The Detective's Secret (48 page)

Jack had told no one that Simon hadn’t tried to drown him. He had wanted Jack to kill him. He had planned to turn Jack into a murderer like himself. A true blood brother. That would remain his secret.

‘Here’s a taste of “Sixty-Four” until you all make it there!’ Dale’s tactic was upfront. It had worked on Suzie; it was working on Stella. Even on Stanley, busy with his helping of scrambled egg.

‘Tuck in, guys.’ Heffernan handed Jack a mug of hot milk and slid a pot of manuka honey over to him. He gave him a look, a flick of the head, like a private signal. Jack wouldn’t be drawn into some joke at the expense of Stella and her mum.

‘I’m going to miss our cosy meals around the fire,’ Dale said to Suzie.

‘Me too.’ Suzie was smiling bravely. Jack felt a pang of sorrow. Whatever else, Heffernan was Suzie’s son. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to give a son away and then have him come back. Even if he planned to fleece you for all you were worth.

Stella finished and laid her cutlery together. ‘I’ve considered Mum’s proposal.’ She got up and collected the plates.

Jack gripped the sides of his chair. Stella hadn’t talked to him about it – not that it would have made any difference; when Stella decided on something, that was that.

‘I can’t invest in another business. Two is enough.’ Stella carried the plates over to the sink.

Jack nearly shouted with joy.

‘I don’t want investment, we sorted that,’ Dale protested.

‘You run one business,’ Suzie corrected Stella, her lips pursed.

‘I run a cleaning company and…’ Stella took a breath. ‘…a detective agency.’

Jack hadn’t expected that. When Stella took a risk, she did it in style. He tried to catch her eye.

‘Wow!’ Dale broke the silence.

Jack took another croissant and slathered it with honey. Containing his triumph, he detected well-concealed disappointment in Heffernan; Dale would be a practised con man.

‘We should be going soon,’ Jack said, although they had another half an hour. No one answered. He finished the croissant.

‘I’ve always advised sticking to your core activity,’ Suzie reminded Stella.

‘I know, but—’

‘Detection is what you do.’ Suzie folded her napkin. ‘You find dirt and wipe it away – you clean up. Clean Slate is turning a healthy profit, but you must reinvest to grow. The company needs to develop. A static company is a shrinking company. It’s right to diversify within your core activity.’ She poured herself the rest of the coffee and raised her mug. ‘To Clean Slate Detectives!’

Jack snatched up a roll and ate it. Suzie, like her daughter, could deal out surprises. Stella would have expected her to argue, to have sound reasons why the idea was a bad one, but she had supported her.

‘So, Terry knew he had a son.’ Stella nodded to her mother.

The mood in the room dropped.

Terry and Suzie had kept their secret from their daughter. Simon would call it betrayal. Jack smeared the last of the crumbs off his plate. Simon would be right.

Terry had compounded the betrayal by confiding in Lucie May. Apart from Terry, Suzie at least had told no one.

‘Terry could have used his position in the police to find you, but he respected the law, so he didn’t,’ Stella said to Dale.

Dale rolled his shoulders. ‘I never came looking for you guys.’ Jack could see that his confidence had ebbed.

‘Stella, he thought of you as his only child, that’s why he left you everything,’ said Suzie.

‘No, Mum, he didn’t think that.’ Stella squeezed out detergent into the bowl and snapped on rubber gloves. ‘Terry didn’t make a will, so as his only surviving heir, in the eyes of the law, I inherited everything. This place has never felt mine. I didn’t work to get it.’ Stella rinsed the plates under the tap.

‘Terry worked so you could have it,’ Suzie said. Jack had never heard her speak in such a conciliatory way about Terry before. It must be the ‘Dale effect’.

‘Terry would have been there at the airport to meet you. I gather he considered a trip to Australia, but couldn’t get insurance because of his heart,’ Stella added. Jack guessed Lucie May had told her. It seemed she had told Stella a lot of things. He thought he was pleased.

Suzie threw down her napkin. ‘Are you saying Terry knew about his heart?’

‘Terry knew a lot of things he kept to himself.’ Stella turned to Dale. ‘Terry liked good plain food and after Mum left he lived on ready meals. He would have liked your lamb stew, providing you ditched the garlic.’ She gave a quick smile and stacked the plates on the dish rack. Jack saw that Terry’s bowl and spoon and cup had gone. ‘If Terry had met you, he would have put you in his will,’ she added.

‘You don’t know that, Stella.’ Suzie was fierce.

‘I do.’ Stella repacked the hamper. Everyone sat back as she wiped the table. She turned to Dale. ‘Half of this house is yours.’

For Jack, what happened next was a blur. There was a knock at the door. No one moved to answer it. Stanley started barking and ran down the passage. Jack went with him. There was a taxi at the gate and a man was on the path, already walking away. He turned around and Jack saw him like an identikit: pronounced cheekbones, glittering eyes, an elegant green serge suit. He was a double of David Bowie.

He was Stella’s ex and he had come to get his dog. Jack guessed this wouldn’t have been the arrangement or Stella would have told them. The man must have broken their agreement. With these thoughts whizzing through his mind, Jack forgot about Stanley until the dog whisked through his legs and leapt at David Bowie.

‘Good boy!’ David – that was his actual name – crouched down and buried his face in the dog’s coat. Jack conceded that the man had a right to the dog’s enthusiastic greeting. Stanley was his dog.

He was distracted by another black cab pulling up behind the one that had brought ‘David Bowie’.

‘Fare for Heathrow?’ the driver called through the cab’s open window.

Jack spread his hands in apology. ‘We don’t need a taxi.’ Who had called him?

‘Please give Stella this letter.’ The ‘David Bowie’ ex thrust Stanley into Jack’s arms. ‘Tell her she can keep him. He’s hers now.’

‘It’s for me.’ Dale was on the doorstep.

The man called David was in the first taxi and being driven away before Jack found he was holding an envelope as well as Stanley. He stuffed the envelope in his pocket and held on to Stanley tightly.

‘Stella’s taking you to the airport,’ he reminded Dale. ‘We all are.’

‘Change of plan. I hate goodbyes, I get choked. Do me a favour, Jack, help me with this stuff.’ Dale heaved two suitcases and a carrier bag out on to the path. He left the carrier bag on the path and struggled down to the taxi with the cases. The driver came to meet him.

Jack grabbed the bag and, still holding Stanley, went after him. Vaguely he noticed it was the bag Suzie had arrived with.

Dale climbed into the taxi. ‘The girls think I’m in the bathroom.’

‘I don’t like goodbyes either,’ Jack heard himself say.

‘I thought you’d get it. I kept trying to catch your eye to let you in on it, but you were eating for all of us!’

‘They’ll be upset that you’ve gone.’

‘Listen, Jack, I have a sister in Sydney and if some joker rocked up claiming to be her brother, I’d give him the evil eye. You are right to be wary of me.’ He was seated in the back of the cab. ‘I wanted to meet Stella, my biological sister, and see where I might have grown up. It’s not great to know you were given away, even if you get the reason, but this way, I might get closure.’ He clipped on his safety belt. ‘My adoptive parents were happy and I had a great childhood, even though there was no spare cash and the Parramatta Road’s not quite as salubrious as this bit of Hammersmith. If I’d stayed here, then I too would have been trundled between two homes like Stella – but at least there would have been two of us. I could have been there for Stella. I mind that.’ He shuffled along the seat closer to the window. ‘At least Stella’s got you.’

‘I’m not her brother.’ Jack had got it wrong. While he had been thinking of himself, Dale had been thinking of Stella.

‘No, mate, you are not!’ Dale reached through the open window and grasped Jack’s hand in his. ‘Tell the world’s best cleaner that Old Man Darnell’s will must stand as it is. For obvious reasons, she’ll listen to you.’ He let go of Jack’s hand.

‘I’ll support Stella with whatever she decides.’ Jack stepped away from the car, holding tight to Stanley.

‘Course you will, Jacko!’ He grinned at him. ‘Oh, and Jack?’

‘What?’ Jack heard himself sounding gruff and tried to smile.

‘How come you knew exactly where in Sydney I grew up? You said Crows Nest when you met me. You were right on the mark. How could you know that? Did you check me out? Wouldn’t blame you if you did.’

‘I lived in Sydney once.’ Jack looked up at the sky. Clear blue, the storm had gone. ‘I moved there in 1988 and lived there for some years until my father got work back in the UK.’ His father had worked on a bridge over the Hawksbury River outside Sydney that was never built – typical of most of his projects.

‘Fair dinkum!’ Dale ramped up his accent. ‘What suburb?’

‘Crows Nest, then Manly.’

‘Good on you, you’re an Aussie after all! Get yourself there again and I’ll shout you more than a drink! Bring Stella.’

As Jack stepped away from the taxi, he heard the echo of Dale’s earlier words. ‘What did you mean, “for obvious reasons”?’ he asked.

‘Jack, for a smart guy, you are one dillbrain around women!’ Dale leant forward and tapped on the glass partition. ‘We’re good,’ he called to the driver. The car drew away from the kerb.

St Peter’s church clock struck eight.

Jack watched it round the corner into St Peter’s Square.
Bring Stella
. He thought again how close Simon had come to making Stella his fourth victim. She had shown him the picture of Simon under the trees at Wormwood Scrubs common. If William hadn’t come when he did, Simon would have lured her further in. He had planned to hurt the woman who mattered to Jack more than anyone in the world. Or worse.

‘For obvious reasons, she’ll listen to you.’

The clock finished striking.

Dale was mistaken. There was no obvious reason why Stella would listen to him.

The first thing he saw when he went back into the house was Dale’s album on the stairs. He must have put it by his suitcases and forgotten to pick it up. Jack grabbed it and flung open the front door, but the taxi had long gone.

‘Did he get off all right?’ Suzie asked. She and Stella were sitting at the table sipping freshly made coffee.

‘You knew?’ Jack exclaimed.

‘I heard him booking it.’ Suzie tore a scrap off Dale’s last croissant. ‘I think he wanted to spare me. I’d said I hated goodbyes.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ Stella pushed a mug of hot milk towards Jack.

‘Because it’s not true. I
love
them, but when Dale confessed he needed diazepam to make it to his dad’s funeral, I guessed that he wouldn’t handle us waving him off to his plane! Me, I’m all for waving goodbye, doing a good tidy, then getting back to the old routine!’

‘I’ll have to go to airport. He’s left this.’ Jack laid the album on the table.

‘I asked him to hide it in the hall.’ Suzie picked it up and, shifting her chair to make room for Stella, she asked her, ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

‘I should get to the office.’ Stella shot Jack a look; he could guess her thoughts. Dale Heffernan had not entirely gone; he had left them with episode two of his life story.

‘Stella Darnell, this is your life!’ Suzie handed the album to her daughter.

Stanley on his lap, Jack read the heading over her shoulder. ‘Clean Slate: the Story so Far’.

Suzie had pasted the pages with testimonies from clients, before and after photographs of carpets and worktops, the changing logo over the decades. There was Stella in the late nineties, modelling the first uniform. A section headed ‘Staff’ featured group photos of cleaners, starting with Stella as the only one. Cuttings from trade magazines of Stella at gala ceremonies collecting awards: one for excellence in disaster restoration; several for excellent customer service and low staff turnover. An article by Lucie May described how Stella had built up a cleaning empire single-handed.

‘Thanks, Mum.’ Stella’s voice was thick. ‘How did you find all this?’

‘I’ve been collecting it since the beginning. I never thought of making an album!’ Suzie shut Dale’s breakfast hamper and did up the straps. ‘Shows you all that you’ve done. That’s my daughter!’ She ate the last bit of croissant.

Stella hefted the hamper out to the hall. Jack caught up with her by the front door.

‘I forgot to say, that guy you went out with, who Stanley belongs to?’ He heard himself imitating Dale’s upward inflection.

‘I’m handing him over at two p.m. this afternoon. Actually, Jack, I was going to—’

‘He said you could keep him,’ Jack finished.

‘Until when?’

‘Um, well, until he die— Forever. He said he doesn’t want him back.’

Stella started to smile. Still smiling she returned to the kitchen. He heard her saying, ‘Mum, I’m taking Stanley for a walk, do you fancy coming?’

It wasn’t until Jack got out the key to unlock the tower that he found he still had the envelope ‘David Bowie’ had handed him. He was about to text Stella, but she would be walking Stanley. He was seeing her that evening. He would give it to her then.

Monday, 4 November 2013

Mist hung over the eyot. The tide had ebbed, exposing the causeway. The river flowed fast, the water murky and unforgiving. The beach was dotted with smashed glass, plastic and wood. Last Tuesday morning St Jude’s storm had left in its wake a trail of devastation across southern Britain. Four people were dead.

On the eyot a snapped reed, a crushed leaf and one footprint were signs of the route he’d taken with Simon. He paused by the gap in the reeds where Simon had tried to make Jack kill him.

‘
Why did you save me that time if you wouldn’t be my friend?’

‘I would save anyone.’