The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Do you think he’s a murderer?’ It surely wouldn’t be this easy. Stella put down about Rowlands’ dead mother paying rent. It might have no relevance to the case, but it was the sort of fact that Jack appreciated.

  ‘Rowlands has an alibi.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘He was in the house nursing his mother. He went out for five minutes with the dog, but went the other way along the towpath to Helen. He saw Daphne Merry, but she didn’t see him. He saw her with the two dogs, he corroborated her story and his own.’

  Corroboration could also be collusion. ‘Are Neville Rowlands and Daphne Merry friends?’

  ‘No one in this street are friends!’ He gave her wry look.

  Terry had said that relatives provided the best and worst alibis. ‘Was his mother still alive then?’

  ‘Yeah, just. She died not long after. I’ll save you time, Rowlands is in the clear.’

  ‘Are these people still living in the street?’ Stella knew that no one was in the clear. Least of all a man whose alibi was his mother. She wrote ‘Old Grouch’ and added ‘SUSPECT’ in capitals. She scrawled a diagram of the five cottages and filled in the names she had so far. She’d need Sybil Whatsit’s surname, but wouldn’t interrupt Honeysett’s flow.

  ‘Tash caused a stink by digging a hole deep enough for a double-decker bus under her house!’ Honeysett grinned. If he had been inconvenienced by the basement, he gave no sign. So, Natasha Latimer (‘Tash’) had ‘kicked’ Neville Rowlands out. What could that mean? Had Latimer been scathing about Honeysett because he’d dumped her for another woman? One of his ‘new girls every week’?

  ‘Like I said, I went to the towpath. I forgot to take a torch and nearly fell into the river. I was scared Helen had done that. She couldn’t swim and even if she’d been able to, it was January, the water’s freezing. Like tonight. You’d be paralysed and sink in seconds into the steely depths!’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what happened.’ Stella didn’t stint on bald poss­ibility. The simplest explanations were generally the right ones.

  ‘If so, her body would have resurfaced downstream. The river doesn’t keep its victims.’

  Stella shot him a glance. Honeysett had what Beverly, Clean Slate’s office assistant, would call ‘a right way with words’. He might be telling a ghost story by the fire. She knew that he was wrong. In winter, with fewer people on the towpath or sitting outside pubs and restaurants, a body could be trapped under a bridge or among weeds unseen and, as it decomposed, not smelled for months. Or it could be washed downstream to the sea and never found. During summer months a corpse’s gases were released faster so the body would rise to the surface quicker. Stella didn’t say this.

  ‘I had to identify the clothes of two female bodies pulled from the Thames that year. Someone’s found drowned in the river once a week. I wasn’t allowed to see either woman as they’d been submerged for weeks. Their faces were disfigured, pecked by seagulls and battered by bridges and boats. Helen wouldn’t have been seen dead in the clothes they showed me.’ Honeysett was able to face grisly detail; Jack might say he relished it. Stella noted this down.

  ‘What about your dog?’

  ‘I whistled and when he didn’t come, I knew he’d gone into the river and she’d gone in after him. Idiotic thing to do.’ Honeysett looked cross. ‘Dogs always survive and their owners drown trying to save them.’

  ‘You said Daphne Merry found your dog.’ She wound up the pressure. Stella made a show of consulting her notes.

  ‘I meant that, at the time, I thought that’s what had happened.’ Honeysett snatched up the poker again. Stella decided her tactic was misguided. Terry wouldn’t have upset a suspect holding a potential weapon. ‘I hoped she’d gone home and was there, worrying about me. I had a car phone; she could be ringing it. She should have had one. With her job she went into empty properties with strangers, but in those days the phones were as heavy as car batteries. When I got back, I thought I saw her, but it was Daphne Merry with the dog. She’d found him on the towpath. She made me call the police; I didn’t want to bother them. Not yet. “That’s what they’re there for,” she said. When I told them Helen was nearly twenty-seven, they asked if we’d quarrelled. I said no.’ He frowned. Stella wondered if they had argued and thought again about the hour between nine and ten when he’d done nothing. ‘Once they knew her age, they weren’t interested.’

  ‘An adult can go somewhere of their own volition; a child’s more likely to have been abducted,’ Stella explained.

  ‘They as good as suggested she’d dumped me.’ Honeysett was scratching at a stain on the arm of his chair.

  Stella reminded herself that she was being a detective, not a cleaner.

  ‘We’d only been married two years, couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Helen had a career, she was in love and we had this house, why leave?’ Another shadow darkened his face. ‘When I told them Helen wouldn’t abandon the dog and that she did the same thing every night they started taking it seriously.’

  Stella knew that most kidnap victims are killed within twenty-four hours of abduction. The police would have had to move fast once they had decided it was abduction.

  ‘What was Helen like?’ Wishing he was there, Stella asked a ‘Jack’ question. She used the first name to put Honeysett at ease.

  Honeysett sighed. ‘Perfect.’

  No one was perfect. Stella bit her lip.

  ‘Kind, funny, beautiful, cared about people and animals, not a bad bone in her body. Every day I pinch myself that she loved me – she could have had anyone. She’d have been a brilliant mum.’ He raked his fingers through his greying hair. Stella couldn’t shake the impression that Honeysett was conscious that the gesture drew attention to his good looks. She wrote ‘Vain’ under ‘Relishes grisly facts’ and then added ‘SUSPECT’.

  ‘You said Helen was addicted to running.’ Stella stuck a poker into the missing woman’s flawless image.

  ‘She was on an endless diet. Ridiculous – she was a string bean. Her wrist fitted in here.’ He made a circle of his forefinger and thumb. Stella envisaged a stick insect. ‘She was even talking about getting a boob job. She hated how she looked. She said she had flat feet!’ He laughed uproariously.

  Stella tapped her pen on her chin. Honeysett was increasingly coming across as a plausible suspect. ‘Could she have gone into the river deliberately?’

  ‘So not! She was full of life. Plus she wouldn’t have taken the dog with her.’

  ‘What was its name?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The dog.’

  ‘I, er, I don’t remember. Why?’ Honeysett looked at her as if reassessing whether she was up to the job.

  ‘I want salient detail.’ Stella supposed in twenty-nine years’ time she would remember Stanley’s name, especially if he’d been involved in a tragedy. She wrote down ‘Lack of recall’.

  ‘They took this house apart while they grilled me in a room without windows for hours. I’m claustrophobic, I need light and air. I was desperate to get out of there and look for her. They made me dredge up the minutiae of our last days. And of course I couldn’t distinguish between them. Why hadn’t I gone looking sooner? Why hadn’t I gone with her? Did I think it was OK to go jogging in the dark by the river? Had we fought? They kept asking that. They checked my hands and fingernails for signs of violence and trapped skin.’

  Stella had been about to ask Honeysett these questions herself.

  ‘…they were wasting precious time. The abductor was out there. He is still out there.’ Again Stella wished Jack was with her. There was something Honeysett wasn’t telling her. Jack would have wormed it out of him.

  She heard a shifting; the lump of wood tumbled on to the hearthstone. Adam Honeysett grabbed tongs from a silver companion set beside the fireplace, snapped the wood between its teeth and threw it back on to the embers. He smacked his hands on his trousers, smudging the wool. Stella was put in mind of an ageing Heathcliff – W
uthering Heights was the only novel she’d read from start to finish – as he slumped brooding back in the armchair. ‘Helen was the love of my life.’ He nodded at Stella’s chair. ‘We’d sit like this, telling each other’s fortunes in the flames. I said Helen had a bright future. How crap was I!’ His forefinger went back to his lower lip.

  It wasn’t the first time a client had told Stella she was sitting in the chair of a dead wife. At least Helen Honeysett hadn’t died there. Or had she? Keeping her voice calm Stella asked, ‘Did the police connect the case – Helen – with Suzy Lamplugh’s disappearance? They were both estate agents, similar age and they worked in West London.’

  Suzy Lamplugh had gone missing the previous July, in 1986. Terry had cancelled an early birthday celebration with Stella in a Chinese restaurant (she was twenty a week later) to join the search, so putting off her first go with chopsticks. Her dad often cancelled their outings for his work. Stella had grown adept at containing her disappointment, but her mum had fumed that Terry was as unreliable a father as he had been a husband. Stella knew about murders and abductions, but – perhaps because her dad was in the police – until Suzy Lamplugh had gone missing, a woman close to her own age, she had never considered the possibility of danger to herself.

  ‘Yes, the police explored that line of inquiry. How could they not? Neither woman has ever been found. It could suggest a man skilled at disposal, but besides thin circumstantial coincidence, no link to the cases has been found.’

  Honeysett spoke like a detective. Perhaps nearly thirty years of liaising with the police had familiarized him with their terminology. She brought him back to the personal. ‘Did your wife have family?’

  ‘Her parents were divorced. The first thing her dad asked me was had she made a will? He gave us money for this place; the bastard wanted it back. But the cottage is in both our names. So he could whistle! She wasn’t declared officially dead until 2007. I had to wait twenty years before I could access her funds.’ Honeysett rummaged in the log basket and tossed more wood into the grate. It killed the tiny flame. A chill closed in. ‘Her mother died in 1988. Cancer. The father died of a heart attack months after. My poor Helen is an orphan.’

  Stella noted the present tense. She didn’t think it was an error. She felt that Adam Honeysett chose his words carefully. Did he think she was still alive? That might be a problem. Stella, remembering what Terry had said, was certain Helen Honeysett was dead.

  ‘Did she have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘She was an only child. So were her parents, no cousins and what not. No one but me.’ Honeysett got down on his knees and tried to encourage a flame from the embers.

  Convenient, Stella noted.

  Honeysett was revving up. ‘The press camped out there. They shouted abuse through my letterbox. “Wife-Killer.” “Where did you bury her?” “Living off her money, Adam?” They talked like we were mates. The police did nothing.’ He scratched his stubble, making a rasping sound.

  ‘Did they rule out a connection to Suzy Lamplugh?’ Stella mused out loud. From his own testimony, Adam Honeysett could have killed his wife. He had been in Northampton, but it was only his say-so that she was alive when he left that morning. Why hadn’t the police charged him? A second later she got an answer.

  ‘The police arrested someone for Helen’s murder with an alibi for the Lamplugh disappearance.’

  *

  The air was icy. Stella pulled up the collar of her jacket and hurried down the alley to Kew Green. Her footsteps rang on the frosted pavement. Stanley trotted alongside her. This time she checked for anyone lurking in the shadows. Her van was ethereal white. Adam Honeysett said he had recognized it because he saw the livery on the panels. Stella preferred anonymity. Hers was the only plain vehicle in the fleet. How could he have known it belonged to Clean Slate?

  12

  Sunday, 11 January 1987

  ‘Stand out of the way,’ Garry instructed his sister.

  ‘Can I hold it?’ Megan pleaded.

  They were in the aviary in the back garden. Steven Lawson had constructed a wooden cage attached to what had been the outside lavatory when the family moved in three years ago. Steven’s first, and only, plumbing job in the cottage had been to instal an indoor toilet. He stowed his tools in the lean-to.

  A bicycle lamp fixed to a bracket cast a light into Garry’s budgerigar aviary. One side of the aviary was given over to perches on which were huddled two blue-feathered budgerigars. There were ladders and a swing held by wires threaded with painted wooden balls on which a yellow bird oscillated dramatically. Cylindrical bird feeders were suspended from the mesh roof. At the one end, under tarpaulin, was a cupboard with shoebox-size drawers cut with circular holes. From these came a constant cheeping.

  ‘You can fill the bird feeders,’ Garry informed Megan. ‘Unhook them and take off the cap at the bottom. Do not spill any seeds. They’re expensive.’

  ‘There’s some there already.’ Megan pointed at a scattering of seeds on the impacted earth at their feet. She wanted this established should Garry accuse her of dropping them.

  Garry didn’t look. ‘They’re husks.’

  ‘I want to hold my chick. Please!’ Megan shivered. She had come outside for the express purpose of seeing her Abandoned Baby Budgie. She didn’t want to fill dirty old feeders, and suspecting Garry of fobbing her off with the boring chore.

  Garry softened. ‘After. Fill that jug with seed and pour it in. I’ve got to clean out the roosting boxes.’

  ‘I’ll help you, Megsy.’ Their dad was outside the aviary, fingers hooked into the mesh. ‘Mum wants you in for tea.’ He unlatched the door and, careful not to let the birds escape, edged inside. ‘Gal, give Megan her bird. Let me do the feeders.’

  Garry extracted a tiny budgerigar with blue feathers from one of the roosting drawers and, holding it in cupped hands, passed it to his sister. ‘She’ll never learn to look after them if all she does is cuddle them. They’re not toys,’ he grumbled.

  ‘The police have taken Mr Honeysett in for questioning. About Helen.’ Steven spoke in a low voice because Bette didn’t want him talking about it to the kids.

  ‘Why?’ Megan kissed the chick’s head. ‘She kissed me back!’ she crowed.

  ‘No, she didn’t,’ Garry said.

  ‘Mr Honeysett was the last person to see Helen.’

  ‘He’s murdered her.’ Garry swept out the last drawer and tipped dirty straw, moulted feathers and seed husks into a bin bag.

  ‘No he hasn’t!’ Megan raised her clasped hands in horror, swooping the small bird upwards.

  ‘Careful! Give her to me.’ Garry took the bird and returned it to the freshly strawed box.

  Seeing the effect on his daughter, Steven Lawson back-pedalled. ‘We don’t know what’s happened. She might have fallen and be in hospital with no memory.’

  ‘She’s not in Charing Cross. I heard Mum telling you,’ Megan told him.

  ‘She’s dead.’ Garry was phlegmatic.

  ‘Don’t start coming out with that nonsense, Garry, you’ll give Megan nightmares.’

  ‘I don’t want her to be dead. She’s nice.’ Megan bit back tears, as much for the tiny bird now in a dark box as for the missing woman. ‘Mr Honeysett is so handsome. Angie says there’s a monster on the loose.’

  ‘What does she know?’ Garry scoffed. ‘He’s not handsome and if he was, it doesn’t mean he didn’t strangle her and throw her in the river to be eaten by eels!’

  ‘Garry!’ Steven was properly cross. ‘Give over now.’ He took Megan’s hand and led her out on to the concrete path.

  Garry made a show of inspecting the filled feeders; then he gathered up the bag and eased out of the cage. He took his time latching the aviary door. Megan watched him so that if she was allowed to look after the birds, she would do it right.

  ‘Chop chop, Megsy!’ Steven Lawson grabbed Megan and lifted her off the ground. ‘Gotcha!’ he shouted.

  ‘No you have not.’ Megan
struggled, but he had got her and was holding her tight.

  ‘Love you, Megs,’ Steve Lawson whispered into her hair.

  ‘I love you back, Daddy,’ she confided. When he let her go, she pushed past her brother and skipped up to the house, bursting into the kitchen, happiness restored.

  Garry waited for his father by the back door and, sniffing, asked in a ‘man-to-man’ voice, ‘Do you reckon they’ll send Mr Honeysett to prison, Dad?’

  Steve Lawson scraped his shoes on the step. ‘I bloody hope so.’

  13

  Tuesday, 5 January 2016

  ‘Excuse me. What are you doing?’

  Jack whipped around. In the darkness he couldn’t see anyone.

  ‘Show yourself.’ Clipped speech sliced the night air.

  As if reeled in on the end of a line, Jack moved away from what looked like a dilapidated house. He’d hoped to have a look inside. Torchlight dazzled him, then the beam dropped to his feet. As the bright dots diminished, he saw an elderly woman, upright and dignified, white hair translucent in the moonlight. Faced with a tall pale man in black on a deserted towpath, she was unafraid.

  ‘You don’t live here,’ she informed him.

  ‘No… I…’ Jack advised Stella that, if in a jam, say whatever occurs. ‘I was clearing up.’ He scooped out his coat pockets and displayed his treasures: sticks, dried leaves and special shaped stones. There were biscuits for Stanley and a Cadbury’s wrapper for chocolate he’d shared with Bella on one of their night walks.