The Detective's Secret

by Thomson, Lesley

  ‘Keep going!’ Stella spoke through clenched teeth.

  ‘I’m a bloody short arse, that’s my lot,’ Lucie gasped. She was standing up, her arms were extended to their limit. ‘It’s down to you, Officer.’

  Stella felt the weight increase as the frame went beyond Lucie’s reach. A blinding pain shot down her back. She stood on tiptoe and gained a fraction more height; the weight was on the back of her head – her neck must break. She had stopped the lid closing, but lacked the height to raise it further.

  She dared not move.

  ‘Move over,’ Lucie whispered. Keeping the frame in place, Stella shuffled along. Lucie’s pink high heels appeared on the step above her. Forcing herself to ignore the agony, Stella concentrated on them: patent leather, pointy toes, stiletto heels. This was not the time to dress up. Lucie fitted them on and Stella thought of Cinderella, her thought cut off by a bolt of pain like a flame travelling from her head down her spine. The lid was closing.

  ‘Stay with it, Officer,’ Lucie spluttered as she eased her foot into the second shoe.

  Stella stopped breathing. If she let it drop, she would not be able to lift it again.

  ‘One, two, three!’ Lucie raised herself up, standing taller in her shoes, the narrow heels wobbling on the metal tread. Stella gave one last push.

  The skylight tipped as the angle activated the pneumatic hinge. The lid stopped when it was vertical. Stella crawled out of the aperture on to the roof. Ahead of her was a garden shed. She blinked, sure she was seeing things.

  The wind howled. Across London the air was frantic with a cacophony of alarms: house alarms, car alarms; emergency service sirens whooped. She struggled around the shed. No one was there.

  The roof was empty.

  Stella strained out over the parapet.

  Jack!

  62

  Tuesday, 29 October 2013

  Stanley!

  An echo – from above or below – in the dark. Jack’s perception was skewed.

  ‘Stanley,’ he whispered again.

  Stanley!

  The dog’s claws skittered on the iron treads. He was close by. Jack let himself breathe. The air was dank and chill like a tomb. His nerves screamed at him to go back to the safety of his flat. Nowhere was safe.

  He put out a hand and felt concrete, cold and crumbling. He shuffled down another step, tip-tapping his shoe, testing for the next one. He was on a spiral staircase. The treads were narrow and steep and the angle of the rail told him it spiralled like a corkscrew.

  Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,

  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

  Simon was inside his mind. The dog had slipped behind him. Even without light, Jack sensed that the animal was hanging back; he too was scared. Jack had no choice but to go on. He must face Simon. He could not deny him again.

  The central column in the tower wasn’t a key supporting stanchion. It was a shaft, built to carry pipes and give access to the roof. Lucie’s article had said Simon studied engineering at university. Simon had outwitted him.

  With each step the metal vibrated, accumulating to an insidious thrum. It was the sound he had attributed to the Glove Man’s ghost. Simon had waited until he was asleep and then he’d crept up the shaft, opened the wall beside Jack’s bed and entered his flat. The tower was no refuge. Like Icarus, Jack would pay for his hubris.

  Faint light spilled through slits in the concrete. Inside his flat there were slits high up in the partition wall and in the kitchen. Jack had believed that they provided a free flow of air between the two rooms but there was no door between the spaces, so air could flow without vents. Drunk with the power of living in the watch tower commanding a view of London, he had made basic engineering errors. He had ignored Simon’s signs. His wings were aflame.

  The meagre light increased with each step. Nerves electric, Jack paused. Should he go up or down?

  You choose!

  He detected a change in the atmosphere. The walls whispered, ‘Truly I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.’

  The dog wasn’t behind him. Jack clattered down the steps and found him bunched in the corner of a cramped space, eyes black in light that leaked in from a porthole. Jack gathered the little animal up and folded him into his waistcoat.

  The Smiths track filled his head.

  Jack had seen the porthole from the outside. It was beyond the reach of the walkway that circled half of the tower. Stupidly he hadn’t considered where it was inside the tower. He returned to the staircase.

  Running away is no escape if you don’t know which direction is ‘away’.

  He swept his hand over the concrete wall, the rough patina grazing his fingertips, and found a door.

  ‘Good boy.’ He whispered Stella’s mantra to soothe the dog. ‘It’s all right,’ he breathed into Stanley’s ear. A warm tongue slathered his cheek, soothing him instead.

  With a click the door swung inwards. The music swelled.

  ‘Hello, Justin. Here I am.’

  63

  Tuesday, 29 October 2013

  Dazed, Jack shifted Stanley on to his shoulder and walked into a semi-circular space. Shapes resolved into a bed, a cupboard, a desk with a chair. It was identical to his flat above.

  ‘I’ll tell you a story

  About Jack-a-Nory,

  And now my story’s begun;

  I’ll tell you another of Jack and his brother,

  And now my story is done.’

  Jack couldn’t see the source of the voice.

  ‘Welcome!’ Low laughter.

  ‘You’ll frighten the dog.’ Jack shouldn’t have drawn attention to Stanley.

  ‘Why did you save me from drowning if you wouldn’t be my friend?’ No laughter now.

  ‘Where is Stella?’ Jack demanded. The voice was coming from corner of the room, which was in shadow. It had broken since he last heard it, but, like eyes, voices don’t alter.

  ‘Don’t disappoint me with silly questions.’

  Outside, the St Jude storm was raging, but in here, but for the Smiths music, it was quiet.

  You are trespassing. This is out of bounds.

  Jack clasped his forehead with his free hand as a faint throbbing in his temples increased to hammer blows. The words were inside and outside his head.

  The light in the room was increasing incrementally, like a sunrise. Shadows dwindled as ambient light washed over the curving concrete walls. There were no windows.

  A quarter of a century had passed since Jack had seen Simon. He was wearing a long black coat with a baseball cap low over his eyes. He snatched it off and flung it on the bed. His face was smooth as if experience hadn’t touched him. But for this, Jack was looking at a version of himself. Simon flicked his fringe from his forehead in the manner of Jack.

  ‘I’ve called the police. They’ll be here soon,’ Jack said.

  He distinguished pictures on the partition wall behind the bed. As the light brightened, he made out close-ups of men and women. Their faces were different, varying hairstyles and ages, black, Asian, white, but each had the impassive expression Jack knew from those waiting on platforms when he pulled into stations. Their unregistering gaze, like that of the dead, would slide over him as he brought his train to a stop. The faces on the wall were his passengers. There was the man with large ears and wispy hair, and the jittery woman in her forties who he suspected was a drinker. She stood on the same spot at Ravenscourt Park station every evening. The young woman so like his mother that Jack could believe she had returned from the dead. And the woman at Ealing Broadway station the night his train broke down.

  The end photograph was not a face. Silver tracks glinted in the headlamps of an approaching train. Just visible, insubstantial as a ghost, was the driver. Jack recognized himself.

  ‘Silly Justin.’ With a half-finger, Simon waved something at him. Thinking it was a weapon, Jack stepped back against the wall. The door had shut. There was no handle. Simon
didn’t have a gun. He was holding Jack’s mobile phone.

  ‘The Cleaner is here. Redoubtable, isn’t she! We did have a nice chat on the station while she did her best to hide her fear. Yes, I was the ‘inspector’ at Stamford Brook station. I’m disappointed it took you so long to work that out.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘Another silly question. Where you go, I go. Justin. Thanks to the handy little ‘stalker’ app on Rick Frost’s phone. He was quite clever, all said and done, you know!’ He tugged on his half finger and continued.

  ‘But for the soundproofing, you’d hear the Cleaner and the Reporter blundering about on the roof. They think you’ve jumped. Poor Justin, his past caught up with him and, unable to bear the shame, he jumped. The reporter will relish writing that.’

  ‘They won’t think that. There’s no body.’

  ‘By the time they ask themselves that question, it will be too late. They’ll find your body soon enough.’

  Jack had never been alone in his tower. Simon had been there. Simon was the man on the bus outside Stamford Brook station; he was the man on Hammersmith Bridge. Simon had delivered the fliers about the tower through his door. He was the man in the crowd.

  Jack had been Simon’s Host. He hadn’t read the signs.

  ‘More disappointment, I thought you’d read them sooner.’ Simon spoke soothingly, as if he could follow his thoughts.

  Into Jack’s mind came the thought that if his own mother had lived, he might have wanted Simon as his friend. But had she lived, he wouldn’t have been sent away to school and he wouldn’t have met Simon.

  ‘You betrayed me.’ Simon spoke in a kindly tone. ‘More than three times, you denied you knew me. What did Mr Wilson teach us? There was a man who didn’t practise what he preached. By now the Cleaner and the Reporter will have worked it out, but I hoped you’d get there before them. You recognized his Timex watch. I supposed it would be plain sailing for you after that.’

  ‘Mr Wilson was the man trapped in the tower.’ Jack nodded as he got it. He had recognized the Timex watch. Stanley tensed; he stroked him. ‘You were the one who shut the door on him.’

  ‘At last!’ Simon tossed Jack’s phone back and forth between his hands. ‘Mr Wilson was the only person who bothered with me. He found me in the basement after you locked me in that last time at school.’

  ‘So why kill him?

  ‘He betrayed me, like everyone else. Like you did, Justin.’

  ‘You killed him because he betrayed you?’

  ‘Do you consider betrayal a minor transgression? Your cleaner puts a high price on loyalty. That was one thing in her favour. You and she are haphazard detectives, but you get there in the end! Shame for you it is the end.’

  ‘So why Mr Wilson?’ Jack asked again.

  ‘My mother, the lovely Madeleine, met Wilson when she was on a business trip to Australia. She left me for a month to go to a banking conference in Sydney. She was at the conference all right but, as my dad in one of his rather cruder moods once shouted at her, she did less banking than bonking!’ Simon raised his eyebrows. ‘She met Wilson in a bar. He did his disappearing act and followed her over here. That man took my mother away from me.’ He smiled brightly. ‘Mr Wilson had to pay for his sins.’

  ‘So you killed him?’ Jack repeated.

  ‘Call it the wrath of God. A week after the hurricane, I went back to the tower to warn him to stay away from her, intending that he’d have learnt his lesson. He was on the floor by the door, stiff and cold and dead.’

  ‘The post-mortem thought it likely that Wilson had a heart attack.’ Jack had thought the sketch of Glove Man on the Missing Persons’ site was familiar. He had assumed it was because he saw so many faces, some of which were on the wall before him. The main reason he had dismissed it was because he had blotted out that time at school. He had blotted out Simon.

  ‘Your mother may be dead, Justin, but it’s no excuse for cruelty. Simon tried to care for you. He only wanted to be your friend. Now you have no friends.’ The man tapped the Bible. ‘One day you’ll understand what you have done. God watches over us all.’

  ‘I shut the door on him.’ Simon tapped his lips with Jack’s phone. ‘I killed him just as that train driver you bought coffee for the other day killed the Captain. It should have been me standing him a cup of coffee. I have much to thank him for. He was my amanuensis. The Captain knew his day had come.’

  Jack had sensed a presence on the balcony overlooking Earl’s Court station. He should have trusted his instinct that he was being watched. Simon had been there.

  ‘Mr Wilson thought my mother was joking. When he realized he was trapped in the tower, he called her names, he shouted unforgivable things about her and about me. When I got outside, the hurricane was raging. I had to go – it was dangerous to be out.’

  ‘Where is Nicola Barwick?’ Jack interrupted him.

  ‘In good time, Justin.’ Simon ran a coin over his fingers, tumbling it over the top of his hand, his half-finger bobbing. At school, Simon had done it to impress him; Jack knew he was doing it now to mark time.

  ‘Tell me my nickname at school?’ Simon said.

  ‘Stumpy.’ Jack had made it up.

  Simon flicked the pen into the air, caught it and continued his trick. His hand resembled a giant insect. The boys had called the teacher a stick insect. Jack’s past was flooding back.

  Stanley struggled to be let down. Jack lowered him to the ground and he ran across to the bed, leapt upon it and settled down. So much for dogs sensing danger. Perhaps that was exactly what Stanley had done: he had gone to Simon, the little boy who had only tried to help and was lonely.

  ‘You have known what it’s like to be shunned. To see people’s eyes glaze over, that flash of disappointment, even panic, when they hear you’re on their football team. They tell you a chair is taken when you try to sit down – all the empty chairs in the class are taken. You were my blood brother, but you did nothing. You told me my mother didn’t love me.’

  ‘I was unhappy. No one wanted to talk to a boy touched by death.’ Jack had had blackness in his soul. Mr Wilson had intoned:

  ‘And then if anyone says to you, “Look, here is the Christ!” or, “Look there he is!” do not believe it. False Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.’

  ‘I don’t have friends,’ Jack said. Stella and Jackie invited him to their houses. Clean Slate’s cleaning team and Beverly in the office had bought a cake in the shape of an engine on his birthday. Dariusz in the mini-mart beneath the office and Cheryl in the dry cleaner’s checked he had eaten recently. There was Lucie May and, before Dale turned up, there had been Suzie. Isabel Ramsay was commemorated in his Garden of the Dead. He did have friends.

  Then Jesus said to the chief priests and captains of the temple and elders, who had come out against him, ‘Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.’

  Jack rubbed at his forehead to stop the voice.

  ‘Quite a contact list for a man with no friends!’ Simon was looking at Jack’s phone. ‘Hmm, I don’t see myself here.’

  ‘I didn’t want a friend. I wanted my mum and my toys. I wanted my bedroom and the tree in our garden. I wanted to make tunnels and bridges like my dad. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want a friend!’ Jack’s voice reverberated off the concrete.

  ‘You told the Captain you didn’t know me. The cooks called me greedy when I asked for seconds, but you got thirds because your mummy was dead.’

  Abruptly the music stopped.

  ‘I am the engineer, not you.’ Simon raised his voice. ‘It’s me that builds bridges and tunnels. You only drive in them and wonder about how long they are. This is my tower, not yours. As you know, the best way to vanquish your enemy is to become him. Look for the person with a mind like y
our own. All those True Hosts – and for what? Time and time again the Cleaner has to save you from yourself, but not this time.’

  ‘How do you know about the Hosts?’

  ‘Oh, Justin! You can do better than that. You and me, we know how to make ourselves invisible, how to garner facts about those we shadow. You taught me surveillance tactics. You told me that, unless they’ve done wrong, most people don’t think they’re being watched. I wanted you to see me, but even when you did, you looked through me and failed to read the signs. You promised the Cleaner to stay in at nights. She’s made you soft!’

  He tapped at the screen on Jack’s phone with his stubby finger. ‘Look, the Cleaner’s sent you a text. Stella mob! Stella mop, perhaps!’

  Beware the jokes of those with no sense of humour.

  Simon is alive. Stay where you are, I’m coming. She’s ahead of you, Justin! So you’re happy to be her friend, or would you like to be more than friends? Is that why you hate Dale, the Brand-new Brother? What shall we reply to her? Too late, he’s dead? or Leave or the dog dies! Shall we tell her you have betrayed her? That you were hiding in the house when she was there? They say anger helps assuage grief. My sister should know, although it’s guilt at her own betrayal she has to assuage, not grief. She’s in with the Captain’s brother. She lied to me. She is Wilson’s daughter – betrayal’s in the blood.

  ‘Wilson wasn’t in a relationship. He was in love with your mother. Who did he betray?’

  ‘Me.’ Simon might have been a small boy, his face untouched by the years. ‘Really, Justin, did Jesus really die for the likes of all of you?’

  ‘I can’t turn the clock back.’ But Jack had tried to.

  ‘I have looked for myself inside your head, but I’m not there, am I? I was dead to you.’

  ‘I told you your mother was having an affair with Mr Wilson. I saw them in the car park at school.’

  ‘You weren’t being kind, if I remember. You laughed.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Jack had wanted someone else to have a reason to cry. He had felt a thrill of cruelty as he told the boy that his mummy had kissed the RE teacher.