The Detective's Secret

by Thomson, Lesley

  He was slotting the key into the lock of his parents’ house when it hit him. The Captain had given him impossible tasks so that he would fail. Simon believed that if he stole from his mother he would die.

  The boy looked back at the cemetery. Chiswick Tower loomed behind the yew trees. From high up there he could spy on the enemy.

  Simon let himself breathe. He had found their new HQ.

  17

  Monday, 21 October 2013

  St Peter’s Church clock struck seven as Stella came out of the subway. She was deliberately early. The Ram had been her dad’s local and she had suggested they meet there because it was close to Terry’s. Since texting Jack, she had decided to refuse to take on William Frost’s case. It was of the open and firmly shut variety. They wouldn’t linger; she would return to Terry’s and do a survey of industrial carpet cleaners, a task Stella viewed as a treat.

  In the nineteenth century Black Lion Lane South had been a rural lane of workers’ cottages fronted by hedgerows and surrounded by fields and orchards. The lane survived the urban creep of London until the 1950s when the extension of the Great West Road spliced it in two. Pedestrians reached the river from St Peter’s church by a tiled tunnel. On the south side, a row of cottages opposite the Ram maintained a hint of country. The pub, once frequented by ostlers, street sellers and the costermongers and those who made a living from the reeds growing along the bank and on Chiswick Eyot, was now the hostelry of choice for professionals, bankers, actors and retired police detectives.

  Stella pushed through the crowd and found Jack at a table out of the way, but with a view of the door. Still in his coat, reading glasses resting on the tip of his nose, he was deep in his A–Z guide to London. He jumped when her dog snuffled at his leg and pushed a glass of orange juice across to her. He wasn’t drinking, not even his usual hot milk. To Stella’s surprise, he had got a bowl of water for the dog.

  ‘Did Suzie enjoy her trip down under?’ He put on an Australian accent.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Stella hung her anorak over her chair and showed the dog the bowl, who bypassed it for a stray crisp. Tilting her glass at Jack in a vague toast, she sipped the orange juice.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her.’ Stella got her Filofax out of her rucksack.

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Jack pursed his lips.

  He would be thinking she’d not checked on Suzie since her return. For a man without a mother, he had plenty of advice on the subject.

  ‘You don’t see.’ Stella flicked to the notes she had taken after talking to William Frost. ‘She’s staying in Sydney.’

  ‘Forever?’ Jack exclaimed. He looked stricken. Taken up with her own worry about it, Stella had forgotten how close he was to her mum.

  ‘I’m to go on watering her plants. A clue that she plans to return. Or maybe not. Would you keep cleaning her flat, please.’

  ‘Has she fallen in love?’ Jack’s eyes were brown liquid pools. Stella thought he looked upset.

  ‘No!’ she snapped because Jack had hit the nail right on the head. ‘Mum says Terry was her wrong turning and that she’s done with relationships.’ Stella tried to remember when Suzie had last said that.

  ‘Look, Stell, chill! Suzie is too astute to be fooled.’ Jack fanned the pages of his A–Z, looking far from chilled himself.

  Stella considered that she had taken more wrong turnings than her mum – some in this very pub. She should have suggested meeting Jack somewhere else.

  ‘About this case, I have pretty much refused it. But Jackie suggested us to him and so I said I’d talk to you, not that there’s much to say.’

  ‘Talk to me.’ Jack folded his arms and leant forward.

  ‘In a nutshell, a man died and the verdict was suicide. His brother says he was murdered.’ With repetition it sounded even more flimsy.

  ‘What do the police say?’

  ‘He spoke to Martin Cashman at Hammersmith. Reading between the lines, Cashman sent him packing.’

  ‘What did he do? Hang himself, jump off Beachy Head?

  ‘Actually it was in your territory.’ Stella realized she had been putting off saying how the man died. Jack was sensitive. When she first knew him, the colour green made him feel ill. She had cured him of that, but with Jack you still had to tread carefully. There was no way round this one. ‘He was waiting for a District line—’

  ‘Which station?’ Jack interrupted.

  ‘Stamford Brook.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About a month ago.’

  Stella got it. ‘Was it your train?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘It was on the Piccadilly line.’

  ‘But you know about it?’ When Jack was upset he went a whiter shade of his usual pale. He looked like a ghost.

  ‘I was there. His name was Frost – like the poet.’

  ‘What poet?’

  ‘Robert Frost.’

  Stella consulted her notes. ‘Frost wasn’t a poet, he was in surveillance.’

  ‘No, I meant— Never mind. I saw Frost go off the platform. Stamford Brook is one of the stations the Piccadilly line trains pass through at high speed. It’s a good place for suicide, not that “good” is the right word.’

  ‘So, it’s cut and dried.’ Jack’s having been there gave them honourable grounds for turning down the case. It would be doing William a favour; he could let go and mourn his brother. Jackie was always saying you shouldn’t bottle up grief. But Stella was disappointed. She wanted to work on another case with Jack.

  ‘Why does the brother think it was murder?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Rick Frost, as he was called, told William he was being threatened and was on his way to tell him more when he died.’

  ‘Feeling threatened sounds a good reason to kill himself.’

  ‘You could say, but he’s adamant Rick wasn’t the sort. It’s like Mum going to Sydney.’

  ‘Delicious food, rich culture, sunshine and sea – how is that like jumping in front of a train?’

  ‘It’s out of character.’ Stella checked her phone. It was breakfast time in Sydney.

  ‘I’m telling him it’s “no”,’ she decided.

  ‘He’ll be extremely upset.’ Jack erred on the side of catastrophe. ‘If Frost was murdered, it was a “perfect murder”.’ Jack opened his A–Z at the first page, as if preparing to read and said,‘the police checked the CCTV footage. He wasn’t pushed – there was no one on the platform to push him.’

  The dog growled. Stella was about to ‘ssh’ him when the growling erupted into a shrill cry, making heads turn. Jack was waving at the door.

  ‘I remember him from the inquest.’

  The dog was on his hind legs boxing the air, apparently full of joy at William Frost’s arrival. Busy reining him in, Stella was too late to stop Jack agreeing to Frost’s offer of drinks.

  ‘Here’s how!’ William raised his glass and clinked theirs. Jack had asked for tap water.

  Frost was dressed in the same preppy gear as when she’d first met him. Chinos, a lambswool jumper with a windcheater. When he took the jacket off, Stella saw one wing of his shirt collar was caught inside the jumper. This irritated her. If it had been Jack, she might have corrected it; as it was, she tried not to look.

  ‘Jackie said I was in good hands.’

  For a man who had lost his brother recently, Stella thought him too cheerful. ‘I’m afraid we—’ she began.

  ‘Tell us about your brother.’ Jack settled in to listen. Stella tried to catch his eye.

  ‘I’m three years older than Rick, but it felt like a lifetime. We disliked each other from the off.’

  ‘The spirit of the dead grows alongside the living. When you think of him in twenty years’ time, he’ll still be three years younger,’ Jack opined.

  Stella groaned inwardly. ‘I should stop you, because the thing is—’ she tried again.

  ‘They live on through us,’ Jack finished.

  William Frost spread
his hands on the table. Stella got the frightful notion he was going to suggest a séance. Jack would be keen on it.

  ‘Rick was a fantasist. He tried to join the army, but he got turned down. He was prone to indigestion. He was rejected by the reserves too.’

  ‘Makes sense. Soldiers have to be fit to fight.’ Stella had intended to say nothing, keep it short.

  ‘Rick should not have been in charge of a gun.’

  ‘Why not?’ Jack asked.

  ‘He would have been trigger-happy, shoot you as soon as look at you. When he was a kid, he went around in full army gear, camouflage, the lot. Harmless stuff, but when most boys get interested in music or sport, Rick was still dressing up. I seriously thought he might blow us all up or become one of those weirdos who shoot their classmates.’

  ‘Weird how?’ Jack was leafing through the pages of his A–Z. He treated it like a bible, saying it helped him make decisions. Stella guessed that Jack had been fairly weird himself as a boy.

  ‘As I told Stella, Rick was a surveillance consultant. Not MI5, more intruder alarms, CCTV. Suited his fantasy of pitting himself against the world. I pitied his wife. When he told me about the threat, frankly I ignored him.’ He finished his beer and pushed the glass away.

  ‘Was he in debt?’ Stella asked.

  ‘He was tight with money, but it’s worth checking out his business. I know he hasn’t left his wife sitting on a gold mine. Worth talking to her too. It wasn’t all hunky dory in that particular garden.’

  William hadn’t told her this on the airport run. Jack had a knack of getting clients to open up.

  ‘What about friends?’ Jack was asking the right questions.

  ‘None. At the funeral, it was just me and his wife.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  Any minute surely Jack would say he had seen Rick Frost jump off the platform. All these questions was him letting Frost down gently.

  ‘Tallulah.’ Frost frowned. Stella nearly pointed out that he would have to accept personal questions if they agreed to take the case. She avoided commenting on the name, partly suspecting him of making it up.

  ‘You don’t know what or who was threatening him?’ Jack finished his water.

  ‘No, but as I say, it’s worth checking out his clients.’ He wiped a hand down his face. ‘I hardly ever saw Rick. I meant to say last time that it’s my fault I didn’t get that last call from him. If I had, think I would have put him off. I was on an all-nighter to finish a job – I’m a graphic designer, we have tight deadlines. If I’d not had my phone on silent maybe he’d be alive.’

  ‘If he was murdered, it didn’t matter,’ Stella said, less to reassure than to be precise.

  ‘Then I had a couple of constables at my door asking me to come and see Tallulah. I did try ringing him, even though they told me they believed it was his body at the station. Idiotic. Got his voicemail and assumed the police had his phone – in those situations they don’t answer – but later I found out it was missing. Another reason why I think he was murdered. He was dead, how could he get rid of his phone?’

  ‘What did the police say?’ Stella asked.

  ‘They thought it had been stolen by kids. Then when it hit the news that it had belonged to a dead man, they dumped it. Station staff found it a couple of weeks later, under the platform at Ealing Broadway.’

  ‘Sounds likely.’ Stella felt bound to defend Cashman and his team, who seemed in fact to have it sewn up. ‘Who has it now?’

  ‘Me. The police kept it, but it’s been wiped so they found nothing on it so gave it to me. Odd, don’t you think?’ He laid a black iPhone down on the table. Its silver case looked to Stella as if it was bullet-proof.

  Stella was grateful that Frost had brought them something tangible.

  ‘Odd and not odd,’ Jack murmured serenely. He was looking at his street atlas.

  Stella was impatient. Jack didn’t need the A–Z to tell Frost that he had been at the station, that he had seen his brother die and knew it was suicide. It was time to end this charade. She caught the words Chiswick Mall on the page; Chiswick Mall was the street where Mrs Carr’s husband had texted her from.

  ‘I’m guessing you’ve decided against taking this case?’ Frost folded his arms. ‘Jackie said you’d hear me out, so thanks.’ He nodded to Stella.

  ‘We’ll take it,’ Jack said. He reached out and, picking up Rick Frost’s phone, put it in his coat pocket.

  ‘Will we?’ Stella was aghast. She was tempted to snatch back the phone and slam it down on the table.

  ‘We will need to talk to his friends and relations, starting with his wife.’ Jack jumped up, indicating the meeting over. Stella got up too.

  ‘I can give you my sister-in-law’s details, but she won’t meet you. She’s refusing to see me. Guess I remind her of Rick.’

  Jack beamed at him. ‘We can find ways in.’

  Stella didn’t think she would like Jack’s ‘ways’.

  William Frost pulled on his jacket. ‘I have an idea for getting into her house. Go undercover as a cleaning company and ask questions incognito. Clean Slate is a cleaning company so you have carte blanche to do a search and gather clues.’ He was animated.

  ‘Not a bad idea.’ Jack was watching the dog nosing at his feet. ‘However, we don’t just turn up on doorsteps with our brooms, we have to be invited.’

  ‘Cold call her.’

  ‘For domestic jobs we post leaflets. We only call businesses after we’ve sent an email,’ Stella intervened. They hadn’t made cold calls since her mum had gone to Australia.

  ‘Post her a leaflet.’ Frost had an answer for everything.

  The atmosphere had cooled.

  ‘It’s unethical,’ Stella insisted. ‘We don’t clean under false pretences. As Jack said, we’ll find another way to speak to Mrs Frost.’

  ‘You’re making it harder for yourselves. What if she’s my brother’s killer?’

  ‘You are welcome to find another investigation agency.’

  ‘I admire your approach.’ Frost’s face was stiff as a mask. He made a show of getting out his own phone and consulting it as if about to call a competitor in front of them.

  ‘Do you think she is?’ Jack looked away from the dog.

  ‘Sorry?’ Frost put away his phone.

  ‘Mrs Frost – Tallulah – do you think she murdered your brother? It would save time if you told us your suspicions,’ Jack said.

  ‘She’s not the killer.’ He folded his arms. Jack said it was a sign of defensiveness, but, big and broad, William Frost would win any fight.

  ‘Is she a beneficiary of his estate, life insurance, the house, death-in-service pension?’

  ‘Yes, but why make a murder look like suicide? She won’t get his life insurance.’ Frost shrugged his shoulders. ‘You have to fight fire with fire. You need to get into his house and knocking on the door all nice and polite won’t do it.’

  ‘It’s possible she would get his life insurance.’ Stella dredged up an unasked-for lecture from a client who was a lawyer, while cleaning his bathroom grout. ‘Providing the policy was taken out a significant period before death and your brother disclosed any mental health issues.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Frost exclaimed as if Stella were corroborating his point.

  ‘Did he have enemies?’ Jack wasn’t giving up. Although the question cropped up in crime dramas, Stella found it unconvincing. She could number her friends on one hand – two fingers – but she didn’t think in terms of how many enemies she had. Clean Slate’s operatives, including Stella herself, had upset clients – cobwebs missed, bleach used instead of tea tree oil, rival companies hunting for tips that mystery-shopped their service – yet they couldn’t be described as enemies. Or could they?

  ‘Rick installed recording devices in air-freshener dispensers and alarm clock radios. He fitted those intruder alarms that collect stats on staff entry and exit. They lead to sackings, divorce, shattered reputations. Lots of reasons for revenge.’r />
  ‘Would that be aimed at your brother’s clients rather than him?’ Jack queried.

  ‘Who do you suspect?’ Stella was pleased by the question. It would tell them as much about Frost as who might have killed his brother.

  He pursed his lips. ‘I don’t point fingers.’

  ‘It would help if you did?’ Jack said. They were being a team.

  ‘Look into his business. As I say, I bet he had a lot of enemies. He certainly had no friends. I’m sure the reason the army refused him was he had “psycho” stamped on his forehead.’ He hadn’t answered the question.

  ‘Who do you—’

  ‘If anything occurs to you let us know.’ To Stella’s surprise Jack got a Clean Slate card from his coat and scribbled a number on the back with the stub of a pencil.

  When Stella shook William’s hand, she was surprised that it was without grip.

  After he had gone, she asked Jack, ‘Why did you say we’d take it?’

  ‘If it’s not suicide, like I said, it’s the perfect murder. His idea about going in undercover was good. Please tell me you were pretending when you said we wouldn’t do it?’

  ‘We’re not compromising Clean Slate. People need to trust their cleaners.’

  ‘Still, I’d like to know why Mrs F. isn’t speaking to William. That stuff about looking like his brother is nonsense. I saw the picture at the inquest, I thought then how they didn’t look like they were brothers,’ Jack mused. ‘We only have his word that he was at home all night.’

  ‘The police went round.’

  ‘Hours after his brother died.’

  ‘Why would William ask us to solve a murder he had committed himself?’

  ‘A clever murderer flirts with capture. He or she can’t help themselves; they want to test their brilliance and stave off boredom. Behind his charm, Frost is ruthless. He didn’t like your refusing his idea one bit.’

  ‘And who is called Tallulah?’ Stella groaned.

  ‘Tallulah Bankhead, the actress,’ Jack replied promptly. ‘She laid a foundation stone in St Peter’s Square when they built the Commodore Concert Hall. You must have seen it.’