Ghost Girl

by Thomson, Lesley

‘I didn’t say the right answers to their quiz.’ She gave a quick smile. ‘I told the young man that I can read and read him the weather forecast. I said I didn’t vote for the Prime Minister and if he did, then he could tell me his name. That put the wind up the lot of them. Serve them right for treating me like a silly old widow.’

  Stella noticed that her mum’s hands were still. She was about to point out that Suzie was not a widow, but said instead: ‘You’re not silly or old.’ She got up. ‘I’ll find out what’s happening.’

  Still clutching the handbag, Stella batted at the curtains and pushed through.

  Five minutes later she was back in the little cubicle.

  ‘You haven’t fractured your skull, but test results might indicate concussion.’

  ‘Were you doing anything nice?’ Suzie’s hands stayed clasped on her lap. ‘I hope you were having fun. It’s Saturday night, half of West London’s in here. I had such a lot of fun when I was young, before I met Terry.’ She patted at her hair. ‘Afterwards too,’ she said.

  Stella gripped the handbag and flopped on to the chair. ‘It wasn’t fun, no.’ She was tempted again to tell her mum everything.

  ‘You look tired. I told Jack, “My daughter works so hard” – it’s good that you do, Stella, I admire you – “but she needs some fun too,” I said. Jack heartily agreed. I want him cleaning for me. You doing it will spoil the mother-and-daughter thing.’ She addressed a vent in the wall.

  ‘Long day.’ Stella was baffled by the idea her mum talked about her when she wasn’t there. She fiddled with the handbag clasp. Open close. Open close.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, Stella.’

  ‘I was wondering… say no if it’s too much… but if you had some time it would help me if you could do a bit for the business. You know, like you used to? Typing, ringing people, chasing up new business.’ Stella snapped shut the clasp.

  The curtain swept aside and a man in a blue coat twisted a wheelchair through the opening.

  ‘Mrs Darnell?’

  ‘That’s me.’ Suzie flourished the newspaper.

  Stella went cold. Her mum didn’t like hospitals and avoided doctors, so would ignore everything: a nagging pain or a blemish on her skin. The doctors were fobbing Stella off; her mum had something worse than mild concussion. She jumped up. ‘I’m Mrs Darnell’s daughter.’

  ‘Come to take you up to the ward.’ The man spun the chair around and clamped the brakes. Stella retreated while the porter transferred Suzie from the bed to the chair. Her mum looked suddenly small and frail, though, at only sixty-six, she was hardly old, Stella reassured herself. Terry hadn’t been old either.

  ‘No need for you to come, pet. Go on home to bed. Come and get me tomorrow. Or if you can’t…’

  ‘I can.’

  The porter wheeled her away. Stella was rooted in the gangway. A few metres away he turned the chair around. Her mum waved. Stella waved back.

  ‘She’s asking for her bag,’ the man called.

  Stella was still holding her mum’s handbag. She hurried up the bays and laid it on her mum’s lap. Suzie propped it upright on her lap and signalled the man to continue. Stella walked back along the gangway. A pallid young man in jeans and an unbuttoned shirt was being helped onto her mum’s bed, his eyes shut.

  ‘Stella.’

  The porter was holding open the PVC flap doors; her mum was gesticulating. Stella shrugged, not understanding. She moved towards them.

  ‘That work.’ Suzie Darnell was now rootling in her bag. ‘I can help you.’

  The doors smacked shut behind her.

  75

  Sunday, 6 May 2012

  ‘Mr Harmon, you needn’t do this if you’d rather not.’ Martin Cashman was gruff. ‘We have officers who are trained. How did you say you were related?’

  ‘It would be better from me.’ Jack circumnavigated the question. He would give anything to leave it to Cashman but he owed it to Mary. Cashman would not understand. Stella would. He wished she were here.

  ‘Please make it short.’ A female nurse reading a chart on a clipboard barred the way to the intensive care room. ‘He’s agitated. I’d say wait until he’s stronger, but he’s not going to make it. If he wasn’t asking for his daughter you could leave it.’

  When he walked in, it crossed Jack’s mind that they were too late. The old man – Robert Thornton – looked dead, his skin grey, his bony features even more cadaverous. He was festooned with tubing beneath a scaffolding of drips. Waste bags draped off the hospital bed. He was so slight he made little impression beneath the sheets. Jack started. Thornton’s eyes were fixed on him, bright and discerning.

  ‘Michael.’ The voice was strong.

  ‘Actually, Mr Thornton, this is…’ Martin Cashman stationed himself at the end of the bed facing the patient. He fiddled with the knot on his tie.

  The old man ignored him. ‘What can you report?’

  Jack sat by the bed, leaning in; he spoke low so that Cashman would not hear. ‘Mary did as you asked…’

  Thornton’s hand began an inexorable crawl over the sheets. He pinched the lapel on Jack’s coat. ‘You have never let me down, Michael.’

  ‘She found the driver.’

  ‘You are an angel,’ Robert Thornton cut in.

  ‘Mary is an angel,’ Jack whispered.

  ‘She left you on your own. She lied.’ Robert Thornton nodded towards Martin Cashman. ‘That policeman brought your sister back. I said, “Keep her, she’s not mine, I’ve done with her.’ The hand dragged at Jack’s coat, twig fingers scraping, groping. ‘She tried to killed my boy, but she didn’t, did she, son?’

  ‘Myra asked me to give you these.’ Jack held out seven green chips. ‘It took me too long to work out why Myra wanted my A to Z. She found streets with no CCTV, reported on landmarks for your fantasy land. She told me, she did all she could to make you love her. When you married her mother, you took Myra on too – only you didn’t. If she is an angel, then you, Robert Thornton, are the devil.’ Jack could smell death on the man and with his words he urged it on.

  Thornton gripped the glass. ‘That girl wasn’t proper police, Mary was a clerk. Where is she now when she should be taking care of you? You need your tea, a growing boy.’

  ‘She always took care of me. She took the trouble to know me. She was the only one who did.’ Jack was floating above him on a sea of white. The walls went convex then concave. Someone muted the sound.

  Jack was slumped on a chair, his head down between his knees. A steaming beaker appeared. Automatically he took it and, sitting up, held it as if it would anchor him.

  ‘Jack, it’s me.’ Stella knelt on the floor. ‘You fainted. I should have been there.’

  ‘He was going to make her kill Matthew Benson for him.’ Jack spoke thickly. ‘Mary saw no way out.’

  ‘They only had tea and coffee. I went for tea.’ Stella guided the mug to his lips.

  ‘Thornton did the murders, but he got frail. He made her take over.’ Jack inhaled the steam from the cup and looked up. Cashman was pacing further along the corridor, talking on the phone. ‘According to Lucie’s file, Thornton worked for an insurance company until he was made redundant in 2002. On top of losing his job, he was losing his touch. When he murdered Harvey Gray, he was seen by Carol Jones. Without his work, he had no access to accident data. He made Mary get it; her role gave him access to what he needed. She loved her work; she loved your dad. Her own father compromised her. It was unbearable, but she would have done anything to make her father love her. Except murder.’ He swirled the liquid in the cup. ‘Mary was lost after her brother died. From what you said, her work was her life. Her stepfather ruined it. He’s ruined her.’

  Stella sat on a chair beside Jack; he shifted closer to her.

  ‘She didn’t have to do what he said,’ she countered. As she said it, she knew that Mary did. There was so much Stella would have done for Terry.

  ‘She blamed herself for Michael’s death. Jackie
told me Mary stole Douglas Ford’s cards instead of bringing Michael home. Douglas came to see Jackie at the office last night; it’s been preying on his mind since a visit I paid him at the garage. She told him he had to go to the police. He said that Mary – we should call her Myra, it was her proper name – chased her brother into the path of Barlow’s car. Thornton must have guessed.’

  ‘Could Terry have known it was Marian?’

  ‘We’ll never know. Perhaps she wanted him to know so brought him Brooke Bond tea not as a present but as a sign.’ Jack rested his head back against the wall. ‘I thought the old man was frightened of his daughter. It was the other way around.’

  ‘And I thought Marian had a violent husband,’ Stella said. ‘Amanda Hampson inflicted the bruises fighting for her life.’

  ‘Amanda would have had the upper hand. Marian’s bruises were defensive. Amanda was desperate; her quest gave her purpose. Marian was thwarting her. You thought Marian was jealous because she wasn’t at the scene with Martin; she was actually shocked that Amanda was dead. Marian ran out of the house, leaving her by the temple; she had let her die.’

  ‘That old fellow wants locking up.’ Martin Cashman was off the phone. ‘He told me that Myra, as he calls Marian, should be dead and not his son. Can you credit that? Don’t care if he’s on his last legs, blokes like him don’t deserve children. When I think of what Marian did for him.’

  ‘Martin.’ Stella used Jack’s knee to stand up. She rummaged in her rucksack. ‘You need to see this.’ She handed Cashman the blue folder.

  76

  Monday, 7 May 2012

  Stella completed her spreadsheet of accidents – murders – and, resting her elbows on the table where Terry prepared his prints, allowed her gaze to roam over his wall of photographs. Until these she had seen few pictures of herself. There were the photo-booth snaps for passports and driving licence, but her schools hadn’t gone in for annual portraits so her mother hadn’t collected the mandatory gallery of gap-toothed grins in blazers that adorned the mantelpieces of many of her clients’ homes. The sort of images that accompanied Lucille May’s reports of the deaths of the boys.

  William Carter, Stephen Parsons, Christopher Mason, Colin Coleman, Robert Smith, Joel Evans, James Harrison. No one would murder Matthew Benson. It was over.

  David had said it was important not to forget lives cut short, now she understood the significance of that remark. One name she would remember: Michael Thornton, the boy with the face of an angel.

  With the grid in front of her, she wanted to review the case. She regretted not taking a copy of the blue folder before she handed it to Cashman. Stella caught sight of her smiling self over the banana sundae. The blue folder was a police matter now.

  Jack had gone to the station to give Martin Cashman a statement about the ‘hit and run’, as Jack called it. She believed David might give himself up. Jack didn’t say it, but she could see he was infuriated by her belief in Barlow.

  A police officer was outside David Barlow’s house in Aldensley Road. Another was by Jennifer Barlow’s grave, in the same cemetery as Michael Thornton. Martin Cashman had reassured them that Barlow would be caught. Jack was giving a detailed account of all they had found out. Giving work as an excuse, Stella had come to Terry’s house, but even the sense of Terry had gone and, unable to settle to work emails, she had retreated to his basement.

  Stella tracked along the top row of the pictures of her as a little girl. Stella on a bicycle, spooning up the sundae, done up in a painting apron; variously in pigtails, later with shorter hair, sometimes in need of a brush. She looked as if she was having the fun Suzie wanted for her. The adult Stella’s different hairstyles reflected the decades and a greater sense of fashion than she gave herself credit for. In one photograph, Stella saw her likeness to Suzie; she hadn’t thought she resembled either of her parents. It was out of sequence, in the middle of the third row down, when Stella was around seven. She got up. It was Suzie. Contrary to what her mum maintained, Terry had photographed her. After she left him he put this up on the wall in his favourite room.

  She heard something and crept to the foot of the stairs. She recognized the sound – she had heard it before. The flap on the letterbox was lifted. Then it was shut. And again. Marian’s ghost.

  Ridiculous. Jack knew not to knock and disturb the neighbours. Pleased, Stella took the basement steps two at time and pulled open the front door.

  ‘Hello, Stella.’

  David Barlow walked past her into the hall, his dog keeping to heel.

  ‘How did you find me?’ Stella fiddled with the kettle. Making a cup of tea was too banal a task.

  ‘I knew you’d come back to your dad’s.’ He sat at the table. ‘I wish I could go back to mine.’ He turned to her. Stella switched on the kettle.

  ‘The police are looking for you.’ His mackintosh was ripped at the hem and stained with oil. His shoes were scuffed and the back of his hand was grazed. ‘Are you all right?’ He was not all right.

  ‘Now that I’m here.’ He faced her. Stella fixed on the poodle, which in turn was following David’s every move, ears pert, chest puffed.

  ‘They’re at her grave.’ David got up, his hands in his coat pockets. ‘Even in death she has set them on me.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Stella said.

  ‘That won’t stop Jennifer. She knows how to press the right buttons. She’s got me. One mistake, Stella. I was a kid myself. We all make them. A fresh start, isn’t that your principle?’

  ‘Mary Thornton is dead.’ She could smell his aftershave – applied some time ago – combined with his own scent. She thought of what Jack had said and wondered if conversely it was possible to despise a man whose body odour and aftershave were compelling.

  ‘She walked out in front of the car. I had no chance.’ Abruptly he took Stella’s hands. ‘I can handle anything if you’re with me. I love you, Stella Darnell. Please don’t let Jennifer beat us. She wanted me to pay for my sin for the rest of my life.’

  Stella took in the unshaven cheeks, straggling locks of hair and bright eyes. She pulled free of him and sat down. Instantly Stanley sprang on to her lap as if he was putting distance between him and David. She saw David notice it too.

  ‘You hardly know me.’ She might have known David all her life. The dog’s woolly coat was impregnated with his smell. She moved away and steadied the animal. Its little body was compact and solid.

  ‘I washed the car and got the dent knocked out in a garage in a place called Seaford, a good distance from Hammersmith. When I saw that article about your dad dying there, it – it took me back. I’d never heard of the place since.’

  He scrutinized his palm as if expecting to find some answer there. ‘Until 15.47p.m. on Friday the sixth of May 1966 I was a good person. Each time you cleaned, you diminished Jennifer’s poison. Some people lose their faith when a loved one is taken. When she miscarried, it proved to her that God existed. It was an eye for an eye.

  ‘Jennifer gave me an alibi. I never asked her to. She told the police that I was at home all afternoon building a cot. The officer was sympathetic and crossed me off his list of grey-saloon owners in London and Surrey and that was that. Then, about a year ago, maybe more, your father knocked on the door and asked about my Wolseley. I knew he was on to me. The police didn’t know it was a Wolseley, they were looking for a grey saloon. Jennifer was ill by then. I said about the baby coming and needing a larger car. When I told him about my wife, he went away but I knew he wouldn’t give up. When I saw that article I realized he would not return. I wasn’t relieved, I promise you, Stella.’ He came and sat beside her.

  Stella felt the dog lean into her and gave it a stroke. She did not believe him. Surely he was relieved. ‘Why did you ring Clean Slate?’

  ‘I told you. I wanted that fresh start you promise in the brochure. Tabula rasa. When you found the jacket I was stunned. Jennifer told me she’d burnt it, just as she told me we had been burgled. I will never forg
et what happened to that little boy, I visit his grave. That angel haunts my dreams. I did a bad thing, but how long must I pay?’

  ‘What happened to the Wolseley?’ Stella stuck to facts.

  ‘I waited a decent interval before selling it, then answered an ad for a Hillman Minx.’ He spoke as if in court.

  ‘Why did you put the picture in a frame on the wall? Didn’t you think I’d be suspicious?’

  ‘I loved that car, I want to go back to that carefree time. I thought that even if you did guess that you’d understand. And you do, don’t you, Stella? He moved closer. The dog gave a low grumble.

  ‘I know we all make mistakes, but—’ Stella did not understand.

  ‘I told Mrs Hunt from the Porphyrion Insurance, it was Jennifer who said: Why mess up more lives? I saw sense in that. Mrs Hunt agreed I had been punished enough. After you went to meet the woman at Dukes Meadows I started thinking. That woman didn’t believe me about the break-in. She looked at me like she knew me. All those visits, pushed by Jennifer, to check whether they’d caught the thieves. I saw the child by the kerb watching me. I knew she’d never forget my face. It was the face of the woman at the police station. It’s the eyes that do it. They don’t change.

  ‘My unborn daughter died a week after the accident. If she had lived she would be your age – not that you’re like a daughter, you make me feel eighteen again. You said I deserved a second chance.’

  The kettle boiled. Holding the dog, mechanically Stella took the two mugs from the draining rack. Moments ago she had been impatient for Jack to return; now she dreaded him finding David Barlow here. She looked in the cupboard for tea bags. There were none.

  ‘There’s only instant coffee. I’ll go to the shop for tea.’ She kept her voice level.

  ‘Instant coffee is fine.’ Barlow moved towards her. The dog shrank into her as if it were frightened. Stella clutched it.

  ‘When you turned up, it was love at first sight.’

  ‘I only drink tea.’ Two days ago it would have been the word ‘love’ that scared her. ‘I won’t be long.’ She edged to the door.