The Detective's Secret

by Thomson, Lesley

  ‘He’s the spitting image of Terry, he must be his son,’ Stella mused into her mug.

  Jack didn’t know how to help her. ‘Shall we ring Jackie?’

  ‘What for? Dale’s not a client and it’s past midnight.’ Stella looked up abruptly. ‘How come you’ve moved?’ she asked. The words ‘without telling me’ hung there.

  ‘It was a snap decision.’ Stella didn’t take action without meticulous planning, backed up by contingency plans. ‘It was time for a change.’ He couldn’t say he was escaping his ghosts or that the tower was perfect for finding True Hosts.

  ‘Are you leaving Clean Slate?’ Stella addressed the question to the dog, who was still sniffing about by the door.

  Lucie May would call her question self-serving, Jack knew it was as close as Stella could get to asking if they would no longer be friends. He sought to reassure her. ‘A change of where I live, not of whom I know.’

  Stanley began to bark, the volume increasing with each one.

  ‘Sssh!’ Stella put a finger to her lips. ‘Good guard dog.’

  The barking subsided to rumbling. Jack followed the animal’s steely gaze to the door. There could be no one outside; he had made sure he’d shut the door downstairs.

  ‘He doesn’t need to guard. We’re at the top of a tower.’

  ‘He hears stuff we can’t.’ Stella looked about her. ‘Who owns this place?’

  ‘A company.’ Jack didn’t know anything about the owners. ‘Their email said I am their first tenant. It used to be a water tower. We’re in the tank.’ He jumped up. ‘Would you like a tour?’

  Stella signalled for Stanley to ‘heel’. Jack didn’t want the dog prowling about his new home. The dog was recriminatory: his bark told Jack he should have asked Stella to help him move in; she was at her best when being practical. Yet she wouldn’t have arranged everything as perfectly as Palmyra Associates. Stella cleaned houses; she didn’t create homes.

  The kitchen sink made the glugging noise of earlier. He leapt on an opportunity to get Stella’s advice. ‘It keeps doing this. Should I call the landlord?’

  Stella turned on the tap. With the rush of water, the glugging stopped. Stanley tottered on his hind legs, reaching up, front paws skittering along the edge of the cutlery drawer trying to see. He was like a toddler, constantly wanting to be involved, grouchy if attention wasn’t on him. Jack just prevented himself from saying, ‘Shoo!’

  ‘It’s an air lock. Happens when water is drained from two sinks, or a bath and sink, at the same time. It’s caught in the reservoir of one sink and when you drain one, air gets pushed up the pipe of the other one.’ Stella visibly cheered up.

  ‘I see.’ Jack clasped his hands together. The world was uncertain and mostly he dealt with it – he was unafraid of darkness, literal or in the soul of a True Host – but sometimes nothing but the warm bright glare of Stella’s practical attitude would do.

  The tour took less than five minutes. Stanley barked when Jack slid aside the partition between the kitchen and the shower room. He was a nervy creature, more like himself than Stella, Jack observed. Stella noted the lack of frosted glass in the window and the toilet right beside it. He reminded her that no one could see in. She appeared to approve of the functional chrome lavatory with water-saving cistern on the criss-cross metal flooring, commenting only, ‘You prefer baths.’ She was still tetchy. He did like a soak in a bath, to the light of one candle, where he floated free and unfettered. Lucie May said he was trying to return to the womb and she was right. He couldn’t explain that to live in a panopticon, he could forgo a bath.

  ‘They can’t risk flooding from this height,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a water tower, a bath is a fraction of what this structure must have supported.’ Stella wandered back to the main room, the dog at her heel.

  The contract said no dogs or cats; Jack hoped this excluded visiting animals. Stella was inseparable from the dog. He wondered what she would do when she had to hand him back.

  As if illustrating this attachment, Stella tipped out her rucksack on to his desk. A collection of dogs’ toys and poo bags landed by his laptop. Out of this she extracted a stuffed meerkat in a Father Christmas robe and waved it at the dog, who, back snuffling by the skirting, ignored her.

  ‘Did Terry know about his— this Dale?’ Jack wouldn’t grant him the status of ‘son’. It must be hard for Stella.

  ‘No.’ Stella took her empty mug through to the kitchen. He heard the tap run, no glugging sound this time. When she returned, she was carrying the binoculars. She went to the north window and, lifting them, peered out into the blackness. ‘If Dad had known, he would have included Dale in his will.’ She adjusted the focus like a pro. ‘He would have told me.’

  Jack knew that Stella’s father hadn’t made a will, another of Suzie’s complaints. ‘He thought he was immortal.’ Stella had inherited all of Terry Darnell’s estate – a house, no savings – because she was his sole surviving child. Or so Terry had thought.

  ‘This One Under case is tough.’ Stella held the binoculars steady.

  ‘I’ve had an idea about how we might meet his wife.’ Jack went with the change of subject. Stella didn’t dwell on personal stuff.

  ‘I can see the house of one of my clients from here,’ Stella exclaimed. ‘These are so powerful I can make out cracks on the pavement outside the door.

  This was the reason Jack was living in the tower, but Stella wouldn’t be pleased to hear that.

  ‘Someone’s coming out. Well, that’s odd. If I wasn’t here, I’d think—’ She darted forward and the instrument banged against the glass. ‘Ouch!’ She rubbed the bridge of her nose. ‘I should go. Mum’s bringing Dale to the office tomorrow – today, rather.’

  Stella kept calling him Dale as if they were already best buddies.

  She turned to him, still looking through the glasses. Jack wanted to shield his face as if she could see right into his head. She wouldn’t like what she saw there. Often he didn’t either.

  ‘By the way, I bumped into William Frost today. We had a bit of lunch. I went through our questions with him.’

  ‘We were going to do that together,’ Jack protested. First Dale Heffernan, now William Frost. ‘I was going to watch to see if he lied.’

  ‘What with moving, I guessed you’d be tied up.’ She lowered the binoculars, looking at Stanley.

  Stalemate.

  Yesterday Jackie had suggested he tell Stella about his move. He should have done. Stella hated surprises, so why had he given her one? He nearly told her about the steam engine on the monitor at the station, how finding the toy placed on top had stirred up disturbing memories long buried. But Stella would guess he was doing it to appease her and she wouldn’t welcome hearing about it with her own past having come back to haunt her. Besides, it was probably not important.

  ‘Why is your mum taking him to Clean Slate?’ Suzie and Jackie would fuss over this Terry lookalike.

  ‘Dale wanted to see where I work. He wants to watch me clean.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Surely the man had seen a woman use a vacuum before. Jack tried to believe it was straightforward: Heffernan had found a younger sister, he was keen to get to know her. He was not a bounty hunter intending to fleece his new family of their money. Stella lived frugally, but Clean Slate was doing well, and with Terry’s legacy she was not on the breadline.

  ‘He wrote to Mum via the adoption agency. He’s upset he didn’t pluck up the courage to do it while Terry was alive. He had assumed we’d resent him turning up. I told him Dad didn’t like surprises, maybe this was for the best.’

  So Stella had confirmed to Dale that Terry would not have welcomed him. Full of the best intentions, she could be clumsy around feelings.

  ‘Why’s he here now?’ Jack had realized that Terry Darnell had doted on his daughter. Not something he understood: his own father Hugh had found having a son a challenge, as if he were a rival. Jack had never tried to rival anyone. Not true. Long
ago there had been someone. He dismissed this thought.

  ‘Mum is overjoyed to be reunited with her “long-lost boy”!’ Stella rolled her eyes.

  ‘So she lied about staying with a friend.’ Jack was chastened by his barb.

  Stella frowned, the idea clearly new. ‘Not exactly.’

  Stanley erupted into shouty barks and crouched low, facing the door, legs braced, tail flailing. Each bark jerked him off his feet. He began to dig, front paws blurred with the effort.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Jack didn’t want the dog to scratch the wood – Stanley was demented. No animals or children.

  ‘He’s picked up a scent, a dead mouse or food dropped by the people here before.’

  ‘No one was here before me.’ Despite the busy rate of his paws, Jack saw he was doing no damage.

  ‘Stanley!’ Stella had an instant effect. She whisked over and, clipping on the lead, brought the dog to the desk and commanded he sit. He stared at the door, pupils dilated, eyes a smouldering brown.

  ‘He’s seen a ghost.’ Jack went to where the dog had been digging. Of course it was colder on this side of the room, which was closer to the staircase.

  ‘I’m guessing he doesn’t like heights.’ Stella shook Stanley’s flapping paw as she gave him a morsel of chicken. ‘What ghosts? You just said you’re the first person to live here.’

  Jack felt dread. The dog had come into the flat, tail up, full of curiosity. If he didn’t like heights he would have objected on the way up. He touched the bars of a tubular radiator by the door. It had cooled; his indiscriminate twiddling of knobs earlier had worked. It must explain the drop in temperature. The dog continued to stare at the floor where he was standing. He looked down. There was nothing there.

  ‘I’ll take him away or the neighbours will object.’

  ‘We’re in a tower, there are no neighbours.’ Jack should have been pleased by this. He suddenly missed the short-eared owl. Perhaps he should have brought her.

  ‘Better go anyway, I’m seeing Dale in a few hours.’

  ‘I’ll see you out.’ Jack quelled peevishness that she was leaving him to see ‘Dale’.

  ‘“Seeing me out” is not a simple matter.’ Stella opened the flat door. ‘Will you be OK with all these stairs? What about when you need to buy milk?’

  ‘I’ll stock up.’

  When he opened the door, Jack expected it to be colder, but the landing was warm.

  Stella craned up the spiral staircase. ‘Have you been on the roof?’ Her voice rang in the metallic vault.

  ‘I don’t have a key.’ He must take this up with Palmyra Associates. It was autumn; they probably thought he wouldn’t want access. Stella followed him down the stairs, the dog lolling on her shoulder, now calm. Above them the stairs wended out of sight. Jack opened the tower door and was hit by a blast of cold air. He reeled back and trod on Stella’s boot. Steel-capped, she wouldn’t have felt it, but he saw his clumsiness as a sign of how badly her visit had gone, as if they were strangers. As Stella said to him, they were supposed to be a team.

  When she put him down, the dog pulled his lead free and shot off along the walkway, too close to the edge. Jack dived after him and stamped on the flailing lead.

  ‘You saved him!’ Stella shouted into the wind.

  Jack watched in horror as the dog lifted its leg against a metal strut and peed over the side into mid-air. Stella brightened.

  ‘That was why he was barking. He’s really pretty easy to read. So, what was your idea about us meeting Rick Frost’s wife?’

  ‘Do a stakeout, park near her house in the back of the van. It’s legal, it’s what detectives do,’ he added for good measure.

  ‘We’ve got nothing to lose, I suppose.’ Stella spoke over her shoulder as she went down the outer staircases, boots clattering, the grille humming with her tread.

  Jack stayed on the narrow metal walkway after Stella had gone as the humming died to nothing. London was a cluster of lights like a circuit board. He went back into the tower and shut the door.

  He was outside his flat when he remembered what Stella had asked about the roof. He didn’t actually know if he could get up there – he hadn’t tried. He crossed the little metal platform and continued up the spiral stairs. At the top he found a large roof light, showing only the night sky. It was a black rectangle. He shot aside two bolts and pushed it upwards. It was stuck fast. He took off his coat and, rolling up his sleeves, wiped his palms on his trousers and tried again. This time he lifted it a few centimetres. He climbed to the top step and, using his body as a lever, succeeded in opening it. Lacking a hydraulic hinge, it had nothing to keep it open beyond gravity. He would find some kind of prop.

  He was at the edge of a vast circular area of decking surrounded by a wall. Pushing back the roof cover – he hadn’t brought his phone, and did not want to be stuck up here – he clambered out and went over to the wall. It reached to his waist. Not high enough; again he was filled with the temptation he always had with heights, to chuck everything he was holding off and then to follow. He retreated from the wall and took in the vast panorama before him. The river was a stretch of darkness flecked with minute lights. He smelled the air: a mix of sulphur, mud, exhaust fumes and wood smoke. He raised his arms towards the sky and felt the wind blow his hair from his face. At last he had his very own tower. He was truly alive.

  Bizarrely, right in the centre of the decking, was a garden shed. Jack supposed that was there to save him lugging tools up for tending plants. There were no plants, however; the space was bare. The shed doors were fixed with a padlock. He would ask the landlords for the key. It would be nice to have some pots up here; he could grow tough hardy grasses able to withstand cold air and the wind. A Garden in the Sky. It would be the antithesis to his Garden of the Dead.

  He went back down the staircase to his flat. The heating had gone off, and the spot on the floor where Stanley had been digging was no colder than the rest of the room. Perhaps the fluctuation in temperature was to do with circular walls. His father would have known.

  Stella had been his first visitor. That was a good sign. Jack looked across at his chair, which faced outwards as Stella had left it. He had suggested the stakeout to appease her. It wasn’t sufficient. He should have said that the reason they worked well together was because she stuck to the rules and he worked in between the lines and beneath the surface.

  Despite Stella’s visit, he couldn’t shake off the homesick ache. Before his promise to Stella not to walk the streets late at night, Jack would have taken a journey across the city to assuage the dull pain. He fetched the field glasses from the window sill, relieved that Stella hadn’t asked about them. If she had, he would have had to tell the truth. He disliked lying to Stella.

  He went to the window Stella had been watching from and trained the glasses on the Hogarth roundabout. He was rewarded by the sight of a white van, ghostly in the sodium lighting, waiting to join the Great West Road. Stella drove a van without the Clean Slate livery – Jack guessed it was because she preferred anonymity – nevertheless he was sure it was her white van he was watching. Moments later his conviction was proved right. He could see her clearly as she accelerated, keeping within the speed limit, towards the rise of Hammersmith flyover. She wasn’t going to her flat. His heart sank. She had said she was seeing Dale in the morning, but it seemed she was going to Suzie’s flat now. Without telling him.

  One by one he studied the little streets that lay between the A40 and Chiswick High Road. Stella had seen a client’s house from this window. He was looking from this window because in an oblique way it made him feel closer to Stella.

  After a night journey, Jack used to ‘retrace’ his steps on Google Street View and take screenshots of houses, doors, windows and the blurred pedestrians and then store them in a file. Now, as he travelled along the streets, magnified through his lenses, he had to rely on his photographic mind to log the detailed views.

  Jack rolled on to his
back. He couldn’t work out where he was. Gradually shapes resolved into his cupboard, the bust of his mother, the two rectangles of mauve-blue light were the south-west and north windows. He listened for what had woken him.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  He flew out of bed and around the partition into the kitchen. The mixer tap was dripping; water was collecting in the spout and dripping into the sink.

  He turned on the tap, grabbed a beaker from the little draining board and filled it. He drank thirstily, refilled it and, tightening the handle, wiped his palm under the spout and cleared it of excess water.

  Two thoughts bothered him. The dog didn’t like him. That didn’t matter, but it was affecting his relationship with Stella. She would have stayed longer if he hadn’t been barking. What had bothered him was the look in the dog’s eyes. Stanley had detected something he and Stella couldn’t see, something Jack wasn’t sure he wanted to see.

  The other thing was Stella’s brand-new Australian brother. Heffernan had dropped everything to return with Suzie to England. Why?

  Jack knew he was apt to imagine the worst at three in the morning. He was at the mercy of treacly dark narratives that ended with him alone or being harried by strangers with no reason to care about him. If he made progress with the case, Stella would be pleased.

  He reached for his phone. One person was awake at this hour.

  ‘How’re you fadging, poppet?’ The corncrake laugh. ‘Why aren’t you here!’

  ‘Are you free tomorrow, after my shift? I could be with you by ten to midnight. I’m driving a dead late.’

  ‘Don’t you mean thirteen and a half minutes to?’ Lucie’s idea of a joke. London Underground trains operated in split minutes; every second was counted. May descended into starter-motor mirth. ‘Better than driving the Late Dead.’ She began to cough violently. ‘For you, sweetie, I’ll cancel the moon! Although not tomorrow, I’m in Lincoln, meeting a ninety-nine-year-old twin who left Hammersmith at birth. The day after?’

  After he had put the phone down, Jack settled under the covers. The tapping had stopped. He would become used to the tower.