The Detective's Daughter

67

Monday, 24 January 2011

‘She sends me cards with the time of meeting. It’s a game; she loves the secrecy and fooling others. She fears being ordinary; the drudgery of daily life. I would have to cancel what I was doing, often at short notice. This was before mobile phones. The postcards come to my flat, unsigned, in envelopes marked “Private and Personal”. Her handwriting would be identifiable but it’s never come to that. She trusts me to destroy them. I could not reply in case he intercepted them. Mr Rokesmith may have suspected we are in love, but he couldn’t prove it.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Yes you do.’

He thought of the cards written in his mother’s hand that he kept in his trophy box. Isabel Ramsay had given them to him. Until now he had supposed they were sent to Isabel by his mother. In fact she had known of his mother’s affair and kept her secret all these years. It was why she had lied to the police about seeing Kate. Mark Ramsay must have known too; it was why he did not contradict his wife’s evidence.

The basement was lined with ceramic tiles. Two lights with gun-metal shades shed white light on a dais in the centre. On this was set a luxurious red-leather dentist’s chair with chrome fittings. Challoner had seated himself in it and at his request Jack had poured him a glass of water.

Above a counter in which there was a sink, a lit panel displayed a series of X-rays showing what Jack judged to be the same set of teeth from different angles: front, down, side. The lips drawn back were a grey mass at the periphery of the image. The teeth were that of a child and flawless, although one on the lower jaw was missing. Jack read the label on each negative: the years progressed from 1968 to 1969, but the name was the same.

Katherine Venus.

As a small boy, passionate about the Romans, he had taken it for granted that his dead mother had been the goddess of love and beauty, with a planet named after her that in 2012 and 2117 would transit across the sun. Buried in the churchyard, her teeth would be perfect; her smile long gone, her own transit was over.

‘That is my father’s work; such tremendous skill, he nurtured your mother. He had this surgery soundproofed because my dear mama couldn’t bear the drill or any dental treatment. Consequently she had dreadful teeth, which mortified my father. She only let him set up his practice in here on the condition that she didn’t have to meet his patients or hear the equipment. Apart from the income, I doubt if she noticed when he died. He might have still been down here, working away. We can shout as loud as we like, not a creature will hear – the nearest houses are weekend retreats and will be empty. At this time of night we are only twenty-five minutes from Brighton and a mere hour and a half from London, yet we could be on the moon. We are alone. Welcome to your mother’s sanctuary, my dear Jonny.’

Ensconced on his throne, Challoner was the True Host; his manner expansive, he sought to make Jack feel at home.

‘No one calls me that.’

‘Your mother does. By the way, you are the spitting image of her, a credit to us both.’

‘I’m not your son.’

Challoner sipped the water with ruminative pleasure. He placed the glass on a ledge beside the little rinsing sink and rested back on the cushioned leather. He was quite unlike his sister; about to die, he was not afraid or concerned.

‘Ah, Jonathan, you were always so intractable.’ Challoner shut his eyes. ‘You’ll have to forgive me my confusion earlier. I thought you were Kate chasing her cup of tea.’

‘I don’t forgive you anything.’ Jack examined the polished steel instruments on the counter. With previous Hosts he had allowed time to understand their movements, their preferences and habits. He had spent weeks observing them, becoming familiar with even minor behavioural patterns. Had he seen Challoner during a cleaning session, he would have recognized him. He had known him on the zebra crossing in Earls Court the night he stepped on the crack in the paving.

‘If you tell me what you think I have done, I can perhaps exculpate myself.’

‘You know what you have done.’

‘Kate is dying to see you. It’s been too long, although she understands you have your life to lead. We must let our children fly free; they do not belong to us, she says.’

‘Stop talking about her as if she is alive.’

Challoner returned to the water and sipped at it with quiet complacency, seeming not to have heard Jack.

Apart from a jumble of debris on the counter, the room was ordered and clean. Despite the outdated equipment, it had a contemporary feel, but as in the rest of the house Jack detected decomposition beneath the cocktail of stringent polishes and detergents. He could imagine why Challoner’s mother had hated going to the dentist, even if it only involved going down to the basement and the dentist was her husband. People had not been happy in this room.

Ivan Challoner had treated Jonathan’s mummy here.

The chair reminded Jack of a 1950s American automobile, the shiny chrome reflected his face warped in the curving silver. He was told to wait upstairs and draw pictures – adults were always asking children to draw pictures – but the profound quiet had distressed him. After a while he had pattered along to the door and, pressing his lips to the wood, had called: ‘Mum-my!’

She had ignored him. Fact: in the soundproofed basement, with the door sealed shut, Kate Rokesmith had not been able to hear him.

The rubbish on the counter was tangles of frayed twine, snaps of wood dried grey and smooth, rounded shards of glass scattered amongst stones and pebbles. These last were arranged according to size, the smallest at the front, then graduating to polished cricket-ball size. Some were flints, others pockmarked wedges of chalk: every item was arranged to depict a beach.

A beach seen only at low tide.

In the twine Jack sniffed river mud; in the chalk he caught the salty tang of the sea. Sunshine warmed his face and a gentle hand brushed his fringe from his eyes. He had discovered the pebbles in the garden by the church and used the twine for mooring rope to tie up his boat and lash together lolly sticks for his bridge. The lumps of chalk he’d dug up from amongst seaweed in the abandoned village. He had lived through the shape and colour of every object; his memories, hopes, fears and dreams were locked within these found and lost treasures. His mummy had said their days out or walks to the river or to the big house in the country were a secret and like the treasures found on his walks at home, she’d taken them away from him.

Meticulously, Ivan Challoner had placed each object where it belonged as if it were a giant three-dimensional jigsaw. All that was missing was the Bell Steps.

‘Grown-ups never appreciate the value to children of what they find. Those treasures are the bones of our lives. I kept them safe for you.’ Challoner smiled fondly at him. ‘We’ve been preparing the house for you, Jonathan. You are our very special guest.’

Deep within the silence of the phantom surgery, Jack heard the wash of the incoming tide and he distinguished voices.

‘What do you mean you’ve prepared the house? You’re not expecting me to move in with you, are you? It needs redecorating, modernizing! And having got away from that dull as ditchwater village, you can’t imagine I want to go back? I have a home here, as do you. Tony darling, don’t spoil it. Hold me and enjoy this, now. I’ve had Hugh doing the silent bit about me not coming to his mother’s frightful birthday lunch, and Jonny is crotchety about your engine… he’s not speaking to me. I’ve had a bloody morning. Please be a sweety and be nice. Be my Heathcliff!’

‘He’s brought my engine with him? Christ, he’ll ruin it.’

‘He won’t be parted from it. I even tried bribery with some lump of glass that dear sweet Isabel gave me for luck. Come on, Tony, don’t waste this time on a silly toy.’

‘It’s not silly, my father gave it to me.’

‘You shouldn’t have given it to a baby then.’

‘I’ve talked to a lawyer. If you give up your rights to the house, it can go through pretty smartish.’

‘What can?’

‘Your divorce, obviously. We will marry.’

‘Oh, Tony, what a funny idea. One husband is enough. Do talk normally. We haven’t got long, Jonny needs his lunch.’

‘Don’t tease me.’

‘I shall tease you if it makes you see sense. I shan’t leave Hugh. He would be devastated and I would hate that. He’s so kind, when he’s not working. I couldn’t do it to our little boy. He loves Hugh and besides all his toys are there.’

‘Not all his toys. Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me.’

‘I don’t love you. There. Tony sweetheart, I would drive you potty if you saw me all the time, you’d soon be bored of me. You are a wonderful dentist and my special friend. Won’t that do? I wish Hugh would come to you. He’s got a nagging tooth that makes him so grumpy. He and Jonny are a bit much at the moment.’

‘You have to leave.’

‘I might as well tell you now, I’m having a baby. At this moment I’m not going anywhere except home. Hugh doesn’t know yet, so it’s our secret. I’ve told you first. Jonathan, come on! It’s time to go.’

‘You cannot go anywhere until you say you love me. Especially with our baby.’

‘She lied to me.’ Challoner broke the spell. ‘They did a post-mortem. She was not pregnant.’

‘She owed you nothing, least of all the truth.’

Jack looped his mother’s green scarf under Challoner’s chin and pulled it tight.

‘You gave this to her for her birthday and lucky for you she was wearing it that day. My father had never seen it so did not miss it when he identified her body. There was nothing to link Kate Rokesmith with you except these X-rays of your father’s and her dental records. Police didn’t ask you for those. You were calculating: you left her body knowing the river was filling and the tide would wash it downstream and then you went after me. If you had found me, I would be dead. I am your only witness and ever since you have lived in fear of me finding you. Isabel Ramsay, for reasons of her own, unwittingly did you an enormous favour; she made your alibi watertight.’ Jack did not add that he could not remember what had happened on the beach; he only remembered the colour of the scarf.

He held the fabric taut and pulled the lever on the chair, making it tip up until Challoner’s feet were as high as his head; he was helpless. His voice was thick as the scarf cut into his neck.

‘Did you stay to fight the dragon-slayer, like a brave little soldier? Did you rush to the aid of your beloved mummy?’

The fine green silk was a second skin that he could not shed.

‘No, you ran away. I’m no psychotherapist, but don’t they call it “projection”? You need to put your guilt on me. Go ahead. I am here for you, I always have been.’

He made no effort to loosen the makeshift ligature.

‘Kate was a trophy to your father; he didn’t want her but he didn’t want anyone else to have her. She was merely existing in his tomb. I saved her. Had you stayed, I might have saved you too.’

The sun was bright and made golden arrows on the water. Jonathan had wanted to drive his engine into the river and see if it could be a boat.

Jack let the scarf loosen.

His voice stronger, Challoner continued: ‘You and he leeched her life. If you didn’t get your way, you punched her and threw things at her. Is there a name for mothers abused by their children? I love her for who she is and I won’t let anyone spoil our life, not even you, who, despite everything, she longs to see.’

Challoner’s skin was white against the green silk. Jack moved his hands further up the scarf.

‘As I clasped her to me, a bird – a phoenix, I now believe – beat its way through my rib cage and I fought for breath. She entered my heart. I carried her home.’ Challoner reached behind and stroked Jack’s sleeve. ‘She is upstairs now, Jonny.’

Jack snatched his arm away and pulled on the scarf, making Challoner choke.

‘Cathy – that was my pet name for her – teased me and my sister will tell you that I do not like to be teased. Cathy promised to leave Rokesmith: we would have our life, the mornings waking up together, the rambles by the sea. I gave you my engine to make her think I would love you too. I brought her here to show her the house. You had to come. She adored our bedroom and was ecstatic when I said I was giving you the attic all to yourself. She said I was so generous. You rampaged along the passages, up and down the staircases, crashing through my house like a tornado. She said how happy you were. We toasted our little family with the last of my father’s Château Latour, laid down the year I was born. We did so because she had promised to leave him.’

It had been cold although the sun was out. Jonathan had made a bridge over the rivulet in the sand running into the sea. First he laid a stick along the mud and propped it up with stones, creating supports to make it solid. Then he dug into the mud to narrow the course so that the water flowed faster. When it was finished he called for Mummy to come and see. They were close to each other, walking amongst the ruins of the mill owner’s house. He had meant for his mummy to see it, but Uncle Tony came instead. He said it was very clever. Jonathan wanted him to go away.

He said so.

‘I have to preserve our peace. You are welcome here, but Stella Darnell doesn’t have your sensitivity and blunders in regardless of feelings. She’s like her father. You take after me.’

‘You are not my father. You are no one.’

‘We cannot host Ms Darnell. I have a mind like yours, but you know that, don’t you? We are one, you and I. I took better notice of you at that school than Hugh Rokesmith. I was a better father to you. For him, you were out of sight so out of his mind. I rang up every week to find out how you were.’

‘You’re lying; it would have been to check whether I had given your description to the police.’

‘You would never have done that. I was certain that your guilt had silenced you and I was right. Jonny, you misjudge me, my calls were proof of how I care for you.’ Challoner grimaced and put a hand to his neck, then let it drop. ‘I couldn’t get your house-mother off the phone. She said Simon was your special friend until the bullying. I was disappointed in you then, Jonathan. However, I understood: we all have our “Simons”, mine was Detective Darnell.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘Jonathan, darling, please! I thought we understood each other. He killed himself: too many beefburgers and beers. Would you pass me my water?’

Jack loosened his grip and gave Challoner his glass.

‘I was with one of my late-night patients when Stella Darnell called her father’s phone. I shouldn’t have answered, a stupid mistake, but after the first call, when I found the phone, I couldn’t resist it. I forgot about background sounds of water rinsing into the sink; still no matter, she wouldn’t have noticed; she is a cleaner, not a detective, after all.’ He tilted the cup; this time he just moistened his lips. ‘She had to be better than her father. She had to poke about in our business.’

‘Stella loves her dad.’

‘She doesn’t understand love. The Stella Darnells of this world do great damage with their lack of insight. They hurt the likes of you and me.’

As the scarf closed on his larynx, Challoner spluttered: ‘If you kill me, you kill her.’

The little boy had collapsed, hot and panting, against the plinth. Unable to reach, Jonathan promised the Leaning Woman he would bring a knife and cut off the plastic box tied to her arm. He promised to set her free.

‘I will save you,’ he told his mummy.

The scent of Eau Savage was overwhelming, the silk of the scarf cool in Jonathan’s hands.