Nineteen
Gary Williams arrived back at his flat just after one. He had been driving since leaving Alec, aimlessly looping in ever decreasing circles between Philby and the Radleigh Estate.
Everything was quiet when he returned to his flat. He resisted the temptation to wave at the officers on obs in the next block then knocked quietly on his neighbour’s flat and slipped inside as Cathy cracked open the door, leaving the lights off in her hallway.
‘Well?’ she demanded.
‘Yeah, you were right. They had me followed all the way to Philby and all the way back here. I led them around for an hour or so, just to keep them guessing. He was there. At Philby. Bastard.’
‘He won’t let up, will he?’
Gary Williams shook his head. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should do it.’
‘What you got to lose?’ she said, touching his arm. He looked down at her hand, but let it lie, though his gaze shifted to some distant point above her head. His eyes hardened.
‘It’s a chance to make a fresh start, Gary,’ she said. ‘Get away from here.’
He nodded slowly and before he could change his mind, she picked up the phone and began to dial.
*
It was well after two by the time they arrived at Mari’s house. The street was silent and dark, street lamps pooling their light on the ground in front of blank windowed houses.
Harry must have heard the car because he opened the door as Alec pulled up by the kerb, the sudden spillage of light almost shocking in the surrounding black.
Harry reached out and clasped Naomi by the arm. His voice was cracked and tense as he spoke to her, almost ignoring Alec.
‘She’s been here so long. I don’t know what to say to her any more. Nomi, she says Joe wrote that thing. She says he might...that he killed Helen.’
‘We’d best go inside,’ Alec said, ‘before we wake the street.’
Mari was sitting in the living room. As they went through, Naomi could hear her voice, but not the words at first. She sounded thick and muffled as though she had been crying or had her face hidden in a handkerchief. Naomi, who had sobered rapidly when Alec had explained about the call, began to feel her head tightening again, the beginnings of the hangover she knew was inevitable, beginning to bite.
‘Mari?’ she said.
‘Over here, love. Come and sit down. I’m sorry to drag you both out at this hour but Harry thought...’ She sniffed again, her voice breaking. Naomi reached out towards her and Mari took her hand and drew her down on to the sofa.
‘What’s going on?’ Naomi said.
She heard a second voice then, one she did not know, but which was twinned with Mari’s in the emotional stakes. ‘I’m Penny Jackson,’ the other woman said. ‘And I came here because...because I thought you ought to know, all of you, just what the police aren’t saying. Oh God, I wish I didn’t have to know either.’
‘You’re saying that DI Jackson made that confession?’ Alec asked her, his voice quiet and controlled, contrasting with the atmosphere of confusion and pain.
The woman must have nodded, Naomi thought, because Alec began again.
‘You brought this so-called confession to the police?’
‘Yes, yes, that was me.’ She took a deep breath as though trying to regain control and when she spoke again she seemed in some measure to have achieved it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You must all wonder what kind of mad woman came here tonight.’
‘Why did you come?’ Alec again. Slightly abrupt, Naomi thought.
‘Why?’
‘Yes, why.’ Alec paused. ‘Forgive me, Miss Jackson, but if it had been my father that might be guilty of this appalling thing, the last place I’d want to be would be with the victim’s family.’
‘I had to do something,’ Penny Jackson said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘OK,’ said Alec. ‘Then let’s start at the beginning. Suppose you start by telling us how you came by the confession and why it took three years after Joe Jackson’s death to come to you?’
When her father had died, Penny explained, he had left everything to her, including the house. Penny had never married, but she’d been in a long-term relationship, which had broken up about a year before Joe died. She had moved back home and remained there.
‘It’s a big house,’ Penny went on, ‘and prices have been going through the roof this past year or so. I decided to sell up, find something smaller, maybe right on the coast. Dad had an extension built to make the kitchen bigger and also so that he could have a garage. The people who want to buy asked me if the foundations had been laid deep enough, or something, for the next floor to be built on top. I asked our solicitor to get the deeds and plans out of storage for me. This...confession...it was in with those.’
‘Any idea why?’
‘No. No, of course I don’t. Dad was normally a really methodical man, but it wasn’t filed with his will or any of the personal stuff that came to me after he died. It was stuck in a storage box with the building plans, just as though it didn’t matter a damn who found it or when.’
Her earlier emotional storm was threatening to break again. Beside her on the sofa, Mari sat tense and still, though she had kept a hold on Naomi’s hand.
‘How long did it take you to decide what to do?’ Alec asked her.
‘Oh, I knew what I had to do. Straightaway I knew that. As soon as I read it I knew what it was all about and that I had to show it to someone. It was a Sunday by the time I’d had a chance to look at the plans and found the letter. I didn’t think there’d be anyone available on a Sunday night, so I waited and I didn’t get a wink of sleep. And on the Monday I took it in and asked to see someone in charge. The rest you know.’
‘What was in it?’ Naomi asked her. ‘Penny, what did the letter say?’
‘I’ve already told Mari what it said,’ Penny told her. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I could go through that again.’
‘It said that he had killed our Helen,’ Mari said softly. ‘That he had strangled her and hidden her in the foundations of a house on Lansdowne Road; he thought it was number 43. That he was sorry, it hadn’t been meant to happen like that, but sometimes that’s just the way life is.’
Mari took a deep, quavering breath. ‘Isn’t that how you said he worded it?’ she questioned. ‘That he was sorry, that our Helen was dead, and that was just the way it was.’
The silence remained for a long time, unbroken by anything except Penny’s quavering breaths and Harry, standing in the doorway, shifting slightly from foot to foot.
Mari said nothing more. She didn’t move and seemed hardly to be breathing, so still was she close against Naomi’s arm.
‘I’ve felt so utterly alone,’ Penny said quietly. ‘And I know it was a stupid thing, coming here tonight. I’m sorry, truly, deeply sorry, if I’ve caused you more pain but I had to do something, talk to someone. Ever since I took that paper to the police...I thought I’d get some support, some help...I don’t know what. But something. Instead, I’ve just been pushed aside and totally ignored. Treated like I’ve done something wrong. It wasn’t me who did anything. It was him, it must have been him. The letter said so.’
‘You seem very ready to be convinced,’ Alec told her. ‘Did it never cross your mind that the confession might have been a fake, or a plant or some stray piece of evidence your father shouldn’t really have had?’
‘Of course it did.’ Anger replaced pain now. ‘You really think I wanted to believe that my father was a killer?’
Naomi felt Mari wince. Harry shifted his position once again and came to sit on the arm of the settee.
‘I wanted them to say to me, Penny, we don’t know what this is, but it has nothing at all to do with Joe. But then they started digging and they found her, didn’t they?’
She got abruptly to her feet. ‘I’m going now,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you. I just thought...I just wanted...’ She began to cry
again. ‘I never should have come,’ she said.
Alec had walked her to her car, checked again that she felt well enough to drive and then returned to the others.
‘How long has she been here?’ he asked.
Harry came in with a tray of mugs and a pot of tea. ‘Since just after ten,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have let her in, I suppose, but I was so taken aback. Then she didn’t seem to want to go.’
‘You could have told her to,’ Alec observed.
‘Yes, I suppose, but it didn’t seem polite.’
‘I’ll bet double-glazing salesmen have a field day in your house.’
‘Hmm,’ Harry said. ‘I can’t help the way I am. I know it won’t do on occasion, but I can’t help it.’
‘It’s the way he was raised,’ Mari said quietly, coming to his defence. ‘But it was getting too much. I wanted her to go away and then I couldn’t stop listening to her. She went on there, talking about Joe, telling like he wasn’t the man we thought he was but how she never thought it would be this bad. That he’d do anything like...like what she reckons he did to Helen.’
‘What do you think she’s playing at, Naomi?’ Harry asked.
Naomi shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe she just needed absolution. But, Alec was right, if I’d been in her place, the last thing I’d have done was come here. God, I’d probably have burned the thing.’
‘Would you though?’ Alec asked her. ‘Or would you he so shocked that you acted as Penny Jackson did? On that same kind of impulse.’
‘Was it impulse?’ Harry demanded. ‘She admits she had at least a night to think it over. I don’t call that an impulsive act, more one that had been considered and well thought out.’
‘Did Joe ever talk about his daughter?’ Mari asked Naomi.
‘Yes. He mentioned her from time to time. What she’d been doing and so on. She’s a year younger than me, I think. I remember that, ’cause she took her A levels the year after I did and Joe said how well she’d done. He was proud of her, if that’s what you mean. I don’t know how close they were.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t know, Mari, Joe was quite a private man. He didn’t talk about much except the job, even when he was off duty. I got the impression that he and his wife didn’t always get along, even that there was another man, but I couldn’t tell you more than that. I know they finally separated, then divorced.’
We talked mainly about me, she thought, realizing this suddenly. We hardly ever talked about Joe and after those first few months, didn’t even talk much about Helen.
She closed her eyes, a reflexive action when she was trying to focus on something, even though there was no longer anything to block out.
‘I can’t remember much at all about Penny,’ she said finally. ‘Except that she was an only child and Joe saying that his wife had decided they wouldn’t be having any more.’
There was another movement from the doorway and the slow thump of Napoleon’s tail against her leg told Naomi who it was.
‘Hello, Patrick,’ she said quietly.
‘Hi, Naomi.’
‘Pat, back to bed with you. Have you any idea what time it is?’
‘Bet it’s cold on the stairs this time of night,’ Naomi said. ‘I used to freeze my backside off, sitting there, listening when my parents rowed.’ She smiled. ‘They didn’t do it very often, but boy, when they did. I could sit on the stairs and hear every word.’
‘Patrick?’ Harry questioned.
‘Yeah,’ the boy admitted. ‘I heard. I heard and then I couldn’t sleep but I didn’t want to come down. I knew you’d just send me back up.’ He moved further into the room and squeezed into the seat beside Naomi. ‘I want to know what’s going on, Dad,’ he said, his voice so earnest that Naomi felt herself melt in sympathy.
‘I think he has a right,’ she said softly. ‘There’ve been too many secrets, Harry.’
She heard him sigh, a great outrush of breath that seemed to deflate all arguments he might have formulated. ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ he told his son. ‘Warm you up, but frankly, I don’t know that I can take much more of this tonight. I don’t know what’s worse any more. Knowing or not knowing. Either way...’ he hesitated, not good with words that offered such emotional betrayal. ‘Either way,’ he said finally, ‘it hurts like hell.’
*
It was after four when Naomi and Alec arrived back at Naomi’s home. The plan was to grab a few hours’ sleep and then for Alec to track down Phillips and talk things through. It was not an interview that Alec looked forward to.
They had talked and talked until words had become just empty noise and all anyone wanted was to escape into sleep, even Patrick, who had been drooping against Naomi’s arm. Even Napoleon seemed subdued, not liking this change in his routine.
Naomi had been silent and thoughtful all the way home. ‘Penny for them?’ Alec said, then laughed at the unintended irony. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I guess a Penny’s what they’re worth.’
She smiled at him. ‘I guess so, too,’ she said, but what she had been thinking all the way home was what an impact Joe had exerted upon her life. From the child, frightened and guilt-ridden, to the teenager who had, if she was honest, an almighty crush on this big, safe man. To the young police officer, bowled over by the thought of working with her hero. There had been little in her life that had not in some way been linked to or influenced by Joe Jackson and she could not believe—would not believe—that now all of her beliefs and hopes and dreams and actions—all her adult life virtually—had been built on such flawed foundations.
‘He didn’t do it, Alec,’ she said slowly. ‘Not Joe. There has to be another explanation.’
But Alec said nothing and Naomi reminded herself that Alec and Joe had had a feud going on all the years she had known them both. Something neither of them acknowledged publicly or made a big thing of in their professional lives, but which was palpable every time the two men met.
Alec, she realized, had no difficulty at all in believing.
Twenty
Saturday dawned clear and cool but with the promise of warmth in the watery sun. Naomi stood beside the window sipping her morning tea and feeling the cold breeze blowing from the sea across her bare arms. It raised gooseflesh, chilling her until she retreated and closed the window, stood still in the sunlight through the glass, enjoying the warmth of it as it eased the chill from her flesh. It was bright enough for her to have some small perception of it: red through her eyelids when she closed them. Shadowed red, dim and unsatisfying, but welcome nonetheless.
She felt exhausted, and from Alec’s reluctance to leave her bed this morning figured he must feel the same, not, she noted with a wisp of satisfaction, that he was ever eager to leave.
Irritated with herself that she should allow such frivolous thoughts to filter through even for a second, she turned away from the sunlight and returned to the kitchen where she had left Alec in charge of cooking breakfast. One thing she still did not have the confidence for was frying eggs.
She could hear him chatting to the dog, Napoleon replying with thumps of his tail upon the floor and a whole range of canine vocalization that he usually reserved only for Alec. Little chirps of noise that sounded more bird-like than dog-like combined with excited panting and questioning whines.
‘You and that dog solved it yet?’ she asked.
‘No, but give us another half hour or so. We plan to revise the theory of evolution next week, if you care to join us. Put dogs right up there with the primates on the evolutionary tree.’
Napoleon arfed happily.
‘You see, he agrees with me.’
‘You bribe all your stooges with bacon rind, do you?’
‘Damn, caught us out again, old man. But you’re wrong, Nomi. Actually it was sausage. Now you sit down and I’ll bring breakfast.’
She laughed, shaking her head at the pair of them and went to find the table, feeling her way around it with her free hand until she came to her chair.
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br /> This was all delaying tactics, she knew. This domesticity of Alec’s. He didn’t want to get on with the day any more than she did. Bed seemed even more tempting than ever and a day in bed spent with Alec, the more so, but even had last night not happened, that would have been impossible.
Alec set her plate down in front of her. ‘More tea?’ he asked, heading back to the kitchen.
‘Please. Think you’ll still be able to make it this afternoon? Sam will be really disappointed if you don’t.’
‘I’ll be there.’ He returned to the table and sat down. She heard him refilling her cup and the clatter as he picked up his cutlery and began to eat. Alec was satisfyingly noisy about everything, she thought. Much easier to keep track of. Harry, on the other hand, did everything with an exaggerated quietness that she found intriguing. Around Harry, she found herself straining to hear, to make out the restrained sounds that went with his actions. To interpret every little nuance as if it were speech.
‘I’ll make it just after three with a bit of luck. Sure you’re OK for getting over there?’
‘No problem, Paul’s coming to get me at twelve. The hordes are due at half past one, Sue’s taking them swimming. Apparently there’s some special floating toys available Saturday lunchtimes. We’ll all be getting back before three anyway.’
‘We? You’re going too?’
She shook her head. ‘Not going in the water, but Sue wants as many bodies as she can to help them get dressed and so on. I can still put socks on and fasten shoes.’
‘Sounds like great fun,’ Alec said dryly. ‘A bunch of four and five-year-olds, all wanting to pee at the same time and getting their laces stuck,’ he continued, but he said it fondly. He was in truth very close to Naomi’s sister Sue, her husband Paul and their two boys and it had become an accepted thing that Alec was included in any invitations that Naomi had for family events.
‘What do you think Phillips is going to say?’ Naomi queried.
Alec snorted. ‘What can he say? He can hardly deny everything now, can he? I’ve got to admit, I’m pretty peed off at being kept out of the loop like this. I mean, I was to start with, but especially now.’
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