The Playground Murders

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Kind?’ Stella didn’t need to fake incredulity.

  ‘Sounds crazy. Danielle had your back. She’d duff up anyone who picked on you.’ He nodded at the loan figure. ‘You’ve got a healthy deposit and with Jack being a tad younger, you can easily service the loan. You’re good to go and get a house!’

  ‘Have you seen Danielle Hindle recently?’ Jack flapped the papers in excitement. Stella almost wished that she believed him. Not that she wanted to live with Jack in Winchcombe. She was a confirmed Londoner.

  ‘I haven’t seen Danielle since she got taken away.’ Hood depressed the stapler. Closed staples sprinkled onto his pad.

  ‘How long have you been married?’ Jack asked. ‘Looking for tips here, mate!’

  Oh please.

  ‘I met Theresa ten years ago. I’d seen a client in Blackfriars. I was on a bench by the bridge grabbing a sandwich. She joined me, we got talking. Love at first sight!’ Was he reciting a script? Or perhaps after a decade Hood had the story down pat.

  ‘Romantic!’ Jack marvelled.

  ‘What about you guys?’ Kevin Hood corralled the staples on the paper.

  ‘What about us?’ Stella barked.

  ‘Ah well.’ Jack crossed his legs and intertwined his fingers on a knee. ‘We also met by the Thames, upstream from you. I recited from my favourite Dickens novel. It was love at first sight too.’

  ‘It was dark.’ And it was a crime scene. Jack’s voice coming out of nowhere had given Stella the creeps. It was love at a hundred and fiftieth sight. ‘Have you seen Danielle Hindle since her release?’

  ‘You’re asking a lot of questions.’ Kevin Hood stopped smiling.

  ‘Just interested,’ Jack bounded in. ‘It’s not often you meet someone with a claim to fame.’

  ‘Danni changed her name. It said in the papers.’ Hood uncapped his fountain pen. Stella half expected a stiletto. She was debating how quick a getaway they could achieve in the tiny room when Hood said, ‘She’s married with a kid. Unless that’s fake news. I hope not. Everyone deserves to live their dream.’

  ‘That’s a bit rich.’ Perhaps Jack had forgotten he was Mr Nice. ‘She killed your friends.’

  ‘Yes.’ His expression closed. He teased the staplers with his pen. ‘You’re too interested. Do you really want a mortgage?’

  ‘God yes!’ Jack hooted. ‘It’s just I’ve got kids living near that playground. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  Silence. Stella, for one, pondered what it made you think.

  ‘I get media people fixing mortgage appointments. Offering me big notes to spill my story on Danielle. Blood money.’ Hood was angry. ‘Real clients find out I knew her and don’t return.’ He chucked down his pen. A spray of green ink shot over his pad like a blood spatter test. Hood appeared oblivious.

  ‘We must go.’ Stella flapped the loan details. Jack said she was slow to get nuance. He also said green ink signified something bad. She couldn’t remember what. Her mind went into overdrive. Had Hood helped Danielle Hindle kill their little friends? Had he helped her kill Cater?

  ‘We’ll be in touch.’ Jack held out his hand. ‘As soon as we’ve found our perfect home.’

  ‘Don’t wait till then. Vendors like it if you’ve got a loan lined up.’ Eyes on Stella, Hood shook Jack’s hand. He’d read her mind. They wouldn’t get a mortgage through Hood and Son. She and Jack would not live in Winchcombe. They had played him.

  Stella was by the door but Jack had to leave first or she’d trap him with Hood.

  Glancing back, she saw Kevin Hood arranging the staples in a circle. A line trailed up to a shape like a balloon. Or a noose.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  1980

  Terry gathered the letter and newspaper off the door mat, distantly surprised that there wasn’t more post – he felt he’d been away for weeks. It was twenty-four hours.

  ‘Stella hasn’t slept in her bed,’ he had called from the doorway of Stella’s bedroom. Unlike the room in his house, this one had living evidence of Stella. Books and papers were heaped on the desk where Stella did her homework, a sweatshirt was slung over her chair.

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone in there. It’s private,’ Suzie had said when he returned to the living room. She’d put a mug of coffee for him in the kitchen hatchway. He drank it while he tucked in his shirt and did up his tie. The coffee was hot and milky the way Suzie knew he liked it. Making love with her, Terry had felt a delicious mix of familiarity spiced with their first time in the back of his Triumph Herald fifteen years ago. He’d let himself believe that they could start again.

  ‘I only looked in.’ Stupid to admit that he’d gone right in and, with a detective’s eye, raked the room for clues about his daughter. All he’d learnt was that Stella was doing photosynthesis in biology. He’d ask her about it.

  Now, Terry returned to the doorstep and lifted the two pints of milk out of the carrier. Taking them through to the kitchen, he pinpointed when it had gone horribly wrong.

  Numb, he’d sat on Stella’s bed. Next minute he jammed her pillow to his face. Fresh cotton, it gave nothing away. Yes it did. It told him that Stella hadn’t come home last night.

  ‘Where is she?’ He’d pulled his tie taut between his fists then swished it around his shirt collar.

  ‘Probably at Liz’s. She practically lives there.’ Suzie had yawned. ‘Liz’s mum makes fantastic shepherd’s pie apparently. Just how hard is it to cook up mince and mash a few spuds? The way Stella goes on you’d think it was cordon bleu!’

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’ An alert had gone off in Terry’s head.

  ‘I’m not her keeper.’

  ‘Actually, you are. For crying out loud, Suze, she’s fourteen.’ He strode out to the hall and snatched at the phone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Suzie clamped a hand over the dial.

  ‘I’m putting out a call. Stella’s been missing over twelve hours!’

  ‘She’s not missing! You’re not “putting out a bloody call”! Suddenly this is The Sweeney?’ Suzie snatched the receiver off him and slammed it down on the cradle. ‘I told you, she’s with Liz.’

  ‘You said “probably” and who says it’s Liz?’ He’d pictured the girls he’d once seen with Stella outside the Regal. Milling about like streetwalkers, eyes black with kohl, lips glossed bright red.

  ‘Liz is Stella’s best friend. A bit dull for my liking, but believe me when your kid’s a martyr to hormones, dull is good. The last thing Stella needs is the Met steaming round there guns blazing.’

  They had replayed an argument that was itself a replay of sundry others.

  Terry shoved the milk into the fridge. There were three full bottles there already. He ordered as if Stella still sat at the table with her cornflakes every morning and drank chocolate Nesquik every night. A smell of sour milk wafted out as he shut the fridge.

  ‘You’re letting her run wild! She saw an X film the other night, did you know that? The girl I saw her with wasn’t super-dull Liz. She looked like a tart!’ Suzie didn’t know. Cloaked in a red mist, Terry had unleashed the darkness of a world that he’d tried to keep from his family.

  ‘Where was Stella last night? For all you know she’s lying in a gutter choked on vomit. Or some man has stolen her virginity!’ Stolen her virginity. Where had he got that from?

  Terry and Suzie Darnell saw that they were not alone. Stella was in the living room doorway, keys in her hand. Staring at her parents as if they were strangers.

  It was the second time in twenty-four hours that a girl had looked at him like that. Betrayal. He’d promised Stella not to tell Suzie about the film. He’d apologized for embarrassing her in front of her mates.

  He’d promised Danielle she could be a detective.

  Now Terry reached for the chair that was Stella’s when she visited. He tossed the letter and newspaper onto the table.

  ‘Stell, you’re OK, I was so worried…’

  Stella had pivoted on her heel and gone int
o her bedroom.

  ‘Perfect father!’ Suzie had slow hand-clapped.

  ‘Stell, let me in.’ Terry had tapped on the door. It was all he could do not to rest his forehead on the wood and plead.

  Now, he rested his head on folded arms on the kitchen table.

  ‘She won’t come out for the rest of the day,’ Suzie hissed. ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  ‘She’s got to eat.’ Terry had found his jacket and briefcase on the sofa where – in what seemed like a different life – he’d flung them. When Suzanne had held him, listened to his anguish that he’d imprisoned a girl younger than their daughter. It wasn’t why he’d joined the police. Had she kissed him first? They’d barely made it to the bedroom.

  ‘You think so? That girl could go on hunger strike for England.’

  ‘I was looking out for her,’ Terry told the kitchen table as if his wife was in the room with him.

  ‘By saying her best friend’s a tart! What happened to your advice about trusting Stella, she knows what she’s doing?’ Banging the heel of her palm on the lift button she’d snarled, ‘Terry, go and arrest someone, it’s what you do best.’

  ‘I’ll call you,’ he’d said.

  ‘Call me what?’ Suzie flung shut the concertina gate.

  ‘We need to talk.’ Last night, in bed, she’d hinted at a reconciliation. Or he’d thought she had.

  ‘You’ve done that.’ Suzie closed her front door. The two women he loved best in the world were behind closed doors.

  As the lift had begun its shaky descent, he had realized he’d forgotten to advise Suzie and Stella never to use it.

  Now, his head in his arms, Terry screwed up his eyes until he saw stars.

  ‘Anyone home?’

  Stella! He raised his head from the table, bleary-eyed. Lucie May held a lit cigarillo in one hand, a key in the other.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ She exhaled shots of smoke from her nostrils.

  ‘Nowhere.’ Inwardly groaning, Terry saw Lucie was dressed to the nines in what he called her ‘killer-kit’: short skirt, heels and red lipstick.

  ‘Crap!’

  ‘What is?’ Terry rubbed at his face. He needed a shower and a shave.

  ‘You weren’t here last night. I called round.’ Holding her cigarillo aloft, Lucie was neutral. ‘Aqua Manda. You’ve been with her.’

  Last Christmas he’d bought Suzie Rive Gauche believing it was what she’d worn. From her expression he’d known he’d got it wrong. He’d meant to ask Stella what her mum wore. Lucie had pricked a memory. Aqua Manda, of course. He couldn’t write it down in front of her.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I popped in.’ He went on the offensive: ‘What’s the problem? You wanted no strings. I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the house, it gets in the furnishings.’

  ‘Furnishings! Get you. Easy to see who’s been yanking your strings.’ Lucie eyed him through curling smoke. ‘You’re a patsy, Terry. She’ll never have you back.’

  ‘I know.’ He didn’t know.

  ‘Who’s that from?’ Lucie stabbed her cigarillo at the letter. Terry had forgotten about it. He made to get it, but Lucie got there first.

  ‘How should I know? Give it here.’ She was in prison. The letters would stop.

  Lucie grabbed a knife from the drainer and slit open the envelope. Terry listened to the tick of the wall clock. A time bomb.

  ‘Jesus wept! It’s her. The Hindle girl is still writing to you.’

  ‘Lucie!’ His shout shocked them both. Lucie only briefly. The length of ash increased on her cigarillo as she read out the letter in an approximation of a child’s voice.

  ‘“Dear DI Darnell, I am at my new school. There are not many kids here but me. All the girls are older and want to do my hair and make me go around with them like a cat. I saw you in the court but you never came for me. I am learning to knit for my baby. Except the girls say I can’t have one. I’ll show them. I said I was a detective with you and they told me the police are bad. The headmaster is alright. Not as nice as you. He says I can have books to read and got me Anne of Green Gables which is stupid so far. I hope you are well. Love Danielle. Xxxxx Five kisses because the girls say you have to have a lucky number. Mine is five like my family though that is not lucky.”’

  ‘Give it to me, Lucie.’ Wearily, Terry put out his hand.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re visiting Danielle Hindle.’

  ‘Of course not.’ He kept his hand out.

  ‘Yeah, like you didn’t spend last night with your ex-wife! Terry, she’s a child-killer! My lot will have your guts. I could have your guts. This is mental.’ Lucie spoke slowly as if he wasn’t right in the head.

  ‘Suzie’s not my ex-wife,’ Terry said pointlessly. ‘I have not seen Danielle. This was here when I got back this morning.’

  There was a beat as they both took in the slip.

  Lucie switched into gear. Her true love was her job. This was a story. ‘This is hand delivered. She knows where you live.’

  Terry flicked on the kettle. ‘She sent the others to the station.’

  ‘She’s written often?’ The ash on Lucie’s cigarillo was perilously long. There was a needle in it. Lucie did it to distract interviewees. And him apparently.

  ‘Forget I said that.’ Terry smelled sweat. He disgusted himself. ‘I had to develop a relationship with her to get her to talk. I want nothing more to do with her. If you breathe a word, you and me we’re finished.’ He lifted mugs from the mug tree.

  ‘Having just shagged your wife, you’re not in the position to bargain, Terry. I don’t take hand-me-downs!’ Lucie didn’t look as tough as her words. Terry felt a flash of tenderness and wished he had more to offer her, she deserved it. He dropped teabags into the mugs and added boiling water.

  Lucie was rereading the letter. ‘Nothing about murdering those kiddies. You’d think she was writing home from a holiday camp. The kid’s whacko.’ She ground her cigarillo out in the sink. He never knew what she did with the needle. She sluiced the ash down the plughole and dropped the stub into the pedal bin. If Suzie was living here she’d have had a fit. If Suzie was here, Lucie would not be here.

  ‘…she’s never owned up to murder, either of them. Get real. That girl’s a psychopath!’ Lucie lit another cigarillo. ‘No tea for me, I’ve got to head off.’

  ‘I am real about her.’ Terry returned to the table with the teas. ‘She doesn’t care about her friends. She fancied Lee Marshall but she killed his sister. She probably killed Robbie, but unless she ’fesses up, we’ll never know. Perhaps in her warped world her actions make sense. I discounted her as a murderer because she’s a kid. I messed up. You saw it before me.’ How could a child kill another child? Terry slumped onto a chair.

  ‘You think the best of people, I think the worst.’ Lucie moved towards him. He pictured Suzie naked. He’d messed up more than the case. ‘You wanted Stella to join the police. Her ma drummed it out of her. It touched your heart when Danielle said what you’d hope Stella would say. That kid used us both. She wanted to be a detective and she wanted to be famous. She’s certainly famous! Cop has Child-Killer Penfriend!’ Lucie cackled. ‘The difference between you and me is I used her back.’

  ‘Don’t print this, Lucie.’ He flicked at the letter which she’d dropped back on the table.

  Lucie narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s it worth, Top Cat?’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  2019

  Jack and Stella knew St Mark’s Church in Chiswick. They’d crept amidst moonlit shadows of ivy-clad mausoleums and crumbling angels in pursuit of clues to murder.

  Today, bright Spring sunshine lent a sentimental aspect to the graves and statuary. A woman pushed a buggy cut through from Chiswick Mall. A blackbird’s song won out over the scrawl of traffic on the Great West Road.

  After leaving Kevin Hood, Jack and Stella decided to visit the grave of Sarah Ferris which, according to Wikipedia, was in the cemetery. Stella had expected Jack to find it quickly. At home
with phantoms, he roamed cemeteries the way most people mingled at parties. But an hour in they were giving up when Stanley bolted after a squirrel. He gave chase into a corner that they’d missed. There they had found not Sarah’s grave, but a headstone for Lee Marshall, her brother.

  BRIAN MARSHALL 1ST MAY 1945–22ND JULY 1975

  MUCH LOVED HUSBAND AND SON.

  TAKEN FROM US TOO SOON.

  LEE MARSHALL 1970–2017

  A GOOD SON AND HUSBAND.

  ‘We can take Lee off the suspect list. He couldn’t have murdered Rachel.’ Jack spoke first. ‘He died two years ago.’

  ‘He was forty-seven.’ Stella noted that the stone needed a clean.

  ‘I haven’t been here for a while,’ Jack said as if he’d neglected friends. ‘Why isn’t Sarah buried here too, I wonder?’

  All the nearby graves dated from the nineteen seventies.

  ‘Marshall senior gets a more fulsome epitaph than his son.’ Jack read the stone. ‘There’s nothing about Lee being “taken too soon” although he was.’

  ‘He wasn’t taken. He killed himself.’ Stella was consulting her phone. ‘Lee Marshall jumped in front of a train.’ Stella knew that Jack dreaded another ‘one under’. ‘Northern line. Tooting Bec.’

  One of Jack’s colleagues had developed a stutter after a suicide in front of his train. Another woman never took a shift on the anniversary of the day it happened to her. Stella was letting Jack know that it was unlikely any of his fellow drivers was involved. Jack drove the District line.

  ‘I wonder what made him do it,’ Jack said eventually.

  ‘Suicide leaves a mess for loved ones.’ When Stella was little, Terry had told her that ‘…once upon a time, suicides and executed criminals could not be buried in church grounds.’

  ‘People aren’t thinking straight. It’s an illness.’ Jack paced around the grave.

  ‘I suppose.’ Stella found it hard to sympathize with those who chose Jack’s ‘office’ as the place to end their lives. A suicide affected other lives too.

  ‘Lee Marshall failed to save his sister from being murdered. I imagine that haunted him.’