The Detective's Secret

by Thomson, Lesley

  His mind was caring for him: it conjured up music. From somewhere in his mind he conjured up the moody strains of the Smiths’ ‘How Soon Is Now?’, his favourite. It mingled with Lucie May’s clattering laughter. Jack fell into a deep sleep.

  28

  January 1988

  The three children walked in strict single file down to Chiswick Mall, the Captain in front. It was Sunday afternoon and Simon had reluctantly ‘come out to play’ as the Captain had put it to his mother in a smiley voice that Simon hadn’t heard him use before. She had agreed on his behalf. ‘Nicky is such a sensible girl.’ Simon was dismayed; since last going to the tower, he had avoided the unit. The Captain had brought Nicky to convince his mum to let him out.

  He had just persuaded his mum to go on a ‘jaunt’, her private name for their walks. They would stroll arm in arm around Chiswick House grounds – like an old married couple, she would say. She had told Simon she wished she’d married a lovely young man like him. One day he would make a girl very happy.

  ‘I will marry you!’ he had insisted.

  ‘Darling, you can’t, boys don’t marry their mummies. But you are my favourite.’

  ‘More than him?’

  A shadow had passed across her face. ‘More than Daddy.’

  ‘Not Daddy.’ Before he could stop himself, but she hadn’t heard.

  They hadn’t gone to the park for a long time, not since he had been to the tower and found— Simon had hoped after that everything would be normal again, but it wasn’t. His mother behaved as if Simon were a ghost and, hardly eating, she looked like one herself.

  ‘Left right, left right!’

  Last in the line, Simon fell back into step with the other two. ‘Where are we going?’ he called out.

  The Captain didn’t reply.

  Simon took consolation from the fact that Nicky had been invited, so he’d have a chance to show her he wasn’t mean, to make her his friend again. On Chiswick Mall, the tower bore down on them, dark and menacing. Simon shuddered at what was up there.

  The Captain pushed Simon against the railings on Chiswick Mall. He looked out over the beach to the eyot; it was shrouded in a bank of mist, losing definition. Water, slick as oil, was creeping across the stretch of mud. Simon was cross with his mother for agreeing when the Captain had asked her if ‘Simon could come out to play?’ He had stared and stared at her to make her say no, because they were going out to the park. But she had said yes straight away, without looking at him once. Then she had made it worse by kissing him goodbye, which ordinarily would have been nice.

  ‘You murdered a man,’ Simon said.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ the Captain fluted. Simon thought he looked guilty.

  ‘He’s dead up there.’ The tower was above them. ‘I saw him.’

  ‘I left before you,’ the Captain said, but with his cracked voice it sounded like a lie.

  ‘You left me to die.’ Simon believed this.

  ‘You didn’t die.’

  ‘I saw you go up the corkscrew stairs into that room and I heard a fight.’ Simon spoke clearly so that Nicky would hear every word.

  ‘How do you know there is a room?’ The Captain had him there.

  ‘I went back and saw it.’ Simon was quick. ‘You dropped your glove on him. You told me you had defeated the enemy. The police will know it’s your glove on the man’s body. It has your name inside.’

  The Captain was crying. Simon was amazed by the potency of his words. A plan took shape.

  Nicky turned to him. ‘Stop making up stories, Simon. If we’re going to the island, we should go. It’s getting dark and I have to get home.’

  ‘He’s a murderer,’ Simon asserted. The lure of his own home and the tea on the kitchen table was lessening as he drove home an unforeseen advantage.

  ‘No one’s murdered anyone. Both of you, stop it!’ Nicky sounded like his mother, Simon thought.

  ‘I have my gloves.’ The Captain bashed at his jacket, tugging out a handkerchief, a spray of bus tickets and sweet wrappers.

  ‘Let me make this easier.’ Simon was his dad talking to his mum, chatty and reasonable while Simon held his breath because his father made his mother cry and that always made his sister cry. He folded his arms and spoke reasonably: ‘This unit works for the good of the country. We don’t break the law. Murder is illegal. I am afraid to say that you’ll be flung in jail and killed.’ Simon’s breath was like smoke in the chill evening. The Captain had snot coming out of his nose.

  Simon took a black leather glove out of his pocket and dangled it at the Captain.

  The boy lunged towards him. Simon skipped out of the way.

  ‘The other glove is up there in the tower. It links directly to you. If you throw this one away, I shall say I saw you do it.’ He took the plunge. ‘And so will Nicky because she is here too.’

  After the man in the tower was dead, Simon had thought it would go back to the way it was before, but it had not. His mother kept looking out of the window as if waiting for someone to come. Him.

  ‘What do you want?’ The Captain had meted out enough coercion himself to recognize it when it was applied to him.

  ‘I shall be captain.’ Simon folded the glove back into his mac pocket. ‘You and Nicky are privates. You follow my orders. If you stage a coup, I’ll tell the police you are a murderer.’ Simon had rehearsed this bit. ‘I shall recruit my deputy. He’s called Justin and he is my friend.’

  ‘Yes.’ The Captain agreed readily.

  Had Simon been less intoxicated by the success of his cobbled-together ruse, he might have found this suspicious.

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  It took him a second to realize the Captain was walking away. He stalked down the exposed slipway to the beach and was heading for the raised path that led to the eyot.

  Nicky’s voice startled Simon. ‘I’m not going to be your “private”, or his. This is a stupid game and it’s gone far enough,’ she told him. ‘Give him his glove back and start being nice.’

  ‘I am nice,’ Simon said.

  ‘You were nice.’ Nicky went after the Captain; Simon had no choice but to follow. Stinking mud was all around him. Simon grimaced; his trousers had been clean on today. He slithered after the Captain and Nicky, hopping over jagged glass and jutting blocks of concrete.

  Simon clutched the glove in his pocket and the leather, cool and limp, gave him faint hope. Gaining courage, he strode along the causeway to Chiswick Eyot. The glove was his talisman. He would win in the end.

  He clambered up a fortification of concrete moulded as sandbags. Sprigs of groundsel and thistle thrusting between the gaps offered tenuous handholds. He plunged down a path that was covered by overarching branches that formed a dark tunnel. He caught a bramble; thorns scored a cut across the palm of his bad hand.

  Super-sensitive – perhaps as a result of surviving in an unhappy household – Simon was alert to shifts in atmosphere. He had a sixth sense. As he made his way through, he felt a tingling at the back of his neck. Hardly daring to hope what it meant, he increased his pace.

  29

  Thursday, 24 October 2013

  ‘I know you say he didn’t like surprises, but I wish I’d found my dad while he was alive.’ Dale was helping Stella slide the bed in Mrs Carr’s spare room back against the wall. ‘I envy that you got to spend time with him, to grow up with him. I have a great adoptive dad, but once they told me, I was always wondering what my real parents were like. I wondered what I had missed.’

  ‘Why didn’t you contact them when you were younger?’

  ‘Ah, you know, loads of reasons. I didn’t want to hurt my parents’ feelings, I was busy building the business, cowardice too maybe. What if they had told me to stuff it?’

  Downstairs, the front door banged. Mrs Carr hadn’t been there when they’d arrived. Stella had found a note pinned to the front door saying that the key was under the recycling bin and to put it back when she left. Hor
rified, Stella had done as instructed. Being dumped by her husband had made Mrs Carr careless.

  Ultimately Stella had been relieved to find she wasn’t there. It avoided the palaver of introducing Dale to her. This wasn’t the ideal job for him to accompany her to, but when Suzie had suggested Hammersmith Police Station, Stella, keen to avoid the even greater complications of Dale asking questions about Terry’s work that she couldn’t answer, had suggested they come to Mrs Carr’s. At least here he could be helpful.

  That morning Stella had introduced Dale Heffernan to Jackie and Beverly and shown him around her office, which, being two rooms, was a quick affair. Now, kitted out in Clean Slate’s uniform of a green polo shirt and blue trousers, he had already vacuumed the stairs and landing and shifted furniture in the spare room.

  ‘He was by the river – Chiswick Mall again – where I saw him walking with her. I tried to follow him, but my car was on yellow lines. By the time I’d reparked, I’d lost him. No point in texting him, he would be furious if he knew I’d tracked him.’ Mrs Carr stood at the end of the bed. ‘Hello, who’s this?’ She stopped in her tracks.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind. This is my bro—’ Stella corrected herself. ‘This is my colleague. He’s assisting me. I left you a message?’

  ‘You did, but somehow I was expecting a girl!’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint!’ Dale was reattaching the headboard that had come loose when they moved the bed.

  ‘Hardly!’ She gave a laugh. ‘Are you an Australian?’

  ‘Got it! Dale. Good to meet you.’ He arched his back and let out a sigh as if exhausted. Stella supposed there was no point in explaining he must always look ‘ready and willing’.

  ‘Are you sure it was your husband?’ she said to distract Mrs Carr from asking Dale about himself and discovering who he was. That was a step too far.

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ The animation that had made Stella suspect Mrs Carr wasn’t entirely sane returned. ‘Lulu to you.’ She leant over and shook Dale’s hand.

  ‘Did you speak to him?’ Stella asked. ‘Lulu to you.’ Suzie had said Dale was a charmer. ‘Mrs Carr?’

  ‘And say what? He lied to me. What’s to say? I’m tempted to tell my brother that I saw him.’ She was batting the open door back and forth between her palms. ‘Should I?’ She was looking at Dale as if she had guessed his relationship to Stella and wanted his ‘brother-take’ on it.

  ‘Ah, look, don’t sweat it, that’s what brothers are for!’ Dale trod on the vacuum lever and the flex whizzed back into the cylinder, the plug flying about dangerously as in her staff manual Stella had warned it would.

  Stella had texted Jack to join them and meet Dale; he had replied, saying he was doing a day shift. She was sure he hadn’t mentioned this last night and caught herself wondering if it was true.

  ‘My brother believes in loyalty.’ Lulu Carr was talking to the door.

  ‘Brothers are there through thick and thin, longer than husbands!’ Dale offered.

  Stella steered Lulu Carr back to the practical. ‘Mrs Carr, your note said where to find the key. Anyone could have got in.’

  ‘How else would you both have got in?’ Lulu wandered out on to the landing. She nodded at Stella, ‘And call me Lulu.’

  ‘I could have come another day.’ Stella had expected Mrs Carr – Lulu – to see her mistake.

  Out on the landing she remembered they needed to empty the landing cupboard, and then she noticed Dale had missed patches on the stairs; she would have to do them again.

  ‘You said you had the locks changed to prevent your husband returning. If he had come round, your effort and expense would have been wasted.’ Stella hit on a key argument.

  ‘If he was following me, he wouldn’t have been here.’ Lulu Carr went ahead down the stairs, leaning heavily on the banisters like child trying to slide down them.

  ‘Got you there, Stell!’ Dale laughed. ‘Mind you, that note would render your insurance void – it was clear instructions for the robbers.’

  ‘You are right!’ Lulu Carr reached the hall and stood watching Dale descend, clearly impressed with him.

  Stella drove off along Perrers Road and paused at the end to join Dalling Road. In the off-side mirror, Stella saw that Lulu Carr was waving; she waved back. Dale had pushed the seat back and lay half prone, legs stretched out, eyes shut as if exhausted. He was only a couple of years older than she was, about to be fifty apparently. Surely a bit of vacuuming hadn’t finished him. Stella, not one for going abroad – or taking holidays of any kind – did not factor in jet lag.

  What she had said to Jack last night was true. Dale Heffernan was unquestionably her father’s son. He had the same brown hair, although a trendier style, sticking up at the back and no doubt thickened with product; the parting was in the same place. On his forehead between the eyes was Terry’s deep crease, deeper still as he got older and had carried some weight. With a shock, Stella saw that Dale had the same shaped hands as Terry, large with stubby fingers.

  ‘We get clients like that, living a fantasy.’ Dale settled further into the seat and, opening his eyes, folded his arms across his chest. ‘Last summer one guy booked a table for two. No one else turned up. We were feeling sorry for him, guessed he’d been jilted. We see that a lot. Then he called over my old maître d’, Barry, and complained at how long he’d been waiting to give his order. Barry was about to say that we were waiting for his friend when he realized the man had started talking to the chair opposite and he’d filled two wine glasses. He consulted with the chair, then ordered food for two. The whole evening he kept up a conversation with the chair. The food got eaten, but Barry and the waiting staff that night swore they never saw him touch the other plate. He’d created a real imaginary friend!’

  ‘How is Lulu Carr like him?’ Stella felt protective of her client. She shouldn’t have confessed to Dale Heffernan her doubts about her sanity. It was a breach of confidentiality. She also thought that she didn’t know her parents any better than Dale did, even though she’d grown up with them.

  ‘The cheating husband? I’d bet my life that’s total fiction. She strikes me as inauthentic.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She felt unaccountably riled.

  ‘Something about her doesn’t add up. Mr Husband toddles off leaving a pile of clothes behind and lots of clobber. What man does that? He’ll have to go shopping for a load more! It’s like that English MP who faked his suicide. He left his clothes on the beach. My guess is our Lulu’s made it all up, but why?’

  ‘Whatever, it’s not our business.’ Stella was firm.

  ‘You’re right. Our job is to keep the lie intact. When the man left, Barry held the door open long enough for two people to walk out and he said goodnight twice. If any of my front-of-house staff had cracked a smile, they’d have been washing up for a week.’

  Thrown by Dale’s suggestion that Lulu Carr might not have told her the truth, Stella took a wrong turning at Hammersmith Broadway and drove on to the Great West Road. Ahead of her was Jack’s tower. She had seen it many times, but, never having been asked to clean it, hadn’t given it a thought.

  Someone was on the roof. Jack had told her he didn’t have access. Had he lied?

  A car cut into her lane; she braked and flashed her lights. When she looked again, Jack wasn’t there.

  30

  January 1988

  Chiswick Eyot was cut off from the mainland when the tide was in, but, Simon conceded to himself as he scurried along the path, the tingling sensation mounting, it would make a good HQ. At low tide, protected by thick, oozing mud, the advancing enemy would sink and die. It wasn’t as good as the tower. But the tower was out of bounds now.

  He arrived in a patch of scrub. At his feet was a circle of white stones with a patch of sunlight. They looked luminous. A small trowel and a fork lay in the soil beside the stones. Simon assumed they were the Captain’s. The soil had been dug recently; lumps of fresh earth lay beside the stones.

/>   Simon indicated the stones. ‘This is brilliant.’ His mouth was dry with mounting dread – the Captain must have a plan. He backed away.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ The Captain stood with his back to a screen of reeds.

  ‘Don’t speak to him like that,’ Nicky said. Simon wanted to sing with joy: she still liked him. Despite Nicky being nice, Simon wished he were at the lake with his mum.

  His mum had only agreed for him to come out with the unit because she wanted him out of the house. She was going to look for the Stick Insect. It gave him no satisfaction to know she wouldn’t find him. Justin had told him that in America stick insects were called ‘ghost insects’. A sign, but of what Simon had no idea.

  ‘These mark where bodies are buried.’ The Captain pointed at the stones.

  The sun had gone in. The stones were still there, but now looked randomly scattered.

  ‘You don’t know that.’ Nicky shook her head. ‘Captain!’

  The reeds rattled in the wind, so tall they reached above the children’s heads.

  No one could see them from the shore. Simon’s foreboding escalated to terror. The Captain hadn’t brought him here to show him a new HQ. So taken up with his glove, Simon had been ambushed. He drifted closer to Nicky. She wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

  ‘My mum’s expecting me. We’re going out,’ he blurted.

  ‘Mummy said you could come out and play!’ The Captain gave a short laugh. ‘She likes me.’

  ‘I should be getting—’

  ‘I think they mark where there’s buried treasure,’ Nicky said brightly. ‘The way they’re arranged, it’s like a clock.’

  She was deciphering a code. Simon was impressed. When he was captain, he would keep her as Official Codebreaker.

  ‘Anyway, Mummy’s not there.’ The Captain didn’t seem to have heard.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Simon knew what he meant.

  ‘Your Mummy left after us. Let’s guess where she was going!’