The Detective's Daughter (43 page)

Police Horses.

Stella watched the officer climb into the passenger seat and the lorry roar off in the direction of Shepherd’s Bush Green and her office.

Police. Ice. Lice. Pile. Pole. Lope. Clip. Clop. Lip. Lop. Nice.

‘Ten words is a lot to get out of one word. Clever girl!’ At six years old he could barely read. His daughter could break words up to make new ones. The idea would not have occurred to him. ‘You spelled “Like” wrong.’

‘Da-ad! It’s “Lice”. A girl in my class had them on her head. She had a comb with disinfectant put in her hair, like the wicked stepmother in
Snow White
, you remember!’

Reading Stella her bedtime story was the best bit of his day.

‘OK, but there’s no “N” in police, Stell. You can’t have “Nice”.’

‘You’re nice, so I can.’ She got down from his lap, off on some new mission.

Police. After Kate Rokesmith’s death
S
tella had willed the word and all that went with it to disappear. Jack had once counted up words visible while they sat at traffic lights and reached twenty-three: street signs, vehicles, retail signage, a T-shirt, a notice on a lamp-post about a lost wedding ring and an advertising hoarding.

The modest frontage of brown brickwork and beige cladding of the police station was three storeys high. A Lion and Unicorn supporting the police crest above the portico and the two lanterns on wrought-iron arms were the only ornaments. On each of these lanterns, Stella read ‘Police’ engraved in the blue glass.

Metal bollards at the entrance were not there when she was little and a barrier boxed in the ledge where she waited for Terry to come off shift. She had pattered back and forth, braving the drop to the pavement, singing to her mother:

‘I’m the King of the Castle.’

‘Stella, get down or you’ll be arrested.’

Hammersmith Police Station.

Terry’s castle.

Aside from a spell there in the eighties, Terry Darnell had seen out the last nine years of his service, until he retired in 2009, at the station where his career had begun in 1966.

His daughter climbed the steps he had used, the surface stained orange-brown with grit, slush puddling in a dip on the third one. Hammersmith Police Station had seen its best days. The police would move to new premises and the life that Terry had known would be history; his forty-three years of service amounting to a framed certificate, a beer tankard and the boxes of an unsolved case in his attic.

Glass doors slid aside and in the foyer it dawned on Stella that Terry would not come out to greet her. The woman behind the grille raised enquiring eyebrows; she did not know Stella.

‘I’ve come to see Detective Inspector Cashman.’

‘Is he expecting you?’

‘Yes.’

The person on the end of the phone must have said Stella was the late Borough Commander’s daughter because the woman came to life, asking if she would like tea or coffee and urging her to sit down. It might have been better to see Cashman at her flat after all, as he had offered, but to avoid him coming there she had volunteered to drop in on her way to a client. It being a Sunday, there was no client.

Afterwards she would check Terry’s camera, left charging in her kitchen. His charger was in a drawer in his desk. Jack had gone on his last
A–Z
walk, refusing to cancel despite the pointlessness of following routes traced by a stranger; he wanted time to himself, then tomorrow afternoon she had put him down to clean for Ivan and then he was coming to her flat. The thought of Ivan made her feel better and she wondered if he was enjoying Rome or Paris. He had not rung; after Paul’s full-on communication this should have been a relief, but it left her uncertain: had she only imagined that they had got on?

She sat where she used to sit, bolt upright, furthest from the desk, her rucksack on her lap. The seat, too, had changed; no longer wood, it was blue metal like a piece of Meccano. Soon, despite herself, she was keeping a weather eye on the door; alert for Terry. What would he be like? How would he be? Each time she saw him she had to get to know him all over again. Sometimes a beard, neatly trimmed, at others a moustache, or clean-shaven with a crew cut. Always a stranger.

The last time: a day’s growth of beard, milky eyes staring at nothing.

A friendly man at the counter had given her a paper and a pen saying ‘Metropolitan Police’ on its side and told her that her daddy would be late, so why didn’t she do him a picture in the meantime? Stella was not the kind of child that knew what to do with an expanse of paper and a world of possibilities. She had a colouring book in her bag, but did not say so. She wrote her name in the corner and drew a handgun with lines coming out of the barrel to show the velocity of the bullet. A voice had told her that little girls did not do guns. It must have been Terry’s.

Over the reception hatch were the names of officers who had died in the war and now Stella supposed that the idea of a gun had come from seeing these. Her thoughts were interrupted by D. I. Cashman. Wringing her hand, he had an air of hurry, as if he had left a situation that could go wrong in his absence. He held open the heavy oak door.

On the bright central staircase, Cashman issued a sober ‘Morning’ to everyone who passed them. A young man called him ‘sir’ and nodded to Stella, who nodded back. As a teenager, she had found the status conferred on her by being Terry’s daughter mortifying. By then no longer holding Terry’s hand, she would slink behind him to his palatial office with a private toilet and its door always open.

Martin Cashman’s heels were official on the parquet floor. Windows filled the passage with sunlight. Stella paused by a wooden batten on the wall in which was fixed a bronze rule reaching to eight feet.

‘This tells us the height of villains. Stand up, that’s it, good and straight. Put your back right up against it. Four foot six! You’ve grown since… since…’

He could not remember the last time he had seen Stella. She would be tall like his mum. As tall as him.

‘I’m not a villain.’

‘Course you’re not. You’re completely innocent, you!’

The rule started at four feet five inches; Stella had supposed the police did not imagine that anyone under that height could be bad. Through the window she counted nine cars in the car park below, ranged in rows of three, the number ‘10’ in blue on white roofs. The cars had changed too. Cashman was waiting. Behind him was an outdated enamelled street sign:

Borough of Hammersmith

BRAYBROOK STREET. W12

Stella had assumed the meeting would be in his office but they were going to the Braybrook Suite, the murder room for the investigation into Kate Rokesmith’s case. Cashman gave a peremptory knock on the door before opening it.

‘This was your dad’s favourite place in the station. He’d only been in the force five minutes when it happened, but I guess you know this.’

Stella said nothing. Cashman left his pad and pen on the table and went to a shelf near one of the windows. There was a large book open there; he flipped through it. He was a curator preparing to guide her through the venerated contents of his museum.

The room was used for meetings: six grouped tables around which were high-backed chairs. Commemorative silver cups were displayed in a glass-shelved vitrine. Terry taught her that word.

‘Here we are.’ Cashman beckoned to Stella.

Reluctantly she stepped past a television on a trolley and joined him.

‘That’s Terry, second from the left.’

A black and white photograph showed policemen crouched down, their hands white against the dark of their uniforms and the grey of the grass. Behind them, other men crept forward like kids playing Grandmother’s Footsteps. Terry’s face was half in view; he was kneeling, one hand supporting himself, the other hovering over the grass; he was staring down. His hair was a John Lennon-style mop and although dressed like the other officers, he looked different. Stella felt that at any minute Terry might glance up out of the image and see her.

In the background was Braybrook Street; a taxi and a police van were parked beside trimmed hedges. This was what Terry was doing instead of meeting his newly born daughter.

‘When I found the room was free, I nabbed it for old times’ sake.’ Cashman was pleased with himself. Stella managed a tight smile.

A slate plaque read:

THIS ROOM IS DEDICATED TO

CHRISTOPHER HEAD

GEOFFREY FOX

DAVID WOMBWELL

WHO WERE SHOT AND

FATALLY WOUNDED IN THE COURSE

OF THEIR DUTY AT

BRAYBROOK STREET, SHEPHERD’S BUSH, W12

12th AUGUST, 1966

Cashman sat at the table and busied himself with his pad. Stella sat opposite.

The shaving cut on his chin, fresh when Stella had seen him a week ago, had healed to a line drawn with a dark red pen.

She could have drawn a detective. That would have pleased Terry.

‘I am sorry about Paul Bramwell.’ He jotted ‘23/1/11’ on a clean page. ‘What with the old lady and more specifically your dad, this is a tough time.’ He pursed his lips.

Had Cashman brought her to the Braybrook Suite and shown her the picture of Terry to soften her up?

‘You were his girlfriend, weren’t you?’

‘It wasn’t serious.’ Stella felt herself grow hot. It would be ridiculous to cry when she didn’t feel like crying.

‘You probably knew Mr Bramwell as well as anyone. His brother hadn’t seen him for months. I want to get a sense of his last days. Did he have fallings out? Any reason to feel bad?’

Stella shook her head. Paul had a school friend he had found on Facebook and the brother; she had not wanted to meet them.

‘When did you see him last?’

‘At my office eleven days ago when we agreed to end it.’

‘Was he upset?’

‘It was a mutual decision.’

‘So he was OK with it?’

‘It was never serious.’

‘I have here that he was forty-nine, an IT engineer for Robbins and Robbins, a PC maintenance firm in Uxbridge. He had a flat near the Goldhawk Road and apart from a spell in the army had lived in Hammersmith all his life. One brother, parents deceased, single.’ He looked at Stella. ‘No kids. Is all this correct?’

‘Yes.’ Stella had not been interested in Paul’s past. She did know about the army because of a tattoo of his number on his upper arm; an arm now lifeless in a mortuary drawer. She blinked.

‘Was he depressed, suicidal? Did he bring it up, even as a joke?’

‘No.’ Stella was careful not to elaborate. She had made that mistake about Mrs Ramsay.

‘How he fetched up by a pontoon at Hammersmith Bridge is a mystery.’

‘He couldn’t swim,’ Stella volunteered.

‘Not much help to him if he could, I’m afraid. I’m sorry to put you through this, Stella, but you know the score: how did you meet?’

‘He mended an office PC and then came back to set up a local area network, an LAN.’ She was pleased to recall the acronym, although the sheer weight of acronyms in Paul’s conversation had soon palled. Now it triggered a flash of fondness. ‘How did he die?’ She steeled herself.

‘The post-mortem is in this morning. I do know he was in the water a while so I’m not sure how conclusive the results will be.’ He sat back. ‘His brother says you and Mr Bramwell were planning to marry.’

‘That was never on the cards; the brother’s got it wrong.’

A knock and a woman police constable entered with an A4 envelope. She spoke in Cashman’s ear, but Stella could hear. ‘The PM results, sir.’

‘Thanks, Mandy.’ Cashman was like Terry, he knew everyone’s names, and gave full attention if only for a second.

He withdrew sheets of paper stapled together and, tipping his chair back on two legs, consulted them. Behind him was a photograph of Sergeant Christopher Head and another of his coffin being carried from the church. Terry had gone to the joint funeral for the three fallen officers. He showed her a newspaper picture of him saluting the coffins.

‘Seems Paul had drunk a distillery’s worth of whisky. We found an empty bottle at his flat, with only one glass. There was a hundred and ninety milligrams of alcohol in his blood. By rights he shouldn’t have been able to stand. Was he a drinker?’

‘Not with me.’ One picture showed the cortège of black limousines along a rain-soaked Uxbridge Road lined with crowds huddled beneath umbrellas. On 1 September 1966, Stella was twenty days old. Terry was a recently married man with a brand-new baby daughter. Had he felt lucky that day?

‘We do have one problem. He appears to have called you the night he died. The line was open for eleven seconds.’

Stella made a show of looking puzzled.
Phone records.
She took the handset out of her pocket and keyed her way to ‘Received calls’.

‘It says here he called me at 11.03. Missed call.’ She kept her voice level.

‘You called him back moments later.’ Cashman grimaced as if the whole thing were a nuisance.

‘It must have jolted in my pocket. I forget to lock it.’ She made a show of locking the handset and placed it on the table between them as if it were a revolver she had emptied of bullets. ‘We spoke briefly – but I thought that was earlier in the week.’

‘Did he – I hate to have to ask – did he sound drunk?’

‘He did. We didn’t talk for long. He was going to the pub.’ Breathe in. Breathe out. They would not have transcripts of the conversation.

‘Did he say which one?’ She watched Cashman write ‘pub’ on his pad.

The three dead men’s expressions bore the same neutrality: prepared for duty, like Terry, officers with a job to do.

‘The Ram. He wanted me to meet him. I said no.’ If they checked where the handsets were when the conversation happened, they would see they were only feet from each other.

‘This is looking like accidental death. Paul has a gash on the back of his skull he likely got from falling. No idea what he was doing by the river. I have to say my guess is that he was urinating: his zip was undone.’ Cashman laid down the report. ‘He was unconscious, but alive when he fell into the water. I am sorry, Stella.’