The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  Stella preferred life to be about discipline and routine. She waged a war on mess.

  Martin pursed his lips. ‘Karen’s got a new man.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was passing the house the other night and saw him going in.’ He went to the bar and ordered another round of drinks.

  Unwilling to leave Stanley on his own, Stella waited for him to return and then went to the toilet. Shutting herself in the cubicle, she rebuked herself for referring to Martin’s kids. It was nothing to do with her.

  Someone had written across the door in felt pen: ‘We get one go at life – don’t piss it away’.

  Ripping off toilet paper Stella tried to scrub off the words, but then caught herself. The cleaning contract for the Ram was one that Clean Slate had failed to get. When she flushed the lavatory she heard her phone, a distant ringing over the thunder of the water in the pan. She didn’t recognize the number and had no intention of having a conversation in a toilet.

  In the passage she made way for a woman to pass. The woman looked like Tina.

  We get one go at life...

  Stella had been back to the hospice three times since her first visit. The first time Tina was asleep and, after sitting in the room with her for an hour, Stella had left. The second and third times Tina’s father arrived and Stella hadn’t wanted to intrude. She would go after her shift at Kew Gardens tomorrow morning.

  ‘The stumbling block is the victim.’ Cashman was tucking into his lamb burger. Stella felt mild irritation as it occurred to her fleetingly that Jack would have waited – not that she minded. She did mind him giving Stanley a chip; it would encourage him to beg at the table.

  ‘Have you traced where the real Hooker stayed when he was here? Or where he lost the wallet?’ She had ordered shepherd’s pie. A familiar meal that, unlike Cashman’s burger, was easy to dispatch.

  ‘He stayed in a hotel on Sandycombe Road in Kew. He paid by card, so he had his wallet then.’ Cashman bit into a chip and, leaning down, gave Stanley the other half. Stanley snapped it out of his fingers and shuffled closer to him, sitting stiffly upright.

  ‘Maybe he was heading for the airport when he lost it,’ Stella speculated. ‘Which airport did he fly out from?’ The shepherd’s pie came in an unruly heap. She stabbed unsuccessfully at a pea.

  ‘Heathrow. There’s CCTV of him there, but none on the Underground. The hotel owner thinks he took a taxi. We’ve put out a call to cabbies to see if anyone remembers him or found the wallet. Nothing. But if a driver fancied a larger tip and pocketed the wallet, he’s not going to ’fess up.’

  ‘London cabbies work hard to get the Knowledge. No amount of cash from a wallet could compensate for losing their licence.’ Stella was hotly defensive, thinking of Tina’s dad.

  ‘He could have lost it on an Underground train. When drivers take a train back to the depot, there are items that passengers have left in the carriages. Nothing to stop an operative lifting a wallet; London Underground don’t strip search.’ Cashman no longer sounded objective.

  ‘They hand in everything they find,’ Stella snapped. She knew he was thinking of Jack. ‘The victim could have stolen the wallet himself and changed identity.’

  ‘Possibly, but Hooker’s name isn’t on the flight manifests. If our man came into the UK recently, it was under another name. His own perhaps.’ Cashman scowled.

  ‘Maybe Hooker didn’t lose the wallet in London. He might have forgotten where he lost it. The victim might have stolen it off him in Sydney.’ Stella was working her way through the mound of shepherd’s pie. She preferred her ready meals: they were rectangular so she could eat in straight lines.

  ‘The credit card wasn’t used after Hooker paid for the hotel in Kew and he requested a replacement when he returned to Sydney. He told Visa he had mislaid it in the house.’ Cashman ripped open a sachet of mayo and squirted it over his chips. ‘Is it possible that the murderer planted a stolen Australian licence on the victim in London?’

  ‘Maybe the killer collects IDs. He did it to confuse the police. It’s worked.’ Stella was enjoying herself. Terry had weighed up evidence, drawing and redrawing conclusions.

  ‘The packet of Winfield cigarettes he had on him is Australian,’ Cashman said. ‘The labels in his clothes have been ripped out.’

  ‘Except the deerstalker.’ Stella pictured her mum in the hat. She wished again that Suzie would send her a normal message. It was as if in going to Sydney, her mum had changed character as well as hemisphere. She had lost her in more than one sense.

  ‘Joseph Hooker lost the hat at the same time as his wallet.’ Cashman gave Stanley a whole chip.

  ‘Did you show the real Hooker the picture?’

  ‘He didn’t know him.’

  ‘Are you checking passengers on flights from Sydney in the last month?’ Stella asked.

  ‘Are you looking for a job?’ Cashman laughed loudly, startling Stanley. ‘Yes, we’re on it. People get a message from the police, they don’t rush to call back.’ He crammed a forkful of chips into his mouth.

  Stella froze. Cashman had mayo on his chin. Should she say something? She dabbed at her own chin to give him a hint to do the same. He didn’t notice.

  ‘The means of death was unusual. It would have been easier to use a penknife with a longer blade. It’s like the murderer wanted us to think it’s an inside job.’ He munched on a chip. ‘Which suggests it’s not. Then again it might be.’ Martin scratched at his chin, missing the blob of mayonnaise by a centimetre.

  Stella scraped her plate clean and laid her knife and fork side by side. Martin’s phone rang. ‘What you got, Rach?’ he demanded. There was a pause, he scribbled something on his napkin with a ballpoint and rang off. He thumped his fist on the table. Stanley bristled, his eyes an impenetrable black.

  ‘The man’s underwear was handmade. No way of tracing the cotton. He has no name. It’s as if he doesn’t exist!’

  Stella tried not to look at the mayo. ‘The longer the delay before you find out who he really is, the more chance the murderer has of covering his or her tracks.’ She lifted out a clean napkin from a dispenser on the table.

  ‘As if I need reminding.’ Martin looked glum. ‘His shoes were a British company. Crockett and Jones.’

  Stella knew the brand: Jack’s shoes came from there. She didn’t say so.

  ‘They were bought here. The company says they’re about forty years old. Not unusual to wear their shoes that long apparently.’ He pulled a face. ‘I prefer my footwear fresh and up to date. This is a bloody needle in a haystack.’

  Although his clothes – crumpled shirts and sleeveless pullovers – were always clean, Jack never looked terribly smart. But his shoes were an exception: he polished them to a shine.

  ‘I forgot to mention the contents of his coat pocket.’ Martin nibbled on a chip. The mayo was as bright as neon. Stella looked away. ‘Strange.’

  ‘What was strange?’ Martin had held up the items in evidence bags in the Marianne North Gallery on the morning that she had found the body. Chewing gum, plastic store cards, the driving licence. Not strange.

  ‘Crumbs and those sprinkles you put on cakes.’

  ‘Hundreds and thousands.’ Stella saw a flash image of herself at a table with a slice of cake in front of her. Terry was urging her to ‘eat up’. The picture vanished. ‘He put cake in his pocket?’

  Martin looked disapproving. Stella didn’t say that Jack was likely to carry a sandwich or a muffin in his coat. He ate on the move.

  ‘The options are that the victim could be British and he lived in Australia, or he’s Australian and forty years ago lived here. Or he was living somewhere else entirely.’ She unfolded and refolded the napkin. ‘Somewhere hot to get the tan.’

  ‘The Winfield cigarettes suggest the former,’ Martin murmured.

  ‘Something’s not right about the Winfields.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Probably nothing. It’s gone now.�
�� Stella’s memory had become unreliable. She reached across the table and carefully wiped Martin’s chin clean with the napkin.

  *

  Stella couldn’t work out where she was. It wasn’t her bedroom: the slants of light from the lamp-post outside were at the wrong angle. Then she realized she was on the left side of the bed; she usually slept on the right. About to shift across, she saw that she wasn’t alone. Lying on his back, his profile outlined in the slatted light through the blinds, was Martin Cashman. Gradually the events of the evening returned.

  She became aware of what had woken her. A phone was ringing. It was her mobile. She propped herself up on her elbows. It wasn’t in the bedroom. Pulling on a T-shirt and jogging bottoms she raced along the landing. The sound came from the study. She had dumped her bag in there on the way to the bedroom and, what with everything, had forgotten to take out her phone. She fumbled with the zips and buckles on the rucksack and then saw it on the desk by her keyboard.

  It was the same caller as when she was in the pub toilet. Or another ‘Unknown caller’. British Woman Lost in the Outback! She should have answered the first time. Fear made her curt: ‘Stella Darnell.’

  The phone to her ear, she came out of the room and went down the stairs.

  ‘Stella, is that you?’ A woman’s voice.

  ‘Yes.’ Stella was patient. Her mum always asked if it was her after Stella had given her name and when it couldn’t be anyone else.

  ‘It’s Michelle.’

  Stella couldn’t think of a client called Michelle.

  ‘Tina’s sister.’ The voice sounded faraway.

  ‘Oh yes. Hi.’ Stella sat down on the last step in the hall. At the same moment, the faulty lamp-post outside went out. Michelle was speaking.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.’ Ludicrously, Stella found it harder to hear in the dark. Then she heard perfectly.

  ‘Tina has died.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  November 2014

  Jack shut the garden door at the back of Kew Villa. He was closing off his exit: if he had to leave quickly, opening it would waste valuable seconds. Yet he couldn’t risk alerting the True Host. If he left it ajar, it might bang in the wind. It wouldn’t creak: as he had noticed the last time he came, the hinges were oiled.

  The moon was three-quarters – on the wane – and a monochrome sheen picked out an overgrown lawn bounded by shrubs. Holly, dogwood and juniper created large patches of shadow: his kind of garden. Following the line of the shrubbery, Jack approached the house.

  Five storeys including the basement and, as before, there was only a light in the top room. He crept down some steps to the basement door. It was locked. He moved stealthily to the side of the house, careful to avoid twigs or dried leaves, those tell-tale signs of a night intruder.

  Kew Villa was detached. It was cut off from the road by a high wall set at right angles and Kew Pond acted like a moat. Jack peered in through grimy glass and saw a kitchen full of clutter: appliances, crockery, empty milk bottles. The wooden cupboards hadn’t been updated for decades. The door was also locked. Jack looked about him. He was standing on a mat.

  He lifted it up and found a key. This should have pleased him – so far it had been easy. Too easy. Like the oiled hinges. A coil of fear stirred; Jack breathed deeply. He was expected.

  His back flat against the wall he kept still. The cold of the bricks seeped through his coat and chilled him further. But it wasn’t this that made him cold to the core. He had a bad feeling about the house. He should leave.

  Turning the key, Jack grimaced as the door opened, expecting a creak, but like the door in the garden wall it made no sound. Nevertheless, he stayed where he was and counted to ten. Then another ten. He ventured inside, ears tuned for footsteps, any change in atmosphere, or for another door that would open on oiled hinges and admit his attacker. Nothing.

  He glided across the kitchen and through a door already open, out to a lino-covered passage. His sense of direction told him correctly that this led to the hall.

  He stopped in the shadow of the staircase. Straight ahead was the front door. No light penetrated the fanlight. But as his eyes became accustomed to the deep gloom, Jack made out a longcase clock beside the door. It wasn’t ticking. His heart skipped a beat. A True Host made time wait. He dared to move closer to it and made out the position of the hands. The clock had stopped at seventeen minutes to twelve: 11.43. The time the passenger emergency alarm had gone off in his train on the night that Jennifer Day died of an aneurism in the sixth car.

  He retreated to the shadows and looked up the staircase. The house was silent, but Jack knew that he wasn’t alone. Somewhere above, the True Host was waiting. He was pulling Jack towards him as if he was attached by a slender thread. It stopped him turning and running out of the front door. He had no choice but to keep going.

  His jaw rigid with tension, Jack kept to the sides of the treads to avoid a creaking stair. He wouldn’t abandon his method even if he was exposed.

  The first room on the landing was a library. It had windows on three sides including the front. Bookshelves filled the walls; a wooden library ladder had been left next to the door. A desk with a leather swivel chair was placed in the centre of the room. He checked behind it and behind the door. No one there.

  On the next landing he had a choice of two doors opposite each other. His fear so great he felt as if he was floating above his body, Jack opened the nearer door and let himself become part of the darkness. After what seemed an interminable length of time, he gathered himself and, hearing no breathing, switched on his torch app. He was in a bedroom, austere and forbidding. It was like his grandmother’s bedroom in Twickenham. A satin quilt was spread over a double bed; pillows and cushions were heaped at the head. He half expected to see her there, pale and waxy in death as in life.

  A flicker of movement. Jack recoiled from a blurred spectre in a mirror on a dressing table with three drawers. A trick of the dust. He peered into the glass. There was no dust. This was surprising to him, because, despite the opulent furnishings, the room had a dowdy, neglected air. He lifted the back legs of the chair tucked beneath the dressing table. Where they had rested were indentations in the Turkish rug. This was one of Stella’s tests. The chair hadn’t been moved for a good while, either to sit on or clean beneath. He sniffed the pillow – not one of her tests – but, lacking Stella’s keen sense of smell, he was none the wiser. He wished that she was with him. Stella would not enter a building without the owner’s permission.

  With shifts on the Underground and cleaning at the Herbarium, it was several days since Jack had seen Stella. He felt out of touch with her. He disliked this, but it did make it easier to do something of which she would disapprove.

  He slid out one of the drawers and a smell escaped into the room. This one he could identify. It was patchouli. Lucie May dabbed it liberally on herself – now it competed with Placid Pet. The drawer was crammed with jewellery. A pearl bracelet nestled next to a necklace of black glass beads and one of chunky wood.

  His mother had worn patchouli. Or had she? Patchouli didn’t fit with the sombre wood and brocade that implied that the room hadn’t been decorated since Victoria was on the throne.

  The second drawer contained a hotchpotch of the sort of useless objects that every owner stored until the day when they might use them. Jack had seen these in many houses: a necklace with a broken hasp, loose beads, single earrings, tooth picks, scraps of sample wool and fabric. He prised open the lid of a velvet ring box; there was nothing on the silk cushion inside.

  In the last drawer he found two pairs of John Lennon spectacles, their arms entangled in ocular embrace. He parted them and lifted one pair to his face. The wearer was very short-sighted. When he put them back, he had trouble shutting the drawer. He pulled the drawer further out and found a wad of newspaper stuffed at the back. He extracted it, careful not to tear the paper.

  He heard something. He stopped. Silence. He wa
s dizzy with fright. Fear of his own fear. He had often explored the homes of murderers or would-be murderers without a frisson of nerves. What was different now? He was out of practice. Since he had met Stella he seldom visited True Hosts. That must be it.

  On the other side of the bed was an oak closet. A Narnian wardrobe. Jack saw them everywhere. They offered promise of another, better place. He unfastened the latch and pulled open a door. A bluff of patchouli and camphor greeted him. A metal rail was bowed with the weight of dresses and skirts, heavy coats and woollens. Jack pinched his nose to ward off a sneeze and, clutching the wad of newspaper, clambered inside as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He pushed to the back and tucked his knees up. If someone looked in, he would be out of sight. He felt calm descend.

  Delving through the clothes, he reached out and swung the door to. He couldn’t lock it from the inside. A True Host would see that the door was unlatched, but Jack wasn’t yet certain that a True Host lived in the house. He needed more evidence. The trinkets and flotsam in the dressing-table drawers were not a True Host’s trophies, the keepsakes of their terrible crimes; they were objects of life.

  He directed his torch app to the back of the wardrobe to prevent light spilling between cracks or knots in the wood and spread the newspaper across his knees. The article was dated Thursday 8 July 1976.

  A4 MAN MAY HAVE BEEN MURDERED

  By Lucie May

  Workmen mending a crater in the Great West Road got a grisly surprise.

  ‘Found a shoe, didn’t think nothing of it, you get all sorts in our line. I goes to pick it up and there was a foot inside. Not what you expect!’ a shaken Kevin Manning told the Chronicle.

  Further digging revealed that the foot was attached to a man’s body aged, police estimate, between thirty-five and forty. ‘Judging from the state of decay, he had been buried at least twenty years. Probably in 1956 when the A4 was extended west. Had it not been for the damage caused by the unseasonable heat his “grave” might have remained undisturbed,’ Detective Inspector Davidson told us. As we reported last week, soaring temperatures melted the road surface opening a crater big enough for a family car.