Ghost Girl (44 page)
‘Would be more practical to take more and save the journeys.’
‘He must return each time.’
Stella didn’t like it when Jack talked as if he knew the killer. ‘Why?’
‘To pay a forfeit to the angel. To atone.’ He sprinkled the glass back on to the grave. ‘I was born on a Tuesday.’
Stella gave a start. The angel’s eyes were admonishing. She knew about the database printout. Stella could never undo what she had done. ‘I thought angels were nice.’ She said this more to herself.
‘Tuesday’s child is full of grace.’ Jack settled beside her. ‘When were you born?’
‘The twelfth of August 1966. What’s this to do with Michael Thornton?’
‘Which day?’
‘No idea. Michael can’t have been that good or gay, you said he sneaked out without permission to get sweets.’
‘Not a capital offence. Three police officers were shot on the day you were born, you said that was why Terry didn’t get to the hospital to see you.’ He fiddled with his phone.
Anxious to avoid the angel’s penetrating stare, Stella trudged behind the statue. The sense of recrimination did not lessen. ‘Surely this thing contravenes the height regulation.’ She heard a rustle in the bushes. It was an animal but still it made her skin creep.
‘You were born on a Friday.’ Jack put away his phone. ‘“Friday’s child is loving and giving.”’ He nodded at Stella. ‘That’s you.’
‘Ha ha.’ Stella shot him a look, but he appeared to be serious. ‘Aren’t angels supposed to be guardians? This one is like a prison guard. The sculptor was having an off-day.’ She stirred the glass with her boot, expecting to expose soil. There was more glass. Whoever was taking it from here would not run out.
‘This angel is for a beloved son. No expense spared. That expression of recrimination is not the artist lacking inspiration, it signifies that someone must pay for the death of sweet baby Michael.’ Jack put up his coat collar. ‘If we stay it will be us.’
Stella was generally immune to Jack’s quirky impressions, but not this time. He had used the word ‘recrimination’, a word she had just applied to herself. The angel would make her pay.
Jack stood in front of the statue. ‘Someone’s tried to stop her.’
Stella joined him. The angel’s arms were slightly raised, exposing thin wrists peeping from the folds of a flowing gown. The wrists ended abruptly. Her hands were missing.
‘Vandalism.’ In the grey afternoon light the severed ends resembled fractured bone.
‘No.’ Jack stroked the marble. ‘It’s a sheer slice. It was premeditated. Cold calculation.’
Stella had cleaned up wanton damage after burglaries or parties that had got out of hand. This was a colder act. ‘Who would do this?’
‘The Archangel Michael defeated Satan and kicked him out of heaven. Satan escaped to earth,’ Jack said under his breath. ‘St Michael is his enemy.’
‘The Fallen Angel.’ Stella caught echoes of a patchy religious education. ‘Michael Thornton committed a sin, you mean?’
‘No, Michael’s with God. Whoever removed the angel’s hands wanted to fracture the power of his guardian angel.’
‘That doesn’t fit with our theory that the murderer is taking revenge on drivers who have run over children.’ Stella squatted down and combed her fingers through the glass.
‘The Book of Revelation is stuffed with sevens: John’s message for seven churches, seven trumpets, seven seals and the final portent when seven angels each bring a plague.’
‘More sevens.’ Stella hadn’t read the Book of Revelation. ‘Sunday is the seventh day of the week,’ she offered.
‘Sunday!’ Stell, you are an angel! Let’s see your matrix.’
Stella swung her rucksack off her shoulder and found the spreadsheet tucked in her Filofax. She kept her back to the angel.
‘The tenth of November, when my erstwhile friend Jamie Markham was killed, is a Sunday and it equals seven.’ Jack sat cross-legged on the glass beside her.
‘Charlie Hampson’s doesn’t, we know this. But—’ Stella nudged him. ‘Hampson was killed on Michael Thornton’s birthday!’
Jack jumped out and went over to the angel. ‘Of the seven deaths we know about, four are in mid-March and one at the end of March, the month of Michael’s birthday.’
‘Lucie said one of the children, Robert Smith, died on the fifth of November, five days before Jamie on the tenth. Mrs Thornton killed herself on the fifteenth, the same day Myra Hindley died.’ Jack got out his phone. ‘The
Daily Mirror
’s headline was “Gone But Not Forgiven”. There has to be a link.’
‘Myra Hindley is one person who can’t be guilty of these crimes.’
‘Lucie made me think. Why did Mrs Thornton wait so long before killing herself?’
‘Lucille May also said some things are only coincidence.’ Stella swung her rucksack on to her back. ‘It was the first time Mrs Thornton succeeded, odds on she had tried before.’
‘What if she’s our killer? She realized with Jamie Markham’s death that nothing had changed, her son was still dead. She saw the futility and ended it all.’
‘Good thought!’ Stella looked at the spreadsheet. ‘Only the shoe man Harvey Gray and Charles Hampson died after she committed suicide.’
Jack had been looking at his phone. ‘Michael was killed on the day the Moors murderers were sentenced to life. Lucie told me. That day Mrs Thornton’s life effectively ended. Hindley dying brought it all back. She couldn’t bear it.’
Suzie had told her that after the Moors murders Terry had vowed never to let his own child out of his sight. Impossible. Finally he left his daughter altogether. Men bottled up feelings for their children. Marian said Joel Evans’s father punched a wall and broke his finger when he heard his son was dead. ‘We’re forgetting something.’
‘Likely. My brain’s on overload.’
‘Joel Evans.’ Stella flipped through her diary. ‘The boy killed outside Marks and Spencer’s on King Street.’
‘So we are!’ Jack grasped the angel’s wrists as if he might heal them.
‘Monday the twenty-third of April. The day I found the blue folder.’
‘Wasn’t it a hit and run?’
‘A man gave himself up later. I was there when Marian was told.’
‘He will be the next victim! We must warn him. What was his name?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘If the killer is alive, going by the pattern he won’t kill for months after the child died.’
‘You said he was speeding up. Something’s changed. His health or his circumstances.’ She saw again the sandy shape on the tarmac. A child ghost washed away in the rain. ‘I’m due at David Barlow’s.’
‘That’s a strange job,’ Jack remarked. ‘Deep cleaning. A metaphor for cleansing guilt or shame. You should profile deep-cleaning clients. Bet there’s a corollary.’
‘David’s got nothing to be guilty about; he nursed his wife to the end. Not many men would and he was burgled.’ Stella hadn’t spoken to David since finding the stuff under his bath. Jack would have a field day if she told him. ‘I’ll drop you at Mrs Hampson’s.’ She hesitated, struck by the reality of where Jack was going. She would not like to clean there by herself. ‘If we delay it, I could come too.’ There was more rustling in the bushes, just to add to it all.
‘I’m normally there without you.’
‘With Mrs Hampson being dead.’
‘She’s not still there. I should escort you to your deep-cleaning gig.’
‘No need.’ Stella cast about for the path. The rustling stopped. ‘Jack. Come on!’ She didn’t relish walking across the cemetery by herself.
‘What’s tomorrow?
‘Sunday sixth of May.’
She read the lead lettering on Michael Thornton’s monument: ‘15th March 1959 – 6th May 1966’.
‘Ring your friend,’ Jack said softly. ‘He will kill Joel Evans’s driver tomorrow.’
Saturday, 5 May 2012
Marian Williams parked her Mini on Staveley Road, a good distance from a van that, despite being plain white, seemed familiar. Everything rang a bell when you worked for the police. She took the bouquet off the passenger seat. When she had seen Stella Darnell outside Terry’s, her heart had gone out to her. Stella was keeping her father’s house ticking along as if she expected him back. Marian wanted him back too. She had given Stella the flowers on the spur of the moment. She didn’t regret it, but it meant that the next day she had come here empty-handed.
Stella wasn’t fooled by the bruise. The way she had looked at her, like Terry did, with concern. She had quickly worked it out and no doubt felt sorry for her. Marian didn’t want sympathy. Still, with Terry gone, it was nice Stella cared.
A man walked out of the cemetery gates. Marian didn’t want to see anyone. She was snatching precious moments out of time. Despite covering her tracks, he always knew what she had done and he made her pay.
Something about the man caught her attention. She lifted the lilies to hide her face and peered through the petals. He was moving with purpose, heels clipping on the pavement. Most bereaved tended to plod along.
She knew him. David Barlow had been burgled. He had lost pictures and valuable silver crucifixes. Dotty to have them on display, she had thought. He brought photographs of the items. Few victims were so prepared. He came the next week to see how the case was progressing. It wasn’t. The burglary would have been targeted, buyers lined up, no clues, no fingerprints. She suggested he list visitors to the house – cleaners, plumbers, any workmen. He let slip his wife was terminally ill so there were lots of people coming. Nurses, deliveries of oxygen, drugs, equipment. None of them would steal, he said. Marian didn’t like to say you couldn’t trust anyone. She saw the underbelly of life; it skewed perception. Poor man was having a hard enough time. Barlow never made an appointment or rang, which would have saved him, and her, time and trouble. Soon she found him a nuisance. Then he began to arouse her suspicions. He didn’t seem bothered about the stolen goods; it was the principle, he said. Keep your principles to yourself, she wanted to say. He was taking up valuable time. She had made a note: ‘one to watch’. If Barlow was here, Mrs Barlow must have died.
He got into an orange Ford Fiesta. She had not noticed it when she parked. Terry would have seen it. Terry was with her now, spurring her on.
She waited for Barlow to round the corner in the direction of the Hogarth roundabout, then hurried into the cemetery. She knew where the new plots were and found the grave immediately.
JENNIFER BARLOW
LOYAL WIFE OF DAVID
1946 – 2012
A plain, self-referencing epitaph. Nothing about being much missed or deeply mourned. What had tested his wife’s loyalty? An affair. That soft-shoe demeanour had to be a sham. She heard voices and ducked behind a mausoleum.
Two people, a man and a woman, walked along the path from the chapel, arm in arm. She had dreamed of bringing Terry here, her arm through his.
She nearly made a noise. The woman was Stella Darnell. The white van was familiar because Marian had seen it in the station compound. Stella had said nothing about a boyfriend. Terry couldn’t have known, he would have said. Marian must get a look at the man; Terry would want to know. She followed them. Terry had taught her his tricks. Keep them in sight, not too close or they will feel you there.
The van pulled away. Marian broke into a clumsy trot. Her lungs were bursting by the time she started her car, an old-style Mini.
Trailing Stella Darnell into Chiswick High Road, she caught a glimpse of the occupants in a shop window. Only Stella. The man had gone. She was hot with shame. He had got out without her seeing. She was very bad. The voice filled the car.
They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…
Saturday, 5 May 2012
Marian Williams filed documents, signed forms and slipped them into internal envelopes until her desk was clear. Being off in the week had set her back; at the weekend she could work uninterrupted. She did not like to leave work pending. She began each day with a clean slate. She smiled grimly at the phrase; it made her think of Stella. Stella, it seemed, got everywhere.
She had saved the best task until last. She tapped Barlow’s details into the database. She started with vehicle registrations dating from eighteen when he probably passed his driving test.
When computers were introduced to the station in the early 1990s, Marian Williams might have been expected not to get on with them. But she was efficient, and others were mindful to respect her exacting systems. The ‘Crime Reporting Information System’ was one of many technological challenges. Some staff took early retirement to avoid it altogether, while others, through a mix of carelessness and obduracy, undermined CRIS with minor errors. Marian hunted these down and corrected them. She grew to know it intimately and, awed by its capability, developed a fierce attachment to it. She posed questions. It gave her answers. It never let her down. The answer it gave Marian now was one that she had dreaded one day finding out.
After a time she gathered herself and printed out the result, noting, as she always did, the last time she had printed a response from the database. It made no sense. She never printed in the mornings and never while the cleaners were in the building.
She picked up the receiver and punched in the number of the woman who was supposed to be a friend.
‘Is that Stella Darnell?’
The conversation was short. She folded the printout and dropped it in her handbag. She had one more call to make.
The administrator whom everyone knew as Marian Williams put on her coat and slung her bag over her chest like a satchel, a precaution against theft. She trotted out of the station. Before meeting Stella, she would stop at the model shop in Hammersmith Station, orange was an unusual colour, but the man stocked everything, he would not let her down.
Saturday, 5 May 2012
Stella found a parking space near David’s house. While she was hauling the equipment out of the van, a Mini took a vacated slot further down the street. Spaces here were free for less than a minute: a time-and-motion fact Jack would relish. Jack. He should not be in the dead woman’s house alone.