The Detective's Daughter (11 page)

Stella wrenched open the door, slamming it behind her and blundered out to the gate.

A coach roared along the Great West Road, its sleeping occupants slumped against the glass. Only when she had clambered into the van and set the central locking did she register that she had the box files. She threw them on to the passenger seat and started the engine, flooring the accelerator and careering out of the street and down St Peter’s Square.

If Stella had checked the rear-view mirror when she turned out of Terry’s road she would have seen a figure under the cherry trees walking in the direction of the river where, thirty years before, Katherine Rokesmith had been found murdered. An hour later, when she was out of the shower, dressed and leaving for the office, Stella discovered she had left Terry’s keys in his house.

September 1985

Justin moved as swiftly as he dared in the deathly quiet library, slipped into the furthest aisle between the bookshelves and raced to the end where there was the door to the basement. Simon followed him into the library seconds later and, flanked by oak cabinets and creaky carousels of catalogue cards, scanned the wood-panelled room.

Simon was not as careful as his prey and allowed the door to slam behind him. The librarian, a placid woman with blurred, creamy features that had earned her the sobriquet of ‘the Oyster’ from the boys, paused from wiping a book with votive diligence to frown from her podium, signalling
silence
with her linen pad.

Justin tripped over a stool on casters, which spun along the aisle. He grimaced, sure he had given away his position, but Simon had wrongly anticipated him and was checking the Reading Corner by the inglenook fireplace which, with a semi-circle of high-backed leather winged armchairs, was an obvious hiding place.

When Margaret Lockett died in 1939, aged eighty-one, she left Marchant Manor to her trust to found and administrate a boarding school for the children of families connected with her father’s passion: the railway. Sir Stephen Lockett had died fifty years before his daughter, an early supplier of toilet systems; he had increased his fortune through shrewd investment in Britain’s developing rail network and his obsession with the likes of sanitary engineers J. G. Jennings and Thomas Twyford extended to structural pioneers such as Gustave Eiffel, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Bouch. This apparently innocuous interest was to prove fatal.

On the night of 28 December 1879, Sir Stephen boarded a train to cross the Firth of Forth by the new Tay Bridge: a lattice-grid construction, then the longest bridge in the world. Queen Victoria had made the inaugural journey six months before. He did not let the storm already buffeting his carriage dampen his spirits and treated with boyish excitement the flickering gas lamps and loose window catch that let rain spatter on to his pocket book and soak his coat. Even when the train lurched upwards, pressing him into his seat, he did not panic. Only when he heard a crack that his understanding of sewer construction told him was the sound of inflexible cast-iron fracturing did Sir Stephen appreciate the gravity of his situation. Tall pilings crumbled, girders buckled and in moments the bridge collapsed like one of Stephen Lockett’s wooden models, although this time he could not revise calculations and start again. The train plunged into the river A rush of water engulfing him, he thought of a toilet flushing but the thought had no time to develop. Over seventy passengers drowned; Lockett’s body was one of those never recovered, nourishing school lore that his waterlogged ghost roamed the night-time corridors of Marchant Manor. On stormy days he shook casements and caused power cuts. Boys claimed to have caught a whiff of his cigar in the library that had been his smoking room.

Six years after the Tay Bridge disaster Thomas Twyford invented the Unites, a one-piece, free-standing toilet set on a pedestal base and Margaret Lockett doubled the turnover of her father’s business living as a recluse amongst his railway relics with only his marble bust for company.

Sir Stephen Lockett’s book collection, typical of a rich man without literary interest, was housed in shelves lining the walls protected by grilles and glass doors. Classics of the day:
The Dictionary of National Biography,
the 1870 edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, and the complete works of Scott, Dickens, Collins and Thackeray were bound in matching calfskin and embossed with Lockett’s off-the-peg crest. Boys could only borrow items with permission of the Oyster and read them in situ wearing a pair of silk white gloves. The only boy in Marchant Manor School’s present intake prepared to suffer this ignominy was now cowering in the Geography section.

When Justin poured over first-edition biographies on contemporary engineers and deciphered cumbersome treatises on new building materials or the effects of aerodynamic forces, he could convince himself that he was the son Sir Stephen had longed for. The musty tomes containing pictures and technical descriptions of masonry, key stones, deck spans, flying buttresses and stanchions impervious to collisions or waves were spellbinding. The eight-year-old guided his finger along dense print, traced diagrams of spans and suspensions, marvelling at sepia images, bold etchings and sentimental paintings of railway scenes, tunnels, bridges and viaducts, towers and lighthouses, and concocted stories to tell his mummy.

Most boys preferred the light airy refectory in the new wing. Justin would sit alone at one of the slate-grey Formica-topped tables, out of sight of the door, to write his letters, watched over by Sir Stephen Lockett.

He kept still in the Geography aisle, knowing he could no longer seek refuge here now that his tormentor had found it.

Daylight was fading. Only the insidious groan of the wind off the sea broke the enforced silence. Any minute Simon would discover him. The copy of
The
Boyhood of Raleigh
by John Everett Millais glinted in its gesso-gilt frame. A barefoot man seen from behind sat on a log dressed in crimson pantaloons pointing to the sea across a stone wall. The gypsy – Justin supposed this because of the earring – had the rapt attention of two boys. Justin believed the boy hugging his stockinged legs was Simon and the other sprawling on his tummy was himself; good friends, the boys listened to stories of the old man’s adventures on the high seas. The picture gave him hope that Simon would one day like him.

Even before the house became a school it had rivalled the Brighton Pavilion’s thirty lavatories with twenty-five: a high number of flush lavatories for a dwelling of its size. Sir Stephen Lockett had installed three in the library alone.

Simon was waiting for him outside one of these. Justin shrank back against a door marked ‘Private’ set at the end of the bookcases. When the librarian fetched him books from the Lockett catalogue stored in the cellars he had noted that she did not need a key. He leaned on the door; it opened.

Luckily someone was in the toilet; of course Simon supposed it was him and he would wait patiently outside, like a spider before sucking the life out of the fly. He was twirling a pencil, his stub finger as nimble as the rest, the pencil danced along his knuckles. Fact: Simon knew nothing about spiders.

Justin heard whoever was inside the toilet pull the chain and under cover of the lavatory’s thunderous flush, he stepped through the door by the bookcase and closed it behind him.

A bulb in a bracket cast tremulous light on uneven stone steps. Gingerly Justin descended and at the bottom found a switch and extinguished the bulb on the stairs in favour of a brighter light in the room. He listened for footsteps above but heard only the hissing of the cistern filling and wastewater sluicing along the soil pipe.

The cellar room used to be a scullery; it was now the librarian’s lair, full of broken-spined books and dusty stationery. Cobwebs furred with dust hung from the joists like miniature hammocks and in front of a mean grate were a chair and table. Sheets of paper backed with cellophane, scissors, a scalpel and a pot of rubber solution glue were arranged on the Formica surface.

Justin would enjoy helping the librarian cover and mend books, he imagined. Across the table was a metal yardstick. He looked at the book being repaired:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
by C. S. Lewis. Most people liked Lucy best. Justin preferred Edmund and given the chance would betray Simon to the White Witch for a lump of Turkish Delight.

He was being observed by a man with a flowing mane of hair and a thick beard. Stephen Lockett’s marble bust had been banished to the cellars to make room for a colour photocopier. Justin stroked his cheek, disappointed to find it chill and unyielding.

Justin had gambled on there being another exit and behind a wooden screen of Chinese silk much nibbled by moths he found an archway to a tiled passage. Piling three hefty volumes on the table he climbed up, teetering, to unscrew the ceiling bulb and everything went dark. He managed to jump off the table and land on the floor without hurting himself. Simon had triggered events early.

After some minutes he began to fear he had overestimated him: Simon had not found the cellar door and had left the library, presuming Justin had given him the slip. Justin was disappointed because he was ready for Simon.

A slant of light lit the steps. Justin ducked behind the screen. The elongated shadow of an old man projected on to the bricks, shoulders bowed, head bent, his feet faltering at each step. It was the ghost of Sir Stephen. Justin was not frightened; he longed to meet him.

The figure turned and became Simon.

Justin drew out the blind cord and pulled it taut in readiness, letting it slacken and then tightening it. It was the ideal weapon and he handled it expertly.

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

Stella emerged out of Shepherd’s Bush Tube station rush hour into sunshine. Dew sparkled on the green. Red buses, blue cars, white vans and yellow salt bins cheered the soulless roundabout and the wipe-clean walls of the new nation-size shopping centre. At this time of the morning – just before seven – the rhythm of the neighbourhood was apparent. In the dry cleaner’s the owner, a woman in her fifties, dressed as if going somewhere special in pressed trouser suits with razor-sharp lapels, waved to Stella, a ticket between her teeth as she heaved clothes on hangers along racks. Stella stepped aside for a gangly young man arranging goods on the pavement outside the Pound and Penny shop. Already towers of storage boxes, swing bins and washing baskets dwarfed stacking stools and brushes stuffed handle-first into a tub. A list of wares was stuck crookedly on to the window, a crease in the laminate obliterating letters: ‘
Garde ware ,gift, partywar, pet upplies snaks statnery swets, toilries
’, which every morning irritated Stella.

The Polish mini-mart below Clean Slate’s office had been open an hour already; two men were erecting the sloping display using crates draped with fake grass, while another unloaded fruit and vegetables from a ten-year-old van. Stella noted the number plate. As a rule she did not trust the owner of a commercial vehicle over five years old. She threaded past the men into the shop and from the back of the chiller cabinet extracted a litre of semi-skimmed milk with the most recent sell-by date. Dariusz Adomek was on the till behind a high counter further shielded from muggers by chewing gum display stands and a Lotto machine. Stella handed up a five-pound note.

‘How’s business. Good?’ He ran the sensor over the barcode and passed back the milk.

‘Good, yes. You?’

‘Mustn’t grumble.’ In a Polish accent the cliché gained new life.

Dariusz Adomek had taken on a lease with the same landlord, and this slender commonality was grounds enough for mutual co-operation. He swiped change out of the drawer and poured the coins into Stella’s palm.

They had the same interchange every morning, developing on it only when Stella was looking for cleaners or Adomek had heard of a new client. No one he recommended – a relative or contact recently arrived from Poland – had let Stella down, the staff turning up for work and the clients paying invoices on time. In return Clean Slate cleaned the mini-market at a discount and Stella helped Adomek with Inland Revenue forms and had Jackie compose and type letters.

Clean Slate occupied two clumsily converted rooms over the mini-mart and a mobile phone shop. Facing south across the green, the late Victorian building was prone to damp, with cracks in ceilings and mould behind filing cabinets. It was hard to heat in the winter, keep cool in the summer and keep clean all the year round.

Stella tucked the milk carton under an arm to fit the mortice in the ground-floor door before seeing that the door was on the latch. It was well before nine. The insurance brokerage on the top floor – which employed a rival cleaning company – had ignored her latest memo.

She headed up the dingy stairs, trying, as she did every day, to ignore the brown linoleum that sent a discouraging message to prospective clients. The landlord refused to decorate the common parts. The tawdry sixties-meets-seventies décor accounted for the low rent for premises in what had become a prime location. Clean Slate had the turnover to afford plush offices with straight walls and air conditioning but an office move would interrupt the hectic routine. Each year, ignoring her accountant’s advice, Stella, nervous of over-stretching her business, put it off. Each day, as she avoided the dirt-engrained banister, she worked her way through the same train of thought and by the time she was at her desk other issues had taken priority, which today was how she could retrieve his keys from her dead father’s house without breaking a window, smashing a lock or Jackie finding out.

A man was outside peering around the sign on her office door.

‘What are you doing?’

He came towards her, a looming bulk in the cramped passage. Stella grasped the milk, fleetingly aware that dashing a Tetra Pak in his face would not save her.

She had forgotten Paul.

‘Come on, Stella. We can work this out and make a go of it.’ He backed off when Stella, head down, whipped both her hands up to avoid his touch. ‘I’ve been calling and texting you,’ he added plaintively.