The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Have you said yes?’ In the evening gloom of the towpath, Jack couldn’t make out Stella’s expression.

  ‘Not without talking to you.’ A fractional pause. He guessed Stella had decided to investigate the Honeysett case, even if she hadn’t told the client.

  ‘You didn’t call me.’ He cursed himself. He was often out of touch and Stella never complained. All that mattered was that they had a new case.

  ‘It was late, I thought you’d be with… busy.’ Stella’s voice in the darkness was disembodied.

  They were on the Thames towpath. The river, hidden by dense scrub on the bank, was visible only where a light from the north side glimmered on the water. There was no wind; bare branches were black lines against the sky. The air was cold.

  Jack drifted closer to Stella. He had been nerving himself up to telling her about Bella. He guessed that Jackie had told her. Being discretion itself, Stella wouldn’t say Bella’s name. He couldn’t say that he hadn’t been with Bella, but on the towpath. Or that the figures he’d seen through the lace curtains of number 4 must have been Stella with Adam Honeysett. Above all he couldn’t tell her about Natasha Latimer’s pet cemetery.

  The appointment with Latimer was at eight. Stella had asked to see him at seven, ‘to fill you in on developments’. Both punctual, they arrived at the Greyhound pub on Kew Green as St Anne’s Church clock was chiming seven. Over ginger beers – neither drank alcohol before seeing a client – Stella told him about her encounter with the missing woman’s husband. She had brought him a copy of Honeysett’s file.

  Watching Stella as she reeled off her list of facts, Jack had observed how having a case energized her. Always alert despite working longer hours than humanly possible, Stella was never languid, but tonight she was animated. Her energy was infectious. He felt excitement stir and when they left the pub, Stella in her smart waxed jacket, sharply cut hair mussed and tousled (Jackie said it was a modish ‘wash-and-go’ cut), had seen, with puff-pigeoned pride, that Stella attracted the attention of some men clustered around a table crowded with pints. Jack had drawn himself up to his full six feet – Stella’s height – to indicate they were ‘together’, and then felt vaguely ashamed of the action.

  Stella had brought them to the towpath ostensibly for Stanley to poo, but he soon realized the true reason.

  ‘According to something I read, this was where Daphne Merry found Helen Honeysett’s dog.’ Stella was looking down at the river.

  Jack had come with Bella to Kew Stairs on one of their nocturnal wanderings. He had first kissed her here. He’d thought the impulse a categorical mistake, that Bella would be furious. But she’d clasped him closer and relief had flooded through him. After that she often came with him on his night walks. Happiest drawing dead plants in intricate monochrome, she said she felt at home in the deserted dark of London. As did he. Not keen to tell Stella this, Jack blurted, ‘Isn’t this where you and whatsisname found Stanley?’

  ‘Closer to Kew Bridge,’ Stella faltered.

  She must have forgotten that episode. Jack couldn’t see her expression, but was cross with himself for his indirect reference to a relationship that had gone wrong. He’d made Stella feel awkward. Stanley had nothing to do with a woman missing, pre­sumed murdered. ‘It’s strange how Adam Honeysett recognized your van. It doesn’t say Clean Slate.’ In the pub, he’d resisted saying this; he’d wanted to hear Stella’s account of the case. He said it now to change the subject.

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘I wonder if he was lying.’

  ‘He could’ve recognized the number plate. You would have.’

  ‘He’d have had to have seen you in the van,’ Jack reminded her.

  ‘He said he’d read about the Kew Gardens murder and other cases. He talked about wanting a fresh eye. He must have seen a picture of me.’

  ‘He’d only have seen a head-shot,’ Jack said. ‘If he knew about Clean Slate, why didn’t he ring the office like other clients, or come to the office, like I did?’

  ‘Adam’s not like other clients. He doesn’t want us to clean or even to get rid of a ghost. We’re not officially a detective agency; maybe he didn’t know how to approach me.’ Stella didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Sounds like he had no trouble “approaching” you. The guy must have followed you.’ Jack felt a coil of fury. He was inclined to say they shouldn’t take the man’s case. He barked, ‘Do you check behind you when you’re out and vary your routine?’

  ‘No! Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s not the point.’ Stella was watching Stanley pad about on the shingled path; she held an empty poo-bag at the ready.

  ‘It is the point if Honeysett killed his wife. He could have followed her to the towpath. You didn’t hear him until he was upon you.’ Stella could spot a stain from twenty paces and identify the most obscure smell, but she tended to trust a person until they gave her a glaring reason not to. Jack felt a lurch of nausea that Stella might one day vanish without trace.

  ‘Adam’d hardly ask us to investigate her disappearance if he killed her,’ Stella said. Again she didn’t sound certain.

  ‘Not if he knows we won’t find her, but wants to shore up his supposed innocence.’ Already Jack disliked Honeysett, not least because Stella referred to him as ‘Adam’. At best the man was insensitive – he should know better than to sneak up on a lone woman – anyone – in the dark. At worst he was a killer. ‘Like you said in the pub, we should interview the plumber.’ Once Jack was living in the street, he’d judge Honeysett for himself.

  ‘Adam’s file’s not comprehensive,’ Stella remarked. ‘I think he cobbled it together for our meeting. That’s what I really think is odd. Why didn’t he keep track along the way?’ Stanley stopped circling and, pulling on his lead, snouted along the towpath. ‘Lucie May covered it – maybe we should contact her. There won’t be gaps in her file.’

  Stella only found out after Terry Darnell’s death that Lucie May had had an affair with him. Lucie made no secret of resent­ing ‘Darnell’s daughter’ for his putting her first. Stella never expressed a view on Lucie, but had been irritated when Jack had consulted her about one of their investigations without discussing it with her. Since then Stella had done the same. Not from revenge: she didn’t work that way. However, proposing that they involve May so early in a case was new.

  ‘Shall we hold off? Lucie has a habit of taking over,’ Jack cautioned. ‘Let’s get familiar with the people involved first.’ He went down the steps to the river, careful not to slip on mud. The tide was coming in; water slopped over the lowest step. He called back, ‘Could Helen Honeysett have committed suicide?’

  ‘Adam said she was happy.’ Stella was lost in shadows on the bank.

  ‘He would say that, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Easy for the killer to push her into the river.’ Ordinarily, Stella disliked discussing death, but she had been brought up on tales of cadaver dogs and the life stages of larvae in a decomposing body. She wasn’t squeamish.

  Jack came back up the steps and, Stanley having not pooed, they continued along the towpath. Away from the lamplight, darkness thickened around them. ‘It was a risk; her body could have resurfaced. Let’s assume that the killer ensured that there was nothing to incriminate him. In which case, that makes it more likely the killer was strong enough to remove the corpse. It restricts suspects.’

  ‘Unless she knew her killer and went with him or her to where she was murdered.’ Stanley tugged on the lead and Stella stumbled forward.

  They were by the dilapidated house that Jack had been about to investigate when he was accosted by Daphne Merry. Again there were no lights on in the windows. This time there was no sign of Daphne Merry to give him away, yet Jack felt an anxious twinge that Stella would know he’d been there.

  ‘That’s possible,’ Jack agreed. ‘If indeed she is dead. Maybe she left him.’

  ‘She owned half the house. It’s not likely she’d l
eave him all her stuff if she wanted to split up with him. Her account hasn’t been touched or her Amex card used.’ Stella flapped the unused poo-bag at Stanley. ‘He ran here last night. Must be animal smells. Let’s find out who lives there. Being out of the way, it’s a good place to lure a victim. Talk about a haunted house.’ She urged Stanley away and set off back along the towpath.

  ‘I bet the police checked. Did your dad mention the Honeysett case?’ Jack caught up with her.

  ‘Not to me. Maybe Mum remembers. Except, thinking about it, they’d split up by then and were hardly talking.’ Stella stopped. ‘What was that?’

  ‘What was what?’ Jack held his breath.

  ‘Nothing. Thought I heard something. Probably just the wind.’ Stella looked behind her.

  They walked on in a silence that from Jack’s viewpoint wasn’t companionable. He kept a lookout for Daphne Merry as he tried to concoct what to say if she mentioned meeting in the early hours of this morning. Not if. When. After what seemed an age, light from the lamp-post by Thames Cottages was visible on the path ahead.

  Stella paused outside Latimer’s house. ‘This is a crazy job. Feel free to turn it down.’

  ‘Best I accept since you’ve accepted the Honeysett case.’ Jack regretted sounding resentful. He was intent on behaving as if the cottage was new to him. He hated lying to Stella – even by omission; too often he had a secret he had to keep from her. Stella would be alarmed that he had broken into a client’s property, even if he was going to be staying there soon. He looked at the cottage. Two panels in the front door were glazed with a pattern of fleur-de-lis. Tonight the garden – if that described an area in which nothing grew – was bathed in lurid green light from lamps that rendered the stone shapes sinister. The green morphed to lurid blue and back again.

  ‘They weren’t on last night,’ Stella remarked and Jack nearly agreed.

  Next door’s garden had organic matter. Weeds sprouted from plastic plant pots on a scrap of unkempt grass and had lifted tiles on the path. Given its state of neglect, he’d expect a ghost to be haunting no 2. The neglect suggested care that had long lapsed, perhaps due to illness or tragedy. Helen Honeysett had lived at no 4. Jack doubted ghosts got addresses wrong: why haunt number 1? He would speculate with Claudia.

  As they reached Latimer’s door light flooded the porch and a voice, tinny and monotone, demanded, ‘State your name and reason for visiting.’

  Jack and Stella remained stock still.

  ‘State your name and reason for visiting.’ The voice came from a silver panel in the wall. Jack’s instinct was to run, but Stella stepped forward and in a matching monotone said, ‘Names: Stella Darnell and Jack Harmon from Clean Slate. Reason for visiting: to discuss getting rid… cleaning.’

  The front door swung open into an empty hallway.

  *

  ‘I fly all over the world, haggling with charlatans trying to fleece me. This was meant to be my haven; the estate agents described it as an area of peace and tranquillity. Instead, what do I find?’ Natasha Latimer glowered at Stella and Jack as if they were to blame for her disappointment.

  ‘A ghost?’ Beside him on a plush silk-covered sofa, Jack felt Stella stiffen.

  ‘No! It’s malicious shit!’ They were in Natasha Latimer’s sitting room on the ground floor. She stood over them, a glass of wine in one hand, a remote control in the other. There was no television so Jack supposed it had operated the door. She hadn’t offered them a drink. Chilled from the towpath, Jack contemplated requesting hot milk with honey, but Stella would do more than stiffen if he did. There was no sign of Claudia.

  Latimer was familiar. Not because he had met her before – he was good with faces and knew he had not – but because she was a type. She was like the sisters of boys at his boarding school: confident, her hair snatched back in a velvet scrunchy, dressed conservatively in Russell and Bromley loafers, tapered slacks, pale blue cotton shirt, cardigan sleeves pushed above her wrists revealing a huge silver bangle like handcuffs. Not remotely like Stella, yet Latimer too was a woman of action. Like Stella she wouldn’t ponder on a decision, but get on with it. There the similarity ended. They were divided by class. Latimer had a demeanour of entitlement and certainty that things would go the way she wanted. Rather like he’d thought Bella until he’d got to know her better, Latimer was obdurate and undoubting. Stella had no sense of privilege, she deferred and offered respect where it was due – and where it wasn’t – to avoid conflict. Only a fool would mistake this as weakness. She was a match for Latimer who, as the Pow3r 1 number-plated Evoque on Kew Green signified, possessed merciless ambition. Latimer’s voice penetrated Jack’s thoughts.

  ‘…you’d expect they’d be grateful. I’ve increased property values – I put it on the bloody map! There was a piece about my basement in the Observer Mag and Tatler. Last week Radio London interviewed me.’ She contemplated her wine glass. ‘But no! Mrs Prim-as-you-like-Merry at number three complained about noise and dust. Adam fucking Honeysett at number four started out charming, but he’s a snake!’ Eyes blazing, nostrils flaring. ‘He took me to dinner. It was going nicely until he said that the vibrations from my digger could have damaged the street. He’s a tin-pot artist not a fucking engineer!’ She banged down her glass on a coffee table, spilling wine. Jack saw Stella twitch; wine was acid and could damage the wood.

  ‘What about Neville Rowlands?’ Stella asked.

  ‘What about him?’ Latimer whipped off her scrunchy and grabbed her hank of hair, rolling the scrunchy back over it, tugging it so tight Jack felt the sting on his own scalp.

  ‘He could be harbouring resentment.’

  ‘He’s dead. Hey, maybe it’s him haunting.’ Latimer gave a ghastly smile.

  ‘Where’s Claudia?’ Jack asked suddenly. Stella was staring at him.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your sister,’ Jack told her.

  ‘Oh, Claudia! She’s at her drumming group.’ Latimer appeared to bat a fly off her hair. ‘I expected trouble from that nurse next door or the son with a hundred budgies. My surveyor had to have a word about damp on their party wall. And if this place wasn’t soundproofed, those birds would drive me nuts!’ She tossed the remote control on to a chair and leant on the mantelpiece.

  ‘What is the son’s name?’ Stella enquired irrelevantly. Jack guessed it was a detective gambit.

  ‘No idea!’ Latimer was disdainful. ‘Geoff, Gordon? He’s at least forty. One of these weirdos married to his mama. Claudia is nice to him.’

  ‘Garry?’ Stella suggested innocently.

  Go, Wonderhorse. Jack settled happily in his chair.

  ‘No idea. Yes.’ Natasha Latimer pushed off the mantelpiece and retrieved her wine. ‘The only one with her head screwed on is old Sybil Lofthouse at the other end of terrace.’

  ‘Number five,’ Stella murmured.

  ‘…she was at the Stock Exchange, not married, could be gay, who cares? Has an ancient mutt. Says she’s learnt to keep herself to herself. Sybil has been nothing but civil, she wouldn’t blab about ghosts.’

  Jack imagined that Latimer approved of anyone who worked with money. While she was talking, Stella had been writing. Glancing across at her Filofax, Jack read ‘Budgerigars’. Stella wasn’t listing cleaning requirements, she was capturing details of the neighbours. She was being a detective. Stella’s moral code prevented her going undercover as a cleaner. Latimer had unwittingly handed them perfect cover. While being a detective for Adam Honeysett, Jack would be a cleaner in the same street. His heart soared.

  ‘…it would be funny were it not tragic. The old chap Judd ambushed me on the towpath and ranted on like a madman. Said I’d ripped out its soul. None of his business, I said. “Go and tell the cops I said that!”’ She guffawed a laugh and, grabbing a wine bottle from the coffee table, topped up her glass.

  ‘Who is Judd?’ Stella asked. Jack knew she would have taken notice of anyone described as a ‘madman’.

  ‘No one!’ Latimer fl
apped an impatient hand. Her inference being that he really was ‘no one’.

  ‘Your sister told Stella you have a close community here.’ Jack wasn’t over his disappointment that Claudia was out drumming. ‘Is Judd a friend?’

  ‘This lot have mouldered here for centuries. They need me!’ It came out as a strangled wail. ‘No, he’s not a friend.’ Latimer might be strident and imperious, but she was also scared. Why was she scared?

  ‘Who do you think is responsible for this rumour?’ The likely suspect was Neville Rowlands, a candidate for the murder of Helen Honeysett, but he was dead. If they did find her killer then he’d wanted him or her to be alive. He wouldn’t give up. ‘Who is Judd?’

  ‘Brian Judd is a slimy toad. I wouldn’t put the ghost rumours past him. Shit-bag!’ Hugging the wine bottle, Latimer was spiteful. ‘I’ve got the place alarmed to the police. I caught Barry the Birdman skulking in the back garden; he pretended he was looking for one of his budgies. No manners. It could be him.’

  Jack regarded his fingers assiduously. That he might have set off an alarm made him go cold. Absently, he corrected Latimer, ‘Garry’.

  ‘Only a ghost could get in.’ Latimer quaffed her wine in one go.

  ‘Please could we see the rest of the house?’ Stella retracted her pen with a click and stood up.

  Although Jack knew that Latimer had converted her basement, he wasn’t prepared for the contrast between the traditionally furnished sitting room, complete with beams and polished oak floorboards, and what he saw at the turn of the passage. He teetered at the top of a glass staircase. As they descended, each tread was outlined with minute blue lights. Jack had the sensation of floating. He gripped a steel rail for balance. Stanley flattened on the first tread, ears back and claws skittering. Stella picked him up and carried him down.

  When they reached the bottom row upon row of ceiling lights lit up, reflecting a floor sheened bluey silver like a sheet of ice. Latimer went ahead, drifting like a ghost. A glass panel slid aside, then another. The basement was cavernous. Jack knew that it went a long way under the garden.