54
Thursday, 3 May 2012
‘She’s waving.’ Jack tilted his hand at Lucille May on her doorstep.
Stella accelerated down British Grove. ‘You might have warned me you planned to seduce her. I was a pumpkin.’
‘A gooseberry.’ Jack unfurled the printout from his coat. ‘By the way, how come you have an umbrella? You don’t approve of them – you say they take people’s eyes out in crowds.’
‘I accidentally took it from a café.’
Jack beamed at her. ‘You stole it?’
‘No. Well, not exactly.’
Jack settled into his seat. ‘That’s what happened in Howards End. A woman went off with Leonard Bast’s umbrella at a concert. It led to his death. Did you accidentally take this too?’ He flourished the printout.
‘You suggested it,’ Stella muttered. ‘Did you have to go on the swing?’ A cheap retaliation.
‘Lucie found it charming and a charmed person chatters like a canary. That stuff about Gray the villainous shoemaker was cool.’ He fished out the blue folder from under his seat. ‘Incidentally, she’d be a star at Clean Slate; her house hasn’t seen a lick of paint for years but it was sterile.’
‘She would turn up late or not at all,’ Stella huffed. ‘She was strange about that mosaic. Did you notice how bitter and twisted she is about the dead drivers? We’ve been assuming this murderer is a man. Lucille May covered most of those cases about the dead boys. She’s got the jade aggregate and she didn’t like me knowing about Britton Way. I think she had a child that died, possibly on a bicycle.’
‘She’s the wrong personality. That mosaic got me, though. Made me feel sad. Did you get that?’
‘No.’ Jack could be subjective once he liked someone, Stella thought. He had dismissed her theory. ‘I think she fits perfectly. The person at the Gray crash was tall. So is May. She was keen to get hold of Carol Jones – why? Lucky for Jones she was dead.’ Stella slapped the wheel. Jack’s lack of logic was infectious.
‘This killer is clever. He, and I think it is a he, has murdered for decades without arousing suspicion. You’ve met her once and you think it’s her. May is an disappointed woman whose prime was way back when and who never made it to Fleet Street.’ Jack balanced the folder on his lap. ‘This photo is different.’ He jabbed at the garage picture. ‘We thought it was here by mistake, but Terry didn’t make mistakes.’ He flattened out the printout.
‘That’s not true.’
‘OK, he missed stuff, but he was methodical. He numbered this “1”.
Stella drew in at the junction of St Peter’s Square by the defunct garage. She parked outside England House, a grand imposing building unlike the others in the square. Clean Slate had two clients there. She took the blue folder off him.
‘It’s a mechanic mending a car.’
‘I know that, but why is it familiar?’ Jack scratched his chin. Stella noted he needed a shave, although the look suited him.
‘It’s here! How stupid to miss it. Terry stood where we are parked now. This was his garage. He would have hung around while they mended his car; he had to keep busy so he took pictures.’
The picture was a mid-shot with little background. Now she saw a triangle of the Commodore’s wall and on the left a sliver of shop frontage. ‘W. R. Pha’. It came back to her. The dental surgery named W. R. Phang had featured on a Pink Floyd album until the dentist made them remove it. Now the surgery had made way for a coffee shop and the garage, once a thriving concern with vehicles every which way on its forecourt, would soon be gone too.
In the picture, the car with the legs sticking out partially obscured an old-style telephone box. The low wall in the photograph was still there, but the phone box had gone.
‘Why did he take this?’ Jack was leafing through the printout.
He might as well apply water torture to her; Stella felt physical pain as he perused the documents she had effectively stolen.
‘Gotcha! Good work for including the 1960s in your search, Detective Darnell.’ He snatched a pen from under the dashboard and circled a line of print. ‘The sixth of May 1966. A Friday. Listen to this: “Michael Thornton, aged seven, fatally injured. King Street, Hammersmith. Vehicle – poss. grey saloon – failed to stop and left the scene. Victim died on impact. No witnesses. First officer on scene: PC T. C. Darnell. Brackets number 130253 unbrackets.”’ He described the air with the pen. ‘Stella, you are a Wonderhorse! I bet Terry never forgot that day.’
‘The date adds up to six.’ Stella had broken the law; she did not deserve praise.
‘No, and nor was it one or three or a Sunday or in March.’ Jack dropped the pen back on the dashboard shelf. ‘Trail’s cold as ice.’
‘I see why it’s different to the rest!’ Stella snatched up the pen as if it were a baton. ‘It was a fatal accident, not a murder.’
‘Hang on.’ Jack got out of the van and ran alongside the hoarding to the low wall where the telephone box had stood. Suddenly weary, Stella noticed it was past midday. She had missed the recruitment interviews. She checked her phone. Nothing from Jackie. This did not make her feel better. Michael Thornton had been killed just round the corner from Lucille May’s house. She tried to corral the fact.
Jack was back in the van. ‘Here!’ He sprinkled a cluster of green chips of glass on to her palm. ‘They were buried by that wall. Your papers say that Michael Thornton was seven when he died.’
‘They’re not my papers.’
‘Other children died, all boys; there are no pictures. This death merited a picture in the blue folder.’ Jack held her hand open and stirred the glass in her palm with his finger.
‘Terry didn’t handle the other deaths, that’s the difference.’ Stella had resented that Terry would not talk about his work. She saw why. It was too painful. His world was obsessive and ultimately lonely. She shivered. ‘Let’s go to my dad’s and take stock.’ She gave the glass back to Jack and started the van.
‘The difference is staring us in the face.’
‘Hunger is staring at me. I need breakfast, or lunch…’ The lights at Chiswick High Road went to amber. ‘We’ll get sandwiches. I’ve bought milk.’ She took refuge in the banal.
Jack slapped the dashboard with the rolled-up printout. Stella hit the brake. Behind them a horn blared; she steered to the kerb and stopped.
‘Michael Thornton was the first boy to die.’ Jack’s eyes were bright. ‘He is the reason for the rest.’