The Janus Stone

When they met at the site, Father Hennessey had given her his card. At the time, she had thought it amusing that a priest would possess something as worldly as a business card. Father Patrick Hennessey SJ it says, in discreet grey capitals. She has no idea what SJ stands for and she doesn’t want to know. On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt to meet him again and ask him a few questions of her own.

Her hand hovers by the phone.

Judy is sitting at her desk, fuming. Bastard! How dare he sneer at her. ‘This isn’t a woman’s magazine.’ And in front of Tanya Fuller too. Judy likes Tanya. She’s fun on a night out and she certainly provides a welcome antidote to Clough and the rest of the lads. But Judy also knows that Tanya is competition.

Judy has been in the police force for three years. She’s a graduate (something she doesn’t often mention to Nelson) and, as such, on the so-called ‘fast track’ to success. When, after eighteen months, she’d been given the transfer to CID she felt that she really was on the way up. She loves detective work and she gets on well with Nelson whose bark is definitely worse than his bite. He may sound like an unreconstructed male chauvinist but, in practice, he is fair to the women in his team and (unlike some DCIs) does not view them as useful only in cases of rape or domestic violence. But somehow Judy feels that her career has stalled. She is a Detective Constable, by now she should be a Detective Sergeant, like Clough. She knows that Nelson has the funding for another sergeant so why hasn’t he given her the stripes? At least until Tanya Fuller turned up she could be sure that she was the best candidate for the job. But now Tanya breezes in from another force with her intelligent questions and her eyes fixed adoringly on Nelson’s face. What if Nelson promotes Tanya over Judy? She couldn’t bear it. She’d jack it all in and become a bookie like her dad.

Judy is meant to be helping Tanya with the dentist search but instead she is going over the notes from the case. She is sure they are all missing something. And, if she spots it, that will mean one in the eye for Nelson, Tanya, all of them.

Idly she sketches a Spens family tree. She met Edward Spens once at a police do and found him rather attractive. This doesn’t affect her deep-seated belief that his family have something to hide.

She looks hard at the name Rosemary Spens. She hears Nelson’s voice, speaking in the flat tone he uses for briefings: ‘Sir Roderick says she was “like an angel” but I get the impression that he didn’t really know her that well. Probably brought up by a nanny.’ That’s it. Judy goes back to the file and rifles through until she comes to the census of 1951. She remembers Clough reading it out to them: ‘Christopher Spens, Rosemary Spens, children Roderick and Annabelle.’ But, typically, Clough has overlooked something and Nelson’s casual words have brought it back to her. There would have been other people in the house – servants, a cook and almost certainly a nanny. And, sure enough, there are four other names on the list:

Lily Wright – cook general

Susan Baker – domestic

Edna Dawes – domestic

Orla McKinley – nanny

Judy looks at the last name for a long time.

Clough, swallowing the last of a chunky doughnut-to-go, is in a stonemason’s studio. The air is thick with dust and out of the fog loom disembodied shapes – columns, fireplaces, the occasional half-finished statue, horses and angels and Greek goddesses. Clough walks carefully through the stone figures thinking that it’s like a book he read as a child where a witch turned her enemies into stone and then decorated her house with them. Either that or a graveyard.

They have had a bit of luck with the stonemason. The firm who made Christopher Spens’ archway in 1956 are still in business. The actual mason has retired but his son is now in charge and has volunteered to bring his old dad into the studio to talk to the police. Clough now wends his way slowly towards the back of the vast room where the comforting sounds of Radio 1 are mingling with the smell of reheated coffee and calor gas. Clough sniffs appreciatively.

An old man is sitting in an armchair in from of the gas stove. A younger man, presumably the son, is chipping away at a small block of marble. Duffy is begging for mercy in the background.

‘Mr Wilson?’ Clough extends a hand. ‘Detective Sergeant Clough.’

The old man holds out a thin hand in a fingerless glove. ‘Mr Wilson senior. Reginald Wilson. I assume it’s me you wanted?’

‘Well, yes, sir. As I explained to your son on the phone, we’re interested in an archway you built in 1956, on Woolmarket Street. For Christopher Spens.’

Reginald Wilson gestures towards a cloth-bound book on his lap marked, in black ink, 1954-1958. ‘It’s all in the book. I always say to Stephen here, put it in the book. You never know when you might want to refer to it. But it’s all computers these days. Not as safe as a book.’ The younger man rolls his eyes good-naturedly.