The Detective's Daughter

33

Wednesday, 19 January 2011

Jack was in Terry’s study. He had obeyed Stella’s instructions not to turn on lights in the rest of the house and parking up she had been gratified to note that it looked from the outside as if no one was there.

Jack was lounging on Terry’s desk chair, his feet propped on an open drawer. He was examining papers from the filing wallet: car insurance schedules, MOT certificates, utility bills that Stella had set aside for probate. She dismissed the ripple of annoyance at this. As she had suggested, he had eaten a shepherd’s pie. The smell caught in her throat.

‘Did you sort Paul out?’ he said without looking up.

‘How did you know…? Yes, I spoke to him.’

‘Don’t tell me, he’d been in all night having a romantic dinner for two.’

‘Something like that.’ She leant on the sill and looked over at Mrs Ramsay’s summerhouse. In the light of the moon it looked like a house in a fairy tale. ‘It was probably a passer-by who got scared and ran away.’

‘Never believe in the obvious.’ Jack slipped the document he had been reading back in the file. He swung his feet down and trundled the chair up to the desk.

‘Have you found anything?’

‘Not so far. He was meticulous, your dad.’ Jack tapped a file box. ‘He kept his life in date order. There are art exhibition programmes with the date of his visit, bills with cheque number and date of payment. I see where you get it from.’ He clawed his hair back from his face. ‘Birth, marriage and death certificates. He’s even kept his divorce papers from 1974. Poor guy, eight years was not much of a marriage.’

The angled light heightened his pallor. Stella wished he would stop calling Terry ‘her dad’ or worse, ‘poor guy’.

‘Art exhibitions?’ she echoed.

‘Like I said, never believe the obvious.’ Jack angled the monitor to face him. ‘Have you been in his computer?

‘No.’ Stella had not come to the house since she had rushed out and she was sure Jack knew this. ‘I suppose he got it to occupy himself in his retirement.’

‘He had an occupation.’ Jack switched on the machine. The fan was loud in the quiet house and blew out the smell of scorched dust as it came to life.

‘That’s a bugger.’ A white background striped with horizontal grey and letters and digits in Courier font spread over the screen.

‘Any ideas what his password was?’

‘None.’

‘He must have had some technical know-how – this needs a BIOS password. Burglars often test a machine before nicking it and if it asks for one they tend to leave it. Only a professional can crack it. I disturbed a break-in at the Hamiltons and they dumped Michael’s laptop because it had a BIOS request.’

‘Pity you couldn’t have caught them.’

‘I did. While they were doing the bedroom I called the police from the study extension and they arrested them on their way out. I had to escape through the study, which was awkward.’

Stella knew a fantasist when she met one. Jack clearly believed what he was saying was true, so it wasn’t lying in the strictest sense. Terry put up with all sorts to get answers. She asked: ‘Why don’t people find you? I would.’

‘Yes, you would, but you’re not like other people.’ Jack tilted back the chair. ‘What was Terry’s warrant number?’

‘How should I know?’

‘I know my dad’s national insurance number and his car registration.’

‘If this is a competition, I’m happy for you to win,’ Stella retorted. ‘Why would I need to know?’

‘It would be a help now if you did.’ He tapped the keyboard. A message flashed up saying the password was wrong, try again. ‘I thought you were close to your dad.’

‘You thought wrong.’

Jack flipped through the document wallet and eased out Terry’s payslips. He ran his finger over the paper. ‘Here we are.’ He punched in a six-digit number:130253.

Password incorrect, press return for a retry.

‘It will lock us out after ten goes.’ Jack leant down and scratched his ankle. ‘What’s that?’ He pointed at the wedge of paper tucked half under the leg of the desk.

‘It’s keeping the desk steady.’ Some detective he was.

Lifting the desk, Jack pulled out the paper and unfolded it.

‘It’s blank.’ Stella wished he would leave things alone.

‘No it’s not.’ He smoothed out the deep creases. ‘Why does Colin Peterson ring a bell?’

It had meant nothing to Stella when she used the paper as a stabilizer. It did now.

‘He was a suspect in the Rokesmith murder.’

The church clock chimed one.

‘Let’s call him.’

‘He’ll be asleep. Besides his alibi was proven.’

‘When the time frame was fifteen minutes to midday, but now?’

‘He was at Doncaster Racecourse. I think we can rule him out.

‘He may know something.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Wasn’t he decorating the spare room? He might have overheard something but not appreciated its significance.’

‘Don’t you think the police would have got that by now?’

‘They were treating him as a suspect, not a witness. Come on, Stella, it’s at least worth meeting him.’

They agreed to go the next afternoon. Jack helped Stella load the computer and remaining files into her van.

‘I’ll give you a lift home.’ She was weary and aware she had done no clearing up.

‘Nice try. I’ll walk.’ Jack smiled.

‘It was a simple offer,’ Stella barked, thinking as she spoke that this was not true.

The snow had stopped and there were no new tracks outside the house or on the road. Jack skittered off in the direction of the Leaning Woman.

When he was out of sight Stella climbed out of the van. Jack was pretending he had the power to conceal himself in people’s houses. He was like some little kid being a spy or Batman. She would find out where he lived and make him cut the crap.

Stella floundered through the snow to the church and tiptoed into the dark clearing with the statue. Jack was not there. She did not linger and shuffled through powdery snow past the subway. What with the graveyard and bushes, there were many places to hide. Jack would keep still until she had gone.

The ground was uneven where snow had been trampled and overlaid by another fall. She returned to Terry’s street where she spotted fresh tracks on the pavement leading to St Peter’s Square. Jack had doubled back from the Leaning Woman. He had got the better of her. She stopped and listened, but heard only traffic on the Great West Road, still busy despite the late hour.

The footprints went diagonally over to the park where, with a flick of the heel, they were lighter. Jack had run, perhaps to make little impression, and then halted by the gate, its horizontal bars picked out in white. The top was clear of snow where he had climbed over or he had wiped it clean to fool her.

Stella nearly gave up. Except giving up was what Jack expected her to do.

She put a foot on the bar above the lock and pulled herself up and over. She had done this before. In the hours before dawn, clothes on over her pyjamas, she had filled a basket with conkers. The cane on the basket was hard and lumpy like a Christmas stocking, or was that from the conkers?

Long shadows fell across the blue-white lawn. For a moment Stella forgot why she was there. Her eyes became accustomed to the dark and gradually she distinguished shapes on the path where Jack had not bothered walk on the edge. He probably thought she would not get this far.

Abruptly prints tracked back the way they had come, along the pavement parallel to the path. He had exited opposite Mrs Ramsay’s house.

She clambered over the gate and ran over to 48 St Peter’s Square. There were no lights in the windows but Jack was not stupid. Nor were there footprints to the door, and the snow on the yew hedge was pristine. She hovered in the porch. She had a key, she could go inside, but it was late and she was tired; her mind was playing tricks; Jack was not here.

Stella stopped by the hedge. So faint she might have missed them were footprints from the park gate – heel first – that went up the steps of the house next door to Mrs Ramsay’s. The house which until 1981 had been Kate Rokesmith’s home.