The Detective's Daughter

37

Thursday, 20 January 2011

Jackie rang to confirm the appointment with Sarah Glyde as they were passing Wormwood Scrubs Prison on Du Cane Road. She had liked Stella’s idea that her cleaners come to initial meetings to impress clients. Stella would have to come up with a reason why this only applied to Jack.

He suggested they leave the van outside Terry’s house and walk under the foot tunnel to Sarah Glyde’s. Stella soon saw why. At the Leaning Woman he cleared off a new layer of snow and scraped icy patches from around her face and along her thigh with a coin.

In the growing dark, the statue diminished in size and the ravages of the years was apparent. It was a lump of concrete which, over half a century, had fallen victim to decay and vandalism. Jack worked frenetically exposing the pock-marked surface demarcated into butcher’s joints, a tinge of colour in his cheeks. It struck Stella that, like a vampire, Jack drew life from the sculpture. His hands flitting over the Woman’s thigh, her face, brushing and sweeping, he was not the zombie of an hour earlier. As the statue had shrunk, so Jack had gained in stature.

Sunlight flashed on the hearse. Stella was beside him, a tiny thing on the wide seat. Already her tights were wrinkling. Her feet fidgeted in new patent-leather shoes. She had expected to visit her nana and although he’d explained what a funeral was, she had not taken it in. Her mother had dressed her up. Wearing a dress had, he could see, put a dampener on the day for her. Until Du Cane Road Stella chattered away; it was exciting, they had a whole huge car to themselves. Did prisoners go in it? He didn’t get this until she announced that the man driving them was a policeman like him. She became subdued when the traffic slowed and the hearse in front filled the windscreen.

Suzanne had said four was too young for a funeral and besides Stella hardly knew his mum. He said she had loved her nana. He had to be right so she came, no arguments. Stella was upset and he was sorry; he didn’t care if he was right, just that he didn’t make her cry.

Du Cane Road was solid; nothing could stop the world, not even his cranky old mum. He had gone mad with flowers despite her warning no fuss. She would have given Stella juice and biscuits afterwards. His family: his mum and his little girl. When he told his mum about his matrimonial problems she said at least you have ‘fin-fan’; her name for his Stella. The sun was hot and it was only morning. They passed the prison. He shouldn’t have brought her.

‘When I get there I’ll sort your father out.’ His mum’s dying words had got a laugh at the station but wouldn’t work on Stella.

‘Is Nana getting boiling hot?’ She jerked a wet thumb at the coffin.

‘She can’t feel anything, not pain or sun.’

Satisfied, she put her thumb back in her mouth; he wouldn’t stop her, not today.

His mum could not feel sunshine.

Stella might have been mulling it over the way she crinkled her forehead. She worked problems out step by step, taking after her nana. One day perhaps he would have his practical businesslike mother back by way of his daughter.

Stella slipped a damp hand into his and they squeezed fingers when the hearse entered the crematorium gates. She would not forget her nana, he told himself. He was right to bring her.

Look after the living, his mum would say.

‘I wanted to scream when he was waffling on,’ Stella said. ‘All that about Terry and primary school.’

‘I didn’t see anything about an Uncle Tony in the files, did you?’

‘Of course not. He made up him up,’ Stella snapped. Jack also knew about ‘made-up’. She rounded on him: ‘What was the matter with you back there? He obviously reckoned Hugh Rokesmith did it and you kept contradicting him. Peterson was there, he should know, that was why you suggested we went.’

Jack’s ear was against the plinth as if he were cracking open a safe and listening to the tumblers. Stella hoped he was not going to have another ‘Pantone 375’ attack.

‘He was biased, he hadn’t liked Hugh Rokesmith because he was a perfectionist. In an engineer’s world errors are not permissible. If a bridge is wrong it shows – at worst it falls down – so your mistakes are public.’

‘Did you meet him?’

‘What do you mean?’ Jack brushed off the last of the snow.

‘You were Jonathan Rokesmith’s friend. Did you meet his father?’

‘He brought the son into the class on the first day.’

They walked in silence through the subway.

In Black Lion Lane Stella trod gingerly; she could not afford to break an ankle. Even when Sarah Glyde’s house was in sight, Stella did not let herself increase her pace. Jack, his coat unbuttoned, flapped ahead of her, silhouetted against the lamplight like a great bat.

Stella gave the knocker two sharp raps. She craned up, certain that she would not like to live in such a large house on her own. Mrs Ramsay had managed it by filling her draughty home with dead people and making up others for company – except she had not made up everyone: Jack was real.

‘You made it! Come out of this perishing cold!’ Sarah Glyde ushered them in.

Jack stepped into the light and Sarah Glyde stopped smiling. The moment was brief and, shaking her hand, Stella decided her impression that the woman had for a moment been terrified was mistaken.