Ghost Girl(The Detective's Daughter) By Lesley Thomson
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To Mel
And for Sarah Baylis, an inspiring writer
(1956–87)
The power to concentrate exists in everyone; but few can concentrate sufficiently to drive a motor car with complete mastery in all circumstances.
Roadcraft: The Police Drivers’ Manual, 1960
Jack is alive and likely to live,
If he dies in your hand you’ve a forfeit to give.
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes,
edited by Iona and Peter Opie
Prologue
In the pale light the girl might be a ghost risen from one of the graves. Zipped up in a chequered anorak, insubstantial, she trips along the asphalt path, her hood drawn up, her face a pallid oval in the twilight. Apart from the anorak she is dressed as if for a party in black patent-leather pumps, white socks gartered to her knees and a swaying skirt. A duffel bag is strapped across her back. She slips with apparent confidence through the maze-like cemetery.
She stops before an angel; the statue dwarfs her. The angel is sculpted to hold the gaze of a mourner and her considerable height means that from below only darkening sky frames her covered head. Fast-moving clouds make her appear to incline towards the child in solemn greeting. The girl returns the stare. Alone in a London cemetery, she does not seem afraid.
She rummages in her bag and brings out a hammer. Managing the oversized tool with both hands, she clambers on to the low marble surround. Her pumps crunching on the decorative surface are the only sound in the votive quiet.
She wields the hammer and with a precise arc smashes at the angel’s wrist, severing her hand. A clean break. The hand lands with a thump away on the grass. The girl positions herself on the other side of the angel and aims again. This time she swings too wildly. On the downward return the hammer head clips her knee, breaking the skin, but she appears not to feel it. She executes the perfect swing of her first attempt and shears off the other hand. She slips the hammer through the neck in her bag. She collects up the two marble hands and pokes them inside.
She rushes away pell-mell, pretty pumps kicking out, flitting over graves and around mausoleums to the central avenue. She leaves the way she came.