Free The Detective's Daughter by Lesley Thomson Page B

path in the first place.
    The lamp-post went on and light picked out recently repointed brickwork and newly painted sashes. Stella guessed that Terry had done the work; he would not trust others. It was probably such stubbornness that had killed him.
    In 1981, the year Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government increased police pay, Terry worked more overtime than usual and was able to buy the corner house that he and Stella’s mother had rented after their marriage in 1966.
    Many of Clean Slate’s clients lived in this part of Hammersmith: lawyers, judges, actors, journalists; ambitious professionals with no time or inclination to scrub or dust. The area was more openly opulent than it had been in the late sixties during Stella’s time there, when a mix of ramshackle upper-middle classes and working people like Terry had resided more comfortably side by side. Nowadays a policeman would be unusual; Stella guessed that Terry had not socialized with his neighbours so would not be missed.
    Terry Darnell had cared little about social class; a detective, he could enter any home and poke about under baths, stairs and floorboards with impunity. He could delve into the recesses of all manner of lives and expose the unspeakable. Stella too, unimpressed by her clients’ status, applied astringents and detergents, wielded brushes and mops, listening without comment or judgement to dilemmas and dramas not dissimilar to those investigated by her father.
    However, as Stella stared up at the drawn bedroom curtains and tightly slatted blinds, she found the notion of a shared experience with Terry untenable.
    She ran the soles of her boots over the scraper and shook loose his mortice key, which turned easily in the lock. She was not so lucky with the Yale; it would not budge. Used to the idiosyncrasies of locks she inserted her gloved fingers into the letterbox, the flap mouse-trapping them, and eased the door back and forth while manipulating the torque with the key. She detected the correct position in the cylinder, the tumblers released, the plug rotated and the door opened.
    Dry leaves were crushed underfoot behind her.
    Stella left the door ajar, the key in the lock, and rushed to the gate. Wind tore through the hedge, smacking at her jacket, shaking chimes hung in next door’s porch that set off a tinkling discord of notes.
    She put her staff through a drill for entering empty premises. The handbook instructed vigilance; keep the key at all times. Do not leave the door open even to go out to the bins: a burglar needs only seconds to slip inside.
    Besides her van, four cars were ranged along the nearside kerb; the bays by the bushes were empty. A gust sent leaves and a squashed milk carton racing along the gutter and somewhere a can clattered and bounced on tarmac. The lamp went out and the carton was subsumed into velvet blackness. Stella concluded that leaves and twigs scraping and sweeping on stone could sound like shuffling soles. She was uptight and letting her imagination run riot, she told herself.
    In the hall she skidded on a heap of mail-order catalogues in plastic wrappers silted up on the brush mat and had to kick them out of the way to shut the door.
    Upstairs a clock ticked and from the kitchen came the drip-drip of a tap. The air was cold but lacked the stale atmosphere she would have expected of a place shut up and unoccupied even for a couple of days. She identified Lavender and Vanilla from Glade’s Relaxing Moments Collection, which she reserved for middle-range clients prior to a sale or new letting to lend a positive impression to the most tired or drab of interiors and reinforce the conviction that Clean Slate did a thorough job. Terry fitted this ‘average’ profile; most of her clients in this district preferred a less synthetic scent.
    Unwilling to attract attention with lights, she twisted on the miniature Maglite attached to her key ring.
    Always carry a torch in case the lights fail.
    Phantoms