake well between the seats. Stella would not call the police to report her van stolen. He felt a twinge: he was sorry that he would not see her again.

  He found a torch in the glove box. He had not brought the clay cutter or the knife. Neither were suitable. Challoner would have plenty of tools that would do the job.

  Shrouded by thickening fog, in his black coat and treading quietly, he was invisible but avoided the light of a single lamp-post as he surveyed a Gothic Victorian villa with a deep arched porchway beyond a twisted hedge. On the gravel outside, parked at an angle, was a silver BMW X3. He shone his light quickly on the number plate; it was registered in 2009.

  Jonathan Rokesmith was as near to happy as he had ever been in his life.

  63

  Monday, 24 January 2011

  The blinds in the surgery were shut and Ivan’s sitting-room window was unlit. He must have already left for the country. Stella was sorry for refusing the invitation to his family home and, jumping into Terry’s car, had driven down to Kew.

  She deliberated whether to phone Ivan, but could not bear the idea of him not answering or not returning her call or, worse, putting down the phone. She had no idea where Fullwood House was so could not go there and surprise him, and besides Ivan was like her: surprising him was out of the question.

  She was disappointed not to find Jack at the surgery, although he would have finished cleaning hours ago. She had left him a peevish message which now she regretted. More than not going to Sussex, she regretted not answering Jack’s earlier calls; there was so much to discuss.

  She had perceived too late what it had cost Ivan to invite her, so intent was she on keeping her routine and not repeating her mistakes with Paul. Stella had not noticed that since Terry’s death she had no routine and, as for having space, well, she had plenty of that. She wished Paul were alive to get on her nerves. She tramped over melting snow to the front steps, the clinging fog chilling her to the core.

  She had listened to Ivan’s account of the new kinds of treatments he was researching and in return described her new compact and easily manoeuvrable walk-behind scrubber-drier with attached cleaning system. Unlike Paul, Ivan did not hanker after owning her; she enjoyed his company.

  Tonight she had found out what was precious to Ivan and rejected him; there would be no second chance. She stared at the sign: Ivan’s name and qualifications were solid in the lamplight suspended above the two brass-studded doors: ‘Dr S. A. I. Challoner. Dentist’.

  Strange that he wasn’t called by his first name, she thought. She tried Jack’s number again. No answer. She pictured him sulking because of her message a
bout the van. Where was he?

  Car headlights raked the steps, momentarily dazzling her. Ivan was back; it was all right – although ideally she did not want him to find her. She cast about with the crazy thought of hiding, but that would make it worse. She prepared a bright smile.

  The headlights on full beam captured her in their glare and suddenly Stella panicked. Her first instinct had been right. She did not want to spend a night with Ivan in a house in the middle of the country, miles from anywhere. Terry would not have liked her to accept.

  Sarah Glyde got out of the car.

  ‘It said in the case papers that you couldn’t drive.’ Something was very wrong.

  ‘I can now.’ Glyde slammed her car door and sloshed through the melting ice up the stairs. ‘Is Antony here? Are they inside?’

  She shoved past and to Stella’s astonishment prodded a key into the front-door lock.

  ‘There’s no one there.’ Stella remained on the top step. ‘Who did you say?’

  Sarah Glyde appeared not to have heard.

  ‘Jack’s a very disturbed young man. He was coming here when he left me. He had a knife.’ She rushed inside and, after jabbing in an alarm code, switched on a lamp in the hall.

  Stella splashed after her. ‘How come you have a key?’ It was inconceivable that Ivan would be friends with a hayseed in ripped jeans and a filthy shirt too big for her. Sarah was circling the receptionist’s office, tapping and stroking the filing cabinet, the desk, the computer and its monitor; muttering incessantly as if casting a spell.

  ‘I rang to warn Antony but…’

  ‘Who the hell is Antony? What was wrong with Jack’s cleaning?’

  ‘You call him Ivan.’

  ‘Do I?’

  Dr S. A. I. Challoner. Dentist. Rule: never call clients by their first name.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew each other,’ Stella whispered.

  ‘Why should you?’

  Terry would have established every connection, however trivial; he found out who knew whom, what they did. He covered every angle. Sipping her lemonade and munching crisps while she sat with him outside pubs, Stella had seen him in action.

  ‘What did you say about Jack?’ She felt dread.

  ‘He cleans for Antony. I had no idea. You know of course. We must find him before it’s too late.’

  Nothing was making sense. Stella’s phone was ringing. She glanced at it before she answered it. The number was not programmed into her phone.

  ‘Stella, it’s Martin Cashman, sorry to call so late. I got this number off your P.A. – she works late too! You got a moment?’

  ‘A moment yes, I’m with someone.’

  ‘Your question was niggling, so I did a bit of homework.’

  Stella did not know what Cashman was talking about. She had a mounting unease.

  ‘I checked up on S. A. I. Glyde? You know, the owner of the Anglia? It was registered to a man who changed his surname in 1982.You still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He became Challoner. Simon Ivan Antony Challoner. Odd maybe, but nothing wrong with it – all above board. Like I said, his residence is listed as Fullwood House, Bishopstone.’

  Stella wrote the information on a copy of Hello magazine, although she would not forget it.

  ‘While I’ve got you, about the funeral, one of our sergeants – a nice lady called Janet – will call you. She worked with Terry for donkey’s years, and is handling it. Say if we’re stepping on any toes.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Stella rang off.

  Sarah Glyde was roaming the waiting room, touching every object like a child engrossed in an elaborate private game.

  ‘Who is Antony Glyde?’ Stella shouted.

  Sarah tilted her head as if hearing the sound from outside.

  ‘My brother,’ she said eventually.

  Antony. Tony. Uncle Tony.

  ‘What about Jack?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Stella was impatient. ‘You said he was disturbed.’

  ‘We need to stop him—’

  ‘Why did you say Jack was disturbed?’

  ‘He told me it was his mother who was murdered outside my house.’

  ‘Why did he tell you?’

  ‘He found my sculpture of her. Kate commissioned me as a surprise for… well, I thought it was her husband, but I think now… I’d have done it for nothing, a face like that is what one dreams… Instantly I saw Jack I got such a sense, and as soon as I worked on the face my fingers told me they had been there before. Today I found out why.’ Her voice had a faraway quality. ‘I brought him to me.’

  ‘Stop talking garbage. You told the police you didn’t know Kate. You said you were out when the murder happened.’

  She was at the dentist.

  ‘Jack knows. I’m worried Antony might…’

  ‘You didn’t think to mention to the police that your alibi was your brother?’

  ‘At the time Kate was killed I was having a filling. Look, there’s no time for—’

  ‘And did Jack also tell you that the time of the murder was wrong?’

  Sarah sank into one of the red chairs, the colour increasing her pallor. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time was your appointment?’

  ‘I’ve been through this. You’re not listening to me, I think—’

  ‘Was Ivan or whoever here when you arrived?’

  ‘No.’ Her mouth was dry, her speech tacky. ‘I let myself in. It was Mrs Willard’s day off.’

  ‘How long did you have to wait?’

  Sarah Glyde was motionless.

  ‘Don’t tell me, you have wondered about it ever since.’ The other woman’s ashen features told Stella that she was right.

  Sarah hugged herself. The room was cold; the central heating had gone off. Stella detected lavender: like Mrs Ramsay Ivan had taken her advice. Jack did not clean the surgery; Ivan preferred to do that himself. Of course he did.

  ‘I don’t know my brother well. He was older so we didn’t grow up together. His father was killed in a plane crash and our mother remarried and had me. He holds me to blame for everything, which is patently unfair. My mother loved him better.’ Sarah jangled the office keys, her sense of urgency gone. ‘I might have known – he has always frightened me – but for the time of death. Antony was with me when Kate was supposed to have been murdered. I clung to that fact.’ She gave a strained laugh, which ended abruptly. ‘I’ve been so grateful that Antony does my teeth for nothing, he charges a fortune.’

  ‘I know.’ Stella thrust the torn page from the magazine in front of her. ‘Do you recognize this address?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sarah stared dumbly at it. ‘It’s where my mother lived with her first husband. Antony was born there. We moved to London when I was a baby. Antony went every weekend as soon he could be trusted on his own. My dad hated it, so my mother went less often until he died. When she died, she left it to Antony. I got the London house because it had belonged to my father. My family are terribly strict around money.’

  ‘Would Jack know this?’ Stella was brutal.

  ‘He was going to kill me.’ Sarah Glyde clasped herself tighter.

  ‘Why did Ivan – Antony – Tony – change his surname?’

  ‘Did he tell you to call him Ivan?’ Sarah frowned. She implied Stella had taken the law into her own hands and renamed her brother. ‘He changed it out of the blue, in homage to his father. My mother was upset. She saw it as a slight to my dad who put him through school. Not that she told Antony; ultimately he could do no wrong.’

  ‘When did his wife die?’ Stella’s hands were tingling, her thoughts racing. She had shown Ivan the case files. After she had given Ivan the camera, the memory card was missing. How had he known she was at the police station? When they bumped into each other on Hammersmith Broadway he had been walking towards her so could not have known where she had come from.

  If Jack had been in her flat he would have heard Martin Cashman’s message. He would think that
she had betrayed him.

  ‘Antony never married. Like me, he prefers his own company.’ Sarah had a faraway look.

  ‘What about his son?’ The little boy whom Ivan tucked in bed before reading him a story. The little boy who had loved to hear his mother playing Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ on the piano and who Ivan said was frightened of the dark.

  ‘You all nice and comfortable? OK, excuse me while I have a sip.’ She made him say this phrase or they couldn’t get going. Stella squirmed under the covers and then settled down.

  ‘Then I’ll begin…’

  He bookmarked their place. Tonight it was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She always knew where they had left off and read out the first line. The teachers told him her reading age was older than seven. He sometimes thought it was older than his own.

  Sarah Glyde was talking: ‘Antony doesn’t have children, he hates them, he couldn’t bear me when I was small. I’m sure he disliked other children even when he was one himself.’ She looked up as if suddenly aware of Stella. ‘Did he say was married? Have you and he been having a…?’

  ‘No.’ Stella was emphatic.

  Jack had found out that Ivan Challoner had murdered his mother. He had gone to Fullwood House.

  Sarah was talking more to herself than to Stella: ‘Antony never invites me to Fullwood, not that I would want to go. The place gives me the creeps.’

  Jack wanted to help Stella solve the case, not simply to get justice for his mother, but to find the murderer and get his revenge. He was going to kill Ivan Challoner.

  Stella pushed past Sarah Glyde and rushed out.

  The wheels spun on the ice, but when they gained traction, the Toyota jumped forward, spinning out on to the road, the rear wheels skidding. Stella glanced in her wing mirror and saw Sarah Glyde silhouetted in the porch.

  Jack had several hours’ start; he would be there. It would be too late to save him from crossing the line, yet she had to try.