The Runaway
Page 5
Without her the magic had gone; it was a just cold concrete tank. He stuffed everything into the holdall, anxious to follow her, to see her when she wasn’t with him. She had left him the Brie, not out of generosity, but because she wouldn’t want to explain how come she had it.
Footsteps. She was coming back. He grew excited and regretted packing up the sleeping bags. ‘Hon, you came back. I knew you would!’
There was a deafening report.
The tank door had shut, he stared disbelieving at the grey metal. Beware the jokes of those with no sense of humour. The lack of handle wasn’t sexy now. She was on the other side of the double cladding, daring him to lose his nerve.
‘Good game!’ His temples thudded from the alcohol and he needed a pee. This was her revenge for his ultimatum. ‘Joke over!’
Wind fluted through vents near the ceiling – she was right about the storm. Daylight no longer drifted in; the street lights didn’t reach so high. Bloody stupid to have said leave the boy, he liked him. The walls emanated chill.
‘He’s a good kid, I’ll treat him like my own son.’ His voice bounced off the concrete.
There was a distant vibration – the bottom door slamming. There was no keyhole this side; his key was useless.
‘Maddie!’
In the dark, the man wondered if, after all, it was not a joke.
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Stella’s School Reports
Handover report: by Mrs Dorothy Myers (on her retirement) to Miss Lorraine Radford
Pupil: Stella Darnell, aged six years and three-quarters.
Date: 8th May 1973.
Stella Darnell is a sullen, unimaginative girl, unwilling to contribute to the class. Only when I point to her, to answer a question, will she give the answer, (invariably correct). For reasons of her own, she hasn’t elected to share it with her peers.
Stella’s reading age matches her years, however she reads little. During ‘Story Time’ when I read to the children, I have twice noted Stella tidying her pencil case instead of listening and on another occasion caught her cleaning marks off her table with an Inner London Education Authority rubber. I had to throw the rubber away.
Here are two incidents that occurred in the last month.
1. Class Three’s homework was to write a story about a girl who has an adventure. Stella described the shooting in 1966 of three policemen in disturbing detail. I told her I thought she had copied her story from a newspaper adding in the girl (who catches the killer, Harry Roberts, in a forest) to fit the requirement. Stella denied this. Concerned, I asked to see her parents. Only her mother came. Mrs Darnell refused to believe that Stella had cheated.
2. A lovely girl (Jane Masters) who has tried to be Stella’s friend, asked Stella what she would like to be when she grows up. Stella told Jane that she would catch murderers. Naturally Jane was upset and I had trouble calming her. Stella said ‘sorry’, but five decades of teaching has taught me to know a perfunctory apology when I hear one. Mr Darnell is in the Metropolitan Police; his wife hinted that his daughter is in his thrall.
Summary:
While not an actual troublemaker, Stella’s behaviour hinders her and threatens discipline. The solution has been to tell her to read aloud in class, and put up her hand (little girls must stick their necks out to find their way in this world) and answer questions. I ask her to keep her hands flat and still on the table during ‘Story Time’. All in all, I have seen no improvement.
However, if she can change her attitude Stella Darnell could become a productive and successful adult.
School Handover report by Lorraine Radford
Pupil: Stella Darnell aged seven and a quarter
Date: November 4th 1973
I have taught Stella Darnell for several months and am very sorry to be losing her from my class. I have found Stella to be a methodical and rational little girl who had earned the other children’s respect. If I have one issue with Stella it is that she is too good.
I agree with my predecessor’s retirement report that Stella has been unwilling to speak in front of the class, but we differ as to the reason why. Stella avoids being the centre of attention and will let other children take credit for her own achievements, such as offering the solution to a puzzle or the arrangement of the Nature Table.
Stella’s reading ability and her spelling and grammar are that of a child considerably older than seven. She has mastered polysyllabic words and complex phrasing.
Stella has a strong sense of right and wrong, perhaps gleaned from her father. She is quick to pick up on unfairness. I asked a girl in her class to stop talking. Stella put up her hand and in front of all the children said it was her that had been talking. She is precise and meticulous, she processes knowledge slowly and retains it. After some sessions with me at my desk, she has begun to open up. Recently she explained how the CID take a cast of a boot print at a crime scene. She told me that when she is old enough she will ‘make a company to catch murderers with’. While it might seem of concern that she has such knowledge of crime, Stella is enthused by the profession. I harness her passion when approaching other subjects (e.g.: arithmetic, reading, writing and telling stories) and I have seen Stella’s work improve and her confidence increase.
Stella works well with her classmates. I overheard her give a girl a concise, unhurried explanation of how to tackle a long division. Stella’s apparently detached behaviour has irked some children. I witnessed Stella being teased about her boots. Stella’s self-contained personality protected her. One of the girls teasing her was Jane Masters, mentioned in Mrs Myers’ retirement report. Seeing it had no effect, Jane stopped. She is now one of the children who treat Stella with respect.
The Darnell parents’ impending separation is distressing to their daughter. Stella is wary of forming attachments – with classmates or with me – she knows that they will end. She will be leaving us to forge new bonds with strangers. Stella deals with anxiety by cleaning (ref. the I.L.E.A rubber in Mrs Myer’s report). I occasionally ask her to help me tidy the classroom after lunch because it calms her to engage in a practical task with a clear outcome.
As stated in my predecessor’s report, Stella plans to be a detective like her father to whom she is deeply attached. She may well find the separation from him hard; this could detrimentally affect her behaviour in her new class.
I asked Stella about the ‘Harry Roberts’ assignment. She was born on the day of the shooting, in her house it’s ‘family legend’. She had read about it in her mother and father’s Daily Mirror. While her parents were arguing in the kitchen, Stella watched a news item on the anniversary of the shooting. In her adventure story, Stella is the girl who catches Harry Roberts and hands him to the police (her father). She didn’t copy it but with a mix of fiction and fact tried to control the tragedy by providing resolution.
With her gritty determination and painstaking approach, I have confidence that Stella will fulfil her ambition. I wish her every luck for her future.
About The Runaway
An exclusive short story from the bestselling author of The Detective’s Daughter.
Stella Darnell understands that her mum and dad don’t want to live together anymore. But she wishes she didn’t have to say goodbye to her bedroom, or pack her hateful pink suitcase that bangs against her legs. Her mum says she’ll have special weekends just to see her dad – but Stella knows that when her dad is solving crimes, there’s no time for her.
And so, aged seven and a half, the detective’s daughter decides to run away…
Reviews
‘Lesley Thomson is a class above.’
Ian Rankin
‘A wonderful, absorbing, intelligent detective story, The Detective’s Daughter takes you on a journey through time, loss and memory. The characters – particularly Stella – will stay with you for a very long time.’
Elly Griffiths
‘A thoughtful, well-observed story about families and relationsh
ips and what happens to both when a tragedy occurs. It reminded me of Kate Atkinson.’
Scott Pack
‘This book has a clever mystery plot – but its excellence is in the characters, all credible and memorable, and in its setting in a real West London street, exactly described.’
Literary Review
‘A gripping, haunting novel about loss and reconciliation, driven by a simple but clever plot.’
Sunday Times
‘The strength of the writing and the author’s brilliant evocation of how a child’s mind works combine to terrifying effect.
A novel one cannot forget.’
Shots
‘Skilfully evokes the era and the slow-moving quality of childhood summers, suggesting the menace lurking just beyond... A study of memory and guilt with several twists.’
Guardian
‘This emotionally charged thriller grips from the first paragraph, and a nail-biting level of suspense is maintained throughout. A great novel.’
She Magazine
About Lesley Thomson
LESLEY THOMSON was born in 1958 and grew up in London. She went to Holland Park Comprehensive and the Universities of Brighton and Sussex.
Her first novel, A Kind of Vanishing, won the People’s Book Prize in 2010. Her second novel, The Detective’s Daughter, was published in 2013 and sold over 300,000 copies.
www.lesleythomson.co.uk
About The Detective’s Daughter Series
Stella Darnell must clean. She wipes surfaces, pokes her cloth into the intricate carving of an oak table, whisks a duster over a ceiling rose. She keeps the world in order. Her watch is set three minutes fast for punctuality – a tip she learned from her father – and the couch in her sterile apartment is wrapped in protective plastic, though she never has guests. In her mid-forties, six foot tall, Stella is pleasant but firm, helpful but brutally pragmatic. The detective’s daughter has time for neither frivolities nor fools.
Jack Harmon is everything Stella deplores. Fanciful and unpredictable, his decisions rely on random signs. He will follow a paper bag blown along a pavement by the wind; a number on a train will dictate his day. Jack is the best cleaner Stella has ever known. Jack sees that Stella makes sense of his intuitive ponderings. Together, as unofficial detectives, these two misfits solve mysteries that have left the police confounded.
1 – The Detective’s Daughter
It was the murder that shocked the nation. Thirty years ago Kate Rokesmith went walking by the river with her young son. She never came home.
For three decades her case file has lain, unsolved, in the corner of an attic. Until Stella Darnell, daughter of Chief Superintendent Darnell, starts to clear out her father’s house after his death…
The Detective’s Daughter is available here.
2 – Ghost Girl
It is a year since her father’s death, but Stella Darnell has not moved on. She visits his house every day and cleans it, leaving it spotless as if he might return.
Stella’s father was Detective Chief Superintendent at Hammersmith police station, and now she has discovered what looks like an unsolved case in his darkroom: a folder of unlabelled photographs of deserted streets. But why did Terry Darnell – a stickler for order – never file them at the station or report them to his colleagues?
The oldest photograph dates back to 1966. To a day when Mary Thornton, just ten years old, is taking her little brother home from school in time for tea. That afternoon, as the Moors Murderers are sent to prison for life, Mary witnesses something that will haunt her forever.
As Stella inches closer to the truth, the events of that day begin to haunt her too...
Ghost Girl is available here.
3 – The Detective’s Secret
TO LET:
Apartment in Water Tower.
A cosy home with detailed views.
Jack Harmon craves silence and a bird’s eye view. From his new home in Palmyra Tower, he can raise binoculars to watch over west London. He can see pictures in people’s houses, read epitaphs in the cemetery. If he watches for long enough, he will learn who has secrets. He will learn who plans to kill.
But Jack does not see everything. A man has died beneath a late-night train, and Jack’s friend Stella, the detective’s daughter, suspects it could have been murder.
Now Jack and Stella are stirring up the past with questions that no one wants answered – questions that lead to an unsolved case nearly twenty years old. And up here, in the tower’s strange, detached silence, Jack won’t hear danger coming until it’s too late...
The Detective’s Secret is available here.
Jump to free preview here
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The story starts here.
First published in Great Britain as an eBook in 2015 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Lesley Thomson, 2015
Jacket Design: www.asmithcompany.co.uk
Author Photo © Emily Andersen
The moral right of Lesley Thomson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781784970710
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Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
The Runaway
Preview
Stella’s School Reports
About The Runaway
Reviews
About Lesley Thomson
About The Detective’s Daughter Series
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright