Only when, hunched over the steering wheel and driving as fast as she dare down the M23, did Stella think of calling the police. By police she meant Terry.
64
Monday, 24 January 2011
His hand hovered an inch from her face, tracing her flawless smile. Her teeth gave him joy; he kept this to himself because she would tease him. He did not like to be teased.
He had once told her this.
His voice broke their reverie: ‘Darling, do you remember me going down to the garage to fetch a gas canister for the heater?’
Her smile, as ever, was encouraging.
‘I was about to leave when the strangest thing happened. I heard a telephone. It could not be mine as I had left it with you, so I was stumped.’
‘This has a happy ending.’ She was anxious; he hastened to allay her worries. If he were to stroke her skin, it would be soft and smell of sunshine.
‘I found a mobile phone by the garage doors. Now this is where I don’t want you fretting, but I found the canvas cover thrown back. It could not be you as you never go in there. I’m right about that, aren’t I, darling?’
Her teeth were even, no gaps, no shrinkage in the gums; good and strong. They looked capped, but he knew they were not.
‘It was still ringing when I got to it. The caller was one ‘Stella mob’. I waited for it to stop then went through the previous calls. I know this is weird to you, but there is a list of Received calls and Dialled calls, then there are messages, some sent, some received. A whole history – yes, it’s terribly clever. I began with the sent messages.’
It did not vex him that he was losing her attention. As long as he had told her, she couldn’t accuse him of keeping it from her. It helped him to go over everything and get it clear.
‘I found two messages on the detective’s phone. They were both to this Stella. One read: Meet me at the Ram 8pm. The next contradicted this with Can’t make it. Will call. Dad xx.’
She was gazing at him, still smiling. Naturally she expected him to have a solution and was not interested in detail. He did not have a solution.
‘I couldn’t find the details of the owner. What I want to know is why they were in our house and if whoever it was came up here.’
The intruder could not get into the house without breaking the front door. He told her to keep it bolted. They must have got into the garage because although he found the garage door open, it was unbolted from the inside. This meant the back door had been unlocked. She was maintaining her smile.
‘So you see, I think they had guessed about us, which means they will be back. Nothing has been moved or stolen, I am sure you would have told me.’ Still she did not respond.
Her shoes had moved; they were at the foot of the bed and not where he had put them, under the chair. She had promised never to betray him.
‘The intruder left in a hurry. Perhaps you remember teasing me for forgetting to bring the gas canister? You said I would forget you next!’
She had laughed. Her laughter shrill and mocking, her head thrown back, her teeth white and flawless in the sunshine.
She had known he had found the phone, but said nothing. From that day the house was no longer a refuge. They were under siege.
There had been nothing in the phone’s Inbox. ‘Stella mob’ had not replied, or if she had the owner had deleted the message. He found her in the contacts list along with lots of numbers referenced only with initials. The owner of the mobile had a lot of secrets, he told her.
We just have one.
‘I did toy with telling Mrs Willard I was ill, but didn’t want her telling Sarah. You know how they hate each other. Mrs Willard can’t resist showing off about me and, whatever you say, it is useful that she is like that; she protects me from patients. I am never sick; they would both be concerned so I had to ride it out.’
The candlelight made the liquid in her wine glass a rich crimson. He couldn’t remember what they had been drinking; she had liked Merlot. It must be Merlot.
‘The next afternoon it was on the local news that a Met detective had died of a heart attack in Seaford. I knew immediately it was that detective, Darnell his name was. “Smart arse”, you would have said. I went on the internet and my suspicion was correct: the man had a daughter named Stella. It’s all there: she owns a cleaning company. She arrived at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton too late. Don’t look like that; it was always too late. The man died in the street. I went up there and found her van in the car park and since then I’ve kept an eye on her for you. I gave her little gifts, the flowers, a book to flatter her, not that she reads. She’s not like you, my darling.’
He could not decipher her expression. Did she already know about the detective? Had she talked to him or, worse, had she been expecting he would return? In case she had, he repeated: ‘The detective is dead.’
‘For half an hour – and it was literally that time – I was on top of the world. At last we were free. But then a woman from Clean Slate rang to book an emergency appointment for her boss: Stella Darnell. With two “L”s, she said. I know, I nearly said. I took the call because it was too early for Mrs Willard. I acted cool, of course. You would have been proud.’
She lay on the bed, the glass in her hand, poised for a sip, listening now.
‘The detective had told his daughter and she came straight to me.’ He had reached the tricky part and heard himself picking up speed, trying to sound normal. He had nothing to be guilty about.
‘She needed a filling, so I got her back in again and invited her for a drink to trap her. Her teeth were in terrible shape – not like yours. She was boring. I’m sorry, but there is no other word. I talked about the boy and she was suitably interested. She would have seen nothing in the flat, although she checked it for cleanliness. I saw her through the hinge gap.’
‘After I invited her upstairs and she said nothing, I thought, incredible as it seems, that it was coincidence she had come to me. She has not the imagination to pretend. She is like her father, no care for people, just intent on getting the job done. She did rather seem to enjoy my company, but believe me, darling, it was purgatory.’
He had her attention so he kept going. He would tell her everything.
‘It’s been stressful. Stella Darnell had this lovesick man in tow. He is gone. An unfortunate accident – I know you understand. He went down like a ninepin. He recognized me; bloody patients get everywhere. The problem is, I think Sarah suspects, my lovely little sister is not as much with the fairies as we think.’
He never got sick of looking at her teeth, their perfection made his job worthwhile even though it left him redundant.
‘Stella Darnell has a new man – one of her cleaners. He cleans for me. Fickle madam: if I were truly a widower, she would be leading me a merry dance. Yesterday she went to the police station about her dead boyfriend. She didn’t mention the cleaner to me. I am disappointed; people let you down.’ He smiled at her. ‘Except you, my love.’
She smiled.
She continued smiling. Ivan was encouraged: ‘She sent her boyfriend on a wild-goose chase; she has not told the police she spoke to Bramwell; she thinks he did it. We will remind her about her lapses in honesty, starting with the twenty-pound note at the automatic teller in Seaford; failed that one, Ms Darnell!’ Ivan raised his glass to her and drank some wine. He had let it breathe and it was at the right temperature: it was delicious.
‘Darling, we needn’t concern ourselves with Mr Bramwell or the detective any more. There’s just the daughter now.’
She toasted him, toasted them both.
‘Luckily Stella is keen to confide in me because my hard work listening to stories about commercial floor care have paid off. What she has told me is good and bad so I want you to pay attention.’ She was still smiling. He did not trust the smile. Did she already know what he was about to say?
‘I invited Stella Darnell here tonight. No, don’t look like that; I know what I’m doing. We w
ould have dealt with her but she refused to come. However, it’s a matter of time. Her new man cleans for me. I haven’t met him but I heard her talking to him by that statue; the night you told me off for taking a risk. Aren’t you glad I did go out on a limb? Who else loves you like I do? They are weaving a web, my darling; one that you and I will not be caught in. I will have to get another cleaner – a shame – this Mr Harmon is terribly good.’
An owl hooted from the direction of the church. The lattice windows were opaque with fog. Ivan was lighter for unburdening himself; she had put the problem in proportion. He could deal with Stella Darnell and Jack Harmon. He would not allow them to ruin a life that had taken thirty years to build: Fullwood House was sacrosanct. Bramwell had been easy; the detective’s daughter would be too. They would soon be safe.
He ran nimbly down to the basement, which he called the surgery, for that was what it had been in his father’s day. He had the only key so he knew it was unsullied by the detective’s intrusion.
The surgery was soundproofed and for this reason once he closed the door he did not hear a floorboard creak in the utility room, nor did he hear someone going up the stairs to the bedroom.
65
Monday, 24 January 2011
After he opened the back door, Jack pressed against the wall and let the minute hand go around his watch-face five times. Ivan Challoner had a mind like his own and would do everything he could to outwit him. He gave him time.
Jack glided along a flagged passage. Outside the fog was thinning and a moon appeared. Fact: a waning gibbous moon. It gave enough light to plot the room: a large kitchen. A carving knife lay on a long table but his experience with Sarah Glyde had told Jack he could not stomach blood and mess.
So far it had been too easy. He gauged the silence; it was too quiet.
He did not need to orientate himself. As in a dream, he knew the way. The doorway ahead led to the main part of the house and upstairs, as he expected, Jack found a corridor with five doors.
Five doors in a row,
Ready steady go.
His boyish sing-song verse reverberated off the walls. He had been before.
Far off, a rook cawed three times. Rooks. He had heard them before too. A bar of light shone beneath the fourth door.
The last time he had turned the handle it had been higher up and difficult to grasp; he’d had to use two hands. Tonight the china knob turned with no effort.
A candle burned and, after the comparative darkness, the bright light hurt his eyes. His entrance caused a draught; the flame flickered and then flared up so the room seem to tip. The candle was in a silver holder with a snuffer attached. The wick was half submerged in molten wax. Jack estimated that the flame had another quarter of an hour.
A campaign of items advanced across the top of the dressing table: lipsticks, foundation, face powder, mascara, eye-liner, combs, hairbrushes, moisturizers, cleansers: the tools of magic. A used cleansing pad, pinched by fingers, stained by lips, lay next to lumps of cotton wool stained with red nail varnish. The black snood that she used to pull her hair back from her face when she did her make-up dangled from the mirror.
Minute fibres clung to an exposed lipstick, the surface of the open pot of face cream had crusted to a custard yellow. Balls of cotton wool were grey and dirty and a scent hung in the air, laced with the heavier tang of damp; it made his stomach clench. He could not touch the bottle of Eau Savage Extreme.
‘Boys don’t wear perfume. I bought it for your mother.’
‘It says it’s aftershave.’
‘And I said, put it down.’
The artistry created authenticity: the make-up, the potions and creams, nail scissors, nail varnish and nail-varnish remover had not been used for decades. This was the stage-set of an abandoned life; he was looking into the past to a time that had petrified; he could not obliterate the evidence with the click of a mouse or the turn of a street atlas page.
Downstairs, a clock struck the hour, followed by church bells, their volume varying as they were carried on the wind. He stopped counting after five and took the candle; cupping the dying flame, he walked egg-and-spoon-race style over to the bed.
He had made Stella count up the number of words she could see out of the car window while they sat in a traffic jam.
He lost count as words swam before his eyes: headlines which provided more context as time went by and the case became history. There had been other murders, other Kates.
Thames murder: Kate killer left no trace
Clueless detectives – Kate hunt stepped up
Kate: tragic boy speaks
Ten years: Kate TV appeal
Was Rokesmith Hammersmith Murder no. 7?
Murdered Kate’s boy is school bully
Rokesmith loses battle with cancer
Mystery flowers on murdered woman’s grave
Kate Rokesmith detective dies
Beneath each headline Jack read and reread the story of his mother’s murder. He could not change the ending: at the end of each article his mother was dead.
Mixed in amongst grainy images – newspaper orange-peeled with damp – were colour prints of Kate. Jack recognized the back of this house. Kate was in the kitchen filling a kettle, smiling brightly: the perfect housewife.
The kettle whistled like a train.
‘Give me that. It’s not for blowing through. You’ll fill it with germs.’
Kate lying fully clothed on the bed in this room, upon the same counterpane as the one on the bed now. She held a glass of red wine to the camera, smiling over the rim; her teeth were white and even. Three Kates reflected in the bedroom mirrors; Kate picking flowers in the garden; Kate outside the front door.
Jack lifted the candle close to the flaking plaster wall. Many photographs had been snipped; he examined one of Kate on the bed: the hand not raising the wineglass was holding a hand smaller than hers. Although he had been there, Jonathan Rokesmith had been excised from the picture.
Jack had lain on the bed beside his mother so that Uncle Tony could take their picture. He had picked flowers in the garden, carefully choosing her favourite ones. He had stood outside the front door and, while they waited to have their picture taken, asked when they were going home.
‘Sssh, darling, smile for Uncle Tony.’
‘After this, you’re to go and play in the sitting room, there’s a good boy. Your mother and I have much to talk about.’
A length of material was draped across the back of the bedstead. Jack directed the candle towards it and a heady scent filled his nostrils.
It was a silk scarf. Even in the guttering light Jack could see that it was a livid green.
Pantone 375.
He set the candle by the bed and with tremulous hands wound the scarf into a pool of slippery fabric around his hand. He put it to his face and breathed in; he shook with sobs.
The flame died.
Jack wrapped the scarf around his neck and blundered out of the room. Jack knew about the second staircase. All his life he had wondered if the house with two sets of stairs was his invention. There had been no one to ask. He stopped: suddenly he pictured seeing the man called Uncle Tony talking to the boy called Simon by the gate in his secret garden at school. He had kept very quiet so they did not see him; but then perhaps that was a dream.
He glided along the passage, the scarf – the last sign – caressing his skin. He did not feel sick.
The door beneath the main staircase opened and a man came out into the hall, his shadow enormous and then diminishing when he reached the front door. He paused at the foot of the stairs.
Ivan Challoner left his father’s surgery, satisfied that everything was in order for his patient. He trusted Stella would come and that his treatment would be effective. He put a kettle on for tea. Kate liked chamomile at this time of night. He unhooked two cups, deciding he would join her. There were drops of water on the floor and he presumed some had splashed when he filled the kettle. He stopped. They were no
t by the sink and were not splashes; they were footprints. They led to the cloakroom where the bulb was low wattage but enough for him to make out that the trail started by the back door.
Someone was here.
Kate. He must make sure she was unharmed. It was then that a nasty idea came to him: Kate had not expected him tonight and she had let someone into their house. He went swiftly along the passage to the hall – and froze.
Kate Rokesmith was standing on the landing, her hair framing her face. The scarf he had given her for her birthday was arranged around her neck in elegant folds, pale moonlight highlighting the fine green threads. Slowly, gracefully, she descended the staircase.
The kettle came to the boil, the whistle rose to an urgent hoot like a child hurtling through a subway tunnel, pretending to be a train.
The piercing sound hurt Ivan’s ears.
66
Monday, 24 January 2011
Stella found the van by the church, the driver’s door hanging open. The new Clean Slate logo showed up in bad visibility; she hoped Jack had been able to bear the green. Where was he?
She slewed Terry’s car beside the van and jumped out. She stumbled down the lane past the church; she nearly missed a track to the right because a hedge jutted out, obscuring the entrance. There were no houses. After ten yards she saw the dark hulk of a barn and directed the torch at it: the light barely reached but she could see great cylindrical hay bales piled to the roof. Jack was not here.
Thawing snow had mixed with mud and by the time she had retraced her steps to the lane Stella’s shoes were soaked through. Twice she veered into a wall and once she slithered into a ditch. Soggy earth clung to her trousers and anorak. The darkness was thick and she longed for London’s many sources of light: lamp-posts, headlights, signs, shop windows. Mad shapes were dancing and ducking on the edge of her vision: she saw what Jack meant about seeing signs and spirits in every inanimate object.
The Detective's Daughter Page 40