Mourning the Little Dead

by Jane A. Adams

  She frowned. ‘Yeah, something like, “This is the place” and I heard jingling, as if she was wearing it on her wrist.’

  ‘Would you know them again? I mean, was there anything distinctive...?’

  She laughed. ‘They sounded like kids. No, no, I know what you mean. Local, I would say. Early teens, bit younger. She sounded pretty self-assured and the footsteps weren’t hurried or panicked or anything. Nothing like that...You know, I got the impression that the second child was younger, but I couldn’t tell you why.’

  ‘Oh? Try.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe her steps were quicker or something.’ She shrugged. ‘I really couldn’t say, it was just an impression. Like I said, Alec, they were just kids.’

  Alec glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. He stood up and bent to kiss Naomi, making certain that he took his time about it. Time enough for Harry to harrumph uncomfortably and look away.

  Once he had gone, Harry made more coffee. There was an empty feel to the day now, as though Alec had somehow taken their sense of purpose with him.

  It was Patrick that voiced it. ‘Well,’ he demanded. ‘So what do we do now?’

  Naomi didn’t answer. She’d been asking herself the same question. She felt suddenly deflated as though talking to Alec had reminded her how futile all this was: her little investigation, piecing things together for her own satisfaction when, in the next few days, she supposed that all the information included in the confession would be released and her gaps could be filled by official channels. It was habitual curiosity, she decided. Born of years of police work...and it was time she let go and found something else to do.

  ‘We don’t do anything,’ Harry replied. He sounded heavy and defeated too as though his thoughts tracked Naomi’s and made him feel just as bad.

  ‘Oh, come on.’ Patrick was indignant. He’d been enjoying himself with this inclusion into the adult world and he didn’t want to give up the privilege.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do,’ Harry told him. ‘The police will do their job and all we can do is wait.’

  ‘Then why go to all this trouble?’ Patrick demanded. ‘You spent hours getting all this together. What was it, a big waste of time then?’

  Neither adult replied. Naomi lifted her head to look in Harry’s direction, symbolically meeting his gaze as if she could see his face. Her hands shuffled the pieces of paper, the photocopied sheets laying bare the memories of Helen’s murder.

  ‘They won’t do much more anyway,’ she said. ‘If the confession is for real, they know who did it and he’s already dead. In a few days at most, they release the information, close the case and that will be it. They’ve got the child out at Philby to concentrate on. Helen...I guess Helen will be a kind of bonus, when they catch the other man. And, I don’t know, Patrick. I don’t know why I went to all this trouble. It seemed important at the time. There were things I wanted to remember properly and, I guess, I wanted to feel involved.’

  It was a hard confession to make. She felt Patrick shift uneasily in his seat and Harry get up, the chair lifted carefully so that he didn’t scrape it on the wooden floor. Typically Harry, she thought absently.

  ‘I’ll make us some more coffee,’ he said quietly. He patted Naomi’s hand as he passed and she was reminded suddenly of Alec’s touch. Harry’s hands were soft, like Mari’s, gentle on her own.

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Patrick said quietly.

  ‘You didn’t. I mean, really, you didn’t, Patrick. I still find it hard to let go, to be shut out. My entire adult life was wrapped up in police work. My friends and colleagues were the same people. I lived and breathed it and I was good at what I did. It just feels so...’

  She smiled, blinking rapidly to stop the tears which threatened. She could feel the boy reaching out to tidy the papers on the table. Shuffling and stacking them. Displacement activity, she thought. Harry made coffee, Patrick sorted paper. She...What did she do? Naomi was no longer sure.

  ‘What about the bracelet?’ Patrick asked her suddenly.

  ‘What about it?’ It was Harry who asked, coming back from the kitchen and setting the tray down with the same care he’d used when he moved the dining chair.

  ‘Well, someone left it. Someone who isn’t dead...it’s kind of like leaving a message.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Patrick.’ Harry sounded vaguely impatient. ‘I expect it was someone’s idea of a practical joke. With all of this resurfacing—’ he paused and sighed—‘there are some sick people out there who would see leaving the bracelet as funny, no doubt.’

  But Naomi shook her head, Patrick’s words having started a train of thought in her own mind. ‘Alec was right,’ she said. ‘I should have thought more about it last night. It can’t be that simple, Harry. Maybe Patrick is on to something and someone was leaving a message of some kind. The question is, what is it they wanted to say?’

  Harry huffed impatiently. ‘Someone remembered the bracelet; read about it in the papers and decided to play a rather sick joke. Alec’s right about that, they should be hunting down whoever planned this thing and bringing them to book...’

  Naomi’s hands moved restlessly, flicking through the papers that Patrick had stacked so carefully, recalling their contents. Then she settled them once more upon the table. ‘It wasn’t mentioned,’ she said quietly. ‘Not anywhere. You read the accounts to me. There are descriptions of Helen’s clothes, her school bag, even what books she would have had with her that day. Nothing about the bracelet.’

  There followed a silence, but for the flap and shuffle of paper as the two of them looked for confirmation of Naomi’s words.

  ‘Well, all right,’ Harry conceded finally. ‘There’s nothing here. But Helen wore that damned thing all the time. Same as you did yours. Anyone who knew her well would have assumed...’

  ‘So why get two kids to dump its twin on my doorstep now?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it he difficult to find another one like it?’ Patrick asked. ‘I mean, yours and Helen’s were bought years ago.’ Naomi laughed. He made it sound like the dark ages. ‘No, she told him. The same little shop still sells the same junk it did when we were kids. In fact, it’s all come back into vogue, the new age, Far Eastern sort of stuff. And, chances are, your dad’s right.’

  ‘See, Patrick. You read too much into things.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ Naomi told him. ‘I mean, you’re right about most of our friends knowing about the bracelet. But that doesn’t answer the why part. Maybe it was a sick joke, like you say. But Harry, what if it wasn’t? The only other explanation is that someone knew, knew for certain about Helen and about the bracelet and that it was still on her wrist when she died.’

  Harry frowned. ‘Isn’t that quite a leap of logic?’

  ‘Is it? Not really, I don’t think. They must have known I would recognize it for what it was. But what I can’t figure out is why. Not just why leave it, but why wait this long to come forward?’

  ‘Come forward?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Dad,’ Patrick told him, the excitement in his voice unmistakable. ‘They must have seen it when Helen was killed. They’ve got to have been there.’

  Fifteen

  Alec had returned to the office to catch up on paperwork. He had dropped the bracelet into his desk tray and it was lying there on top of his files when Travers walked in.

  ‘Slipping, Alec? Shouldn’t that be back in the evidence locker?’

  ‘What? Oh.’ Alec picked it up. ‘It’s not Helen’s,’ he said. He handed it over for Travers to see. ‘It might well be evidence, but I’m damned if I could tell you what of.’

  Travers gave him a quizzical look. He pulled up a chair and sat down, dumped the file he had been holding in Alec’s in tray and examined the tiny bangle. Picking it up, it was clear that this was not Helen’s. Hers had been well preserved, considering the time it had been in the ground, but it had also been bent out of shape and the enamel chipped and flaki
ng.

  ‘What’s the story?’ Travers asked.

  Alec told him.

  ‘Has she been interviewed?’

  ‘Not officially, no.’

  ‘I’ll get someone on to it. You’d better give her a call, tell her to expect someone. Tomorrow, probably.’

  ‘And what about this confession?’ Alec demanded. ‘Dick, you can’t keep sitting on this. Not now you’ve found her. It looks...’

  ‘I know how it looks.’ Travers unfolded himself from the chair and stretched. ‘Phillips wants a few more days. He’s called a press conference for—’ he glanced at his watch—‘about now actually. Take a look?’

  There was a television in the corner of the office and Travers dragged it out and plugged it in. He flicked through the channels trying to find the news.

  ‘...found the remains of Helen Jones,’ Phillips was saying. ‘The child’s identity has been confirmed by dental records and personal items found with the body. Helen Jones, as you all know, disappeared on her way to school on the 17th March, twenty-three years ago. Her family asked me to relay that they are relieved to finally lay their child to rest and ask you to respect their need for privacy at this most difficult of times.’

  ‘Fat chance of that,’ Alec commented.

  They watched in silence as Phillips fielded questions from the floor. Most concerned the confession. Phillips was evasive: Still further lines of inquiry to follow. A statement would be issued in the next few days.

  ‘Think he’ll do it?’ Alec asked.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Handle the announcement when we have to tell them it was one of our own that killed Helen Jones.’

  Travers looked at him, his face expressionless. ‘Shooting in the dark, Alec?’ he said finally.

  Alec nodded. ‘Yes, but it looks like I scored,’ he said.

  *

  Harry, Patrick and Mari were also watching the news. ‘I wanted to make sure he said it,’ Mari told her son. ‘About leaving us alone.’

  ‘They’ll take no notice, Mam,’ Harry told her. It’s a miracle we’ve been left alone as much as we have.’

  She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘I know, but I still told him he had to say it.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘Come back to my place,’ he said. ‘Tonight. Or we could go away for a little while, just until everything quietens down.’

  Mari frowned at him. ‘And what good will that do? I want to be here to arrange the funeral as soon as they say we can. I want to be here to bring Helen home. There are still old friends around here, people who have the right to see her laid to rest, and I’ll not have it said that I’ve not seen properly to my own.’

  ‘No one would think that, Mam,’ Harry protested. ‘I just thought...’

  Mari squared her shoulders. ‘Some storms just have to be ridden,’ she said.

  A knock at the door put paid to further debate. Mari waved her son back to his seat. ‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘It’s probably one of the neighbours seen the news.’

  Harry nodded. There had been a steady stream of visitors since he had arrived. Usually repeat visitors too, women and the odd man, who had known his family forever and wanted Mari to know that they were there. He watched his mother hustle through into the hall, wondering how she would handle things when they really were over and Helen buried and their lives once more changed forever.

  Mari opened the front door and peered outside. There was no one there. She stepped out into the street and looked both ways, past the parked cars and kids playing in the road. In the distance, hurrying around the bend was a woman, dressed in blue, with dark hair. She was no one Mari recognized but it seemed likely that she must have been the one who knocked on Mari’s door. Mari almost called after her, then she shrugged her shoulders and decided it was better to let it go.

  As she turned to go inside a child’s voice called out from down the street. ‘Wait a minute, Mam!’

  Mari stopped, one hand upon the door, and stood back, feeling the brush of clothing and whisk of long blonde hair as she ran on by.

  Mari closed her eyes as tears pricked at the lids, wishing so hard that she could confide in Harry just how often she still saw and heard her other child.

  *

  Sarah Clarke’s mother moved restlessly around the living room, straightening objects that did not need to be straightened; dusting, tidying, unable to be still. The television was on and her husband watched the news, leaning forward in his chair as though he needed to see more closely.

  ‘It’s going to he like this,’ he said, ‘isn’t it? Like this, waiting bloody years for someone to catch the bastard.’

  ‘They say he’s dead,’ his wife told him, her voice abstracted and distant. ‘The one who killed that other child. Helen.’ She said the name slowly, carefully, as though it were important to get it right. ‘Helen Jones,’ she said again.

  Her husband glanced across at her and she watched as he poured another measure of whisky into his glass. The evening sun glinted through the window, catching against the cut glass of the tumbler and breaking into a million, multicoloured fragments.

  She blinked, realizing that her eyes were full of tears; tears distorting the light.

  The door opened and their son, Sarah’s brother, stood there, looking at them. No one moved, each one frozen in that captive moment. He closed the door again and Maggie heard him racing away from her up the stairs.

  Sixteen

  The day had begun with great frustration for Naomi. She had made a decision the night before that she should go and talk to ex-Detective Sergeant Lyman, the man mentioned in the news reports as being part of the investigative team under the command of Joe Jackson.

  She recalled Lyman from her early days as a police officer and had worked with him closely on a few occasions, so she was reasonably certain he would remember her.

  The address she had for him was an old one and she had no phone number. On calling directory enquiries she found that Lyman was now ex-directory and she had no means of calling ahead to see if the man still lived there, was home and wouldn’t mind her coming over.

  Frustration number one.

  She had hope to call Harry and have him be her escort for the morning, but as she was about to pick up the receiver, Harry himself rang.

  The press corps had returned in force, lining themselves up at both ends of the road and proving to be ‘a flaming nuisance’ as Harry put it.

  ‘I can’t leave Mari,’ he told Naomi. ‘They kept knocking on the door earlier, so we called the police. There’s a patrol car sitting in the road now. I feel like a major crime scene.’

  ‘How’s Mari taking it?’

  ‘Oh, far better than I am. Both sets of neighbours have taken up residence in the kitchen and they’re all in there, drinking tea and pulling the world to pieces.’

  Naomi laughed. ‘Is Patrick OK?’

  ‘Bored, but otherwise coping. You?’

  ‘I’m just fine. Look, I’ll talk to you later. You take care.’

  Frustration number two.

  Number three happened when she phoned her usual taxi firm and found that George Mallard was on his day off, but they knew who she was and that she was one of George’s regulars and promised someone would be round in twenty minutes.

  Finally, Naomi thought, she could be on her way.

  It was after eleven when the taxi pulled up outside Lyman’s house and the driver came around to help her out. ‘You want me to wait until you’re inside?’ he asked her. ‘George reckons to, doesn’t he?’

  Naomi laughed, he had evidently been well briefed. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘And I’ll ring when I’m ready to come home.’

  She took a firm grip on Napoleon’s harness and allowed him to lead her forward up the short garden path. The scent of roses filled the small front garden. They crowded against the edges of the path, pulling at her shirt sleeve. Napoleon stopped and sat down and Naomi reached out, looking for a bell or a door knocker. Finding neither,
she rapped with her knuckles on the wooden door.

  It seemed like a long time before he came and when he did, there was a silence long enough to fill Naomi with uncertainty once more.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Lyman?’ she asked finally.

  ‘Yes, lass, it’s me. I had this feeling you’d be along, you’d best come inside.’

  Turning to wave to her taxi driver, Naomi followed her ex-colleague inside.

  Geoff Lyman set the tea tray down upon a little table and Naomi could hear him pouring tea and arranging biscuits on a plate. He had said very little since welcoming her inside and leading her into what she thought must be the room at the front of the house. She had been here once before that she could remember and there were two reception rooms, with the kitchen beyond. The room was very quiet, just a clock ticking somewhere behind and above her head, and Napoleon snorting to himself as he settled at her feet. She had listened intently for a sign there might be someone else in the house—when she had come here the last time, there had been a wife in evidence, waving goodbye as they arrived—but there had been no sound this time that indicated anyone else’s presence.

  ‘I’m setting your tea down here, on the floor next to your chair. Can you manage that?’

  ‘That will be fine. Thanks.’

  ‘The...er dog, he won’t drink it, knock it over or anything...?’

  ‘No. He knows better than that.’

  It wasn’t Naomi herself that he was uncertain how to talk to, she realized suddenly. It was the blind woman—sitting in his living room, with that very visible reminder of what she was snoring contentedly on his living-room floor—that he was having difficulties with.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said softly. ‘I’m coping well, most of the time, and I don’t expect you to say anything, because there’s nothing you can say. I’m not here for the sympathy.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. Then: ‘I’d forgotten how direct you can be.’

  ‘That’s OK, too. So had I.’

  Geoff Lyman laughed briefly, but it cracked the tension between them.

  ‘You said you’d guessed I’d come,’ Naomi reminded him. ‘What made you so sure?’