The Detective's Secret (47 page)

‘It’s OK,’ she said because she couldn’t say just how much it wasn’t OK.

‘Lucie May says you’re the next of kin,’ Cashman said.

Stella was grateful he was being businesslike. She didn’t want sympathy. She didn’t want to feel anything.

‘We’re not related.’ Stella shook her head. ‘Jack doesn’t have any living relatives.’

‘You can nominate a person who isn’t a blood relative as next of kin. Lucie May says Jack Harmon nominated you.’

‘How would she know?’

‘What doesn’t Lucie know!’ He smiled briefly.

A cordon of police tape and cars had been set up along the mall. The plastic smacked in the wind. Through the rain, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles were like stars falling. Stella was thinking like Jack. No, she wasn’t; no one thought like Jack. Through the open doors Stella could see her van. It was inside the cordon. She had parked it in another life, the one where Jack was alive.

Jack
.

‘Clean Slate for a fresh start!’ Why did they offer that? She didn’t want a fresh start. When someone dies, you want the old life back. You want everything to stay the same. A fresh start was like dying all over again.

‘Jack.’

‘
Sorry?’ Martin Cashman said.

‘Nothing.’

Cashman extracted Stella’s empty cup from between her hands.

‘What about Jack. Have you found him?’ Stella hadn’t meant to ask.

‘We think so.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Stella, I need you to—’ He got up, putting his arms out as if she might fall. ‘We have found a male, white Cauca—’ He stopped, evidently remembering who he was talking to. ‘I asked Lucie May, but she says she can’t face it. I’ve seen her at dozens of PMs, but I guess this is different. It’s different for you too, but—’

‘I’ll do it.’ Stella got off the bed and jumped down out of the ambulance, the blanket around her like a cape.

Chiswick Mall was impassable; the river covered the camber. Waves, lashed up by the wind, pushed it up the street.

‘Where is he?’ she asked.

‘This way.’

A group of people were huddled on the slipway. In slick black rainwear they looked like crows picking at carrion. Stella was thinking like Jack. He would know the word for a collection of crows.

Jack
.

A long black roll of carpet lay at their feet. A body bag, sleek and black and zipped up, looked like rubbish in the storm-littered street.

The first dead person Stella had ever seen was Terry. The strain gone from his face, he had looked better than when she had given him his Christmas aftershave weeks earlier. The next two bodies she saw involved blood. After the third one, Stella had believed herself inured to the sight of death.

Jack
.

If she saw him dead, it would be true.

She walked away. The wind roared about her ears. She reached her van and flung open the passenger door.

Lucie May nearly fell out on to the pavement. She kept hold of her tablet, the screen casting a glow over the wet flags.

‘You have to come with me!’

Lucie struggled upright.

‘I can’t do it by myself,’ Stella said.

‘I told Cashman, I’ve got to file the story. It’s an exclusive with the
Mirror
!’

‘Now!’ Stella leant in and snapped shut Lucie’s tablet.

‘I look a fright, but I suppose he won’t…’ Lucie patted at her hair.

‘Jack won’t know!’ Stella said.

‘No, of course.’ Lucie took Stella’s arm.

Something grabbed her leg. She lashed out, dislodging it. It happened again; she shook it off and kicked harder.

Lucie was gesticulating. Stella wheeled around, fists ready. A creature cowered by the slipway. Stella stared unbelieving. Then it was rushing to her and swarming around her legs. Stanley was alive and she had nearly killed him.

Stella snatched him up and buried her face in his chest. His coat was damp and matted with mud. He smelled of the river, of dank undergrowth. She sniffed again. Shampoo, washing powder – biological – honey soap… Stanley smelled of Jack.

Martin Cashman escorted them down the slipway. Someone stepped into the lamplight.

‘Martin, I’ll do it,’ Jackie said. ‘Jack Harmon was like another son to me.’

‘Thank you.’ Martin began to lead her to the ‘roll of carpet’.

Jack had been there for her dad’s funeral. He had stopped her from driving away before it began. If it were Stella in a zip-up bag on a wet pavement in the dead of night, he would see she came to no harm. Jack would insist that if someone had to identify her – to see her dead – it should be him.

‘Let me.’ Stanley on her shoulder, Stella strode down the ramp. A man introduced himself. She heard ‘pathologist’.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ No.

A crumpling of plastic, a zip buzzed. Someone shone a torch above the exposed face, keeping it clear of the body to soften the light.

Stella forced herself to look down. The eyes were shut, the lips so pale the skin hardly showed. A straggle of hair smeared across the forehead. Although effort had been made to clean his face, there were streaks of mud on his cheeks. The bag had been opened to his chest, the hands folded. Stella found she couldn’t speak.

‘This man has been pronounced dead before, so let’s get it right this time, folks!’ Lucie May was by her side, around her an aura of steam. ‘This is the man who owns that tower over there. He refused to give me an interview.’ She nodded at the pale hands. ‘That’s Simon Carrington. Distinguishing mark? The man has two joints missing on his left middle finger. There’s a sister: she can do the formal thing; but one thing I can say, this is
not
Jack Harmon!’

There was a shout from the direction of the river. The rain had abated, but the wind was stronger. There were no lights on the opposite bank. The Thames was in darkness.

A movement. A light moving towards them over the water. The chugging of a motor. Stella made out a boat with two figures hunched at the stern. As it got closer, she saw it was a police launch. Carrying Stanley, she walked down the slipway. She started to run.

The blood pounded in her ears and the dog felt lighter as he moved with her. She waded into the river oblivious to the ice-cold water up to her calves and fell against the boat. Hands pulled at the sides and dragged it up the cobbles.

People were all around her, police and paramedics. Jackie was by her side, Stanley tucked into her neck. The paramedics were lifting something out of the boat. Against the wind, Stella heard Lucie: ‘This is Jack Harmon. His middle name is Justin. John Justin Harmon.’

Stella felt her legs go from under her and was supported from each side. Jackie and Martin Cashman held her up.

A shout.

Scrambling, footsteps, an engine revved. Stella was dazzled by headlights from the slipway. She was steered out of the way of two women with a stretcher. Stanley began to bark. Shrill and informative.

John Justin Harmon.

In the glare of the ambulance lights, Stella was aware of Lucie May coming away from the river, talking into her phone. She took Stella’s hand and shook it up and down as, speaking into the mouthpiece, she yelled, ‘He’s breathing!’

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

‘So when did Terry find out he had a son?’ Stella fixed on the flickering television screen in the ‘Relatives’ Room’. An old episode of
Dad’s Army
was showing; she watched the platoon pass the camera one by one. The volume was down, but – whether it was not quite off or she was imagining it – she could hear the theme tune in her head. The men stumbling across some common made her think of Simon and the Captain, Captain Mainwarings both.

Lucie and Stella had been sitting on the plastic bucket chairs in Charing Cross Hospital for two hours while Jack – who had been in the river, clinging to a clump of reeds and fighting against the current – was treated for hypothermia and a strained arm.

Two hours gave ample time for Lucie May to spill every bean on Terry that she had.

‘On the day he came to see you in Hammersmith Hospital, three days after you were born, he’d been on that search for Harry Roberts who killed the policemen.’ Lucie sucked on her cigarette even though it was switched off. Her tablet was open on her lap. She had been in busy email contact with more than one newspaper, but in the last half an hour there had been a respite. It was then that Stella asked her about Terry. Lucie was the one person she could rely on for the unvarnished truth. Lucie wouldn’t restrain herself with concern for Stella’s feelings and for this Stella was grateful.

‘How did he find out?’ Stella didn’t need to ask.

‘Suzanne told him. He reckoned she was fed up that he had put an armed man before a newborn daughter. To be honest, I’m inclined to agree. He was working around the clock, but all it took was two minutes. Terry wasn’t great on multi-tasking unless he’d had a drink and we—’

Stella put up a hand: the unvarnished truth had limits. ‘He never told me,’ she said.

‘He thought you’d be jealous, that if you knew you had a brother you’d assume he loved him more. Terry was always scared you wouldn’t love him. Cock-eyed thinking, if you ask me, and I said as much. Dale became the skeleton in your family’s cupboard.’

Stella had had enough of skeletons, and cupboards for that matter.

On the television screen, the titles for Hitchcock’s
Strangers on a Train
were showing. This reminded Stella of Simon Carrington’s train, left at Underground stations and in the cemetery for Jack and her to find. Jack had a copy of the novel on his shelf; it was one of the few he had brought with him to the tower.

Looking at the television, Stella asked, ‘Did you love Terry?’

Puffing on her dead cigarette, Lucie concentrated on the screen. ‘This is Jack’s favourite film.’ She reached for the remote and turned up the volume.

‘Did you?’ Stella repeated.

‘Yes, stupid mare that I am, I did.’

Friday, 1 November 2013

Dale and Suzie were on the step when Jack opened the door of Terry’s house. Beside them on the path were two enormous suitcases. Dale was holding a picnic hamper. Jack was tempted to find a reason to flee back to the tower, but since Stella had come and collected him from his overnight stay in Charing Cross Hospital she hadn’t let him out of her sight. Jackie and Stella had made up a bed for him in what had been Terry’s bedroom. Dale had sent over a vat of soup that Jack had to admit was an elixir, its effects instantly curative, not that he’d let it cloud his judgement about the Bounty-hunting Brother.

He’d promised Stella to take her to the airport and mind Stanley while Stella and Suzie went with Dale to the departure gate. Later that day Stella was handing Stanley back to his owner. She hadn’t said, but Jack guessed she wanted the dog with her up until the last moment.

Stella also wanted Jack to help with Suzie after Dale had gone and Suzie lost her son for a second time.

‘I’ve brought us a Heffernan starter-pack!’ Dale grinned.

Jack caught the smell of freshly baked bread. Stella had told him that while he was staying with Suzie, Dale had treated them both to bagels, dark rye toast and honey, flatbreads with hummus, fruit loaves with sultanas and currants and lashings of butter. Jack could have told Dale that, apart from a cheese sandwich from the mini-mart beneath the office that she forgot to eat, Stella barely touched bread. In a few hours Heffernan was flying home to Sydney, then there would be no more cooking.

The house was as warm and bright as it had been on the evening that Dale had made lamb stew. Jack had filled the cafetière, and a rich smell of dark-roast coffee wafted down the hall. Stella had asked him to lay the table. Now Jack felt a wash of alarm. Heffernan’s deadly weapon was his skill in whipping up delicious concoctions – potions – to gain Stella’s trust. Against all odds, it had worked.

‘Welcome back to the land of the living, Jack. Tuck in!’ Heffernan ushered him into his usual seat, facing the kitchen door. ‘When I did the cleaning with Stella, I thought that Lulu was weird about the man she’d seen in the street. I couldn’t work out if she meant her brother or her husband was with the other woman. Beware of brothers!’ Dale handed Jack a plate on which grilled bacon, tomatoes with scrambled egg, garnished with parsley, were tastefully arranged.

Jack had to be alert to protect Stella from her brother’s underhand intentions. Australia might be the other side of the world, but the internet wiped out the distance. Money could be wired from London to Sydney in seconds.

‘So, Jack, we’re lucky to have you, mate! Your old school friend tried to drown you. How come that wasn’t in the paper?’ Dale asked.

Stella came to the rescue. ‘We want Jack working undercover.’

In her syndicated article for the
Mirror
, Lucie May had described Simon’s campaign of revenge on his mother’s lover, Nathan Wilson, his RE teacher at school. The boy had believed the Australian had only wormed his way into his confidence to reach his beloved mother. As Jack considered this, he thought of Dale and was struck with the idea that history was repeating itself.

As a stand-in for an unloving husband, Simon’s role was usurped by the teacher. Over thirty years he had planned careful vengeance on his betrayers. His brother-in-law, Rick Frost, whom Simon still called the Captain, was a long-standing enemy. His sister Tallulah was the love child of his mother and Wilson, but Simon cared for her and protected her. When she began an illicit affair with William, she truly betrayed him. He could convince himself that Rick had married her out of spite and she was ‘innocent’, but when he found out she was in love with William, he was appalled and could find no refuge. He saw it as a final betrayal: it was tantamount to nullifying him. Nicola Barwick, the third member of the children’s gang, sided with Rick Frost against Simon. Simon fell for his sister’s unfounded suspicion that Barwick was having an affair with the Captain. From then on, she wasn’t safe.

Lucie May hadn’t told the story of Simon’s obsession with a boy who refused to be his friend and how, growing up, he had adopted Justin’s mannerisms and ambitions. How he had spied on him, tracked him through the streets and ultimately got inside his head.