The Detective's Secret

by Thomson, Lesley

  ‘How could he know where you were?’

  ‘From up here. Simon delivered those fliers; he knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to live in a tower, my own panopticon. He organised the removers, he made sure everything was exactly where I would have put it. He knew everything about me. Once I moved here, I became his True Host. Simon had stolen Rick’s phone and replaced it with a decoy one for the police to find. William told me Rick had invented an app that tracks wherever you are. Simon stalked you and me. He knew where we were all the time. Chilling thought, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jack saw that the idea made Stella uncomfortable. He tried to reassure her. ‘Not any more, though.’

  He focused on St Peter’s Church as the bells chimed five times. He had noticed that when he looked at places through the binoculars, even in the soundproofed tower, he heard the local sounds. He shifted to Terry’s house on Rose Gardens North and gave a start.

  ‘There’s a massive white pantechnicon outside your dad’s house!’

  ‘You’re not the only one moving.’ Stella wandered out to the kitchen. She called back, ‘I’m selling the flat and moving into Terry’s. The garden will be good for Stanley.’

  ‘That’s great.’ Jack was stunned. Stella was giving up her high-security flat with its three mortices and London bar for a house on a street with neighbours. He saw that it was fair that Stella give Dale half of the value of Terry’s house, but hadn’t expected her to take action so soon – and not this action. While he was retreating to his childhood house – returning to the ghosts – Stella was moving on. He murmured:

  ‘I answered myself,

  And said to myself

  In the self-same repartee:

  “Look to thyself,

  Or not look to thyself,

  The self-same thing will be.”’

  It wasn’t all about ghosts. He had missed the short-eared owl knocker on his door and wondered if she had missed him.

  ‘Can you see how they’re doing?’ Stella was back.

  ‘They’re going.’ Jack put down the binoculars.

  ‘I’ll go down.’ Stella was zipping up her anorak. ‘Listen, I bought sparkling wine to celebrate the end of the case – cases – and that we’re keeping Stanley.’ She gave Stanley a fishy treat. ‘Fancy coming over? I’ve taken Dale’s stew out of the freezer. It just needs a flash in the microwave.’

  ‘I’ll do a last check and meet you at the van.’ Jack hid his delight.

  Stella was on the spiral staircase when he remembered the envelope David had given him.

  ‘I’m sorry! I totally forgot – Dale going put it out of my mind!’ Jack hung over the railing and handed the letter to Stella. ‘I hope it doesn’t matter that it’s late.’

  Stella took it from him. Seconds later, Jack heard the thud of the main door closing.

  She had said ‘We’re keeping Stanley’. He stopped himself doing a little skip.

  Dear Stella,

  When I asked you to mind Stanley, you weren’t keen, but you do things properly. You will have cared for him and he will have become attached to you – and I think you to him too, so it is best if you keep him.

  I’m going to live far away – somewhere where I won’t see a Clean Slate van in the street and feel sad. I would like to say a proper goodbye. I know you hate them, but maybe just this once you might make an exception.

  If you are willing, I’ll be at Stamford Brook station tomorrow at 3 p.m. Please come without Stanley – I couldn’t bear to see him. I’ll wait fifteen minutes, then, if you don’t come, I’ll suppose you didn’t want to see me. Here’s to a Tabula Rasa!

  Love,

  David

  PS You might want to change Stanley’s name because you didn’t choose it.

  The letter was dated last Friday. By ‘tomorrow’ he had meant Saturday.

  Leading Stanley across the road, Stella walked past her van on down to Chiswick Mall and leant against the railings overlooking the eyot. She folded up the letter and tucked it into her anorak pocket. Once again she reminded herself that ‘Mr Right’ didn’t exist. Her phone beeped. David. She snatched it out of her pocket, registering that there were no staring eyes at the top of the screen.

  Fancy a drink tonight? x. It was Liz.

  When they were young, Liz had sent her letters to suggest they meet. She never rang Stella. She gave her space to decide. Stella had said she was cleaning or had left it a while before replying and then not replied at all. Liz knew what Stella was like. She didn’t try to change her.

  Can’t tonight, tomorrow? You OK? Liz had liked ‘Justin Venus’.

  Nicola Barwick was moving back into her house in Chiswick. Liz was going to buy Stella’s flat in Brentford. Stella had been reluctant to do a deal with a friend, but Liz had persuaded her. The flat was quiet with a view over the river and, with its locks and pass-codes, secure. Liz had said she trusted Stella. Stella’s phone pinged again.

  See you at the Ram on Black Lion Lane? Yes I am OK, thanks to you, ’tec! Lxx

  Stella shuddered to think what Simon Carrington might have done if he had not drowned before he could make it back to the tower where he had left Liz and Nicola Barwick. Nicola had said that Simon Carrington was once a nice little boy. Stella found that hard to believe.

  Jack hadn’t told Stella what had happened between him and Carrington on the eyot and she wouldn’t ask him. There was a lot about Jack that she didn’t know and didn’t want to know. When he came down from his tower, she would say that she had been wrong to ask him to promise not to walk in London at night. Jack must walk where and when he liked.

  Stella couldn’t bring herself to admit to Jack that she had used Rick Frost’s stalking app to locate him. She couldn’t bear that she hadn’t trusted him.

  If Jack asked her why she had changed her mind about him walking at night, she wouldn’t be able to explain, except that if she had to make a promise not to clean, she would find it hard to keep.

  ‘You will always be called Stanley,’ she told the dog. ‘It’s who you are.’

  Jack put the binoculars back in their case. He would keep them. Simon had given them to him as a present, he wouldn’t reject them. He slotted them back into his bag alongside Simon’s toy train.

  He had lived with the darkness of own unkindness to Simon. Like Rick Frost, he had lived with threat, if vague and amorphous. Even though he had assumed Simon was dead. Simon’s death did not lessen the feeling. Jack knew he would always live with the darkness.

  Stella was the light. While she could be awkward and insensitive, she would never set out to cause hurt. If someone hurt her, she absorbed it and carried on. She never sought revenge. She hadn’t held it against Suzie, or Terry, that they had kept so important a secret from her. She had accepted Dale into her life. Stella did what was right.

  He listened. No glugging sink, no vibration on the spiral staircase and no music seeped from the curving grey concrete walls that had witnessed death and silence.

  His mind was his own.

  The Tower card had turned up in his Tarot reading on his birthday. It was a sign. He had ignored it. Simon had forced him to experience the chaos and destruction that the card might be said to herald. He had made him face the darkness in his soul. The tower – the card and the building itself – had made Jack see himself. To have posted it through his door, Simon must have been inside his house and taken the card from the pack on the hall table. He was a True Host in more ways than one.

  Jack returned to the eyot window. Light sparkled on the Thames, the calm before the ebb tide. A plump seagull perched on the tide marker on the eyot. On the beach at the western tip of the island were two figures. A woman, hands on hips, was watching a little boy pushing what looked like a steam engine down a plank of wood into the water. A dart of sunlight dazzled Jack and he blinked. Thinking to get the binoculars, he looked again and saw that, but for the gull preening itself on the tide marker, the beach was deserted.

&
nbsp; On Chiswick Mall, Stella and Stanley stood by the railings facing the river.

  They were waiting for him.

  ~

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

  The next thrilling book in The Detective’s Daughter series will be released in Spring 2016

  For more information, click one of the links below:

  Acknowledgements

  Lesley Thomson

  About The Detective’s Daughter series

  An invitation from the publisher

  Acknowledgements

  In the course of researching and writing The Detective’s Secret, many people have been generous with their knowledge, experiences and time.

  The help of Frank Pacifico, Test Train Operator for the London Underground, has been invaluable. Although he’s nothing like Jack in character, Frank has succeeded in imagining Jack’s preoccupations and, as we travelled the District line, he offered me fitting ‘driver’ observations that enabled me to see through Jack’s eyes. Any mistakes or errors regarding detail of the London Underground are mine.

  Jack isn’t a believer in coincidences, so I wonder what explanation he would have for my finding that the information from brothers of two childhood friends proved to be key to my research. My thanks to them both.

  The designer Tom Dixon is the brother of my beloved old friend Vikasini. Tom kindly lent me his water tower and I spent one hot summer morning wandering through it. I looked out at London from the roof and imagined Jack’s panopticon. In this novel I have taken the liberty of moving Tom’s tower across London from North Kensington and relocating it beside the River Thames at Chiswick.

  I grew up in Hammersmith, up the road from Tanya Bocking and her brother Nat. While trawling the internet, I landed on the Water Tower Appreciation Society’s website and found that the writer and photographer Nat Bocking is its secretary. I am grateful to Nat for sending me links and a reading list, which included Water Towers of Britain by Barry Barton, a fascinating account of their use and construction.

  As always, my thanks go to Detective Superintendent Stephen Cassidy, retired from the Metropolitan Police. Again, any factual errors regarding the police are mine.

  Thanks to: Emeritus Professor Jenny Bourne Taylor of the University of Sussex for her recommended reading from the nineteenth century – the spirit of this century haunts this story.

  My partner, Melanie Lockett, listens to and gives discerning comments on my unfolding ideas. When words arrive on the page, she is my first reader. Thank you.

  Stella’s dog Stanley was ‘trained’ courtesy of Michelle Garvey at Essentially Paws. Any of Stanley’s wayward behaviour is my responsibility.

  Lisa Holloway, Creative Industries consultant and lecturer, has given me valuable advice.

  Thanks to: Tasmin Barnett, Domenica de Rosa, Marianne Dixon (aka Vikasini), Juliet Eve, Hilary Fairclough, Christine Harris, Kay and Nigel Heather and Alysoun Tomkins, who, in varying ways, gave me encouragement along the way.

  West Dean College in Chichester was accommodating and supportive during the writing of this novel; my thanks in particular to Rebecca Labram, Francine Norris and Martine McDonagh.Thank you to my agents, Capel and Land. My agent Philippa Brewster is exceptional. Much gratitude goes to Georgina Capel, Rachel Conway and Romily Withington.

  Laura Palmer is the best of editors and a joy to work with. Big thanks to all at Head of Zeus, in particular Nic Cheetham, Kaz Harrison, Mathilda Imlah, Clemence Jacquinet, Madeleine O’Shea, Vicki Reed and Becci Sharpe. Once again, my thanks to Jane Robertson and Richenda Todd, who have given the text unremitting scrutiny, proofing and copy-editing respectively.

  About The Detective’s Secret

  TO LET:

  Apartment in Water Tower.

  A cosy home with detailed views.

  Jack Harmon craves silence and a bird’s eye view. From his new home in Palmyra Tower, he can raise binoculars to watch over west London. He can see pictures in people’s houses, read epitaphs in the cemetery. If he watches for long enough, he will learn who has secrets. He will learn who plans to kill.

  But Jack does not see everything. A man has died beneath a late-night train, and Jack’s friend Stella, the detective’s daughter, suspects it could have been murder.

  Now Jack and Stella are stirring up the past with questions that no one wants answered – questions that lead to an unsolved case nearly twenty years old. And up here, in the tower’s strange, detached silence, Jack won’t hear danger coming until it’s too late...

  Reviews

  ‘Lesley Thomson is a class above.’

  Ian Rankin

  ‘A wonderful, absorbing, intelligent detective story, The Detective’s Daughter takes you on a journey through time, loss and memory. The characters – particularly Stella – will stay with you for a very long time.’

  Elly Griffiths

  ‘A thoughtful, well-observed story about families and relationships and what happens to both when a tragedy occurs. It reminded me of Kate Atkinson.’

  Scott Pack

  ‘This book has a clever mystery plot – but its excellence is in the characters, all credible and memorable, and in its setting in a real West London street, exactly described.’

  Literary Review

  ‘A gripping, haunting novel about loss and reconciliation, driven by a simple but clever plot.’

  Sunday Times

  ‘The strength of the writing and the author’s brilliant evocation of how a child’s mind works combine to terrifying effect.

  A novel one cannot forget.’

  Shots

  ‘Skilfully evokes the era and the slow-moving quality of childhood summers, suggesting the menace lurking just beyond... A study of memory and guilt with several twists.’

  Guardian

  ‘This emotionally charged thriller grips from the first paragraph, and a nail-biting level of suspense is maintained throughout. A great novel.’

  She Magazine

  About Lesley Thomson

  LESLEY THOMSON was born in 1958 and grew up in London. She went to Holland Park Comprehensive and the Universities of Brighton and Sussex.

  Her first novel, A Kind of Vanishing, won the People’s Book Prize in 2010. Her second novel, The Detective’s Daughter, was published in 2013 and sold over 300,000 copies.

  www.lesleythomson.co.uk

  About The Detective’s Daughter Series

  Stella Darnell must clean. She wipes surfaces, pokes her cloth into the intricate carving of an oak table, whisks a duster over a ceiling rose. She keeps the world in order. Her watch is set three minutes fast for punctuality – a tip she learned from her father – and the couch in her sterile apartment is wrapped in protective plastic, though she never has guests. In her mid-forties, six foot tall, Stella is pleasant but firm, helpful but brutally pragmatic. The detective’s daughter has time for neither frivolities nor fools.

  Jack Harmon is everything Stella deplores. Fanciful and unpredictable, his decisions rely on random signs. He will follow a paper bag blown along a pavement by the wind; a number on a train will dictate his day. Jack is the best cleaner Stella has ever known. Jack sees that Stella makes sense of his intuitive ponderings. Together, as unofficial detectives, these two misfits solve mysteries that have left the police confounded.

  1 – The Detective’s Daughter

  It was the murder that shocked the nation. Thirty years ago Kate Rokesmith went walking by the river with her young son. She never came home.

  For three decades her case file has lain, unsolved, in the corner of an attic. Until Stella Darnell, daughter of Chief Superintendent Darnell, starts to clear out her father’s house after his death…

  The Detective’s Daughter is available here.

  2 – Ghost Girl

  It is a year since her father’s death, but Stella Darnell has not moved on. She visits his house every day and cleans it, leaving it spotless as if he might return.

  Stella’s father was Detective Chief Superintendent at H
ammersmith police station, and now she has discovered what looks like an unsolved case in his darkroom: a folder of unlabelled photographs of deserted streets. But why did Terry Darnell – a stickler for order – never file them at the station or report them to his colleagues?

  The oldest photograph dates back to 1966. To a day when Mary Thornton, just ten years old, is taking her little brother home from school in time for tea. That afternoon, as the Moors Murderers are sent to prison for life, Mary witnesses something that will haunt her forever.

  As Stella inches closer to the truth, the events of that day begin to haunt her too...

  Ghost Girl is available here.

  3 – The Detective’s Secret

  TO LET:

  Apartment in Water Tower.

  A cosy home with detailed views.

  Jack Harmon craves silence and a bird’s eye view. From his new home in Palmyra Tower, he can raise binoculars to watch over west London. He can see pictures in people’s houses, read epitaphs in the cemetery. If he watches for long enough, he will learn who has secrets. He will learn who plans to kill.

  But Jack does not see everything. A man has died beneath a late-night train, and Jack’s friend Stella, the detective’s daughter, suspects it could have been murder.

  Now Jack and Stella are stirring up the past with questions that no one wants answered – questions that lead to an unsolved case nearly twenty years old. And up here, in the tower’s strange, detached silence, Jack won’t hear danger coming until it’s too late...

  A Letter from the Publisher

  We hope you enjoyed this book. We are an independent publisher dedicated to discovering brilliant books, new authors and great storytelling. Please join us at www.headofzeus.com and become part of our community of book-lovers.