12
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Stella left the van in St Peter’s Square to avoid Terry’s neighbours, although in over a year she hadn’t met one. The petrol gauge was on empty; she would fill up at the garage on King Street on her way to her flat. She was parked outside a house that had belonged to a client who had died last year. The area was peopled with ghosts; not that Stella believed in them. She observed with disapproval that the new owners had replaced Mrs Ramsay’s 1960s black and white curtains in the dining room with wooden blinds. Jackie had suggested Stella drop a leaflet in for the new owners but Stella was not keen to clean a house when she had known the previous occupant. Jack had said this was because she was fond of Mrs Ramsay. To prove him wrong, Stella resolved now that she would return with a leaflet and put it through the brass letterbox, which even from the street she could see was in need of a buff.
She punched in Terry’s alarm code; the beeping stopped and she caught the chimes of the church clock striking ten.
She opened the basement door, this time switching on the light and, feigning confidence, stomped down the stone steps.
She avoided the photograph wall but still had the conviction that her many faces were watching her. She was haunting herself.
The blue folder was on the table where she had left it. This mildly surprised her, as if Terry might have filed it away in her absence. She sat down and directed the lamp down. She properly examined each photograph. Some were of roads stretching away. She had already fathomed that photographs labelled for example with ‘3a’ or ‘3b’ were of the same road as the first photograph labelled simply with a ’3’. They were close-ups of features in the same street: a tree trunk, a telegraph pole. There were only two prints in the file with one number, these were ‘1’ and ‘4’.
She could see nothing new and was beginning to think there was nothing to see when on the photograph labelled ‘5b’ in Terry’s handwriting she spotted something by the kerb. She looked closer and made out a witness appeal notice. It was an older version of the one in King Street marking where Joel Evans had been killed, but like that one it was anchored by sand bags draped over the cross bars that, with the poor quality printing, looked even more like Jack’s piglets. She tried to read the writing on the notice, but it was too small.
She flicked through the photographs but found no others with boards or anything that gave an indication of the date the picture was taken. It was late and she was cleaning the police station in the morning; she should go back to her flat. Yet she was sure she was on to something. Jack was the one person who she could be sure would be awake at this hour. She had to hope he wasn’t driving his train or he wouldn’t answer. In the subterranean chamber there was no signal. She gathered up the folder and ran upstairs to the hall. In the thin light from the intermittent lamp-post across the street, vaguely aware of Terry in the shadows overseeing her every move, Stella dialled Jack Harmon’s number.
Two rings and then it went to voicemail. The abruptness of the switchover made her suspect Jack had cut the line. Had he broken his promise about his night-time business? This was why she didn’t want him anywhere near a police station. She was about to hang up when she changed her mind and left a message: ‘Jack. Me. I’ve got a job for you.’ She paused, then added: ‘A cleaning job.’ She grimaced; she liked to see a person’s reaction when she was talking to them. She had forgotten to tell Jack about the case.
Still holding the blue folder she went out and double-locked the door. She hurried around to St Peter’s Square and clambered into the van. She turned on the engine and glanced up at Mrs Ramsay’s house – she would always think of it as Mrs Ramsay’s – and thought of Jackie’s idea about the leaflet. She opened the glove box and found the stash of flyers kept in all Clean Slate vans. She was startled by her phone blaring through the van’s speakers. The caller’s name flashed up on the dashboard screen.
Jack Mob.
She pressed the ‘pick up’ button on the steering wheel. She loved her new van’s gadgets.
‘You’ve got a cleaning job for me,’ Jack said in a hushed voice.
‘Why are you whisp— Oh, never mind. Yes. No.’
‘Great that you’re clear. I love that.’
‘I mean it’s not cleaning.’ She paused. ‘It’s a case.’
‘A detective job?’
‘Probably nothing.’
‘But you think it’s probably something.’ Jack’s voice was hardly audible.
Stella stuffed the flyers back in the glove box and picked the blue folder up from the passenger seat. ‘Yes. I think it is,’ she said, opening it at the first photograph.
‘See you in the morning, then.’
The light on the dashboard went out.