The Detective's Daughter

62

Monday, 24 January 2011

Jack followed the instructions on the van’s satellite-navigation system until, coming out of Newhaven, he recognized where he was and switched off the relentless voice. He travelled the remaining miles in silence. At the sign for Bishopstone he checked his rear mirror but there were no headlights. Indicating left, he flicked down to sidelights and bumped slowly up the lane.

He was looking for the silver BMW four-wheel drive. On the seat beside him was a printout map of the area. After he had left Sarah Glyde’s studio, his instinct had been to come straight to Sussex but he had forced himself to prepare. He had returned to his parents’ house in St Peter’s Square and brought up Broad Street in Seaford on his screen. There it was, a silver four-wheel drive, fixed in time, making its way towards the Co-op supermarket in the sunshine, its driver a shadow behind the wheel. He had clicked the magnifying glass icon and enlarged the image; cropping the surrounding street from the frame, he pressed Print screen. He confirmed that the vehicle was the X3 model on a dealer website.

There was always a silver X3 outside the surgery when he came to clean and on his last visit it had been missing.

As he remembered from when he had come with Stella and from his journey in Street View, the lane wound for a long way, with no dwellings, hedgerows overgrown; the van’s sidelights accentuated the density of leaves and groping branches. Fullwood House was remote; Ivan Challoner did not want neighbours.

Outside the churchyard his phone rang, and he fumbled for it, sending a blue light over the dashboard when he hauled it out of his coat slung over the passenger seat. Stella had left another voicemail: ‘Jack? Stella. Where are you? Ring when you get this. You’ve taken one of the vans. Why were you in my flat?’

They were no longer a team. Jack told himself Stella had abandoned him. He had her van; she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. She had not answered his calls. He mounted the verge where they had parked last time and cut the engine. He would not tell her where he was; she would find out soon enough. Jackie would have told Stella she had spoken to him.

It was over.

He turned off his telephone and dropped it in the handbrake well between the seats. Stella would not call the police to report her van stolen. He felt a twinge: he was sorry that he would not see her again.

He found a torch in the glove box. He had not brought the clay cutter or the knife. Neither were suitable. Challoner would have plenty of tools that would do the job.

Shrouded by thickening fog, in his black coat and treading quietly, he was invisible but avoided the light of a single lamp-post as he surveyed a Gothic Victorian villa with a deep arched porchway beyond a twisted hedge. On the gravel outside, parked at an angle, was a silver BMW X3. He shone his light quickly on the number plate; it was registered in 2009.

Jonathan Rokesmith was as near to happy as he had ever been in his life.