‘What if she won’t talk?’ Stella slotted the van by the war memorial where Rachel Cater had parked on that fateful day.
‘She’s returning to her old home to see us so she’ll hardly go “no comment” on us.’ Jack ran a comb through his hair.
They were both startled by a shriek like a tortured child.
‘Stanley’s awake.’ Jack peered over the rim of a box-shaped bed lined with fur – attached to the seat – a gift from Lucie May for ‘the small poodle with a lion’s personality’. Hitherto having only seen the dog as a means of leaving poo on her carpet and demanding attention, Lucie’s generosity was a volte-face. Jack reckoned she wanted something and indeed Lucie had kept ringing since the day she’d overheard that Carrie Philips was coming to the office.
‘I hope Penelope Philips doesn’t mind dogs.’ Stella wasn’t looking forward to meeting a woman whose daughter believed she was a violent killer. There was no nice way to mention that.
‘Her husband’s lover bled all over her front room, I don’t imagine she’ll be overly worried about pawmarks,’ Jack said. ‘Stella, I can meet Lady Penelope on my own if you’re worried.’
‘I’m fine.’ As ever, Jack had read her mind.
Jack and Stella were early so they went for a stroll along the main street. In the distance came the hoot of the steam train. The classic railway, run by volunteers, added to the impression that Winchcombe belonged in a bygone age.
‘We’re in The Railway Children.’ Jack sighed happily. Stanley drank from a water bowl outside the Emporium gift shop which was displaying some thirties’ style posters, adding to the impression.
‘Is that your favourite film?’ Last week Bev had made them do a quiz from one of her magazines on how well you knew your partner. Jackie got full marks on Graham. Beverly filled in what her wife should like despite Jackie’s warning about trying to change her. Trudy and Stella hadn’t joined in. If Bev had intended the quiz as a means of probing into Trudy’s private life it had failed. Stella’s refusal was because, a gatherer of facts, she knew that Jack’s mother had been murdered when he was little. Aged seven he’d been sent to a boarding school in Kent. His father – prime suspect for the murder – died in Scarborough District General when Jack was in his twenties and while he’d left the bedside to get a coffee. The media reported that the ‘orphaned son of the murdered woman’ had gone to Australia, but once, when they’d been talking about Stella’s brother who lived in Sydney, Jack had commented that he’d never been ‘down under’. These snippets won Stella no points in the magazine quiz.
‘Yes, it is my favourite film. That bit on the platform where the father emerges through the steam.’ Jack’s eyes misted up as if the memory was his own.
‘Do you imagine you’re getting off your train to meet your children?’
‘Maybe.’ Jack scooped Stanley up as a lorry mounted the kerb at the awkward turn into North Street. ‘Thanks, Stell!’
‘For what?’
‘For knowing how I tick!’ Jack gave her a lingering kiss.
Stella doubted that actually she had any idea how Jack – or anyone else – ‘ticked’. Taking Jack’s hand she led him back to ‘the Murder House’.
When her home became a crime scene the police had moved Penelope Philips to a safe house in Broadway, a nearby village. Stella and Jack knew it from their previous visit to Gloucestershire. Although her husband had been in prison for months – on remand and then when he was found guilty – Penelope had not moved back to Winchcombe. Stella would make it her business to find out why.
At the scene clean, Stella had been surprised that, given the house was in the middle of the village, a brutal murder had gone unnoticed. Now Jack reminded her that it had happened in the afternoon on a day when Winchcombe – unlike Hammersmith – still had early closing.
‘OK, so we’re agreed.’ Stella paused outside the old Lloyds bank. ‘You give a sign if you reckon she’s a murderer.’ When Stella had first known Jack, his reliance on portents and instincts had alarmed her. She was unconvinced by Jack’s claim that he could tell a psychopath (he called them True Hosts) just by following them down a street. She didn’t relish the idea that Jack followed anyone. But stalking came with detective territory so she’d reluctantly accepted it. Over the years they’d solved several cold cases, and Stella had seen that Jack saw what others missed. What she missed.
‘I’ll fiddle with my coat, like this.’ Jack brushed one of his lapels as if at a stain on the fabric.
The latch buzzed open as soon as Jack pressed the bell. Stella checked the street again. Carrie had warned them about reporters. Stella expected Lucie May. A man taking cash from the ATM looked authentic, but so would a person intending to look authentic.
Stella considered that, murderer or not, she’d feel safer with Lucie than Penelope Philips. As she stepped into the dark hallway, her heart missed a beat.
Although the curtains and blinds were closed, Stella could see how clean the place looked. This somewhat allayed her nerves.
A shaft of sunlight slanted across the carpeted floor. Stella faltered. She saw a body there. Face down in pooling blood. Spatters covered the walls and the lounge door.
‘Do come in.’ As if they were on a social call.
Stella looked at the carpet again and saw only the slant of sunlight.
In brown cords, angora jumper draped with a silk scarf that Stella recognized from the Emporium’s window, Penelope Philips was every inch a respectable Cotswold Woman. Perfume, the scent uncompromising, hit Stella’s nostrils. Her hyposensitive olfactory sense identified Molecule One, the perfume that Bev’s wife Cheryl had got for her. If anyone was changing anyone, Cheryl was affecting Bev. In a good way, for Bev was happier. Distantly Stella noticed that Molecule One wasn’t the scent she’d caught on her last visit to the house. Good Girl, that was the name. She gathered herself. Terry said don’t get bogged down with irrelevancies. He also said not to ignore trivial detail.
With a chilly smile, Penny Philips raised a hand signalling for them to go into the lounge. Stella disliked that they were as good as trapped in the house with Philips. Even if she wasn’t a murderer, she wasn’t exactly friendly.
The floorboards had been replaced. A new carpet laid. Stella caught a whiff of gloss paint and saw that the skirting boards gleamed. Two floral-patterned sofas and a coffee table on which was the beginnings of a jigsaw faced a huge television that was on the way to being a cinema. Everything was spotless. Stella relaxed. A scrupulous cleaner, Philips would not be a violent murderer. They could relax. Perching on one of the sofas, Stella tried to catch Jack’s eye.
But looking down, Jack was brushing at the lapel of his coat.
Chapter Seventeen
1980
‘If you find the murder weapon you’re home and dry.’ Lucie sat up in the bed and lit a cigarette. In a shirt of Terry’s that she’d commandeered and wearing a beige-coloured BA eye mask from a recent trip to the States pushed up onto her forehead, she looked alarming, as if she’d been kidnapped.
‘We don’t need it. We have a confession.’ No point in keeping that back, Lucie told him she’d found out as soon as she arrived. And no point in wondering who in his team had leaked the information. It was him.
‘A confession is so much confetti, here today, mashed in a puddle tomorrow.’
‘We’ll find what he used to crush her neck.’ Terry found the manner of the little girl’s death as upsetting as the fact of it. A strong man had used his might to mash the life out of Sarah. Michael Sutherland had suggested that defining lines either side of a wide area of deep abrasions on the skin were achieved with a weapon such as a brick.
‘If he’s got any sense he’s got rid of it.’
‘It must be somewhere on the common.’ Terry blinked at the smoke. He wished that Lucie wouldn’t light up after sex. It was his fault that she was there. Lucie had found him in the pub with the team, on a high that they had a confession. Frustrated that he couldn’t
share the news with Suzie and Stella, he’d cracked quicker than Derek Parsley. And here they were with Lucie puffing on a post-coital fag. Despite her relentless chase of a story, Terry trusted Lucie. He owed her this one. ‘Danielle Hindle will do well in court. She’s an incomparable witness.’
‘Please tell me that you’re not relying on that little madam!’ Lucie’s mask gave her the look of a fly with more than one pair of eyes. Which sometimes he thought she must have. She missed nothing. ‘And what’s a friggin’ incom-bloody-parable witness?’ She sucked in a long drag, holding in the smoke as if it was dope. Terry wished Lucie would give up, one day it would kill her.
‘It’s what a judge once called Bernard Spilsbury, the godfather of pathology, before, and during the Second World War.’ Terry was reading Spilsbury’s biography. Suzie would grumble that he was never off the job. At least crime was something that he and Lucie shared. And good sex. Not as good as Suzie. Terry banished the thought. ‘Reading’ was an overstatement. The last few nights, he’d reread the same page before falling asleep with the light on. Suzie used to lean over and take the book out of his hand. Lucie – in her portable darkness – never noticed.
‘Danielle Hindle is a ten-year-old kid. She’s got you round her little finger. Like Stella, she canters rings around you.’ Lucie contemplated her cigarette. Even she knew when she’d overstepped the mark.
‘If Danielle Hindle’s dad was a banker or a lawyer and not an incompetent burglar, Danielle would be looking at university. As it is she wants to join the police. Sometimes rehabilitation comes out in the new generation. Her writing’s good, she’s clever, she can express herself. OK, so her spelling’s bit off, but better that than being stuck for the right word. That’s what I tell Stella.’
‘How do you know?’ Lucie blew smoke at the ceiling.
‘From her letters.’
‘Who to?’ Lucie pressed home.
‘Me. OK. Forget I said that!’ Bloody idiot.
‘She writes you letters?’ Lucie ground out her cigarette in the ashtray that Suzie had bought for his mum while they were all on a holiday in Dorset when Stella was a baby. When his mum had died of lung cancer three years later and he was clearing out her house to return it to the council, Terry had kept the ashtray and, reluctantly, let Lucie use it.
‘Her teachers say she’s a bright kid if only she’d concentrate. With her home life, it’s no wonder. Where could she do her schoolwork?’ Terry recalled the chaos in the Hindle house when they’d gone there to talk to Danielle. A teacher had told him Danielle was good at art but wouldn’t take any painting home: ‘It’ll get thrown away. Eddie Hindle is a nasty piece of work. When he’s out of prison, Danielle and her brother as good as live in that playground. For different reasons, those kids prefer it to their home.’
Lucie snuffled down in the pit of his arm. ‘Sweet that she writes to you, Tel. Let’s see.’ She moved her hand down his stomach. One thing about Lucie, she was blatant. Terry nudged her away.
‘It’s against the law to bring evidence home. It would be inadmissible in court. You know that.’ He pinched his nose. He had a full-blown headache.
‘That girl’s got you by the short and curlies.’ Lucie illustrated this with a tug beneath the duvet.
‘Ouch!’ He’d scooted the letters under the bed seconds before Lucie had come out of the bathroom. Had he anticipated that he’d be stupid enough to invite her back, Terry would have properly concealed them. ‘Anyway, like I say, no smart-arsed barrister will get one over on Danielle Hindle.’
There was a click and a flare. Lucie lit another cigarette. She leaned over the bed and dropped her lighter into her handbag. She kept it close should she need to jot down some fished-for nugget in her pad. Like him, Lucie was never off the clock. Unlike him, she never took her eye off the ball.
‘Danielle Hindle told me she wanted to be a reporter.’ She yawned.
‘Have you talked to her?’ Terry jumped out of bed. Grabbing his trousers he hopped and staggered into them. ‘You had no right to go near her! Not without her parents’ consent. Not even then. Lucie, I’m warning you. Do. Not. Print. Anything!’ He fumbled with his zip.
A smoke ring hovered over Lucie’s head like the mockery of a halo.
‘I don’t tell you how to do your job. Don’t stop me doing mine. Those kids were happy to chatter like like my darling budgie.’ Her mouth a pencil stroke, eyes blindfolded. Lucie was scary.
‘She’s a kid. What’d you promise, a never-ending supply of bubble gum?’ He scrubbed at his hair. Being able to see did not give him an advantage.
‘A minute ago you were comparing her to some ancient pathologist.’ Lucie did her corncrake laugh. ‘Believe me, Danielle Hindle’s an incomparable liar!’
‘She pointed us towards Derek Parsley. When he was picked up he was covered in blood. He’s got previous. She saw him in the playground. All of that’s true. Now he’s confessed.’ Terry pictured the man sobbing into his hands. It had been several hard days’ nights.
‘Until today, my geld was on Sarah’s daddy. Alan Ferris is a psycho.’ Despite her blackout mask, Lucie placed her cigarette in the ashtray and in her Marilyn Monroe voice breathed, ‘Why sure, honey, the kid will be a damn fine witness.’
‘Meaning?’ Terry caught his triple reflection in the mirrored doors of his built-in wardrobe. Midnight shadow, bloodshot eyes, an arrest mugshot looked better. He couldn’t remember why he’d put on his trousers. Suzie had wanted the mirrors.
His bedside phone rang.
‘Guv, it’s Derek Parsley!’ Cashman was shouting.
‘Has he told you where to find the… weapon?’ Terry shouldn’t grudge Martin his moment in the sun, but he did. He really did. He’d nearly mentioned the brick in front of Lucie May.
‘He’s hung himself.’
‘Hung himself?’ The words were foreign.
‘He’s dead, guv.’
‘Dead?’ Lucie ripped off her mask. ‘Tel, come on.’ She whipped clean knickers from her handbag and dressed with the speed of Harry Houdini in reverse.
Fixed on the tail lights of Lucie’s MG, Terry mercy-dashed through the dark empty streets in his police-issue Rover. Lucie had got her scoop.
Chapter Eighteen
2019
‘Carrie’s Daddy’s girl.’ Philips was doing a jigsaw. From the picture on the box, Jack recognized Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. Penelope had completed a clock face draped over a rock. The profusion of curves and expanse of dark colour would be difficult.
‘This is a challenge, Mrs Philips,’ he exclaimed cheerily. A soothing accompaniment to murder. They must leave.
‘Pass me that piece, please, Jack. And for God’s sake call me Penny. All my friends do.’
It was rare for True Hosts to have friends. The woman hadn’t spoken with conviction. He didn’t believe that she had friends. He handed Penny a jigsaw piece of entirely interlocking sides. He’d assumed she’d randomly chosen it but Penny fitted it into the dark section. A True Host would do that.
‘Thank you for meeting us.’ Stella must have forgotten their agreed sign. Jack was practically thumping his lapel, but Stella was fixed on the jigsaw as if she might have to join in. She was chewing spearmint gum. She hadn’t chewed gum since he’d met her. A sign of nerves? Stella was rarely nervous.
‘I’m guessing Carrie thinks that I killed that whore.’ Penny snapped in another piece and followed it swiftly with another one. Now the sky – lurid yellow and blue – was forming.
‘No,’ Stella said. Never lie to a True Host.
‘Yes,’ Jack said.
‘Of course.’ She flashed Jack a grateful smile and indicated for him to pass her another piece. She completed another clock. This was creeping him out. A True Host, she was of course unfazed that her daughter thought her capable of murder. The second clock slimed over a table on which was another clock crawling with ants. In the centre of the picture – not yet in the puzzle – was a figure: Dali asleep, J
ack vaguely recalled.
The puzzle was a perfectly executed performance. Philips was playing a game with them.
‘Welcome to Ground Zero!’ Penny got up. She had completed the sky. ‘I expect you were promised a tour?’
Jack saw Stella start. So Carrie hadn’t told her mother that Stella had cleaned the crime scene and therefore hardly needed a tour. Useful. Except they needed to leave and take stock, as Stella would say. Stella hadn’t moved. Jack knew that fixed smile. She’d seen his sign after all. She was weighing up her next move. Leave. He willed her to look at him. But suddenly Stella sprang to life.
‘Yes, we were promised a tour,’ she said.
‘The Cater bitch drove me from my home.’ Her tone brittle, Penny regarded Stanley who was preening his paws. ‘That’s where she was. Bleeding like a stuck pig.’
The carpet was the same tough loop weave that Bella had got for the twins’ bedroom. Jack worried that it hurt their knees when they played. When he’d told Stella, she’d said that it was hard-wearing.
‘This was my forever house.’ Penny Philips might have been showing the place to potential buyers. Again, Jack imagined himself and Stella living there. Stella was too rational to mind that a woman had been murdered in the hall and she’d cleaned up so would be confident there’d be no bacteria. So far Jack had no sense of Cater’s ghost. He wished he did. He felt a pang of sorrow for Rachel. She’d had the misfortune to fall in love with her boss.
‘With Chris gone I’ve got my dogs out of storage.’ Penny indicated the ornaments crowding the surfaces.
‘Do you have a dog?’ Stella asked.
‘Christ no!’ She completed two more pieces of the puzzle, then commanded, ‘Come.’
Stella went out of the room first. Jack couldn’t attract her attention without Penny seeing. He could feign illness, but knowing Stella she would suggest he wait in the van for her. Stella was rarely afraid. Jack lingered in the room and flipping over a piece saw no number on the back. Penny Philips had not been cheating. His blood froze.
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