The Detective's Daughter

71

Monday, 10 January 2011

Terry blundered into the cover of the trees. With so few graves in this part of the churchyard, there was nowhere to hide. He ran heavily, the change in his trousers jingling; he clutched his pockets. He tried to vault over the low wall, but his muscles would not work and he lost his footing. The drop on the other side was greater and he landed awkwardly, ripping his jacket on barbed wire. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky, waiting for a face to appear over the wall. In the silence he became aware of the call of rooks. He rolled on to all fours and clambered back to the wall, grabbing tufts of grass for meagre purchase. He counted to ten and peeped over the jagged flint.

Ivan Challoner knelt at the foot of the grave. He had a longish package wrapped in paper. He had changed his clothes; when he had left his surgery three hours before he was wearing a brown suit and a raincoat, every inch the sociable dentist, nodding to a passer-by as he unlocked his car. Now in baggy corduroys, a shirt and buttoned-up cardigan under a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, he had become a country gentleman. Familiar with village routine, Challoner knew precisely when to bring his flowers so as to avoid meeting anyone.

Terry raised his camera. The light was thinning but he could not risk flash. He steadied himself on the wall and fired off some long shots; then he zoomed in as Challoner rested the flowers against the headstone, unfurling the paper. The images would be good enough to connect Challoner to the flowers.

Challoner had bought them from a florist’s by Kew station that afternoon. Tomorrow Terry would show Challoner’s picture to the woman behind the counter. She would remember him. Terry would build the case brick by brick; Challoner would not escape.

Challoner was muttering, but Terry was too far away to hear the words. He was just feet from the man who had blighted his own life. Terry wanted to accost him but Challoner would have a plausible story. Some photographs and the hunch of a jaded ex-detective was not enough to get a conviction. Terry needed cogent evidence.

He heard a rasping and looked about him before understanding that Challoner was making the noise. For twenty minutes, loose locks of thick grey hair tumbling forward, the man scratched at the inscription with what looked like a screwdriver, all the while talking in a soothing tone.

Terry was cold and his limbs were stiffening, but he dare not shift. He was relieved when Challoner stood up and, retrieving the discarded bouquet, stepped up the slope. Terry waited until he had gone and then clambered over the wall, ripping his shirt, and hastened after him.

He was in time to see Challoner stick the dead flowers in a bin by the gate. Terry let him pass behind the eastern buttress of the church and skirting the path by the beech hedge ducked between the mausoleums. Challoner was fiddling with the chain on the gate. He heard Challoner push it open and close it behind him, replacing the chain.

Terry scrabbled up, his back against cold stone, stretching his legs, bringing them one at a time up to his chest and down again in sketchy imitation of the exercise given to him by the physiotherapist. It eased the tightening in his chest.

On a nearby headstone was the name Edward Challoner: he had died in 1890, his wife Emily ten years later. Terry scrambled to his feet. A son, George, had died twenty years after his mother in 1920 and a Simon Challoner, only son of George in 1957, aged forty-one, ‘his plane lost over the English Channel’. It sounded as if the man had died in action; Terry knew he had been to the races at Deauville and was Ivan Challoner’s father. Although Ivan was Kate Rokesmith’s dentist, he had not been on their radar because they had not needed dental records to identify her. The police did not connect that a Simon Challoner had treated her at his home in Bishopstone when she was three and an Ivan Challoner twenty years later in Kew. Had they done so, a lot else would have fallen into place.

Terry had posted Janet by the lych gate and joined the mourners by the grave. From her vantage point Janet would not have seen Challoner and Terry had missed him completely. Challoner had his own gate and after the funeral had slipped away. But for one photograph Terry would not have known he was there.

While supposedly keeping an open mind, as procedure dictated, the investigation was scaled down: Hugh Rokesmith was the killer and they would prove it.

Within this paradigm Challoner had free rein.

The fluorescent hands on Terry’s watch said it was seconds before five, confirmed by tolls of the church clock as he traipsed up to the lych gate.

He sat in the front passenger seat of his car and scrolled through his photographs. Without downloading them he could not tell if they were in focus, but they appeared to be better than he could have hoped. It was clearly Ivan Challoner by the grave. Terry tucked the camera in behind a toilet roll in the top compartment: in this sleepy hamlet, thieves could operate with impunity.

He got out again. In London, the street lighting made it seem dark, but in this valley in the South Downs, the even light was enough to see where he was going. Terry adopted a stroll, ready to bid a hearty goodnight to anyone he encountered and say that he and his late wife had courted here if he got chatting.

He deliberately went past Challoner’s house and then sneaked back out of view of the windows. If someone did come, he would hide in the garden and pray Challoner would not see him. Hardly ideal, but he had no choice.

A light burned in a downstairs room where Challoner had left the curtains open. Terry could see a green sofa, an ornate wall lamp from which the light came and a mirror in a gold frame above a mantelpiece. There was no sign of Challoner.

He risked a few steps into the front garden, treading on grass patches amongst the gravel to avoid making a sound. The building’s symmetry was upset by a lean-to garage; Challoner had not put his car away. Terry was about to look through the sitting-room window when Challoner appeared. He shrank into the hedge but Challoner pulled shut the curtains without looking out.

Terry returned to the lane. Light from a lamp-post near the church did not penetrate this far and darkness enveloped him. Stars were pinpricks of light in the velvet sky. Terry congratulated himself for remembering his torch. Two dustbins stood by Challoner’s drive. He squatted behind them, his jacket, which had hung heavy on him all day – he flushed with the slightest effort – offered scant warmth, but, huffing, he pulled it around him. He had put on weight and could not do it up.

Terry had the patience if not the stamina for a long wait.

After half an hour the front door clicked, the car’s indicator lights blinked and the locking system bleeped. Challoner was returning to London for work in the morning.

Headlights swept over Terry’s hiding place, raking the bins a fraction from where he crouched. Challoner reversed, a red glow picking out dew on the grass like droplets of blood. The BMW accelerated away.

Terry kissed his palm at the receding car. Challoner had handed him an opportunity. Everyone gets one lucky break in their career; his had been a long time coming.

He brushed himself down and hobbled back to the lane and in through the lych gate. Here he dared use his torch and, keeping to the path by the beech hedge, found the Challoners’ gate. As he had seen, a chain linked around the latch was fastened with a padlock – but the intricately wrought fleurs-de-lis provided ideal footholds. As a younger man Terry would have scaled it like a monkey; in his sixties it took momentous effort to pull himself up and propel himself over. He did not jump down – he could not afford an injury – but gingerly descended on to the lawn where, mopping his face with his handkerchief, he tried to get his breath.

The shadows of the yew flitted over the grass through which the church tower was stark against night sky, its perky cockerel now dark and menacing.

He worked his way along flagstones slippery with icy moss, relying on an incipient ghostly moonlight to see, and tested the windows; all were locked with catches and limiters to prevent the sashes being lifted. A burglar alarm box from a company in Seaford was prominent above the back door but there was no obvious connection. When Challoner had left, Terry had not heard him set an alarm; in the countryside silence he would have heard the keypad bleep. He gambled that it was off. His hands slick with sweat, Terry fished in his pocket for surgical gloves and snapped them on. He still had no idea how he would break in but as he turned the kitchen door handle, to his astonishment it opened. No alarm.

Immediately he tripped over a pair of wellington boots beside a washing machine. He righted them and shone a light on hooks with waxed jackets, stiff from lack of wax, and sagging yellow waterproofs. He was in the utility room. Just in time he avoided a mop in a metal bucket.

Terry’s rubber-soled shoes made no sound on the stone floor, his torch illuminated a passage going in two directions. He chose right and found himself in a kitchen. Given how immaculate Challoner was, how sleek and clean was his car, and according to his website how state of the art his surgery, this room had not been decorated for decades. Pans hung from a wall of crumbling plaster; dishes were stacked on shelves by an Aga on which was a kettle and a pressure cooker. The stove gave off a dying heat welcome to Terry after his vigil in the cold. A couple of plates and a pan stood on a wooden draining rack. Challoner was no interior designer, but he was clean and he too would not leave dishes unwashed. At this moment his own house was spotless and sparkling, and thinking this Terry imagined getting Stella over. She knew about finishing off jobs. She would finish this job with him.

He froze: the table was set for breakfast, a packet of Cornflakes, a jar of marmalade, a butter dish along with plates, mugs and cutlery. For two. Challoner’s sister had given him the impression Ivan lived alone. She had not spoken kindly of her brother so it could not be her. A wave of tiredness engulfed him, making his legs ache. He was losing his grip: besides telling him that another person was in the house or was expected, what the breakfast table mostly indicated was that Challoner was coming back.

His heart was like a piston against his ribs. He should leave, except if he did then Challoner would have won. For the first time since Stella was a little girl, Terry felt alive.

A fire door lined with green baize gave a sigh when he pushed it. He was in a spacious hall with mosaic flooring stretching to the front door and a staircase to his left. Terry braced himself and climbed the stairs.

A carpeted corridor the length of the house had two windows offering a watery light. There were five doors in a row.

Outside a wind was getting up, its rising moan like a wounded animal; somewhere a casement rattled. There was a constant creaking; Terry held his breath trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. The house was adjusting to his presence and the diminishing heat from the Aga.

He switched off the torch, mindful of the lane and thankful that the moonlight was sufficient.

The first room was a bathroom with white ceramic walls that had the look of a morgue. He resisted the need to use the toilet and nudged the second door, which swung inwards. He shut it behind him and shone the torch: the room was crammed with cupboards, boxes, an upended bedstead, a roll of carpet; typical domestic junk. Terry stifled a sneeze; everything was choked with dust. He beat a retreat.

In contrast, the next room was sparsely furnished with a single bed and a wardrobe resembling a coffin. A wooden chair draped with clothes was beside the bed. He lifted up a man’s shirt and sniffed, grimacing at the sickly aftershave. Beneath this was a pair of trousers, folded along the front seam. Was this spartan bedroom, more like a monk’s cell, where Challoner slept?

He saw a movement and, wheeling around, stifled an exclamation. A quilt had slithered off the bed. Sweat broke out on his body again, which at least offset the cold.

He rummaged for a stick of gum in his trouser pocket and folded it into his mouth; the chewing calmed him. In the corridor, Terry turned off the torch before attempting the third door.

The gum did not stop his teeth chattering; he had rarely experienced fear like this. He had relied on the shots of adrenalin that pumped around his body while he counted down to raid a drug dealer’s house, or faced a posse of journalists ready to annihilate him. The reality of coming here without a warrant, without proof, without even being a police officer hit him.

Headlines. Photographers. Disgrace. Failure to solve the Rokesmith case would be nothing compared to being caught breaking and entering.

Bang. Bang. You’re dead.

He pictured the little boy aiming two fingers at him with dark, accusing eyes.

He was doing this for the boy and for his father.

Hugh Rokesmith had been a man of few words; his short marriage had blighted his entire life. Terry had been wrong and wished that he could tell him. He felt for the thin, slightly stooped figure whose drawling manner had done him no favours. When Rokesmith died Terry had been angry that he had evaded prison, but now Terry was sorry he could never make amends. At least he could present Jonathan Rokesmith with his mother’s killer and exonerate his father. The prize was within his reach.

The door jolted on its hinges with a thump and Terry was bathed in orange light.

Brown eyes and shoulder-length hair. Eau Savage Extreme: she preferred aftershave to perfume. She didn’t care what people thought.

From such clues as these had the detectives built up a profile of the dead woman, as if knowing her better would tell them how she had come to be murdered.

A pair of trousers and a blouse like those she had been wearing when her body was found were hanging from the wardrobe. It was like meeting long-lost friends. Isabel Ramsay could not describe Kate’s clothes to the police because she had not seen her. A splash of green from the scarf to match the lemon patterned blouse; Terry did not know about clothes, but knew what he liked. His ex-wife had worn the same blouse until discovering it was the taste of a murder victim.

Under a chair, toes pointing out, the scent of perfume acceding to mothballs and damp, were her shoes.

A trickle of sweat ran into his eyes; he blinked and with a punch his chest constricted. Terry had no words to express the sight, yet words were everywhere; newspaper articles, the type small, large, black, white, were fitted around picture after picture: Kate Rokesmith’s image was plastered over the walls.

A book lay on a wooden nightstand: Wuthering Heights. He made out an inert lump in the bed.

The second place at breakfast.

Wheels crunched on the drive. Crashing into the door jamb, he plunged along the passage, just remembering to switch off his torch. He stopped at one of the windows: Challoner was getting out of his car, younger, fitter and more agile than Terry, whose muscles were draining strength as if a plug had been pulled.

Terry was trapped. No one knew he was here; he had not told Stella.

He fumbled blindly with a cupboard door, grabbed the handle and found himself at the head of a staircase like the one at the other end of the passage. Symmetry. He felt a surge of love for the architect.

At the bottom, the silence told him he had not woken the person in the bed. If there had been a person at all; nothing in this bloody place was what it seemed.

Terry identified domestic sounds: the fridge door opening and closing, drawers slamming, a tap splashing which set pipes clanking. The roar of a boiling kettle, a rising whistle that subsided, water pouring into a mug, two mugs; comforting noises that offered him no comfort. With the scrape of a chair a shadow fell across the passage: Challoner was coming. Terry had no time to go back upstairs.

There was a door.

He tumbled down a step, twisting his ankle. He bit on his hand as hot pain seared up his calf, retaining enough presence of mind to pull the door shut after him.

Challoner must know he had an intruder; the sound of his heels clicking on the stone passage was close. He could have seen Terry’s car, or maybe knew his back door was unlocked. Terry scrambled behind a shelf unit that would not shield him if Challoner put on the light. He curled into a ball and on a childish impulse hid his head in his hands to increase his invisibility.

A strip of light missed his hiding place by inches. He heard a chink of glass and peeped through his fingers. Challoner was lifting a bottle of whisky out from a wooden case stuffed with straw. He left and closed the door, but Terry did not move; he might be calling the police. Then he considered what he had seen: a shrine to a murdered woman. Calling the police was one action Challoner would not take. He got up and rolled his shoulders to encourage circulation.

Between him and the external doors was a shape shrouded in stiff tarpaulin. Wedged in tight, between it and the wall, Terry tugged ineffectively at one of the cords holding the tarpaulin; it was tightly knotted. He tried to undo it, but it would not budge. He laid the torch on the concrete floor and pulled his keys out of his trouser pocket. He sawed the cord between the teeth of the mortice key; old and frayed, it gave way and he snatched and tugged at the canvas until he had created enough slack to lift it free.

In the feeble light of the failing torch he knew what he was looking at. He pulled at the canvas until he could poke his torch beneath.

There were newspapers on the floor. He tore off a scrap and scribbled the number down.

He heard footsteps above.

The person might see the quilt on the bedroom floor and realize they had an intruder.

The garage doors were locked with two rusted bolts, top and bottom; after one desperate tug, the top one released with a bang like a gunshot. Terry went to work on the lower bolt and grazed his hand before he eventually wrenched it out of the floor. The door shuddered loudly when he opened it enough to squeeze through. He closed it behind him. In the throes of another flush, the cold air was welcome; he mopped his face with his handkerchief. He had pulled his shoulder at some point and it ached. His strained ankle hurt and his breathing was like sucking on a blowtorch. He was out of condition; when this was over – how extraordinary that he could think of the Rokesmith case as over – he would follow doctor’s orders and get fit.

This time Terry risked jumping down from the gate into the churchyard. He executed a perfect landing on the tiled path and wished Stella had been there to see it.

Terry was woken by a pain in his cheek where the armrest had been digging into him. The papers had dropped from his hand and were scattered in the well beneath the front passenger seat. He gathered them up and, trying to stretch, hit his shin on the window. Terry was in the habit of taking documents from the case files when he left the house, hoping to spot something new. He smoothed out on his lap the psychiatrist’s reports on the boy in the weeks after the murder. He had attended all the meetings, desperate that Jonathan would speak and describe his mother’s killer.

He climbed out of the car, his damp shirt sticking to his skin. Seven forty-five and it was barely light. He had slept over eight hours, yet he did not feel better for it.

His bladder was full. He looked up and down the road; his was the only car parked in the seaside bays. Opposite was a recreation ground and in the distance there were already lorries on the A259. Out of sight, below a bank of pebbles, came the wash and hush of the tide. He clambered over a wall separating the beach from the road, crossed a concreted walkway and took jumping strides, his feet sinking into the shingle, down to the shoreline. Dark-grey sky merged with iron-grey sea. He laid the papers down, weighing them with a chunk of bleached wood, and peed. He swayed as he did up his zip. His head was a mush as if he had been drinking. Last night had been the first night for weeks when he had not had a drink and nor had he eaten.

Far off he made out a yellow dot. The Newhaven–Dieppe Ferry returning to Britain. Tucking in his shirt and doing up his cuffs, this sight cheered Terry. He would invite Stella to France, they would go for the day because she wouldn’t be able to spare much time. Like him, her work came first.

Stella scampered over the beach when the water receded and waited, hands on hips. She bellowed at the sea: her words got lost in the rush of shingle dragged by the water, but he knew what they were.

‘I’m not scared of you!’

The water rushed at her; Stella belted off pell-mell, squealing when froth lapped at her heels catching her sandals.

Terry swept her up into his arms high above the sea.

‘Come on, Stell, let’s get an ice cream,’ he shouted. She scrubbed at his hair, her legs encrusted with sand. Maybe he’d buy himself one too.

A burst of wind buffeted him and shifted the wood. The pages flew into the air. Terry snatched at them, but they whirled towards the surf, fluttering like birds in the dawn sky. Helpless, he gazed out to sea; he did not need the reports, he could practically recite them word for word.

It was a steep climb up the shingle and twice, his balance poor, he stumbled on to his knees.

He fell into the front seat, shivering, his neck stiff from sleeping awkwardly. His jacket pulled at his shoulders, somehow making his chest ache. These days he had pain somewhere all the time. He was too old to camp out in a car. Yet this morning nothing could dampen his spirits.

He unscrewed the lid from his flask. He could have done with coffee last night but had forgotten it. Too exhausted to drive to London, he had told himself he had no deadline to meet, no press conference to attend. Ivan Challoner had no idea; he could take his time.

Terry had solved the case that had haunted him for decades.

Instead of going home he had found his way to the sea and, scrunched up on the back seat, covered with a skimpy picnic rug tainted with de-icer fluid, his jacket a pillow, had fallen into a thick sleep, dreaming of Jonathan Rokesmith and his bear named Walker.

Ivan Challoner would provide a plausible reason for the flowers; he would claim they were a tribute to Kate’s years in Bishopstone where his family had lived for over a century. He would not be able to explain the stuff in the house. He would finally pay for his crime.

It was tempting to call the station, but Stella must be the first to know. He would show her police work in action. She was like him, she was thorough and methodical: together they would bring Ivan Challoner to justice.

He poured coffee and balanced the cup on the dashboard while he did up the flask. Steam clouded the windscreen. The liquid tasted of plastic.

He would buy breakfast in Seaford and call Stella. They would make a plan.

Terry spelled out his daughter’s name in the steam on the glass with a forefinger. He flopped back in the seat, catching a whiff of himself: sweat and greasy hair. He puckered his nose and scratched his unshaven cheek with distaste. A clean and fastidious man, he disliked being unkempt. He would shower and shave before he saw Stella. He wanted to look good. He undid another button on his shirt – torn now – to ease the pressure on his chest. He checked to see if absently he had clicked on the safety belt and found that he had not. He shifted to release his jacket, which had rucked up behind and pain came like a stitch. He had drunk the coffee too fast. Terry felt every day of his sixty-eight years.

The sky was lightening towards the west. The steam had evaporated, and where he had written ‘Stella’ were vague finger dabs. He took out his handkerchief to blow his nose and the slip of newspaper with the registration plate fell out. He slotted it above the sun visor while he rubbed his chest to mitigate the cramps.

Terry followed signs in Broad Street and found a car park behind the Co-op. He paid for half an hour – the shortest period; at the outside he would be fifteen minutes – and displayed the ticket.

Seaford was a retirement town. This early on a parky January morning there were few locals about. It was too quiet. Terry could not imagine growing old here. This thought was contradicted by a derisive cry of seagulls above him. He retreated into the heated supermarket where he snatched up a ham roll from the chiller cabinet, hesitated, then made it two; he had missed supper. He grabbed a can of Coke. He broke into another sweat and, swaying, put out a staying hand. He needed to eat, that was all.

He waited in the queue, pressing the cool can to his cheek; only one checkout was open and the cashier was slow, examining each item as if it was foreign to her. Jonathan had thrown away the green crayon because he had not wanted the colour in the box. He had drawn Challoner’s house in black and white. Terry cast around for another cashier. He ached; the food in his arms was heavy; the can was like lead.

He was being watched.

A small girl was by the counter, leaning back on it, a teddy bear clamped to her nose.

Stella.

He would not wait until he was in the car, he would ring Stella outside the shop before her day got under way. Terry winked at the little girl and quick as a flash she vanished behind the wire baskets and peered at him through the holes.

Terry patted his jacket. He had left his wallet in the car. He felt himself redden; his breathing hurt – there was no air in the shop. The little girl had gone. Behind him the queue had backed up to the drinks aisle. Terry was about to abandon his breakfast when he found his wallet. He had forgotten his new jacket had inside pockets but was too tired to explain and handed over a ten-pound note. Always prepared, he had been to the cashpoint before staking out Challoner’s surgery.

Terry lifted the carrier bag and nodded to the cashier. He wanted in some oblique way to share his buoyant mood, to say his daughter had bought his wallet and that he was this far from catching a murderer. A woman jolted him; he was in the way, so he left.

Janet, his colleague, had gone to the car but Terry had been finishing his notes, grabbing some peace. It was a sweltering afternoon; the air in the consulting room deadened even with the garden door open. He was exhausted then too. Terry had been invisible to the boy, being either a detective or in this session a bear, and Jonathan had stayed mute, so that was that: dead end. The case was cold.

The boy appeared, holding his bear by the ear.

‘All right, Jonny?’ Without thinking, he spoke to the boy as he would his daughter.

Terry had never heard the voice before.

‘You have to know a very important thing.’ The boy was confidential.

‘Yes?’ Terry kept still; he did not call for a witness. Walker the bear stared at him with button eyes.

‘It’s important that you know.’

‘What should I know?’

‘My mummy is dead.’

Terry Darnell faltered by the trolleys in the supermarket entrance. Until then he had been too preoccupied with catching Kate Rokesmith’s killer to remember this bald fact.

In the search for his wallet he had not come across his phone. It was in the car. No, it was not in the car. It had been in his pocket when he was in Challoner’s garage. He had mistaken it for his torch. He still had the torch but not the phone. Where was it?

He had dropped it in the garage. Challoner would know the police were on to him.

He could not call Stella.

The street was busier: sunlight suffused the mist, cars had parked along the kerb and pedestrians jostled on the pavements, wheelie shopping baskets rumbling, motorized buggies clearing a path.

Darkness squeezed him from the sides. The carrier bag was too heavy.

‘My mummy is dead.’

Darkness pushed from above.

Stella!

And then from below.

A woman coming out of the Co-op knocked into the elderly man who had dawdled in the queue. She tutted and then exclaimed when he fell down in front of her.

Later she would tell police how the gentleman had toppled over like a toy soldier. She had shouted into the shop for someone to call an ambulance. She was a nurse and had tried to resuscitate him, but had established before the paramedics arrived that he was dead.