The Dog Walker

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘Dead to you,’ Jack said. ‘After you got him out, you didn’t care what happened to him.’

  ‘I didn’t tell the police about Rowlands breaking in because I didn’t bloody know!’ Natasha Latimer turned to Stella. ‘Are you going to let him talk to me like this? He’s the bloody cleaner!’

  Stella had never heard Jack so brutal and unforgiving. If he were a cleaner, she’d have to sack him. But he was a detective so she did nothing.

  ‘What’s the harm?’ Claudia flapped her cloak. ‘Nev visits his animals. We must have access to our dear departed. He’s not a criminal, he’s a sweetie!’

  Latimer scowled down at her sister. ‘No one is a sweetie.’

  ‘It’s only bricks and mortar, Nats. Love conquers all,’ Claudia said apropos of nothing.

  Natasha climbed off the digger and, speaking as if her sister didn’t exist, said to Stella, ‘Ask your operative to stay until the locks are changed and then leave.’ She went through to the basement.

  Light slanted into the chamber as the lamps in the basement lit up. Stella heard the panels swish open and shut. Then silence. Stanley had dropped the rag; she snatched it up and stuffed it in her pocket.

  ‘Could one of you tell me how to drive this?’ Claudia was perched on the digger, her cloak billowing.

  ‘Let me show you,’ Jack said.

  *

  ‘So Claudia gave Neville Rowlands a key,’ Stella said.

  Lights dotted the River Wall. Residents of Strand on the Green across the Thames were waking and starting the day. Natasha Latimer and her sister had gone. Stella and Jack sat on the lips sofa in the basement. They had drinks, tea for Stella, hot milk with honey for Jack.

  ‘One thing I’d liked about Latimer was that she spared the pet graves. Yet it didn’t fit with who she was. I knew she must have paid Rowlands to leave, but what sum was worth leaving his pets behind? Looks like he and Claudia shafted Latimer! Hoorah for Claudia.’ Jack wondered if he’d see her again.

  ‘It was still trespassing. It’s against the law.’ Stella got off the sofa and went over to the River Wall. The river appeared to sub­sume her. Jack had the dreadful notion she might drown and silently urged her to come away. When she spoke it even sounded as though she was under water. ‘Was it Claudia who started the haunting rumour? And why Helen Honeysett specifically?’

  ‘Claudia Latimer is in touch with spirits. She’s a sensitive soul. She will feel Honeysett’s ghost here.’ Jack was inclined to go with Claudia on that, but he wouldn’t push it. ‘This entire area is imbued with Helen’s disappearance. That’s a haunting of sorts.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain who put the question on the screensaver or operated the digger.’ Stella had palpably had it with spirits.

  ‘Maybe Rowlands isn’t the sweetie Claudia thinks he is. She sees the good in us all. Megan Lawson said Helen Honeysett called him a sweetie too, although I expect she called everyone that. Rowlands took Latimer’s money and kept a key to her house. It must have been tempting to indulge in a touch of revenge for being booted out. Yes it’s against the law, but I kind of get it.’ Jack totally got it, but refrained from saying so.

  ‘How would Rowlands know what Steven Lawson wrote in his diary?’ River light played over her.

  ‘Lucie complained that Neville Rowlands was the only resident of Thames Cottages who’d talk to her after Honeysett vanished. One guess how he found out.’

  ‘Lucie told him? Surely she wouldn’t give up her secret!’

  ‘A few nippets and I’m betting she wouldn’t be able to help herself.’ Jack tried to formulate how to express his conviction that Brian Judd had murdered Helen Honeysett. They were wasting time on Rowlands. Stella’s open mind had limits and tonight – or this morning – he’d challenged it with spirits, so True Hosts would close it with a clang. He ventured, ‘What was Brian Judd’s alibi?’

  ‘He was at work.’

  ‘Who said?’ True Hosts made themselves visible if they wanted to give the impression that they were somewhere when they were not.

  ‘A colleague, I think. We must double-check.’ Stella came back to the sofa and, sitting down, pulled the Honeysett file from her rucksack. She was going to look for the article on Latimer’s tussle with Judd. Jack shut his eyes. Tell her where you saw it. ‘I can see Brian Judd would dislike Latimer, but why would he murder Helen Honeysett?’ Stella pulled out a newspaper cutting and, frowning, said, ‘I haven’t seen this one before… Oh my God!’

  Eyes on the River Wall as if it could swallow him up, Jack raked his fingers through his hair. When he tried to tell the truth something always got in the way.

  ‘What?’ Jack felt a wash of guilt. She knew. No. How could she know?

  ‘The colleague was Graham Makepeace. Jackie’s hus­band. I’ll call him and ask for details. Let’s hope he remembers.’

  ‘Although Jackie hasn’t mentioned it, I doubt he’s forgotten that a colleague was a suspect in a murder case!’ Jack steepled his fingers, feeling relief and then more guilt that he had something to hide from Stella. He was an idiot! He mustered himself. ‘Stell, that article I read about Brian—’

  Stella was excited. ‘Adam told me all the neighbours came to their house-warming party at Christmas in 1986, days before Helen vanished. That would include Neville Rowlands.’ She waved the photograph of Steven Lawson smiling. ‘We’ve identified all the others in the picture. Except for that man.’

  ‘That’s Lawson.’

  ‘No, there.’ Stella was patient. ‘It’s blurred, but I think he’s the man we met on the towpath. And who I saw just now on the way back from Jane Drake’s. Look at the way he’s standing, as if the ceiling’s too low. The dog walker on the towpath had a stoop.’

  Jack fished his glasses from his shirt pocket and crammed them on his face. He peered at the fuzzed figure of a grey-haired man soberly dressed in a black suit and tie standing behind Lawson. He jerked his hand, slopping milk on his coat. Stanley appeared from nowhere and began busily to eradicate the stain. Jack had seen the suit an hour earlier, encased in plastic in Brian Judd’s musty-smelling wardrobe. ‘He looks rather formal for a neighbours’ party,’ he commented inanely. The man wasn’t Neville Rowlands, he was Brian Judd. He looked out of the photograph with the impassive stare of a True Host.

  ‘I’ll show this to Beverly,’ Stella decided. ‘It’ll help if she can put a face to a name.’

  Jack blurted, ‘What if it’s not Rowlands? We couldn’t see the man properly, his head torch was blinding.’ Again he considered that True Hosts were sartorially stringent; Judd’s suit bagged at the pockets and his tie was crumpled.

  ‘Adam will know.’

  ‘It could be this Brian Judd fellow.’ Jack hated himself for his craven duplicity.

  ‘Would a recluse go to a party? Especially with neighbours?’ Stella limited interaction with her own neighbours to hasty greetings. She’d never accept an invitation to a party. She angled the picture towards him. ‘Who’s he looking at?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘Helen Honeysett?’

  ‘No, Judd or Rowlands – if it is him – isn’t looking at the lens. Compare him to Lawson who is definitely smiling at Helen. That man’s gaze is off to his right.’

  Jack hadn’t touched his drink. He was rather going off milk. He looked at the photograph. ‘You’re right, he’s not look­ing at her.’

  ‘He seems upset.’

  ‘Not upset.’ Jack shifted to face Stella. ‘Say when I get it right.’ He glared at Stella with a furrowed brow.

  ‘You look furious.’ Stella held his gaze; her own expression was one of concern. ‘What’s the matter?’

  He let his brow relax a fraction. ‘OK, how’s that? Compare me to Judd.’

  ‘You look the same!’ Anxiously, Stanley bounded on to Jack’s lap and began licking his face.

  ‘There!’ To avoid Stanley’s tongue and to hold the expression, Jack was tight-lipped like a ventriloquist: ‘Ask ee ah I veel?’

  ‘How do
you feel?’ He loved Stella for falling in with him.

  He pulled Stanley off. ‘Burning in my stomach like hot coals. Outrage. No, not outrage.’ He took the picture off Stella. Their fingers brushed. Hers were warm although the basement was as chilly as death. ‘Jealousy. Gnawing jealousy that could drive a person mad. That’s Judd’s expression.’

  ‘What would he be jealous of? If it is Judd.’

  ‘Not “what”, whom. If Judd isn’t looking at Helen Honeysett, whom is he watching?’ Jack spoke on a sigh. ‘We’ll never know.’

  ‘We might!’ Stella was examining the other photograph. A group, by a mantelpiece decked with tinsel, balancing paper plates of food and glasses of wine, were chatting with pretending-to-be-fascinated faces. A younger Bette Lawson was talking to a middle-aged woman in a silk shirt with a rose quartz pendant and silvery hair swept into a bun. Slightly apart, drooping in studied languor, a teenaged boy – probably Garry Lawson – was holding out a tumbler of orange to a small, childish hand off ‘stage left’, likely to be Megan’s. ‘Sybil Lofthouse hasn’t changed.’ Stella pointed at the pendant woman. ‘I don’t recognize that woman.’ She gestured at a tall woman with soft brown hair and a beaky nose with Adam Honeysett, behind Sybil Lofthouse and Bette Lawson.

  ‘That’s Daphne!’ Jack enthused. ‘It was only about a year since her husband and daughter were killed. Amazing she’s at a party.’

  ‘Life has to go on. She still had to earn a living,’ Stella said. ‘So that’s Mum’s declutterer!’ Stella held the picture up to the light. ‘Merry was attractive.’

  ‘Still is.’ In the eighties, even in a Lady Diana-style ruffled blouse, Daphne had been striking. Yet closer scrutiny betrayed a sombre truth. Her face was a mask, her eyes glazed; she was hardly present. She had suffered what every mother fears: the death of a child. If anyone was haunted anywhere, it was Daphne Merry.

  Jack felt annoyed: Daphne was listening politely to a twenty-something Adam Honeysett. Flamboyant in mascara, sparkly jacket with epaulettes, a scarf tied around his head, draping down one shoulder, Honeysett might be Simon Le Bon. Daphne was clasping her glass as, holding a bottle of champagne, Honeysett leant over her. Prat. It was nearly thirty years ago, but Jack longed to intervene and save her.

  ‘This was taken seconds before the one of Lawson with the man in the suit behind him.’ She tapped the time stamp in the corner. ‘Helen took this picture, then swung around and took Lawson, and caught Judd-stroke-Rowlands – or whoever he is – unawares. Wait a sec…’ She placed the pictures in parallel on her knee and grabbed her Filofax from her rucksack, tearing out the plastic rule from the diary section. She laid it between the photos, tracing the man’s gaze towards the group picture. ‘He’s watching Daphne Merry.’

  ‘Stella, you are the greatest of Wonderhorses!’ Jack grabbed her hand and flapped it up and down. ‘He saw Honeysett forcing drink on Merry and resented it.’ Jack had felt the impotent resentment himself moments before.

  ‘Resentment isn’t jealousy,’ Stella pointed out.

  ‘No. It’s not,’ Jack agreed. He let go of Stella’s hand.

  ‘Watch me.’ She pulled a hideous face at him. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Blood-curdling rage?’

  ‘Jealousy,’ she huffed.

  ‘You never get jealous.’ He heard the annoyance in his voice. Stella didn’t mind about the things that most people – him included – suffered over. Her mum fussing over Dale, Lucie claiming Terry for herself, him being with Bella…

  ‘Maybe the man in the suit liked her.’ Stella would avoid the word ‘love’. ‘He looks fit to brain Adam with that bottle if he could.’

  Jack pushed his glasses over the bridge of his nose. ‘If Brian Judd or whoever was in love with Daphne he’d hate Adam Honeysett leering at her.’

  ‘Judd was a recluse, how would he have the chance to fall in love with her?’

  ‘Walking his dog on the towpath?’

  ‘How do we know he had a dog?’

  ‘When we went into his house I saw dog things,’ Jack said too quickly. Stella looked over the top of the photograph at him. In that second, with the force of a gale, it hit him. She knew he was lying.

  ‘That’s why Stanley goes there,’ Stella said. ‘He can smell the dog. But it’s not a motive for killing Helen. Mum said Merry still lives on her own. So whatever the man in the black suit felt for her, it wasn’t – or isn’t – mutual. And like I say, it doesn’t explain why he’d kill Honeysett.’

  ‘Perhaps Helen upset him. It doesn’t take much to tip a True… someone over the edge,’ Jack said.

  ‘How did imitating Judd – or Rowlands – tell you he was jealous?’ Stella asked.

  ‘I noticed how it made me feel. I felt jealousy.’

  ‘It doesn’t help us prove Brian Judd broke in to this house. Nor does it get us nearer to knowing what happened to Helen.’ Stella looked at the photograph of Steven Lawson smiling at the camera. ‘It could be him.’

  ‘Who could be who?’

  ‘Judd or Rowlands. That man I said I passed again, who was walking his dog on the towpath again tonight – this morning. It was as I was coming back from Jane Drake’s. I was going the wrong way.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Jack clenched his fists. The True Host had got him in his sights. He was watching the person Jack was closest to. Stella.

  Who am I and what have I done?

  ‘Perfectly sure. My van’s parked by the recycling place. I got lost on one of the paths in a maze-thing in the estate and ended up on the towpath.’

  Everything ended on the towpath.

  ‘I mean are you sure he was the same man that we met?’ Brown scuffed shoes.

  ‘I’m not sure. I couldn’t see his face. He was wearing that torchy thing. I was dazzled. I said goodnight. He didn’t reply.’ She paused. ‘It freaked me out. It can’t have been the same man because the one we met was polite. He asked about Stanley being obedient. Another thing…’ Stella flapped her hand in dismissal. ‘Stupid.’

  ‘What’s stupid?’ Dread coiled upwards.

  ‘That was the thing that’s been nagging at me since I was with Jane Drake. I asked if she had a poo-bag and she said she didn’t have a dog!’

  ‘So what?’ Jack tried not to sound panicked. The man must be Judd.

  ‘That night we met the man, do you remember seeing a dog?’

  ‘No, but it was dark. It was probably rummaging in the bushes like Stanley does.’ He had not seen a dog. A chill crept down his back. Stanley had gone into the playroom. Through the glass, Jack could see him nestled in the sandbox. ‘Or he didn’t have a dog. People can go for walks on their own. I do.’

  ‘After midnight and at five in the morning?’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s when you met me—’

  ‘He had a lead slung across his chest.’ Stella stopped, then said, ‘He had a bag with poo in it. I said it was stupid.’

  Jack didn’t trust himself to speak. Brian Judd was too many steps ahead. The man they had met together on the towpath last Wednesday had a lead across his chest. Where was his dog? Following her own train of thought Stella hadn’t noticed his silence.

  ‘…Helen’s dog was found on the towpath by Daphne Merry. We should check if other dogs have been lost around here since January 1987. Lucie May would know, but after last night, I don’t fancy asking. You’d have better luck.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Jack cleared his throat. ‘You could ask Martin Cashman.’

  ‘No way!’ Stella was keen to forget her fling with Cashman. It was mean to remind her. Trying to wind back, Jack made it worse: ‘We do know of one dog found on the towpath.’

  ‘Do we?’ Stella never spotted meanness.

  ‘Stanley. You and Thingy rescued him from falling into the river near Kew Bridge.’ Jack was being mealy-mouthed. He knew Thingy was called David. The man hadn’t been good enough for Stella. Jackie maintained that Jack didn’t think any man was good enough for Stella.

  ‘David rep
orted finding Stanley to the police. No one claimed him,’ Stella answered stiffly. She wouldn’t want to think about David any more than Cashman.

  Jack began polishing his glasses as if cleaning would undo his hurting her.

  Stella was gazing at the photograph of Adam Honeysett with Daphne Merry. ‘Adam looks like Simon Le Bon, don’t you think?’

  ‘Not really,’ Jack huffed. Although moments earlier he had thought this himself. He sniped, ‘Are you sure David Barlow reported Stanley missing?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ Stella was staring at him. ‘Is that you being the man in the black suit again?’ She was geared up to guess the feelings behind his expression.

  ‘No.’ Jack wiped a hand down his face to erase his expression of gnawing jealousy.

  54

  Tuesday, 12 January 2016

  Stella clipped the signed job sheet into her folder. It was five past nine. She’d started the shift late because a lorry had broken down on the Great West Road. Lawyers and clients were arriving at the Hammersmith Magistrates’ Court.

  Dark clouds scudded across a leaden sky. Stella’s mood wasn’t affected by weather, but being late made her tense. She zipped her jacket up to the collar; the fur lining protected her cheeks from the sharp gusts whipping across the car park. Her van was in her allocated space by a cluster of wheelie bins.

  ‘Got you bang to rights have they, Detective Darnell?’ The corn­crake laugh, harsh and mirthless, carried on the wind. Lucie May sauntered over to Stella, the heels of her knee-high boots clicking on the asphalt. ‘Been eradicating stains?’ Her eyes gleamed coldly at Stella.

  Stella decided things couldn’t get worse. ‘I want a favour.’

  They had formed a fragile rapprochement the year before last when Lucie had helped with Stella and Jack’s last case, but the visit to her Murder Room had undone all of that. In the chill of the winter morning they eyed each other as if preparing for a duel.

  ‘Knew you’d come pecking. Being a detective ain’t such a box of birds after all!’ Lucie barked. ‘The favours are all run out. I have to get into court.’