The Detective's Daughter (57 page)

A strip of light missed his hiding place by inches. He heard a chink of glass and peeped through his fingers. Challoner was lifting a bottle of whisky out from a wooden case stuffed with straw. He left and closed the door, but Terry did not move; he might be calling the police. Then he considered what he had seen: a shrine to a murdered woman. Calling the police was one action Challoner would not take. He got up and rolled his shoulders to encourage circulation.

Between him and the external doors was a shape shrouded in stiff tarpaulin. Wedged in tight, between it and the wall, Terry tugged ineffectively at one of the cords holding the tarpaulin; it was tightly knotted. He tried to undo it, but it would not budge. He laid the torch on the concrete floor and pulled his keys out of his trouser pocket. He sawed the cord between the teeth of the mortice key; old and frayed, it gave way and he snatched and tugged at the canvas until he had created enough slack to lift it free.

In the feeble light of the failing torch he knew what he was looking at. He pulled at the canvas until he could poke his torch beneath.

There were newspapers on the floor. He tore off a scrap and scribbled the number down.

He heard footsteps above.

The person might see the quilt on the bedroom floor and realize they had an intruder.

The garage doors were locked with two rusted bolts, top and bottom; after one desperate tug, the top one released with a bang like a gunshot. Terry went to work on the lower bolt and grazed his hand before he eventually wrenched it out of the floor. The door shuddered loudly when he opened it enough to squeeze through. He closed it behind him. In the throes of another flush, the cold air was welcome; he mopped his face with his handkerchief. He had pulled his shoulder at some point and it ached. His strained ankle hurt and his breathing was like sucking on a blowtorch. He was out of condition; when this was over – how extraordinary that he could think of the Rokesmith case as over – he would follow doctor’s orders and get fit.

This time Terry risked jumping down from the gate into the churchyard. He executed a perfect landing on the tiled path and wished Stella had been there to see it.

Terry was woken by a pain in his cheek where the armrest had been digging into him. The papers had dropped from his hand and were scattered in the well beneath the front passenger seat. He gathered them up and, trying to stretch, hit his shin on the window. Terry was in the habit of taking documents from the case files when he left the house, hoping to spot something new. He smoothed out on his lap the psychiatrist’s reports on the boy in the weeks after the murder. He had attended all the meetings, desperate that Jonathan would speak and describe his mother’s killer.

He climbed out of the car, his damp shirt sticking to his skin. Seven forty-five and it was barely light. He had slept over eight hours, yet he did not feel better for it.

His bladder was full. He looked up and down the road; his was the only car parked in the seaside bays. Opposite was a recreation ground and in the distance there were already lorries on the A259. Out of sight, below a bank of pebbles, came the wash and hush of the tide. He clambered over a wall separating the beach from the road, crossed a concreted walkway and took jumping strides, his feet sinking into the shingle, down to the shoreline. Dark-grey sky merged with iron-grey sea. He laid the papers down, weighing them with a chunk of bleached wood, and peed. He swayed as he did up his zip. His head was a mush as if he had been drinking. Last night had been the first night for weeks when he had not had a drink and nor had he eaten.

Far off he made out a yellow dot. The Newhaven–Dieppe Ferry returning to Britain. Tucking in his shirt and doing up his cuffs, this sight cheered Terry. He would invite Stella to France, they would go for the day because she wouldn’t be able to spare much time. Like him, her work came first.

Stella scampered over the beach when the water receded and waited, hands on hips. She bellowed at the sea: her words got lost in the rush of shingle dragged by the water, but he knew what they were.

‘I’m not scared of you!’

The water rushed at her; Stella belted off pell-mell, squealing when froth lapped at her heels catching her sandals.

Terry swept her up into his arms high above the sea.

‘Come on, Stell, let’s get an ice cream,’ he shouted. She scrubbed at his hair, her legs encrusted with sand. Maybe he’d buy himself one too.

A burst of wind buffeted him and shifted the wood. The pages flew into the air. Terry snatched at them, but they whirled towards the surf, fluttering like birds in the dawn sky. Helpless, he gazed out to sea; he did not need the reports, he could practically recite them word for word.

It was a steep climb up the shingle and twice, his balance poor, he stumbled on to his knees.

He fell into the front seat, shivering, his neck stiff from sleeping awkwardly. His jacket pulled at his shoulders, somehow making his chest ache. These days he had pain somewhere all the time. He was too old to camp out in a car. Yet this morning nothing could dampen his spirits.

He unscrewed the lid from his flask. He could have done with coffee last night but had forgotten it. Too exhausted to drive to London, he had told himself he had no deadline to meet, no press conference to attend. Ivan Challoner had no idea; he could take his time.

Terry had solved the case that had haunted him for decades.

Instead of going home he had found his way to the sea and, scrunched up on the back seat, covered with a skimpy picnic rug tainted with de-icer fluid, his jacket a pillow, had fallen into a thick sleep, dreaming of Jonathan Rokesmith and his bear named Walker.

Ivan Challoner would provide a plausible reason for the flowers; he would claim they were a tribute to Kate’s years in Bishopstone where his family had lived for over a century. He would not be able to explain the stuff in the house. He would finally pay for his crime.

It was tempting to call the station, but Stella must be the first to know. He would show her police work in action. She was like him, she was thorough and methodical: together they would bring Ivan Challoner to justice.

He poured coffee and balanced the cup on the dashboard while he did up the flask. Steam clouded the windscreen. The liquid tasted of plastic.

He would buy breakfast in Seaford and call Stella. They would make a plan.

Terry spelled out his daughter’s name in the steam on the glass with a forefinger. He flopped back in the seat, catching a whiff of himself: sweat and greasy hair. He puckered his nose and scratched his unshaven cheek with distaste. A clean and fastidious man, he disliked being unkempt. He would shower and shave before he saw Stella. He wanted to look good. He undid another button on his shirt – torn now – to ease the pressure on his chest. He checked to see if absently he had clicked on the safety belt and found that he had not. He shifted to release his jacket, which had rucked up behind and pain came like a stitch. He had drunk the coffee too fast. Terry felt every day of his sixty-eight years.

The sky was lightening towards the west. The steam had evaporated, and where he had written ‘Stella’ were vague finger dabs. He took out his handkerchief to blow his nose and the slip of newspaper with the registration plate fell out. He slotted it above the sun visor while he rubbed his chest to mitigate the cramps.

Terry followed signs in Broad Street and found a car park behind the Co-op. He paid for half an hour – the shortest period; at the outside he would be fifteen minutes – and displayed the ticket.

Seaford was a retirement town. This early on a parky January morning there were few locals about. It was too quiet. Terry could not imagine growing old here. This thought was contradicted by a derisive cry of seagulls above him. He retreated into the heated supermarket where he snatched up a ham roll from the chiller cabinet, hesitated, then made it two; he had missed supper. He grabbed a can of Coke. He broke into another sweat and, swaying, put out a staying hand. He needed to eat, that was all.

He waited in the queue, pressing the cool can to his cheek; only one checkout was open and the cashier was slow, examining each item as if it was foreign to her. Jonathan had thrown away the green crayon because he had not wanted the colour in the box. He had drawn Challoner’s house in black and white. Terry cast around for another cashier. He ached; the food in his arms was heavy; the can was like lead.

He was being watched.

A small girl was by the counter, leaning back on it, a teddy bear clamped to her nose.

Stella.

He would not wait until he was in the car, he would ring Stella outside the shop before her day got under way. Terry winked at the little girl and quick as a flash she vanished behind the wire baskets and peered at him through the holes.

[J. J. Rokesmith, 13 September 1981]

When Jonathan returned, Walker the teddy bear was on the detective’s knee. He saw this immediately because Walker is his benign witness. Before he begins an activity he turns the bear to face where he has decided to be so that he is observed by him.

In this final session I began by giving Jonathan a task, one I have broached before. The adults: the detective and female sergeant, the female social worker and father were silent while I reiterated how Jonathan might help catch the bad person. If he had not seen anything, he could not help. He must not make up stories to please the police or me. He did not speak.

There was five minutes left when Jonathan came in from the garden. He hesitated on the threshold, apparently considering removing Walker from the detective, who remained neutral. He did not smile in case Jonathan interpreted this as triumph and decided he had ‘captured’ the toy. Nor was he stern, which might imply he had removed the bear as punishment. The impression given was that Walker had chosen his lap. Jonathan would see that if Walker was ‘in the detective’s corner’ then D. I. Darnell must be a good man. He returned to his table and sat still. The questions resumed in a light voice – Walker was doing the talking:

Did you see a man talking to your mummy?

No answer.

Were you there when the man hurt your mummy?

No answer.

What colour hair did the man have?

No answer.

At the end of the session the boy trotted over to the detective and put his face close to Walker’s face, glaring at him, implying betrayal. Then he collected him and left.

This time he did not shoot the detective.

Terry patted his jacket. He had left his wallet in the car. He felt himself redden; his breathing hurt – there was no air in the shop. The little girl had gone. Behind him the queue had backed up to the drinks aisle. Terry was about to abandon his breakfast when he found his wallet. He had forgotten his new jacket had inside pockets but was too tired to explain and handed over a ten-pound note. Always prepared, he had been to the cashpoint before staking out Challoner’s surgery.

Terry lifted the carrier bag and nodded to the cashier. He wanted in some oblique way to share his buoyant mood, to say his daughter had bought his wallet and that he was this far from catching a murderer. A woman jolted him; he was in the way, so he left.

Janet, his colleague, had gone to the car but Terry had been finishing his notes, grabbing some peace. It was a sweltering afternoon; the air in the consulting room deadened even with the garden door open. He was exhausted then too. Terry had been invisible to the boy, being either a detective or in this session a bear, and Jonathan had stayed mute, so that was that: dead end. The case was cold.

The boy appeared, holding his bear by the ear.

‘All right, Jonny?’ Without thinking, he spoke to the boy as he would his daughter.

Terry had never heard the voice before.

‘You have to know a very important thing.’ The boy was confidential.

‘Yes?’ Terry kept still; he did not call for a witness. Walker the bear stared at him with button eyes.

‘It’s important that you know.’

‘What should I know?’

‘My mummy is dead.’

Terry Darnell faltered by the trolleys in the supermarket entrance. Until then he had been too preoccupied with catching Kate Rokesmith’s killer to remember this bald fact.

In the search for his wallet he had not come across his phone. It was in the car. No, it was not in the car. It had been in his pocket when he was in Challoner’s garage. He had mistaken it for his torch. He still had the torch but not the phone. Where was it?

He had dropped it in the garage. Challoner would know the police were on to him.

He could not call Stella.

The street was busier: sunlight suffused the mist, cars had parked along the kerb and pedestrians jostled on the pavements, wheelie shopping baskets rumbling, motorized buggies clearing a path.

Darkness squeezed him from the sides. The carrier bag was too heavy.

‘My mummy is dead.’

Darkness pushed from above.

Stella!

And then from below.

A woman coming out of the Co-op knocked into the elderly man who had dawdled in the queue. She tutted and then exclaimed when he fell down in front of her.

Later she would tell police how the gentleman had toppled over like a toy soldier. She had shouted into the shop for someone to call an ambulance. She was a nurse and had tried to resuscitate him, but had established before the paramedics arrived that he was dead.

Monday, 21 February 2011

Mrs Ramsay’s house had been empty for weeks. Stella caught a whiff of lavender in the air. Her feet clattered in the hall, the rug and hat stand had gone, dust had settled on the glazing bars and fine cobwebs occupied cornices. It needed another clean, but she would not say or Gina Cross would think she was touting for more work.

Gina Cross had not visited the house, nor had her brother and sister. Stella was used to the vagaries of families: she not been able to deal with her dad’s house. Nonetheless, it saddened her: when she wasn’t railing against their carelessness, Mrs Ramsay had spoken fondly of her children; for some reason they did not feel the same way about her.