Through the bars of the gate he caught sight of her by the subway moving briskly towards the Great West Road instead of following his path through the trees. She was returning to the school. Jack felt a flicker of disappointment: the game of cat and mouse was over before it had begun.
Her singing was soft and lilting. She was in the street. How had he missed her? Jack could bear it no longer and put his hands over his face. Despite the threat, the tune, a song of the sirens, filled him with peace and caressed his cramped, stiff body.
‘Mary had a little lamb,
Little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go…’
The singing was louder as she passed his hiding place. The church bells chimed ten o’clock.
Jack crept up to Terry’s front door. He tilted the flap on the letterbox and let it go. Once, then quickly two more times so that Stella did not mistake it for movement caused by the wind.
‘…And so the teacher turned it out,
Turned it out, turned it out,
And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near.’
The singing grew louder still.
Jack lifted the flap and it took all he had not to bang it and scream out for Stella. He tapped again and pressed his face to the cold glass.
‘“Why does the lamb love Mary so?”
The eager children cry…’
*
The door opened and Jack pitched forward. He put hands out blindly in the darkness and, grabbing the door, silently closed it.
‘What the—’
‘Sssssh!’
Stella felt herself propelled along the hall. She stumbled on the step into the kitchen and lost her footing. A fusty cloth smothered her; everything went black.
‘Keep still and don’t speak.’ More a breath than a whisper.
Her pulse was racing. There was trembling that was not her own. ‘Jack?’
‘Sssssh!’ The trembling increased.
The chill of the floor penetrated Stella’s polo shirt. She could not move: Jack was lying across her and his coat was smothering her. This was not why she could not see. The light was off. Beyond her heart’s feathery beat, Stella heard the letterbox. It was lifted. It did not go down. Someone was looking through.
Jack was shaking. He was scared.
The letterbox shut. Stella strained for the slightest sound and heard the Terry’s gate click shut.
‘OK, safe to move.’ Jack did not move.
Stella felt the length of his long frame along her body. His soft coat brushed against her cheek. It smelled of Ecover non-biological and Jack. She let herself relax.
Abruptly Jack was up and she was dazzled by the overhead strip. Stella struggled to a sitting position and collapsed against the dresser, rubbing the back of her neck to ease the numbness.
Jack was sitting at the table. The shadow of a beard was stark against his ashen features. His fringe flopped, hiding his eyes. With his coat collar up, he looked like an overwrought hero in a black and white film.
‘What was that about?’ Automatically Stella took down a mug from the pine dresser.
‘Nothing.’ He was fiddling with the photographs on the table.
‘Funny nothing.’ Stella flicked on the kettle.
‘Please could I have hot milk with honey?’
Stella poured the remainder of the milk into the mug – so much for it lasting a week – and placed it in the microwave. ‘Jack, what is going on?’ She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
‘Thought I was being followed.’ Jack straightened the row of prints. ‘Terry is numbering these chronologically. That second crash on Marquis Way was more recent than the first one in 1977 when Paul Vickery died. He’s numbered the two shots as ‘6’ and ‘6a’, which suggests it’s later than the Markham crash which Terry’s numbered with a series of fives.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t walk about at night, there’s all sorts out there.’ All sorts included Jack. The microwave bleeped. ‘You’re lucky I opened the door.’
‘Weren’t you expecting me?’ Jack asked reasonably.
It was true, Stella had asked him to come, but he hadn’t said yes. ‘I said come to my flat, at around eight,’ she said firmly, unsure this was true.
‘I’m glad I didn’t then.’ Jack peered at the pictures.
Stella had seen him distracted like this before. It was due to Amanda Hampson. ‘Would you like more shifts?’ He needed structure.
Jack scratched his cheek, leaving marks down his cheekbones like a Red Indian. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Why did we have to keep quiet?’ She glared at him. ‘Who is out there?’
‘I told you, some weirdo.’
‘Actually you didn’t say they were weird. We should call the police.’
‘This is London. It’s nothing.’ Jack swallowed his milk down the wrong way and was overwhelmed by a cough.
‘Promise me you’ll be sensible.’ Stella had no right to exact anything from Jack and he would say so. Nor would he be sensible.
‘I promise,’ Jack said.
Stella joined him at the table and tried again: ‘Are you OK after, you know, after Mrs Hampson?’ Saying her dead client’s name brought back the smell of congealing blood.
‘Yes. You?’
‘Me? Definitely.’
They scrutinized the roads stretching into the distance.
‘I’ve been wondering what Amanda wanted to tell your dad,’ Jack said finally.
‘We know. She told Marian Williams her husband had passed his advanced driving test. Naïve to suppose that prevented him having an accident, as Marian pointed out.’
Jack sipped his milk. ‘She wasn’t naïve. She wanted to save her nugget of gold for Cashman if she couldn’t tell Terry. I think Amanda was fobbing her off, she didn’t want to waste it on a lowly civilian employee.’
‘She got that wrong,’ Stella huffed. ‘Marian is hardly lowly. Her job is vital and she takes pride in it. She’s Cashman’s gatekeeper so that tactic meant Mrs Hampson didn’t speak to him.’ Stella saw something of herself in the rigorously organized administrator.
‘Are you sure she didn’t say anything else to the clerk?’
Stella told Jack about Marian’s arm and her own conviction that Marian was a victim of domestic violence. She had appreciated Marian’s tact in not telling Amanda Hampson that she was Terry Darnell’s daughter. Luckily Hampson had paid her so little attention she had not noticed her Clean Slate uniform or the bleach issue might have come up.
‘Bruises don’t darken that quickly,’ Jack agreed, sipping his milk.
Stella mimed wiping milk off her upper lip but Jack appeared not to notice.
‘Any more thoughts?’ He gestured at the photographs.
‘The streets look the same.’
‘We know they’re not because we’ve been there.’
‘But they are!’ Stella pulled her chair forward. ‘They are the same kind of street.’ She jabbed at the second shot of Marquis Way where Paul Vickery had died. ‘They have no bends or side roads and are long. No houses. All of the three streets we have been to were in a no man’s land – clapped-out industrial units and businesses shut up or run down, cemeteries. No ordinary person would go there after dark.’ She glared at Jack. ‘That man at the laundry would have called out if he was there legitimately. As you said, he legged it when he saw the van.’
‘You’re right.’ Jack traced his finger along Marquis Way. ‘There are no cameras. CCTV didn’t exist in 1977, but it did in 2002 when James Markham slammed into that horse chestnut on Britton Drive.’ He spiralled a lock of hair and said ruminatively, ‘It’s terrible for the tree. No one thinks of that.’
‘Sweet.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It was a sweet chestnut, not horse.’
‘Fancy you knowing that!’ Jack brushed back his fringe. ‘What a dark horse, or dark horse chestnut you are!’ He eyed Stella gleefully over his mug.
Looking at her grid, Stella saw something that should have been obvious. ‘Every man drove into a tree!’ She put down her tea. ‘Jack, there’s no way these are accidents.’
‘You’re right!’ Jack slumped back. ‘How do you make three and possibly four men, if we count the telegraph pole, die on impact? Law of averages means it’s not possible.’
‘That’s the “how”. Let’s keep to the “why” for now.’ Once Stella knew why there was a stain, she knew what had made it and could decide what agent to use to remove it. ‘There were no cameras on Phoenix Way where Charlie Hampson died either. So for each of these incidents there was no CCTV and no witnesses.’
‘Amanda saw the Collision Report Book for Hampson’s accident. Weather conditions were dry, but there was thick fog. The police told her it’s likely he got disoriented.’
In the beat that followed, the fridge sprang to life, its hum loud in the hushed quiet. Again Stella had the sense Terry was in the room with them. If David’s dog was here, he would know. She picked up her phone. No message from David.
‘Where’s your back-door key?’ Jack got up.
‘Terry hides it in the fork section of the cutlery drawer. Why?’
Jack rattled around in the drawer and found the key. He unlocked the door and went out on to the patio. ‘Lock up after me.’ He buttoned up his coat. ‘A small thing: when you leave, try to look normal.’
‘How else would I look? Where are you going?’ Stella was dismayed.
‘To bed.’
Jack scaled the garden wall and melted into the night.
Stella waited on the patio, half expecting him to reappear. Eventually she turned the key in the lock and returned it to the drawer. She washed up Jack’s mug and, casting about for her own, saw the notes she had stuck on the photographs.
Charles Hampson was killed on 15 March 2009. She had written ‘15/3/2009’. Seven digits counting the zeros, and seven for ‘16/3/1977’ for Paul Vickery. Jack said seven was a special number. Seven was number of stones he had found at each crash site. Seven was the number of cakes Jennifer Barlow had made for her husband before she died.
Stella reached for her mobile to call Jack. The date for Jamie Markham was 10/11/2002. Eight digits. She put down the phone. Dead end.
There was a message.
Fancy a meal at mine with Stanley and me? Sat eve after last sesh of dp clng? Dx
Yes, she wrote and was about to add a kiss, but decided against it. Then, before she pressed ‘send’, she changed her mind and typed a lower-case x. David was right, it was the last deep cleaning session, she would make the most of it.
Stella had planned to go to Richmond Park with Suzie on Saturday. She would cancel.
Saturday, 2 July 1966
‘This will be nice and tidy when we finish, Daddy,’ piped Mary. She was helping pack up Michael’s room because her mum would not come in there. Her daddy was using two gigantic boxes. If Michael was there and she was not grown up, they would have hidden inside them. Instead she was doing as she was told and filling them with Michael’s comics and cars, his toys and his Andy Pandy books.
Mary had expected to enjoy the task. Michael would be cross she was touching his things and even crosser that they would be given away. But being dead he couldn’t spoil it and stop her. She kept forgetting all the things that being dead meant. Some of them were not fun. She did like helping her dad. She would do anything for him, and was waiting for the moment to say so.
She heaved Michael’s shoebox of lead soldiers out of his toy cupboard. A headless sentry fell on to the floor. ‘He was broken already,’ she said quickly. ‘Where shall I put it for mending?’
‘In the box, no need to mend it.’
Michael’s marbles filled an enormous glass sweet jar to the brim. Mary grasped the jar and lifting it, staggered to the boxes. The jar slid from her grasp and crashed to the floor. The afternoon they had moved in she had dropped a box and broken china and glass.
The jar landed on Michael’s sheepskin rug and did not break. The lid burst off, scattering marbles among the tufty wool. Her dad had gone. Mary tiptoed to the window. Grass grew around the legs of Michael’s swing. She stepped on a marble and, stooping, picked it up. It did not have the pattern of the others – single twisting leaves of blue, white, red or yellow. This one had fiery orange snakes coiling around each other. It was Michael’s champion marble. She had confiscated it from him. He must have stolen it back from her. She heard voices and ran to her place on the landing.
‘Jean, we have to get it done. The room’s a mausoleum.’
‘You never wanted her.’
‘Don’t go over this again.’
‘You blame me.’
‘That woman said it, the one you allowed in and blabbed away to. Children need mothers, especially boys.’
‘Blame me, go on.’
‘You’re not to blame.’
Mary stumbled up the stairs and into her room. She barricaded the door with a chair and like a snake slithered under the bed and found her duffel bag.
She laid the Angel’s hands on the bedspread, palms uppermost, the ends of the wrists white and sharp. She touched the left one.
That’s my blood.
She dropped Michael’s champion marble into the hand; it made a chinking sound. She tried to close the cold fingers around it, but they were too stiff. ‘You won it, it’s yours.’ She spoke into the room.
The bedroom door slammed into the chair but didn’t open.
‘Open up, girl. What are you playing at?’ her dad shouted. ‘What’s that mess in Michael’s room?’
‘I don’t know.’ She stuffed the hands into the bag and kicked it under the bed. She moved the chair. The door flew wide. Her dad was on the landing.
‘Did you do this?’
Mary looked into Michael’s room. Marbles were strewn like petals all over the rug. ‘No.’ She was firm. ‘Maybe the jar fell.’
‘Nobody likes a liar.’ His eyes were like marbles. ‘Clear it up.’