The Detective's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

papers: receipts, loyalty cards, the driving licence and sixty-five pounds in twenties and a five. He was one coffee away from a free drink at Caffè Nero; she had presumed greasy spoon cafés were more him. She struck lucky: a receipt from a filling station in Seaford. She peered at the faint blue ink and worked out that Terry had bought petrol at sixteen minutes to eight that morning.
    Stella had never driven Terry; if they went anywhere together it was in his car. When she passed her test – first time – her mother had told her that Terry did not trust women drivers.
    At the bottom of the bag two glistening ham rolls nestled in a Co-op carrier; the doughy bread mummified in cling film had been flattened by a can of Coke. Her stomach heaved: Terry had bought them just before he died.
    At London Zoo, Terry had treated his little daughter to a bottle of Coke. Stella hated drinks with bubbles but at the giraffe house she had upset him by calling him ‘Terry’ as her mum did, instead of ‘Dad’, so she sucked dutifully on the pink straw, willing the level to creep down, the bubbles exploding in her throat. They waited on the westbound District line platform of Earls Court station to go the one stop to her new home in Barons Court and Stella got a feeling in her tummy. She swallowed a rush of saliva and stayed stock still.
    The train clattered in, doors swished, a voice boomed and when people pushed behind her Stella threw up over shoes and legs. Brown foaming liquid chased along the carriage floor. The train was taken out of service and it was her fault.
    She had retreated to the new bedroom, with no toys and a stain on the ceiling. Before being sick she had planned to say ‘Thank you for having me, Daddy’ to make it all better. In Stella’s memory her parents’ voices conflated with the policeman who had mutely reprimanded her lack of emotion: ‘What were you thinking of? You don’t know your own daughter. She hates fizzy drinks.’
    You don’t care about your father.
    The NHS bag bulged with bald indicators of a life. Stella did not think of Terry Darnell filed in a steel drawer in the hospital mortuary, but as following her out of the hospital warning her to mind her own business.
    Jackie had told Stella that Seaford was a seaside town twelve miles east of Brighton; she took the coast road recommended by her satnav. A notice announced Seaford was twinned with Bönningstedt in Germany. She swung past the station over a mini-roundabout, took a left then a right on to a street with Barclays Bank on one side and a Pound shop on the other. She was in a ghost town: no cars; no pedestrians on the shop-lit pavements. A crisp packet broke free from the shelter of a lamp-post to spin and skitter along the camber like tumbleweed. A church clock tolled nine as Stella stopped the van outside a disused Woolworths store and turning off the engine became aware of a creaking like a rocking chair. She got out: further along the street the metal sign for a men’s clothes shop swung back and forth; the place unsettled her.
    Jackie had said Terry died at a difficult time of the year: right after Christmas. Stella did not see what that had to do with anything; she had not spent a Christmas with Terry since she was seven.
    The Co-op had closed an hour ago. Stella guessed that it must have looked the same when Terry arrived early that morning; the shelves restocked with packets, jars, bottles, their labels stark in the low security lighting. Rows of shopping trolleys were corralled next to the fruit and vegetable section, ready for the next day. Terry would not have used a trolley for so few items; he had not touched them. Opposite, she read ‘Sweet Moments’ on the fascia of a handmade-chocolate shop; perhaps these were the last words that Terry had seen.
    If Stella expected to find a clue to the drama that had taken place in the doorway twelve hours earlier, she was disappointed. The two-storey shop buildings, block paving, tang