The Detective's Secret

by Thomson, Lesley

  ‘Simon,’ Lulu whispered.

  ‘Simon what?’

  ‘Carrington.’

  ‘Isn’t your maiden name Carr?’ Stella quelled frustration.

  ‘My father wasn’t my real dad. Mum had an affair and I’m the result. I don’t know my real father’s name so I shortened Carrington to Carr. Like I said, I wanted a “fresh start”.’

  Stella doubted that lopping off a bit of your surname amounted to a fresh start. ‘If we assume the numbers closer together are one word, then this could be a message. Four words starting with Simon.’ Stella put a line between each word. ‘This next one has four letters. Another “S” and eight is—’

  ‘I told William that I guessed Rick had found out about us and he killed himself. It proved he loved me after all.’ Lulu’s words were blurred with sobs. She snatched up her tissue from the desk.

  ‘It’s an “H”,’ Stella exclaimed. ‘The two and the one are close together so “twenty-one”, which is “U”, and then twenty. That’s a “T”. “Shut”! “Simon shut”. What did he “shut”?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Lulu huffed. ‘A case, his mouth, my mouth, a door—’

  ‘A door! Yes, this last grouping has four numbers. The first is “four”. A, B, C, D. “Simon shut something door”. To make sense it should be “the”, but there are five letters. We know twenty is a “T”, then we’ve got fifteen and a twenty-three.’ Stella counted out the letters on her fingers. She got lost and started again.

  ‘Tower,’ Lulu offered dully.

  ‘“Simon shut tower door”.’ Stella folded her arms. ‘What kind of sentence is that? Is it another code?

  Lulu had stopped crying.

  ‘Lulu, where is your brother now?’ Stella demanded.

  ‘Simon was so sweet to me when I was small. When Dad was cross with me, he would say I wasn’t his daughter. Simon would take me out for walks by the river and tell me not to listen to him. We went to his HQ in the cemetery where he was the Captain. He once gave me a bottle of Coca-Cola. It tasted of blood, but he told me it was a magic potion to keep me safe. He’d say, “It’s you and me, Lulu, against the world.” When we were first married, Rick hated me seeing Simon and told me not to trust him. William once said he loved me. No one had said that to me before, but after Rick died, William became like him and Simon. They were always checking up on me.’ She tossed her hair back. ‘My brother’s got this thing on his phone; he can find me wherever I go. To protect me, he says.’ She slumped back in the chair. ‘So has William. Rick gave it to him.’

  Stalker Boy. Stella said nothing.

  ‘Does your brother protect you?’ Lulu suddenly asked.

  ‘I don’t need protecting.’ As she spoke, Stell wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Who’s that man?’ Lulu nodded at the picture frozen on the computer screen.

  Stella had hoped Lulu had forgotten about Jack. ‘My colleague, he works undercover,’ she said. ‘So, exactly when did you tell Simon Carrington – your brother – about your affair with William?’ Was this how Terry felt when all the disparate bits of information, subtle nuances and apparently random events started making sense?

  ‘I can’t remember. I told you they hated each other,’ Lulu muttered.

  Stella’s eye fell on two framed pictures beside the monitor. They weren’t in the paused film; Lulu must have put them there very recently. The photograph of Lulu’s parents had been on the sitting-room mantelpiece downstairs.

  The other one showed two people in their late twenties. Stella recognized Lulu and guessed that the man was her brother, he looked like the man in the picture with Lulu’s mother, who it seemed was not her actual father

  Cleaners shouldn’t have opinions about their clients’ homes, while detectives should. Simon Carrington had delicate features framed by locks of dark hair. In black and white, she couldn’t tell the colour of his eyes; they were light, almost ghostly. He was looking at the camera with such intensity that she felt he could see into her head. His gaze was empty, his face without expression. Stella considered again that Lulu didn’t take after her mother. However, were it not for the stubble on his chin and lack of make-up, Simon Carrington might be his mother’s double.

  He looked like Jack.

  Stella opened her phone and, fingers clumsy, swiped through her camera roll to the picture she had taken of Stanley dancing with his stick on the common. She tweaked it and enlarged the screen until it filled with the trees in the background. She manipulated the image until she found the man under the trees. He was out of focus, but his face was just about distinguishable.

  Simon shut tower door.

  ‘Is this your brother Simon?’ Stella held up her phone to Lulu. Jack lived in a tower. She had to stop herself shouting at Lulu. ‘Take a look.’

  ‘How can I… Ye-es, I think so.’ Lulu sniffed into the tissue. ‘That doesn’t mean anything. He goes for walks.’

  But it did. Stella had seen the man before. He was the man standing on the lawn outside her flat. It wasn’t Jack. He was the inspector at Stamford Brook station. Stalker Boy.

  ‘Lulu, where is your brother now? Where is Simon?’

  There was a creak on the stair. Both women shrank from the door. There was nowhere to hide. A faint buzz. Stella caught the camera lens tracking them. A red light was blinking.

  ‘You left the front door open.’ Warm and friendly.

  Lulu pushed past Stella.

  Stella stared at the man in the doorway.

  ‘I was trying to tell you all this when you rushed off.’ Holding Lulu close to his coat, he stroked her hair. William Frost looked over her head to Stella.

  ‘Tell me what?’ Thoughts, pictures, impressions. Stella tried to arrange them. Stain by stain. All the stains had joined up.

  ‘When you asked me about the glove. I remembered that Rick had said it was to do with the glove. I ignored him. He was always coming out with stuff like that – the guy was paranoid, I know that. He had to control everything. But it got me thinking. After I told the police I had lost the glove in the park, Rick was nice to me, far nicer than necessary. Made me wonder, had I covered for him without intending to?’

  ‘This isn’t Rick’s phone.’ Stella waved the phone at William. ‘Someone took his phone, swapped the case and left it for the police to find. You said Rick had the stalking app on his phone, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘So whoever has his phone can find out where anyone they want is and stalk them?’

  ‘If they have their number, yes.’

  ‘Where is Simon now?’ Stella shouted at Lulu. Simon was the name of the boy Jack said he had known at school. Jack said there was no such thing as coincidence.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where does he live? You must know!’

  ‘I don’t.’ Lulu sobbed, waving her hands in front of her face as if clearing away cobwebs. ‘He’s very private. He takes me out for meals. I don’t go to where he lives. His father left the house in trust to my mother – he cut me out of his will because I wasn’t his. Simon gave me half the value of the house. He’s a fair man, you see. The other day I walked past the house and saw it’s up for sale.’

  ‘They used to live next door to Jackie, in Corney Road,’ William said quietly.

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’ Stella demanded

  ‘Why would I? I didn’t think it was anything to do with who killed Rick.’

  ‘There were two children next door, a sweet boy as thin as a rail and his cute sister, think her name was Lulu, something like that. Their parents’ marriage was on the rocks, the dad was a psychiatrist with a fancy car, chap never passed up a chance to be sarcastic about his wife – talk about airing dirty linen! The boy was playing substitute husband, protective little mite. I made Graham promise that those parents wouldn’t be us one day. I think we’ve succeeded! The boy – or man – moved out years ago, he rented the house out and is only selling it now. We’re holding our breath as to who buys it. Good
neighbours are gold.’

  Stella remembered Jackie’s words. She let the information fall into place.

  ‘Stay here! Lock the windows, don’t answer the door to anyone! If he has Rick’s phone, he’ll be using his app and will know you’re both here. He knows we’re all here.’ She looked at her phone. There was a pair of staring eyes at the top of the screen. ‘Turn off your phones!’

  Stella snatched up the framed photographs and, shoving them into her rucksack, ran down the stairs and out of the house. Despite her instruction, she didn’t think to turn off her own phone.

  56

  Monday, 28 October 2013

  The wind whistled down Chiswick Mall, its screams and whines punctuated by bangs and smashes as flower pots, garden ornaments and benches were dislodged from window ledges and hurled on to the ground.

  Shrouded in a billowing cagoule, hooded and shapeless, Liz Hunter could have been mistaken for being drunk or a passenger on the deck of a ship tossed and rolling in high waves. She swayed and staggered, to the left, to the right, into the gutter, stopped and set off again, quickening her pace. She kept close to garden walls and hedges. She paused every now and then and consulted her phone to reassure herself she was following Justin’s directions. She looked up and saw the tower. She was here.

  She checked her phone again; Stella hadn’t replied to her text.

  ‘Let’s see the letter?’

  She jumped. A man stepped out of an alley. It was Justin. She nearly hugged him, but he didn’t like being hugged. He looked annoyed.

  ‘Can we get out of this wind?’ Liz shouldn’t have texted Justin and told him about the returned letter. She had hoped he would have advice, but he seemed cross. Maybe he minded after all that she hadn’t told him Nicola’s address. She had been so pleased with herself for demonstrating to him she could be trusted to say nothing. She should have waited for Stella. She should have done what they agreed and waited to see if Nicola would come for it.

  Although she had been looking forward to this, their first meeting in his home, Liz was suddenly sure she shouldn’t have come.

  ‘No need to worry about the letter. Indeed, from now on there’s no need to worry at all.’ Justin remarked pleasantly. His crossness apparently gone, he took her hand.

  ‘That’s marvellous!’ She laughed, although she didn’t feel in the least like laughing.

  ‘This way.’ He led them down a narrow passage that smelt of rotten leaves and urine. The bricks glistened in the lamp-lit dark.

  ‘I feel bad, Justin. You see, I decided to open it. It’s from the man who died at Stamford Brook station whom Nicola knew when she was little. It’s a list of numbers. Twenty-seven altogether. Justin, are you any good at deciphering codes?’

  ‘As you say, let’s get out of the storm. I’ve brought us a bottle of champagne and cheese and biscuits. I hope you like brie. Come up to my tower!’

  ‘This is your tower! How amazing!’

  Fleetingly, Liz Hunter considered whether it was wise to have told no one where she was going. Then Justin drew her close and she breathed him in.

  57

  Monday, 28 October 2013

  A strong gust of wind buffeted the van. Forecasters were warning people to stay inside unless their journeys were strictly necessary. A storm called St Jude was going to hit southern Britain tonight. It was strictly necessary to find Jack.

  Stella saw she had a text. Jack always contacted her in the end. It was from Liz. Call me.

  Liz would have to wait.

  In the dark, headlamps in her rear mirror dazzled her. She couldn’t tell if she was being followed.

  There was no point going to Jack’s tower, he had told her he was driving. He didn’t answer his phone when he was on the trains. She drove around Hammersmith Broadway twice to try to lose Carrington if he was out there, and then pulled off into Sussex Place. Immediately she saw her mistake: it was a dead end. She flung the van around and headed back towards the Apollo on the Broadway. She slowed down and checked her mirror again, although Carrington couldn’t be behind her. She’d stopped in a parking bay opposite a mansion block, confirmed the doors were locked. Just in case, she kept the engine running.

  Stella forced herself to think rationally. If she called Martin Cashman, he would remind her he required evidence that Nicola Barwick was missing, that Rick Frost had been killed by Simon Carrington. If he had, Lulu Carr and William Frost would be unreliable witnesses at a trial. William had lied about his glove and not been honest about his relationship with Lulu. Even if the glove was matched to the one on the dead man, it wasn’t a link to Simon. Lulu didn’t know truth from reality. The Piccadilly line driver might identify the photo of Simon, but his testimony wouldn’t stand up in court because he had initially thought the man on the platform was Jack. Simon Carrington had been clever; he featured nowhere.

  Simon. Stella’s heart was palpitating. This was like a game of Patience: the cards were falling into place, with one card blocking a suit.

  She reached into her bag and lifted out the pictures. In the light of the street lamp, Simon looked nothing like Jack. His mother was smiling off camera at someone to her left. Stella could see a snippet of shoulder. Someone had been cropped from the image.

  Out of the blue, Stella smelled Dale’s scones. She trusted her olfactory sense. She had seen the woman’s face before. The sight of her mother holding Dale’s album flashed up. Stella realized where she had seen the woman. She texted Suzie: Send photo of first page of D’s life story.

  There was one person who would help her get evidence for the police. Stella drummed on the steering wheel, dismissing the idea. The van was hit by a vicious squall, it lurched and she dropped her phone. She scrabbled for it in the passenger footwell.

  She had run out of options. She brought up her contacts list and found the number. Against any better judgement Stella had ever had, she pressed ‘Dial’.

  ‘Stella Darnell here. Are you free?’ She waited. Then: ‘I’m on my way,’ she said.

  58

  Monday, 28 October 2013

  There were no rattling casements or creaking joists. Jack couldn’t hear loose tiles crashing off roofs or recycling bins and bottles clattering along empty streets, hurtling and twisting. The only sign of the storm were murky grey clouds that streamed across the sky, joining and re-forming, and flurries and blusters tearing at the surface of the Thames.

  Jack sat in the Hammersmith Bridge window, resting his binoculars on the heel of his palms. A coil of steam rose from his mug of hot milk. The domestic scene belied his mood: he was full of foreboding.

  He had been positive that he had lost his phone in the tower. But he had looked everywhere and not found it. He had tried to email Stella, but the storm must have caused his internet connection to break. He had decided to find a phone box and ring her, but when he stepped out on to the walkway, he was blown over to the rail by the force of the wind and admitted defeat.

  Though Jack knew he was safe in the tower – if he couldn’t get down, no one could come up, yet he didn’t feel safe. When Stella had shown him the passport photo of the back of the man’s head, he had said he didn’t recognize him. He recalled the image. It wasn’t so much the head, but the back of neck, above the shirt collar. It might be nearly thirty years, but Jack knew who it was. His senses attuned to the slightest sound or movement, he trained the binoculars on Chiswick Eyot.

  Somewhere out there, Simon Carrington was alive and he was watching.

  59

  Monday, 28 October 2013

  ‘It’s the Detective’s Daughter!’ An electronic cigarette cocked above her shoulder, Lucille May exhaled a cloud of vapour. Stella caught a whiff of peach.

  Stella had expected this. Lucille May relied on sex appeal, she didn’t relish female competition. Least of all from the daughter of the man who, Stella suspected, was the love of her life. Stella had convinced herself that Lucille May wasn’t Terry’s type, but she didn’t know what his type was.


  ‘Come in, since you’re here.’ Lucille waved the cigarette in vague invitation and sashayed on pink leather pumps to her sofa.

  ‘Tea, coffee, water? If you’re still off the booze.’ Lucille twisted the top off a bottle of mineral water, gulped from it and flopped back, apparently exhausted, lending little weight to her offer.

  ‘No thanks.’ Stella ignored the jibe that was prompted by her refusing triple gin and tonics on previous visits. The water and the electronic cigarette suggested that Lucille May was on a health drive. Stella caught the buzz of a text. ‘Excuse me.’ She opened her messages.

  ‘Social networking is vital these days. Not for me, of course, I’m established.’ Lucille blew a peach-scented cloud towards Stella.

  Suzie had photographed the whole newspaper cutting from Dale’s album. Laboriously, moving the text into view on the small screen, Stella read:

  FEARS MOUNT FOR MISSING TEACHER

  Five years to the day since English teacher Nathan Wilson vanished, police say they have no clue to his whereabouts. The forty-year-old bachelor, on a sabbatical from Menzies High in exclusive Vaucluse, set off last October on a three-month walking tour of New Zealand to ‘feed his soul’ and never came back.

  Apart from a possible sighting in the NZ town of Wangherie and another on Manley’s Shelley Beach early one morning, no one has seen or heard from Wilson, described by colleagues as a loner with no living relatives. Neighbour Byron Carter, who lived in the same apartment block in Cremorne, said Wilson introduced him to his fiancée (pictured left). ‘The girl was quick to say he was “jumping the gun, they were just friends”. Nat looked pretty crook, bloke was smitten.’

  Inspector Todd Mangen of the NSW Police Force told a packed press conference at the Local Area Command on Pacific Highway this morning that Wilson’s bank account has remained inactive and the mystery ‘fiancée’ has not come forward. They have no reason to suspect foul play, but with no contact from Wilson, they fear for his safety and welfare.