72
Saturday, 5 May 2012
The house in Aldensley Road was in darkness. No orange car. Jack jumped out before Stella braked. There was no sign of him by the time she got to the front door. She leant on the doorbell. She frowned at the Big Ben chimes.
She ran down the side alley and found Jack tugging at the patio door.
‘Can you open this?’
‘You’re the one who breaks into houses.’ She was crisp.
‘Don’t you have a key? The man’s your client.’
‘No, David was always here.’
Compared to the afternoon when the kitchen had been richly warm with spring sunshine and the scent of freshly mown grass on the breeze mingling with David Barlow’s aftershave, to Stella it now resembled a dark, uninviting cave. She shone her torch through the window. The beam reflected in the polished glass and only a dim glow penetrated. A spark of light caught the electric clock and another bounced off the photograph of the car. Gradually appliances and cupboards, table and chairs took shape.
She shone the torch across the garden and began to tremble. The chairs had been put away; the table was a solitary object beneath the tree. David had put the chairs out for the tea. Three chairs. She shivered.
‘What was he wearing?’ Jack’s voice out of the gloom made her start.
‘I can’t remember. Trousers, um…’
‘Funny that.’ Jack’s voice was metallic. ‘Did he have that on?’ He nodded at the glass.
Stella directed the torch at the door again. The jacket she had found under the bath was on the back of a chair. She told Jack about finding it. As she did so, she felt the truth of what he had said. David had killed Michael Thornton. And he had worn the jacket that day. Somehow Jennifer Barlow had known and she had hidden first the jacket upstairs under the bath and later the pictures and the crucifix under the downstairs bath, a punishment that was long and slow. He had unintentionally made a false insurance claim. Stella didn’t need to check to know that the insurance company would be the same one that Robert Thornton had worked for. Mrs Barlow had implicated her husband in a lesser crime than driving away from the scene of an accident and forced him to deal with the police. Jack said David had tortured the Thorntons; his wife had tortured him. Drip on drip. Her death didn’t release him. David wanted Stella to set him free.
She rang David’s phone again. The kitchen lit up with a bluish tinge.
‘It’s his phone.’ Jack moved closer to her.
She watched David’s handset judder across the counter, propelled by the vibration, and turn an inexorable circle. At the edge it tipped off and hit the floor, a muffled splintering audible through the double glazing. The ringing in Stella’s phone ceased.
There was a scrape on the gravel. Stella swallowed a yelp. A figure emerged from behind the water butt. Marian Williams. Stella’s legs went to jelly. She was holding something. A gun. They were in point-blank range.
‘Can I help?’ It wasn’t Marian.
‘We were looking for Mr Bar—’ Stella began.
Jack cut in. ‘David invited us for an aperitif but we’re a little late. Or it’s the wrong day!’ He put on his ‘Lucille May’ charm.
It was a bicycle pump. Equally lethal in the wrong hands.
‘Dave’s gone out.’ The woman swung the pump down.
‘Did he say where?’ Jack took Stella’s hand, probably intending the neighbour to think them the epitome of a happy couple. He was wearing Terry’s gloves, which absurdly heartened her.
‘Pub by the river – what’s it called? An animal. The Ram, that’s it. He said Jennifer would be pleased. Bless her, Jennifer was difficult to please. Dave didn’t put a foot wrong, but she still found fault. I never speak ill of the dead, but how he managed all those years with her on at him every turn… That man was a flippin’ angel.’
She led the way back to the street. ‘Grief plays havoc with the memory. Dave’s got to start again. Bound to be hard at first.’ She ducked up the path of the adjacent house. ‘I’ll say you called.’ The door slammed.
‘That’s the pub by the Bell Steps. Come on.’ Stella pulled her van keys from her pocket. A paper fell on to the path. She picked it up. To her horror she saw it was the green form she had taken from Paul Vickery’s file. She had forgotten to return it. Jack had seen it, he picked it up. ‘Terry signed out the file from the General Registry,’ she said quickly before he said anything.
‘I wonder why.’
‘We know why. He had a hunch that turns out to be true.’ Stella had a glimmer of pride for her dad.
‘Vickery was killed on Marquis Way.’ Jack flicked the form. ‘Terry already knew, that’s why he took the photograph.’
‘Marian must have been checking what the police knew about the accidents. Maybe she thought they were on to her.’ Stella took back the green form. ‘We need to get to the Ram before he leaves. Not like him to forget his phone.’ She didn’t know what David was like. She didn’t know him at all.
‘He didn’t forget.’ Jack shut the gate. ‘He won’t want it with him. Phones are tracking devices. By leaving it behind, he’s killed the scent.
‘Now we know where he is, come on!’
‘No point.’
‘There’s every point.’ Stella stopped herself yelling.
‘He’s not there.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Would Barlow tell the neighbours his business? That woman wasted no time telling us. He was ensuring that no one – you specifically – knows where he is. The bicycle-pump woman was his decoy.’
Stella did not want to think about David. ‘Mary Thornton was only fourteen when Colin Coleman died.’
‘Kids commit murder and this is an MO for a teenager. No weapons. All she had to do was distract a speeding vehicle. Children do that unintentionally, as we have seen.’
‘Lucille May said Carol Jones saw a man leaving the scene of Harvey Gray’s crash.’
‘She could have been wrong, it was dark.’
‘She said a tall figure. Marian is not tall. However, Lucille May is.’ She paused. The journalist had gone out of her way to buy the house where the Thorntons had lived. She had kept from them that the dead boy had a sister.
As if he could track her thinking, Jack said, ‘It’s not Lucie. Why would she give you the Thorntons’ address at the school? I heard Marian, or Mary, on the phone. I know she was talking to an intended victim.’ Jack had his faraway look. ‘Probably Matthew Benson. By leading her to David Barlow, we have saved Benson’s life, for what it’s worth.’
Stella had heard Marian on the phone too. But for all Jack’s crystal ball perception, he had not actually talked to her. Sneaking into her flat was not the same. ‘What if she had to take over when the tall man messed up the Gray murder by being spotted and her only victim is Charles Hampson in 2009 on Phoenix Way? She can’t use it again: thanks to Amanda’s campaigning there’s CCTV.’ She thought about the laminated map in Terry’s study and the different coloured pin she had put on Spelling Way.
‘Marian doesn’t mark the death on her model afterwards.’ She slid into the driver’s seat. ‘She puts the glass there before. She would have been about to murder Joel Evans’ killer, Matthew Benson, but now she’s found the first driver. The third chip in Marquis Way is for David!’
‘That’s it! Better the street you know. After tomorrow she won’t care if the likes of Lucie May – or us – spot a collision pattern, her task will be finished.’ Jack scrambled in beside her.
Stella read the clock, two minutes past midnight. ‘After today.’
She had swung left on to Ducane Road and they were passing Wormwood Scrubs prison, the turrets gaunt against the night sky, when Jack finally spoke. So quietly she had to ask him to repeat it.
‘I think I know who the tall man is.’