The Distant Dead

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Cheek of the chap – you, his assistant? But why not talk to you?’

  ‘He tried, but was called away. Then later, at the Death Café, I supposed he was hitting on me, so I gave him the brush-off.’

  ‘Atta girl,’ Lucie chirruped. ‘So, how does Clive fit in?’

  ‘Clive overhears something at the Death Café, or was he in the abbey too? Maybe he saw something that at the time meant nothing, then the next day he learns Roddy has been murdered and whatever it was makes sense. He did say something. I ignored it.’

  ‘Come on, what was it?’ Lucie said.

  ‘I thought he was joking, something about the Beatles.’ The gin was, after all, smoothing the edges.

  ‘All of them, one of them?’ Lucie glared at her. ‘John, Paul, George—’

  ‘Lennon. He said “Think John Lennon.”’

  ‘That’s as code-worthy as chamomile.’ Lucie pulled open a bag of figs with such force the bag split, spraying figs everywhere. Chocolate, carrots, figs, Stella admired Lucie’s effort to keep off the cigarettes.

  ‘Car wo my. Or mo.’ Stella snatched Stanley mid-flight as he aimed for a fig.

  ‘John Lennon was shot around early December in 1980 by a man who had got Lennon to sign Double Fantasy, his last album, I remember it well. I had to spend the next day in bed.’ Lucie looked wistful. ‘Can’t see how that helps us now.’

  ‘Clive had met Northcote – what if he killed him? He never got paid for the clock he mended for Northcote. A silly reason, but Clive seemed pretty upset about it when he told us. What if he mended the clock and killed him, like Lennon’s killer?’

  ‘Northcote owed him for the clock, killing him meant Clive would never get his money. Stella, by now our killer will know you’ve bagged a ringside seat at both Roddy and Clive’s murders.’ Lucie washed down her fig with nippet. ‘Your picture’s been in the news, the killer could think you know more than you do. Have you seen anyone out of the ordinary?’ She was making another nippet.

  ‘No, but I haven’t been looking.’ Jack said, ‘Never assume you are unobserved.’ Or was that Terry?

  ‘Our murderer will be well aware you’re the Detective’s Daughter, Hygiene Queen of Crime with a hundred per cent solve rate.’ Lucie handed Stella the gin and tonic. ‘Drink this, you’ll need it.’

  ‘Why?’ Stella was back on the country lane, brake lights red in the pitch dark. She had noticed someone out of the ordinary.

  ‘Because if I’m right, you could be the next victim.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  2019

  Jack

  SIR ALECK NORTHCOTE

  1901–1963

  FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST

  LIVED HERE

  1929–1941

  Jack peered through the rain-spattered windscreen at the plaque. Then at the top floor from where, nearly eighty years ago, Julia Northcote had strung up her noose. Scant comfort that, had she lived, Julia would now be dead. Jack felt as sad as if she had died yesterday and Julia Northcote had been his own mother.

  How had Giles felt when he learned of her death? Did he, like Jack had, still write letters to his mummy after supper at boarding school? In his cell at Pentonville prison waiting for his last dawn, had Giles cried for Julia?

  Next door, the Coach House which, Jack had read in the Tatler, was where Northcote had garaged his Daimler, was now a bijou bolthole of brushed steel and repointed bricks with a separate gate.

  11.11 p.m. Jack lived by signs. The time was good luck. He and Stella had got into a thing of texting each other with a heart if they noticed it was 11.11. She wouldn’t welcome him doing that now. When he’d seen SJX on a Toyota Hybrid – Stella Jack Kiss – that very day Lucie had texted urging him to see Stella in Tewkesbury. Not every sign was a good sign.

  When he left Jackie and Graham’s, Jack’s low mood was lower still. The others were working with Stella and Lucie. Whatever Beverly said about Jack being on the team, if Stella didn’t want him, that was that.

  Before Jack met Stella, he’d been on a mission. He would find out who murdered his mother and kill them. He was looking for what he called a True Host, one who has murdered or plans to murder. A True Host because Jack gained entry to their home and, secreted in an attic or spare room, became their guest.

  Stella had been investigating one of her father’s cold cases. After a shaky start, they agreed they had objectives in common and teamed up. But Stella, the police-officer’s daughter, hadn’t cared for Jack’s MO. Hiding in people’s houses was illegal, never mind creepy.

  Now Jack would return to his old ways. Without a shred of evidence, as he looked across the dark empty street, Jack was convinced that Julia Northcote’s suicide held the key to the Tewkesbury murders.

  Parked on the corner of Ravenscourt Square, after the virtual tour and a ramble on Street View, Jack was so familiar with Northcote’s old house, he might already live there. He could imagine mounting the steps, scratching the key in the lock and letting himself in.

  Behind him, a wire fence gave on to the tennis courts in Ravenscourt Park, the nets slackened and forlorn.

  11.20 p.m. The square would be bristling with CCTV, but Jack doubted they were monitored.

  Only Northcote’s old house showed a light. Open shutters displayed the vast soulless downstairs which Jack had explored in his 3D immersive experience. It would not be there that he’d find ghosts.

  The thing about estate agents, Jack imagined telling Stella, is, while they are mad to broker a deal, at the end of the day we all take our eye off the ball. Forget to set alarms, lock doors and so… let’s see…

  Jack clicked shut the car door and sauntered to a gate that had once been the tradesmen’s entrance. Often they leave the side gate unlocked… Voilà.

  No security lights came on as he crept along the side of the house and stepped onto a lawn, the grass grey in the light-polluted dark.

  At the end of the garden stood a studio which, from growth on the sedum roof, was several years old. Jack edged up to French doors to the left of a back door and applied himself to the task. A network of drainpipes might serve as a ladder, but the ironwork would be slippery and he wouldn’t survive a fall onto the paving. No fire escape. Jack tried the sash of one of the downstairs windows. Locked fast.

  Jack was staring in through the French doors when he saw a face.

  *

  Stop breathing, don’t look at the person, make yourself cease to exist.

  Like a child, he shut his eyes. Idiot.

  ‘Jack.’ Beverly opened one of the French doors. ‘Hurry up, before someone sees you.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jack was dry-mouthed with fright.

  ‘Same as you: finding out what Roddy March was searching for in that top room cupboard.’

  ‘Where’s Cheryl?’

  ‘At home in bed.’

  ‘Does she know you’re here?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No. She’d go nuts. I said I needed to pop into the office. She knows I’m being a desk slave to save Stella’s business.’

  ‘You lied to your wife? You and Cheryl have only been married a few months.’ Jack was dumbfounded. He needed everyone else to be happy. ‘She’s a lawyer.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, Mr Perfect Man, but if I’d told her the truth she’d have come too. I won’t let her risk her career.’

  ‘Have you found anything?’

  ‘I was about to go upstairs when I saw you flitting about. Hardly subtle – aren’t you meant to be good at this sort of thing?’

  ‘Not any more.’ He was gruff. ‘Let’s get it done and get the hell out. I can’t let you risk your career either.’

  ‘What career?’ Bev pulled a face. In the torchlight she looked grotesque. ‘I have nothing to lose.’

  ‘A clean record is what you have to lose, come on.’

  ‘Don’t forget these.’ Beverly smacked a pair of latex gloves into his hand.

  ‘You carried a spare pair?’ Jack snapped on the gloves. Bev
really was a mini Stella.

  ‘I brought them for you.’

  On the top landing, Jack rested a hand on the banister from which Julia Northcote had tied the rope. He switched on his torch and shone it on the wood.

  ‘There’s the faintest disturbance in the grain. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d miss it.’ Beverly sounded as sad as Jack felt. ‘She didn’t tie it in the centre, the weakest place, she secured it above that thicker strut to be sure it held her weight.’

  ‘She couldn’t risk surviving,’ he murmured.

  ‘She had this lovely house, a successful husband and young son. She had to have been very unhappy.’ Beverly spoke as if she’d gone over the facts many times.

  ‘That doesn’t spell happiness,’ Jack said.

  The cupboard in the back bedroom where, on the virtual tour, they’d seen March, was now shut. Beverly turned a small brass key in the lock and swung it open.

  A clothes rail and shoe rack. Both empty. The carpet inside was different to the one in the room, but the pattern looked nineteen seventies.

  Beverly bent and, grabbing an edge, peeled back the carpet. Beneath was dark brown lino which looked new but, with a thrill, Jack saw was original. Lining the bottom of the cupboard, it got no footfall. His hopes were dashed when Beverly sat back on her haunches, having found nothing.

  ‘Pull up the lino.’

  ‘It goes right under this shoe rack… wait. Oh, actually…’ Beverly tugged at the wooden rack and suddenly giving, she was sent backwards, still clutching it.

  ‘This has been disturbed.’ Jack was attacking the lino in the corner that had been beneath the rack. Beverly crawled over and together they wrenched it free.

  ‘This floorboard’s loose.’ Beverly shifted the only plank that didn’t run beneath the cupboard. ‘Get my make-up bag from my rucksack and give me my nail file.’

  ‘This isn’t the moment for a manicure.’

  ‘Nor is it the moment for one of your bad jokes.’ Beverly glared at him.

  Rummaging through lipsticks, tampons, mascara, Jack found a metal file. He passed it to Bev and said, feeling the need to regain ground, ‘I left my skeleton keys at home.’

  ‘Here we are.’ Beverly prised up the plank and reached into the cavity below, producing a cardboard box.

  Jack shone his torch. ‘Sea, sand and sun will please everyone. And so’ll Lyons’ Swiss Roll.’ A single line drawing showed a sandcastle in the shape of the Swiss Roll. In smaller letters the address of the factory, Cadby Hall, Hammersmith Road, London W14.

  ‘My mum liked Swiss Rolls,’ Jack said. Or was that a dream?

  ‘Who wants a Swiss Roll on the beach?’ Beverly wrinkled her nose. ‘Let’s get out of here, there could be a hidden sensor.’

  ‘Now you think of it,’ Jack said, ‘if there were there were, the police would be here by now.’

  Beverly replaced the plank and stamped down the board. They slotted in the shoe rack. It was impossible to tell there had been any disturbance.

  On the landing, Jack made Beverly pause. The house was silent, too silent. He tuned into the quiet. It was the deeper silence of invisibility. Of another heart beating.

  ‘Someone is here.’ Jack breathed into Beverly’s ear. ‘We are trapped.’

  Beverly shook her head and before Jack could stop her, glided soundlessly down to the next floor. He had no choice but to keep close to her.

  A creak. Unmistakable. Someone was there.

  Beverly was an independent married woman in her thirties yet Jack felt responsible for her. Beverly wasn’t just emulating Stella. It was him and his True Hosts which had inspired her tonight. If Bev got hurt Stella would kill him.

  Beverly was climbing out of the landing window. Jack stifled a shout as she disappeared. They were two floors up. Then her head appeared above the sill.

  There was a fire escape on the side of the house. He should have known. He really had lost his touch.

  Jack tried to keep up with Bev on what felt like an endless descent. The wrought-iron steps were slicked with icy rain, his palm even in latex gloves stung with cold. One misstep could be fatal. The person in the house could be waiting at the bottom.

  His worst fear was, for once, not realized.

  ‘This way.’ Bev was a shadow amongst shadows. Racing blindly in her direction, Jack found her behind the studio.

  ‘I’ll give you a boost.’

  ‘Can you take my weight?’ Jack could make out Beverly’s interlaced palms.

  ‘Yes, hurry.’

  Steading himself against the studio wall, Jack stepped onto Bev’s hands and immediately she launched him upwards. He grabbed the top of the wall, his coat twisted around him. At last he was sitting astride the brick. He reached for Beverly. At the same moment they both heard a door open.

  ‘Quick.’ He hauled Beverly up.

  Moments later Beverly was leading Jack around the back of the teahouse in Ravenscourt Park. They crossed the old stable yard where Beverly unbolted a gate and hustled Jack through onto the pavement outside.

  ‘My car’s in Ravenscourt Square.’ He heaved a breath.

  ‘You can’t go back. Honestly, Jack, you’re getting soft. How come you didn’t walk? Plus, you entered premises without establishing an exit strategy. It’s not me who’ll get the criminal record.’

  ‘Seriously, thanks, Bev, you saved us.’ Jack was humbled. ‘I was an idiot.’

  ‘We’re both idiots. We should have stayed to see who was there. It had to be Roddy March’s murderer – who else has reason to be there?’

  ‘The owner?’ Jack said. ‘Whoever it was expects us to keep watch, they will have gone by the side entrance to avoid us.’

  Beverly’s car, parked twenty minutes away in Chiswick High Road, took three goes to start.

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ she said as they drove towards Shepherd’s Bush. ‘We’ve got what March was looking for and obviously didn’t find.’

  ‘Unless he was hiding it, not searching for it.’ A new idea.

  ‘Let’s open the box at Clean Slate,’ Beverly said. ‘It feels ages since supper – if only there were Lyons’ Swiss Rolls in the box, I could murder one. Let’s get some from the mini-mart.’

  Bev had circled Hammersmith Broadway three times – to lose anyone on their tail – when Lucie’s siren ringtone sounded on both their phones.

  We’ve got another body.

  Chapter Thirty

  2019

  Stella

  Stucco had fallen from the tall thin Georgian house. A woody rosemary bush grew drunkenly in an avocado bath set on bricks by the door. A sign suckered to the downstairs window read, ‘Vacancies’.

  ‘Well I never. Clive was a silly sod, but I wouldn’t wish that on him.’ Gladys Wren started talking as she opened the door and hastily, as if they were expected, she ushered Lucie and Stella inside. ‘First Roderick, then Mr Know-It-All Burgess. Fancy you being there so soon afterwards. A nasty surprise. Come into my parlour or you’ll be catching your deaths. So kind of you to pop in after your shock yesterday. Dreadful.’

  Stella wondered if Gladys’s last remark was meant as ironic. From the two Death Cafés, Stella had concluded no one should underestimate Gladys. Indeed, Lucie had planned to break the news about Clive’s murder to Gladys and study her reaction, but Stella was unsurprised that Gladys was totally up on last night’s murder.

  Gladys Wren’s ‘parlour’ was overburdened with a dark sideboard on which was an orange plastic bowl of plastic peaches and nectarines and an Bush radio that dated to before ‘retro’ – the tuning plate recalled the radio from Stella’s visits to her nan in the sixties, offering magical far-off lands, Moscow, Luxembourg, Frankfurt, the Midlands. Perched on a huge television was a stuffed cotton hen. Antimacassars, two care-home-like armchairs and a bamboo magazine rack overflowing with copies of the Radio Times contributed to the time-warp.

  ‘You’ve collected some treasures.’ Lucie spun about the room.

  ‘Ro
derick wanted to put that wireless on eBay, I wouldn’t hear of it. What a bright lad he was.’ Gladys Wren snatched a duster from her apron pocket and whipped it over the radio. She turned to Stella. ‘Want a cuppa?’

  ‘Yes please.’ Lucie flumped onto a leather pouffe and made parched noises. The pouffe put her at a height disadvantage to the armchairs. Stella knew this would be Lucie’s intention. It made her appear harmless. Stella also knew that Lucie wouldn’t get the better of Mrs Wren. Gladys, please, we’re old friends.

  ‘Funny-osity,’ Lucie said when Gladys was out of the room. ‘That dress, mutton and lamb— Ooh, Mrs Wren,’ Lucie shot to attention as Gladys returned, ‘fancy you being Roddy’s landlady.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say at the Death Café?’ Stella said.

  ‘Roderick wanted me incognito. I had to ask Andrea to keep mum. Goodness, what a temper she was in, I don’t know why she came. Roderick had schooled me with what to say about death, but what with Joy and poor dear Clive taking lumps out of each other and Felicity getting steamed up, it went clean out of my head.’ Gladys hovered by the door. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I went. It got me out. Roderick was an eye-opener; my evenings are deathly dull now.’

  Promising newly baked Dorset apple cake, Gladys went out.

  ‘We need to see March’s room,’ Lucie hissed from the pouffe.

  It was Lucie’s idea to get into Roddy’s room. Stella had been against it. What a great way to get properly in trouble with Janet and the police. Then Lucie suggested they pay their respects to Roddy’s landlady, she must be grieving. Aware Lucie was only trying another way to see where Roddy had stayed, Stella recalled she’d liked Gladys, she would like to know how she was doing.

  ‘His room will be sealed.’ Stella was determined to keep Lucie reined in.

  Roddy’s address was the last bit of information that Janet had given Stella before she had cut Stella loose.

  ‘Our Mrs Wren knew March and your grumpy gardener.’ Lucie was consulting her version of the diagram Stella had done of the seating in the Death Café.