Ghost Girl

by Thomson, Lesley

  ‘He will be the next victim! We must warn him. What was his name?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘If the killer is alive, going by the pattern he won’t kill for months after the child died.’

  ‘You said he was speeding up. Something’s changed. His health or his circumstances.’ She saw again the sandy shape on the tarmac. A child ghost washed away in the rain. ‘I’m due at David Barlow’s.’

  ‘That’s a strange job,’ Jack remarked. ‘Deep cleaning. A metaphor for cleansing guilt or shame. You should profile deep-cleaning clients. Bet there’s a corollary.’

  ‘David’s got nothing to be guilty about; he nursed his wife to the end. Not many men would and he was burgled.’ Stella hadn’t spoken to David since finding the stuff under his bath. Jack would have a field day if she told him. ‘I’ll drop you at Mrs Hampson’s.’ She hesitated, struck by the reality of where Jack was going. She would not like to clean there by herself. ‘If we delay it, I could come too.’ There was more rustling in the bushes, just to add to it all.

  ‘I’m normally there without you.’

  ‘With Mrs Hampson being dead.’

  ‘She’s not still there. I should escort you to your deep-cleaning gig.’

  ‘No need.’ Stella cast about for the path. The rustling stopped. ‘Jack. Come on!’ She didn’t relish walking across the cemetery by herself.

  ‘What’s tomorrow?

  ‘Sunday sixth of May.’

  She read the lead lettering on Michael Thornton’s monument: ‘15th March 1959 – 6th May 1966’.

  ‘Ring your friend,’ Jack said softly. ‘He will kill Joel Evans’s driver tomorrow.’

  59

  Saturday, 5 May 2012

  Marian Williams parked her Mini on Staveley Road, a good distance from a van that, despite being plain white, seemed familiar. Everything rang a bell when you worked for the police. She took the bouquet off the passenger seat. When she had seen Stella Darnell outside Terry’s, her heart had gone out to her. Stella was keeping her father’s house ticking along as if she expected him back. Marian wanted him back too. She had given Stella the flowers on the spur of the moment. She didn’t regret it, but it meant that the next day she had come here empty-handed.

  Stella wasn’t fooled by the bruise. The way she had looked at her, like Terry did, with concern. She had quickly worked it out and no doubt felt sorry for her. Marian didn’t want sympathy. Still, with Terry gone, it was nice Stella cared.

  A man walked out of the cemetery gates. Marian didn’t want to see anyone. She was snatching precious moments out of time. Despite covering her tracks, he always knew what she had done and he made her pay.

  Something about the man caught her attention. She lifted the lilies to hide her face and peered through the petals. He was moving with purpose, heels clipping on the pavement. Most bereaved tended to plod along.

  She knew him. David Barlow had been burgled. He had lost pictures and valuable silver crucifixes. Dotty to have them on display, she had thought. He brought photographs of the items. Few victims were so prepared. He came the next week to see how the case was progressing. It wasn’t. The burglary would have been targeted, buyers lined up, no clues, no fingerprints. She suggested he list visitors to the house – cleaners, plumbers, any workmen. He let slip his wife was terminally ill so there were lots of people coming. Nurses, deliveries of oxygen, drugs, equipment. None of them would steal, he said. Marian didn’t like to say you couldn’t trust anyone. She saw the underbelly of life; it skewed perception. Poor man was having a hard enough time. Barlow never made an appointment or rang, which would have saved him, and her, time and trouble. Soon she found him a nuisance. Then he began to arouse her suspicions. He didn’t seem bothered about the stolen goods; it was the principle, he said. Keep your principles to yourself, she wanted to say. He was taking up valuable time. She had made a note: ‘one to watch’. If Barlow was here, Mrs Barlow must have died.

  He got into an orange Ford Fiesta. She had not noticed it when she parked. Terry would have seen it. Terry was with her now, spurring her on.

  She waited for Barlow to round the corner in the direction of the Hogarth roundabout, then hurried into the cemetery. She knew where the new plots were and found the grave immediately.

  JENNIFER BARLOW

  LOYAL WIFE OF DAVID

  1946 – 2012

  A plain, self-referencing epitaph. Nothing about being much missed or deeply mourned. What had tested his wife’s loyalty? An affair. That soft-shoe demeanour had to be a sham. She heard voices and ducked behind a mausoleum.

  Two people, a man and a woman, walked along the path from the chapel, arm in arm. She had dreamed of bringing Terry here, her arm through his.

  She nearly made a noise. The woman was Stella Darnell. The white van was familiar because Marian had seen it in the station compound. Stella had said nothing about a boyfriend. Terry couldn’t have known, he would have said. Marian must get a look at the man; Terry would want to know. She followed them. Terry had taught her his tricks. Keep them in sight, not too close or they will feel you there.

  The van pulled away. Marian broke into a clumsy trot. Her lungs were bursting by the time she started her car, an old-style Mini.

  Trailing Stella Darnell into Chiswick High Road, she caught a glimpse of the occupants in a shop window. Only Stella. The man had gone. She was hot with shame. He had got out without her seeing. She was very bad. The voice filled the car.

  They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…

  60

  Saturday, 5 May 2012

  Marian Williams filed documents, signed forms and slipped them into internal envelopes until her desk was clear. Being off in the week had set her back; at the weekend she could work uninterrupted. She did not like to leave work pending. She began each day with a clean slate. She smiled grimly at the phrase; it made her think of Stella. Stella, it seemed, got everywhere.

  She had saved the best task until last. She tapped Barlow’s details into the database. She started with vehicle registrations dating from eighteen when he probably passed his driving test.

  When computers were introduced to the station in the early 1990s, Marian Williams might have been expected not to get on with them. But she was efficient, and others were mindful to respect her exacting systems. The ‘Crime Reporting Information System’ was one of many technological challenges. Some staff took early retirement to avoid it altogether, while others, through a mix of carelessness and obduracy, undermined CRIS with minor errors. Marian hunted these down and corrected them. She grew to know it intimately and, awed by its capability, developed a fierce attachment to it. She posed questions. It gave her answers. It never let her down. The answer it gave Marian now was one that she had dreaded one day finding out.

  After a time she gathered herself and printed out the result, noting, as she always did, the last time she had printed a response from the database. It made no sense. She never printed in the mornings and never while the cleaners were in the building.

  She picked up the receiver and punched in the number of the woman who was supposed to be a friend.

  ‘Is that Stella Darnell?’

  The conversation was short. She folded the printout and dropped it in her handbag. She had one more call to make.

  The administrator whom everyone knew as Marian Williams put on her coat and slung her bag over her chest like a satchel, a precaution against theft. She trotted out of the station. Before meeting Stella, she would stop at the model shop in Hammersmith Station, orange was an unusual colour, but the man stocked everything, he would not let her down.

  61

  Saturday, 5 May 2012

  Stella found a parking space near David’s house. While she was hauling the equipment out of the van, a Mini took a vacated slot further down the street. Spaces here were free for less than a minute: a time-and-motion fact Jack would relish. Ja
ck. He should not be in the dead woman’s house alone.

  ‘Tea first!’

  David relieved her of the Planet vacuum cleaner. His shirt sleeves were pushed up, revealing sturdy workmanlike arms, surprising since he didn’t strike her as practical.

  He had laid the table with plates decorated with dainty doilies, bone-handled forks and real napkins. A candle burned in the centre of a sponge cake dusted with caster sugar. Another of Jennifer Barlow’s creations. Stella was cheered by the cafetière of coffee and a milk jug from which wisps of steam arose. Jack liked cake; if he were here he would see that he had got David wrong.

  Stanley was curled up asleep in a bed by the radiator. The dog and the laden table gave the kitchen a homely aspect very different to Terry’s. David slid out a chair for her and then slid it back as she sat down.

  Mindful of time – she wanted to check on Jack – Stella glanced at David’s wall clock and stifled a gasp. Surrounding the clock were the pictures and crucifixes from under the downstairs bath. The jacket she had found hung on a hook cleaned and pressed. Stella had worried that David would not refer to her discoveries. He had put everything on display.

  ‘The cake looks nice.’ She was glad Jack wasn’t witnessing this. At the same time she wished that he was.

  ‘Last cake.’ David sat down. ‘I’ll have to have a go myself. I’ve got rather partial.’ He patted his stomach, still, Stella noticed, as flat as a board.

  The candle flame gave his face a glow, accentuating the start of a tan.

  ‘Make a wish.’

  ‘Now?’ she said stupidly.

  ‘I’ve made mine.’ He laughed merrily. ‘Keep it secret.’

  Stella never made wishes, but this was not the time to say so. I wish we could find the murderer. With too big a blow, she extinguished the light and knocked over the candle. Only then did she think she should have wished something about David.

  David flapped open his napkin and spread it over his lap. With efficient chops he divided the cake into exact sixths.

  Stella bit off a piece. The sponge was moist and tasted of lemons.

  ‘I bought my Wolseley forty-six years ago.’ Barlow nodded at the pictures. Stella clutched the table edge to stop herself trembling and looked to where he was pointing.

  She hadn’t noticed the car. Unlike the other pictures it wasn’t framed but was a print, like the ones Terry did, the colours lurid and dreamlike. David had not mentioned the stolen items.

  ‘Wolseleys are beautiful to drive, even without power-assisted steering.’ He detached a morsel of sponge with the side of his fork, gathered it up and popped it into his mouth. ‘The smell of the leather, dark red, sumptuous. That shine on the walnut veneer. I was at the start of my career and engaged. At eighteen I was on top of the world!’

  ‘It’s hard to manage without a car, even in London.’ A lump of cake stuck to the roof of Stella’s mouth. She couldn’t dislodge it with her tongue, so she gulped her coffee. She would have to say something.

  ‘You’ve made this place as good as new. And God, in the guise of the good people at Porphyrion, will finish what you started.’ He sat back. ‘These pictures, those crosses are shackles. Jennifer stitched me up, Stella.’ He wiped his hands on his napkin and leant forward. ‘She hid them and said we’d been burgled. She was crying, but she never cried. Made me call the police – no, not call, I had to go there. She’s adept at dreaming up new modes of torture even from beyond the grave. Divorce would have spoiled her fun.’ He appeared to be controlling a rage.

  ‘You had no idea?’ Stella could see he was telling the truth. Her skin tingled. Mrs Barlow was dead. She could harm no one. But suddenly Stella felt as if the woman was in the room with them. A malevolent presence. Something nudged at her leg; she leapt back. Stanley was licking her boot.

  ‘Don’t feed him. He mustn’t beg.’ David came over and swept the dog into his arms. He turned to her. ‘It’s over, Stella.’

  Stella reeled. No one had ever ended it with her. Jackie believed Stella split with up men to stop them leaving her. A shame, Jackie said, because men adored Stella and would never leave her.

  ‘No more recrimination.’ He was taking the pictures down. He stuffed them into a plastic bin bag, careless, it seemed, of breaking them. ‘Tabula rasa. Clean slate!’

  Stella was stunned. That word ‘recrimination’. David Barlow had asked her to deep clean, his second chance. No amount of scrubbing would rub out her theft. She could not hide the printout under the bath.

  ‘The police used to drive Wolseleys,’ she managed. He didn’t want to end it. She was not relieved. If he knew about the printout, then he would say it was over. Perhaps he did know and was talking about recrimination to encourage her to confess.

  ‘They did.’ David threw the bag on the patio. It landed with a metallic crash and the breaking of glass.

  Stella’s phone rang. Jack. ‘I need to take this, it’s work.’

  In the hall, she tripped over a canister of air neutralizer that had rolled out of the equipment bag. She should not have let Jack go on his own. ‘Jack! Are you OK?’

  ‘Is that Stella Darnell?’ A girl’s voice.

  ‘Ye- es?’ Stella didn’t know any children. She checked the handset: Caller unknown.

  ‘Could I see you?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Marian.’

  ‘Well, to be honest I’m in the middle of…’

  ‘You said to call if I needed help.’

  After the scene in the toilets Stella had encouraged Marian to call and she had meant it. ‘I’m with a client,’ she heard herself say. Marian had a violent husband. Terry would not refuse. ‘I could come afterwards. Are you at the station?’

  ‘I don’t work weekends. I can’t see you at home.’ Marian was wheezing as if she had been crying. ‘Do you know Dukes Meadows? By the river at Chiswick, not far from where you are now. It’s peaceful. We won’t be disturbed.’

  Stella would rather they were disturbed. The shoulder-to-cry-on stuff was more Jackie’s department. She agreed to meet at six-thirty in the car park by a boathouse, presumably a café. Marian rang off without saying goodbye; she was upset. Bang went the supper with David. Disappointed Stella tossed the air neutralizer back into the bag and returned to the kitchen.

  David had brewed fresh coffee.

  ‘Nothing wrong, I hope.’ He asked questions without being intrusive. He leant against the fridge, the dog resting on his shoulder.

  ‘A client.’ Stella told him she was meeting Marian and how she knew her. Although he would be sympathetic, she didn’t mention the marital abuse. She would not break a confidence, even one that hadn’t yet been shared. She told him this meant they couldn’t have supper.

  ‘If it’s any consolation, I can’t anyway, something’s come up. I’ll explain another time.’

  ‘Do you know Dukes Meadows?’ She was mildly surprised David hadn’t said earlier that they wouldn’t be able to meet.

  ‘Lovely spot for a stroll or a picnic. Not tonight, the weather is forecast to deteriorate.’ The dog cocked its head as if particularly interested. ‘Are you going from here?’

  ‘Yes, apparently it’s quite near.’

  ‘Traffic willing, it’s twenty minutes. You’re younger, but for my generation Dukes Meadows has a darker association. They found a victim of “Jack the Stripper” there in 1959. One of the Hammersmith Murders. I was a lad. Me and my pals went to have a nose. There you go, Fluffkin.’ He put Stanley back in his bed and flapped a furry brown bear under its nose. The dog snapped the bear between its jaws and dashed it against the cushion. ‘I go back there sometimes. Can’t help myself.’

  ‘What happened?’ Stella asked out of politeness, thinking about Marian.

  ‘A dawn police patrol found Elizabeth Figg propped against a willow tree. She was a twenty-one-year-old prostitute. It was my first body – not that I saw her; they’d constructed a corrugated iron shelter and shooed us away. One officer said she
could have been sunbathing, looking over the Thames to Watneys brewery. Was your dad there?’ David was animated.

  ‘He was a boy.’ Stella was impressed at his recall of an event of over fifty years ago. But then the Rokesmith murder was still clear in her mind from when she was fifteen. She snapped to: this meant David had to be over sixty.

  ‘Your dad was taken too soon.’

  ‘His first fatality was in 1966 – a boy killed in a hit and run.’

  ‘Where was that?’ David snatched away the bear; the poodle whimpered.

  ‘On King Street.’ Stella took her mug to the sink.

  ‘I’ll give you directions for Dukes Meadows. It’s hard to find even with a satnav.’

  That a woman had been murdered there made Stella even less willing to go. Amanda Hampson’s house was preferable – maybe better the corpse you know. She had no idea how to make Marian feel better. Until David, her relationships were not an example and this wasn’t really a relationship.

  ‘We should not forget the Elizabeth Figgs and Michael Thorntons; or we forget ourselves.’ David sluiced soap off Stella’s mug under the hot-water tap.

  ‘You know about Michael Thornton?’ Stella stopped in the doorway. Idle chat was how Terry unearthed clues.

  ‘The car hit him the day Myra Hindley and Ian Brady got life. Sixth of May 1966.’ He twisted the drying-up cloth around inside the mug. ‘Thornton’s sister watched her brother die. I really hope she has forgotten. Her name was Myra, then after the murders her parents changed it to Mary.’ He draped the cloth on the oven door handle. ‘Myra Hindley was still trying to get released when she died. Jennifer said you can’t ever be forgiven for killing a child. A few years earlier, Hindley and Brady would have hanged.’

  Myra Hindley was coming up a lot. Mrs Thornton had killed herself on the fifteenth November 2002. Five days after Jamie Markham, who in turn was five days after the boy Robert Smith on Guy Fawkes Night. Lucille May had built a file on the crashes, supposedly for a book she was writing, and she had gone as far as buying the house that the dead boy had lived in. That didn’t add up. She needed to talk to Jack.