31
Friday, 27 April 2012
Stella backed into the administrator’s office, pulling her cleaning cart after her, and was disappointed to find a woman seated at the desk. It was empty the last time she cleaned and at half-seven in the morning she had presumed it would be today.
‘Would you rather I returned later?’ Stella apologized to hide her annoyance; she preferred to clean alone.
‘I’ll still be here when you do,’ the woman said, coming around the desk, ‘Say when you need me to move.’ She put out her hand. ‘You must be Stella. Marian Williams. I’m so pleased to meet you at last. I used to work with your father. I was at the funeral, but naturally you were taken up with so many people.’
The woman’s grip was stronger than Stella expected.
She let go. ‘Have you got what you need?’
‘Yes thanks.’ Stella rattled the cart. ‘If you don’t mind me being here?’
‘Carry on. I’ll be too busy to notice.’ As if on cue, her telephone rang. Marian Williams took up the receiver and, guiding the flex around her computer, sat down again.
Relieved that Williams was reasonable – it made her job easier – Stella began taking files from the shelves and stacking them on a row of cabinets. Although not actively listening, she could not help hearing Marian Williams’s conversation.
‘…Yes, forgivable. I’ve done the paperwork. Joel’s mother is on tranquillizers. Mr Evans has hurt his hand.’ She paused. ‘He punched the wall when Paula and Phil broke it to them and broke a finger. I took them to the site. She came over faint, had to take her into Marks to recover. Breaks your heart.’ Another pause. ‘…No, they have an older girl. Poor love was a shadow…’
Joel Evans was the boy killed by a car on King Street. As an executive officer, Marian Williams had to process road traffic accidents and, from the conversation, Stella guessed her duties included liaising with the bereaved parents.
‘Let me know if you get the Nominal.’ Marian Williams ended the call.
Stella thought back to the news bulletin: a man had been seen checking his car on Chiswick High Road. From Williams’s conversation, no one had confessed.
The woman caught her eye. ‘I’ve been at this for years. It never gets easier.’
‘Sorry?’ Stella assumed an expression of distraction.
‘FATACs. Fatal accidents. Collisions, we call them now, because frankly there’s no such thing as an accident. Reckless motorists think they own the road and a child is so much flotsam. The excuses I read in the report books the officers fill in at the scene. You’ll know from your dad.’ She waved an orange booklet at Stella. ‘This one is a hit and run so no driver statement, but I’ve lost count of the ones who bleat it wasn’t their fault. They don’t come out and blame the pedestrian, but they’re itching to. Did you hear about Joel Evans?’
‘Yes.’ Stella was glad she had. Ignorance would have counted against her. For Marian Williams the death of a child outweighed everything. While her manual didn’t encourage conversation with clients, it did advise that operatives took interest if engaged in chat. ‘Have they found the driver?’
‘He will have washed his car and had the bodywork repaired with cowboys who don’t ask questions. No qualms that a young life is wasted and a family destroyed.’
‘It isn’t only the victim who dies.’ Stella heard herself echo Terry. She rummaged in her cart for the beeswax polish.
Mrs Williams might remember James Markham’s crash on Britton Drive. Perhaps she had gone there with the wife and son. She could imagine Mrs Williams being unsympathetic about Markham; she’d think he deserved it.
Williams’s phone rang again.
‘Hello, Detective Chief Superintendent Cashman’s office… What? Martin’s not here. Tell her to make an appointment, not that he’ll see her. Thanks for the warning, or rather no thanks. Next time keep that portcullis shut.’ Marian Williams slammed down the receiver. All her good nature gone.
The door burst open and a woman in a tightly belted rain mac, long blonde hair streaming over her shoulders, marched in on sharply clicking high heels. Her handbag threaded through an epaulette, swung from her shoulder and she waved a plastic wallet as if clearing a path before her. Stella retreated to the shelves and began rearranging the files. Marian Williams stood her ground from behind her desk.
‘I have come to see Detective Chief Superintendent Darnell.’
No one moved. The words took on horror-movie proportions in Stella’s mind.
‘DCS Darnell promised that if I found him fresh evidence he would reopen my husband’s case.’ She smacked the brightly coloured wallet down on the desk. ‘My name is Amanda Hampson. My husband was Charles – yes, I see you remember me – his file is in that lot.’ She gestured at the box files heaped on the cabinets and saw Stella. She addressed her: ‘Now they have to listen.’
‘Can we go outside?’ Marian Williams moved swiftly to the door and held it open. ‘Please!’
‘I am not going until I see the Chief Superintendent. No offence, but I won’t be fobbed off with civilian staff this time.’
Marian Williams was clearly flustered and Stella guessed it was because the scene was being played out in front of the cleaner and because of who she was. For her part she wasn’t keen to meet her newly returned client. She grabbed her cart. ‘I’ll come back,’ she mouthed. The administrator nodded.
Stella trundled the cart to the stairs and sneaked back to the door. Not one to eavesdrop, she had to know why Mrs Hampson wanted Terry. It might have a bearing on the case, she told herself as she dusted the skirting board.
‘Mrs Hampson, DCS Darnell has left us. His replacement is DCS Cashman but he is not here and no one else is authorized to consider this case.’ Although the voices were muffled, Stella could hear.
Stella didn’t think the last point was true but had little sympathy for Mrs Hampson, what with the business of the tea tree and now her lying about Stella’s dad asking her to return. Terry would not have done that; he hated time-wasters.
She heard a sliding sound and then a thump, like a body falling, and for a wild moment thought Mrs Hampson had attacked Marian Williams.
Then the administrator spoke: ‘Leave those, I’ll deal with them.’ She was close to the door. Stella fled up the corridor. Two uniformed officers were coming down the staircase but paid her no attention. The administrator’s door did not open. Stella risked returning to her listening post.
‘You’ve been kind.’ Mrs Hampson sounded defeated; she might even be crying. Marian Williams, it seemed, was an excellent gatekeeper. Stella felt a little sorry for the woman who, after all, had lost a husband. She hoped Marian hadn’t said she was DCS Darnell’s daughter.
Marian Williams was speaking briskly – the equivalent of sweeping up – and in a minute she would have got rid of her. ‘…although I doubt much can be done after all this time.’
‘…once I’ve explained it you’ll…’ Mrs Hampson was saying. Stella strained to hear but her words were mumbled as if into a hankie; then she blew her nose. She was leaving. Stella bounded back to her cart and pushed it into the next office.
When she went back to finish off, Mrs Hampson had gone and Marian was frowning at her computer. She did not acknowledge Stella.
‘Thank you for that.’ Stella squirted polish on the shelves. She was running late.
‘For what?’
‘For not introducing me to Mrs Hamp— to your visitor.’ She’d rather the administrator did not know Mrs Hampson was a Clean Slate client.
‘I had to puncture her hopes. It shows how little she knew her husband.’ Williams punctuated this with a stab on her return key. ‘She had just discovered he had passed his advanced driving test and told me this proved his crash could not have been an accident. I had to tell her: police officers pass that test and it doesn’t prevent them having accidents. Rare, I grant you.’ She tapped the keyboard and a printer by the window came to life. Still sitting, she wheeled her chair over and caught the page as it tipped into the tray.
‘I see.’ Stella was not surprised Mrs Hampson had not known about the test; many of her clients knew little about their partners.
Marian Williams had been more patient with Mrs Hampson than Stella would have been if faced with irrational behaviour. Indeed, she had not been patient and it had led to Mrs Hampson cancelling the contract. People like Mrs Hampson must be par for the course at the station. Even if they were grief-stricken and could not accept that an accident was just that, an accident. Terry must have appreciated that his executive officer kept them at bay.
Marian Williams would take her time passing Mrs Hampson’s message to Martin Cashman and Stella did not blame her. She did not envy Williams her job.
A young constable knocked on the open door. ‘Hey, Marian, something to make you smile. The Nominal who mowed down the kiddie has only gone and walked into the lobby. He’s given himself up. Paperwork’s on its way. Brace yourself, you’re going to love him!’
‘Name?’ The administrator wasn’t smiling; her fingers hovered over the keys.
‘Matthew Arsehole Benson.’
She nodded grimly. ‘Was he sorry?’
‘Gutted.’ The young man slapped his palms in a rhythm on the door jamb. He stopped when a frisson of annoyance passed over Marian’s face. ‘Gutted there was a camera above Marks and Spencer’s. He knew we’d get him so he pipped us to it. He’s crying so get your tissue box out.’ With a cheery wave, he was gone.
Stella folded and refolded her cloth: ‘Just like you said.’
Mrs Williams did not reply.