The Detective's Daughter

42

Thursday, 20 January 2011

After leaving Stella, as she had anticipated, Jack did double back. He trod in other people’s footprints along Hammersmith Terrace. In Eyot Gardens the snow was thick, which made walking easier.

He noticed he was not the only one to have come this way since the last snowfall. A tall man, he guessed, looking at the distance between the prints; someone who stepped with the ball of his foot first.

He retraced his steps. Not literally, for he made no attempt to be precise, even kicking snow up to blur previous prints with the present ones; that would confuse. He stooped and made a snowball; compacting it to ice, he hurled it across Hammersmith Terrace. It splattered against the wall of the old laundry, making no sound. He ran to where it had landed, chips of snow on the flawless surface. Snow on snow. He scooped up more and, moulding it between his gloved palms, lobbed it at the spot where he had been standing. Bull’s eye. He went through this caper twice, shuffling back and forth across the road each time. If anyone noticed him they would think him drunk, or eccentric, but not suspicious. He hopped and jumped over his tracks until there was a muddle of footprints.

Once more he went down Eyot Gardens, further obscuring his tracks. The Great West Road had been salted. With offices on the south side and bushes and trees on the north, he would not be seen by a sleepless resident. A camera might catch him so he wore his woolly hat and affected a limp for the benefit of the lens. His disability was not pronounced; they would congratulate themselves on their observation skills if they spotted it. He pretended to struggle climbing the central barrier of the Great West Road and crossed the eastbound carriageway in a lop-sided stroll, hands in his pockets, head down, partly for the CCTV, partly because he felt like it.

It was two in the morning and with the city to himself Jack was in excellent spirits. He squatted down to make another snowball and hoped nothing would happen to spoil it.