THE DOG WALKER
Lesley Thomson
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About this Book
About the Author
Table of Contents
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About The Dog Walker
A haunted house, a broken family and a body that has never been found. Stella and Jack must reawaken the secrets of the past in order to solve the mysteries of the present.
January, 1987. In the depths of winter, only joggers and dog walkers brave the Thames towpath after dark. Helen Honeysett, a young newlywed, sets off for an evening run from her riverside cottage. Only her dog returns.
Twenty-nine years later, her husband asks Stella Darnell, a private detective, and her side-kick Jack Harmon, to find out what happened all those years ago.
But when the five households on that desolate stretch of towpath refuse to give up their secrets, Stella and Jack find themselves hunting a killer whose trail has long gone cold.
For Alfred, who gave me the idea
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
About The Dog Walker
Dedication
Map
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About Lesley Thomson
About The Detective’s Daughter Series
From the Editor of this Book
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
Map
Prologue
January 1987
On a hot summer’s day the Thames towpath between Kew Bridge and Mortlake Crematorium is stippled with sunlight spilling through willow fronds and shading oaks. Birdsong twitters above the rumble of a District line train crossing Kew Railway Bridge. Although in London, the leafy towpath resembles a pastoral idyll. Cyclists weave around strolling couples and families straggling with scooters and pushchairs.
In deepest darkest winter, lamplight from the north bank is absorbed in the black waters and only joggers and dog walkers brave the towpath.
On this night, a figure walked briskly beside the Thames. The sweeping arc of a torch picked out puddles in the mud. A dog nosing along the bank cocked its ears. The person – a man or a woman in baggy waterproofs – paused. There was the thud of footsteps. Emerging out of the gloom came a jogger accompanied by a dog. The dog walker moved to the river’s edge to make way.
‘Good evening!’ the dog walker hailed the receding figure. No reply. The jogger’s dog was circling on the path; he pooed and, kicking his back legs in triumph or relief, raced away.
Clear of trees, the path was stained by the orange of the light-polluted sky. The dog walker strode on along the path, seemingly unfazed by the slap of the river against the bank and rustling in bushes that might suggest a creeping assailant.
The arch of Chiswick Bridge was a tomb in which ice cracking beneath the dog walker’s step was amplified.
It’s the dog walker with their inquisitive pet straying off the beaten track who’s likely to come upon the body of a murder victim. Bent on their daily routine, rarely does it occur to them that they themselves could be a victim.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ The words hung in the wintry air.
1
Monday, 4 January 2016
Stella Darnell headed smartly along Shepherd’s Bush Green, trim in a green waxed jacket, wool-lined collar zipped to her chin against the searing wind, flat-soled black-leather ankle boots clipping on the frosty pavement, a styled pixie bob framing a lightly made-up complexion. A leather rucksack on one shoulder. A diminutive apricot poodle, shaggy and unstyled, ‘Crufts-trotted’ at her heel.
The morning had started badly because it had started late. For the first time in Stella’s memory she had overslept. Embroiled in a dream in which she shot up with the alarm, dressed and searched without success for her boots, she had been stunned to wake at seven to find she was in bed. By half past the Great West Road was snarled up and what would have been a fifteen-minute journey at six took an hour. One reason was a collision between a Range Rover Evoque and a Fiat 500 on Hammersmith Broadway. The Evoque’s registration was ‘Pow3r 1’. Jack said a personalized plate was a sign of the owner’s character. Stella’s, a birthday present from her brother Dale, was ‘CS1’; it stood for Clean Slate, although several clients had jokily suggested ‘Crime Scene Investigation’. Jack suggested that Dale intended it to signify the two sides of her life. Stella, a cleaner for most of the day, was, with Jack Harmon, for the rest of the day and much of the night, a private detective. Her decision to open a detective agency, made a couple of years ago, wasn’t yet official. She and Jack operated on an as-and-when basis.
As her van drifted past the accident, Stella took in the scene. The driver, a blonde woman in an embroidered coat, high heels and huge sunglasses despite there being no sun, was hectoring a bespectacled man with thinning hair who gazed forlornly, hands stuffed in the pockets of his cord jacket, at the crushed wing of his Fiat. The Evoque was undamaged. With the trained eye of a police officer’s daughter, Stella saw, from the angle of the vehicles, that Pow3r 1 had swapped lanes and rammed the Fiat’s offside. The Evoque was at fault, but as she drew level Stella heard the man apologize.
*
Stella shouldered the street door up to her office. It was locked. This was unheard of. She had lost count of her reminders to the insurance brokers on the top floor to keep the door locked against intruders. Emails, laminated notices and personal entreaties were ignored, resulting in delivery couriers – usually for the brokers – coming to Clean Slate on the first floor.
Stella was unused to needing her key and had to search for it. She was crouching down, digging in her rucksack, when the door opened. There was a shriek and Stanley let loose a barrage of shouty b
arks.
‘Stella! I didn’t see you sitting on the ground!’ Beverly was Clean Slate’s young office assistant. Permanently cheerful, she attacked her work with an unbounded enthusiasm that Stella could find overwhelming.
‘I’m not sitting…’ Stella found the key and stood up.
As ever Beverly looked immaculate. She wore knee-high boots, a short black dress, thick black tights and a skimpy green bolero jacket. She squatted down and vigorously petted Stanley, presenting her face to be licked. ‘I’m popping next door for milk and Jackie says to get biscuits! We’ve got that woman coming in about the toilet cleaning job.’ She flapped Stanley’s ears merrily.
‘Washrooms, not just toilets…’ Stella exclaimed. ‘She’s coming to the office?’
‘Yeah, bummer! We’ve been here since dawn deep cleaning. But you can’t turn a sheep into a wolf or whatever. Do you fancy anything from the shop?’
‘Get chocolate bourbons. They’re her favourite!’ Dariusz winked at Stella. ‘A gift from me.’ Before Stella could object, he followed Beverly inside.
Pausing by the open door, Stella considered that she did like bourbons best. Like her, Adomek made it his business to know what his customers liked. She sniffed. The air in the passage was tainted with stale cooking although no one in the building cooked. The greasy smell somehow seeped in from a hamburger place two shops down. Jackie wanted Clean Slate to move to a larger and more attractive office. Stella was reluctant; she hated change. And she’d miss her chats with Dariusz Adomek. But when a major potential client insisted on coming to the office, as this Angela Morrish had, Stella saw Jackie’s point.
Beverly called to her across the fruit and veg, ‘Ooh, I forgot, there’s two women waiting for you. One’s in a bad mood, the other’s well weird!’ She did a ‘bad mood’ face and swooped into the shop.
‘I haven’t got anyone in my diary…’ Stella always kept the first week after New Year free. Then again, she never overslept. Could she have forgotten the appointment?
Leading Stanley up the steep staircase, she considered how threadbare lino, peeling Anaglypta wallpaper and the cloying odour of meat would do nothing for the woman’s mood.
On the landing, Stella smelled something else. Orange, rose and jasmine cut with patchouli. Her hypersensitive olfactory sense identified Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle. The visitor had expensive taste. Nerving herself, Stella went inside: ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘Late for you who’s always here before dawn! It’s only nine, love.’ Jackie Makepeace, Stella’s PA, office manager and perhaps her closest friend, took Stanley’s lead from her. Nodding at a door marked ‘Stella Darnell, Chief Executive’, she dropped her voice. ‘You’ve got visitors. They came on spec, but insist on seeing you, or one of them does. I offered them drinks. One doesn’t drink caffeine; the other said she’s in a hurry.’ Jackie’s expression betrayed nothing.
A woman sat in Stella’s swivel chair; she was tapping a Clean Slate branded pen on the desk, a slow beat that counted Stella in. ‘I expected you’d be here.’ She didn’t look up.
Stella moved to the guest chair and, looking at the woman properly, had to contain astonishment. Blond hair, embroidered coat, sunglasses pushed up on to her head. Pow3r 1. Stella was less incredulous at the coincidence – Jack said there were no such things as coincidences (or accidents) – than that Pow3r 1 had got to the office before her. Up close she was younger than Stella had supposed, in her twenties, not thirties. Stella’s assessment had been formed from a hazy assumption that a younger woman was less likely to own a car which left little change from thirty-five thousand quid. Stella’s dad whispered in her head, as he often did since his death, ‘Observe closely, never assume. Work with what you see, not what you think you see.’
The woman shot a peremptory hand across the desk, clearly keen to dispose of pleasantries. ‘Natasha Latimer.’ Her grip was crushing.
Knuckles smarting, Stella enquired, ‘How may I help you?’
‘I want Blank Slate to do a job.’
‘It’s Clean Sl— I can come and do an estimate.’
‘That won’t work. You won’t see a thing in a short visit.’
Stella nearly shouted with surprise. A woman with long hair braided at the ends with brightly coloured beads was brooding at the window. Wrapped in a custard-yellow cloak possibly adapted from a blanket, she wore flared maroon cords, blue shoes with crepe soles, a loose-knit cardigan – loose in that the stitches were giving way – over a red cotton smock that reached to her knees. This had to be the visitor whom Beverly had dubbed weird. She wore a woollen hat with a bobble the size of Stanley that protruded behind her. It gave her the look of a chess piece – the bishop, Stella vaguely thought.
‘She will see all she needs to see.’ Natasha Latimer readjusted the sunglasses on her head. ‘This is my sister.’ She spoke as if referring to something unfortunate that couldn’t be helped.
‘Claudia. Greetings.’ The woman floated over to the coat stand. For a ludicrous second, Stella caught a resemblance between her and the stand. ‘You need to be there a good long time to appreciate it.’
‘How is that?’ Stella didn’t say that three decades of short visits to do estimates had proved a success.
‘You won’t see her in broad daylight.’ Claudia was kindly.
‘She will see what’s necessary.’ Natasha Latimer beat a tattoo with the pen.
‘Daytime’s usually when—’ Stella began.
‘When’s the last time you saw a ghost?’ Claudia might have been asking Stella when she’d last caught a cold.
Stella had just redrafted the company’s ‘lone-working’ policy so was up on the risks of being by herself with a client. Or two. Jackie was the other side of the wall. She didn’t air her opinion that ghosts didn’t exist – she wouldn’t contradict a potential client even though she guessed Latimer would be right there with her. What she did know was that a job for two sisters who had already exhibited polar opposite opinions was bound to end in disaster. She was debating how to refuse the job without offending one or both of them. Clients who saw ghosts might also see non-existent stains and dust and quibble over invoices.
Stella’s cleaning business was successful, bolstered with a mix of commercial contracts and domestic clients. She only took on clients who gave clear cleaning briefs and were respectful to the operatives. Natasha Latimer was brusque and ill-tempered. Her sister would probably be fine, but whatever she asked the cleaner to do, Stella was pretty sure Latimer would object to. Her likely wealth – evidenced by the coat, the car and wafts of Chanel – was no guarantee of good manners or regular payment. Stella focused on how to get Jackie’s help in ushering Pow3r 1 and her sister out. She took a subtle approach. ‘I’ve actually never seen a ghost.’
‘And you never will!’ Latimer was snappish.
Jack could chat on happily about spectral sightings – he claimed to encounter ghosts all the time. Since her dad’s death, Stella sometimes got the impression Terry Darnell had left a room as she entered it and, as just now, his voice broke into her thinking. But she didn’t believe his pearls of wisdom came from beyond the grave. Latimer was talking.
‘...so I moved in before Christmas. My new deep basement is double the square meterage of the house. I’ve gone right under the garden. Everything is “smart”, no extraneous switches, and it’s soundproofed. In and out. A humidifier keeps out the damp. You can’t hear it… floor’s water-resistant. The property is now worth millions. It’s old and was crying out for a makeover. The location is totally perfect, what with the river and Kew Gardens, and there’s only a few properties in the street.’
‘It has a lovely community feel,’ Claudia interposed, her fearsome bobble hat nodding. ‘Tucked away by the river. You can get right in touch with your soul there. The river
speaks—’
‘Yah, community, right!’ Latimer whipped off her sunglasses and spun them around by one of the arms. ‘Bunch of robots.’ She plucked at her coat with manicured fingers.
Claudia smiled to herself. ‘When I step inside she’s waiting for me.’
‘Who is?’ Stella hoped they hadn’t already told her.
‘That fucking woman!’ Latimer spat out the words, her eyes blazing.
Stella wished she’d gone with Jackie’s advice of a panic button under the desk. Claudia didn’t appear dangerous, but with talk of spirits, she was only marginally more reassuring. Jack would be in his element. She mustered herself. ‘Which fu— Which woman?’ Did she mean her sister?
Latimer whacked the pen on the desk, sending a staple remover whizzing on to the carpet. Bangles clinking, Claudia waltzed over and picked it up. Stella reassured herself that her office wasn’t soundproofed; she could shout for help. Except that would be rude. Not for the first time, she considered how being polite could be the death of her.
‘Helen Honeysett has found peace there.’ Claudia projected an air of patient explanation. ‘I’ve told Nats to chill. The girl is harmless, a gentle soul.’
‘Who is harmless?’ Jack believed using a modulated voice calmed a person in a frenzy. To her own ear, Stella sounded as if she was addressing a halfwit. It would explain Claudia’s peculiar lilting delivery; she’d be used to her sister.
‘Was, not is! Helen Whatsit. That estate agent.’ Latimer uttered the term like a swear word. ‘Claudia says she’s haunting the house.’
‘Ah.’ Stella understood. Natasha Latimer was blaming the estate agent for disappointment in her purchase. Sometimes clients blamed Clean Slate for their new home, despite a thorough clean, not being what they hoped for. ‘Your estate agent should have returned the key when you complet—’
‘Not that one! The girl that went missing in 1987. The year I was born.’ Latimer huffed as if personally affronted by this fact. ‘She lived in my street. She went out jogging in the dark on the towpath that runs right by my property and was never seen again. Claudia says she’s haunting me!’ She clicked the pen rapidly. ‘Claudia, I said leave this to me.’ Latimer flashed a warning look at her sister smiling beatifically by the coat stand.