The House With No Rooms

by Lesley Thomson

  She snapped a picture of the photograph and enlarged it on her phone screen. Through the pixels, she deciphered two house numbers, 22 and 20, on the houses beyond the crater. Placing her pen on the map overlaid with the old map, one end by the two houses, Stella traced a line, following the angle of the camera lens, to the north side, where she lived. She sighed with satisfaction; this was why she liked this work. The crater had opened up where number 25 Rose Gardens used to be.

  Consulting the electoral roll, a task at which she was now adept, Stella found that in 1954 and 1955, 25 Rose Gardens had had a sole occupant: a Mrs Ivy Collins. She trawled back in the volumes as far as 1939 but found no Mr Collins. Perhaps he had been killed at the start of the Second World War which had started that year or Mr Collins had never existed and Ivy styled herself ‘Mrs’ for respectability. Number 25 had no entry in 1956, presumably because it had been demolished around then. By 1960 the street had two suffixes, ‘North’ and ‘South’.

  The archivist found her a folder of articles and photographs specific to Rose Gardens. On the top were the articles from the seventies that Jack had given her covering the Ramsay robbery in the fifties and the body unearthed in the crater in 1976 when tarmac had melted.

  The file included black-and-white prints of Rose Gardens before the A4 was extended. Writing on the back said the photos were donated in 1954 by William Britton, a local amateur photographer. One was shot looking towards the junction with St Peter’s Square. Counting along Stella made out Terry’s house. Opposite, where there were now bushes and a scrap of grass, was a wire fence bounding back gardens in Black Lion Lane. A man with a dog about the size of Stanley was standing beside a curved iron lamp-post that looked Victorian. The position of the post was where the faulty lamp was now and this helped Stella get her bearings.

  Two doors down from Terry’s, closer to the camera, a boy aged about fourteen was sitting on the wall. He was outside number 25, Ivy Collins’s house – now an end of terrace – grinning at the photographer. Flipping the picture over, she found a date stamp: March 1954. Given his confident – cheeky – pose, the chances were that the boy had lived there. It was likely he was Ivy Collins’s son. She could see from the photo that he was too young to vote.

  The article about the robbery said the burglars were likely to be boys thin enough to have climbed through a narrow window at the back of the Ramsays’ house. Stella knew the window from when she had cleaned for Mrs Ramsay; there was no way an adult could get through, unless they were very small in stature. Could this boy have been the robber? Not a link possible to make in the 1950s because the man’s body with the signet ring was not found until 1976. By then Ivy Collins and her son would have been rehoused. The police would have done house-to-house inquiries after the man’s body was found in 1976 – with fewer houses in Rose Gardens and many of the occupants who had lived there in the fifties having died or moved on. Still, it was inconceivable that detectives wouldn’t have worked out that Ivy Collins had a son who was a prime candidate for the crime. Perhaps they had and the boy had an alibi – or wasn’t even living – or they hadn’t been able to trace him. Terry had probably known. She could never ask him.

  Stella photographed the picture of the boy and tried enlarging his image on her phone, but the result was too grainy to do more than confirm he was smiling.

  Stella got out her phone. No one had texted. She had hoped for one from Tina.

  Let’s do coffee, I need decent human interaction!

  An idea occurred and before she could change her mind, Stella texted Lucie May. The reporter had access to resources and possessed investigative skills that Stella – and Jack – had yet to hone. Stella would use them. She was learning that detectives couldn’t work alone. Terry had trusted May; she would trust her too. Armed with Ivy Collins, the name of the woman who had lived in the ‘murder house’ in Rose Gardens with her son in the fifties, and having established the names of all those who had lived in Kew Villa, Stella called it a good morning’s work.

  It was raining when she stepped out on to Shepherd’s Bush Road. Head down, hood up, she ran towards the Metropolitan Underground station.

  ‘Want a lift?’

  Her hood didn’t move when she turned her head, blocking her view. She wrenched it back and was hit in the face by a squall of rain.

  A taxi was crawling along the nearside kerb and through the open window the driver was gesticulating at her. It was Tina’s dad. She couldn’t say no without sounding rude, but she didn’t want to talk about Tina. She splashed across the pavement to the kerb.

  Cliff Banks was wearing a green polo shirt, the same colour as the Clean Slate uniform. He was leaning across the front luggage space grinning. ‘Climb in, Stell. It’s cats and dogs, I’ll take you to wherever you’re going.’

  ‘I can get a train.’

  ‘You’ll be soaked before you reach the Broadway. Chrissie wouldn’t forgive me for passing by. Hop in, love.’ Stella heard the click of the door locks being released and admitted that she was grateful to accept.

  As soon as she settled in the back, she felt awkward. On the rare occasions that she took a taxi, she avoided small talk with the drivers. It was hard with Cliff Banks; his ‘talk’ would be far from small. Thinking where she had just been, Stella said the first thing that came into her head, ‘I heard that Tina had drawing lessons when she was young.’

  She thought that Cliff Banks hadn’t heard, but then saw that he was looking at her in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘That’s going back.’ He did a U-turn and headed up Shepherd’s Bush Road. ‘It was with an old mate of mine, George Watson. Mucked about together as boys. He only goes and marries some heiress. He finds himself living in a flippin’ mansion by Kew Pond and drawing flowers for a living!’ Stella couldn’t decide if he was being sarcastic or was impressed. Kew Villa. Tina had had drawing lessons with George Watson. Were they the people that Tina had told her friends Bella and Emily were her parents? An odd thing to lie about. But Tina having had drawing lessons was odd. She had been a woman of surprises. Foxtrotting being one. Dying another.

  ‘Drawing flowers is a far cry from being a solicitor.’ Stella had decided that Jack had got it wrong about Tina’s drawing lessons. It didn’t fit with Tina. It seemed that she hadn’t known Tina at all.

  ‘I wanted her to mix with different people. They didn’t have kids so it was nice all round. Chrissie did some lovely pictures. Rosalind Watson baked cakes – she used to give Chrissie her tea,’ he said, as if this was important.

  ‘Rosamond.’ Her notes fresh in her mind, Stella coughed to disguise the correction. Looking out of the window as they swung on to Shepherd’s Bush Green she met the gaze of an elderly man waiting on the kerb. He was wet through, but seemed not to care. His hands plunged in the pockets of his sodden windcheater, he stared at her without expression. Harry Roberts. The man from Stella’s childhood nightmares. She turned in her seat, but rain was streaming down the glass and the man was a ghost shape and then was gone. It wouldn’t be Roberts; she doubted he was allowed to set foot in the borough where he had killed the policemen. Banks was talking:

  ‘So Chrissie talked to you about her lessons?’ He was smiling in the mirror.

  ‘No. I found out from the funeral.’ This was true. There was nothing wrong with Tina’s friends looking back on her life, but Stella decided not to mention Jack’s conversation with the women called Bella and Emily. Luckily Banks chose to change the subject. He asked her if she would continue cleaning the flat until it was sold and she agreed that she would.

  ‘I’ll let you know a good time to go,’ he said.

  When they got to the Clean Slate office at Shepherd’s Bush Green, Cliff Banks refused payment. ‘Chrissie’d have conniptions if I charged you! She’s watching over us and is grateful you’re humouring her old dad. It wasn’t just luck that I was passing.’

  Stella was sad. How could he know that Tina was watching? As for ‘old’, Cliff Banks didn’t look old. He
was one of those men who could be anything between fifty and seventy. His hair was short with a flick at the front; he was natty in the polo shirt, he was good-looking and, despite the smoking, gave off an impression of vigour and health. She remembered the photograph in Tina’s flat and how she had mistaken Banks for a fifties matinee idol. With a shock, Stella acknowledged that her own dad hadn’t looked as fit as this since she was in her teens. Terry had died before his time. She could have driven with him in his blue Toyota Yaris chatting as she had with Cliff Banks in his taxi. Tina had still had a dad. ‘Tina has died.’

  She was passing the mini-mart when Cliff Banks called her back. ‘Take this for your books.’

  It was a blank taxi receipt. Before she could protest that she wouldn’t claim for a trip that she hadn’t paid for, the taxi had joined the stream of traffic heading towards Holland Park and the Westway. She pocketed the slip of paper.

  Banks had known to bring her to Shepherd’s Bush Green although she hadn’t told him where she was going. Terry used to second-guess her. He had once saved her from walking in front of a lorry. Berating herself for getting like Jack, Stella stomped up the stairs to the office.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  October 1976

  Bella hopped about on the pavement impatiently. It was bang on half past three. Emily was due to call. Their plan was going wrong because there was a man in the telephone box. She had never seen anyone in there before and she was cross. It was unreasonable to be cross – she could hear Emily herself telling her – it was a public call box so anyone could use it. But the man wasn’t talking on the phone. He was holding the receiver as if he didn’t know how to work it. All the time he was doing that Emily would be calling and getting the engaged signal. Soon Emily’s mum would wake up and catch her on the phone. Bella didn’t want Emily to think that she had forgotten their agreement. When Emily didn’t come to school she was to ring Bella at the telephone box outside Kew Gardens – Bella was there to draw flowers – and Bella would tell her what she had missed at school.

  Bella could bear it no longer. She pulled on the heavy door with all her might and heaved it open. She leant against it to stop it closing again.

  ‘There are people waiting. If you’re not going to make a phone call, please could you get out of the way so that others can?’ She loosely echoed the words a woman had once said to her when she had been waiting in the box for Emily to call.

  The man turned around.

  ‘Oh!’ Bella stepped back. She had seen him before. It was Chrissie’s dad. Or the man Bella had decided was her dad because he had come out of the big house by the pond when she had watched it after school, waiting for Chrissie to come home. The man that Bella didn’t believe was her dad. Memories of the hot summer months earlier flooded back. ‘How’s Chrissie?’ she spluttered.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Chrissie? Your daughter.’ The sense of triumph that she would have experienced months before was muted now that she and Emily didn’t see Chrissie. She had disappeared from their lives.

  The man towered over her. Although the sun had gone in, he had clip-on sunshades over his glasses so she couldn’t see him properly. He looked like a giant insect.

  ‘She’s not my...’ He looked about him as if checking that they were alone. Bella wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, teachers were always saying so, but – cross that this stranger was in the telephone box – she had forgotten. She felt an ice cube of fear slide down her back. ‘She’s fine,’ he said.

  The telephone in the call box began to ring.

  Bella was frozen to the spot; the weight of the closing door dug into her shoulder. She watched as if tied up as the man leant back into the box and lifted the receiver.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Yes, I think she is.’ He looked at Bella. She could just see his eyes out of the side of the sunshades. ‘A girl on the line for you, Bella.’ He gave a funny smile. One of his teeth looked like a gravestone, grey and crooked. He moved so that Bella could come into the box with him. She remained on the pavement. He held the receiver out to her, but the metal cord didn’t stretch beyond the box. ‘You will have to come here.’ His voice grated.

  Quickly Bella ducked under his arm. She felt a nudge in her back and saw that it was the closing door. The man had left the telephone box.

  The cubicle smelled of tomato sauce. Bella’s throat constricted with revulsion.

  ‘Who was that?’ Emily’s voice sounded as if she was small and far away.

  ‘You’ll never guess!’ Bella peered through one of the grimy windows in the box. Beyond the sweep of pavement were the wrought-iron gates to Kew Gardens. The man had gone. ‘It was Chrissie’s dad! Except I think I was right and—’ She stopped. ‘Ems, are you OK?’

  ‘My mum’s done it again.’ Emily spoke in a monotone.

  ‘Done what?’ Bella knew what Emily was going to say. ‘Is she... Is she— ’

  ‘Dead. I don’t know, I’m at the hospital.’

  ‘Charing Cross?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m coming.’ Bella slammed down the phone and pushed out of the acrid-smelling cubicle. She had come to Kew Gardens after school to draw flowers. Now she would go to the hospital instead. She wouldn’t tell her mum where she had really been; her mum would say it was none of her business. Bella would lie to her.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  November 2014

  Stella reached around in her seat and gave Stanley a rice bone. Not normally advisable because he could turn nasty to protect his ‘kill’. If she needed him to move, he would refuse until he had finished the bone. But this afternoon she was going nowhere and it was vital to keep him occupied.

  Given a choice, Stella wouldn’t have brought Stanley, but Jackie had gone to see her son Nick dancing in a matinee in the West End and Beverly had enough on her plate managing the office single-handed without dog-sitting.

  She was on the second stage of her legwork, working on Case One. Ensconced in the van, she laid her Filofax on the passenger seat next to her, hoping that, in her black suit, she might be mistaken for an estate agent, not that they generally drove white vans. She also hoped that a woman sitting for a long period in a parked vehicle might be less conspicuous than a man. Both hopes were slim.

  She reviewed what they had. Potentially two cases. Tina’s bizarre request to ‘catch a murderer’ and Terry’s comment to Lucie that he had ‘let someone get away with murder’. Jack had related his conversation at the funeral with Tina’s childhood friends. At the time of the drought, Tina had confided to the one called Emily that she had seen a murder. Both women told Jack that Tina often told lies. So, like the boy crying wolf, Tina hadn’t been believed. But for the locket, Stella would have objected that Tina wasn’t a liar. She still harboured doubt. Tina must have had a reason for claiming that the locket wasn’t hers. Case One was flimsy but Stella owed it to her friend to follow up on her deathbed request.

  For these cases all they had to go on was a bag of strangely assorted items: a jumbled text, images of Terry on Street View and a bundle of receipts. Many detectives worked with less.

  She was parked up outside Kew Villa, overlooking Kew Pond, in the same space where Terry had been four years earlier. The police set store by the re-enactment of crimes, hoping to jog memories of witnesses and of those who hadn’t realized that they were witnesses. Stella was doing this in reverse. She was reconstructing the detection process hoping to identify the crime. Stella was on a stakeout.

  She took a sip of tea from Terry’s flask and placed the cup on the dashboard. Steam clouded the windscreen, blurring her view. She wiped the glass with a gloved hand. She had put the heater on full blast coming from Shepherd’s Bush to build up a store for when the engine was off. This had abated and the van was like an ice box. Terry had been here on a summer’s day.

  She was hungry. She’d planned to hold off having the pork pies that she’d bought from the Tesco Express outside Kew station – faithful to Terry’s MO
– until at least an hour into the stakeout. But with Stanley crunching on his bone behind her, she couldn’t wait.

  Biting into the first pie, she washed it down with tea and scanned the house. The lace curtains in the downstairs windows hadn’t as much as twitched and no one had come out or gone in. She opened the copy of the Daily Mirror that, like Terry, she had got from the newsagent’s in Kew Gardens station and spread it across the steering wheel. Her eye was caught by a headline: Police Killer Free. She rattled the paper and shifted in her seat. Harry Roberts was out of prison. The article said that he was being closely monitored. A police chief described it as ‘sickening’. She checked her phone to see if Cashman had been in touch. She hadn’t seen him for a couple of days, he had been unable to leave work. No one had texted. She blinked from her mind the image of the blank-eyed man she had seen on the kerb in Shepherd’s Bush, telling herself that he had not been Roberts.

  With a start she looked up. The paper was a prop; she shouldn’t actually be reading it. She could see how detectives lost concentration at crucial moments. The lace curtains hadn’t moved. If she was being watched she had better look like she was outside for a reason. She flipped to the page in her Filofax on which she had written Tina’s text.

  Please never shed fruit was sleet, how dear hehe No Kesto Mar.

  She had told Jack that Tina never did crosswords, but she didn’t actually know that. It could be an anagram. She wrote down the individual letters in the sentence in her Filofax in no particular order, breaking up the twelve existing words (not that hehe, kesto or mar were words) to start the process. There were 50 letters. She began a list of new words – sheet, stone, devil, dead – there were many possibilities. Too many. Tina wouldn’t have made it this hard. And while she was trying to work it out, she wasn’t watching the house.

  The tea was already lukewarm; Terry’s flask was less than effective. Still no movement in any of the windows. Catching the last crumbs of the pie, munching, Stella remembered Cliff Banks’s request for her to continue cleaning the flat. She was pleased: it was something concrete that she could do for Tina. Well, not for her since she was dead... She forced herself to concentrate. She hadn’t considered how boring a stakeout was. Something needed to happen soon to keep her alert.