The Detective's Daughter

58

Monday, 24 January 2011

Jack let himself in through Stella’s basement. The scrap of thread he had wedged in the jamb drifted down; no one had been here since he’d used the exit to avoid Paul Bramwell.

He was unlikely to meet anyone in the lift, but just in case he used the stairs, the box clasped to his chest.

He put his ear to Stella’s door. It was a ridiculously thick security door and he did not expect to hear anything, but a particular stillness confirmed she was out. Stella was becoming as unavailable to him as she had been for the drowned Paul. He rang the bell, pressing the button and holding it. Stella did not come.

Jack had taken Stella’s key off her ring when he handed back her car key the day they escaped from Paul. He had had a copy cut and it was back before she could notice it had gone.

‘Stella?’

No answer.

Jack’s footsteps and the click of the front door were deadened by the carpet, the fire doors and the triple glazing. It gave him the irrational sense that he was a ghost, and entering the living room he coughed to dispel this impression. He half expected to find Stella among the files, trying to solve the case by herself, but the room was empty.

He tried Stella’s mobile number and left another message: ‘I’m in your flat.’

The sun had almost set and streaks of orange across grey sky tinged the river a dusty pink. Jack Harmon watched the yellow disc sink below a bank of smog on the horizon. The light faded incrementally until his own reflection – holding the bust of his mother in his arms – stared back at him.

He was startled when the answer machine snapped into action; Stella had turned off the telephone bell.

‘I’m not able to take your call. Leave a message. Thanks.’

Jack shifted his mother’s head and sat in his corner on the sofa.

‘Hi, Stella. Martin here. Martin Cashman from Hammersmith? I ran a check on that item we discussed? Like I said, it’s an early plate, the second year into that scheme which started in 1963. It’s 1964. The present owner bought it new, so now it’s a classic, although must be on private property as no tax paid since, oh wait a sec.’ Jack heard a shuffling and breathing. ‘Here it is: 1981 and the owner is S. A. I. Glyde, address at the time was Fullwood House, Church Lane, Bishopstone, Sussex. If I can do anything else any time at all, please just ask, I insist… It’s Martin speaking, by the way.’

The machine went quiet. Stella had not told him she was going to trace the number plate; in fact she had behaved as if it was not important. He had believed her.

In the dimming light his mother’s head was more lifelike than ever: her features fluid, her mouth on the brink of a smile. Katherine Rokesmith’s clay facsimile was moulded by the woman who murdered her. Some murderers collected trophies as mementoes of their crimes. Sarah Glyde had crafted a clay bust of her victim.

He had given Stella a chance to stop him. He had come to the flat, trusting they were a team, to tell her about Sarah Glyde. But like Terry Darnell, Stella worked alone – or no: it seemed, despite her avowed dislike of them, she worked with the police.

Jack was on his own.

He sprang up and roamed the flat, still holding Kate’s head, convincing himself Stella had forfeited her right to privacy. In the spare room was a desk, as basically furnished as Terry Darnell’s, lit by a lamp shaped like a spider’s leg, the bulb the size of a bullet.

Jack was surprised to find a novel by Stella’s bed: Wuthering Heights. A postcard three chapters in marked her place. He held open the place with his thumb and took out the card. It was of Queen Charlotte’s cottage in Kew Gardens; he had been there during page seventy-one of his street atlas expeditions. He turned it over: ‘T, Five. “Cathy” x’.

It was his mummy’s writing but her name was spelt wrong. He had other cards like this in his biscuit tin of trophies.

Twenty minutes later the Clean Slate van was outside Sarah Glyde’s house where a solitary light shone in an upstairs window. At last Jonathan Rokesmith was doing what for most of his life he had planned he would do.

This time he did not ring the bell first. He opened the door with his key.