The Detective's Secret (44 page)

‘Jack wouldn’t betray anyone.’

‘Jack refused to be Carrington’s friend. I think in this scenario, Carrington is Jesus.’ Lucie May pulled her scarf away from her mouth. ‘We’re dealing with a madman!’

‘Simon sent this text. He’s got Jack’s phone!’ She smacked the dashboard. It occurred to her that Jack put a kiss after a message and this one had no kiss. She berated herself for dwelling on irrelevant detail while missing the key issue. Simon Carrington had Jack’s phone. What would he do next?

She signalled left into Church Street, bumping the van over debris strewn over the road from bin bags and chucked up from the riverbed, and braked opposite the passage to the tower. She tried to open the van door. It was stuck.

‘It’s the force of the storm.’ Lucie made no move to get out. ‘Do a three-point turn so we’re facing the other way.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Stella pushed harder and opened the door five centimetres, then stuck her arm into the gap to stop it closing. Excruciating pain took her breath away. She was caught in a giant vice. She pushed with all her might and managed to release her arm.

Lucie was puffing placidly on her e-cigarette. Giving in, Stella started the engine and did what amounted to a ten-point turn, revving the engine and stamping on the brake.

With the wind blowing against the back of the van, the door was snatched from Stella’s grasp when she opened it. They both clambered out of the van easily, sheltered from the gale by the bonnet of the van. Only then did Stella notice Lucie’s shoes. Slip-on pink high heels.

‘You can’t wear those, you’ll fall,’ she shouted against the wind.

Lucie delved into the huge handbag and produced a pair of pink Hunters. Leaning on Stella’s arm, she hopped about on each foot and swapped her high heels for the boots.

Stella pulled her phone out of her pocket, looking in vain for a text – any sign – from Jack. All she saw was a pair of staring eyes at the top of the screen.

Stalker Boy.

Who was watching her?

Stella stepped out of the shelter of the van, and a powerful rush of wind felt as if it would rip her hair from her scalp. She reached up to pull up her hood and saw the tower.

Someone was on the roof.

‘JACK!’ she yelled. She tried to point him out to Lucie, but the journalist had crossed the road and was stomping off down the passage.

The cage door crashed open and then shut, harassed by the wind. Above the clamour of the storm, Stella heard a high-pitched humming as if some choir was singing. It was the wind whistling through the grille. She wrenched open the door. Her little finger bent back; distantly she registered that it might be broken. She hustled Lucie into the cage and on to the first stairway. As they climbed, the frame shook, the force of the wind increasing with each step. Fixed on Lucie a few steps above her, Stella had no sense of making headway.

Lucie staggered on to the walkway and leant recklessly on the flimsy guard rail. All that stood between her and a plummet of several hundred metres was a length of rusting iron. Stella waved at her to come away, but Lucie was shouting and gesturing. Stella turned and saw what she was pointing at. In a freak lull in the storm, she heard Lucie: ‘Rivets. Gone! If rest go, it’s curtains!’ Her telegrammatic words rang out above the wind.

As if to illustrate this, the frame swayed out from the wall: another rivet had snapped. The walkway shook. Stella took Lucie’s hand and lunged at the door. Already open, it gave way and they fell inside, stumbling at the foot of the spiral staircase. Lucie shut the door.

In the sudden quiet, Stella heard music. She recognized the Smiths.

‘I never could bear that band. Enough to send you back to take a jump.’ Lucie stuffed her cigarette in her coat pocket and clutched her handbag.

‘It’s Jack’s favourite,’ Stella said.

‘Get away!’

‘It’s a sign.’ Stella clattered up the staircase, shouting, ‘Jack, it’s me, Stella!’ Her words reverberated against the concrete wall. ‘And Lucie.’

Jack’s flat door was closed.

‘He’s on the roof.’ Stella continued up the staircase.

‘We’re coming!’ Lucie’s tone implied she was playing hide and seek.

At the top of the spiral staircase was a flat ceiling in which was a glass hatch of a metre square. Stella stretched up to slide the bolts. It was open. Of course it was – Jack was up there – but why shut the skylight?

Stella slammed her hands against the glass, but it didn’t shift. She pushed harder but it made no difference – she lacked the strength to lift it; the glass alone must weigh thirty kilos.

Stella went up to the penultimate step, until she was so close to the skylight that she had to crouch. She flattened herself against the curving glass, her feet either side of the stair, grasped the handrails and, pushing, manoeuvred herself to half standing. The hatch didn’t shift.

‘Wait!’ Lucie inserted herself into the gap between the top step and the skylight above Stella. She raised her hands above her head and splayed her fingers on the section of glass beside Stella’s back. ‘Say “when”!’ she gasped.

‘One, two, three. Push!’

Stella and Lucie began to straighten their bodies, the action like two levers. There was the crack as the rubber seals parted and the frame lifted a centimetre, three, five centimetres. It stopped.

‘Keep going!’ Stella spoke through clenched teeth.

‘I’m a bloody short arse, that’s my lot,’ Lucie gasped. She was standing up, her arms were extended to their limit. ‘It’s down to you, Officer.’

Stella felt the weight increase as the frame went beyond Lucie’s reach. A blinding pain shot down her back. She stood on tiptoe and gained a fraction more height; the weight was on the back of her head – her neck must break. She had stopped the lid closing, but lacked the height to raise it further.

She dared not move.

‘Move over,’ Lucie whispered. Keeping the frame in place, Stella shuffled along. Lucie’s pink high heels appeared on the step above her. Forcing herself to ignore the agony, Stella concentrated on them: patent leather, pointy toes, stiletto heels. This was not the time to dress up. Lucie fitted them on and Stella thought of Cinderella, her thought cut off by a bolt of pain like a flame travelling from her head down her spine. The lid was closing.

‘Stay with it, Officer,’ Lucie spluttered as she eased her foot into the second shoe.

Stella stopped breathing. If she let it drop, she would not be able to lift it again.

‘One, two, three!’ Lucie raised herself up, standing taller in her shoes, the narrow heels wobbling on the metal tread. Stella gave one last push.

The skylight tipped as the angle activated the pneumatic hinge. The lid stopped when it was vertical. Stella crawled out of the aperture on to the roof. Ahead of her was a garden shed. She blinked, sure she was seeing things.

The wind howled. Across London the air was frantic with a cacophony of alarms: house alarms, car alarms; emergency service sirens whooped. She struggled around the shed. No one was there.

The roof was empty.

Stella strained out over the parapet.

Jack!

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Stanley!

An echo – from above or below – in the dark. Jack’s perception was skewed.

‘Stanley,’ he whispered again.

Stanley!

The dog’s claws skittered on the iron treads. He was close by. Jack let himself breathe. The air was dank and chill like a tomb. His nerves screamed at him to go back to the safety of his flat. Nowhere was safe.

He put out a hand and felt concrete, cold and crumbling. He shuffled down another step, tip-tapping his shoe, testing for the next one. He was on a spiral staircase. The treads were narrow and steep and the angle of the rail told him it spiralled like a corkscrew.

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Simon was inside his mind. The dog had slipped behind him. Even without light, Jack sensed that the animal was hanging back; he too was scared. Jack had no choice but to go on. He must face Simon. He could not deny him again.

The central column in the tower wasn’t a key supporting stanchion. It was a shaft, built to carry pipes and give access to the roof. Lucie’s article had said Simon studied engineering at university. Simon had outwitted him.

With each step the metal vibrated, accumulating to an insidious thrum. It was the sound he had attributed to the Glove Man’s ghost. Simon had waited until he was asleep and then he’d crept up the shaft, opened the wall beside Jack’s bed and entered his flat. The tower was no refuge. Like Icarus, Jack would pay for his hubris.

Faint light spilled through slits in the concrete. Inside his flat there were slits high up in the partition wall and in the kitchen. Jack had believed that they provided a free flow of air between the two rooms but there was no door between the spaces, so air could flow without vents. Drunk with the power of living in the watch tower commanding a view of London, he had made basic engineering errors. He had ignored Simon’s signs. His wings were aflame.

The meagre light increased with each step. Nerves electric, Jack paused. Should he go up or down?

You choose!

He detected a change in the atmosphere. The walls whispered,
‘Truly I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.’

The dog wasn’t behind him. Jack clattered down the steps and found him bunched in the corner of a cramped space, eyes black in light that leaked in from a porthole. Jack gathered the little animal up and folded him into his waistcoat.

The Smiths track filled his head.

Jack had seen the porthole from the outside. It was beyond the reach of the walkway that circled half of the tower. Stupidly he hadn’t considered where it was inside the tower. He returned to the staircase.

Running away is no escape if you don’t know which direction is ‘away’.

He swept his hand over the concrete wall, the rough patina grazing his fingertips, and found a door.

‘Good boy.’ He whispered Stella’s mantra to soothe the dog. ‘It’s all right,’ he breathed into Stanley’s ear. A warm tongue slathered his cheek, soothing him instead.

With a click the door swung inwards. The music swelled.

‘Hello, Justin. Here I am.’

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Dazed, Jack shifted Stanley on to his shoulder and walked into a semi-circular space. Shapes resolved into a bed, a cupboard, a desk with a chair. It was identical to his flat above.

‘
I’ll tell you a story

About Jack-a-Nory,

And now my story’s begun;

I’ll tell you another of Jack and his brother,

And now my story is done.’

Jack couldn’t see the source of the voice.

‘Welcome!’ Low laughter.

‘You’ll frighten the dog.’ Jack shouldn’t have drawn attention to Stanley.

‘Why did you save me from drowning if you wouldn’t be my friend?’ No laughter now.

‘Where is Stella?’ Jack demanded. The voice was coming from corner of the room, which was in shadow. It had broken since he last heard it, but, like eyes, voices don’t alter.

‘Don’t disappoint me with silly questions.’

Outside, the St Jude storm was raging, but in here, but for the Smiths music, it was quiet.

You are trespassing. This is out of bounds.

Jack clasped his forehead with his free hand as a faint throbbing in his temples increased to hammer blows. The words were inside and outside his head.

The light in the room was increasing incrementally, like a sunrise. Shadows dwindled as ambient light washed over the curving concrete walls. There were no windows.

A quarter of a century had passed since Jack had seen Simon. He was wearing a long black coat with a baseball cap low over his eyes. He snatched it off and flung it on the bed. His face was smooth as if experience hadn’t touched him. But for this, Jack was looking at a version of himself. Simon flicked his fringe from his forehead in the manner of Jack.

‘I’ve called the police. They’ll be here soon,’ Jack said.

He distinguished pictures on the partition wall behind the bed. As the light brightened, he made out close-ups of men and women. Their faces were different, varying hairstyles and ages, black, Asian, white, but each had the impassive expression Jack knew from those waiting on platforms when he pulled into stations. Their unregistering gaze, like that of the dead, would slide over him as he brought his train to a stop. The faces on the wall were his passengers. There was the man with large ears and wispy hair, and the jittery woman in her forties who he suspected was a drinker. She stood on the same spot at Ravenscourt Park station every evening. The young woman so like his mother that Jack could believe she had returned from the dead. And the woman at Ealing Broadway station the night his train broke down.

The end photograph was not a face. Silver tracks glinted in the headlamps of an approaching train. Just visible, insubstantial as a ghost, was the driver. Jack recognized himself.

‘Silly Justin.’ With a half-finger, Simon waved something at him. Thinking it was a weapon, Jack stepped back against the wall. The door had shut. There was no handle. Simon didn’t have a gun. He was holding Jack’s mobile phone.

‘The Cleaner is here. Redoubtable, isn’t she! We did have a nice chat on the station while she did her best to hide her fear. Yes, I was the ‘inspector’ at Stamford Brook station. I’m disappointed it took you so long to work that out.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘Another silly question. Where you go, I go.
Justin
. Thanks to the handy little ‘stalker’ app on Rick Frost’s phone. He was quite clever, all said and done, you know!’ He tugged on his half finger and continued.

‘But for the soundproofing, you’d hear the Cleaner and the Reporter blundering about on the roof. They think you’ve jumped. Poor Justin, his past caught up with him and, unable to bear the shame, he jumped. The reporter will relish writing that.’