The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  Jack could think of only one way to divert her. A split second before he let go of the lead he cried, ‘Oh no, Stanley’s escaped!’

  Stanley shot away into the darkness around the side of the house. Stella chased after him. Jack followed. It came to him that Natasha Latimer had talked about Brian Judd at her cottage. He could have said that. He’d let Stanley go for no reason. If something happened to the little dog he’d never forgive himself.

  There was no one there. Where had Stella gone? Dimly aware that he was sick with himself, Jack tore along the side of the building to the back. He stumbled and fell headlong. He was cushioned by damp grass, short and springy beneath him. He rolled over and staggered to his feet.

  ‘Stella!’ At the top of his voice. He didn’t care if Brian Judd heard.

  ‘He’s here!’ In thin moonlight, Stella, etched in silver, was a hologram. She was peering through what Jack knew was the kitchen window. ‘He’s here. Whoever’s in there has Stanley. I can see him. I’m calling the police!’

  ‘No, Stella—’ Judd would tell them that Jack had broken into his house. He hadn’t worn gloves; if SOCOs checked for prints his would be all over the bathroom window. Cashman would be beside himself.

  ‘There’s no sodding signal.’ Stella was waving her phone in the air.

  In the midst of this, it occurred to Jack that she rarely swore. ‘I’ll sort it.’ He hated himself for being the pseudo superhero. He went to the lavatory window and thrust up the sash so hard it crashed against the top. He flung himself over the sill.

  The door was locked. There was no key.

  There was whimpering through the door panel. ‘Stanley! I’m coming.’ He flung his weight against the door. Hot pain shot up his shoulder and down his wrist. The door held. He rubbed his arm and launched himself again. It wasn’t there. He hurtled through space, shadows and shapes spinning about him. More pain as he fell flat on his face. Something hot and damp slathered his cheeks. It was Stanley. The dog snuffled around him, pushing at his hair to get to him, licking him.

  ‘The front door was open.’ Stella stood over him. She was holding up the key to the lavatory. No sympathy, she was being practical.

  Jack dusted himself down. He had landed well, nothing broken.

  ‘This place needs a deep clean.’ Stella clipped on Stanley’s lead. In the weak light seeping through the glazed front door, Jack saw that there were even more leaves and flakes of bark than the last time he had come. Wind off the river would send them in. It suggested that Brian Judd did use the front door.

  ‘Hello!’ Stella called up the stairs.

  Jack grabbed her arm. ‘Sssh!’

  ‘You saw someone up there. Brian Judd presumably. He might be too frightened to come down. Mr Judd, it’s OK, we were just passing by. We mean you no harm.’

  Silence. Jack felt creeping chill. He sensed a presence. It emanated from the walls, the shadows, the stairs that wended into darkness. Someone somewhere was standing very still. Their mind was blank, their gaze vague. Waiting.

  ‘I was possibly mistaken. It was more likely to have been a ref­lec­tion or… or…’ Jack could hear himself. He didn’t sound convincing.

  ‘Best we check. Brian Judd could be lying injured or unconscious. Or worse.’ Leading Stanley, Stella crunched over the leaves to the staircase. She seemed unafraid. If there was a problem she would address it.

  ‘Stop!’ Jack exclaimed in a near shout.

  One hand on the banister, Stella froze. ‘Why, what’s the matter?’ Jack detected a quaver in her voice. Stella barely trusted him at the best of times.

  ‘If Judd is there and is injured or afraid, Stanley could make things worse. All of us could overwhelm him.’ Jack pictured the face at the window. The expression hadn’t been fear. ‘I’ll go. Stay here.’

  ‘There’s only two of us. Stanley’s on a lead and he’s good at detecting.’ Stella didn’t relish chivalry.

  Stanley detecting Judd was just what Jack did not want. He would meet the True Host alone. He could hardly explain this to Stella.

  ‘Maybe he’s phobic about dogs. Some people are.’

  Stella got this. In her cleaning work she encountered many phobias. Dust being the main one. She let him go.

  On the landing, pallid light leached from open doors along a passage. Judd had ample warning of his approach.

  ‘OK up there?’ Stella was whispering. For some reason this made Jack feel properly scared. He dared not reply and give Brian Judd his position. Judd knew anyway. Jack felt him close. One of the shadows was not a shadow.

  He took a step along the passage. He felt as if his skin was alive; every part of him tingled. Another step. Two more. He could no longer cover his back. He fumbled for his Maglite. His fingers closed around the little torch and he slipped the keys attached to the ring between his fingers. Crude defence. No True Host would be prey to violence. He couldn’t use the Maglite. He couldn’t face what he would see. He would die.

  Jack backed away down the corridor and ran downstairs. Despite the chill, he was in a flop sweat.

  Stella wasn’t in the hall. In a second Jack got it. The point about a True Host was that they second-guessed you. Then they third-guessed you. The choice might be binary, but you had to out-think them. Judd had known Jack would want to confront him alone. He had known that Jack would prevent Stella going up the stairs with him. It was a classic chess move. He had left Stella alone. Not alone.

  ‘Stella!’ Jack rushed into the little closet. The window was shut. He pulled on it, but this time it didn’t open. Blinded with panic, he hadn’t seen that the latch had been fastened. His fingers trembled as he unscrewed it.

  ‘This needs a chemical scour. Almost not worth doing except it’s an antique.’ Stella was shining her torch into the filthy lavatory pan. ‘You were quick.’

  ‘Yes, he’s not up there.’ Deception had a habit of snowballing. The distance between them was vast: soon Stella would be out of sight.

  ‘Let’s check out Judd’s alibi. We don’t have motive, but he’d have had the means to dispose of her.’

  ‘He must have one since he’s not a suspect.’

  ‘We must test every alibi. The killer hasn’t been found in thirty years. It’s likely he has been interviewed by the police and dismissed because he has an alibi. Or she, we shouldn’t assume it’s a man either.’ Stella was holding the bathroom key. ‘There’s no one downstairs, I checked.’ She fitted the key on the inside of the bathroom door. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ She was already at the front door.

  Jack lingered in the lavatory. He would come back. Brian Judd was expecting him.

  *

  ‘That wasn’t here then.’ Stella’s boots crunched on the shingled towpath.

  ‘What wasn’t, when?’ Jack had walked city streets at night since he was a teenager without fear. He was hunting those whom most people took care to avoid. Tonight, on the desolate towpath, the river black and timeless on his right, he was very afraid indeed. Honeysett’s killer wasn’t dead. He had just got better at killing. Whom had he killed?

  Who would be next?

  ‘In the photos of police searching the undergrowth for Honeysett in 1987, the towpath was churned-up mud. If someone had attacked Helen Honeysett, she could have slipped and fallen.’

  ‘It was winter. The mud might have been frozen solid,’ Jack said.

  ‘She could have slipped on ice.’ Stella stopped to let Stanley lift his leg by a bush on the bank. They watched his teetering hops on three legs – for a delicately built animal he lacked balance and co-ordination.

  ‘There were no footprints indicating a struggle. The police couldn’t isolate footprints. They knew dog walkers – Lawson and his daughter, Lofthouse, Helen Honeysett, Daphne Merry and Neville Rowlands and Adam – had been there. But there were joggers and other dog walkers that never came forward.’ She continued walking. ‘This surface would leave no prints.’

  ‘Adam Honeysett could have parked on tha
t road by Kew Bridge that goes to the towpath. There’s businesses under the arches – a gym open until late – but in 1987 it would have been deserted.’ Jack thought he sounded like Lucie May, intent on proving a man guilty regardless. He was playing for time. He must find out about Brian Judd himself. Nothing that Stella discovered would tell the real truth. True Hosts were not identifiable by National Insurance numbers or the electoral roll. He must find him and follow him. Except, Jack was sure that Judd, moving on soundless soles somewhere close, had found him first. In the next second, this was confirmed,

  ‘He’s heard something.’ Stella put her finger to her lips. Stanley was straining back the way they had come, his tail between his legs.

  ‘He’ll smell lots of smells here.’ Spears of dim light drifted through branches. Someone was there. Jack felt the coil of fear unwind.

  ‘He’s not sniffing, he’s listening.’ Stella wasn’t mollified. ‘Oh, I see, he wants a poo.’ She dug about in her jacket pocket for a poo-bag.

  Jack suppressed the urge to snatch up Stanley, grab Stella’s hand and head for the lamp-post by Thames Cottages. Stanley circled one way, then the other; he padded a metre back towards the dilapidated house and circled again.

  Hurry up.

  ‘Good evening.’ A pleasant greeting.

  ‘Evening,’ Stella responded brightly. Her lack of fear should lessen his own, but instead it was quadrupled. Jack couldn’t speak.

  As the man briefly entered the circle of light, his head torch dazzled Jack and he noticed a dog lead slung around his neck. It was clipped over his chest – the dog walker’s way – so it wouldn’t slip off. The man moved off into the darkness.

  Perhaps Stella was spooked by the encounter after all because she picked Stanley up and hastened on. At the lamp-post by Thames Cottages, she stopped again. The man was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t had time to go into one of the cottages or to reach the alley. He must have gone on to the Kew Stairs.

  Jack walked up the green with Stella and watched until her van joined the South Circular. As he shut the door of Latimer’s cottage and paused in what he hoped was an empty house, the presentiment of evil he’d felt earlier crystallized. Helen Honeysett had been murdered by a True Host.

  Who am I and what have I done?

  Who had known that these were Steven Lawson’s last words?

  In the dilapidated house, he’d been within touching distance of Brian Judd. Judd hadn’t been a suspect; he had an alibi. Stella was right to discount all the alibis. True Hosts circumnavigated circumstantial evidence and, with sleight of hand, manipulated assumptions. Jack must stop Brian Judd killing again. And he must do it alone.

  47

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  Stanley started barking almost as soon as they were on the South Circular. Short sharp barks. He was asking something. Stella stopped the van minutes from Thames Cottages. He must have eaten something illegal and wanted to do another poo. She walked with him along Townmead Road. They passed the gates to the recycling centre and arrived at the entrance to the housing estate she had pointed out to Jack from the towpath. While Stanley did his circling this way and that, Stella regarded a sign: ‘No Unauthorized Entry. Contact Concierge to Visit Residents.’ The concierge’s kiosk was empty so who would know?

  Perhaps it was that, although after midnight, Stella’s mind was busy and walking was preferable to trying to sleep. Or perhaps it was that Stanley changed his mind about pooing there. Instead of returning to her van and driving to her house in Hammersmith, Stella let Stanley tug her past the kiosk and, without authorized entry, into the estate.

  Even in daylight the curving streets and terraces of faux Georgian houses in pale sandstone, with no cars parked on the kerbs or people on the pavements, was unsettling. Although Stella appreciated pavements free of litter and splodges of chewing gum, at night it was uncanny. She trailed after Stanley as he pottered and sniffed along the ‘pretend’ street.

  Jack had seemed different. Was there something the matter? She couldn’t give him more cleaning, he was at Natasha Latimer’s full time and when he finished he’d return to Suzie’s and to the London Underground. Maybe he was missing Bella. Stella had no remedy. She wasn’t aware of missing anyone if she wasn’t with them.

  Although she couldn’t see cameras, she felt she was being watched. With each step, she felt the silence and stillness press in on her.

  Stanley dragged her up steps where lighted bollards revealed a winding path mosaicked with cobbles. He nosed between the tall red ornamental grasses that Stella remembered seeing on the towpath. It was like a maze. They arrived in a circular clearing from which other paths led. Balanced on a plinth in the centre was a large stone ball. She hoped it was firmly fixed as Stanley beetled to its base and began to poo on the cobbles. Looking away to give him privacy, Stella rummaged in her jacket for a poo-bag. She tried every pocket, but only found loose change and liver treats. She had used the last one on the towpath. When Stanley had finished, she chose one of the paths, searching for something to use instead. She wished the man she’d seen earlier would come back this way.

  She arrived at the top of steps leading to the towpath and went down. Something caught her eye. A crisp packet. Perfect. As she reached for it, Stanley snouted forward and snapped it between his jaws. He glared at her with wary menace. No amount of agility or obedience classes had trained him out of snatching litter or discarded food and possessing it with heart-stopping ferocity. Stella waved a treat under his nose. Recognizing a bribe, he whipped his head away. No use pretending she didn’t care. He knew too well that she did care. It was freezing, the towpath was dark and the silence oppressive. Was it like this for Helen Honeysett?

  She would walk Stanley back to his poo, and on the way maybe he’d drop the bag.

  She must have strayed off her original path because she found herself back at the towpath. She waited a moment, hoping the man she’d seen earlier would return. But perhaps he’d been going home.

  This time she saw that there was another path a couple of metres along. She took that one and at last found herself by the stone sphere. And the poo.

  Stanley’s tail dropped. He growled. Not the growl of a dog who has captured a crisp bag or the sharp squawky bark of a dog who wants a poo. But a warning bark that signalled danger.

  Stella took in reality. She was alone, far from anyone who might hear her call for help.

  ‘Who are you?’ A woman appeared from behind the stone.

  ‘I might ask you that.’ Too late Stella recalled Terry’s advice about humouring strangers in dark isolated places. He had never advised being haughty.

  The woman wore a quilted jacket and trousers, long hair tied back, her face immaculately made up. ‘I live here, I don’t have to explain myself.’ The air of entitlement bristled. Perhaps haughty was OK after all. The woman leant on the stone ball. If it rolled off the plinth it would crush Stella.

  Hazily she thought the woman was from Neighbourhood Watch and had seen Stanley poo. Worse, she’d seen Stella walk away from it. ‘I was about to pick—’

  ‘I know who you are.’ The woman was pacing around the ball, narrowly missing Stanley’s poo. ‘I’ve seen you with Adam. Think you can keep him when no one else can?’ In contrast to her clothes and make-up the woman’s trainers were thick with mud, her laces frayed and trailing.

  Stella tried to summon up Terry’s list of warning signs for phys­ical violence. Body tension, tick. Pacing, tick. Increased volume of speech, tick. Terry had taught Stella to fell a strong man in seconds. The woman was thin and, although she was wiry, Stella was sure she could overcome her. Her dad had advised ‘de-escalation of the situation’ as a first step. Stella went for the truth. ‘I hardly, er, know Mr Honeysett.’ It was true, but she sounded like she was lying. She said emphatically, ‘I am not having a relationship with him.’

  ‘I saw you coming out of his house.’ The woman spat venom. ‘I’ve seen you by the river with him.’

 
; ‘I’m working for him.’ But in that instant Stella realized she and Jack were working for Helen Honeysett, a dead woman who couldn’t speak for herself. Not for her husband.

  ‘Assess threat and risk and then come up with a working strategy…’

  Terry had said that part of the strategy was to ask yourself if your action would resolve the situation. Running away was an obvious action. ‘I’m sure if you talked to Adam, he’d—’

  The woman hissed, ‘Don’t placate me. I was stupid. I believed he’d leave her. I was prepared to do anything for him. Even perjury!’ She broke off one of the ornamental grasses and flung it at Stella’s feet like a discarded spear.

  So much for ‘de-escalation’. The woman was blocking the entrance to the nearest path, a warning sign of violence.

  ‘You committed perjury?’ Stella had seen a younger version of her in Adam Honeysett’s augmented file. Lucie May called her ‘the Mistress’. Jane Drake was the nineteen-year-old with the pied-à-terre whom Adam Honeysett had been with when Helen Honeysett vanished.

  ‘I told the police I was with Adam when his wife disappeared. That made me fair game for the wolves. People from the tabloids shouting through my letterbox, chasing me with cameras.’ She snapped off another grass and flailed it at Stella. ‘One bitch called me a whore!’

  Stella found Drake’s systematic vandalism of the grasses as disturbing as her words. ‘Your alibi made Adam Honeysett the prime suspect. He’d been unfaithful. It gave him a strong motive for killing Helen. How was that a favour?’

  ‘It got him off the hook. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be in prison.’ Jane Drake held a grass in both hands out in front of her as if she were involved in some arcane ceremony. She whispered, ‘The night that woman disappeared, Adam was sup­posed to come to my flat. He rang saying he had to work late. He always told her that when he was with me, so I knew he was lying.’

  ‘He was with you.’

  The grasses shifted, a dry rustling. Neither woman noticed. Nor did they notice there was no breeze.