The Detective's Daughter (41 page)

NB: Saw Clean Slate card on IR’s fridge. Ring S.

Tried to contact D. I. Richard Hall, passed in 2001.

Talk to SD then MC.

‘Terry was good with people,’ Stella remarked after they had both read the document on the desktop. ‘So she did speak to the police.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Jack admitted.

Mrs Ramsay had not shared all her secrets with Jack, Stella noted.

‘Terry seems to have assessed her correctly: he wasn’t taken in by her charms,’ Jack said. ‘He didn’t speak to you.’ He jabbed a finger at the ‘SD’.

‘He had the wrong number,’ she admitted. She cleared her throat. ‘We need to look into Mark Ramsay. Something’s not right there.’

‘I don’t feel that was where Terry was going.’ Jack was gnawing at his thumb.

Nevertheless Stella underlined Mark Ramsay on their list of suspects, which numbered four: Hugh Rokesmith, Mark Ramsay, Paul (who surely did not count but she left him there anyway) and the wild card: the ‘nominal’ in police-speak.

They spent the next fifteen minutes exploring Terry’s computer but found nothing else. According to a receipt in his files, Terry had not had the machine long before he died. He had not created any other documents.

Jack clicked on the browser to find out the five-day weather forecast.

‘What do you care? You’re underground most of the time.’

‘Not when I’m walking.’

‘Walking! Where?’

‘It depends which page I’m on.’

‘What do you mean?’ Stella looked at her watch. It was only thirty-five minutes past eleven. She was sorry not to be meeting Ivan; she could do with a glass of wine at the end of the day.

‘I found a London street atlas on a Richmond train. It has pen marks on every page. I thought at first they were a child’s scribbles, but when I looked properly I found that the lines trace a journey. They are a sign.’

‘A sign of what?’ She had thought it was going too well.

‘Only if I complete all the journeys will I find out. I trace each one on Street View before I go in real life. It’s not cheating, it’s another way of seeing.’

‘Why would it be cheating? It’s not just a sign that someone forgot their
A to Z
?’

Jack groped in his coat and produced a filthy battered copy of the
A–Z.
Stella thought again about a therapist. She would not like Jack to go off the rails. Literally.

‘I’ll show you.’ He clicked on Google maps.

Stella grabbed his wrist: ‘Stop! It’s showing what was looked at last. Why didn’t I think of that? We can see the history of Terry’s searches.’

‘I’m walking this last page tomorrow.’ Jack was gazing at the book. He paused, then: ‘Isabel loved my tales.’

Stella found that hard to believe. Mrs Ramsay was not a good listener. She pulled the monitor towards her.

‘Pay attention, Jack. Where is Bishopstone?’

‘East Sussex. It’s where my mother grew up. She’s buried in the churchyard there. You know this; it’s in the notes. It’s near a town called… um what’s it called?’ Jack looked up and ran his finger down the screen. ‘There, Seaford. Anyway, when I’m not working I go on these expeditions following—’

‘Seaford. Are you sure?’

‘It says so there.’

‘Seaford is where Terry died.’

Jack jerked his head. He crammed the book back in his pocket and clutched at the desk to steady himself. He grabbed the mouse from Stella and enlarged the window.

‘You’re a star, Stell.’ He batted the arm of Stella’s chair.

No one but Terry or Jackie called her ‘Stell’.

Jack switched to Google Street View. ‘Your dad must have gone to see her grave or the house where she lived. Why did he do that?’

‘Like the jury going to see where Diana died?’ Stella ventured.

‘No, it was something else.’

‘His car is still in Seaford – I meant to go and get it!’ Stella exclaimed.

‘Let’s go.’ Jack leant on the desk to get to his feet, making it tip forward. He did up the few remaining buttons on his overcoat.

Stella typed ‘Broad Street’ into the Street View search. A picture of the high street where Terry had died came into focus out of a cluster of pixels. She manoeuvred the cursor along the road to the Co-op store on the left. Most pictures for Street View were taken in brilliant sunshine, giving the scenes an upbeat unreality, but the weather the day these images were taken had been overcast, cold and spitting with rain. Somehow she expected to see Terry going into the supermarket to buy his breakfast. The cursor swooped out of control and she was in the next street: a figure was heading towards the camera. Stella thought it familiar, but in the course of her job she met many people; they merged into types. Most people looked like other people.

‘Terry’s car might hold a valuable clue!’ Jack was on a treasure hunt. Ever since she had learnt his real identity Stella could not shake off the impression he was a small boy treating everything as a game. Despite bags under his eyes and lines around his mouth that made him look nearer forty than thirty-three, Jack could seem four years old.

Jack looked over at the screen and divined Stella’s motivations for looking at the Co-op better than she did herself. He spent as much time in Street View’s static landscape as he did walking the actual streets, searching the pixellated faces on sunlit pavements for the parent he had lost. Since 27 July 1981 his life had had only one purpose. He brushed Stella’s shoulder: ‘Terry had a massive coronary and wouldn’t have known about it. It’s the memory of pain or trauma that makes it bad. It’s worse for those left behind.’

Stella turned off the machine. ‘We’ll take the train so we can come back in Terry’s car together and debrief.’

Stella did not add that she wanted Jack’s company.

Saturday, 22 January 2011

Bishopstone was less than half a mile from the A259 – the route from Brighton to Eastbourne – but with no through road and any road markings or signs lost beneath the snow it was remote and timeless. All the way from Seaford Stella had kept the fan on, but Terry’s car had not warmed up by the time they found the church.

In Seaford they had searched the car, squatting down by the door sills to peer beneath the seats, but Terry had been a tidy man and there were no used tissues or chewing-gum wrappers; they found nothing.

It was late afternoon; they had been travelling for two and a half hours. Their journey had begun with an Upminster District line train to Victoria station. To avoid fuss Stella had waived expense and proposed they hail a taxi, but Jack was reluctant. He had a staff pass for the Underground and Stella, thinking it would do him good to feel in charge, agreed. He insisted they face forwards in the front carriage and had sat with his left hand clenching and unclenching, his eyes on the door to the driver’s cab at the end of the gangway like a child steering. Stella understood; her left foot would depress a phantom brake at junctions and bends whenever she was a passenger in Jackie’s car.

They had changed trains at Lewes for Seaford. There, they struggled along icy pavements, past a church, a police station and a post office, to a wide street called the Causeway, to the sea where Stella had left Terry’s car. The cars were covered with snow and Jack stomped ahead clearing registration plates until he found the Toyota.

Neither of them had considered the risk involved in moving the car. Snow had banked up around the wheels but they found a small shovel in the boot – there was also a hazard triangle and a first-aid kit – and dug around the tyres. The street was as slippery as an ice-rink and when Stella finally started the engine and manoeuvred out, the wheels spun and they slid gracefully over the camber stopping just short of the smaller shape of a motorbike. Stella coaxed the vehicle forward; the brakes were spongy and the wheels’ response to the steering approximate. They missed a parked car by inches, knocking the wing mirror, making it spring inwards, which Jack insisted on getting out to correct. At last they reached the Bishopstone junction.

The village was at the end of a long winding lane. Stella was relieved to turn off the engine and dared not contemplate the drive back. She got out of the car and leant on the front wing. The air was fresher and colder than in London and she took a long breath.

Despite their speculations on the train, they were no closer to finding out what had brought Terry to Bishopstone.

‘Why would he come here?’ she mused out loud.

‘Perhaps he had wanted to visit her grave; remind himself why he was doing it.’

‘How often do you come?’

‘Hardly ever.’

Jack had told Stella about the set numbers and knew she had found it hard to contain herself at the idea that he made life decisions on the basis of a train’s identification number. He would not admit he had come to the grave two years ago, on 6 December, because on that day his first train’s number had been 612.

‘How far are we from Charbury?’ Stella was speaking.

‘About ten miles, maybe a bit less. Why?’

‘It’s where the Ramsays have a house. Maybe we should move Mark Ramsay up the list.’

A gust of cold wind blew in from the open car door and something fluttered out from the sun visor on to Jack’s lap. He held it up to the interior light.

Newspaper had been torn roughly with no care for the text; it was probably rubbish and he was about to stuff it into his pocket, when he caught the words ‘vacuum cleaner’ in the fragment of headline:
riticize lazy security guards for failing to check vacuum cleaner.

Until he worked for Stella, Jack had not realized how much there was to know about cleaning: the equipment, cleaning agents, solutions for specific stains, hazard signs, buckets with wringers and wheels, brushes for every kind of dirt. He had stumbled upon an art form. He knew he was a good train driver but received any praise and promotion with stolid indifference. He did not care. Stella had not told him she admired his work, but let it slip to his mythical referee on the phone. He was pleased.

The article was dated 30 September 2008. The story was about the fire on the
Cutty Sark
the previous year. The incident was the major news story on the day his father had died. Jack had sat in the hospital watching the BBC lunchtime news on the monitor opposite the bed. Once, such a report would have gripped Hugh Rokesmith, who considered every eventuality when designing a bridge or a tunnel, but the world had diminished to an irrelevance and he did not respond when Jack reiterated the events of that early morning in May 2007.

Now it seemed that a Planet 200 industrial vacuum cleaner had been left on and overheated, causing a fire on the nineteenth-century clipper. Jack knew the vacuum, set on a platform with braked castor wheels at the front and a guiding bar at the back. Stella used them for commercial jobs. There had been one in the back of the van when they visited the plasterer and he had sneaked a look. Made in Italy, its stainless-steel cylinder with a little gauge was like a steam engine, although it operated on different principles. He longed to touch it, polish it and hear its motor; it was a feat of engineering. Unfortunately it wasn’t necessary for Ivan Challoner’s flat or Sarah Glyde’s house, despite its years of neglect.

Jack had been shocked to see tears running down his father’s cheeks. He wasn’t looking at the television but out of the window at the sky. Jack had never seen him cry and had walked out of the ward. He kept walking, out of the hospital, on and on until he reached the sea. He ended up in Scarborough’s Grand Hotel where he bought a coffee. While he was drinking it, a call came from the hospital. His father had died.

It was a sign.

He flipped the paper over. In jagged blue biro was a string of letters and digits in the margin: ‘CPL 628B. Does this mean anything to you?’

Stella floundered through ankle-deep snow and leant in through the open door. ‘Nope.’

‘A serial number.’ Jack handed her the paper. ‘Or a password?’

‘It’s a registration plate.’

‘Foreign maybe.’

‘No, in the UK the suffix series started in 1963, the last letter is the age of the vehicle. This is 1964. What with your number thing, I’m surprised you didn’t know that.’

Jack got out of the car and slammed the door. The sound startled rooks in the graveyard, their clattering wings and a burst of cawing broke the quiet.

‘Me too! Good work, PC Darnell, your time on traffic paid off.’

‘Terry told me.’

Jack could have said he treated numbers as a coded instruction; he dwelt on the message that they carried. His set numbers might tell him which train to pick up, but their meaning was deeper. He rarely considered numbers in the context of their own system; that was mundane.

‘Terry had a string of stolen cars in his head, he’ll have spotted this and written it on the nearest thing, no doubt while driving.’ She crumpled the paper and stuffed it in her anorak pocket.

‘I’ll show you where Katherine Rokesmith grew up.’

Jack led them up the lane and on to a track narrowed by blackthorn bushes so high they were effectively in a tunnel. Here there was less snow, but the frozen mud pitted with ice made walking treacherous, so Stella was grateful when he stopped by a gap hidden amidst foliage which she would have missed.

A gate with the name ‘Rose Cottage’ carved along the top bar was held by one hinge; beyond it a path of terracotta tiles wound through tall grasses and bushes to a glimpse of a roughly stuccoed house with missing roof tiles. It looked deserted, but for a light in a downstairs window.

‘Who lives here?’ Stella breathed.

‘No idea. When my mum’s parents died she had to move.’

Stella stepped back and tripped on a plastic milk bottle holder with an indicator dial for the milk required. Two empty bottles had toppled out. Righting the carrier, she caught the manufacturer’s name on the dial: ‘Gina-Ware’ – the company owned by Mrs Ramsay’s son-in-law; now she too was seeing signs. She dropped the bottles back in.

‘Let’s get on, the light is going.’

‘Different to St Peter’s Square, isn’t it?’ Jack was conversational on the way back to the church.