The Detective's Secret (36 page)

Lucie scrambled off the sofa, walked on tiptoe to her drinks cupboard, did a pirouette in her stockinged feet and returned. She was on another of her wagons, Jack concluded.

‘He got a suspended sentence for a disproportionate response. We had sacks of letters in his defence, many saying “good riddance” to Morrison. There are some lovely people out there!’ She gave a corncrake laugh.

Simon hadn’t been interested in tunnels and bridges at school. Jack remembered Simon rolling coins over his fingers, the stump moving like a lever. The coin flashed and danced before his eyes.

If Simon was alive in 1998, it didn’t mean he was alive now. Jack banished the thought. You only got so many wishes that another person was dead before you had to die yourself.

‘So, I hear Terry Darnell’s boy’s been found?’ Lucie May switched on an e-cigarette and regarded it happily.

‘Who told you?’ Jack snapped.

‘Who didn’t! It’s all over Hammersmith Police Station. The Dowager Darnell is swinging from the rooftops, crowing that she’s got her baby back. I was thinking, maybe she’d do an exclusive for the paper. It’s a great story!’

‘It’s private.’ Stella would be horrified. Lucie gave short shrift to Suzie, the love of Terry Darnell’s life, at least according to Jackie.

‘If only Terry had lived to see him.’ Lucie was fleetingly pensive. ‘Anyway, darling, what’s your interest in Carrington?’ She puffed on her e-cigarette, eyes bright with news-hound fervour.

Jack told her about the steam engine and the carriages, and about the boy who had tried to be his friend when he was seven.

‘You’re saying this steam engine means that this bloke is telling you he
still
wants to be your friend twenty-eight years on?’

‘He’s the only one alive who knows what the engine means to me.’ Lucie, like Stella, didn’t have time for semiotics or portents; neither woman would change plans because of a squashed lump of chewing gum shaped like a shark on a pavement. ‘I don’t think he wants to be my friend any more.’

‘Your steam engine was in the papers.’ Lucie scowled as she vaped on the e-cigarette. ‘You had a tantrum in the street cos your dad wouldn’t buy you one. Hardly top secret.’

‘Most people won’t remember. But Simon won’t have forgotten. You’ve put here that he was training to be an engineer: when we were at school he wanted to be an astronaut.’

‘A typical little boy’s ambition. Like wanting to be a train driver, it’s not real. Or not usually.’ She blew steam at him.

Jack didn’t say that when they were boys Simon had shadowed him, copied his gestures, taken out books when he returned them to the library. Had he copied his ambition and made it his own?

‘How would he know where you are and why would he care enough about Stella Darnell to be creeping among graves after her? If the guy’s an engineer, presumably he’s got some engineering to do.’ Lucie puffed out another cloud of steam.

‘If he’s following me, he would know Stella is my friend.’ Jack went cold. Simon had been following Stella. Jack needn’t wonder how he’d found her; the Simon he remembered would have found a way.

‘Here’s my take on this, Jackdaw. Some kid left the engine at the station. A bloke – any woman would have handed it in – is rushing for his train and he dumps it where a driver – you, honeykins – will see it. The parents will have reported it lost if it’s worth a bob or two. Mystery solved!’

‘Passengers aren’t allowed beyond the gate where the monitors are.’

‘Oh and this Simon character would let that bother him?’ Lucie widened her eyes.

Despite him telling Stella they were dealing with the meticulous planning of a ruthless professional, Jack couldn’t see how Simon could know about his shifts: he agreed them at short notice. Simon would have needed access to his rota. A shadow of unease passed over him; again he reassured himself that at least in the tower he was safe.

Lucie batted his arm. ‘Listen up! After you left the other day, I dug out my file on your “One Under”. I texted you, remember?’

‘Oh yes.’

Ring re RF inquest. LM.
Some detective, he had forgotten about it.

‘After the inquest, the widow was at it hammer and tongs with Rick Frost’s brother in a side street. You know me, never off the clock, I hid behind a van and watched it all.’

‘They were having sex?’

‘No! Arguing. I couldn’t hear them, but they looked fit to kill. Suddenly they start kissing like two bloody turtle doves, not breaking, but making up. They saw me and sprang apart. I added in a para about them comforting each other and left the rest to the imaginations of our gifted readers. Even so, my soiled nappy of an editor said we couldn’t use it.’

Which brother was Lulu Carr upset about? Another lie. Like Stella, Lucie liked hard evidence. He had hard evidence. Jack gave her the glove Stanley had stolen from Lulu Carr’s house and left in his tower. Handing it to Lucie, his fingers tingled. His intuitions were never wrong.

‘This glove was found in Rick Frost’s house. Did Terry tell you the names of the children whom the police interviewed about their lost gloves? This one has the letter “F” inside the lining. That might be a “W” or maybe a “V”, but it’s smudged.’

‘Now you’re talking!’ Lucie flung down her e-cigarette and, scrambling off the sofa, ran out of the room. He heard her taking the stairs at a faster pace than he imagined her capable of. She returned with another manila file and another carrot. He wouldn’t dampen her resolution with a warning about excess consumption of beta-carotene.

Lucie licked a forefinger and, flicking through the file, drew out a page of lined foolscap covered with what looked like crazed hieroglyphics. Her shorthand was faster than most people’s speech.

‘Terry told me this in confidence – pillow talk! I keep a secret by forgetting I know. If I’m ever hypnotized, governments will fall. Luckily I wrote this down. This is just for you, Jack.’

Jack wasn’t fooled. Lucie claimed to adore him, but she worked alone or, it seemed, with Terry. Anything she shared would be chalked up as a favour to him that one day she would call in. He felt a coil of unease, less about the prospective favour, than because he saw he was right about Lucie’s relationship with Stella’s father. Stella must never find out; it would break her heart.

‘So here’s the list. Alphabetical and look who’s at the top!’

Jack tried to take the sheet of paper from her, but she held on to it and jabbed at it with her carrot. He leant over and read the name she was pointing at. ‘William Frost!’

The first step in a case was to assemble the jigsaw pieces. Only then could you begin to fit them together. They had a lot of pieces.

‘There’s more!’ Lucie was clearly enjoying herself. ‘Not long after Glove Man was found, a boy came into Hammersmith Police Station and reported seeing a man and a woman going up there the year before. The timing fitted, but when a detective went to get his statement, the kiddy did an about-turn and claimed he’d got the location wrong, he’d meant Chiswick House grounds and he couldn’t describe the pair. The policewoman ticked him off for wasting their time. Terry reckoned that the first story was true, so he went to see the boy, who was adamant it was Chiswick House grounds. The parents got antsy, said he had only been trying to help. Terry’s hunch was that the boy had been warned off by someone, but with the mum and dad standing guard, he couldn’t pursue it. So that was that.’ She whacked the sheet of paper with her carrot, her e-cigarette bobbing between her lips. ‘Brace yourself, Jackanory!’

Jack didn’t need to brace himself: his nerves were taut piano wires. Like Lucie’s secrets, he had tried to erase Simon from his mind, but he was alive. Simon was inside his mind.

‘In 1988 the boy was ten. He’d be thirty-five now.’ She clamped a hand on Jack’s leg.

‘Guess what?’

‘What?’ Jack obliged.

‘The boy’s name was Richard Frost!

‘Otherwise known as Rick Frost,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘Yes!’

October 1988

‘What did you say?’

Simon eased forward in the deckchair; then, feeling undignified, he struggled out of it and went to the supplies cupboard in corner of the hut. He propped a foot on one of the packing cases that served as seats for foot soldiers. With Simon’s promotion, there was only one foot soldier: the Captain who was now the Private.

The Private lingered in the doorway, his body angled as if he might turn and run, yet the dull lustreless look in his eyes belied this. His angular body was framed by the grey mausoleums, headstones and a manicured yew tree in the cemetery beyond.

‘Come in,
Richard
!’

The boy flinched as if hearing his real name spoken had hurt. He stepped inside and, in a belated attempt at attention, clicked his heels together.

A shadow fell across the doorway.

‘Who’s there?’ Simon shouted.

‘It’s me, Captain.’ Nicky came in and, giving a sharp salute, fell in beside the boy.

These days, it was a proper unit, Simon thought. Justin had never answered the note Simon had put through his door.

Why didn’t you say I was your friend when he asked?

The question presented itself as it had repeatedly over the last year, since they had found Justin by the river.

Letting the others stand there, Simon inwardly reviewed the facts to himself. Justin and Nicky had been his friends and they had betrayed him. Mr Wilson had betrayed him, but he had been punished and, until two weeks ago, Simon had almost forgotten about him.

Simon could find no proper punishment for betrayal. Yet no one could get away with such a terrible crime. His mummy had betrayed him. Simon blinked away this thought.

‘You must be punished,’ he informed them.

‘I did exactly as you told me.’ The boy was pulling at his middle finger the way he used to do when he was imitating Simon. He was frightened, but Simon supposed he was mimicking him and it fuelled the inchoate fury that these days was always gnawing his insides. A sense of injustice was corrosive.

‘I went to the police and told them that when I said I saw a man I had made a mistake.’

‘He did. I went with him,’ Nicky suddenly said.

‘Did I say you could?’

She shook her head, whether in agreement that he hadn’t said she could or because she found him too much, Simon couldn’t be sure. He wanted to trust Nicky. He tried to explain to her, ‘We are an undercover unit. We never show ourselves. Especially not to the police. You shouldn’t have gone too. Neither of you should.’

‘You ordered
me
to go.’ The boy was distressed.

‘I told you to go and undo the bad you did. You shouldn’t have gone to the police in the first place. This unit stands together. You tried to get me put in jail. You are a traitor!’ Simon fought to stay calm. ‘You must be punished.’

‘How?’ The Captain was perhaps anxious to get the torture over with. ‘I did what you said and I’ve been demoted.’ He looked down at his chest as if to show there was nothing left of him.

‘What would you do if it was me?’ Simon hit on a method that would stay with him all his life: to punish people with their own demons.

‘I d-don’t…’ the boy stammered.

‘You’d have me court-martialled and shot.’ Simon smiled, raising his eyebrows for confirmation. ‘Remember?’ He saw from her face that Nicky did. He saw her like him a tiny bit more.

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘I think you did and it’s a good idea, don’t you think, to set an example?’

Simon strolled past them to the door and cast a look across the cemetery. Dusk was falling. At this time of evening, the shadows shifted and it seemed that the statues moved. Simon wasn’t afraid. Not any more.

He had brought the hut back into service as their HQ. The tower had been out of commission and now had police swarming all over it. The eyot had been occupied by the enemy. Simon knew he went there. He left him little signs: he moved the stones, he planted some bulbs, but had no idea if Justin had seen. Simon didn’t pretend that Justin was his friend. When he had seen him on the eyot, he had looked right through Simon as if he was no one. He had denied that he knew him. The final betrayal.

Mr Wilson had told Simon that the disciple Peter denied knowing Jesus. Three times, it said in the Bible. He had said that by doing so Peter hadn’t just betrayed Jesus, he had betrayed himself. Simon now understood what he meant. Justin was lost to him as a friend, but he was lost to himself too. Only Simon could save him.

‘I didn’t say I saw your mum going into the tower that day. I lied and said the people I saw were in Chiswick House grounds and were not a man and a lady. My brother even told them he had lost the glove. I did everything like you said.’ Richard hiccoughed.

‘You didn’t lie. You never saw my mother,’ Simon said. ‘Why did you go to the police at all? You thought you were cleverer than me. If you go there again, I will tell them the truth. That you are a murderer and that your brother lied for you.’

‘They told me off for wasting their time.’ The boy scuffed his boot with the soft earth at his feet.

‘You are not fit for this unit.’ Simon echoed the Captain’s own words.

‘Give him his glove back, Simon. It’s not even his, it’s his brother’s, so he’s already been punished by him for taking it and getting him involved with the police. We all know Richard is innocent. This is a silly game. Let’s stop.’

‘Please let me go.’ The boy made the mistake of nodding his thanks to Nicky.

‘Please what?’

‘Please,
Captain
.’ The boy rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his windcheater. Simon had forbidden him to wear his Captain’s jacket: he had seen that if he stripped him of the trappings of authority – uniform and rank – he could sap him of his strength, his identity. He could make him nothing.

Taking a bottle of Coca-Cola from the supplies cupboard, Simon put out a hand. Nicky tried to hand him the bottle opener, but Simon indicated the campaign table. Slowly she laid it down there as if giving up a gun. Simon snatched it up and, applying it to the bottle, prised off the cap. He didn’t toss the cap away, as the Captain had done at their first meeting, he placed it with the opener on the table like the spoils of war.