‘What happened to the satnav? You don’t believe in maps.’
‘It’s broken.’
‘British Grove is off King Street, opposite the junction for Goldhawk Road.’ He raised the book. ‘Is this A to Z yours?’
‘Clean Slate’s, yes.’
‘I’ve lost mine.’
‘Yours is defaced by those letters on each page. Time you got another.’ Stella had to be firm with Jack. ‘That is not yours.’
‘I dropped it and now a stranger has it.’ Jack sounded mournful. He believed his possessions were lost without him. Stella scoffed inwardly, but then saw Bunny sitting on her pillow at her mother’s. She’d been worried sick about him when he went. However, a street atlas was hardly the same.
Travelling towards the lights on Hammersmith Road, passing the site of the register office – long gone – where her parents had married in 1966, Stella remembered: ‘What was that about cracking the code?’
‘Ah yes.’ Jack tapped his cigarette case. ‘The digits for the dates when the men died all equal seven.’
‘Not all. Some have eight numbers.’
‘Not the number of numbers, the total of the numbers. Take Paul Vickery, our first death on Marquis Way. He died on the sixteenth of March. That’s a one, a six and a three. It equals ten. One and nought is one. Add the year, which was 1977. One plus nine is ten, make that a one again, two sevens are fourteen which is five. Add in our two ones and we have seven. The trick is to think of it like reducing gravy, keep boiling it down.’
Concentrating on keeping to the speed limit, Stella had lost track. ‘I’ve nearly filled in the grid. Get my Filofax.’ She indicated her rucksack.
Jack scrutinized the neatly drawn matrix. ‘Hey, well done on Denis Atkins. How did you find him?’
‘There was a plaque on Mafeking Avenue. I found an article about when it was unveiled, which gave me the year. It mentioned a man called Atkins…’ Stella was rather impressed with herself.
‘See! The seventh of September 1970. All of that comes to thirty-three. Add that and it comes to six.’ Jack’s cigarette fell on to his lap. ‘And Charlie Hampson’s date – the15th March comes to twenty which boils down to two. What a nuisance.’ He found the cigarette and snapped it into his case. ‘Something about threes maybe, thirty-three was Jesus’s age when —’
‘Two of them were killed on a Sunday and mostly in March, including Hampson.’ Stella felt excitement building, the answer was just out of reach. They were by Marks and Spencer’s. The witness appeal board about Joel Evans’s death was still there.
‘Very true.’ Jack shut the Filofax and popped it back in the rucksack.
‘There’s a seven in half of the dates, we keep finding seven bits of glass and the boys who died were aged seven. This man has a thing about seven.’ Stella was on it now.
‘What’s in British Grove?’
‘Lucille May.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘A reporter on the
Hammersmith and Fulham Chronicle
. She covered most of the accidents. She did that piece about Terry. Don’t mention it. I won’t say who I am.’
‘Sounds like a Hollywood actress. Great name.’ Jack whistled. ‘Nice one, Stell. Are we telling her about Terry’s photos?’
‘Absolutely not. She’s a journalist.’
‘Have to be clever. They have the snouts of porcupines.’
‘You’ll think of something.’ Stella dipped down a road behind the garage where Terry got his car serviced. It had closed down. Hoardings blocked it from view; a sign warned of demolition. Stella saw why older people could resent change. It played havoc with memory. If you didn’t recognize a place, how could you remember where, or even who you had been? The garage going put Terry at another remove. The nice man who had given her polo mints while they waited for his tyres to be changed must be dead now. More bloody ghosts.
‘They’re putting up luxury flats.’ Jack dropped her rucksack on the floor. ‘Ooops.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Some man told me.’ He pushed everything back into the bag.
The garage gave way to a terrace of redbrick villas. Stella drew up by the first house.
‘What’s this?’ Jack held up the printout from the police database.
Thursday, 3 May 2012
‘Jamie Markham was my schoolfriend.’ Jack contemplated his milk.
Stella tapped sharply on the floor with the umbrella, but he ignored her. She should not have left the strategy to Jack; pretending to know the road traffic victim was a bad idea. Lucille May was a journalist. Like a detective, she would be programmed to smell a rat and root it out.
‘My dear, you don’t look old enough.’ Lucille May patted Jack’s knee. In a short dress topped with a baggy man’s jumper, her stockinged feet tucked under her, she faced him on a leather chesterfield set in a bay window. On a coffee table in front of the sofa lay a London street atlas and the latest copy of the
Chronicle
and a heap of files containing Lucille May’s articles. They sipped their drinks.
‘I’m older than I look,’ Jack demurred.
‘My condolences about Jamie.’
Stella thought Lucille May might try to sound as though she meant it. She left her hand on Jack’s knee a little too long. Jamie Markham was twenty-nine in 2003 so would now be thirty-eight. This meant it was plausible they could be schoolfriends. Still Jack’s ruse was risky; she would have said so if he had told her what he planned to say.
‘We lost touch after school.’ Jack looked regretful.
At least he was resisting embellishments: unlike her, Jack was a skilled liar. The coffee was lukewarm and sweet. Stella put it down.
Lucille May’s flirty, rather skittish manner didn’t suit either her or her name. She was the woman who had interviewed Stella about her father’s death, the article that had prompted David to call. Their conversation had been on the phone, Stella having refused to let her come to the office, so she had not seen her until now. She had mumbled her name at the door, but May’s eyes were on Jack. Stella had to hope the journalist didn’t recognize her from the photograph used in the article. May had a careworn air that, like Jack, made it hard to guess her age, mid-fifties, Stella decided. She was tall. Stella was always surprised to meet women as tall as herself at six feet. May had invited them in before they could finish explaining why they were there. Stella thought back to the woman’s probing questions about Terry and shuddered. ‘Lucie, please!’ Ushered ahead of her into the kitchen, they waited while she made the drinks so had no chance to confer.
The kitchen had not been decorated for decades. Stella had eyed with distaste chipped blue Formica surfaces, shrunk and faded floral curtains that hung limply. The living room was dingy, the furniture tired and outdated. Despite the rooms having been knocked through and French doors added, foliage around lattice windows let only a dim greenish light filter in.
Jack’s ‘open sesame’ had been his dead friend, Jamie Markham. Fiddling with the cutting on Markham’s death, May needed no encouragement to talk.
The room was that of a busy professional. Although worn, it looked unlived-in. A gigantic television divided the room by a green-tiled fireplace. The wall above and the mantelpiece were filled with cheaply framed photographs of May with various low-grade celebrities spanning at least thirty years. They put Stella in mind of Terry’s basement wall with pictures of herself. A warped laminate bookcase was packed with garish true crime paperbacks and back copies of the
Chronicle
. Trying to sit properly in a squashy oatmeal settee, Stella saw no sign of a partner or children, although Lucille May wore a ring on her wedding finger, implying there had been someone at some stage.
‘The Markhams were newly married and she was pregnant. Well, you’ll know that.’
‘Not until I read your article. I’d appreciate hearing anything you can tell me about Jamie.’ Jack looked sorrowful.
Stella got up and fled to the other end of the room where doors opened on to a garden. So much for teamwork. Since Jack had found the printout, they had not made eye contact.
The garden was a meadow. The grass was too long for a domestic machine; were she doing the job, she would bring in their new rotary field mower. Stella’s eye was drawn to a swing. The chains were hanging from a rusting metal frame, the seat green with mildew. Lucille May had at least one child.
Stella got the picture: ‘empty nesters’ holding on to their kid’s stuff for hoped-for grandchildren. No child should use that swing; it belonged in a skip. Lucille May needed Clean Slate’s gold garden package. She would get Beverly to pop a leaflet through. She turned back to the room.
‘…Markham’s son had reared some creature… Let me see.’ May was rootling through her files. ‘Here we are. A sweet lad. Bit like my brother – how we change!’
Stella returned to the settee. Clearly old, it had recently been professionally cleaned. She could just detect the musky scent of leather cleaner.
‘He looks like Jamie.’ Jack leaned in and looked at the cutting.
‘Nonsense, darling. Kid’s fair and Markham had dark hair.’
Stella shot Jack a look, but he was deliberately avoiding her. He read aloud: ‘“… Damian Markham, aged seven, is now the same age as little Chris Mason was when James Markham’s Peugeot RCZ hit him on Shepherd’s Bush Road nearly eight years ago to the day in 2002. Markham was cleared of dangerous driving despite a witness reporting he had exceeded the speed limit. Damian, pictured here with a blackbird he reared singlehandedly, never knew his dad. Markham died months after Chris when his car smashed into a tree one night on Britton Drive, North Hammersmith. Why Markham was there late on a Sunday remains a mystery.”’
‘Must have put a dampener on Damian’s fifteen minutes of fame,’ Jack observed drily.
‘Chris Mason’s death was the bloody dampener. A little boy’s life cut short through carelessness.’ Lucille May was stern. ‘Friend or not, he destroyed the Masons. They didn’t have other kids.’
Marian Williams had talked about families being destroyed, Stella thought. Both women were on the sidelines of law and order. Terry tried to make a difference, stop the crime that wrecked ordinary lives. He must have known Lucille May. Stella thought her more his type than Marian; good-looking, a laugh, May would take no prisoners. Something stopped Stella asking her. If Terry had wanted to, he could easily have got May to help. He had not wanted it, she was sure.
‘Was it Jamie’s fault?’ Jack finished his milk.
‘There was no film in the security camera. Your man said Chris dashed out without looking. A witness corroborated his story. Technically it was not.’
‘Could Markham have committed suicide?’ Stella chipped in. Lucille May looked surprised. Perhaps she had forgotten she was there.
‘Sophie, his lovely young wife’ – her tone was acid – ‘said he was upbeat the week before he died, so no, more’s the pity. Sorry, sweetie.’ She patted Jack’s knee again.
‘People are often in great spirits before killing themselves. The decision’s made, they can be at peace,’ Jack said.
‘His wife insisted he was full of the future. They were moving to a bigger house, he had put a down payment on a Jeep. Sophie Markham said it was like he’d won the pools. I wheedled that out of her by fussing over her boy and his scraggy bird. She wrote to complain after the piece was out.’ She puffed her cheeks. ‘Not like the Masons have the luxury of sticking fucking pipettes down blackbirds’ gullets!’
Stella noticed that Lucille May spoke without care for Jack’s supposed feelings. Like Marian she did not mourn these men. Working on the same cases, if from different perspectives, it was likely the two women had met. She didn’t see them getting on. May seemed to view other women as competition. Marian might think May had a hand in the mess she and Terry had tried to clear up.
‘My editor wanted something on this house, but I’m saving it for the book. You don’t get anywhere in this game by squandering what took hard-won graft.’
‘Why did he want you to write about this house?’ Jack put down his empty glass.
‘You don’t want to know.’
Stella leaned forward on the umbrella. They did want to know. A good detective treats everything as important. To her surprise Jack got up.
‘Do you mind if I go for a smoke?’
‘Be my guest. I could do with some fresh air. I’ve given up, but once in a while…’ Lucille May swiped up a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the arm of the sofa.
Stella thought there would be more fresh air if she stayed where she was, but grabbing the umbrella she trailed after them.
‘Poor you, you’ve covered a lot of fatalities.’ An unlit cigarette between his lips, Jack cleared spiders’ webs from the seat of the swing and, sweeping up the skirts of his coat, sat down and gripped the chains. Stella had to admit he drew people out. Particularly women old enough to be his mother.
‘I’ve lost count. Two in Marquis Way – I highlighted that to the police. Paul Vickery and that crook.’ Lucille lit a cigarette and, cupping her hand, the cigarette between her lips, proffered the flame to Jack. He shook his head and began to swing to and fro.
‘What crook?’ Stella asked. May didn’t seem bothered that Jack wasn’t smoking.
‘Harvey bloody Gray. Blew his company’s pension fund and then himself. No loss.’
‘What did the police say when you pointed out the two deaths?’ Jack twisted the swing full circle one way and then the other. The frame creaked ominously.
‘They hate you doing their job. The “fatacs” were over twenty years apart so the location wasn’t a black spot. Fine, have it your way, said I, gives me free rein.’ One eye shut, she drew long on her cigarette. ‘One day you’ll all come crawling.’
May’s gaze fixed on the end of the garden. Stella looked. A bike leaned against the fence, tyres flat. The saddle was the same colour as the seat on the swing. Stella’s stomach fizzed. Perhaps May’s child would not present her with a grandchild. Her child had died. She tried to get Jack’s attention, but kicking with his feet he swung higher. Anyone would think the swing was why they were here.
‘It gets to you. The kiddies’ deaths, same story over and over, some tosser thrashing his motor. Gives a crap excuse, gets off with a fine or a ban and saunters off into the proverbial whatsit. It’s all about speed. Meeting deadlines, beating journey times. Shave off an hour here, seconds there. Keeps the world revolving and the coffers filling and the rest of us as powerless as ants.’