The Detective's Daughter

48

Saturday, 22 January 2011

Bishopstone was less than half a mile from the A259 – the route from Brighton to Eastbourne – but with no through road and any road markings or signs lost beneath the snow it was remote and timeless. All the way from Seaford Stella had kept the fan on, but Terry’s car had not warmed up by the time they found the church.

In Seaford they had searched the car, squatting down by the door sills to peer beneath the seats, but Terry had been a tidy man and there were no used tissues or chewing-gum wrappers; they found nothing.

It was late afternoon; they had been travelling for two and a half hours. Their journey had begun with an Upminster District line train to Victoria station. To avoid fuss Stella had waived expense and proposed they hail a taxi, but Jack was reluctant. He had a staff pass for the Underground and Stella, thinking it would do him good to feel in charge, agreed. He insisted they face forwards in the front carriage and had sat with his left hand clenching and unclenching, his eyes on the door to the driver’s cab at the end of the gangway like a child steering. Stella understood; her left foot would depress a phantom brake at junctions and bends whenever she was a passenger in Jackie’s car.

They had changed trains at Lewes for Seaford. There, they struggled along icy pavements, past a church, a police station and a post office, to a wide street called the Causeway, to the sea where Stella had left Terry’s car. The cars were covered with snow and Jack stomped ahead clearing registration plates until he found the Toyota.

Neither of them had considered the risk involved in moving the car. Snow had banked up around the wheels but they found a small shovel in the boot – there was also a hazard triangle and a first-aid kit – and dug around the tyres. The street was as slippery as an ice-rink and when Stella finally started the engine and manoeuvred out, the wheels spun and they slid gracefully over the camber stopping just short of the smaller shape of a motorbike. Stella coaxed the vehicle forward; the brakes were spongy and the wheels’ response to the steering approximate. They missed a parked car by inches, knocking the wing mirror, making it spring inwards, which Jack insisted on getting out to correct. At last they reached the Bishopstone junction.

The village was at the end of a long winding lane. Stella was relieved to turn off the engine and dared not contemplate the drive back. She got out of the car and leant on the front wing. The air was fresher and colder than in London and she took a long breath.

Despite their speculations on the train, they were no closer to finding out what had brought Terry to Bishopstone.

‘Why would he come here?’ she mused out loud.

‘Perhaps he had wanted to visit her grave; remind himself why he was doing it.’

‘How often do you come?’

‘Hardly ever.’

Jack had told Stella about the set numbers and knew she had found it hard to contain herself at the idea that he made life decisions on the basis of a train’s identification number. He would not admit he had come to the grave two years ago, on 6 December, because on that day his first train’s number had been 612.

‘How far are we from Charbury?’ Stella was speaking.

‘About ten miles, maybe a bit less. Why?’

‘It’s where the Ramsays have a house. Maybe we should move Mark Ramsay up the list.’

A gust of cold wind blew in from the open car door and something fluttered out from the sun visor on to Jack’s lap. He held it up to the interior light.

Newspaper had been torn roughly with no care for the text; it was probably rubbish and he was about to stuff it into his pocket, when he caught the words ‘vacuum cleaner’ in the fragment of headline: riticize lazy security guards for failing to check vacuum cleaner.

Until he worked for Stella, Jack had not realized how much there was to know about cleaning: the equipment, cleaning agents, solutions for specific stains, hazard signs, buckets with wringers and wheels, brushes for every kind of dirt. He had stumbled upon an art form. He knew he was a good train driver but received any praise and promotion with stolid indifference. He did not care. Stella had not told him she admired his work, but let it slip to his mythical referee on the phone. He was pleased.

The article was dated 30 September 2008. The story was about the fire on the Cutty Sark the previous year. The incident was the major news story on the day his father had died. Jack had sat in the hospital watching the BBC lunchtime news on the monitor opposite the bed. Once, such a report would have gripped Hugh Rokesmith, who considered every eventuality when designing a bridge or a tunnel, but the world had diminished to an irrelevance and he did not respond when Jack reiterated the events of that early morning in May 2007.

Now it seemed that a Planet 200 industrial vacuum cleaner had been left on and overheated, causing a fire on the nineteenth-century clipper. Jack knew the vacuum, set on a platform with braked castor wheels at the front and a guiding bar at the back. Stella used them for commercial jobs. There had been one in the back of the van when they visited the plasterer and he had sneaked a look. Made in Italy, its stainless-steel cylinder with a little gauge was like a steam engine, although it operated on different principles. He longed to touch it, polish it and hear its motor; it was a feat of engineering. Unfortunately it wasn’t necessary for Ivan Challoner’s flat or Sarah Glyde’s house, despite its years of neglect.

Jack had been shocked to see tears running down his father’s cheeks. He wasn’t looking at the television but out of the window at the sky. Jack had never seen him cry and had walked out of the ward. He kept walking, out of the hospital, on and on until he reached the sea. He ended up in Scarborough’s Grand Hotel where he bought a coffee. While he was drinking it, a call came from the hospital. His father had died.

It was a sign.

He flipped the paper over. In jagged blue biro was a string of letters and digits in the margin: ‘CPL 628B. Does this mean anything to you?’

Stella floundered through ankle-deep snow and leant in through the open door. ‘Nope.’

‘A serial number.’ Jack handed her the paper. ‘Or a password?’

‘It’s a registration plate.’

‘Foreign maybe.’

‘No, in the UK the suffix series started in 1963, the last letter is the age of the vehicle. This is 1964. What with your number thing, I’m surprised you didn’t know that.’

Jack got out of the car and slammed the door. The sound startled rooks in the graveyard, their clattering wings and a burst of cawing broke the quiet.

‘Me too! Good work, PC Darnell, your time on traffic paid off.’

‘Terry told me.’

Jack could have said he treated numbers as a coded instruction; he dwelt on the message that they carried. His set numbers might tell him which train to pick up, but their meaning was deeper. He rarely considered numbers in the context of their own system; that was mundane.

‘Terry had a string of stolen cars in his head, he’ll have spotted this and written it on the nearest thing, no doubt while driving.’ She crumpled the paper and stuffed it in her anorak pocket.

‘I’ll show you where Katherine Rokesmith grew up.’

Jack led them up the lane and on to a track narrowed by blackthorn bushes so high they were effectively in a tunnel. Here there was less snow, but the frozen mud pitted with ice made walking treacherous, so Stella was grateful when he stopped by a gap hidden amidst foliage which she would have missed.

A gate with the name ‘Rose Cottage’ carved along the top bar was held by one hinge; beyond it a path of terracotta tiles wound through tall grasses and bushes to a glimpse of a roughly stuccoed house with missing roof tiles. It looked deserted, but for a light in a downstairs window.

‘Who lives here?’ Stella breathed.

‘No idea. When my mum’s parents died she had to move.’

Stella stepped back and tripped on a plastic milk bottle holder with an indicator dial for the milk required. Two empty bottles had toppled out. Righting the carrier, she caught the manufacturer’s name on the dial: ‘Gina-Ware’ – the company owned by Mrs Ramsay’s son-in-law; now she too was seeing signs. She dropped the bottles back in.

‘Let’s get on, the light is going.’

‘Different to St Peter’s Square, isn’t it?’ Jack was conversational on the way back to the church.

‘How did Kate meet Hugh Rokesmith?’ She could not call them Jack’s parents.

‘It’s a fairy tale. She was walking her dog in a place on the south side of the A25 – we’ll pass it when we go. Tide Mills is the ruins of a nineteenth-century village by a railway halt. My father was returning from a meeting and fancied some air and pulled off the road. He petted her dog and they got talking. He might have driven on by.’

They reached the car.

‘It might have been better if he had,’ he added.

‘How do you know this? Didn’t you say he never mentioned Kate?’

‘Isabel told me.’ Jack opened his silver case and, taking out a cigarette, put it in his mouth. ‘To be precise, she didn’t tell me, she assumed I knew. She said what a charming way to fall in love and it must have rubbed off on me.’

‘You wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t.’

Stella led the way through a gate beneath a gabled roof and strode ahead up a salted path to the church. In the gloom she thought the row of mausoleums looked like buildings in a miniature city.

Jack read out an inscription: ‘“William Catt, 1770 to 1853.” I used to wonder why cat was spelled with two Ts. It was a word I could spell because of Brunel, our cat.’ Jack was animated. ‘I had forgotten Brunel.’

The church tower was forbidding against the darkening sky. Stella knew they ought to return to London; in the country it seemed lighter than it was and already the driving conditions would be dangerous.

In the porch Jack tried the door; it was locked. He veered off the path. Thick snow made it hard to distinguish the graves and more than once they stumbled into troughs and over hidden mounds.

They went between two rectangles of snow: topiaried bushes and down a slope. A gravestone was on its own near a low flint wall beyond which fields had already merged in the twilight.

‘Are you the ones who bring the flowers?’ The strident voice carried over the hushed ground. A middle-aged woman lost in a wool coat and angora scarf scurried down the slope, pulled along by a small shaggy poodle straining on a lead.

Jack and Stella drew closer together.

‘I’m sorry?’ Stella said.

‘The flowers. They are there again! Even in this atrocious weather they’re here. I walk Mansfield here most days and I’ve never caught anyone by the grave or putting them there. The old ones are taken away. So thoughtful. I assume it’s her son. The husband is dead and there was a little boy who would be grown up now.’ The woman glared at her dog, which caused him to sit down, sinking into the snow, a paw tentatively lifted up and down.

‘We’re not locals, so no flowers, I’m afraid. We read about St Andrew’s in a thingy in the tourist place so thought we’d pop in to take a look. I gather this is the oldest church in Sussex. What a thing!’

Stella watched as Jack rattled on, his accent pure public school.

‘Unfortunately it’s locked. Such a pity they lock churches these days. We are admiring the view, then heading off home.’ He waved a hand into the gloom.

The woman rummaged in her pocket and produced a handful of little bone-shaped dog biscuits. ‘Paw.’ The dog did as it was told and snapped up the proffered treat.

‘You must have heard about the young woman callously murdered in London. This is her. She came from here. Tragic. She was with her son. I went to the funeral. The whole village turned out. It was terribly sad. I supposed you might be relations and I wanted to give you my condolences. You don’t see many at the grave, thankfully really. I do hate these shrines that are springing up everywhere, willy-nilly. On the other hand, apart from the flowers, our Katherine is rather neglected.’

‘Did you know her?’

Terry would have talked to the woman, too, while Stella was fighting the urge to run away.

‘We were in the same class at school. I can’t say we were friends. When Katherine met that husband, she left and never came back. Or not while she was alive.’ She grimaced and popped another biscuit between the poodle’s lips. ‘The poor thing. Such are the twists of fate. We’ve had more than our share of tragedy here, what with the plane crash at Shoreham that killed thingummy. I want to call him Flyte because he was a mad-cap pilot type and besides that’s the Waugh novel, anyway the man with the frosty big-wig of a son. Years ago all this was, his grave is here too somewhere. I should set up a tour, the way I’m going on. Mansfield! Ssssh! No begging.’ She dropped the lead, squeezed the biscuits back into her pocket and did up the button.

‘You’re not meant to speak ill of the dead, and especially when the death was in such appalling circumstances. But Katherine Venus – that was how we knew her – wasn’t warm. She didn’t have friends, apart from the son, Lord Snooty. Such a shame.’

‘What son?’ Stella was paying attention.

The dog set up a furious barking, shrill and intent and scattered away over the snow.

‘Mansfield! He sees ghosts and won’t let up.’ She set off in pursuit up the slope, her legs kicking out behind her. The area under the trees had become dense and impenetrable. The woman’s distant tones of admonishment faded to quiet.

‘Let’s hear it for nosy bloody parkers,’ Stella muttered. ‘Does the young man she mentioned mean anything to you?’

Jack shrugged. ‘Probably a boyfriend. I expect she had many. Mrs Poodle-Person no doubt disapproved.’

The headstone, iced with snow, gave the date of Kate Rokesmith’s death – 27th July 1981 – and stated only that she was ‘Wife of Hugh Rokesmith’. Lichen had blotched the inscription and it was sprinkled with snowflakes. Stella brushed these away.

‘It doesn’t say when she was born.’ Nor did it mention Jack, but she did not say this.

‘I hadn’t noticed.’ He was looking in the direction the dog had gone.

‘No label, no message, nothing.’ Stella examined the flowers. ‘They don’t smell. I didn’t know you could get orange roses.’

‘They mean something.’

‘Do they?’ Stella was tiring of Jack’s signs.

‘The colour of roses signifies different emotions. Black roses mean death. I can’t remember orange.’

‘I wonder why your father didn’t put both dates. Birthdays are nicer to think about than death.’

‘Perhaps the only date that mattered to him was the one on which she ceased to exist.’ Jack went towards the path. Stella wandered over to the wall despite her concern that they should leave. There was a drop of about six feet on the other side of the wall – more maybe, the snow made it hard to tell. She sat astride it.

Everything swooped and she had to clasp sharp flint to balance. Terry had been here. He had climbed this wall and sat where she was sitting. He had jumped down; Stella felt for toe-holds, clinging to stones to prevent herself pitching off. She lowered herself by degrees until her boot, kicking about in the snow, encountered solid ground. She was out of sight of the graveyard. She trod on something – a plastic disc. She held it up to the failing light: it was a lens cap.

Terry had been here and taken a picture.

They had not found a camera in the car, nor was there one among his belongings. Terry was here; she felt his presence. Panicked, Stella lunged at the wall. It was harder to climb and twice she fell before struggling over and tumbling into the graveyard. She brushed slabs of snow off her anorak and knees and made her way past Kate’s grave up the slope to the path. There was no sign of Jack.

A gate clanged. The sound came from past the church. She skirted the building where there were more graves and a beech hedge which stretched to the lych gate. She found footprints and tracked them to an iron gate in the hedge. Through this she could see nothing because another hedge blocked the view. The gate was fastened with a padlock glinting silver in the last light. Stella could make out the twin gables of a house above the second hedge; she presumed it was the vicarage.

At the crunch of footsteps she saw Jack emerging from trees where the dog had gone.

‘There’s another way out.’ He was grim-faced and pale. ‘Someone was there recently.’

‘It was the dog-woman.’

‘There’s more than one set of footprints. That dog heard someone.’

‘I should think this path must be a cut-through.’

‘It’s not the best way, but good if you don’t want to be seen. Those roses are fresh.’

‘Did you follow the tracks?’

‘They disappear. It’s like the person took off into the air.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Nothing’s impossible.’

Stella looked at him, but he was staring through the gate at the house. To bring him back, she said loudly: ‘The flowers had snow on them and there are no footprints by the grave. They were not put there today.’ Then she headed for the car.

Terry’s boxy Toyota was ten years old. He would have looked after it, but earlier, having not been used for nearly two weeks, it had only started after several attempts. This time it fired first time. She rolled the seat back and stretched out her legs and rested her head back. There was a compartment above the mirror, flush to the fascia. They had missed it. Stella was sweeping her hand over the plastic, feeling for the mechanism, when Jack climbed into the car.

Their fingers brushed as he reached up and depressed the plastic cover; it sprang upwards. The space inside dipped down to defy gravity, so Stella had to poke far inside. Behind a roll of toilet paper, her fingers encountered a hard object. She knew it was Terry’s camera before she pulled it out. She knew too that the lens cap would fit.

‘He carried this everywhere. Mum would go on about how much time he spent in his darkroom.’ She groaned. ‘I forgot about his darkroom. It’s in the basement.’ She cradled the camera in her hands. ‘She’d be talking and Terry would take a photograph, of a passer-by, a number plate, a street, cars with a broken tail light or a dent. He was discreet. He snapped pictures because a person looked suspicious or familiar; they never knew. He built a bank of images he hoped one day would provide evidence or a clue. My mum said that after they were married he stopped photographing her.’

‘You’re lucky; he took pictures. The only ones I have of me are passport pictures and driving licence, a nursery school snap they used for the media when my mum was murdered.’ He rubbed his ear and added: ‘That one of me as a baby with Kate has gone missing; the press nicked it.’

Stella was about to contradict him – she had no pictures of herself – when truth dawned: ‘Terry was taking pictures of Kate’s grave.’ She cradled the camera.

‘Turn it on.’ Jack fiddled with his case, drew out a roll-up and stuck it between his lips.

Stella turned a dial to the right as she had seen Terry do. It had no effect. She tried it the other way and the lens motor buzzed, the lens shot out, firing off the lens cap and then retracting.

‘Battery’s dead.’ Jack took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth and held it with his fingers and thumb. ‘He must have a charger, perhaps in the darkroom.’

Stella could not go into Terry’s darkroom. There, more than anywhere in his house, he would be present; she kept this to herself.

‘Where did you find the lens cap?’

‘Behind the graveyard wall.’

‘Why would he take a picture of the grave from there?’

‘Terry was particular about perspective and framing.’

‘So why take the headstone from behind? I didn’t know where you were; you were out of sight.’ Jack put the cigarette back in his case. ‘Terry hid there.’

Stella pulled down the seat belt and clicked it into place.

‘He was taking a photograph of the person leaving the flowers.’ She spoke in a whisper. She released the handbrake and the car slid off the verge on to the lane. ‘It will be on the camera. We must find his battery charger.’

‘I desire you.’ Jack banged the dashboard with his cigarette case.

Stella hit the brake. The car continued moving.

‘Orange roses, that’s what they mean. Or “I desire to get to know you better.”’

Stella played the wheel, giving it enough slack to avoid skidding.

‘Jack, do you suppose that the person who puts the flowers on Kate’s grave is the person who murdered her?’

‘I do,’ Jack replied. ‘It’s what I would do.’