The Detective's Daughter (12 page)

‘How did you get in here?’

‘The door was unlocked. You want to watch that, anyone could wander in.’

Anyone had.

‘You’re seeing someone.’ Paul was blocking the doorway. ‘Who is it? That fuckwit Pole you were talking to?’

‘No, it isn’t.’ Stella regretted taking the bait and giving him a toehold. ‘It’s none of your business who I see. Are you spying on me? You left that message last night when I was at Terry’s.’

‘It
is
my business if you’re messing me about.’ He rubbed under his chin with the back of his hand, a gesture that had once attracted Stella. ‘I have the right to come to your flat. Terry who? Was that the bloke with the flash Beemer? Don’t lie.’

‘So you weren’t outside when … Oh never mind. Look, I said it’s over, end of.’ Stella tried to step around Paul but he remained in the way.

‘This place is all you care about.’ He thumped the wire-reinforced glass.

‘My father is dead.’ Stella unwittingly jettisoned the standard splitting-up script for a different kind of drama.

‘What do you mean? Your dad’s died?’ Paul put out a hand and tentatively brushed her sleeve and when she did not react, read it as a good sign and slid his fingers down to her hand.

‘Yes he has. Not that you asked,’ Stella retorted, aware of the flagrant illogicality. She shoved past Paul and scratched her key in the lock. ‘I don’t want a scene, please, Paul?’ She tripped the alarm and had ten seconds to deactivate it. Once inside, her tone softened: ‘This is hard enough without you making it worse.’

‘I’ll call later, yeah?’ Paul drifted along the landing, obviously cowed by the immensity of Stella’s loss. ‘You’ll get through this. I’m there for you. My dad died too. I am beside you on this.’ He retreated downstairs.

Stella punched in the alarm code, relieved that Jackie had not been there because she would feel sorry for him. Jackie believed that what Stella needed was the love of a good man; Paul, with his pleasant if unremarkable looks and kind nature drenched in Boss aftershave, was her latest vision of Stella’s Mr Right.

Forcing Paul from her mind, Stella thought how a locksmith would be expensive and attract attention but the probate papers were in her old bedroom; she should tackle them soon.

She had an hour and a half before Jackie would prop the door back and flip the ‘Open’ sign around, and the administrative assistant, an eager woman of twenty-two, would set to making coffee for the three of them. This was Stella’s favourite part of the day; the world was clean and tidy and there was all to play for. But this morning, despite the sunshine, she was in an unfamiliar landscape stalked by the demons of Terry and Paul.

If a potential customer faltered on the lino-covered staircase, their mood would lift on entering the bright, immaculate office, with shelves of storage boxes and catalogues. A bank of filing cabinets with primary colour-coded drawers would reassure them that this was a place where promises were kept, contracts adhered to and even the most complex of tasks expedited. The laminated pages of the Staff Handbook – beside the water cooler for continual reference – counselled:
Avoid clutter: nothing without legs, apart from waste bins and filing cabinets, must touch the floor. Keep equipment on shelves and cupboards and box in cables and wiring.

Computers in black casings were in standby mode, the Clean Slate logo floating about the screens like a fish in a tank, the ‘L’s in each word expressed by two sweeping brushes. Against the wall was a trestle table on which was a drinks fridge with a see-through door and a tray of white cups, saucers and plates. Three plastic storage jars from the Pound and Penny shop displayed tea bags, instant coffee and sugar. A silver jug kettle reflected the room in concave.

There was a stain on the carpet. Stella bent down and it disappeared: it was the shadow of a hole-punch by the photocopier.

While she was at ground level, she could not resist checking the floor: no bits, no fluff. She spied two paper clips and an elastic band beneath the radiator, and with her nose inches from the pile she could see no grooves made by the vacuum brush. She sniffed and was mollified by an uplifting aroma of lemon.
Six out of ten.
New cleaners did the ‘home shift’ before she let them loose on clients. This one had answered a perpetual advert on the website, had not come recommended by Adomek and offered only lukewarm references.

She was about to turn on the photocopier – it took ten minutes to warm up – but this was the assistant’s task and Jackie was insistent she would forget her routine if Stella kept doing her job. Stella switched it on.

Two wood-veneer-topped desks, striped with bars of winter sunlight through Venetian blinds, were pushed together by the window. Creating symmetry were three-decker filing trays on each desk, marked ‘in’, ‘out’ and ‘pending’. Stella’s door was propped open with a foot-high cement lion Jackie had presented to Stella on her forty-fourth birthday last August. If she had minded that Stella had not taken it home, she had not said. Perhaps she understood that Stella’s home was the office. She only closed her door for client meetings, which were rare; decisions were made by telephone or at what Jackie persisted in calling the ‘scene of grime’.

Stella’s room was a third of the main office, partitioned by a clumsy stud wall that abutted the window frame and vibrated whenever a Tube train rumbled below, causing framed certificates and awards for best cleaning company to slide askew on their strings. Stella straightened them before placing her rucksack on the visitor’s chair and pulling her laptop and Filofax from it.

She had painted the walls white herself. The only colour was Clean Slate’s new green and light blue logo emblazoned on blocks of sticky notes, box files, company literature and the printers’ complimentary mouse mat. A spray of Clean Slate branded roller-ball pens were arranged in a papier maché pen pot, the blue and red William Morris design a gift from a client who did occasionally visit the office. Stella judged the pattern fussy, should the contract end, the pen pot would go.

She consulted her calendar – a replica of the one in Terry’s study – and was relieved that she had only one appointment: a cinema in Richmond. She switched on her computer and angled the slats in the blinds to allow in a soft light.

The calendar reminded Stella about the door keys. She toyed with the notion of abandoning the house; so what if everything was stolen? If only when people died everything to do with them vanished too. If only when relationships ended the other person just went away.

A bus with Marble Arch on its destination panel inched past the window, giving the room a temporary rosy glow.

Whatever he said, Paul must have trailed her last night and, not realising that the house belonged to Terry, assumed as he always did that she was having an affair. She wished she had thought of this while he was there; it would have calmed him down. Briskly she returned to the main office where the answer machine signalled messages with subdued pips. About to press ‘play’, she decided to get a coffee first. There was no kitchen so she ran up to the toilets on the next floor to fill the kettle.

She could deal with Paul.

The toilets were shared with the insurance broker and with both genders which meant that the seat was generally up. The landlord cleaned the room to keep overheads down and this meant that paper dispensers were rarely filled and the roller towel, grey with overuse, spooled on to the vinyl flooring of pallid lemon-coloured flowers. There were gaps under the doors so Stella only used the toilet if she was alone. She left the kettle on the sink and went into the nearest cubicle and, loath to touch it, tipped the seat with one finger. It fell on to the porcelain with a crash. This action was unnecessary for she never sat on a public lavatory, but hovered inches above.

She sipped her coffee as the answer machine clicked into gear. Transcribing calls was the assistant’s job, but Stella prepared to scribble details in the daybook in writing that no one could read.

‘I would like to speak with Miss Stella Darnell.’ Stella knew the type; a client who would find fault before the cleaning had begun. The woman paused after each sentence as if she intended Stella to respond. ‘This is Gina Cross, Isabel Ramsay’s daughter. You were her cleaner.’ Stella jabbed at the page with her pen. Ye-es, so? She drew a box around the name, and made it three-dimensional.

‘I want you to clear out my mother’s house once we have removed valuables. My number is…’ Stella was not good with numerals and had to replay the voicemail to note them in the right order.

The next three callers were a supplier and Wendy, the first cleaner to join Clean Slate, calling in sick for the first time, compounding the staffing issue. The final message was a client wanting an extra session. She left the machine off; she would answer any calls: people never tried again if they got a voice message. Clean Slate was open for business.

She copied Gina Cross’s details on a sticky note and, armed with her coffee, went to her room. Mrs Ramsay always gave the impression that Gina, Lucian and Eleanor lived with her.

Unlike many of Stella’s clients, Mrs Ramsay never boasted about her children’s careers. She tssk-tssked while she stirred clutter on her kitchen table in search of her paper knife with which she opened her junk mail as if it were eagerly awaited correspondence. If she couldn’t find the knife, she complained that one of her kids had it. Perusing each catalogue or leaflet, concocting her first drink at a few minutes past eleven each morning, splashing gin into her glass, tossing in ice cubes and dribbling in tonic, Mrs Ramsay would rail that it was her three monsters who wrecked the house, causing her to mislay things and then accusing her of absent-mindedness or senility. Her children and their friends played hide and seek all over the house day and night, creeping up and down the stairs. Stirring the liquid with the handle of a spoon, Mrs Ramsay would make Stella promise not to tell Gina, of whose disapproval she appeared afraid. Hearing Gina Cross demand that she call her ‘ASAP’, Stella understood why.

After several sessions of cleaning for Mrs Ramsay, Stella noticed she repeated the same stories, and some incidents involved Stella, as when the freezer thawed because ‘Eleanor’ had unplugged it. Another version had Gina as the culprit and Mrs Ramsay would, she informed Stella, make her daughter clean up her own mess and pay for the damage from her pocket money. Children must be taught a lesson or they got away with murder.

One day Stella was collared in the street by a distressed woman who accused Mrs Ramsay of taking her cat and calling it Crawford. Stella went inside and removed the cat, which was moulting, from the top of the boiler in the kitchen. She said nothing when she handed over the pliant orange and white animal. She remained non-committal, while the woman, now addressing her pet, divulged that the Ramsay children had not visited their mother since the year 2000.

Later that day Mrs Ramsay confided to Stella that she had found Crawford the cat dead in Elly’s room. He was curled up on her bed and she had assumed him asleep, but when she touched him he was ‘as cold and hard as a hat. Cats and dogs are harbingers of evil.’ She had decided they should stop for a coffee to get over the unpleasantness.

It did not surprise Stella that with their mother dead, her offspring were fronting up to claim their inheritance. Such behaviour, about which she made no judgements, was not unusual.

She punched in the telephone number.

‘Gina-Ware, for fantastic plastic, yes?’

Stella sat up. She had called one of her suppliers. The catalogue was in front of her on the desk because yesterday she had been weighing up their sale offer on 36-litre mop buckets with heavy-duty wringers.

‘I’m sorry, wrong number.’

She rang the number on the sticky note and the same voice answered.

Gina-Ware. Mrs Ramsay had said her son-in-law, whom she dubbed Jon-the-footrest, owned a business specializing in durable plastic products, including footrests. Gina-ware was everywhere: Jackie had the deluxe footrest for her back.

‘Hello, Stella Darnell speaking. Clean Slate. You called us about a house clearance?’

‘I’m driving. I answered because our call centre has gone down. Meet me at the house to agree a price so you can get going.’

Stella was about to offer condolences and explain that she did not give instant estimates and would quote only after scoping the job when the line went dead.

For the next hour she worked through emails, signed her way through letters Jackie had left and calculated two outstanding quotes. With half an hour before the others would arrive, she got her rucksack from the chair and dragged out the Rokesmith box files she had fled with the night before. She set them on the desk, keeping the label away from the door, and went to fetch the shredder.

Stella remembered the murder of Katherine Rokesmith. There had been a storm of publicity, but now only a few aged under forty would know details without prompting. Many other shocking events had occurred since to occupy the public’s imagination.

Terry Darnell had the afternoon off so invited his fourteen-year-old daughter to central London to see the rehearsal of the wedding of Charles and Diana. Colleagues detailed on special duty would assure them a prime position and afterwards he would take her to a restaurant – pizza or a hamburger, whatever she liked. Stella was nonchalant, saying she didn’t believe in royalty. She had never been out for a meal with Terry and the idea made her nervous about waiters waiting and lots of cutlery. Up until then they’d had fish and chips, or Terry had microwaved shepherd’s pie with tinned peas. Even this was an ordeal for the teenager who did not like chewing and swallowing in front of others. In preparation, Stella had ironed new jeans, chosen a skimpy top and planned to wear lipstick, which would ‘show him’.

Early that morning he had rung the flat to outline the tight schedule: she must be in the foyer of Hammersmith Police Station at eight in the morning. They would travel up to town with officers going on duty, which meant, he promised, that she got a ride in a panda. Her mother warned that if she was late, Terry would go without her. She would describe any arrangement with Terry in terms of the threat of what would happen if Stella fell short. An hour before she was to leave, Stella was touching up her make-up when her mother barged into her bedroom: