The Detective's Daughter (39 page)

Sarah retreated to the sitting room to consider her next move. She could not go to her studio with Harmon in the house. She wanted his photograph and had an hour to obtain it.

She would wait until he was vacuuming the top floor and take him unawares. A photograph was a poor substitute for him modelling for her, but would allow her to study his face and make a sketch which would define him in lines and shade. Asking his permission was out of the question.

Jack was not real to Sarah Glyde. Not until the head under the damp cloth on her work table was complete would he gain life.

She unclipped the lens cap and rubbed the glass and viewfinder with the corner of her blouse, aimed the camera at the marble fireplace that, preferring the intimacy of her studio, she seldom lit. The battery was charged; it was ready.

Jack was in the doorway, his hand poised to knock. His soundless presence reminded her of Antony and she suspected he had been there some time.

‘Miss Glyde, sorry to bother you, but the back room is locked and there’s no key.’

‘Sarah, please.’ She attempted to be airy and tried to hide the camera under a sofa cushion, but it tumbled to the floor. Jack pulled it up by its strap and kept hold of it.

‘I’m sorry if I gave you a start.’

Sarah felt heat rising in her cheeks.

‘It looks OK.’ He turned it over and switched it on. ‘So, the top room?’

She wanted it cleared out and filled with sunshine.

‘It’s not mine.’ Sarah patted her hair, fitting a strand behind her ear that immediately fell forward. ‘ The room. I should have said.’

‘You did say to give everywhere an “overhaul”.’ He repeated her term without mockery, apparently to mollify her.

‘My brother has the key – it’s his old bedroom. He’s older than me. It’s ridiculous but that still counts so there’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘Not a problem.’ The lens zoomed out; Jack retracted it.

‘Tony has his own house. Two actually.’ Sarah could not stop herself and offloaded oft-rehearsed phrases of injustice like ballast. ‘One in London where he works and a country cottage, yet he still has his room in
my
house. It shouldn’t matter because there’s loads of space. My mother took his side, you see. She believed he was fragile and needed extra support. He could eat what he liked, while she rationed my food because it was family lore that I was fat. He never put on weight. The silliest things upset one, don’t they?’

‘It’s working.’ Jack handed her the camera.

‘I’ll have a word and see what he wants doing.’ As she said the throwaway line, Sarah imagined that this was possible. She had only to say:
I want it as a guest room.

You don’t have guests.

That’s because I don’t have a room for them.

It’s my room.

Dad said it could be mine when you left.

He’s dead. I’m in charge now.

‘Let me know when you want me to do in there.’

Sarah sank on to the sofa. Jack had switched the camera to display mode and his clay head, its shape defined, his jaw kneaded and moulded, was on the screen. She had smoothed the clay, working and reworking it, wiping it down, shaping it; caressing it. This would be her best creation. Jack Harmon must have seen it.

Jack Harmon. The name was familiar. She gazed at the face, the unformed features ghostly in the poorly lit image, seeking to reassure herself that Jack could not have recognized himself. Few recognized their own beauty.

She heard squirts of an aerosol, bumps and scrapes: above her Jack was shifting furniture in her mother’s room. Her bed – single once Sarah’s father had died – squeaked and rumbled as he manoeuvred it. Stella Darnell was right, he was thorough. The vacuum motor droned, overlaid with taps of the nozzle probing along the skirting boards.

By the time Sarah had nerved herself to creep on to the landing and up the stairs, Jack was in the bathroom. The window was painted shut and, like Antony’s bedroom, it overlooked the river. He had the best view in the house.

Keeping out of the way of the door, she confronted the vacuum: one of those red spherical machines with eyes and a mouth on its body. It was coy, grinning at her from the sink pedestal, its tube snaking out of sight. The lavatory lid banged.

He was using the lavatory. Sarah wanted to see him pissing. She wanted to hear him. She wanted that knowledge of him. Switching on the camera, she raised it to her face and inched closer.

Jack was standing on the lavatory seat with his back to her, his face pressed to the bathroom window set high in the little room, which unlike the lower panes was not frosted.

In the mirror above the sink Sarah had a perfect shot of his profile. She snapped, once, twice and then a third time. The shutter made no sound. She ran down the stairs, out of the house and into the studio where she collapsed on her work desk, panting and heaving to get her breath, exhilarated by her temerity.

Only when she had printed the pictures and placed them in a folder marked ‘Suppliers’ – that Antony would never pry into – did it occur to her to wonder what Jack Harmon had been doing. What was he so interested in looking at?

After he had gone she went up to the bathroom. The ceramic sparkled; the limescale that had stained the bath since her mother died had gone, as had the grime around the pipework. The taps shone. The room looked as it had when her father was alive.

The lid was still closed. Gripping the downpipe on the overhead cistern, Sarah climbed on to the lavatory. Below her, the river flickered with black and silver when wind rippled its surface. It was low tide, the muddy shore was exposed; she craned down, but could not see what had attracted Jack Harmon’s attention.

Sarah Glyde was still standing on the lavatory when her brother walked in.

Friday, 21 January 2011

‘She keeps the top room facing the river locked and went peculiar when I asked her to open it.’ Jack cupped a hand under his chin to stop crumbs as he bit on the biscuit. They were in Stella’s flat. Jack was sprawled on her sofa, the plastic covering squeaking as he fidgeted.

‘Peculiar how? She wanted us to do everywhere.’ Stella was annoyed. ‘I quoted her for that room. Did you say?’

‘So, you come out ahead.’ Jack wiped his hands on his trouser legs. ‘I could hardly insist she break the door down. Apparently it’s her brother’s bedroom and she went on about him, harking back to old resentments. Sibling shit.’ He sniffed.

‘It’s a waste of time you being there if you can’t see out of that window.’

‘It can’t be much different to the bathroom so we can assume that anyone in that room would not have seen where Katherine Rokesmith died. No one was there that day so it wouldn’t help us.’

Jack crunched up the last digestive biscuit. He had eaten half the packet; Stella wondered again if he ate properly. His kitchen was well equipped, yet she could not envisage him cooking.

‘I’ll get someone else on the contract; you’ve found out what we needed to know.’ If they were at Terry’s she could have heated up a shepherd’s pie for him. Next time they were there, she would get one out of the freezer.

‘We promised her the same cleaner each week.’

‘Listen to you, Mr Customer Care.’

‘I’d like to go again.’ Jack poured himself more coffee from the stainless steel cafetière. ‘I’ve got a feeling.’

‘What kind of feeling?’

‘I had left the vacuum on to check the window. I can’t swear to it, but I had the sense that someone was in the room, yet when I looked round there was no one.’

‘Maybe she fancies you.’ Stella was losing patience. She had spent the morning at Mrs Ramsay’s. She would not confess to Jack that all the time she had been convinced Mrs Ramsay was present. It would encourage his fanciful thinking. Nor did she tell him that Paul’s continued silence was troubling her. There had been no contact from him since yesterday. When she was driving, she kept tabs on her mirrors; at her flat she kept checking the communal landing to see if he was outside. He had never been silent this long; if Paul was playing games, he was getting better at them.

The door buzzer went.

Jack put his finger to his lips and tiptoed out. He had the video picture up by the time Stella got there. A motorcycle courier was gesticulating at the lens, a parcel under his arm.

‘Are you expecting a delivery?’

‘Yes. Can you see anyone behind him?’

‘No. If your man has sense, he’ll keep out of view until the last minute.’

‘I’m not risking it.’ Stella activated the intercom and spoke into the microphone: ‘The entry button doesn’t work, have your helmet off by the time I get down there.’ She turned to Jack. ‘After I’ve got the package, watch to see if Paul appears.’

The ping of the lift and Stella’s heels clicking on the marble broke the cladded silence.

It was the same courier who delivered lilies to Mrs Ramsay but he gave no sign of recognizing Stella. She took the padded bag off him, executed an illegible squiggle on his handheld device with the stylus and slammed the door. As the lift door slid shut, a silver SUV was passing on the main road, but otherwise nothing moved. If Paul had been out there, he would have appeared, she assured herself. She rather wished that he were; then at least she would know he was all right. His silence was oppressive. Nothing in these flats made any sound: the rapid ascent of blue-lit numbers on the control panel was the only evidence that the lift worked.

The Friday morning arrival of Mrs Ramsay’s flowers belonged to a remote time. The packed-up house was soon to be empty of all the furniture she had kept clean, making Stella doubt that the two years she had cleaned for Mrs Ramsay had ever happened.

Jack was still in the hall. He had stayed as she requested, which gave her hope for what she planned next. She sat on the sofa, the plastic squeaking, ripped off parcel tape and broke open the padded bag.

That morning the new uniforms had arrived in the office and she had asked Jackie to courier over one large polo shirt for Jack.

She held it aloft. The Clean Slate logo was embossed on the shoulder, the silk thread – Pantone 277 – contrasted with the Pantone 375 material; it was smarter than she expected.

‘This’ll impress Sarah Glyde.’ She went for the light approach.

Jack glanced up from the papers he had returned to and blanched.

‘Take it.’ Stella laid it on the table in front of him.

Jack rushed out of the room. Stella couldn’t hear him being sick – her soundproofed walls did their job – but went cold and clammy at the thought of him kneeling in front of her spotless toilet bowl.

She was kneading the top-quality material busily, berating herself for being rash when Jack reappeared. She did not think it possible he could look any paler, but he was chalk-white.

‘Don’t look like that. I never throw up.’ He skirted the room, avoiding the shirt, which she had draped over the arm of the sofa. ‘Green makes me ill, while you practically pass out at the prospect of vomit. What a team!’ He retreated behind the case files on the glass table. ‘We need Terry.’

‘How would he help?’

‘You really didn’t rate him, did you?’ Jack mopped his forehead with a wodge of lavatory paper.

‘He was a crap detective and a worse parent.’

‘What sort of daughter were you?’

‘It wasn’t my fault he was never there.’

‘He had to work. You don’t mention your mother. What’s her excuse?’

‘She lives in Barons Court with her budgerigar.’ Her mother loved the tiny yellow bird that talked as much as she did.

‘You are second best to a bird?’

‘I’m forty-four; I don’t need a mother.’

‘We all need a mother.’

Neither of them spoke.

‘I stopped existing for my father the day my mum died. As soon as I was old enough, he enrolled me in a remote Dotheboys Hall boarding school.’ Jack fished into the packet for another biscuit until he saw there were no more left.

‘I thought you nursed him when he was ill.’

‘It didn’t make us close. He was bitter. The world believed that he had killed his wife and, in the absence of the police, the press and the public, his resentment was aimed at me.’

‘You believed he was innocent.’

‘He knew that I wasn’t sure. Children know their parents the least of everyone. He never mentioned her and we never visited her grave. I wondered if he could kill someone. He knew that.’

‘What is it about green?’ Stella had depended on her shock tactic curing Jack. She was eager to see him in the new uniform; she wanted him on the next Clean Slate brochure.

‘It should have sun on it.’

‘Talk normally.’ Stella shook the shirt. Jack flinched.

‘It is absolutely terrible.’ His eyes were mournful. ‘I can’t say more.’

The telephone rang.

‘Yes?’ Stella rapped.

‘Stell? It’s me, love, listen I’ve had the strangest call.’ It was Jackie.

Stella prepared herself: it would be a client wanting to mix and match services and Jackie had found the idea of straying outside the pricing structure strange. To Stella such requests were opportunities.

‘A man has called saying he’s Paul’s brother. Your Paul.’

‘He’s not— Oh, never mind.’

‘He was supposed to have a fish supper with him last night and he never showed up and isn’t answering his mobile. The brother told me you were going to marry him. Paul, I mean.’

Jackie was trying not to be peeved that she hadn’t been informed, Stella thought.

‘Jackie, if I ever marry, you will be the first to know. Why is he panicking? Paul’s a grown man. He can drop out of a fish supper if he wants.’

‘He wasn’t panicking, he presumed Paul was with you. He was expecting to meet you too. I said as far as I knew you were not in touch with Paul and had not been for a while. I said he had misunderstood.’

‘I haven’t seen him.’ Stella chose not to mention her visit to Paul’s flat, or last night; it would involve confessing that she had tricked Paul. She was not proud of it.

‘I do hope he hasn’t done anything stupid. He cared too much for you.’

‘He’s probably mending a computer in a place with no signal.’