The Detective's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

speeding along the M23. Her rear-view mirror reflecting the empty motorway was a black rectangle. Earlier there had been tail-lights ahead, which were snuffed out when the driver rounded a bend and had not reappeared. She adjusted her phone in its cradle on the dashboard.
    Where was Terry’s mobile phone?
    She rumbled on to the hard shoulder and, releasing the seat belt, scrabbled through the NHS bag on the front seat. There was a shuffling in the back of the van. Stella froze. She had not adhered to her own rule of looking in the interior if she left the van. It was easy to hide amongst the buckets and spare overalls. She heard the shuffling again, then a thump, and she spun around.
    A bag of dishwasher salt granules lay on the carpeted floor. Many clients included appliance maintenance in their contract and someone had stacked the bags on the racks without securing them. Another was about to go; Stella clambered through the seats and caught it. She stowed the salt where it belonged, on the bottom shelf in a plastic container.
    She checked the central locking and remembered why she had stopped. One thing Stella did know about Terry was that he always kept his mobile phone with him. Yet it was not in the NHS bag nor in his car, although there was a phone charger in the glove box.
    The keyboard on her BlackBerry was fiddly in the feeble light but eventually she selected ‘Dad’. She clenched her teeth, waiting for it to connect: some part of her expecting Terry to answer.
    The ringing briefly fell in step with the click-click of her hazard lights. She was about to hang up when it stopped.
    ‘Who’s that?’ Stella almost said: Dad, is that you?
    Who’s that? a woman responded .
    ‘No, who are you?’ Stella demanded.
    No, who are you? It was her echo.
    The line deadened with an almost imperceptible change in quality; a cessation of sound as if someone had replaced a receiver.
    The screen said ‘Call duration twelve seconds’. Stella selected ‘Dialled numbers’. ‘ Dad’ was top of the list with ‘Clean Slate’ underneath: her last two calls.
    She pressed ‘redial’.
    This time the answering service cut in and Terry’s voice invited the caller to leave as much information as they liked. Even in retirement he was encouraging witnesses to come forward with evidence, available any time of the day or night.
    Stella had always told herself that if she called, Terry would be too busy to talk.
    Her voice hesitant, she asked whoever had the phone to ring her to arrange collection.
    Maybe Terry had dropped his phone when he collapsed and it had been stolen by kids. Thinking that she had called the wrong number, she went into ‘Dialled numbers’ again: the word ‘Dad’ lost meaning the longer she stared at it.
    Stella caught her reflection in the side window, the dark rendering it high contrast: lumpy hair, her eyes lost in their sockets and her mouth a grim pencil line. She ran the window down to erase herself and was hit by cold wood-smoked air. Beyond the carriageway ragged trees were outlined against the sodium-pink sky of a town. A light blinked through the branches, moving, vanishing, then appearing closer and she heard a long low whistle.
    She looked in her wing mirror and saw that a car was parked on the hard shoulder twenty yards away with its lights off. It hadn’t been there when she had pulled off the road. She tilted the wing mirror, but it was too dark to tell if there was anyone inside. She did not want to wait to find out; she started the engine and gunned the van out into the middle lane. Fixing her seat belt, she accelerated to seventy. Careful of petrol consumption and after all a policeman’s daughter, Stella did not speed.
    By the time the lights of London twinkled ahead, she was clear: Terry’s death was a task to be ticked off and then she would move on.
    She easily negotiated the tight gap between bollards on Hammersmith Bridge, but instead of joining the Great West Road to go to her flat