The Detective's Secret (29 page)

Stella didn’t know about ‘dying love’. Jackie said she did the leaving to avoid being left and suggested she give people more time.

Stella had put last night’s text out of her mind, but sooner or later she would have to agree to speak to David. She shifted Stanley out of reach of Lulu.

Stella did know the gritty feeling of betrayal. It had kept her arms stiffly by her side when her dad waved at her before he drove away from her mum’s flat the day they separated. She hadn’t let either parent carry the little pink case her dad had given her for ‘going away’ to the new flat in Barons Court. He hadn’t remembered she hated pink. Stolidly she had lugged it up the steps into the cold lobby of the mansion block, clacking across the tiles all by herself.

She was startled by a text. It was Jack.

Ask Lulu C about the glove.
Why did that matter?

‘Lulu, do you know—’

Lulu was already out of the van. By the time Stella had untangled herself from her belt and the dog’s lead, Lulu had knocked on Nicola Barwick’s front door and was stamping her feet on the step, against the cold or perhaps with lack of patience.

‘I know you’re in there!’ Lulu smacked the flat of her hand on the glass pane.

The door opened.

‘Where is Nicky?’ Lulu demanded.

‘I’m afraid she’s not here. Can I help?’

‘This is her house,’ Lulu insisted.

‘Lulu, let’s go,’ Stella murmured.

‘I know she’s here. I have seen her.’

‘She’s moved.’ The woman looked genuinely regretful.

‘I’m her friend,’ Lulu asserted.

‘I’m sorry, but—’

Stella knew what the woman was thinking. If Nicola Barwick had wanted a friend to know where she was, she would have told her.

‘It’s a mistake. I’m sorry,’ Stella said to the woman, who turned to her.

‘Stella Darnell!’ She put out her hands. ‘You haven’t changed a bit!’

Stella backed against a holly bush by the door, hardly aware of the prickles. It was the client who had reported her to the police.

‘I know she’s here.’ Before Stella could stop her, Lulu had barged into the hall. ‘Nicky?’

‘Really, she’s not—’ the woman protested.

Stella gathered her wits. The woman was the same age as the client had been; she would be in her seventies now.

‘You have been quick! I just rang the office. I didn’t expect you so soon. And not
you
– I imagined you far too grand – one of your staff. I was going to send my regards but I got the answering machine.’

Stella had learnt to admit it when she didn’t recognize people: ex-clients often hailed her in the street or in the bank. When she had improvised, waiting for a clue to identity to emerge, it had led to a minefield of misunderstanding.

‘Do I know—’ she began.

‘Liz Hunter! You never were good with faces, but you had the nose of a bloodhound!’

Stella had first met Liz in primary school before she moved to Barons Court. They had gone on to the ‘big’ school together. When Terry was leading a major case and was plastered over the newspapers and TV, Liz Hunter was the only child at Stella’s comprehensive who hadn’t tried to worm information out of her, or ask her for his autograph. Had the term ‘From Hero to Zero’ been in use then, someone would have applied it to her dad. In the days after the Rokesmith murder, everyone wanted to be Stella’s friend, but over time, as the case dragged on and Terry was on screens asking for the public’s patience, the fifteen-year-old became the failed detective’s daughter. No more invitations to parties and illicit trips to the pub. She wasn’t asked to join the group going to the Duran Duran concert at the Hammersmith Odeon. Simon Le Bon’s autograph beat Terry’s by a mile. In the midst of this Liz Hunter invited her home for tea.

Liz would wait beside the bus stop on Kensington High Street where Stella alighted from the number 28 each morning and walk with her up to the school. She materialized by the gym block gate during lunch where Stella went to get away from questions about Terry and shared her sandwiches with Stella. Stella didn’t have to pretend interest in the photographs of the Hunter family cat that Liz took for a project on feline genetics. Liz never asked her about Terry’s case. Stella began to look out for her at the bus stop. She found a textbook on genetics in Hammersmith library and photocopied a paper on the domestic cat for Liz. When Liz was off school with a bug, Stella went round to see her. From then on she was a regular visitor. Stella thought it would be nice to have a brother who was good at maths. Liz had two such brothers.

After school, they went different ways. Stella started cleaning and Liz studied French at a northern university. Stella couldn’t have said why she didn’t reply to Liz’s letters. After a while they stopped coming.

At the end of the Blue Folder case and of whatever she had had with David, Jackie had urged Stella to find friends outside the business. If she wouldn’t join a book group or a knitting group, why not look up old friends? Stella said there were none. She had briefly thought of Liz Hunter, but doubted she would reply if she contacted her.

‘I want a cleaner. I went online to find a reputable firm and found an article about you solving that case of your dad’s that happened when we were at school.’ Aside from lines bracketing her mouth and one or two grey hairs in an auburn bob, Liz was the same. ‘Of course I rang Clean Slate!’ She stood aside. ‘Come in. Let’s find your friend and have a coffee!’

‘She’s not my friend.’ Glancing back at the van, Stella froze. Jack was standing beside it, his back to her. He had said he was driving today.

‘I know him,’ she exclaimed

‘Know who?’ Liz Hunter stepped out on to the pavement.

Jack had gone. In the distance Stella saw his tower, tall and menacing in the grey morning light.

‘No one.’ Stella went inside.

Stella was assailed by colours: green skirtings, yellow walls, a rug of red and orange stripes. A low table was crowded with vases of blues and greens. A nightmare to clean, but whatever the cost Stella would give Liz Hunter a large discount.

On a chair beside a door to a Juliet balcony sat Lulu Carr. Stella felt distinctly uncomfortable. Lulu was too calm. Legs crossed, her alabaster-pale complexion paler against the garish décor, she was smiling as if butter wouldn’t melt. She was up to something.

Saturday, 26 October 2013

Jack had one more chance to time the tunnel. It was his last shift on the Wimbledon line before he was back full-time on the Dead Late shift.

He placed his watch on the sill and, his hand steady, adjusted the lever to a speed of forty kilometres per hour. In the sun the tracks sparkled bright silver; up ahead was the West Hill tunnel. Jack cleared his mind. Stella would wonder why it mattered that he knew the length of the tunnel. He couldn’t explain that it would lead him to discover who had left a toy train on the station monitors. Although Jack believed in ghosts, he didn’t believe that a ghost had left it there. He could not tell Stella that the answer to the calculation about the tunnel would help him learn the identity of Glove Man and know who had caused Rick Frost to die under a train at Stamford Brook.

He braced himself. Second hand at the one-minute mark before ten: three, two, one! He plunged into darkness.

Bricks flowed up and over his cab, lit by the yellow of the train’s headlamps. Six seconds, eight, twelve. At exactly twenty-four seconds Jack brought the train out of the tunnel into blazing sunshine.

Time and speed. The two numbers, ‘forty’ and ‘twenty-four’ were stepping stones; he was closer to the truth.

The platform at East Putney was crowded with morning commuters. Jack could see a station attendant talking into her loudspeaker pack, announcing his train. He slid his eye over the waiting faces, registering every one. He clipped his watch back on and opened the train doors.

He consulted the driver’s monitor to the left of his cab and his good mood drained away. There was something there. He got off his stool. On the lower quadrant of the split screen he could see the attendant waving ‘all clear’ with her paddle.

The ‘something’ was a toy railway carriage. Jack whirled around and scoured the platform. It must have just been left or another driver would have seen it. The attendant would have seen it. She was now the only person on the platform. She did a shrugging motion: was he all right? Jack gave her a ‘thumbs up’ and got back into the cab. He shut the doors and eased the train forward. In his mind he trawled through the faces he had seen on the platform on the way in. One of them had been familiar but, as if in a dream, the image had faded.

You denied you knew me. Three times.

The sun shone through the windows. The cab was warm, but Jack felt cold.

Who could know that as a boy he had owned the same toys? He had been dismayed when his father replaced his steam engine with an inferior one of plastic. It pulled three carriages like the engine now on his window sill in the tower. Jack didn’t suppose his dead father had placed the toys on the monitors. Nor had— He could not bear even to think his name. A name that belonged to a past that was better buried.

But someone had put the engine there. Someone who knew about the engine he had had when he was little. The back of his neck tingled. The connecting door between the cab and the passengers was shut. Even so, Jack was convinced he was being watched.

Jack stopped on the balcony overlooking the District line platforms at Earl’s Court station and took the carriage from his bag. His carriages had been full of tiny figures, moulded in beige plastic. When his tunnel collapsed, the passengers were thrown from their seats and choked by mud. The tragedy wouldn’t have happened if he had been driving. Until now Jack had succeeded in blotting out that afternoon in the kitchen garden of his school when his train had crashed in the tunnel.

The toy carriage wasn’t empty. A man sat near the front. He was looking at him.

Jack shuddered as if the passenger could see into his mind. Pieces of a train set had been placed on top of the monitors. By a person who played with codes and signs. Someone with a mind like his own. Jack’s own mind was being monitored. He had to keep it shut. He knew how to do that. Shoving the carriage into his shoulder bag, he began his calculation. He didn’t need a notepad; his photographic mind held the numbers as if lit in neon.

Forty kilometres per hour was two-thirds of sixty kilometres per hour. Sixty kilometres per hour was one kilometre or one thousand metres per minute. Travelling at forty kilometres per hour he covered 666.66 metres (recurring) per minute. He had taken twenty-four seconds to go through the tunnel, 66.66 (recurring) metres every six seconds. Jack leant on the balustrade; below him a Wimbledon train arrived at the far westbound platform. Two drivers were swapping over. The new driver climbed into the cab; the other began to climb the central staircase.

There are four sixes in twenty-four. Jack multiplied 66 metres by four. A peace descended on him. The length of the West Hill tunnel was 266.66 (recurring) metres. He drew his coat around him as a dusty breeze swept out from the tunnel below. His mind was a vast plain on which images and ideas ranged far and wide. This hidden fact would lead him to more. This was being a detective.

Jack wouldn’t be back on the trains for a week. He had time.

Into his opened mind came a glove. A black leather glove was found on the body in his tower.

Black leather gloves were two a penny, but it was less common to have a crown motif on the cuff and a popper fastener as Lucie had described in her notes. The glove Stanley had in his mouth in the tower had a crown indented in the leather. Focused on the dog’s white teeth and mistrustful glare, Jack had seen the crown indentation by his upper incisor. Stella said the dog had stolen it from Lulu Carr’s house.

There was no such thing as a coincidence.

Jack turned on his phone. Stella would be at Nicola Barwick’s house. He hoped she was all right. He shouldn’t have let her go off with a suspect on her own. His thumbs flew over the keyboard:
Ask Lulu C about the glove.

He continued along the footbridge towards the Exhibition Centre. The tunnel was 266.66 metres in length; the fact had opened his mind and given him the glove. One fact led to another.

There is madness in your method.

Jack pummelled at his forehead. The thought – although a fact – had come unbidden into his mind; it was not his own. He had the notion he was being watched and, turning around, heard someone speak:

‘It’s Jack Harmon, isn’t it?’

Jack looked at a stocky man with backcombed thinning hair. He had rheumy eyes as if in the grip of an allergy. He recognized the driver who had got off the Wimbledon train a few minutes ago, but he didn’t know him. Another face he couldn’t place.

‘Yes.’

‘Darryl Clark. We met at the— I was driving that train that—’

‘Of course!’ Jack saved him from finishing the sentence. Darryl Clark was the Piccadilly line driver who had the One Under at Stamford Brook. ‘I saw you get off a District line train just then.’

‘I got a transfer. I can’t face that track. Still the same line, but it’s not the same. You doing all right?’

‘Oh yes, but then I wasn’t driving the train.’ It occurred to Jack that he wasn’t doing all right. With all that had happened – the move to the tower, the toys on the monitor and Stella’s brother – he had been distracted from the actuality of the death on the track. Darryl Clark brought it back. Rick Frost’s expression: now he thought it was of fear and perhaps some vain effort to make Jack understand what he was trying to convey.

‘Have you got time for a quick drink?’ the man asked.

‘It’s a bit early for me.’ Jack wanted to see Stella.

‘Me too!’ The man gave a sudden laugh, a shout, the sound pushed with effort from the depths of his chest. ‘I meant a coffee.’

‘Yes of course.’

The two men returned along the footbridge to the staff canteen.

‘What was your set number?’ Jack asked conversationally as they descended the staircase

‘My set number?’ Clark looked at him.