The Detective's Secret (22 page)

On the staircase Jack saw what had been troubling him. The Frost home was clean. Not a speck of dust. Everywhere sparkled. In the sitting room someone had smoothed the carpet pile after vacuuming, leaving no tracks. Tallulah Frost didn’t need a cleaner.

Cleaning could be an antidote to grief; although she’d never admit it, Stella’s shifts had increased when her dad died. Jack relished cleaning, ever hoping to recreate the home he had lost long ago. If Mrs Frost did her own cleaning, she must be very upset indeed. Either that or she had found a cleaner on a par with Clean Slate. Stella had competition.

Singing softly under his breath, he mounted the stairs. If anyone walked in now, he had nowhere to hide. Jack’s fingertips tingled. This was how he liked it.

‘
Old Mother Goose,

When she wanted to wander…’

Invisibility wasn’t all about keeping to the sides of stairs or to the ends of floorboards where there was least give. Jack dipped into rooms unseen and crouched in a strip of shadow when the Host was near. He wasn’t like the enemy Rick Frost had sought to ward off with alarms and sensors, he joined the household and learnt its darkest secrets.

‘
…Would ride through air

On a very fine gander.’

On the landing he listened for breathing or for the silence of held breath. All clear.

No dirty grouting in the bathroom or limescale on the bath. The chrome plugholes shone. On the landing Jack opened a built-in cupboard. It contained Mrs Frost’s summer clothes and, judging by a gap on the left-hand side, had once held her husband’s too.

At the back of the house Jack opened a door by the bathroom.

‘Hello, Rick.’ This was Rick Frost’s sanctum. He lingered in the doorway, picturing the man who had lain broken and bleeding on the sharp stones. Jack felt profound sadness. Death was expressed by the gaps in wardrobes and the silence of overly cleaned rooms.

‘Please give up your secret,’ he breathed but detected no ghost.

Rick Frost had run his business from this room. The walls were taken up with shelves crammed with books on coding and intruder monitoring. Jazzy-coloured boxes of security software were emblazoned with exclamatory titles: ‘Duress!’ ‘Panic Stations!’ ‘Dispatcher!’

Three filing cabinets left space for the arm of an L-shaped desk with a
Mastermind
chair in the corner. The other arm of the ‘L’ would have had a view of the back patio, but for the frosted window. Dedicated to combating human transgressions, mostly inspired by the darkness of the soul, Frost hadn’t required daylight. To beat the enemy, it was necessary to have the mind of the enemy.

Beside the desk was a dustbin-sized shredder where Jack guessed Frost destroyed every scrap of rubbish.

Jack fitted his Clean Slate pen through the desk-drawer handle and was surprised when it slid open. Inside was typical desk stuff: a stapler, staples and a staple remover, a cloth tape measure, a roll of sticky tape and some AA batteries. Shutting the drawer he heard a clunk as something rolled to the front. He opened it again and found a bullet. Not so typical. When William had said his brother took part in battle re-enactments, Jack had supposed this was jousting with shields, not using modern weaponry. At the back of the drawer he found a rolled-up canvas belt bristling with more bullets. He shivered. Although no ghosts, he felt a nasty energy in the room.

On the desk was a thin silver laptop with a printer. Jack sat down in the spacious chair, appreciating how comfortable it was. He turned on the laptop. The machine sprang to life and demanded a password.

He’d expected this; Frost was in security. Most people were unimaginative about passwords, choosing pets’ names or whatever they saw when they glanced up from the monitor: Webster, Shakespeare. Stella had used ‘hygiene’ until he made her change it. Frost would have a strong password, alpha-numeric for starters.

A wireless mouse lay on a blank mouse mat. No company logo. Frost’s was a clandestine business: he would rely on word of mouth for customers. They must find out who they were and what he had done for them. There was a shiny dip on the right of the space bar; otherwise there was an equal amount of wear on the keys. No way to establish the letters in the password, which, infrequently typed, wouldn’t be evident.

The mouse was on the left of the laptop. At the inquest the pathologist had said Frost’s left wrist was broken, as if, going under the wheels, he had instinctively tried to protect himself. Jack had forgotten. Frost
had
raised his hand, not to stop the train, but to Jack. He had been trying to point something out to him. Not something.
Someone
.

The prime suspect was Stella’s ‘inspector’. Was he returning to the scene of his crime? Or had he followed William Frost to the pub and overheard Jack suggest to Stella that they go Stamford Brook station? Suddenly Jack was sure the man was not there simply waiting for a train.

Jack peered closer at the desk. There were scratches on the laminated top, so faint that, but for the strip of sunshine on the desk, he would have missed them. Someone had written something on paper with ballpoint, leaving the indentation on the desk. A single moment of carelessness, for there were no other marks on the laminate. The error suggested the action was untypical, perhaps in a moment of stress.

Jack patted the breast pocket in his coat for his notebook and pencil. Laying a sheet of paper over the scratches, he shaded it with the pencil, keeping his pressure consistent. Gradually he revealed a series of marks, white against the pencilled background. He held it up to make sense of them and saw the camera.

Fitted above the door, it was white like the walls. It moved fractionally and a red light blinked. It had been filming him since he entered the room.

Numb with horror at his stupidity, Jack didn’t hear the diesel engine until it stopped. He strode out to the landing and opened the door of the room at the top of the stairs: Mrs Frost’s bedroom. It was probably a delivery van. The driver would go away when he or she got no answer – or it might not be for this house. He tiptoed to the window and peeped out through slatted blinds.

Outside was a van, back doors open. Beneath it Jack could see legs encased in trousers and sturdy boots. He knew them instantly.

Jack Harmon could break into and live in a stranger’s home with a steady pulse and cool nerve, but as Stella heaved her equipment bag on to her shoulder and headed to the front door, the dog at her heels, he nearly fainted.

He ran to the landing and blundered into the bathroom, then back to the landing. Stella had agreed to William Frost’s plan, she was working undercover as a cleaner. It explained the hyper-clean rooms, the lack of vacuum tracks on the carpet, the precise positioning of ornaments and the ball bearing at ‘six o’clock’ in the well of the candle holder until, like a game of Russian roulette, he sent it spinning. It wasn’t the work of a rival cleaning company or of a widow assuaging grief, it was Stella Darnell at her best.

Jack must help her in with her bag. He froze. Stella hadn’t told him she had changed her mind. She didn’t want him, or William Frost, to know. A detective’s daughter, she would be uncomfortable about her decision. If Jack greeted her in the hall, aside from frightening her, he would cause her deep shame.

He spun around, hands wringing. It was worse. Stella would realize he had broken his promise. He had betrayed her.

Friday, 25 October 2013

With green lights all the way from her mum’s flat, Stella made it to Lulu Carr’s on time, but she hadn’t been able to drop Stanley off at the office. She could have left him at Suzie’s. Dale said he loved dogs, but he seemed to ‘love’ everything so she took that with a pinch of salt. She would explain to Lulu Carr that Stanley, being made of wool, wouldn’t moult. If she had allergies – and Stella suspected she did – the dog would not set them off. She rehearsed her speech in her mind as she reversed into a space outside the house. If there were any accidents – there won’t be, he’s toilet-trained – or if he caused any damage – he knows not to touch anything – she would reimburse her. Stella pulled her equipment bag from the back of the van and slung it over her shoulder.

She was reaching for the doorbell when she heard a single chime from somewhere in her anorak. A text.

Had to see bro. Key under mat. Lulu. x

Not again! If this cavalier attitude to security was Lulu Carr’s revenge on her estranged husband, it was self-defeating. She wondered about the brother; if he was loyal, he was probably also protective. When a person slid into chaos, it was often the relatives who called in Clean Slate. Stella hoped he wasn’t fuelling Lulu Carr’s obsession with her husband. Having just acquired a brother herself, Stella had no idea what to expect. However, Lulu not being there did mean she needn’t explain why she had Stanley in tow.

There was no key under the mat.

This hitch did at least give her a reason to leave and get on with the ‘One Under’ case. So far they had three suspects backed up by flimsy evidence. Her internet search on Rick Frost had resulted in one page of double-spaced text, including a photo that looked like a passport picture. The lack of available information on him might be apt for a surveillance expert – Frost had left the faintest of footprints – but it wasn’t helpful for finding his killer. But ‘stick to one job at a time’ had been her motto since she started Clean Slate. Stella texted Lulu Carr,
No key. Will you be long?

Lulu texted back immediately.
Another one above door. Don’t be cross!

Stella stepped back from the door and looked at the narrow lintel above the door. She caught a movement in one of the upstairs windows. She shaded her eyes against the morning sunshine and saw only a flash of light as the sun hit the glass. She wouldn’t put it past Lulu to be in there, watching, testing her. Perhaps if she had left without texting, Lulu would have cancelled the contract. At this moment Stella doubted she would mind. She could see the key. Checking there was no one in the street, she took it down.

She unlocked the door, picked up the equipment bag and, with Stanley beside her, squeezed inside. Stella was pleased to see that Lulu was still keeping the house tidy; perhaps she was on the road to recovery. It was good too that she was seeing her brother and not scouring the streets for Mr Carr and his mistress.

Stella laid the towel she kept in the van to dry the dog off after walks down in the hallway and directed Stanley on to it. Obediently he flopped down and contemplated her with a doleful expression.

She lugged the bag into the living room and got out her ‘light-clean kit’. The room was already spotless, but Stella was the first person to applaud the cleaning of a clean room.

Ten minutes later, as the clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven fifteen, Stella came out of the living room to fill a bucket with warm water from the kitchen and saw the towel on the hall floor. No Stanley.

She ran into the kitchen and tried the back door. Surprisingly, given Lulu’s lax attitude to keys, it was locked. She knew he wasn’t in the sitting room. She took the stairs three at a time to the landing.

Stanley was sitting on the crimson mat, bolt upright, staring at the cupboard built into the space behind the banister rail. He was making a hideous guttural growl. Stella realized she had heard the sound for some minutes but, engrossed in getting the windows spotless, hadn’t taken it in.

When he saw her, Stanley began to bat at one of the doors. It was loosely fitting and made a resounding bang. The cupboard had stored many of the husband’s clothes, jumpers and more combat gear, which Lulu had carted off to the dump. Stella had helped her put her own clothes in there. There was nothing that Stanley could want.

‘Stanley!’ David had told her that if Stanley was fixated with getting under a sofa or nosing behind a bookcase, there would be a good reason. Last week, giving in to his barking at a filing cabinet, Beverly and Jackie had eventually shifted it, a half-hour effort, to find his stuffed rat wedged behind it. There could be no toy in this cupboard.

‘What are you doing up here?’ She reached for a liver treat, but the pouch around her waist contained cleaning gear. She went closer and stopped.

Lulu’s bedroom door was open. She
never
left it open.

There was one room in the house that Lulu didn’t want her to clean: her bedroom. Stella had dreaded to think what state it was in, so, looking in, was surprised to find it immaculate. Dominating the room, beneath a swathes of fabric suspended from the ceiling, was the biggest four-poster bed she had ever seen. More suited to a stately home than a modest house in Hammersmith. Soft linen and lace billowed from the ceiling, suspended there like clouds. Great dust collectors, she fleetingly thought.

Mirrors placed at strategic points reflected the bed into infinity. The bedspread twinkled with gold and silver threads; intertwining blossoms in blues, green and reds were lit by a sun motif in the centre. The sun was not as bright as the flowers. Floating on top of the silk was a pool of water, golden like the sun. The awful truth dawned.

Stanley had peed on the bed.

‘No, no.
No!
’ Stella scrubbed at her hair. She bundled up the counterpane. No point in reprimanding Stanley, the moment he had laid claim to Lulu Carr’s territory would be lost in his past.

Something dropped to the floor. Stella reached down for it. It was Lulu’s driving licence. There were bite marks in the plastic cover. Flushing with horror, Stella flipped it open, praying that Stanley hadn’t rendered it invalid. The photograph wasn’t Lulu; the face that stared out at her was the same as the one turned up in her internet research. It was Rick Frost.

‘Stanley!’ Stella closed the bedroom door. Holding the counterpane high to avoid tripping, she hurried down the stairs. She piled it into a large IKEA bag she kept in her equipment bag for emergencies such as this, got her phone from her anorak and called Jack.

Pick up!