‘I told her to keep off that slide. I told you, Lee.’ The words were a dreadful keening.
‘I’m sure she listened,’ Terry said.
Abruptly, Cathy wiped at her eyes. ‘It’s a mistake! Lee brought Sarah home. She’s asleep upstairs.’
Keeping an eye on Alan Ferris, Terry nodded at Cashman to go and see. He’d ride a stripping down from his boss if Sarah was curled up in bed. Kids swapped clothes. He wanted to be wrong. Ferris was nursing his fist. Terry gave him his handkerchief. As he took it from him, their eyes met. The man knew his daughter wasn’t in her bedroom. Was that parental instinct or something darker?
Cashman was back, Janet with him. Their faces said it.
‘See, she’s all tucked up. Now go away and leave us alone. Out!’ Cathy hugged herself.
‘Cathy, Sarah is not there.’ Terry kept his voice even.
‘They’ve got her in the playground.’ Lee shook violently. Janet guided his mother to the couch. From somewhere she’d found blankets which she draped over Cathy and Lee’s shoulders. From the kitchen, Terry heard the kettle.
‘Alan, I’m sorry but we need you to provide identification. Janet will stay with Cathy and Lee.’
‘I’ll get Danielle.’ Lee flung off the blanket and was out of the door before anyone could stop him.
‘Sarah is good at sports,’ Cathy Ferris said. ‘Long jump like her brother, and catching. Her teacher says she is the…’ The past tense came down like night. Defeated, Cathy was stranded in a life that had cut loose from its moorings.
‘How?’ Alan Ferris bound Terry’s hanky around his fingers.
At last the question. Terry braced himself. Ferris’s dramatics could be a ruse to deflect suspicion. A fractured hand was nothing compared to life meaning life. He didn’t sugar the pill. In some concession, he let three seconds pass then, ‘Sarah was murdered.’
Chapter Seven
2019
‘Did your dad dying make you follow his footsteps and become a detective?’ In a tight pink skirt suit, blouse revealing a fan of creases converging to her cleavage, Lucie May was, as she’d declared when she’d breezed into Stella’s office in knee-high spiky boots that added to her six feet, ‘dressed to kill!’
‘It wasn’t a decision. I solved a murder case that my dad had stored in his attic. It went from there.’ A bus drifted past the window. Stella caught the eye of a bald man with glasses on the top deck. She looked away first.
Lucie May scribbled shorthand in her journalist’s notebook. There was already writing. Stella wouldn’t put it past Lucie to have written Stella’s replies on the way to the office. For the umpteenth time that morning, Stella regretted agreeing to the interview for the Daily Mirror. Carrie Philips would arrive in an hour. Philips and Lucie must not meet.
It was three years since Clean Slate had increased staff and office space to accommodate the detective service, specifically cold case murders. However, recently there’d been a dearth of deaths (Jack’s joke) so they’d relied on bread and butter work: witness statements, tracing heirs and loved ones and background checks for employers. Loath to fan the flames of domestic turmoil, Stella stopped at divorce surveillance. The interview had been intended to drum up business, but yesterday Stella had met Carrie Philips. She should have put Lucie off. Plus Stella was tired of the father’s footsteps hook. Terry Darnell died seven years ago, was she still following him?
The door opened and Beverly poked her head in. ‘They’ve delivered the dry ice to here! I tried to redirect them to the warehouse, but they’ll only go to what’s on the docket.’
‘It’s fine, Bev.’ Stella was happier discussing cleaning products. ‘I asked them to send the nine millilitre pellets here. For emergencies. We’ll store them in the freezer outside the conference room.’
‘Copy that.’ Beverly’s head vanished.
‘You never know when you need dry ice!’ Lucie cackled. ‘I can see you rising out of the clouds to “Rule Britannia” on a Wurlitzer!’
‘It’s for cryogenic cleaning.’ Stella hastened to stop Lucie running with the image. ‘Instead of chemicals.’
‘Back to murder!’ Rapping her retractable pencil on the pad, Lucie rolled her eyes. ‘C’mon, dude, give me spice and grit! Daddy was your hero then ker-plonk, he toppled off his pedestal! Before he died he tried to call you, but you’d changed your number without telling him so you never said goodbye. Milk it, bubs! Get readers sobbing into Kleenexes, not checking if it’s time for EastEnders!’
‘The idea is to attract cold case clients. Not make them cry.’ Stella couldn’t bear to be reminded that for the last months of Terry’s life, she’d hardly spoken to him.
‘Emotion is the driver.’ Lucie was pencil ready. ‘Trot on, ducks!’
‘When I was eighteen Dad sent me a police application form and a postal order to buy something nice,’ Stella obliged.
‘What did you buy?’
‘A set of cleaning equipment. Mum tore up the form.’ Stella had said this in another interview she’d done for the local paper. It was old news. ‘The next day I got my first job.’ She’d wanted to be a Met detective until she was seven when her parents divorced. She didn’t tell Lucie that her mum warned that Stella would be on her own for life if she joined the force. Her mum and Lucie May were best enemies (as opposed to friends). Jack put this down to being in love with the same man.
‘You wanted to be a detective when you were a kid. You dumped the ambition when your mum dumped Terry.’ Lucie was writing as if to dictation. ‘Did he share teccy tips with you?’
‘When I was four, we got a cadaver dog. An Alsatian. I got sent to the headteacher for telling kids that the dog found corpses.’ Stella had sat cross-legged on cold lino in the head’s office writing out the times-table on a length of bus ticket roll that Miss Swan made a thing of cadging off conductors. She’d wondered why she was in trouble for telling the truth.
‘Way to go!’ Lucie May’s pencil was a blur on the paper.
‘Don’t put that!’ Stella’s mother crashed into the room as if on a police raid. When Clean Slate was a start-up operating from Stella’s bedroom, Suzie Darnell had handled admin while Stella cleaned. Nowadays Suzie ran the customer database and offered caustic opinions without waiting to be asked.
‘Did Terry show you a dead body?’ Lucie paid Suzie no attention and when Stella shook her head was businesslike: ‘We’ll say he did.’
‘He would have if the opportunity had arisen,’ Suzie said. And then as if referring to pocket money or Easter eggs, ‘Terry robbed Stella of her childhood.’
‘Yesss!’ Lucie had struck gold.
‘That’s fake news!’ Stella was appalled. Suzie described her marriage to Terry as a wrong turning. Jack said that Terry was the love of Suzie’s life. In Lucie’s hearing Suzie would never concede anything positive about Terry. Keeping to safer ground, Stella embarked on a sales spiel. ‘I promise a rapid response to “death and chaos” situations. I sanitize drug dens, mortuaries and scenes of long-term death and suicide. I’ve got certificates in crime scene clean-up and hypodermic needle collection, deodorizing and the removal of contaminated flooring. I can’t turn the clock back, but I can restore order.’
‘You can’t turn the clock back, but you can keep it ticking. Coo-ell!’ Lucie crowed. ‘Wait. What did I say? You’ll drive the Mirror’s readers to suicide or have them fleeing to a drug den if I write this. They hate swearing and nasty subjects.’
‘…my passions are deep cleaning, dog walking and dinner with friends.’ Stella had learnt that filibustering kept Lucie at bay.
‘Less of the “I”.’ Suzie waggled a finger at her daughter. ‘You and Jack are a team!’
‘Jack prefers to be anonymous.’ Stella was patient. Her mother adored Jack.
‘Don’t encourage that! With those looks and charm, he’s your poster boy!’ Lucie shrieked.
Suzie Darnell slapped the door jamb. ‘Stell, I’ll see you Sunday. Will Jack bring the kiddi
es?’
‘No.’ A constant question, although her mum knew that Jack’s ex had forbidden him to let Stella see his twins. Milly and Justin would be three in June. That fact would give Lucie grit and spice.
‘How’s it going as the wicked stepmother?’ Lucie enquired sweetly.
‘Stella, sorry to bother you.’ It was Trudy Wates, her PA.
‘“The Disinfecting Detective!”’ Lucie chirped merrily. ‘Tell me about your most recent cleaning scene. Was it a good old-fashioned murder?’
‘No.’ Stella would be in serious trouble with Cashman if she discussed her trip to Winchcombe. She smiled at Trudy. ‘Yes?’
‘Carrie Philips is in reception. She’s early.’
‘The daughter of the murderer?’ Lucie’s pencil was a dart ready to aim.
‘No.’ Stella only lied on special occasions.
Chapter Eight
2019
At last the barcode took and an image of a Bourbon biscuit packet popped up on the screen. Jack preferred a real assistant, but the queue to the till stretched to the back of the shop and he was determined to keep pace with technological change. One day there would be no people and if he couldn’t self-checkout he’d have no biscuits.
On a charm offensive with Stella’s PA, Jack was bringing biscuits for the meeting. The Sainsbury’s Local used to be the mini-mart owned by Dariusz Adomek, Clean Slate’s friend. Dariusz sold it last year and had returned to his native Poland. Jack was pleased that Dariusz had profited by the sale, but missed their chats. Unlike this machine, Dariusz had a heart and didn’t beep.
Stella’s office was fronted by a black door (Lucie May called it Downing Street) set between the Sainsbury’s and a dry cleaner’s. Jack had to say his name twice before Trudy buzzed him in. She didn’t like him. Stella said he was imagining it. Jackie said Trudy was protective of Stella’s time. Trudy was nothing if not efficient. It was this that Jack disliked. Efficiency left no room for spontaneity which was where, Jack believed, real life was found. He was disgruntled at how things had turned out because it was him who’d suggested Stella free up Jackie to manage the detective business and get a new PA. No one questioned why Stella should need protecting from Jack. Stella would say he was over sensitive. (Actually, non-judgemental, she’d never say that, but still Jack made Stella his conscience.) Trudy had been at Clean Slate since last autumn and was, as Beverly put it, ‘magic’. Heigh ho.
The fragrance of a lavender plug-in caught his nostrils on the stairs. Since Stella had taken over the building, she’d had the hall and staircase decorated rosy white. Gone was the threadbare lino in favour of a carpet that didn’t show stains. Not that stains had a chance to show themselves before Stella eradicated them.
On the landing outside reception, Jack prepared a smile. He’d rather head on up to the meeting, but it wouldn’t do to bypass Trudy. Maybe she did like him and it was him that wasn’t keen on her.
‘How’s it fadging?’ Beaming, Jack took loping strides into the office, smacking his hands as if cold. Realizing this might imply criticism of the temperature – Trudy’s remit – he unbuttoned his coat. ‘It’s lovely and warm in here!’
‘The heating’s been off. I’ve just mended the thermostat.’ Pounding at top speed on her keyboard, Trudy didn’t pause. Jack saw she wore a big woolly scarf.
‘Well done! Brrr!’ Tied in a knot of his own making, he knew he’d done nothing to make Trudy comfortable around him.
‘They’re upstairs.’ Trudy looked up with a sudden smile, her eyes inscrutable behind reactive lensed glasses. She fixed her gaze on his chest. Jack attributed avoidance of eye contact to shyness, but Trudy had got the job because she was a no-nonsense woman, deft at defusing difficult customers and judging excellent cleaning operatives. Short, mid-forties, her pale translucent complexion suggested oxygen starvation although she worked long hours and had seemingly boundless energy.
‘I brought biscuits!’ Jack cried.
‘Beverly got them.’ Trudy cracked open a stapler and extracted a bar of staples from a tray in her desk, slotting them in as if loading a gun.
‘You can’t have too many biscuits.’ He remained hearty.
‘You cannot,’ Trudy agreed.
Jack thought that Trudy could do with the whole packet. Thin as a rail, he suspected she had an eating disorder. On the team night out, she’d had no more than a starter portion of Caesar salad. Given to off-the-wall deductions, Beverly had put it down to Trudy being left-handed. Bev had said that like her brother, no one would have taught Trudy to hold a fork. Whatever the truth of this, right now Trudy was jotting something down with her right hand so that blew Bev’s theory from the water.
‘Carrie Philips is here.’ Trudy resumed typing. ‘You just missed that reporter.’
‘Oh! Right.’ Jack had thought he was early – he punched the air, the gesture of a man totally on top of things – and fled upstairs. He was sorry not to see Lucie, then annoyed with himself for thinking that she’d have protected him from Trudy. Ludicrous.
Clean Slate’s top floor was above the old mini-mart and the dry cleaner’s. A laminated notice on a door read ‘Murder Incident Room’.
‘Carrie is in the loo.’ Beverly patted the chair next to her. Just thirty and recently married, she was perpetually optimistic. Initially a byword in scatterbrained inefficiency, over the years under Jackie’s tutelage, she had become sharp as a knife. Beverly covered all bases and missed nothing.
‘Sorry I’m late, I was chatting with Trudy.’ That hardly described their cool exchange.
‘Good.’ Stella wanted him to like Trudy. ‘You’re not late, Carrie was early.’
On an oval table were jugs of water in which floated slices of lemon (Trudy’s touch), glasses, a plate of Bourbon biscuits, a flask of coffee and Clean Slate branded mugs. In the centre, like a miniature spaceship, was a conference call telephone. Stella sat at one end with Beverly at her right. Two bulging files at the other end and a steaming mug of some kind of fruit tea (another Trudy innovation) signalled Carrie Philips’ place. A fan of appropriate stationery, Stella had one of Terry’s unused police notebooks.
‘Twins OK?’ Stella asked Jack. ‘Trudy said Justin was off colour.’
Jack felt a frisson of shame. One, Trudy had remembered his son had missed a day of nursery. Two, even though she’d only seen them once as babies, Stella always enquired after the twins. He inwardly tsked for his own ungenerous thoughts.
‘Fine!’ He put his biscuits beside the latest Clean Slate cleaning brochure displayed on a shelf unit by the door and sat next to Beverly. Immediately he sprang to his feet as the door opened and Stella introduced him to Carrie Philips.
Nodding at him, Carrie ignored his outstretched hand. Jack saw strain and grief in the lines around her mouth and creasing her forehead. She looked older than mid-twenties, her father’s imprisonment for murder had piled on years. Jack didn’t think her rude. She looked windswept as if her father’s life sentence had tumbleweeded her far beyond the prosaic business of niceties.
‘Daddy didn’t do it.’ Blowing on her tea, Carrie sent up a puff of fragrant steam. ‘You’re all thinking, “Yeah, she would say that” – that’s what the police think.’ She flourished a yellow legal pad and scribbled a heading at the top.
‘We keep an open mind,’ Stella said. ‘Please tell us your take on what happened.’
‘Dad left his shop and drove home.’ Carrie’s plodding delivery suggested she’d related her story many times. ‘Where you were yesterday.’ She scowled at Stella as if Stella had trespassed. ‘He found that woman’s body in the sitting room. She’d been stabbed with a knife. The police called it frenzied. Daddy had to get rid of the body.’ Carrie drank some tea. Jack saw her hand tremble when she replaced the mug on the table. Carrie was left-handed. She too was thin as a pin. He glanced at Beverly. But her theories flapped in the wind and doubtless she’d abandoned her view that feeding yourself was easier with the right hand. For himself Jack noted
that Carrie’s pen had green ink which he associated with mental instability.
‘Why didn’t he call the police?’ A detective’s daughter, Stella would say that. Preferring to exist under the legal radar, the police had never been Jack’s first resort.
‘He panicked. They’d think he did it. He was right because they did think that! He had to wrap her in plastic sheeting to stop blood getting everywhere. The only place he could dump her was that drain. He had a huge amount of cleaning up to do.’ Outrage flitted across her face as if by leaving a body behind, the murderer had caused untold inconvenience. ‘And he had to move her car. She left it by the war memorial.’
It seemed that Rachel Cater had thoroughly inconvenienced her father.
‘Did your father know the victim?’ Stella swished to a fresh page. Jack had no trouble picturing Stella as a high-ranking Met officer like her dad.
‘I knew nothing until the police found the body.’ Carrie took a biscuit but didn’t eat it.
‘Did your father know the victim?’ Stella asked the question as if for the first time.
It wouldn’t be out of the question for the client to be the murderer. For now, Jack shelved this option. Stella said he complicated things.
‘You know he did!’
‘I want to hear it from you.’ Stella was sexy when she was stern.
‘She was his PA at the auctioneer’s.’ Carrie Philips fiddled with a fearsome lime green pendant shaped like a rugby ball that hung around her neck like a penance. ‘She was sleeping with him.’
‘How long for?’ Mini Stella, Beverly, was also using a police notebook.
‘A month maybe. My mum called her a man-eater.’ She pursed her lips as if this wrapped it up. An untruth which Carrie Philips would know they could confirm. According to the trial reports, her father had been seeing Rachel Cater for over six months.
‘Christopher Philips confessed.’ Stella faced her.
‘He didn’t do it.’ Carrie smouldered. ‘The police lied.’
The Playground Murders Page 6