The Detective's Daughter

20

Thursday, 13 January 2011

Jack comforted himself: despite the rushed departure from his Hosts’ house, he had not put a foot wrong. Around him houses were dark – many people went to bed early or drew their curtains against the elements and to keep out those with minds like his own. Only like-minded souls would be out tonight.

He dodged over the A4, between the pillars of the Hogarth flyover where snow blew like polystyrene pellets along the ground. The structure thundered above his head when cars trundled over it. Jack had no fears; he lived with the sense of abandon a tourist has in a foreign landscape that feels insufficiently real to be dangerous.

He stopped by a drain and pulled out his Hosts’ door keys and the hammer. He wiped them clean of prints and posted them through the grille; far down he heard a plop when they hit the water. It was nearly ten.

He hurried by St Nicholas’ Church where on other nights the sprawling graveyard tempted him in.

Not tonight.

Chiswick Mall had changed little in the last 150 years: from the mansions set back from the road, behind their walls came the smell of wood-smoke; outside, the muffled grind of carriage wheels and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves seemed to carry on the wind along the riverside road. At high tide the river lapped on to the camber, strewing it with mud, splinters of wood and other debris. Not tonight.

It was low tide and the eyot at Chiswick, temporarily abandoning island status, was linked to the Chiswick Mall by a ragged causeway of stones. Jack’s boots sank in dry snow and with difficulty he walked as fast as he could to the Bell Steps.

A door slammed on Hammersmith Terrace and a man limped up the middle of the road, leaving dragging prints. Stopping by a car, he pushed snow off the windows, front and back, and eased himself into the driver’s seat. The engine purred into life and the car accelerated out into Black Lion Lane.

Jack stood in a dark patch of road left by the car. He was at the end of Hammersmith Terrace and on cue came the swell of voices and then quiet as the door of the Ram opened and creaked shut. A woman paused by the snow-topped picnic tables to do up her jacket and pull up the hood on her anorak, which would, Jack noted, hamper her side vision.

He shrank into a porch when she turned towards him, away from the subway. Although she braved solitary paths at night and took gratuitous risks, Stella Darnell was not like him or Michael Hamilton; she did not consider herself beyond harm. Like her detective father, she could not resist a challenge, so it would be with trepidation that, having checked no one was behind her, she made her way down the Bell Steps to the bank of the River Thames on a winter’s night.

Jack gave Stella two minutes, then he went after her.