Mourning the Little Dead

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Tell ’em who you are,’ Viccy commanded. ‘Tell ’em they can come out and get the hell out of here. We’ve no fight with them, only that bastard over there.’ She jerked her head back towards the opposite block, as though the spirit of Gary Williams might still be hiding inside.

  Feeling oddly foolish, but not sure how else to approach this, Alec knocked upon the door. Down below, vans with their sirens wailing, filled with reinforcements, screamed into the space between the buildings. Phillips, complete with bullhorn and surrounded by officers carrying shields, emerged from cover and began to shout.

  ‘Oh, shut the fuck up,’ Alec muttered. He banged again upon the broken door.

  It was some time before PCs Dobson and Wake emerged from their prison, blinking in the sudden brightness of dragon lights trained upon the balcony.

  Alec had reached that point where fear had gone to be replaced by overwhelming weariness. Whatever happened now, he just wanted to get it over with. The adrenaline rush that had carried him this far was long since burned out, to be replaced by dull thoughts, such as the amount of paperwork his little escapade would generate.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he told them. ‘Everything’s just going to be fine now.’ He turned them towards the stairs, urging them down then glanced back towards Viccy Elliot who was standing in usual Viccy pose with her arms crossed once more across her chest.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said and, absurd as he knew it to be, found himself sticking out his hand for Viccy Elliot to shake.

  To his profound surprise, she did. Her clasp was as fiercely strong as any man’s.

  ‘You’re nuts,’ she told him again, just in case he had missed it earlier. ‘Totally touched.’

  Downstairs, the crowd had parted and the officers walked though, urged behind the shield line and into the relative safety of the armoured van. Phillips lowered his bullhorn and stared at Alec. Alec glanced at his watch, then shook it and looked at it again. The numbers changed even as he watched. It felt like days, but only a scant half-hour had passed since he had first taken cover with Phillips behind that first shield line.

  Twenty-Five

  Alec arrived midway through the Monday morning, filthy and smelling of smoke, exhausted but too hyped up to sleep.

  ‘You stink,’ Naomi told him frankly as he kissed her. ‘Sorry. I’ll get in the shower.’

  ‘Give me your clothes and I’ll get them in the machine.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I...um...I might be on the news.’

  And disappeared into the bathroom before she could question him further.

  There was a bulletin at eleven. She tuned into it with Patrick. ‘Looks like the whole place burned down,’ Patrick said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All these piles of stuff on the road. They’re still smoking and there are loads of fire engines and bricks and stones and broken glass all over the road. There’s a riot shield, it’s lying in someone’s front garden.’

  The anchorwoman began to report and Patrick shut up so that Naomi could hear as she reprised the Gary Williams story and showed library pictures of the riots two years before that had flared up over such a similar event.

  There was a reference to a couple of officers on observation who found themselves under siege but, said the anchorwoman, they had no details as yet about this, beyond knowing that both escaped without injury.

  ‘Local police find themselves at full stretch,’ she went on to say, ‘and reinforcements were called in last night from Barsford and Felton. Officers I have spoken with this morning, though reluctant to say that morale is low, emphasize the difficulties of dealing with situations like this one on the Radleigh, with all the high-profile allegations against the police that have undoubtedly fed the bad feeling which already existed here.’

  ‘That’s a cock-eyed way of putting it,’ Alec commented, emerging from the bathroom.

  ‘Nothing about you yet,’ Patrick told him, slightly prematurely.

  ‘At the centre of these allegations is Detective Inspector Alec Friedman, the police officer who arrested and subsequently released Gary Williams, the man whose residence on the Radleigh Estate sparked this last round of troubles.

  ‘Currently, as well as the riots, police here at Ingham and five miles down the coast at Philby are investigating two murders. The killing of Sarah Clarke, the six-year-old whose body was found on Philby beach and in connection with which Gary Williams was originally brought in for questioning. Also Helen Jones, who died more than twenty years ago and whose remains have recently been discovered in a house on Lansdowne Road.’

  Then followed more library pictures showing police in overalls carrying spades into number 43.

  ‘Rumours concerning a belated confession, which reportedly told police where to dig for Helen’s body, are rife in this small community, though so far police are refusing to release any information regarding this so-called confession or to comment on the claims that the murderer is now deceased.’

  ‘Feeling better?’ Naomi asked him as Alec came over and sat down beside her.

  ‘Some. Hungry though.’

  She squeezed his hand. ‘We’ll have an early lunch. Bad was it?’

  ‘I’ve had better days...nights. Whatever.’ He had leaned his head back against the sofa and slumped down. She could feel his fingers growing slack against her own and a moment later his breathing told her that he had gone to sleep.

  Phillips arrived an hour after Alec and announced without ceremony that it was Alec he had come to see.

  ‘What is this?’ Naomi asked him. ‘An incident room?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Phillips told her. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk? In private.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Naomi told him, unable to keep the note of sarcasm from her voice. ‘Patrick and I will hide out in the kitchen.’

  She only partially closed the door and as Patrick helped her with sandwiches she made no attempts not to hear the conversation from the other room.

  Phillips was trying to clear Alec out of the way.

  ‘You’ve got TOIL time built up, Alec. Paid leave, too. Take some time out.’

  ‘What and make it look like Gary Williams has a case? I’ve done nothing wrong. Push me out and what kind of statement are you making?’

  ‘This has nothing to do with Williams,’ Phillips told him in a furious whisper. ‘It’s about last night’s little commando action. Alec, what the fucking hell did you think you were playing at?’

  ‘Acting on my initiative...sir.’

  ‘You were lucky, Alec. Bloody lucky. It might have turned out very differently, very differently indeed.’

  ‘I thought, sir, that it was a fair gamble. An even bet—’

  ‘No you bloody didn’t, Alec, that’s my whole point. You didn’t think. You just acted. Going in there like some one-man army. It’s the kind of thing...the kind of thing Joe Jackson would have done and there’s no room for that sort of jingoistic, maverick stance in today’s police force.’

  Alec was silent for a while and then: ‘Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not,’ he said. ‘I acted as I saw fit in the situation.’

  ‘Without the consultation or the approval of a senior officer. Without reference to procedure or to officer safety.’

  ‘What officer safety?’ Alec’s voice raised angrily again. ‘With respect, the only one I put on the line was me and that’s something you could never say of Jackson.’

  ‘Which doesn’t make your actions any more acceptable.’ Phillips sighed and then continued in a more conciliatory tone. ‘I could have you suspended, Alec, but I won’t and I won’t force your hand over taking time out. But step out of line, just one fraction of a bloody inch out of line again and so help me, Alec, I’ll see you go down.’

  He left then without even telling Naomi goodbye.

  *

  Alec had then spent the early afternoon giving a full account of himself. Naomi was outraged that he’d been so stupid. Patrick, predictably, was impressed. />
  He had eaten lunch, tried to shake off the imminent need to sleep and managed to get an appointment at four o’clock with Penny Jackson’s solicitor.

  Mr Ian McKintry was a middle-aged man who, so he told Alec, had worked for the same firm since qualifying. He had known Joe Jackson as a personal friend and was puzzled as to the nature of Alec’s visit. He was destined to stay that way.

  ‘There’s not much I can tell you,’ Alec apologized, ‘but Miss Jackson informs us that she collected some papers from you about a fortnight ago. I’m wondering if you could tell me what these entailed.’

  Ian McKintry looked at him over the top of heavy glasses. ‘Why don’t you ask Miss Jackson?’

  ‘I have,’ Alec lied. ‘Or at least, she told me about the extension plans and some other documents that had been left with them. The difficulty arises in that Miss Jackson can’t be certain which of several documents she collected on that particular visit and which came into her possession at an earlier date.’

  McKintry’s pursed lips told Alec that he didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Might I enquire,’ he asked, ‘as to what kind of documents you may be referring?’

  Alec shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to say.’ He sat back in his chair and spread his hands in an expansive, placating gesture. ‘Mr McKintry, I realize that you have to consider client confidentiality. We’re both used to using our discretion in these matters. If you have any worries, I suggest you telephone Miss Jackson.’

  ‘If I had any intention of telling you anything, I would do just that,’ McKintry told him. ‘Inspector Friedman, I’m very sorry but there’s nothing I can tell you. Miss Jackson came to inspect the deeds, she took the plans for the house extension away with her together with an envelope, which I assumed contained other pertinent documents, and the photographs which had also been stored with the plans.’

  ‘Photographs?’

  ‘Please, Inspector, I really can’t go into detail and in any case, I didn’t really see them. There were photographs of building work, I believe. We glanced at them and Penny, Miss Jackson, commented that her father must have kept a record of the building work. And a photo of her father with a young policewoman. It looked kind of official. Anything else and you really will have to visit Miss Jackson again.’

  He rose to indicate that the interview was at an end, but Alec was happy to go by then. Pictures of the building work, he wondered. Yes, but which house? Jackson’s own or 43 Lansdowne Road?

  Twenty-Six

  Penny Jackson did not look too happy to see Alec. ‘You remember me?’ he asked her. ‘Detective Inspector Friedman. We met the other night.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘I remember you. Is this an official visit?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alec told her. ‘Yes it is. May I come in, Miss Jackson?’

  She stood back to let him come inside, not commenting on the fact that he had returned to formality when he had called her Penny that night at Mari’s.

  ‘Come through,’ she said and led him from the surprisingly large hallway into one of the rooms that led off it.

  The room had a large bay window looking out on to the overgrown front garden. It was a pleasant room, spacious and well proportioned, but it had about it an air of neglect and underuse and damp. Yes, definitely damp, Alec thought, as though it had not been used or heated in quite some time.

  He had been to Joe Jackson’s house a few times before the man retired. Strictly business visits, usually conducted as swiftly as possible closeted in the small room at the back that Joe used as his study. Alec had never been in here, but he imagined it had changed little since Penny’s father had died.

  The grey carpet was patterned with leaves and reminded Alec of one in his gran’s house that had been there since Alec was a boy. The three-piece had been fixed up with loose covers. Pink and floral and Alec could not imagine either Joe liking them or their even being his daughter’s choice. Embossed wallpaper covered the walls that had no other decoration and on the heavy tiled mantelpiece, a pipe stand remained from the days when Joe still occasionally smoked.

  It could, Alec thought, have been a room in a second-rate boarding house for all the character or sense of home it had.

  ‘Sorry it’s so cold in here,’ Penny told him. ‘I only heat the rooms I’m using. This place is like a mausoleum in the winter. Mother always hated it for that but Dad always insisted that he needed the space.’

  She smiled wanly. The other night when he had seen her, Penny had at least been animated. Now she seemed as pallid and lacklustre as the room.

  ‘Maybe you’d be more comfortable if we talked somewhere else,’ Alec suggested. The chill seemed to be coming off the walls and seeping through the glass, yet he could have sworn it was a mild September day outside.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t think so. We can talk in here.’

  ‘All right,’ Alec said. ‘Miss Jackson, I’ve just been chatting with your solicitor.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said sharply. ‘And why would you do that?’

  ‘Because,’ Alec said as soothingly as he could, ‘I thought you had enough to contend with right now without me asking what must seem like trivial questions. Unfortunately, Mr McKintry wasn’t able to be of much help.’

  She frowned at him. ‘I don’t see...’ she began. ‘Inspector Friedman, I’d appreciate it if you came to the point.’

  A small noise out in the hall caused her to jerk her head around. Was there someone else here? Alec wondered.

  ‘Are you all right, Miss Jackson? If you already have guests, I promise I won’t keep you from them any longer than—’

  ‘What makes you think I have guests?’ she said sharply. Then she sighed and seemed to be trying to relax, as though aware of how sharp and irritable she must be sounding. ‘You must forgive me,’ she said. ‘It seems strange to have someone to visit. No one comes here. No one at all.’

  ‘It must be lonely,’ he offered. ‘It might be better when you’ve moved.’

  ‘If, I move.’ She smiled tightly. ‘The purchasers might not be so keen on living here when the story breaks. Who wants to live in the house of a murderer?’

  ‘That’s not been proven yet,’ Alec said gently. ‘Miss Jackson, Penny, there might well be other explanations’

  But she was shaking her head. ‘You don’t believe that any more than I do,’ she said softly and the wealth of longing in her voice touched Alec for the first time since he had encountered her. Then she squared her shoulders and sat upright in her chair, all business again. ‘Now, what was it you wanted to know?’ Penny Jackson said.

  Alec left ten or so minutes later having learnt very little, except that Penny claimed not to remember where she had put the photographs that came from the solicitor’s office.

  ‘I was upset,’ she told him. ‘Far too upset to take any notice of a few photographs after I’d seen that other thing.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Alec told her, ‘but maybe, if you could think now. What you did when you came home, where you might have put them?’

  ‘What does it matter where I put a few photographs? Look, there were pictures my father must have taken of the extension being built and one...one of Naomi Blake in uniform. It must have been taken when she first joined the police.’

  She broke off for a moment and Alec got the impression she was trying not to cry. There was another deep breath, a further squaring of shoulders that were already sergeant major straight. ‘If you must know, it upset me,’ she said softly. ‘There was a message scrawled across the back from Naomi. She called my father the best friend anyone could ever have and said she hoped that he was proud of her.’ She sighed. ‘I know he was.’ The corners of her mouth twitched into a small sad smile. ‘He saw Naomi as a big success story. Something he’d done right, helping her, you know, after Helen had disappeared. Naomi blamed herself and I think her parents thought she was headed for a breakdown. Joe...my father...he spent hours with her, talking and so on. Getting her back into schoo
l. Helping her to face life.’ She smiled at him again, but it was clearly an effort for her. It never reached her eyes.

  He spent hours with her, Alec repeated to himself as he drove away. Hours, it seemed to him, that could have been spent with Penny, but that was something that Penny Jackson could not bring herself to say.

  *

  Gary Williams had been interviewed again. Travers having the pleasure this time, but nothing new—apart from the odd combination of insults—had emerged from the hour spent in Williams’ plush hotel room.

  The paper, which had run his story, had paid for a week in the Majestic, a hulking piece of late-Victorian excess set on the cliff top ten miles up the coast from Philby, as part of their deal with Gary Williams and his new girlfriend.

  Travers guessed that Williams had probably doubled the cost of the suite in what he’d imbibed from the mini bar. But then, that was their affair, not Travers’.

  Back at the station he ran into Alec, fresh from his session with Penny Jackson and looking about as sour as Travers felt.

  ‘Phillips catch up with you?’ Travers asked

  ‘He did, so you can consider me reprimanded...sir,’ he added as a sort of afterthought.

  Travers took his arm and stopped him in his tracks. ‘Alec, if we weren’t so undermanned he’d have had you suspended. You know that. And with good reason.’

  Alec said nothing. He looked away, suddenly fascinated by the typists in the next office, drafting interviews into the computer.

  ‘And I’d have backed him,’ Travers added. ‘OK, enough said. I’m about to run the reconstruction tape again. You want to join me?’

  Alec nodded. ‘I’ve just seen Penny Jackson,’ he said, glad to get the conversation back on to a normal footing. ‘And Penny Jackson’s solicitor.’

  ‘Oh? Anything new?’

  Alec hesitated. ‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘But I don’t quite know how it fits in. The solicitor said that Penny took some pictures with her, photographs, he thought, of the Jackson extension when it was being built.’