The Detective's Daughter (25 page)

‘Paul’s harmless. He wouldn’t hurt me.’ She would not discuss her private life with an employee.

‘He will be back. Guys like that, they don’t give up and he wants you.’

Unlike some people who smoked roll-ups, Jack’s clothes and hair did not smell of tobacco. Stella caught shampoo, washing powder and soap on the cold air.

‘What are you doing here?’

They were climbing the steps, treading on soft snow.

‘I knew you would be here.’

‘That wasn’t my question.’

‘That was my answer.’

He had not sounded surprised when she rang, as if he had been expecting her call. Tonight he had known she would be here. She had given him a job. Had he known she would? She should feel afraid of him, but strangely she did not.

‘Have you learnt anything tonight?’

All the lights in the pub except one above the sign were off.

‘What do you mean?’ Stella knew what he meant.

‘You’re here because of the Rokesmith murder.’ He kicked up snow, making a black scar in the road.

‘How do you know?’

‘Why else would you be here at this time of night? Oh, and you were looking at the papers when I visited your office and I dare say in the pub just now.’

‘This is none of your business. My dad has died, I’m clearing out—’

‘You’re on a mission to solve the case for your old man. Nice sentiment, although I’m not sure Paul sees it that way.’

‘I’m clearing out Terry’s house. There’s no mission.’

‘Not fast enough, according to your PA.’

‘Have you been talking to my staff?’ Stella was stunned. Jackie had never betrayed her.

‘She has told me nothing; she’s quiet as the grave.’ He walked in long strides, bouncing on his heels.

‘I’ll pay you what I owe you.’ Stella was gruff. They went down the ramp into the subway. Jackie would tell her not to trust this scruffy man; he was too full of himself. His next words underlined this.

‘I’m the best cleaner you’ve ever had.’

‘No one is indispensable.’

‘We both know that is not true.’

In the tunnel Stella had to take extra steps to keep up with him, their footsteps echoing.

‘We match perfectly. Your Paul sees that. I know how people live, when they piss and shit, when they make love; if they never make love. I know when they are having affairs, keeping secrets; living a lie. I know about those who are sick of their partners and those who are sick of themselves. I know what they are thinking and I know what happens next. You need someone like me. When I clean, I see things.’

Jack stopped.

‘Are you saying you know who killed Kate Rokesmith?’ Stella tried to keep her breathing regular. It could not be him, despite the poetry and the coat; he didn’t strike her as the type.

‘I have no idea, but together we might find out. We would make a good team.’

‘There’s no basis to think that and anyway why do you care?’

‘I don’t care. I like puzzles. Why do you care?’

‘I don’t care either.’ Stella directed her key at her van and the locks shot up.

‘I’ll come to yours in the morning and see where you’re up to in the files.’

‘I can manage on my own, thanks.’

‘It’ll speed things up if there’s two of us.’

‘No, you’re all right. Like I said, I’ll manage. Thank you.’ Only when she reached the traffic lights where the old Commodore had stood did Stella realize she no longer had her scarf.

Jack watched until Stella had driven away and then returned to the church. Pushing through the bushes, he sat with his back to the Leaning Woman. Sheltered from the snow by sycamore branches overhead, he struck a match into his hand and lit a roll-up.

In the shadow of the statue, he stroked the London street atlas in his pocket. The end was in sight; he only had a few pages to walk. This was not good for so far the journeys had led him nowhere.

He had not known of Stella’s existence until he read about her father’s death in the paper and saw her name; it explained the dark house and the missing car. He should have realized that the one he needed was the detective’s daughter. It must be someone methodical, who did not let emotion interfere with their thinking and would worry at the problem like a terrier with a lamb bone. Stella Darnell was that someone.

While Stella arranged ideas logically and was focused and ordered, he depended on intuitions and dreams to make signs out of numbers and chance events and divined messages out of random words.

Stella would need to be in charge; he liked that about her. He must not act too soon. If she were not in control, he would not get the best out of her. She was not especially perceptive; that would be his job.

He got up and rested his cheek against the sculpture’s concrete flank. Under the sycamore and in the shadow of St Peter’s Church, she was dusted with only a light coating of snow; he brushed it off.

Jack knew what Stella had been thinking when she drove away. She had sized him up and, although dubious, was interested and would trust him. Until it was necessary, he would not let her glimpse what he was really like. He knew too that she did not think he had killed Katherine Rokesmith. That she would reach that conclusion in the face of so little evidence was what attracted him.

Smiling to himself, Jack ground his cigarette out on the plinth. He blew on the mark and pocketed the stub. He would like to tell Stella that whatever the evidence it did not mean he was incapable of murder.

Friday, 14 January 2011

The buzzer went. Stella flicked a dishcloth over the counter and draped it on the dish-rack. She stopped to straighten it unhurriedly; it would be Paul. She would let him in and get it over with. She dried her hands and squirted a bead of hand moisturizer into her palm from a wall-mounted dispenser. On her way through the sitting room, she did an unconscious sweep for anything she did not want him to see. The files. She scooped up the papers, crammed them in the boxes and put them behind the table next to her rucksack. She decided to leave her laptop; it gave nothing away.

Apart from the furniture there was nothing else, although Stella did not consider that the picture-less walls, uninterrupted grey carpet, and bland, blond furnishings would reveal more to any visitor than an empty coffee mug, pieces of opened post or a battalion of ornaments could. She nudged a coaster in line with another.

Paul had his back to the security camera lens almost out of shot. Stella spoke into the receiver: ‘Hello.’ She released the lock; the figure vanished and through the intercom she heard the thud of the lobby door.

A rat-a-tat-tat inches from her face made her jump and instinctively retreat along the passage. Paul had run up the stairs. Not for the first time she was grateful there was no letterbox. She regretted letting him in. He did not knock again, but he was still there. She pattered back to the door and squinted through the spy hole.

She was staring at Jack Harmon.

She opened the door suddenly and was gratified to see him start with surprise.

He was dressed the same as the day before: black wool trousers, a black polo neck and a baggy black jacket draped from his thin frame as from a hanger. His leather shoes – Crockett & Jones’ Oxfords – surprised her for despite scuffed toes and frayed laces they lent substance to the unkempt appearance.

‘I said not to come.’

‘I’ve brought your scarf.’ He hung it on a hook in the little vestibule by the door and stalked past her down the passage, behaving as if he was at home. Stella hurried after him into the living room.

Landing with a crash, like a small boy, Harmon sprawled on the sofa, one leg dangling over the arm, the plastic covering protesting as he wriggled to get comfortable. Although he had shaved and washed his hair, she was relieved that Ivan Challoner was unlikely to meet him and hoped that any encounter would take place after she had issued Jack with his Clean Slate uniform.

At nine Jackie had rung to relate what she had missed at work the day before. Stella told her she would be sorting out Terry’s house which might go on until Monday so would take no calls. She wanted to say this applied particularly to Paul, nor must Jackie take pity on him and make him tea in the office, but could not bear to say his name or think about him. Jackie had been pleased that Stella was getting on with her father’s things and had offered to help, which made Stella guilty because she had never lied to Jackie. Now it occurred to her that were Harmon to attack her, no one would know he had been here. No one would hear and the flat, equipped with every cleaning agent, was an ideal space in which to erase all trace of violent crime. She dismissed the thought.

‘What’s the point of this?’ Jack slapped the plastic on the sofa.

‘It protects the fabric. Look, thanks for bringing the scarf, but—’

‘From what?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘If you never take off the cover, it’s a plastic sofa.’

‘Now you’re here, do you want tea or coffee?’ Stella had bought the sofa at a good price simply for sitting on. Plastic could be wiped down and she would do so after Jack Harmon had gone.

‘I don’t drink tea or coffee.’

‘Let’s get to business then.’ Stella pulled out a chair from under the dining table and reached down for the file boxes.

‘Please could I have a glass of milk?’

In the kitchen Stella poured half of what little was left in the pint container into a glass and took it back to Jack. He drained it in one go and wiped the milky moustache off his upper lip with the sleeve of his coat.

A film of condensation on the window pane merged the sky, the river, the trees and the snow into a stratified white-grey mass. With a plastic squeak, Jack leapt up, holding the empty glass and rubbed the pane with the milk-stained sleeve. Through the porthole the only movement in an otherwise static scene was a cyclist speeding along the towpath on the far bank. This angle was unfamiliar to Stella; she was never here in the day and, preferring to eat at the kitchen counter, had not until now sat at the table.

‘This isn’t everything surely?’ It was not a question. Harmon settled himself at the head of the table and waved a hand at the two boxes beside Stella’s laptop.

‘The rest is at the house.’

Harmon sighed. ‘Have you been through them?’

‘I read the docket which contains the report Terry wrote, and an index to the papers with a front sheet listing reasons officers gave for signing the file out of the General Registry.’

From the depths of his overcoat Jack Harmon produced an envelope of tobacco bound with an elastic band and set about rolling a cigarette with nicotine-stained fingers while he read.

He laid the completed cigarette in a slim silver cigarette case where three others were already in a row and read on. Soon he had made six cigarettes and had nearly finished Terry’s report. He was fast. After a bit, without taking his eyes from the page, he shrugged out of his coat, letting it fall over his chair. Stella wanted to hang it up in the hall, but was not keen to touch it.

She took out some papers from the second box and prepared to work, but he had her notes and, besides, she couldn’t concentrate. The angular pale man was like a ghost in her flat, the bleak morning light emphasizing his cheekbones and racoon circles around his eyes. He scanned her pages of neat script, sniffing at intervals.

A box of tissues lay beside a flat-screen television and DVD player on the shelf unit. Next to these were various illustrated books on plants and flowers that, despite her having no garden, Terry kept giving her. Stella fetched them and put them beside Jack but he ignored her.

‘You have been thorough,’ he murmured eventually. It had taken him twenty minutes, and still disgruntled at him being there at all Stella was tempted to test him.

‘So you are carrying on where your dad left off?’ He rolled another cigarette although the case was full. Suddenly Stella knew where she had smelled the tobacco before.

She dragged her rucksack out from under the table and found the plastic bag in one of the many zipped side pockets. She shook the squashed cigarette end out on to the glass top.

‘You’ve been to Mrs Ramsay’s.’ She managed a whisper. ‘You were in her house. I thought this was hers.’

Jack licked along the strip of paper with a tongue coated yellow, and looked at the filter. ‘Yes, that is mine.’ He shot her a boyish grin. ‘I was using it as a bookmark.’

‘I assumed she was going mad when she said someone was there.’ Stella gripped the sides of her chair. ‘She was telling me about you. I ignored her.’ She swallowed hard.

‘I wouldn’t beat yourself up. Isabel lived in another time and I literally “played” along. She was happier with men and children. You gave her what she wanted too.’

‘I was supposed to be there, I was invited.’ Mrs Ramsay had not invited her; she paid her on a monthly basis to be in her house.

‘So was I. The difference being, no money changed hands.’ He was haughty.

‘The police think she was murdered.’

‘Since when did you believe the police?’

‘There’ll be proof you were there, a fingerprint, a—’

‘A cigarette rich with DNA?’ He flicked the butt at her. It spun over the polished wood and landed in Stella’s lap. ‘The book was a message for you. I was too clever there, it was lucky you turned up when you did.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘
Our Mutual Friend
, but you ignored the sign. I realize now that the direct approach works better with you.’ He gave a throaty laugh.

‘She said she heard doors creaking, and the fifth stair, and she fretted about children playing: in the basement, the garden. She got scared – and all the time it was you.’ Stella remembered how Mrs Ramsay had been tormented by losing stuff; she had tried to tell Stella but Stella had humoured her and congratulated herself on doing a few extra hours for nothing. Mrs Ramsay had known she was being mollified; she never waved goodbye.

‘We can’t work together if you break the law.’

‘I was invited. How is that breaking the law? Besides, you’re not so squeaky clean. Compromising a crime scene? When did you plan to hand this evidence to Cashman? You shouldn’t even have been there, but hey, special treatment for the detective’s daughter! As I said last night, we are a match.’ He brandished Terry’s report: ‘Did you see, your dad was the last person to take the file out.’