The Detective's Daughter

14

Thursday, 13 January 2011

The WPC on ‘scene guard’ behind the ‘Do Not Cross’ police tape impassively eyed a woman in trousers that showed off a flat stomach stepping out of a cleaners’ van. Her loafers were polished to within an inch of their life and she was, the officer reckoned, too smartly dressed for a cleaner. She was the boss come to collect her winnings, or in this case, cut her losses. She obviously knew the wisdom of running a spotless Peugeot Partner slapped with company details rather than a Lexus or Merc that advertised to customers that she knew how to spend their money. The officer allowed a sliver of respect for the woman, who like herself looked to be early forties. She raised her eyebrows in enquiry, ready to state it was ‘no entry’ whatever Ms Clean Slate said.

A car glided to a stop at the kerb and the passenger door swung out, clipping the woman’s natty leather rucksack, but she did not break her stride. The WPC recognized the detective inspector’s Volvo. Doing up his jacket, he bounded out of the passenger seat like Action Man and, just a fraction too late, she raised the tape to let him pass.

‘All right, sir?’ Of course he did not reply.

‘Are you in charge here?’ the woman called after him.

‘Contact our communications people. You know the score, no press.’ D. I. Cashman rapped on the front door, studying his shoes while he waited for it to open. The police officer did not move, underlining his authority.

‘Do I look like a journalist?’ The front door remaining closed, Cashman had to acknowledge her. ‘I cleaned for Mrs Ramsay.’ The woman fidgeted with branches on the straggling hedge, ripping off leaves. ‘Stella Darnell. Clean Slate.’ She gestured a thumb at her van. ‘Maybe you knew Detective Superintendent Darnell?’

There was a beat.

‘Terry? Terry bloody Darnell?’

Stella took in the female police constable with a slight nod and played a never-used card: ‘He was my father.’

‘You know what?’ The detective was coming down the steps. ‘Your dad taught me more than I’ve forgotten.’ He jumped the last two. ‘It’s a hellish thing. I was totally gutted.’ Panting, he gave her a clumsy handshake across the hedge. ‘Martin Cashman, Detective Inspector.’ He hesitated. Maybe like Terry he was happier with the evidence-bag aspect of death than with cups of sugary tea and a few well-chosen words.

Stella saw that he was the Terry look-alike of the day before, dressed in a serviceable Marks & Spencer’s suit, like the one she had put into the dry cleaner’s below her office in readiness for charity. He had Terry’s mousy hair combed in a side parting, tipping over his collar; it was, Stella knew, due a cut that he would not make time for. In his pudgy vein-flecked features were the beginnings of Terry’s double chin and his slight paunch had loosened his shirt from his waistband. He hastened to tuck it in, emitting a tang of Gillette aftershave. In no time at all, Stella reflected coolly, the doppelgänger effect would be complete.

With a look to the WPC, Detective Inspector Cashman beckoned Stella through.

Fixing the tape back into place, the officer observed Stella Darnell stalk up the steps as if she owned the place, and grudgingly envied how she had the boss eating out of her hand.

‘He rang me last week… he was on form, cracking jokes. Still on the job!’ The front door had been opened and upstairs Stella could hear voices, heavy footsteps and guffaws of laughter. Instinctively she was annoyed; Mrs Ramsay did not encourage visitors.

‘I was sure retirement would get to him. Some can’t hack having no reason to stress. Mad, isn’t it? We’ve had blokes doing the conga on the Friday and a couple of months later I’m listening to a eulogy at their…’ With scene-changing swiftness he wiped his hand over his face and made a show of shuffling his shoes on Mrs Ramsay’s doormat. Stella did the same.

Mrs Ramsay would have been distressed to see her dilapidated but pristine hall a mess. Gone was the ratty rug that skidded and chalk marks outlined the stains it had hidden. The acrid smell of ninhydrin, used to lift latent prints, extinguished the lavender fragrance Stella encouraged Mrs Ramsay to spray throughout the house and a dusting of fingerprint powder greyed the coiled end of the balustrade polished so recently.

‘Those were there already.’ Stella indicated the stains.

‘Our guys said that.’ He loosened the knot on his tie as if she was depriving him of breath, as Terry did when she challenged him.

Sensing advantage Stella pressed the point home: ‘I couldn’t get rid of them. Mrs Ramsay didn’t know what they were.’ She cast around. The rug slumped drunkenly in plastic wrapping beside the antler hat stand, which was also in the wrong place.

‘Blood, SOCO think. Forensics’ll confirm.’ He rubbed his hands together vigorously and stepped over the marks to the stairs. ‘You didn’t do the cleaning yourself? Big shot these days, your old man says – said.’

Stella detected sarcasm.

His shirt – blue cotton with pencil-thin brown stripes – was identical to the one Terry was wearing when he died.

‘Sky’s the limit,’ he told her and kissed her forehead. In his best shirt, he waved her off through the gates, tracing a big rainbow arc with a sweep of his arm to egg her on but she did not look back, already Miss Independent. He stayed until she had gone. It would be three whole hours until dinnertime. He had promised to be in exactly the same place when she came out. They were going to have sandwiches in the park as her reward for being such a brave girl.

The detective’s brogues could do with a buff, but like Terry he would blend into a crowd. Terry’s death was a detail; there were more detectives where he came from. One day D. I. Cashman too would be substituted; maybe by the woman at the gate. Stella roused herself.

‘No actually, I did handle this. Mrs Ramsay was particular and I knew her ways.’

Sunlight slanted in through the landing window at the turn in the staircase, highlighting nineteenth-century Punch cartoons framed in gold wood hung in step formation. Glittering particles of dust flittering in the light reminded Stella of how Mrs Ramsay would snatch at them, opening her fist like a child to examine her empty palms. She had once found Mrs Ramsay vacuuming the air, she waved the nozzle like a fire fighter putting out a blaze. Mrs Ramsay kept her curtains shut to avoid seeing what she could not remove or wipe away and was fond of saying that what was out of sight was not out of mind.

‘When did you come here last?’

The hall was as chill as a church. Mrs Ramsay did not heat rooms she only passed through. Her skeletal frame clad in fraying layers of fluttering silk, cotton and cashmere, she claimed not to feel the cold.

‘Last Friday for three hours. I finish at one. Sometimes I have a cup of tea, but I had a meeting in Chelsea at one thirty so had to rush.’ Mrs Ramsay had been hovering by the hat stand, flapping an overcoat, smoothing the fabric. She was annoyed Stella could not stay and Stella had half expected her to bar the way. A mad notion in retrospect, but lately her behaviour had been more erratic. Busying herself rummaging in the pockets of the coat, she did not say goodbye.

The coat was not there now. At the time Stella had supposed it belonged to Mr Ramsay; his wife seemed unable to accept he was dead and like she did the rest of her family behaved as if he had just left the room.

‘Did the old lady seem anxious or unwell?’

‘She was always anxious; no worse than usual.’ Stella reacted to the term ‘old lady’; it did not describe Mrs Ramsay.

‘OK.’ He pulled out a notebook that was bagging his jacket and drew a pen from his breast pocket. ‘Why was she anxious?’

Decades after she had left Terry, Suzanne Darnell still complained about how he never dressed for an occasion and the careless way he treated his clothes, although her own were neglected, with several blouses on one hanger and trousers, or slacks as she called them, bundled up with no regard for the crease.

‘Oh, no reason.’ Stella did not need the police asking awkward questions. ‘Older people get anxious, and depressed, it goes with the territory.’ She tossed generalizations at him like birdseed. ‘She had to know when I was coming so she could be ready, her routine kept her going. Nothing odd about that.’ Except Mrs Ramsay was not like the other pensioners Stella worked for. Stella pictured the last list dashed down in the bold and rounded script, her handwriting was not shaky or tiny; Mrs Ramsay had never seemed old.

She sniffed tobacco smoke, someone had smoked a cigarette; she wanted to order them all to leave.

Despite being an ex-smoker, Terry too hated the smell of cigarettes.

She returned to the open doorway and looked out at a splaying tree in the Square. The trunk was so thick that two people could not hold hands around its circumference. Wind in the night had stripped the last of the leaves, leaving branches stark and uncompromising against the sky. She could not remember what time of year the lawns would be dotted with conkers, shining as if soaked in oil; unless kids had got in before the park opened and taken them all.

‘Put your jeans on over your pyjamas. Here, wear my jumper, that’s it. Do up your shoelaces good and tight. We won’t talk until we’re clear of the house, keep close by me.’ She cocked her head so he could whisper into her ear. It felt soft against his lips.

If she was afraid she did not let on, clutching his hand she scurried beside him to the Square. It was bitter; he was glad he had made her wrap up. He climbed the gate first then made her fit her boot on to the foothold between the bars. He had forgotten her mittens and worried about the icy metal. He nearly shouted with joy when she hauled herself up like a boy, rolling over the top and scrabbling with her boots for the horizontal bar. She peered into the pitch black beyond the torchlight. She was so excited. He knew then that his plan would work.

Until now it had not occurred to Stella that Isabel Ramsay’s disconnected remarks, her fanciful stories, were more than eccentricity. What she had told the detective about her being anxious was true: she had been on edge. When Stella left, the bolts were shot home and she would hear the security chain while she was still on the path. When the water pipes had banged and hooted Mrs Ramsay had said it was the little boy again. Stella remembered that it was the youngest child, Eleanor, whose antics had annoyed her mother, but did not correct her. By the time she was in her van and ready to drive off, Mrs Ramsay would be peeping through a gap in the dining room curtains and Stella would wave. Mrs Ramsay did not move, her face, like a ghost’s in the reflection, indistinguishable from the sky. Stella could not say any of this to the detective.

‘Did the old lady get on with her family?’ D.I. Cashman gave a business-like sniff, his pen poised. ‘I’ve got here: husband was a doctor, dead over ten years, three kids…’

‘I never met her children. We try not to come when there are visitors. Clients prefer their guests to see the effects of our work, not trip over a brush or slip on a wet floor. You’re better off asking them.’

It was not lost on Stella that having access to the house and the trust of the frail owner, she was technically a suspect. She would not be charmed or intimidated: never would she compromise client confidentiality, especially for the police. Cashman had so far treated her as ‘one of our own’ and was putting up with her unhelpful responses because she was his ex-boss’s daughter.

She had not made the connection that Mrs Ramsay had not seen her family for nearly as long as Professor Ramsay had been dead. She did not say that each time she came, she tidied up two water glasses by the bed both emptied: CID were not interested in ghosts.

Nor did she mention Mrs Ramsay’s obsession with finding her children’s dolls’ house and how she had led Stella through the rooms, warning her to a avoid a creaky stair, getting over-excited as she described an ‘incy-wincy’ bedspread she had embroidered for the main bedroom in the dolls’ house. Although she gave the impression that it was Eleanor who was keen to have the house found, Stella guessed from the way she chattered on about the dolls and the ‘exquisite little furniture’ that the house had belonged to Mrs Ramsay herself. Stella’s parents could not have talked so intricately about her toys.

They had searched the children’s bedrooms. Mrs Ramsay had shaken a fist at Eleanor’s gloss-black ceiling and blood-red skirtings, like the rooms of some teenage offspring of Stella’s clients. Stella ignored her fretful hints to extend Clean Slate’s services to painting and decorating; their core business was to clean.

The rooms in the Ramsay’s basement were a holding bay for discarded objects. A cylinder and an upright vacuum, its bag stiff and cracking with age, telephone directories and newspapers from the sixties were heaped on a single-sized bed. There was no dolls’ house.

Like her own bedroom in Barons Court, no room had any toys; perhaps like Stella’s mother, Mrs Ramsay had given them to charity without asking her children’s permission.

Mrs Ramsay had stipulated that Stella must not touch any of this or her daughter would never learn. It did not need a detective to work out that the bedrooms had been abandoned long ago.

Mrs Ramsay’s behaviour had worsened in the last month, she had lost all sense of time. Stella kept this to herself while D.I. Cashman scribbled a concluding point in his notebook with a stab of his pen and went into the dining room.

They were hit by a cloying odour: dead flowers, their stalks limp, were scattered over the tablecloth, a stain spread into the midnight blue material was not unlike diluted blood.

The detective’s mobile phone rang and raising his hand he stepped out to the hall to answer it.

Oxi-clean was the only agent that removed lily stains from fabrics; supermarket stain-devils never worked as well. Isabel Ramsay frequently got stamen stains on her clothes and when Stella told her she had a means of eradicating them she had been rewarded with one of Mrs Ramsay’s rare smiles.

She had put the granules out on her desk in the office to bring with her on her next visit. Jackie had accused Stella of liking to please Mrs Ramsay and she denied it, saying she was merely doing her job.

Mrs Ramsay’s one pleasure was the arrival each Friday of a bouquet of lilies. Stella felt vaguely guilty that she did not buy her own mum flowers; her mother griped that Terry had never given her flowers.

At the 10 a.m. knock, Mrs Ramsay hastened to the door, patting her hair, smoothing her stomach, and would affect surprise and coquettish delight at the sight of the courier, a leather-clad man. He never lingered over her exclamations and kept on his helmet. When he had gone, Mrs Ramsay, her face a hectic flush, spent the next hour arranging the white flowers which for Stella spelled funerals. She would shuffle through to the dining-room table, the vase precarious in her bony hands, stamens staining her blouse, murmuring: ‘Such a sweet thing, so kind, he always was a poppet. My guests adore flowers – men especially, despite what they say.’

Ignoring Stella’s offer of help she would lower the vase, top-heavy with blooms, into the grate. This was the stage in the procedure when she got another cloud of pollen on her clothes and became distracted, her mood dampened. Stella would spend rest of the morning trying to cheer her up because she did not like to leave Mrs Ramsay feeling low.

The detective was still on the phone. Stella went over to one of the windows, and inspected the fingerprint dust on the pelmets. One morning, while cleaning these, she had overheard Mrs Ramsay on the kitchen phone complaining about the lilies. This had struck her as an unreasonable response to a present, even for Mrs Ramsay who, although exacting, had scrupulous manners. Stella had dropped the cloth when she got it.

Mrs Ramsay had sent the bouquet to herself.

On her final visit, Mrs Ramsay had told Stella that until her forties she had preferred white roses.

‘I grow them in my private garden. No one knows about them. Ah, how those intoxicating blousy blooms become one’s friends!’

‘What made you prefer lilies?’

‘Nothing lasts forever.’ Mrs Ramsay had looked at Stella as if she were a stranger with no business asking her anything and, fluttering her hands, pointed out a smudge of grease under the cooker hood.

‘A load of china was broken and a clock, look at that casing, it’s got to be worth a few bob. I’m thinking she must have tried to defend herself.’ Cashman had finished his call and was bending by the fireplace where Stella saw broken pieces of both Mrs Ramsay’s vases in the grate amongst glass and the smashed carriage clock that used to be on the mantelpiece.

‘Did you leave those flowers on the table?’ Stupid question: the police would have moved nothing.

‘We don’t touch anything. The intruder must have dumped them there.’

Stella smoothed a wrinkle in the cloth without him seeing. The lilies smelled stronger as a through draught picked up the scent. She turned to see who had come in, but there was no one.

‘I think she did this herself.’ Stella saw it all. Mrs Ramsay would have had one of her tempers. She had not grown old gracefully; her increasing frailty frustrated her.

‘Wouldn’t she have it cleared up?’

‘She’d fallen a couple of times so wouldn’t have risked it. She knew I would do it.’

‘Bit of a duchess, was she!’ He sniffed.

‘It’s what she pays me for.’ She did not say that Mrs Ramsay would have left the mess for Lizzie, the live-in help, nor that Mrs Jackson – the next-door neighbour with the stolen cat – had told her that Lizzie dated from her mother-in-law’s era and had been dead for thirty years. It was Lizzie’s name at the top of the lists that Mrs Ramsay left for Stella.

‘The noise may have alerted her. Perhaps the intruder intended it as a weapon,’ Cashman suggested.

‘I’d go for that poker,’ Stella returned. ‘Where did he break in?’

‘Ah, well, that’s where it’s good you’re here. There’s no sign of forced entry. Mrs Ramsay either knew her visitor and was happy to open the door, or – more likely, given it was night – they let themselves in with a key.’

Stella saw where this was going.

‘I don’t employ murderers, Detective Inspector.’

‘Course you don’t, but we know things can get out of hand. Might she have upset one of your people? Who worked here before you took over?’ His face reddened as he ploughed on. ‘Did they have a grudge, or got greedy? There are valuable artefacts here.’

Stupid, then, to destroy them.

‘I got to know how Mrs Ramsay liked things done, sometimes it’s easier than training up staff.’ Stella resorted to sales patter. ‘We tailor our processes according to the customer. I pay my staff properly; they don’t look for ways to make up a shortfall. If I remember rightly the girl washed the floor in the wrong order of tasks then walked on it before it was dry. Easily done, some clients don’t mind, some do. It was ages ago.’

‘We’ll have to talk to her.’

‘By all means, bear in mind it’ll be an overseas call. She returned to Elblag three months ago.’

‘Is that a prison?’ He shot her a quick grin.

‘Small town in Poland, population about sixty thousand.’

‘Terry said you were good.’ Cashman whistled. ‘Look, Stella, you know from your dad we have to be thorough. Could I get you to print off the names of everyone who cleaned here, just to eliminate prints and establish motives?’

‘Doubt you’ll find many prints besides mine. I too am thorough.’ Stella knew it gained nothing to antagonize Martin Cashman; she should be co-operative. She used to tell herself to comply with Terry; if she chatted properly she could leave his house and wouldn’t have to see him until Christmas. Terry would be thinking the same thing.

‘Where did you find her?’ Stella became the policeman’s daughter. Cashman, like Terry, would work from a mix of preconceptions and prejudices.

‘On the bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling like she’d been scared out of her wits. Her phone was off the hook, indicating she went to use it and he got to her first.’

He was resting his foot on the low tubular radiator beneath the sill. Stella stopped herself demanding he remove it; she had cleaned the cast-iron columns last week.

‘See this?’

A hand print deteriorated to a smear as it travelled down the glass. Through the pane she saw the policewoman talking to someone but couldn’t see who it was.

‘She was trying to bang on the glass to attract attention, and her assailant dragged her off.’

Stella had seen such a mark many times.

‘It’s a test. For me.’

‘A what?’

‘If this was here at the end of a session, Mrs Ramsay complained.’ Stella flushed. There had not been a trap like this for weeks and she had presumed that Mrs Ramsay had concluded that with Stella she had met her match. She had begun bringing in glasses of fruit juice halfway through the shift and boiling a kettle for coffee before Stella had finished. Instead of the instant coffee reserved for ‘tradesmen’, Stella was given ground, strong without sugar, just how she liked it.

She should never have rested on her laurels. Page seven of the Clean Slate handbook warned: Do not at any point imagine the client is your friend; it will compromise your work.

Mrs Ramsay had never trusted her.

‘I thought we had it tough.’ Cashman sucked his pen and, at home in this house that was not his, flung wide the connecting doors to the kitchen.

Fixed to the wall beside the broom cupboard was a Bakelite telephone, its fabric cord draped across a 1968 calendar that Mrs Ramsay kept because it celebrated her best decade. It was always open on June, with a picture of a red telephone box in swinging London’s King’s Road. Stella could imagine the young Isabel Ramsay, toting a cigarette as she barked orders down the phone to the florist, the grocer, the Harrods’ van driver, amidst plumes of blue smoke. Even in her seventies, Mrs Ramsay reminded Stella of the pre-assassination Jackie Kennedy. Jackie ‘O’ featured on the calendar’s August page in a black and white chequered jacket and sunglasses.

Mrs Ramsay said this had been a happy family home; soon it would be dismantled and the mementoes of a lifetime scuttled into rubbish bags and supermarket boxes.

‘We’ve contacted the eldest daughter. She was hazy about when she last saw her mother,’ Cashman said.

Stella did not remember when she had last seen Terry.

‘I spoke to her yesterday.’ She regretted the words as soon she had uttered them. He did not need to know Gina Cross had asked her to clear the house.

‘Why was that?’

‘She told me about Mrs Ramsay’s death.’ This was not true; Stella kept her voice level. She had to hope that the officer on scene guard on Tuesday had not said Stella had been unaware of Mrs Ramsay’s death until she came to the house.

Cashman appeared to change tack.

‘Did Mrs Ramsay mention they were mixed up in the Alice Howland case back in the day?’ Mistaking Stella’s blank expression for ignorance rather than determination to make no more careless slips, he was encouraged to continue: ‘A girl went missing. One of those investigations that chews away at you, though most of the guys must be pushing up the proverbials.’ He trailed off.

‘I keep a distance from my clients’ personal lives.’ Stella spoke into the silence and asked: ‘What makes you think Mrs Ramsay was killed?’ The evidence for murder was circumstantial and flimsy.

‘She had bruises on her leg, her shoulder and her right arm.’

He lounged against the sink that Stella had given a proper going over with ceramic cleaner. It was holding up well.

‘As I said, she had falls. She told me to keep them secret. I moved things to reduce hazards, but she put them back. She was hard to help. I tried to get her to see the doctor for her dizzy spells.’

‘Did she go?’

‘She never went out, don’t think she had house calls.’

‘One of the neighbours said she nicked their cat. A Mrs Jackson, know her?’

‘Yes and I wouldn’t go that far. Mrs Ramsay liked animals and made friends with them, that was all.’ As soon as she said this, Stella was convinced it was untrue; Mrs Ramsay did not like animals.

She had imprisoned Mrs Jackson’s cat in Eleanor’s old room, not, Stella was sure, because she cared about it, but to punish the creature. A punishment really intended for the youngest daughter who had left her room in a mess.

‘She was claustrophobic?’

‘Agoraphobic. Possibly.’

‘The autopsy will give us more on the bruising.’ He shut the book and crammed it in his jacket pocket.

Stella wanted the police gone from the house so tossed him a red herring: ‘She got headaches. Sometimes she spent all day in bed.’

Cashman wasn’t listening. Interview over.

‘Terry would’ve wrapped this up in a jiffy.’ He gave a tight smile. Stella bridled at the mention of Terry. She doubted he would have had a clue. Unlike any phone messages she left for him, he would have returned Martin Cashman’s call and played at detective; in fact he had called him last week.

‘You don’t think this is murder?’

‘Not for me to say.’ Stella shrugged. ‘I can’t see who would have wanted to murder her and I can’t see anything missing, only broken.’

Through the kitchen window she noticed the door to the summerhouse hanging open. The catch needed mending. It was an item on her list of surprises for Mrs Ramsay.

‘You’d have a better idea than the daughter about what’s different. Do you mind if we pop upstairs and you cast your eye?’

Other than rumpled blankets – Mrs Ramsay had never taken to a duvet – Stella reported the bedroom unchanged. A twisted sheet trailing over the bedspread was proof only that Mrs Ramsay slept badly, tossing and turning, getting up and roaming the house or going to the toilet. The water glasses were in their places beside the bed; one with a lipstick stain on its rim was half empty. The SOCO team had not reached the top floor so Cashman should not have brought her here.

He trusted her.

Stella took care where she put her feet, and folded her arms to stop herself touching anything. This was for show; her fingerprints would be everywhere.

Here, where she spent many hours reading or lying in the dark with a migraine, Mrs Ramsay’s absence was more noticeable. Stella avoided magazines on the floor by Mrs Ramsay’s side of the bed and read the title of a book on the bedside cabinet. Emma. Mrs Ramsay shunned books with deaths in them and as a safeguard flicked to see who was still alive in the last chapter. She had said Jane Austen suited her perfectly.

Stella pictured Mrs Ramsay propped up against plump duck-down pillows, penning another list to Lizzie.

She walked around to Mark Ramsay’s side. His staged presence, including the empty water glass, had given her the creeps but she did not share this with the waiting detective. The glass was full and a paperback edition of Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, with two dog-eared copies of The Lancet from June and May 1999, lay beside it. The books changed each time she came.

‘Did she have a partner?’ The detective was straining to keep irony out of the enquiry; his equal opportunity training a straw loosely clutched. Terry never had that trouble, to him all people were equal and no one mattered more than someone else, including his family.

‘She never got over her husband’s passing.’ There was something on the floor by the bed. Casually dropping her car keys Stella went as if to retrieve them.

It was squashed filter of a roll-up cigarette. Stella scooped it up with her keys.

‘Terry mentioned the old lady when he phoned, weird.’

Stella’s stomach flipped. Irrationally she fumed that Terry discussed her clients with anyone and she crossed the room to where two sash windows looked out on to the Square and tried to control her temper.

Two children straggled along a path in the park: the little boy wobbled on a bicycle pushed by an older girl. The bike jack-knifed and he tumbled on to the verge. Stella could hear his cries. The girl propped the bike against a bench and hauled the boy to his feet and the wailing subsided as she straightened him out.

‘Why did he mention Mrs Ramsay?’

‘She was a witness in a murder.’ Cashman was by the door. ‘I was a raw recruit in Bermondsey then. The Old Kent Road was another land to a West End boy!’ He was chatty, suddenly affecting a stronger London accent. ‘Your dad asked me to get hold of her statement. Anything for Tel, I said, no trouble.’

It was the statement that Stella had read last night. She made a mental note to look for the missing page.

‘Why did he want it?’ Mrs Ramsay had never mentioned Katherine Rokesmith. Nor had she mentioned Terry, although the name Darnell might have rung a bell.

Cashman continued: ‘Didn’t he tell you? He said he was going to ring you.’

‘No.’ Cashman had got that wrong. Terry only rang her on birthdays and Christmas.

‘This was about them next door, in the eighties.’ He gestured at the wall. ‘The old lady – she wasn’t old then – gave us our only solid sighting of the victim. She saw Kate Rokesmith setting off for the river.’ She could smell Cashman’s hair, his aftershave, his skin. If she shut her eyes it would be Terry.

‘Katherine Rokesmith?’ Her mouth was dry.

‘You got it. It’s down to your Mrs Ramsay that we got a time on the killing.’ He said ‘we’ although he was at a different station at the time. Like Terry, he spoke as if he and the police were one.

Mrs Ramsay must have watched children in the square, as Stella was now doing. The girl had taken the bike and was pedalling off, the boy, probably her brother, was unable to keep up. Mrs Ramsay would have tapped her fingers on the sill, mouthing encouragement or admonishment. Did she mistake them for her own? She had crowed to Stella that she had always known what her children were up to, the parties they attended, the forbidden late nights they imagined they got away with but had not because the fifth stair creaking gave them away.

She was always telling stories – why had she never mentioned Katherine Rokesmith?

Stella looked down. The woman police officer was still talking; from here she could see it was a man, probably a journalist. This was how stories leaked, hacks feigning idle chat with bored coppers.

It was Paul.

He glanced up and Stella stepped back, colliding against D. I. Cashman, who had come up behind her. She did not want him asking Paul questions and hurried out of the room to distract him. A door in Mrs Ramsay’s garden opened on to the Great West Road. Stella had a key but could not think of a reason to give Cashman for leaving that way. Paul would have seen her van; he had followed her.

He was turning into a stalker.

On the landing, she hesitated. Cashman went into the sitting room, jangling his keys like an estate agent showing round a client. There were six more stairs and on the fifth stair, as Mrs Ramsay said, the wood creaked when she put her weight on it. With the house busy, vacuum going, radio on, it would be easy to miss. At night it would be loud.

‘Let me know about the funeral. We’ll give him the send-off he deserves.’ Cashman puffed out his cheeks. The sitting room was crowded with SOCOs, so they walked down to the front door. Shaking hands he added: ‘I can’t get my head around it.’

‘Why was Terry ringing me?’ Stella was furious with herself for asking.

Already the detective’s mind was elsewhere; she knew those darting looks of distraction when Terry switched to bluff humour and fiddled with his watch strap.

‘To talk to his daughter? Hey, maybe he wanted a cleaner!’

Stella took the steps outside so fast that the police officer barely managed to lift the tape in time and was in her van before she remembered Paul. There was no sign of him. Trying to sound nonchalant, she called out: ‘What did that man want?’

‘Directions.’

‘I thought I knew him, that’s all.’ Stella shrugged. ‘Saying that, I meet a lot of people.’ She started the ignition. The officer was lying, but she couldn’t argue.

‘I’m sure you do,’ the WPC muttered.

Stella drove round to Rose Gardens North, determinedly avoiding looking at Terry’s, and uncurling her fingers examined the cigarette stub in her palm. One end was crushed as if extinguished against a hard surface. The tobacco had a distinctive smell – familiar, although she could not think why; she avoided smokers.

She tipped the butt into a plastic bag and poked it into a compartment in her rucksack. It was proof that Mrs Ramsay had started smoking again, although that didn’t matter now. Her phone rang.

‘Your teeth must have made an impression on that dentist,’ Jackie said gaily. ‘He wants a weekly clean of the flat above his surgery. The catch is, he wants us this afternoon and the rota’s full. We’re fresh out of staff.’

‘Did you tell him that?’

‘What do you take me for? I said I’d talk with you.’

She imagined Ivan Challoner in his immaculate surgery, music drifting from between books that had nothing to do with dentistry. The memory of the sweet mix of scents and fragrances eclipsed the sticky odour of Mrs Ramsay’s cigarette butt. Stella had never looked forward to a filling before.

The dental surgery would be a nice piece of work, high standards and with interesting objects to wipe down and buff up for an appreciative client. But she did not want to go there as Mr Challoner’s cleaner.

‘Shall I add him to the waiting list?’ Jackie repeated.

Stella adjusted the seat belt. She was meant to limit her cleaning sessions. First law of running a business: leave time to get more business. Dust and dirt wait for no one. Second law: learn to delegate. Being unable to see the bigger picture or take the long view had been Terry’s problem. Her mother said he saw only what was under his nose.

You’re just like Terry.

Stella made a snap decision: ‘Get hold of that man who came in earlier – Jack Harmon was his name – his form’s in thingy’s in-tray.’

‘Beverly. You don’t like the newbies going into the field without a home run. I’m sure I could persuade Wendy although it’s her day off.’

‘She’s seeing her dad in the home. Get Beverly to chase up references.’

‘I’ll do it myself.’

Crossing Chiswick roundabout on her way to a client in Sheen, a hearse with no coffin passed Stella, probably returning from Mortlake Crematorium. She absorbed the detective’s words about giving Terry a ‘send-off’. Funerals were a waste of money and Terry hated fuss; she should have said.

The police constable had not told Stella Darnell how she had boasted to the chatty neighbour that she was at Detective Superintendent Darnell’s leaving do or that his local was the Ram. Generally pissed off, she let the man know the daughter was in the house. He said he had to be somewhere but asked her to send Stella, as he called her, his condolences and he would see her later. She had been a tad indiscreet, but he had said he was a friend of the family.

When Stella Darnell had asked about him in a tone implying she had better keep her mouth shut, the officer decided not to relay his message. Later she resolved to make this good with a note to Stella dropped in D. Supt. Darnell’s letter box when she came off duty since she didn’t have her address.

When her shift ended, the WPC was exhausted from hours of standing in the cold and her goodwill, such as it was, having evaporated, she went straight home.