2
Monday, 23 April 2012
Stella pressed the doorbell, initiating a ‘Big Ben’ chime. The freshly painted window sashes told her all she needed to know about David Barlow. Bereaved men came in two kinds: those in denial who fled to an irresponsible past and those who spruced up and replaced the dead wife. The first group stopped shaving, drank and fed off takeaways until a tide of bottles and cartons spilling out of the kitchen prompted a relative to call in Clean Slate. The relative paid the invoices until a new partner came along and cancelled the contract.
Barlow was in the second camp. His having contacted the office told her he disliked the break in routine; for him Clean Slate was a dating agency and he would resent stumping up for cleaners who proved unsuitable marriage material. He would pay late or not at all. Stella had learned to avoid his sort. Compassion had limits.
Her assistant Jackie Makepeace had let Barlow in under the wire. He had read the article in the Chronicle. Supposing the piece to be about Terry Darnell’s funeral, Stella had agreed to the interview and then was dismayed to see it headed ‘The Detective’s Daughter’. It described how single-handedly (single generally, it was implied, as if she were open season) she had succeeded where her cop-dad had failed and solved the famous Rokesmith murder, a cold case from the eighties. Set into a shot of Terry’s flag-draped coffin on the blustery damp day at Mortlake Crematorium, watched by a solemn crowd of mourners from across the Met, was a photo of Stella at her desk. The caption beneath, ‘Sleuth at Work’, was a blatant misrepresentation of Clean Slate’s brochure picture of Stella drawing up a cleaning schedule that Jackie had sent through to the paper. Jackie had stopped her complaining. ‘All publicity is…’ The thrust of the piece – written by a woman with two first names like the characters in The Waltons – was how Stella had built up a cleaning empire in West London yet found time to clean up crime. Stella, so the article decided, had laid her dad’s ghost. He could rest in peace. What bloody ghost? Stella fumed to herself again on Barlow’s doorstep, noting with some approval the daisies ranked each side of the tiled path. She hadn’t worked on the case alone – but Jack did not want to be mentioned. Wise move. Although published a year ago, the piece still attracted a trickle of business. Barlow was the latest. Pleased by this PR success, Jackie made Stella promise to pop by on her way home and seal the deal. Stella promised herself that the meeting – crowning a hectic day – would be short with no deal.
Her resolution wavered when David Barlow opened the door. Neat hair, aquiline nose, he was trim in a slick suit with a silk tie. But for it being a modest terraced house near Hammersmith Broadway and therefore unlikely, David Barlow might be David Bowie. The resemblance was striking.
‘Come in.’ He ushered her inside with a sweeping hand. He was her height – six foot – but Stella banished this as irrelevant.
Aware of Barlow behind her, she made for a doorway on the left of the hall. She rehearsed her exit: the sitting room was too large, too small, impossible to clean – whichever was applicable.
Barlow had put tea things out on a glass-topped table. With doilies. Stella set her shoulders. If he expected to win her over he would not.
‘Do sit down.’
She sat down in a spacious armchair by the fireplace and found herself agreeing to a cup of tea. Barlow sat on a sofa, his back to the window.
‘She was in that recliner, sitting where you are. Towards the end she couldn’t concentrate and she’d doze off with the telly. I kissed her and whispered it was bedtime. She wasn’t breathing.’ He handed her a cup.
Stella quelled an inclination to rush out to her van. She took a sip. It was exactly how she liked it, a dollop of milk and one sugar. She sank into the cushions.
So it was that Stella Darnell – aged forty-five and indeed single – director of Clean Slate Cleaning Services (For a Fresh Start), came to be sitting in a dead woman’s riser-recliner, taking tea on a Monday evening in Hammersmith when she had planned to be clearing out her dead father’s house and compiling a quote for a car dealership in Chiswick.
David Barlow chatted peaceably from the corner of an austere sofa with little padding, his legs crossed, one foot twitching in emphasis of certain words. ‘…it was a Friday, too late to ring the doctor or undertaker.’
‘Medics work through the night.’ Stella drained her cup and placed it on the little table. A furtive finger test confirmed the job would be unrewarding: no dust. Apart from random black lines on the walls, the room – spanning the length of the house, including a conservatory extension – was clean.
‘My wife had passed away, no one could help her and on a weekend they are run off their feet.’ Mr Barlow cleared his throat: ‘And to be honest, after so many years, I wanted her a little longer, you understand.’ He smoothed his tie. Jack said the gesture was a sign of dishonesty. What did he know? He never wore a tie. ‘You are too young to have known death.’ Barlow smiled, looking over the top of his rimless spectacles. Perhaps referring to the article he added, ‘Although that isn’t true.’
Stella was trying to conjure her escape so did not correct him about her age or elaborate on her experience of death. Jack had worn a tie to her dad’s funeral, she remembered.
David Barlow’s thick brown hair had no grey and his symmetrical good looks showed only a few lines. He was younger than Bowie, anywhere between forty-five and fifty-five. In over twenty years of running Clean Slate, Stella’s stringent appraisal of her clients had begun to include their dress sense. This, coupled with her assessment of their attitude to the cleaning, had contributed to a shrewd business acumen that brought Clean Slate considerable commercial success. Barlow had trodden silently over his spotless carpet in understated soft brown leather loafers. He had not smartened up for their appointment; he took this trouble for himself.
Aside from David Bowie, he put her in mind of her dad. It was not his appearance, she decided; Terry was an off-the-peg man, in a hurry, his clothes lacking Barlow’s attention to detail. But Terry was a charmer; he always broke the ice and could elicit information and confessions from suspects or indeed anyone. Barlow’s mild manner had to be an act because, like Terry, no wool would surely ever be pulled over those gimlet eyes. He had already got her to have tea. Time to go.
‘Clean Slate would not suit you, you need—’
‘Of course.’ He laid his cup and saucer on the tray. ‘Your firm is too successful.’ He got up, apparently accepting Stella’s refusal before it was clear in her mind. ‘We were burgled a while back and Jennifer felt the place was violated. I should have had the house cleaned while she was alive.’
He shot her a brief smile. His eyes were a greenish blue. Absurdly, because there were more important things that she forgot, she recalled that Bowie had different coloured eyes. Stella struggled to her feet, snatched up her rucksack and glanced behind, half expecting Mrs Barlow to be there.
‘I chose Clean Slate because you list “deep cleaning” among your services.’
Stella stopped, her hand on the door jamb. ‘It’s for industrial environments, hospitals, hospices…’ she managed.
‘Deep cleaning is what I want.’ Barlow addressed the recliner. ‘Your website lists the eradication of kitchen grease, offensive odour control, duct cleaning. This would be a sanitizing…’ He folded his arms. ‘I want cleaning that is as deep as can be. I want everything cleansed, all traces eradicated. To make this a home again.’
He looked around the room as if surveying the devastation that the burglary must have caused. Stella brightened. David Barlow appreciated order and cleanliness. Her heart began to race and she strode back into the room.
‘I want the walls washed, all furniture pulled out and cleaned, vent panels, everything removed, taken apart. Retribution.’ He turned to her.
Stella now saw that the marks on the wall were not random as she had assumed but were shapes outlined with dirt where objects had once hung. There were the outlines of three crucifixes between the oblongs and squares of pictures. Not a believer in God, Stella did not rule his existence out. She supposed that the theft of a crucifix – three – might incite retribution. Yet she wasn’t convinced that deep cleaning would do it. How would the thieves know?
It was not her policy to dwell on her clients’ motives. However, inspired by David Barlow’s determination to get his house back, she found herself hoping it would help.
‘I’ll do it.’ She swung her rucksack down and ferreted in it for her estimates pad. ‘When were you thinking?’
‘Clean Slate must be too busy to bother with me.’
He crossed to the recliner and depressed a foot pedal. The chair tilted slowly forward like a person getting to their feet. Stella found the sight unsettling. Was he not serious after all? She knew that type.
‘I used to run a sales team for an internet company. I wasn’t meant to fuss with customers only making small purchases like dial-ups or modems. Time is money.’ He let the chair down. ‘You have to be pragmatic.’
Barlow would have been a soft touch: too nice. Her dad would have made a crack salesperson; he got what he needed from any situation. Now that Barlow was prevaricating, Stella was determined to close the sale. She flipped to a fresh page in her pad and, clicking on her Clean Slate branded pen, jotted down what she could see. Thankfully the wife had not been one for ornaments – unless the burglars had taken them. ‘I’ll send you a quotation.’ She was particularly formal to hide a rising excitement; it was a year since she had deep cleaned.
‘Invoice me after each visit. I will pay by return.’
He didn’t ask for a cash deal; exacting a discount was another trait of one species of widower. The less they paid for their new wife the better. Barlow was what he seemed: a decent bloke wanting a job done.
‘It will be expensive,’ she warned, rat-a-tatting the page with her ballpoint. Were Jackie here she would suggest Stella talk up the benefits of Clean Slate so when she priced the work the client was primed to think it worth every penny. She had killed the job.
Barlow nodded. ‘I want it sorted.’ He repeated, more to himself, ‘I will pay.’
Reprieve. Stella flipped open her Filofax. They decided on two sessions a week. She scratched out a recruitment meeting with Jackie that clashed with one day.
Standing in a shaft of sunlight from the conservatory, Barlow enquired: ‘Who will be coming?’
Stella looked out at a green lawn so neat it looked synthetic.
‘Me.’
Halfway up Aldensley Road, braking to avoid boys kicking a football across the kerbs, Stella reappraised David Barlow. He wasn’t sizing her up as a bride. He wanted his house cleansed of bad memories so he could move on. Maybe this was why she hadn’t sold Terry’s house, she would tell Jack next time he asked. David Barlow was her kind of person. He valued order, free of dust or grime. Just as she did, and she had been quoted on it in the article. The piece had appeared in the paper before his wife died; Barlow had not rung earlier because she was too ill. Stella exhaled with relief as she turned on to King Street and headed for Young’s Corner. Deep cleaning. Perfect start to her week. The last domestic client to commission cleaning at a forensic level had died; she missed the work.
David Barlow was exactly whom she needed.