‘He was due home at seven. He was area sales manager and did ridiculous hours driving around his territory – West London, Surrey, some of Hampshire – and on a Sunday, poor love.’ Mrs Hampson looked sharply at the portrait as if she sensed contradiction. ‘He rang me at six saying something had come up and he would be late. We were going out, the table booked for eight. He said, “Don’t cancel, get the last sitting.” He would not have done it.’
‘Done what?’ Jack was glad Stella was not there to see him crash through the rules. ‘Let clients talk. Do not engage them in conversation on personal matters. Keep cleaning throughout or afterwards they will blame you.’
‘Killed himself. Suicide. Took his own life. Took it where?’ She sat down at the desk. ‘They insinuated Charlie was having an affair and couldn’t cope. “Dumb wife blind to what’s under her nose” was written all over their faces. Meetings on a Sunday; all men tell lies to unsuspecting spouses. He’d completed expensive dental treatment only days before. Why would he do that if he planned to be dead? Sodding waste of money since his head smashed through the windscreen.’ She snatched up the pen again, holding it above the papers on her desk as if about to pounce.
Jack regarded Charles Hampson. The man’s chilly smile revealed flawless teeth.
‘At first they were sorry for me. You get sympathy if you lick your wounds and go quietly. Then I came out fighting and, boy, did that put them off!’
‘Who are “they”?’ Jack pulled the flex out of the vacuum but then stopped; it felt inappropriate to clean, even though that was why he was here.
‘The boys in blue, the sickly coroner, our so-called friends and my family – such as they are. Two motley cousins. “Don’t fool yourself, Amanda dear, face facts.” I couldn’t stand it and now I don’t have to. No one invites “the Widow” to dinner – not even to a party. They pretend I’m dead too.’
She had the low, cracked voice of a heavy smoker, although Jack couldn’t detect smoke on her or in the room.
‘I told the policeman, “If you won’t get to the truth, I will.”’ She stirred the papers on her table with the pen.
‘What do you think happened?’ Charles Hampson had a portentous air. Beringed hands clasped, he could be peeing.
‘Not what I think.’ Mrs Hampson grabbed some pages and rattled them at Jack. ‘I know. Charlie’s car came off the road. I called him at ten past eleven and couldn’t get through. That was normal, he turns his phone off for meetings but I was fretting. I had the table until midnight – if it had been anyone but Charlie they would have let it go, but people did anything for him. I was calling him for the umpteenth time when the doorbell went.’
In the pause, Jack imagined he could hear the bell ring. ‘Don’t feel you have to—’
‘He died instantly. They assured me he felt nothing – as if that was consolation.’
‘Wasn’t it?’
Mrs Hampson shot Jack a look. ‘Of course it was, I don’t want him to have suffered. But suicide? The man was happy. Why kill himself?’ Mrs Hampson reached for a plastic carrier bag by the desk and brought it on to her lap. She pulled out a newspaper and, unfolding it, jabbed at the print, motioning to Jack.
She had been talking for fifteen minutes. Jack would not finish on time; the job was slipping away from him. He joined her at the desk.
It was a copy of the
Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle
and was dated Thursday, 19 March 2009. Mrs Hampson prodded an announcement about a forthcoming Japanese Garden Party to be held in the borough. Jack was puzzled until underneath he saw the piece reporting a fatal car accident the previous Sunday on Phoenix Way on the Phoenix Industrial Estate. The driver was Charles Hampson, aged fifty-four, a sales manager for AVCOM Technology. Mr Hampson was dead on arrival at Charing Cross Hospital on the Fulham Palace Road. His BMW, a brand-new vehicle, the report stated, swerved off the road, glanced against a tree and finally smashed through a wall.
‘His teams were exceeding targets. He was due a whacking bonus and had promised me a Lexus. His car was a week old. Had he wanted to do something so fucking stupid, it would not have involved his beloved Beemer.’ She glared up at Jack. ‘It was not suicide.’
‘It was an accident.’ Jack nodded, at a loss as to how to resume cleaning without appearing crass. Mrs Hampson seemed to have forgotten why he was there. Soon she would remember and demand a refund for dawdling.
‘It was not an accident!’ She leapt up and barged past him, stopping by the sitting-room door.
‘What do you think happened?’ Stella’s rules had never seemed more sensible.
‘I know what happened.’ Mrs Hampson pointed a jabbing finger at the portrait. ‘Charlie was murdered.’
Jack stowed everything into the van. He opened the driver’s door and with a sigh got in.
‘You’re running late.’
With a yelp he scrabbled at the door, his instinct to jump out and scream for help.
Stella was sitting in the passenger seat.
‘We need to talk,’ she said. ‘Go round the corner.’
‘I won’t charge overtime.’ Jack turned on the ignition and took the van unsteadily down a little road on their left. He stalled the engine before he could brake.
‘Yes you will, don’t be silly.’ Stella twisted around and leant back on the door facing him, her rucksack on her lap. She rummaged in it and produced two flasks; she passed one to Jack. ‘There’s hot milk and honey in yours. I’ve got tea.’ She busied herself pouring tea into her cup.
After a sip of the hot sweet liquid Jack brightened: ‘What do you know about Amanda Hampson?’ He did not mention he had seen her before. It would involve him confessing how he came to be there.
‘Ex-customer come back to haunt us after three years in the wilderness. We lost the job over using bleach. Did Jackie say?’ She raised her eyebrows. When Jack nodded, she went on. ‘Husband dead. Cancer, I think. Tell me there were no hiccups.’
‘He was killed in a car crash. Mrs Hampson says he was murdered. She’s trying to get the police to reopen the case. They’re not interested.’ Their drinks had made the windscreen steam up so he rubbed a porthole in the glass. ‘I’m guessing they think she’s potty. She swears Hampson had no enemies and was popular at work. He sold process software of some kind.’ He blew on the hot liquid.
‘How did he die?’
‘Car accident. I just said.’
‘Literally.’
‘He hit a tree and then a wall, he must have been going fast.’
‘I’d say so. What’s the problem, does she think the brakes were tampered with?’
‘The car was new. She has no evidence for murder.’
‘Sounds far-fetched. Was the verdict “Accidental Death”?’
‘No, it was “Narrative” – a catch-all for when nothing else will do. She is sure they think it was suicide. She said he would have left a note.’
‘Not if he’d wanted her to collect on the insurance.’
‘I doubt Charlie-boy would be that considerate.’ Jack pictured the ice-blue eyes of the man in grey. ‘Hampson told his sister three weeks before he died that he was furious at losing a sales pitch, but Amanda Hampson says that’s nonsense, he was on top of his job and his sister is, quote: “a stirrer”. They don’t get on.’
‘She can’t accept it was an accident. She said we used bleach on purpose.’
‘Perhaps she was right,’ Jack said without thinking. Seeing Stella was about to protest, he added: ‘It is a mystery why Hampson left the road. It was straight with no parked cars. The only thing was the weather. That night it was foggy.’
‘Was he drunk?’
‘No, and there’s no mention in his diary of the meeting he said he had. Although he told Amanda it was last-minute, which could explain that.’
‘He was lying.’
‘He was lying to someone. She says he always told her the truth. Oh, and there was no CCTV.’
‘He was having an affair and drove too fast to get back in time.’ Stella drank her tea. ‘People assume their partners tell them the truth, erroneously usually.’
‘You have to assume a level of trust or you go mad,’ Jack countered. Stella was cynical about relationships.
‘People are blind to reality if it suits them not to rock the boat. It means they don’t have to have sex, but get companionship; they keep the status quo and the lifestyle. Some people would rather live with betrayal than be on their own.’
Jack poured more milk into the flask cup and breathed in the steam. She had a point there.
‘It’s a pact with the devil,’ Stella said. ‘Those people keep a clean house.’ She sipped her drink in silence as if digesting this idea.
‘Amanda Hampson would have clouted me if I had hinted her husband was meeting someone,’ Jack said at last.
Stella screwed the cup back on her flask. ‘It’s open and shut.’ She could have been meaning the flask.
‘Anyway, she likes my work and wants me every week.’ Jack drained his cup. ‘Because, as she put it, I “understand”.’
‘We’d better allow two and a half hours: she’ll want to chat on to you about her “murdered husband”.’
‘I’ll try to avoid it.’
‘Make allowances. Tea-tree and sympathy: that’s what you can offer!’ Stella sniffed at her pun.
‘You don’t make jokes. What’s happened? Is this the case you mentioned last night?’
‘Will you clean for my mother for two hours twice a week? If you go in the late afternoon it will give her time to make a mess and lose stuff for you to fail to find.’ She stuffed the flask back in the rucksack.
‘Yes of course.’ Jack looked at her. ‘And the case?’
Stella reached into her rucksack and produced a blue plastic ring binder.
‘See what you make of that.’
Friday, 6 May 1966
‘Your brother’s crying. He wants you.’ A red-faced boy rushed up to Mary Thornton. She ignored him, her attention on a boy waiting by the wall. In the two playtimes that day, Mary had lobbied for children to meet her by the drinking fountain in the playground after school. She was methodical, her Brooke Bond cards – Trees of Britain – were arranged in ascending numeric order, bound by an elastic band. Even outside, they gave off a whiff of tea leaves. Mary had several swaps.
Only Douglas Ford was here. A head shorter than Mary and painfully thin, the boy had knobbly knees and eyes that blinked when he spoke: easy pickings for teasing. He had forty-seven cards stuck crookedly on to the flimsy pages of his album.
He wanted Mary’s Yew (Number 9) and Sycamore (Number 13). With these two swaps he would have forty-nine and only needed the Holm or Evergreen Oak (Number 43) to have the set of fifty. Mary had thirty-six. Douglas was offering her the Holly (leaf and berries), which she didn’t have, and the English Elm, which she did. Her dream of being the first in the class to fill her album was slipping away. She was holding him off, hoping for more comers.
‘He’s asking for you right now.’ The smaller boy ran on the spot.
‘Is this all you’ve got?’ Mary demanded, waving the album at Douglas.
‘Michael’s hurt,’ the boy persisted.
‘You could swap the Elm with someone else,’ Douglas replied helpfully. ‘Could I at least have the Yew in return for the Holly please? It’s a bit more rare.’ He twitched, his eyes shutting. His album was firmly in the new girl’s possession; one hand fluttered impotently towards it.
‘Michael wants you.’ The smaller boy tugged at Mary’s sleeve.
‘It’s rude to interrupt.’ She shook him off. The Holly would add to Mary’s collection, but would give Douglas Ford a terrible lead. The sun was hot on her bare shoulders. She eased the straps on her sundress.
‘Michael says to get your mum.’
Mary came up with the perfect deal. ‘Meet me under the last railway arch in five minutes.’ She nodded to Douglas to confirm it was an order not a suggestion. She slipped the elastic band from her fingers on to her cards and dropped them into the ample pocket of her dress.
Douglas’s eyes were screwed tight shut. ‘I’m to go home. Nan’ll kill me.’
‘Don’t answer back.’ Mary was Miss Crane. She drew herself up: ‘It’s either that or no Yew for you.’
‘You have to come now!’
Mary looked down at the boy at her elbow. ‘I don’t have to do anything.’ She pulled her satchel strap over her head, arranging it across her chest. ‘Where is he?’
She did not hurry. The boy rushed off around the corner to the Infants’ playground. Mary sauntered behind. The boy tore across the asphalt, dodging the last of the infants straggling out of the gates to waiting parents and stopped by wide shallow steps that led to a circle of grass which Mary had learnt was the called Sunken Garden. Becoming an instant signpost, the boy pointed at a forlorn figure in baggy shorts and scuffed Clarks sandals hunched in the centre, his bright red pullover pulled over his knees. Mary trotted down the steps and over the grass. Michael had one arm around his crooked knees. His other arm hung limp as if it did not belong to him. He watched his older sister impassively.
‘What’s the matter?’
Fresh tears brimmed and the little boy dashed at them with a grubby palm.
‘I fell over.’
‘You tripped, you mean.’ She stood with her hands on her hips. ‘You look all right. Come on, it’s late.’
‘It hurts.’ Michael cradled his right arm in his left hand. ‘I can’t write.’
‘You can’t write anyway and you don’t need to now because it’s home-time.’ Mary grabbed her brother’s right wrist.
He blanched when she swung his hand up then down and let it go. Silent tears flowed in earnest and he sniffed miserably while Mary peered at the dimpled arm. The skin, brown from the sun and dusted with dirt, was otherwise unmarked.
‘Don’t fuss.’ She tossed back her hair, her voice low like Miss Crane’s. ‘There’s no blood. Don’t be a baby. Go on home, I’ll be along.’
‘What? Why? Where are you going?’ Astonished at the new arrangement, Michael stopped crying. ‘You’re to get our tea.’ He had learnt to rely on the newly established routine of his sister looking after him after school, however prone to sharp jabs and illogical tellings-off it was.
‘You can get your own.’ Mary was brisk. The idea that she did not have to look after her little brother every day was gaining momentum. ‘You’re seven now.’
‘You’ve got the key to the house.’