The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  True Hosts didn’t keep pets; they avoided any intimate connection. Brian Judd had given over an entire room to his dog. It didn’t add up, Jack thought.

  He lifted the bag of biscuits down from the shelf. Fishing his reading glasses from his coat he put them on. In the poor light he read the sell-by date: June 2012.

  He needn’t worry about being attacked by a small dog, it no longer lived here. Or anywhere. The room, neglected and deserted, was less a shrine for a loved animal than a sign that the owner couldn’t face the immensity of his loss.

  Jack placed the bag on the shelf, facing as it had been; a True Host would notice the smallest alteration. His attention was caught by a letter on the table. The name on the letterhead was Natasha Latimer’s. This was a connection between Latimer and Judd. Although he was wearing gloves, he didn’t pick it up.

  DEAR MR JUDD,

  You have received numerous communications from my lawyers re my purchase of your property. To date you have not replied.

  Unfortunately the building has been allowed to deteriorate. It is in need of extensive renovation or demolition will be the only option. Enclosed is an increased offer that should expedite the matter. It allows you to relocate somewhere more suitable for you.

  I look forward to receiving your acceptance, ASAP.

  Yours sincerely

  NATASHA LATIMER

  Enc.

  In the peremptory tone and the expressed expectation of success Jack recognized the woman he had met only once. The date of the letter was December 2010. Since Latimer hadn’t bought the house, the ‘matter’ had never been ‘expedited’. Number 1 Thames Cottages must have been second choice. This house, set back from the river, offered more scope for alteration than the house she’d bought. Jack, too, would prefer to live here, although he wouldn’t instal a basement. Jack found he was obscurely grateful to Judd for not giving in to Latimer and keeping the house as it was. This too was not in the character of a True Host. Yet an atmosphere of malevolence pervaded the rooms.

  Whatever Judd was, he must dislike Latimer. A True Host never forgave. Natasha Latimer, ruled by hard cash and a hard heart, would be haunted by her nemesis.

  Jack lifted the letter up by one corner and slipped out a yellowed newspaper clipping. It was dated March 12 2011. Just a few weeks after he’d met Stella.

  PENSIONER DEFIES DEVELOPER

  By Lucie May

  A man whose family has owned an eighteenth-century house by the river at Kew for 150 years has turned down an offer of £1.5 million. ‘Mr Judd has let the house fall to rack and ruin. It’s crying out for skilled restoration. It’s my dream home,’ property developer Natasha Latimer told us. ‘Judd could retire to a little property. Only a fool would refuse hard cash.’

  A recluse, Brian Judd walks his dog on the towpath before dawn and late at night. Police have warned Latimer to stop approaching the elderly man or they will charge her under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Judd, who declined our invite for a chat, has lived in the substantial riverside property all his life. Charles Judd, a prosperous wine merchant, bought the house in 1858 for twenty-two guineas. In the 1930s his grandson sold the family business and drank the proceeds. His son, Brian Judd, retired from Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s accounts department in 2005 and has rarely been seen since.

  Latimer’s intended renovations include digging out a deep basement. Unmarried with no children, Latimer told us she didn’t plan to sell on the improved building at a vast profit, she wanted to join ‘in with the local community’.

  Brian Judd’s home is close to the towpath where, in 1987, 26-year-old estate agent Helen Honeysett went missing. Judd, like all men living in the vicinity, was questioned by the police. He was working at the office late that night.

  Looks like Ms Latimer will have to keep searching for that Dream Home!

  It was the kind of story Lucie loathed. People wrangling over a house wouldn’t make her Journalist of the Year. Jack supposed that Latimer had tried to harness the press to drum up support. No one manipulated Lucie, and a champion of the underdog, she’d have backed Brian Judd over Latimer.

  Latimer didn’t talk of houses or homes, but properties and projects. It was a shame, he thought, that Helen Honeysett wasn’t actually haunting her. A top-selling estate agent, it was likely they’d have got on. The Thames Cottages ‘property’ had come with Neville Rowlands as a sitting tenant; presumably Latimer had offered him a sizeable sweetener to move on. Jack shone his torch around the room filled with chewed and manky toys, a dog bed, magazines advising on defleaing or what to do on Bonfire Night. He felt a wash of grief for the small dog that had capered and snoozed here. Rowlands’ dogs were buried in the family pet cemetery in the back garden. How much ‘hard cash’ had persuaded him to leave them behind?

  *

  Judd’s bedroom might be a monk’s cell. It was furnished with a single bed above which hung a plastic lampshade operated by a cord. On a stool by the bed was another Dogs Monthly, December 2010. Was that when his dog had died? A white MDF wardrobe, the fittings loosening, leant crazily against the wall. Jack prised open a door and a musty odour drifted out. Stella could identify a composite of smells in seconds; he settled for the predominant one of damp cloth and old man. Three jackets, a black suit encased in dry-cleaning plastic and two pairs of shoes, one black and one brown, all scuffed, the leather dry and cracked. True Hosts were particular about appearance. Jack kept his own shoes lubricated and polished.

  He gripped the door. The man he and Stella had met on the towpath the night when Stella had scared Jack with her twenty-second hearing test had been wearing scuffed black shoes. He lifted one black lace-up off the rail. The soles were scratched. No mud. But then it hadn’t rained and the towpath was shingled. The man had been walking his dog. There was no dog here. All the same…

  Jack felt a change in the air. The minutest alteration. True Hosts moved stealthily; Brian Judd would give no warning of his return. Jack went to the doorway and, crouching, peeped out into the passage. People watched for intruders at head height. But a True Host would know to look down.

  Thin light played tricks with distance and dimension and Jack took time to orientate himself. His skin prickled with the nearness of another human being. A weighted silence pressed in upon him. He hid his face with his coat collar and moved quickly along the corridor. He reached the dog’s room and hesitated. Was Brian Judd waiting for him there? Or was he on the landing, patiently biding his time? Two choices. Jack tried to out-think him. He’d expect Jack to try to leave. So he was on the landing. Or Judd would expect Jack to think that’s what he’d think and so he was in the dog’s room. Or he’d think Jack would guess that and so he was on the landing after all. But Jack had thought that too. Judd would confound him by being in one of the other rooms in the passage. His head bursting, Jack crept into the dog’s room. Something moved by his feet. He froze. The stuffed hen had fallen out of his pocket.

  A slant of moonlight silvered the floor. Jack’s throat tickled with dust that hung in the cold air. True Hosts disliked dust.

  Who am I and what have I done?

  Brian Judd had typed Steven Lawson’s last words on to Natasha Latimer’s computer. He had a reason to hold a grudge against her. But how did he know of the diary? Jack counted to ten and crept back to the door.

  The passage was quiet. He pushed the thinking on. There was one approach that a True Host never took.

  Jack gathered his coat to him and ran down the passage. He leapt down the stairs and trampled on the dead leaves in the hall. The obvious exit was out of the front door. He veered left and slammed into wood. The lavatory door was shut. He rattled the handle, knowing already he’d miscalculated. The True Host was with him all the way. The door gave and barrelling inside, Jack flung himself through the open sash and tore up the path to the footpath.

  True Hosts never showed themselves. Brian Judd would not have expected Jack to break cover. He had out-thought him. Jack stood for
a moment in the shadow of the porch. He willed Brian Judd to join him.

  Why did Judd lock the bathroom door from the inside? Jack felt a stab of doubt. Could the person who locked the door have no more right to be in Judd’s house than he did? Did he already have a guest?

  He heard a call. A cat or a fox. Someone was waiting in the shadows by the riverbank. Brian Judd.

  A flicker. Small breed, pale coat the colour of the fur caught in the spines of the hairbrush in the dog’s room. The dog wasn’t dead after all.

  51

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  At Chiswick Bridge I decide to walk on. I hate lying to you. I would dearly like to escort you back to your cottage, but you appreciate me giving you privacy. Soon I will be with you and we will never be parted.

  Instead I follow you along the towing-path. Keeping watch and keeping out of sight. It’s not a good time to be out. I don’t want you encountering that young man, you are far too trusting. When we get back to the cottage, you pull your curtains. You shut me out. I don’t like that.

  52

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ Jack fussed Stanley’s ears as the little poodle smothered him with efficient licks.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Stella sounded furious.

  ‘I was…’ Jack couldn’t tell the truth. He turned the tables. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Stanley needed a… Oh, never mind, we have to pay a call on someone.’ Stella was steaming off into the darkness. He caught up with her as the lamp-post came into sight.

  ‘Hang on, Stell, look.’ He plunged into thick bushes beside Latimer’s cottage. ‘This must be where that tunnel in the basement comes out.’ Stanley, proficient at agility, nimbly jumped over brambles and snuffled inquisitively through the bars of a rusting iron grille.

  Stella peered into the gloom of the passage beyond the bars. She looked down at the dog. ‘He’s seen something.’ She squatted beside him and ran her fingers under the metal frame.

  ‘Careful he doesn’t get his head stuck,’ Jack warned as Stanley nosed forward. Health and safety was Stella’s thing but, filled with contrition at almost being caught trespassing, he was eager to make amends, however trivial. Or futile.

  ‘Here we are.’ Stella slotted a key into the lock and pulled on the grille. Impeded by the brambles, it opened a few centimetres. Her voice echoed in the dank passage. ‘Either this is a spare or our intruder leaves the key here. I’d bet on the latter.’

  He should tell her that he had a good idea who the intruder was.

  ‘I think I saw that man again.’ Stella stepped into the passage. ‘The one we met on the towpath.’

  ‘Stell, watch out! Judd might be in there.’ Idiot. Jack smacked his forehead. Truth time. ‘Actually, I have an idea who the intruder is.’

  ‘Who?’ Stella sounded far away. She’d switched on her torch app; ghostly light flickered on the brick.

  He must get the key off her and lock the grille. It was never good to thwart a True Host. Jack cannoned down the tunnel and found her in the vaulted chamber sitting on the digger.

  ‘Latimer made enemies before she moved here. She tried to buy that house on the towpath, but the owner, who’s called Brian Judd, wouldn’t sell.’ He was out of breath although he hadn’t been running.

  ‘How do you know?’ Stella operated the lever and raised the claw. Stanley barked uproariously, a strident sound that made Jack’s ears ring. Worried that the dog would be crushed, Jack picked him up.

  ‘Lucie May wrote an article.’ He compounded his stab at the truth with a lie: ‘It was in Honeysett’s second file.’

  ‘I didn’t see it.’ In the semi-darkness, Jack couldn’t tell if Stella doubted him.

  ‘Maybe I saw it somewhere else.’ He sounded lame. He remembered what Stella had said earlier. ‘Why did you say the case was wide open?’

  ‘Like you said, everyone living on this terrace in 1987 could have murdered Helen Honeysett. Or it could have been team­work. She upset all of them.’

  Stella told him she had met Jane Drake. While excited by the information she’d gathered, Jack felt frustration that, again, she’d met a suspect without him.

  Stella jumped off the digger. ‘Show me the back garden.’

  ‘It’s dark.’ Jack didn’t know why he’d said that.

  ‘It was dark the first time you saw it.’ Stella headed back down the tunnel.

  Jack was hot with confusion. How did Stella know? In a flash he understood. Jane Drake. He ran after her. ‘I’m sorry, I was impatient to see the house and—’

  Stella unlocked the garden door with the grille key. ‘One key fits two locks. It probably used to work the front door before the Banham.’ Stanley tumbled out of Jack’s grasp and whisked inside. They went after him. Stella locked the door. Jack hoped that, rather than keeping Brian Judd out, she hadn’t shut him in with them.

  She would know about his breaking in to Judd’s house too. She knew him much better than he knew her. She knew him better than Bella. ‘Stella I—’

  Stella trained the torch on a headstone. ‘Someone’s been cleaning this.’

  ‘Cleaning it?’ If he told Stella about his visits to the dilapidated house, she would refuse to work with him. At least he’d have told the truth. Jack felt he was teetering on a cliff edge.

  ‘Hercules died in 1987, but the headstone’s lighter than that one over there for Max who died in 2012. Max’s stone is better quality – granite is hard-wearing – than the lighter one for Hercules. Why should the older, poorer stone look newer? Answer, it’s been cleaned.’ She bent and sniffed the 1987 stone. ‘Mrs Cooper’s Concentrate.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Silly question. Stella could identify a cleaning astringent in one sniff.

  ‘It gets rid of algae and moss as well as dirt.’ She arched her back in a stretch. ‘Could Rowlands be buried here? I suppose not, that’s illegal.’ She raked the beam over the headstones.

  ‘Actually it’s not. According to the Burial Laws Amendment Act 1980, if Rowlands had owned the house, he could be buried in his garden. A body is classed as “Clinical Waste” and provided you’ve registered the death—’ He interrupted himself. ‘The thing is, Stella, I went into…’

  Stella had gone. He went round the hedge. She was craning over the little bridge at the green glass skylights. ‘That’s not right.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I’m really sorry. I should—’

  ‘The lights only work if triggered by movement or body heat.’ She pointed down.

  ‘That’s right.’ He saw why when he’d first seen the glass he’d mistaken it for water. He imagined dropping a stone and making ripples on the glowing surface.

  Stella’s voice was a murmur. ‘Jack, there’s someone in the basement.’

  53

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  Jack switched on the light in the hall. Stella couldn’t hear any­thing below.

  At the top of the stairs, a finger to his lips, he whispered, ‘I’ll go first.’

  ‘Better I go, I’ve got Stanley.’ As if illustrating this doubtful advantage, Stanley hopped on to the first step and forged on down, forcing Stella to push past Jack.

  On the River Wall, a solitary light twinkled on the water. The base­ment lights came on. The glass panels slide aside. At the end of the sweep of ice-like floor, Stella saw that the door to the hidden chamber was open. They had just been in there. The door had been shut.

  Jack strode past her, patches of blue light illuminating the floor where he stepped. He kicked open the brick door with a crash.

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ she heard him say.

  ‘Where were you?’ a voice demanded.

  ‘In your pet cemetery.’

  Illuminated in the dirty light, Natasha Latimer sat on the digger. Her sister Claudia was leaning against it, gazing up as if waiting for her go. Stella gathered her wits and signalled to Stanley to sit.

  ‘Your ghost isn’t a ghost, he’s
as alive as you or I,’ Jack said. ‘But I think you already know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Ghosts are real.’ Without her bobble hat, Claudia seemed slighter, like a ghost herself in the dim light of the bulb.

  Straining on his lead, Stanley began scuffling in the dirt. ‘Leave!’ Stella hissed. The poodle shook his head; something was flapping between his teeth. A dead creature. Stella tried to see, but he gave a gurgling growl. If Stanley was being a hunter, he wouldn’t give up his prey. She shone her phone down. It was a scrap of rag. She let herself breathe. It wasn’t as enticing as a crisp bag; he’d soon lose interest.

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ Natasha Latimer batted her sister away. ‘You’ve dragged me here in the middle of the night for what?’

  ‘The night is the best time of the day,’ Claudia said dreamily. ‘We will meet our ghosts. That’s why I said to come.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it is the best time!’ Jack agreed. He looked up at Latimer. ‘In 1987 those renting had more rights than they do now. If the landlord had wanted to get rid of a sitting tenant, they’d have had to offer an incentive. How much did you offer Neville Rowlands to leave?’

  ‘Enough.’ Natasha Latimer smiled. Stella knew that was a bad sign. Why was Jack discussing tenants’ rights?

  ‘I said she should let him stay.’ Claudia buffed the yellow paintwork with her blanket cloak. ‘It wasn’t good karma to make him go.’

  ‘I agree,’ Jack said. ‘But Neville Rowlands has been coming back and you knew. You hoped we’d boot him out. You couldn’t tell the police because the press would love the story of the young property developer who picks on elderly men.’

  Latimer folded her arms across her chest. ‘Rowlands is dead.’