The Detective's Daughter (40 page)

‘His work hasn’t heard from him since Wednesday.’

She hung up and looked at Jack. He appeared to have resumed reading, his glasses on the end of his nose, the cut on his hand livid against his skin and his face pointedly averted from the polo shirt.

The only person Paul could have met on the way to the pub was Jack.

He raised his eyes.

‘I slipped on the ice, Stella,’ he said. ‘Have you checked he hasn’t cottoned on to Ivan Challoner? He may have seen you with him. Why don’t you give your friendly dentist a call?’

‘Let’s not talk about Paul or my dentist.’

Stella went to the toilet. As she dried her hands, she thought it was likely that Paul had seen her with Ivan. She could not ask him if Paul had been to see him. She hit upon an idea.

She pulled her mobile out of her trouser pocket and rang his surgery.

The starchy receptionist answered.

‘I wanted to check the dates of my appointments with Ivan’ – she deliberately used his first name – ‘as I’m filling in a claim form. They might have sent an insurance rep round, they’re pretty diligent.’

‘It’s not usual. I give patients their receipts and they post them.’

‘No one has been in asking about me? Would they have got in touch with Ivan directly?’

‘I am sure they would not. However,
Mr
Challoner is not here, he’s speaking at a conference in Rome and will not return until next week.’

‘Thanks for your help.’

There was no reason why Ivan should have told Stella he was going away, but still she was disappointed that he had not mentioned it on Monday when he had talked of their meeting soon. Presumably it would not be soon.

Jack was absolutely still on the sofa, the Clean Slate polo shirt balled up in his hands.

‘Katherine Rokesmith was wearing a scarf the colour of Pantone 375.’ His voice was level.

Stella took the polo shirt off him and folded it.

‘It was not on her when they found her body.’

‘Her killer took it to remind him of her. He has a box of trophies.’ Jack’s face was almost the white of the sofa.

Stella fitted the shirt back into the bag and placed it on the table out of his sightline.

‘We have the murder weapon,’ she said softly, and drew up a dining chair close to the sofa, their knees touching: ‘Jack, he strangled your mum with her own scarf.’

I saved you.

He had planned saying this to her all the way home. The curtains were drawn, lights on and the fire lit. He was her hero and she expected nothing less.

You’re mine
, she would say and he would feel the truth of it.

He tucked her in, promising to come upstairs after a quick drink.

‘You have a wonderful reputation.’ She stroked his hair. ‘You must do everything you can to preserve it. You have saved us both!’

She drifted into sleep. It was his reputation he had saved, he thought, contemplating the bruise on his face in the hall mirror. It would show and he would have to explain it. She was the only person he could tell. Once he had discussed it with her, he felt better and everything shrank to normal.

His mother used to say that most things looked better after a night’s sleep and something about a trouble shared.

The man should have minded his own business, she agreed. The man had been itching to start a fight, he told her.

He poured himself a finger of whisky. His hand shook and he caught the neck of the bottle against the glass, splashing liquid on the table. She was good to him. Not a day went by when he did not tell himself this.

It was too dark to see the rooks. He raised the glass to his reflection in the kitchen window.

‘
You saved me
,’
he whispered.

Saturday, 22 January 2011

Mrs Ramsay’s house was finished. Her daughter had sent a consignment of bright yellow plastic crates from her company: Gina-Ware. They had packed them with crockery, vases, figurines, books; the paraphernalia of fifty years would go into storage. Stella had sprayed the rooms with a sandalwood and ginger spray from the Body Shop she had not used before. She wished Mrs Ramsay could offer an opinion, although feared she might consider the scent dreary. It was not usual for the family of the deceased to ask Clean Slate to sort the contents and Stella had disliked taking responsibility for deciding what to keep and what to take to charity or the rubbish tip. Lucian and Eleanor had not been in touch; Mrs Ramsay would have called them naughty. Stella had been wary of throwing out something valuable and knew Gina Cross would not welcome the number of crates.

She had not thrown out the spiral notebooks indented with Mrs Ramsay’s heavy script and stained with multiple mug rings: the weekly task lists. These were still on the shelf in her bedroom. Stella had read them, but found nothing to shed light on why Mrs Ramsay had not told the police the truth.

Each list – addressed to Lizzie, the Ramsay’s live-in help in the sixties – was dated with the completed item scrawled through. Many were carried over: ‘Clear Mark’s Study’ appeared frequently and was never crossed off. There was no study; Stella guessed it must be at their country house. A lot of the items – cleaning, general tidying – were delegated to children. Mrs Ramsay would cook special meals:
Boeuf en Daube popped up the most.
Later notebooks covered a greater span of time but the names assigned for the tasks stayed the same, with Mrs Ramsay seemingly unaware that they no longer figured in her daily life.

In the last notebook it had been Stella not ‘Lizzie’ who actioned: ‘Sort Broom Cupboard, Do basement and Tidy coal cellar.’ She had shovelled damp coal in the hole beneath the pavement, the cramped chamber enmeshed in spider webs as thick as rags. For no apparent purpose, she moved coal from one part of the cellar to the other. Mrs Ramsay did not light fires. Stella would tell Gina Cross about the coal, but did not think she would want it.

Stella did not feature in Mrs Ramsay’s notebooks.

She should arrange handing over the keys but was delaying the moment. She locked the front door and walked around the corner to Terry’s house.

Jack arrived at 11 a.m. on the dot as she was booting up the computer.

‘How did you get in?’

‘You left the back door open.’

‘Yes, but … OK. We need to crack this password.’

‘It’s possible to bypass the BIOS with a desktop computer, but newer laptops have a security chip on the motherboard. We need an engineer; Paul would know, you needn’t explain why we want it. Just a thought.’ Jack knelt down beside her chair, and picked up Terry’s silver ballpoint. Once more Stella breathed in a mixture of washing powder and fabric rather than stale tobacco smoke.

‘Can you really not guess it? Your dad wasn’t that complicated, was he?’

‘We’ve been through this. You carry your parents’ vital numbers and now I understand why. Plus you’re obsessed with numbers. All the same, did you know your father’s password?’

‘My mother’s birthday,’ Jack replied promptly, sucking on the ballpoint.

‘Terry wouldn’t be using
my
mum’s birthday. She still complains he never remembered it. She holds a grudge that Terry was on a job the day I was born.’

‘What was that?’

‘Twelfth of August 1966.’

‘No, the job.’

‘The Braybrook Street shooting.’

‘Do I know about that?’

‘You’re too young.’ Stella was dismissive. ‘So was I, come to that.’

‘When was it? What was it?’ He pulled forward a blank police notebook from the pile Stella had yet to clear.

‘Three policeman were shot dead in Braybrook Street, West London, when they approached a suspicious group of men in a car. It’s right by Wormwood Scrubs Prison, so at first it was assumed they had escaped. I had just been born and Terry was on his way to Hammersmith Hospital, and was diverted to join the search. They didn’t find the ringleader, Harry Roberts, for three months. He camped out in Epping Forest. Terry didn’t see me for two days.’

‘I vaguely remember reading about it.’

Jack was bluffing. He did not like it when she knew something that he did not.

Stella carried on: ‘The room, used as the incident room at Hammersmith Police Station in the eighties, is named in honour of the fallen officers: the Braybrook Suite. They ran Kate’s investigation from there.’ She trundled the mouse around the mat; the pointer did not show up on the screen. ‘It’s a meeting room now with pictures and a plaque to the officers. It was the worst loss of police life since 1911 and wasn’t matched until the IRA Harrods’ bomb in 1983 when another three officers died.’

‘Considering your view of the police, you’re well informed.’ Jack got up and went over to the window.

‘Terry showed me the room.’

‘So, when
was
your birthday?’

‘I said, twelfth of August 1966.’

‘That makes you…’

‘It makes me older than you. Can we get back to breaking into this thing?’

‘Try your birthday.’

‘That’s one date Terry will not have used.’

Jack came over and, leaning over her shoulder, pecked in: ‘12-08-1966’.

The screen returned an incorrect password.

‘Told you.’ Stella flung back in the chair, pushing it away from the desk, just missing Jack’s feet.

‘Three of his colleagues were killed on that day and his daughter was born. Terry cared all right.’ Jack frowned. ‘One, two, zero, eight, six, six.’

Password incorrect, press return for a retry.

He shook his head. ‘What time were you born?’

‘How would I know? You know that too, I suppose.’

‘Do you know what time you were born?’ Jack repeated.

‘No.’

Stella swivelled the chair back and forth. She could get crates like Gina’s to store Terry’s stuff until she had time to deal with it. Gina-Ware offered good rates.

‘Where’s your birth certificate?’

‘Certificates only have dates.’

‘Do you still have Terry’s files here?’

‘The case files? You know I don’t, they’re at the flat.’

‘His personal files, the stuff you’re meant to be giving to the lawyer.’

Stella tipped a languid hand at the buff concertina file on the floor where she had left it the night she had fled Terry’s house. That seemed a lifetime ago.

‘You’ve already been through that. This is a waste of time, Jack.’

‘We’ll see.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Eight six six!’

‘What?’

‘My set number on Tuesday was your birthday. See? It’s a sign!’

To humour him, Stella typed in the numbers.

‘No luck.’

Jack wasn’t listening. He spilled the papers on to the carpet tiles and, cross-legged, scrutinized each paper, giving a running commentary: ‘His dad’s death certificate, his leaving certificate – exemplary service – meant to show you this, not that bad a detective then. You should display this. His mum died four years after you were born, do you remember her?’

‘Four is too young to remember anything.’ Nana.

‘Quite possibly.’ Jack bit the side of his thumb.

Hunched over the papers, Jack Harmon – or Jonathan Rokesmith – could have been playing cards or arranging his toy cars. With a shock Stella saw why she had taken the risk of allowing this shabby man who looked in need of a meal and older than thirty-three into her flat and on to her cleaning schedule. She understood why she was prepared to be alone with him in a succession of empty houses late at night. She had a new reason for finding who killed Jonathan Rokesmith’s mother. Against her better judgement, she liked Jack.

Her mobile rang.

It was Ivan. She answered, pretending she did not know the caller so that he would not guess she had programmed his number into her handset.

‘I am so sorry but I will have to postpone dinner for a bit. I’m at a conference in Paris. Paediatric dentistry is not really my thing, but one has to show one’s face. I’ll be away until next week. May I call you when I’m back and see how you’re fixed? I feel rotten, I should have rung earlier.’

Stella assured Ivan that she did not mind. Privately she was rather relieved: eating in a restaurant twice in one week was a challenge she did not relish. She enjoyed the fact that the dentist’s receptionist had got it wrong; she had said he was in Rome.

‘Here we are!’ Jack waved a faded pink card. ‘Stella Victoria Darnell – Victoria was his mother’s name by the way. Born in Hammersmith Hospital, weighs ten pounds, one ounce – that’s
heavy
– on Friday the twelfth of August 1966 at two minutes past midday. Your adoring parents sent this to their friends and relations announcing you were here!’

He crawled over to the desk and kneeling up, tapped in the keys like a pianist picking out a melody.

‘One, two and a zero, then another two. A one, a two and zero-eight. I’ll bet he dropped the nineteen so lastly six and six.
Voilà!
’

Nothing happened. Then the hard drive light on the left of the keyboard flickered, the screen went blue and up came the Windows password request. Jack repeated the sequence of numbers. They were in.

‘Most important day of his life,’ Jack said under his breath.

[I. Ramsay Statement, T Darnell 11092010.docx]

Isabel Ramsay, 77. Flirts like a girl. Complimenting her jacket got me indoors despite my being police and her not liking Hall. (Looked up: D. I. Hall – Howland case 1968.). Mrs Ramsay appears demented, talks as if kids still young and husband still alive. Could be shamming.

Showed her local paper piece on village hall opening in Sussex (Charbury). She admitted lying. Didn’t think it serious, ‘silly mistake’. Possibly acting. Was in Sussex until mid afternoon. Thinks husband (Prof. Mark Ramsay, fifty-six at time of 29/7/81, died 1999, likely suicide but coroner ruled Acc. Death) saw Kate R. Doesn’t know and never asked. Could be covering for him. ‘He is a doctor. He has signed the Oath.’ Became animated and insisted the husband did not know she had ‘made stupid mistake’. I told her she was compellable to give evidence against her spouse: she tried to end conversation. When I pushed the point that Ramsay had not come forward to contradict her evidence she said: ‘He loved me.’ Said this phrase several times, her lie possibly because she can’t remember and not hiding evidence.