It wasn’t Mr Wilson. It was the man from the train. Simon was shoved aside by a man in station uniform who grabbed the man and pushed one of his arms behind his back.
Something flew across the ground. Instinctively Simon caught it. Black leather with a flap that was open. It was his mum’s handbag.
‘Police!’
‘Thief!’
‘Get him.’
Stamford Brook station teemed with people: passers-by, station staff, passengers from an Upminster train pulling out of the station. There was the whoop-whoop of a siren and a Ford Focus with chequered strips and flashing lights tore up to the zebra crossing. Two police officers pushed through the gathering crowd. It took a few moments for someone to see a small boy in grey school trousers and a jumper with a tear in the sleeve, sitting slumped against the photo booth clutching a woman’s handbag. A few more moments for the people who dragged him to his feet to understand that he wasn’t the accomplice of the culprit but the son of the woman whose bag had been snatched.
Simon was taken outside to where his mother was talking to a woman police officer. His sister reached up a hand and he squeezed it.
‘You and me against the world, Beewax,’ he whispered to her. ‘I’ll protect you. Always.’
‘Bzzzzz!’ she replied confidentially.
‘Kid’s a hero,’ a man in London Transport uniform told the police officer. ‘Tackled the guy – piled in there. Fearless. That boy loves his mum!’
Simon didn’t take his eyes off his mother. Unblinking he stared, and when she looked away he spoke quietly so that no one else would hear: ‘Since he’s not come, we can go hunting and gathering.’
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
Stella waited while Stanley sniffed at a lamp-post. She swapped hands on the lead as he pottered around the post to prevent him becoming wrapped around it. They were outside the house on Primula Street in Hammersmith where her dad had been born and lived until he moved with Suzie to Rose Gardens North. Terry had swapped the hum of the A40 for the Great West Road. Stella had a photograph, presumably taken by Suzie, of Terry leaning in the doorway, with her nana and herself, aged four, on the doorstep of the house she was outside now.
Terry’s father had died of a heart attack when he was fifteen.
‘
I was at school, I rushed out of the biology lab, dodged across roads, I didn’t care. I stood on the path outside our house and yelled, “Not my dad! Not my dad!”’
When Terry himself had died of a heart attack, Stella had resented the disruption to her work.
Not my dad!
The semi-detached red-brick house looked smaller than she remembered. A wheelchair ramp had replaced the step. Her nana would disapprove of the double mattress slumped against the wall and the television dumped on balding turf. Gone were the marigold borders and window boxes in the photograph. A plastic urn, faded and cracked, flourished with dandelions by the ramp.
Her nana’s ashes were scattered at Golders Green Crematorium. Terry used to visit the memorial book on the anniversary of her death. Terry was cremated at Mortlake. It hadn’t occurred to Stella to put an entry in the memorial book for him. Suzie hadn’t let Terry’s death get in the way of expressing her dissatisfactions about him. Recently, Stella realized, her mum had been quieter on the subject. She had someone else on her mind.
Dale Heffernan.
Her phone was ringing. Jackie.
‘William Frost wants to get hold of Jack.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘No. You OK with working with him?’ They hadn’t yet spoken about Jackie referring the case.
‘Yes, although I’m not sure we can help,’ Stella said. She saw a face at the upstairs window and for a second assumed it was her nana. ‘He said he knew you when he was a boy.’
‘Hardly. William’s brother Rick used to play with our neighbours’ kids. We’d just moved in, all our cash was soaked up by the mortgage, we were on rations, no sofa or table. There were two children next door, a sweet boy as thin as a rail and his cute sister, think her name was Lulu, something like that. Their parents’ marriage was on the rocks, the dad was a psychiatrist with a fancy car, chap never passed up a chance to be sarcastic about his wife – talk about airing dirty linen! The boy was playing substitute husband, protective little mite. I made Graham promise that those parents wouldn’t be us one day. I think we’ve succeeded! The boy – or man – moved out years ago, he rented the house out and is only selling it now. We’re holding our breath as to who buys it. Good neighbours are gold. ’
Stella drifted along the street, content to listen to Jackie’s chat about her home life.
‘Anyway, William got Jack’s answer machine. I said to call you. I’m guessing that with Jack’s new venture, he can’t spare the time.’
‘He’s not driving every day.’ Stella assumed Jackie meant the day shifts Jack was doing for a colleague whose partner was unwell.
‘I’m thinking of his move. It’s today, isn’t it? He’s already in a state about that owl! I told him, “Take it with you.” He won’t, he said it’s like taking the fireplace or half the garden. She – he says it’s a “she” – belongs with the house. Jack gets attached to things. I said to Graham, “That owl is a constant in his life. The lad’s not got many, poor lamb!”’
‘Not many owls?’
‘Things, people, places. A legacy of losing his mother young is he’s slow to trust others, you know that. I do hope this is a good decision. He could get lonely up there.’
Jack hadn’t said he was moving. His working for Stella wasn’t a pass to his private life, but Stella had supposed they were friends. Jack didn’t have a pet, certainly not an owl. He wasn’t interested in her dog, not that Stanley was her dog.
Jack was leaving Clean Slate.
A man was walking towards her. Stella moved to let him pass. He moved too.
‘There you are!’ William Frost was barring her way.
‘Jackie, I’ll have to go.’ She rounded on him. ‘How come you knew I was here?’
‘My brother designed this app, it shows me where any of my contacts are at any time. I’m testing it for him.’ He shrugged. ‘I
was
testing it. I found you in minutes.’
‘What do you want?’ Stella did not like being ‘found’.
‘I tried Jack. What a dark horse he is!’ He seemed oblivious to her annoyance.
‘He’s moving house,’ Stella retorted. She didn’t have Jack’s new address. Unwilling to admit that he hadn’t told her what it was, she hadn’t asked Jackie for it.
‘You and me then!’ Frost said. ‘Let me buy you lunch.’
The pub was crammed with sleekly dressed lunchtime office workers. Bulky in her wellingtons and anorak with a small poodle on her shoulder – in case he trod mud into the carpet – and wind-tossed hair, Stella felt out of kilter. She went for cheesy chips and a ginger beer and, while William threaded his way through the crowd to order food and drink from the bar, she retreated to a table at the back. It was next to a cleaning cupboard and immediately the whiff of polish calmed her. She gave the dog water in his collapsible bowl. He drank greedily and then flopped against her leg, his sodden muzzle soaking her trousers. Once this would have horrified her, now she barely noticed. She flipped to a clean page in her Filofax, clicked on her Clean Slate ballpoint and wrote today’s date at the top, underscoring it for good measure. Glancing up, she caught sight of Jack by the door. Dropping her pen, she half rose.
‘Food’s on its way.’ William slid into the seat opposite and handed her a frosted tumbler of ginger beer. ‘This is nice!’ He clinked a large glass of red wine against hers. ‘Here’s how!’
‘Cheers.’ Stella sat down and drank her ginger beer. She gave a spluttering cough – she had forgotten she hated fizzy drinks. Bubbles bursting in her gullet, she looked for Jack, but couldn’t see him.
‘Two seconds.’ She got up and, unleashing the dog from the table leg, pushed through the throng to the door. The pub faced Wormwood Scrubs common, an expanse of green. There was no one there. No sign of Jack. She was about to text him, but saw she had no signal. Reluctantly – she could do with Jack with her – Stella returned to the table.
‘Let’s start with your brother.’ She spoke with a confidence she didn’t feel. Jack was moving; perhaps he’d come into the pub to get a sandwich.
‘As I said, it’s his wife you should be talking to.’ William raised his glass as if in another toast. ‘Being his brother didn’t mean we were close.’
‘It’s a start.’ Not having a brother, Stella couldn’t argue, but she found his unwillingness odd. Why had he gone to such trouble to find her? ‘Let’s start with his likes and dislikes.’
‘How will this help find his killer?’
Stella tapped her pen on her lips. She didn’t know how it would help or why she’d asked. She glanced at her phone, hoping, despite the lack of signal, that Jack had texted. ‘If this is a pre-meditated murder, his personality and his routines might have contributed to his death. Obviously if it was a random killing, it won’t help at all.’ Faintly pleased with herself, Stella wrote ‘Likes’ and ‘Dislikes’ divided by a line.
‘Liked the army, disliked me, liked spying on people, disliked heights.’ William gave a satisfied huff as if giving the correct answer in a pub quiz and sat back for a young man to put a plate heaped with a slab of steak and a mountain of chips in front of him.
Stella’s chips came on a large platter nestling beside a jungle of salad that was way beyond a garnish.
‘What was he like as a boy?’ Stella untangled a chip from threads of molten cheese.
‘I was three years older, a big age gap when you’re small.’ William drained his glass. ‘We didn’t share friends.’ He was devouring his steak with the urgency of someone refuelling before whizzing off to do something dangerous and pointless, a quality Stella grudgingly admired.
‘Who were his friends?’ she asked.
‘That’s overstating it. He didn’t have friends as such; he had a gang who did what he told them. They had a hideout in a graveyard near our house.’ Frost looked around him as if expecting to see Tallulah Frost in the pub. Stella looked too, still hoping to see Jack. It couldn’t have been Jack, she decided.
‘Rick was the sort of boy who pulls legs off spiders. One of them ended up marrying him.’ William dropped his voice as if they might be overheard.
‘One of the children in his gang?’ He couldn’t mean spiders.
‘Total surprise. Rick wasn’t interested in relationships, gay or straight, he was in love with the army. Can’t say there was much love lost between them.’ He frowned. ‘And hey, the army don’t want soldiers chewing on Gaviscon double action before going into battle!’ He tossed his balled napkin on to his empty plate, the edges soaked red with bloodied juices. ‘Me, they’d have had like a shot, as it were!’
Stella could imagine William Frost leading a platoon in the army, striding forth without hesitation. She doubted he suffered from indigestion.
‘He designed that tracking app. If he didn’t know anyone, why did he care where anyone was?’
‘I didn’t say he knew no one, just that he didn’t have friends. No point in tracking someone you trust.’
‘Can anyone use that app?’ Stella examined her fingers, an idea forming.
‘Give me a name and bingo!’ He snatched up his phone. ‘The one drawback is that the person can tell you’re “watching”. A pair of eyes pops up at the top of their screen. You have to hope they don’t notice – and few people would. Rick would have sorted that if he’d not—’
‘In general’ – Stella waved her hand – ‘does it keep a history of people you’ve followed? If we knew your brother’s movements, we might find out who he thought was a threat.’
‘The software must be at his house.’ His reply was pointed.
Stella got the hint. She was not dressing up as a cleaner. Their plates had been taken away without her noticing. She berated herself; she was too easily distracted to be a detective.
Jack had been doing day shifts on the Underground – for a friend, he’d said. She had thought that, apart from herself and Jackie, he had no friends. She didn’t count Lucille May, the flighty journalist they had consulted for the Blue Folder case who, like lots of older women, had a soft spot for Jack.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ William was on his feet. Again he glanced about him.
‘White no sugar, thanks.’ So far in this interview she had netted nothing. They had said their prime suspect was Rick Frost’s wife. Perhaps Jack’s idea that William Frost had executed the perfect murder and couldn’t resist boasting was correct. He seemed intent on saying how he was better than his brother and something was making him jumpy. She felt a wave of unease and was grateful to be in a packed pub and, although he was fast asleep at her feet, to have the dog with her.
While he was at the bar Stella scribbled down a list of questions. Jack would angle them to encourage William to talk laterally, to ramble on and give himself away. Stella wanted to cut to the chase and instil shock value.
Did you murder your brother?
If Frost could commit a perfect murder, he would lie as convincingly. She needed Jack to scrutinize body language while she asked the questions. Jack was on her mind; that was why she thought she had seen him. Where was he moving to?
William had left his phone on the table. Stella could see him at the bar giving their order to a woman. She snatched up his phone and brought it to life. Nearly passing out that he hadn’t protected it with a password, she tossed the handset back on to the table.
The woman was pouring coffee into cups on the counter. Stanley must have sensed something was wrong because he was on his hind legs, front paws on her thigh. ‘Ssshh!’ she admonished him, although he had made no sound.
William was leaning on the counter in conversation. The woman had stopped what she was doing. Ignoring Stanley, Stella retrieved Frost’s phone.
She had no idea what the app was called and swiped screens back and forth looking for it. She found an icon of a magnifying glass.
Stalker Boy
. She shivered and glanced up; the woman was putting saucers under the cups. The dawdling would be annoying in another circumstance, but now every second counted. Stella willed Frost to keep up the banter as her fingers, damp with perspiration, dabbed on the icon and opened the software.