The Detective's Daughter

30

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Snowflakes were swirling; the church tower was a pencil sketch, its lines indistinct. Stella had lost sight of Jack and thrust aside rhododendron branches, tipping snow on to her head. Ahead, lit intermittently by traffic and what lamplight penetrated the dense foliage, was the statue.

They had not spoken on the drive to Terry’s house and Jack had got out of the van as soon as Stella turned off the engine. He had not seemed surprised to see her at Stamford Brook station, nor had he avoided her on the platform at Earls Court where she waited while he took the train to the depot. Implicitly they had both known where they were going and why: Stella could not return by herself to Terry’s house for only the second time since his death. She had to take Jack with her.

Wind had blown snow into the clearing; bushes and the spreading sycamore offered scant protection. It covered the Leaning Woman’s head and shoulders like a shawl. Stella tramped around the sculpture and found Jack, his knees up to his chest, curled in a ball. He clasped his hands as if in prayer, perhaps in an attempt to keep them warm. Stella resolved to find Terry’s gloves. She would heat up a shepherd’s pie because in the half-light, despite all the milk he drank, Jack looked more malnourished than ever.

‘You didn’t mention a “day job”.’ Her voice was level.

‘Night job, to be accurate. I do the Dead Lates four times a week. Tonight I finished early because I was a relief driver.’

‘This is early?’ Hampered by manic flurries of snow, Stella could not see the time on her watch. In the van, it had been about midnight.

‘The night is young.’

Stella lowered herself beside Jack. ‘Where do you live?’ She raised a gloved hand. ‘Don’t bother making it up. I contacted the address on your form. A Michael Hamilton and his wife Ellen – who actually live there – had never heard of you.’

Jack lit a cigarette; he had taken a risk putting a real address on the form; the best lies were mostly truth. The Hamiltons had been his family for longer than was wise since they were not part of the main task. They had not given him what he was looking for, but he at least had found what he had lost: a home. He cleared his throat.

‘Have you any idea what paltry issues can form the basis for a catastrophic rift in a relationship? Which way a lavatory roll is fitted in the holder, pulling from the top or from underneath, can be a reason for murder.’

‘Don’t change the subject.’

‘This is the subject. In the afternoons, I’d hear the gabble of kids’ voices from the gardens, that way they talk, excitable and dramatic, then it goes wrong and they’re quarrelling. “It’s not fair”, “It’s my turn” and so on. I’d want to join in.’ It was upsetting to hear that the Hamiltons claimed he was a stranger.

‘One more time and then I am going. Where do you live?’ Stella’s back was numb and she zipped up her anorak to cover her chin.

Jack blew on his hands. ‘There are so many secrets.’

‘Here, take these.’ Stella gave him her gloves.

She balanced on her haunches trying to avoid the cold and wet, which was already seeping though her trousers. ‘How can you expect me to trust you when you come out with this stuff?’

‘I don’t expect anything. However, you do trust me, or you wouldn’t have me cleaning for you.’

Stella considered the truth of this and kept it to herself. ‘Did you steal anything from these Hamiltons?’

‘No. I gave them back their lives.’

‘How exactly?’

‘So much is hidden in homes: affairs, private hurt, injustice. I shone light on some of it and moved events along. I am a catalyst.’

‘So where do you live?’ She pulled her hood over her head.

‘Why do you care? I do the work and you have my number.’

‘I care if you break into people’s homes, I know you were in Mrs Ramsay’s. You claim she invited you, but why would she do that? And why were you sending her flowers?’

‘I told you, Isabel was my friend.’ Jack struggled to his feet. The statue had vanished beneath snow and he brushed it off, his actions frantic, as if her smothered state was distressing to him.

‘Since you were such good friends, why didn’t Mrs Ramsay tell you that she lied to the police about Kate Rokesmith?’

‘As I keep saying, we have private lives. Perhaps she might have, had she not died.’ Jack swept snow from the statue’s head. ‘Although I doubt it. Isabel was made of steel and rigorous in committing nothing to paper.’ As he worked, more snow fell, undermining his efforts.

‘What makes you sure she didn’t write stuff down?’

‘I didn’t find anything. No letters, cards, journal nor notebook: Isabel Ramsay was the sort of woman to write about her every move; she fascinated herself and would imagine her children fascinated after she was gone, but there wasn’t even an appointments diary.’

‘I didn’t say you could sort her papers. That was not part of the brief.’

‘Terry solved his cases with a squirt of polish and a buff of a duster, did he?’ Jack swished snow from the outstretched arms with one of Stella’s gloves. ‘If we want to learn stuff, we have to be nosy.’

‘Terry didn’t solve this case.’

‘Rather than protecting Hugh Rokesmith, my guess is she was protecting her own husband. She was always grumbling about Mark Ramsay. You knew that. She wouldn’t believe he was dead.’

‘Protecting him from what?’ Stella retorted. ‘Her husband was a professor, a doctor.’

‘Doctors kill people. Take Harold Shipman.’

‘I know they do.’ Stella was on her feet. ‘He wasn’t interviewed because he was at work at midday.’ She stamped about, churning up snow, to get feeling back in her toes. ‘My money’s still on Rokesmith. Will you leave that bloody concrete monstrosity, you’re not making any difference.’

‘We already decided Rokesmith had no motive.’ Jack ignored Stella’s outburst. ‘What about Mark Ramsay, since midday has been discounted?’

‘I read he was at work at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. You’re setting up dummies.’

‘And Paul, did you check him out?’

‘How am I supposed to do that?’ Stella huffed. ‘I think Rokesmith was having an affair and wanted Kate out the way, the oldest reason in the book.’

‘We have no evidence.’ Jack put Stella’s glove back on. ‘He never remarried.’

‘What does that prove? Nor would I if I’d murdered my wife.’

Jack scuffed at the ground with his boot. ‘This is where the boy was found.’

‘This is where we’ll be found if we stay any longer.’ Stella moved to the edge of the clearing. They were in the middle of London beside a major road, but it might have been in a remote wood insulated from the world by thick snow and dense bushes.

‘Hugh Rokesmith lived under a cloud of suspicion all his life. Commissions for work ran out except the occasional job at a derisory price and so-called friends stopped phoning. Women were still interested, the kind that correspond with murderers in prison. By the time he died he was, like Isabel Ramsay, a recluse. His cancer would have been treatable had he gone to the doctor sooner.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘It’s all there on the internet.’

‘It’s not.’

‘The Leaning Woman took care of the boy.’ Jack walked around the plinth. ‘See these lines?’

Faint marks had been painted on the concrete.

‘They represent the jointing of a carcase.’ Jack trailed his gloved finger over the woman’s stomach, making marks of his own in the new snow. ‘We are looking for a man with a mind that could do this because such a mind killed Katherine Rokesmith.’

‘What makes you so definite that man wasn’t her husband?’ In the poor light Jack looked older. Stella realized she had never actually established his age. It was not on his form. He was still talking:

‘…Rokesmith gained nothing. She wasn’t insured and had no money. Her death shattered him and he was lumbered with the son. On top of that he had to live with the world’s certainty that he was the culprit.’

‘He didn’t do much to prove otherwise.’

‘If you are not guilty you don’t have tracks to cover.’

‘Not like you.’ Against her better judgement Stella blurted out: ‘How innocent are you? Why are you so interested?’ She retreated to the gap in the privet.

‘I was Jonathan Rokesmith’s friend.’ Jack spoke to the Lady.

‘What sort of friend? Where is he now?’

‘We were at school together.’ He rubbed his face. ‘Jonny’s dead.’

‘You’re too old!’

‘Thanks.’ He smiled grimly. ‘We are the same age. He would be thirty-three now. Same age as Jesus when he was crucified.’

‘Why wasn’t Jonathan Rokesmith’s death in the news?’

‘The Rokesmiths aren’t news. There have been other murders, other murderers.’

‘So you snoop into people’s lives and steal their identities for the sake of a dead friend?’

‘The best detective thinks like a murderer, didn’t your dad tell you that?’ He smiled briefly. ‘Call it unfinished business.’

‘Terry was not the best detective.’

Jack had played games with her. Stella turned on her heel. He could follow her or stay talking nonsense in the icy cold: it was up to him.

They heard a sound; it could have been a gust of wind blowing snow off a branch, but the second time it was further away. Footsteps. Jack pushed past her and sprinted out to the road.

There was no one going towards the square or the other way along the north side of Black Lion Lane. Then came the drone of an engine and a brake light sparkled on the camber at the far end.

‘This ground was virgin.’ Jack pointed. Apart from their tracks there was another set of indistinct prints along the pavement by the bushes, leading to where they had seen the car.

‘These are forefoot-struck,’ Stella announced.

‘What?’

‘Whoever made them landed on the ball of their foot rather than their heel, which is more common.’ She straightened up: ‘I use my heel and so do you. The heels on your shoes are worn while the front part of the soles are only scratched.’

‘Are you suggesting that, like Hugh Rokesmith, I can be in two places at once?’

‘I said that this person uses the front of their foot, didn’t I? Besides, I’m your alibi. If we can’t trust each other…’ Stella began to walk back to Rose Gardens North, speaking over her shoulder: ‘Someone was on the other side of those bushes, they must have heard everything.’

‘We might be closer than we think.’ Jack’s voice was almost inaudible.

‘Here, take Terry’s keys and let yourself in, I’ll be back.’

‘You trust me now?’

‘I must be mad.’

‘Where are you going?’ Jack’s hair tufted at the back like a child’s after napping in a cot. ‘You’re not bottling out, are you?’

‘No, I am not.’ Stella snapped. ‘I have to sort something.’