The Detective's Daughter

45

Friday, 21 January 2011

‘She keeps the top room facing the river locked and went peculiar when I asked her to open it.’ Jack cupped a hand under his chin to stop crumbs as he bit on the biscuit. They were in Stella’s flat. Jack was sprawled on her sofa, the plastic covering squeaking as he fidgeted.

‘Peculiar how? She wanted us to do everywhere.’ Stella was annoyed. ‘I quoted her for that room. Did you say?’

‘So, you come out ahead.’ Jack wiped his hands on his trouser legs. ‘I could hardly insist she break the door down. Apparently it’s her brother’s bedroom and she went on about him, harking back to old resentments. Sibling shit.’ He sniffed.

‘It’s a waste of time you being there if you can’t see out of that window.’

‘It can’t be much different to the bathroom so we can assume that anyone in that room would not have seen where Katherine Rokesmith died. No one was there that day so it wouldn’t help us.’

Jack crunched up the last digestive biscuit. He had eaten half the packet; Stella wondered again if he ate properly. His kitchen was well equipped, yet she could not envisage him cooking.

‘I’ll get someone else on the contract; you’ve found out what we needed to know.’ If they were at Terry’s she could have heated up a shepherd’s pie for him. Next time they were there, she would get one out of the freezer.

‘We promised her the same cleaner each week.’

‘Listen to you, Mr Customer Care.’

‘I’d like to go again.’ Jack poured himself more coffee from the stainless steel cafetière. ‘I’ve got a feeling.’

‘What kind of feeling?’

‘I had left the vacuum on to check the window. I can’t swear to it, but I had the sense that someone was in the room, yet when I looked round there was no one.’

‘Maybe she fancies you.’ Stella was losing patience. She had spent the morning at Mrs Ramsay’s. She would not confess to Jack that all the time she had been convinced Mrs Ramsay was present. It would encourage his fanciful thinking. Nor did she tell him that Paul’s continued silence was troubling her. There had been no contact from him since yesterday. When she was driving, she kept tabs on her mirrors; at her flat she kept checking the communal landing to see if he was outside. He had never been silent this long; if Paul was playing games, he was getting better at them.

The door buzzer went.

Jack put his finger to his lips and tiptoed out. He had the video picture up by the time Stella got there. A motorcycle courier was gesticulating at the lens, a parcel under his arm.

‘Are you expecting a delivery?’

‘Yes. Can you see anyone behind him?’

‘No. If your man has sense, he’ll keep out of view until the last minute.’

‘I’m not risking it.’ Stella activated the intercom and spoke into the microphone: ‘The entry button doesn’t work, have your helmet off by the time I get down there.’ She turned to Jack. ‘After I’ve got the package, watch to see if Paul appears.’

The ping of the lift and Stella’s heels clicking on the marble broke the cladded silence.

It was the same courier who delivered lilies to Mrs Ramsay but he gave no sign of recognizing Stella. She took the padded bag off him, executed an illegible squiggle on his handheld device with the stylus and slammed the door. As the lift door slid shut, a silver SUV was passing on the main road, but otherwise nothing moved. If Paul had been out there, he would have appeared, she assured herself. She rather wished that he were; then at least she would know he was all right. His silence was oppressive. Nothing in these flats made any sound: the rapid ascent of blue-lit numbers on the control panel was the only evidence that the lift worked.

The Friday morning arrival of Mrs Ramsay’s flowers belonged to a remote time. The packed-up house was soon to be empty of all the furniture she had kept clean, making Stella doubt that the two years she had cleaned for Mrs Ramsay had ever happened.

Jack was still in the hall. He had stayed as she requested, which gave her hope for what she planned next. She sat on the sofa, the plastic squeaking, ripped off parcel tape and broke open the padded bag.

That morning the new uniforms had arrived in the office and she had asked Jackie to courier over one large polo shirt for Jack.

She held it aloft. The Clean Slate logo was embossed on the shoulder, the silk thread – Pantone 277 – contrasted with the Pantone 375 material; it was smarter than she expected.

‘This’ll impress Sarah Glyde.’ She went for the light approach.

Jack glanced up from the papers he had returned to and blanched.

‘Take it.’ Stella laid it on the table in front of him.

Jack rushed out of the room. Stella couldn’t hear him being sick – her soundproofed walls did their job – but went cold and clammy at the thought of him kneeling in front of her spotless toilet bowl.

She was kneading the top-quality material busily, berating herself for being rash when Jack reappeared. She did not think it possible he could look any paler, but he was chalk-white.

‘Don’t look like that. I never throw up.’ He skirted the room, avoiding the shirt, which she had draped over the arm of the sofa. ‘Green makes me ill, while you practically pass out at the prospect of vomit. What a team!’ He retreated behind the case files on the glass table. ‘We need Terry.’

‘How would he help?’

‘You really didn’t rate him, did you?’ Jack mopped his forehead with a wodge of lavatory paper.

‘He was a crap detective and a worse parent.’

‘What sort of daughter were you?’

‘It wasn’t my fault he was never there.’

‘He had to work. You don’t mention your mother. What’s her excuse?’

‘She lives in Barons Court with her budgerigar.’ Her mother loved the tiny yellow bird that talked as much as she did.

‘You are second best to a bird?’

‘I’m forty-four; I don’t need a mother.’

‘We all need a mother.’

Neither of them spoke.

‘I stopped existing for my father the day my mum died. As soon as I was old enough, he enrolled me in a remote Dotheboys Hall boarding school.’ Jack fished into the packet for another biscuit until he saw there were no more left.

‘I thought you nursed him when he was ill.’

‘It didn’t make us close. He was bitter. The world believed that he had killed his wife and, in the absence of the police, the press and the public, his resentment was aimed at me.’

‘You believed he was innocent.’

‘He knew that I wasn’t sure. Children know their parents the least of everyone. He never mentioned her and we never visited her grave. I wondered if he could kill someone. He knew that.’

‘What is it about green?’ Stella had depended on her shock tactic curing Jack. She was eager to see him in the new uniform; she wanted him on the next Clean Slate brochure.

‘It should have sun on it.’

‘Talk normally.’ Stella shook the shirt. Jack flinched.

‘It is absolutely terrible.’ His eyes were mournful. ‘I can’t say more.’

The telephone rang.

‘Yes?’ Stella rapped.

‘Stell? It’s me, love, listen I’ve had the strangest call.’ It was Jackie.

Stella prepared herself: it would be a client wanting to mix and match services and Jackie had found the idea of straying outside the pricing structure strange. To Stella such requests were opportunities.

‘A man has called saying he’s Paul’s brother. Your Paul.’

‘He’s not— Oh, never mind.’

‘He was supposed to have a fish supper with him last night and he never showed up and isn’t answering his mobile. The brother told me you were going to marry him. Paul, I mean.’

Jackie was trying not to be peeved that she hadn’t been informed, Stella thought.

‘Jackie, if I ever marry, you will be the first to know. Why is he panicking? Paul’s a grown man. He can drop out of a fish supper if he wants.’

‘He wasn’t panicking, he presumed Paul was with you. He was expecting to meet you too. I said as far as I knew you were not in touch with Paul and had not been for a while. I said he had misunderstood.’

‘I haven’t seen him.’ Stella chose not to mention her visit to Paul’s flat, or last night; it would involve confessing that she had tricked Paul. She was not proud of it.

‘I do hope he hasn’t done anything stupid. He cared too much for you.’

‘He’s probably mending a computer in a place with no signal.’

‘His work hasn’t heard from him since Wednesday.’

She hung up and looked at Jack. He appeared to have resumed reading, his glasses on the end of his nose, the cut on his hand livid against his skin and his face pointedly averted from the polo shirt.

The only person Paul could have met on the way to the pub was Jack.

He raised his eyes.

‘I slipped on the ice, Stella,’ he said. ‘Have you checked he hasn’t cottoned on to Ivan Challoner? He may have seen you with him. Why don’t you give your friendly dentist a call?’

‘Let’s not talk about Paul or my dentist.’

Stella went to the toilet. As she dried her hands, she thought it was likely that Paul had seen her with Ivan. She could not ask him if Paul had been to see him. She hit upon an idea.

She pulled her mobile out of her trouser pocket and rang his surgery.

The starchy receptionist answered.

‘I wanted to check the dates of my appointments with Ivan’ – she deliberately used his first name – ‘as I’m filling in a claim form. They might have sent an insurance rep round, they’re pretty diligent.’

‘It’s not usual. I give patients their receipts and they post them.’

‘No one has been in asking about me? Would they have got in touch with Ivan directly?’

‘I am sure they would not. However, Mr Challoner is not here, he’s speaking at a conference in Rome and will not return until next week.’

‘Thanks for your help.’

There was no reason why Ivan should have told Stella he was going away, but still she was disappointed that he had not mentioned it on Monday when he had talked of their meeting soon. Presumably it would not be soon.

Jack was absolutely still on the sofa, the Clean Slate polo shirt balled up in his hands.

‘Katherine Rokesmith was wearing a scarf the colour of Pantone 375.’ His voice was level.

Stella took the polo shirt off him and folded it.

‘It was not on her when they found her body.’

‘Her killer took it to remind him of her. He has a box of trophies.’ Jack’s face was almost the white of the sofa.

Stella fitted the shirt back into the bag and placed it on the table out of his sightline.

‘We have the murder weapon,’ she said softly, and drew up a dining chair close to the sofa, their knees touching: ‘Jack, he strangled your mum with her own scarf.’