The Detective's Daughter (50 page)

She had perceived too late what it had cost Ivan to invite her, so intent was she on keeping her routine and not repeating her mistakes with Paul. Stella had not noticed that since Terry’s death she had no routine and, as for having space, well, she had plenty of that. She wished Paul were alive to get on her nerves. She tramped over melting snow to the front steps, the clinging fog chilling her to the core.

She had listened to Ivan’s account of the new kinds of treatments he was researching and in return described her new compact and easily manoeuvrable walk-behind scrubber-drier with attached cleaning system. Unlike Paul, Ivan did not hanker after owning her; she enjoyed his company.

Tonight she had found out what was precious to Ivan and rejected him; there would be no second chance. She stared at the sign: Ivan’s name and qualifications were solid in the lamplight suspended above the two brass-studded doors: ‘Dr S. A. I. Challoner. Dentist’.

Strange that he wasn’t called by his first name, she thought. She tried Jack’s number again. No answer. She pictured him sulking because of her message about the van. Where was he?

Car headlights raked the steps, momentarily dazzling her. Ivan was back; it was all right – although ideally she did not want him to find her. She cast about with the crazy thought of hiding, but that would make it worse. She prepared a bright smile.

The headlights on full beam captured her in their glare and suddenly Stella panicked. Her first instinct had been right. She did not want to spend a night with Ivan in a house in the middle of the country, miles from anywhere. Terry would not have liked her to accept.

Sarah Glyde got out of the car.

‘It said in the case papers that you couldn’t drive.’ Something was very wrong.

‘I can now.’ Glyde slammed her car door and sloshed through the melting ice up the stairs. ‘Is Antony here? Are they inside?’

She shoved past and to Stella’s astonishment prodded a key into the front-door lock.

‘There’s no one there.’ Stella remained on the top step. ‘Who did you say?’

Sarah Glyde appeared not to have heard.

‘Jack’s a very disturbed young man. He was coming here when he left me. He had a knife.’ She rushed inside and, after jabbing in an alarm code, switched on a lamp in the hall.

Stella splashed after her. ‘How come you have a key?’ It was inconceivable that Ivan would be friends with a hayseed in ripped jeans and a filthy shirt too big for her. Sarah was circling the receptionist’s office, tapping and stroking the filing cabinet, the desk, the computer and its monitor; muttering incessantly as if casting a spell.

‘I rang to warn Antony but…’

‘Who the hell is Antony? What was wrong with Jack’s cleaning?’

‘You call him Ivan.’

‘Do I?’

Dr S. A. I. Challoner. Dentist
. Rule: never call clients by their first name.

‘I didn’t know you knew each other,’ Stella whispered.

‘Why should you?’

Terry would have established every connection, however trivial; he found out who knew whom, what they did. He covered every angle. Sipping her lemonade and munching crisps while she sat with him outside pubs, Stella had seen him in action.

‘What did you say about Jack?’ She felt dread.

‘He cleans for Antony. I had no idea. You know of course. We must find him before it’s too late.’

Nothing was making sense. Stella’s phone was ringing. She glanced at it before she answered it. The number was not programmed into her phone.

‘Stella, it’s Martin Cashman, sorry to call so late. I got this number off your P.A. – she works late too! You got a moment?’

‘A moment yes, I’m with someone.’

‘Your question was niggling, so I did a bit of homework.’

Stella did not know what Cashman was talking about. She had a mounting unease.

‘I checked up on S. A. I. Glyde? You know, the owner of the Anglia? It was registered to a man who changed his surname in 1982.You still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘He became Challoner. Simon Ivan Antony Challoner. Odd maybe, but nothing wrong with it – all above board. Like I said, his residence is listed as Fullwood House, Bishopstone.’

Stella wrote the information on a copy of
Hello
magazine, although she would not forget it.

‘While I’ve got you, about the funeral, one of our sergeants – a nice lady called Janet – will call you. She worked with Terry for donkey’s years, and is handling it. Say if we’re stepping on any toes.’

‘It’s fine.’ Stella rang off.

Sarah Glyde was roaming the waiting room, touching every object like a child engrossed in an elaborate private game.

‘Who is Antony Glyde?’ Stella shouted.

Sarah tilted her head as if hearing the sound from outside.

‘My brother,’ she said eventually.

Antony. Tony. Uncle Tony.

‘What about Jack?’

‘What do you mean?’

Stella was impatient. ‘You said he was disturbed.’

‘We need to stop him—’

‘Why did you say Jack was disturbed?’

‘He told me it was his mother who was murdered outside my house.’

‘Why did he tell you?’

‘He found my sculpture of her. Kate commissioned me as a surprise for … well, I thought it was her husband, but I think now … I’d have done it for nothing, a face like that is what one dreams … Instantly I saw Jack I got such a sense, and as soon as I worked on the face my fingers told me they had been there before. Today I found out why.’ Her voice had a faraway quality. ‘I brought him to me.’

‘Stop talking garbage. You told the police you didn’t know Kate. You said you were out when the murder happened.’

She was at the dentist.

‘Jack knows. I’m worried Antony might …’

‘You didn’t think to mention to the police that your alibi was your brother?’

‘At the time Kate was killed I was having a filling. Look, there’s no time for—’

‘And did Jack also tell you that the time of the murder was wrong?’

Sarah sank into one of the red chairs, the colour increasing her pallor. ‘Yes.’

‘What time was your appointment?’

‘I’ve been through this. You’re not listening to me, I think—’

‘Was Ivan or whoever here when you arrived?’

‘No.’ Her mouth was dry, her speech tacky. ‘I let myself in. It was Mrs Willard’s day off.’

‘How long did you have to wait?’

Sarah Glyde was motionless.

‘Don’t tell me, you have wondered about it ever since.’ The other woman’s ashen features told Stella that she was right.

Sarah hugged herself. The room was cold; the central heating had gone off. Stella detected lavender: like Mrs Ramsay Ivan had taken her advice. Jack did not clean the surgery; Ivan preferred to do that himself. Of course he did.

‘I don’t know my brother well. He was older so we didn’t grow up together. His father was killed in a plane crash and our mother remarried and had me. He holds me to blame for everything, which is patently unfair. My mother loved him better.’ Sarah jangled the office keys, her sense of urgency gone. ‘I might have known – he has always frightened me – but for the time of death. Antony was with me when Kate was supposed to have been murdered. I clung to that fact.’ She gave a strained laugh, which ended abruptly. ‘I’ve been so grateful that Antony does my teeth for nothing, he charges a fortune.’

‘I know.’ Stella thrust the torn page from the magazine in front of her. ‘Do you recognize this address?’

‘Yes.’ Sarah stared dumbly at it. ‘It’s where my mother lived with her first husband. Antony was born there. We moved to London when I was a baby. Antony went every weekend as soon he could be trusted on his own. My dad hated it, so my mother went less often until he died. When she died, she left it to Antony. I got the London house because it had belonged to my father. My family are terribly strict around money.’

‘Would Jack know this?’ Stella was brutal.

‘He was going to kill me.’ Sarah Glyde clasped herself tighter.

‘
Why did Ivan – Antony – Tony – change his surname?’

‘Did he tell you to call him Ivan?’ Sarah frowned. She implied Stella had taken the law into her own hands and renamed her brother. ‘He changed it out of the blue, in homage to his father. My mother was upset. She saw it as a slight to my dad who put him through school. Not that she told Antony; ultimately he could do no wrong.’

‘When did his wife die?’ Stella’s hands were tingling, her thoughts racing. She had shown Ivan the case files. After she had given Ivan the camera, the memory card was missing. How had he known she was at the police station? When they bumped into each other on Hammersmith Broadway he had been walking towards her so could not have known where she had come from.

If Jack had been in her flat he would have heard Martin Cashman’s message. He would think that she had betrayed him.

‘Antony never married. Like me, he prefers his own company.’ Sarah had a faraway look.

‘What about his son?’ The little boy whom Ivan tucked in bed before reading him a story. The little boy who had loved to hear his mother playing Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ on the piano and who Ivan said was frightened of the dark.

‘You all nice and comfortable? OK, excuse me while I have a sip.’ She made him say this phrase or they couldn’t get going. Stella squirmed under the covers and then settled down.

‘Then I’ll begin…’

He bookmarked their place. Tonight it was
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
. She always knew where they had left off and read out the first line. The teachers told him her reading age was older than seven. He sometimes thought it was older than his own.

Sarah Glyde was talking: ‘Antony doesn’t have children, he hates them, he couldn’t bear me when I was small. I’m sure he disliked other children even when he was one himself.’ She looked up as if suddenly aware of Stella. ‘Did he say was married? Have you and he been having a…?’

‘No.’ Stella was emphatic.

Jack had found out that Ivan Challoner had murdered his mother. He had gone to Fullwood House.

Sarah was talking more to herself than to Stella: ‘Antony never invites me to Fullwood, not that I would want to go. The place gives me the creeps.’

Jack wanted to help Stella solve the case, not simply to get justice for his mother, but to find the murderer and get his revenge. He was going to kill Ivan Challoner.

Stella pushed past Sarah Glyde and rushed out.

The wheels spun on the ice, but when they gained traction, the Toyota jumped forward, spinning out on to the road, the rear wheels skidding. Stella glanced in her wing mirror and saw Sarah Glyde silhouetted in the porch.

Jack had several hours’ start; he would be there. It would be too late to save him from crossing the line, yet she had to try.

Only when, hunched over the steering wheel and driving as fast as she dare down the M23, did Stella think of calling the police. By police she meant Terry.

Monday, 24 January 2011

His hand hovered an inch from her face, tracing her flawless smile. Her teeth gave him joy; he kept this to himself because she would tease him. He did not like to be teased.

He had once told her this.

His voice broke their reverie: ‘Darling, do you remember me going down to the garage to fetch a gas canister for the heater?’

Her smile, as ever, was encouraging.

‘I was about to leave when the strangest thing happened. I heard a telephone. It could not be mine as I had left it with you, so I was stumped.’

‘This has a happy ending.’ She was anxious; he hastened to allay her worries. If he were to stroke her skin, it would be soft and smell of sunshine.

‘I found a mobile phone by the garage doors. Now this is where I don’t want you fretting, but I found the canvas cover thrown back. It could not be you as you never go in there. I’m right about that, aren’t I, darling?’

Her teeth were even, no gaps, no shrinkage in the gums; good and strong. They looked capped, but he knew they were not.

‘It was still ringing when I got to it. The caller was one ‘Stella mob’. I waited for it to stop then went through the previous calls. I know this is weird to you, but there is a list of Received calls and Dialled calls, then there are messages, some sent, some received. A whole history – yes, it’s terribly clever. I began with the sent messages.’

It did not vex him that he was losing her attention. As long as he had told her, she couldn’t accuse him of keeping it from her. It helped him to go over everything and get it clear.

‘I found two messages on the detective’s phone. They were both to this Stella. One read:
Meet me at the Ram 8pm
. The next contradicted this with
Can’t make it. Will call. Dad xx
.’

She was gazing at him, still smiling. Naturally she expected him to have a solution and was not interested in detail. He did not have a solution.

‘I couldn’t find the details of the owner. What I want to know is why they were in our house and if whoever it was came up here.’

The intruder could not get into the house without breaking the front door. He told her to keep it bolted. They must have got into the garage because although he found the garage door open, it was unbolted from the inside. This meant the back door had been unlocked. She was maintaining her smile.

‘So you see, I think they had guessed about us, which means they will be back. Nothing has been moved or stolen, I am sure you would have told me.’ Still she did not respond.

Her shoes had moved; they were at the foot of the bed and not where he had put them, under the chair. She had promised never to betray him.

‘The intruder left in a hurry. Perhaps you remember teasing me for forgetting to bring the gas canister? You said I would forget you next!’

She had laughed. Her laughter shrill and mocking, her head thrown back, her teeth white and flawless in the sunshine.

She had known he had found the phone, but said nothing. From that day the house was no longer a refuge. They were under siege.

There had been nothing in the phone’s Inbox. ‘Stella mob’ had not replied, or if she had the owner had deleted the message. He found her in the contacts list along with lots of numbers referenced only with initials. The owner of the mobile had a lot of secrets, he told her.