‘But you wonder if they were pictures of Lansdowne Road?’
Alec nodded. ‘But she claims not to know where she put them after she got home. Said she was too upset by discovering the confession, so she put them somewhere and doesn’t know where.’
‘And you don’t believe her?’
‘Not so much I don’t believe her...I mean I can accept that finding a confession written by your father would kind of put everything else out of your mind. It’s her reluctance to look for them that I find somewhat harder to accept. She says they’re lost and as far as she’s concerned, that’s an end to it.’
Travers nodded.
‘The other thing is, she was dead jealous of Naomi.’
They had arrived in Travers’ office and Alec slid the tape into the machine. He perched on the edge of the desk with the remote, fast forwarding to the scene where Gary first appeared. They watched in silence as Gary pushed his way to the front of the crowd, to where he seemed to be smiling, almost laughing at the proceedings.
‘What’s he looking at?’ Travers questioned. He let the tape run further on, watching as the camera angle changed, showing the crowd from another view. Gary Williams was staring and the woman he was staring at returned his gaze with as much intensity. The woman was Maggie Clarke.
Twenty-Seven
The next few days passed quietly. Alec spoke to Maggie Clarke who admitted that she remembered Gary standing in the crowd and that she had eventually remembered him as the father of one of Sarah’s friends.
‘I don’t see why you’re asking me about him,’ she said. ‘I thought he’d been released. I saw all that stuff in the paper.’
‘He has,’ Alec confirmed. ‘Maggie, how well did you know him?’
The hurt expression in her eyes tore into him, but he persisted. ‘I can understand maybe that with all the controversy about Williams you don’t want to be seen to be involved with him.’
‘I was never involved with him.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ Alec told her, but it got him thinking.
‘How did you all meet?’ he asked.
‘How do you think we met? Our kids went to the same school. Look, it was a silly thing, the older ones were doing some family history thing at school. A family tree and it came out then, when they were talking. Williams was my maiden name. It got us talking, that’s all and their little boy was in Sarah’s class. They played together.’
She was getting impatient now, unable to see what use this irrelevant questioning could be.
‘Haven’t we been through enough,’ she demanded, ‘without you coming here and asking your stupid questions? You should be out there, looking for the bastard that killed my little girl.’
He got nothing further from her then, nor, to be honest, could he blame her for her reaction. The Radleigh had quietened down. A few youths hanging around on the street corners, but nothing out of the ordinary and a week passed with little of consequence happening anywhere. Mari had asked again if Helen’s remains could be released to them and again been told that while the investigation was still ongoing this could not be done.
She seemed to need something though, some way of marking the fact that her daughter had at last been found and some way, Alec guessed, of mourning the little deaths they had all been through. The death of faith, Naomi called it in an odd, almost poetic moment and Alec knew what she meant.
A memorial service had thus been organized to take place in the local church on the Tuesday, just over a week since the Radleigh riots. The family had asked for it to be a quiet affair, but despite this, the entrance to the church was lined with sombre, silent crowds and the opposite side of the road with journalists.
Alec accompanied Naomi. Penny Jackson came alone, and late, standing uncertainly in the doorway and then slipping into a seat right at the back. Sergeant Lyman had asked Alec if it would be out of order to turn up and Mari, when asked, had extended her welcome, though he too kept clear of the family until the end. He also steered clear of Penny, Alec noted, glancing her way only once and then studiously avoiding her.
At the end of the simple service, the family filed out slowly from the dour red brick church that had been so much a part of Helen’s childhood landscape.
‘Would you make a statement,’ someone shouted from across the road. ‘Mrs Jones, if we could just have a word or two.’
Harry had taken his mother’s arm, was leading her on towards home, but to everyone’s surprise, Mari stopped and looked around. Then she released herself gently from Harry’s grip and crossed the road.
She was a small figure in her dark grey mac and her best black shoes; shoes that only made it out of the wardrobe for weddings and for funerals. Her quiet dignity brought a hush to the waiting crowd.
‘I wanted to lay my child to rest,’ Mari said softly. ‘But it might be some while yet before I can. So I thank you all for coming. It was a nice service and for now, that’ll just have to do.’ Then with the same stiff dignity, she turned back towards her home.
‘Oh, Mari,’ Naomi whispered, her hand tightening on Alec’s arm. ‘Alec, what are we going to do?’
*
‘You never told me,’ she said later as Alec drove her home. ‘Told you what?’
‘Why you hated Joe.’
‘I never said I hated Joe. I didn’t like him, that was all.’
‘And why was that?’
Alec sighed. ‘Joe always had his own agenda. He was secretive; a maverick as Phillips would say.’
‘And you’re so different?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I am so different, Naomi. I’ve never laid anyone on the line, except myself. I’ve never put anyone at risk. If I’m working with a team, then I make sure I know the position of every damn member of that team. What they can handle; what they can’t.’ He looked irritably in her direction. ‘You’ve worked with me. You know that’s true.’
She nodded slowly. Alec might be impulsive on his own account, but it could never be said he was neglectful of his duty where others might be compromised.
‘And Joe?’ she asked.
‘Joe was careless with other people’s lives,’ Alec said. ‘At least, that’s the way I read it. There was one time, Naomi, when Joe nearly got an officer killed, he was so damn sure of himself. So damned certain he was right.’
‘Oh?’ Naomi questioned. ‘Who?’
‘It was me,’ he told her. ‘I was young and green, at the end of my first post-probationary year. I’d been given this opportunity to work with the famous DI Jackson. Plain clothes, surveillance, the works. Joe said I was an unfamiliar face and he needed that. Me, I was keen as mustard. Wanted to prove myself. I was young, impressionable, eager to impress and Joe had every right to be proud of me. I’d got myself a courier’s job and the courier office was right next door to the warehouse that Joe was sure was the centre of operations. We’re talking vice here. Porn mainly and Joe had been seconded to divisional because he was the one who’d uncovered the local side.
‘Oh, he was a great detective. Committed, single-minded and that was just the trouble.
‘I’d managed to get up into the roof space above the courier’s office. They used it for storage mainly and off between calls we played darts and sat around in one of the big rooms upstairs. One floor higher and our building was separated from the next by studding, that was all, and guess who was tasked with getting the surveillance equipment into next door.’
Naomi was horrified. ‘You were a kid,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have the experience for that. How the hell did he get clearance?’
‘He didn’t. As far as anyone else was concerned, I was on a watching brief. Who came in, who went out. That was meant to be that. And there was me, thinking I must be doing a great job if Joe had persuaded our superiors I was capable of taking this on. Promotion glittered on the fast track and all I could see was my sergeant’s stripes and a move to CID.
‘Then it all went down. I knew it was coming—the raid on
the warehouse—but I didn’t know when and Joe had me on obs, supposedly keeping the intel flowing on who was in and who was leaving. The trouble was, Joe hadn’t told anyone precisely where I’d been posted and there was me, stuck up in the roof space of this building when the shit hit the fan and our lot moved in, armed to the teeth, and their lot started to fire back.
‘There was a way out on to the flat roof and across on to the next building and down their fire escape. And some of the gang decided to make a run for it. Armed officers followed and yours truly was stuck somewhere in the middle. God, Naomi, I have never been so scared. A bullet hit the wall two inches from my head and all I could do was curl up in a ball and pray. Next thing I know, I’ve got a gun pointed at my head and some joker telling me to keep still and lay flat on the floor with my hands on my head. Fortunately, he was one of ours, but the fact is, Joe should have pulled me out long before.
‘Naomi, if I’d had a bullet up my arse I couldn’t have moved then. I’ve never felt so scared or so...I suppose so stupid.’
‘You never told me,’ she whispered. ‘Why did you never tell me?’
‘You really have to ask? Naomi, how Joe covered his back, I never did find out, but the official record has me outside of the building keeping point all the time the gun fight was going on. It had me reporting to Joe when some guy left ten minutes before and him telling me to hold my position. That’s it.’
‘And you never challenged that?’
‘Oh, get real. Only a handful of people ever knew the truth anyway and I was a rookie. Green as grass. I was commended for the undercover stuff I’d done working for the courier and I hadn’t got it in me to challenge the official line. If I had, Joe would have just piled the responsibility back on to me. The eager youngster trying to make a name and I’d have been disciplined, maybe finished. I wanted in, I wanted CID more than anything.’ He laughed. ‘It seemed important back then. Now, I wonder if I’d have been better off working as a courier. A lot less hassle.’
Naomi said nothing. She had no reason to disbelieve Alec. It all fitted with what she knew of Joe, but did not consciously like to recognize. He had always focused more on getting the job done than he had on how to do it.
But she still found all of this so hard to accept. Joe had been a cornerstone of her life, one of its few firm foundations, and now she could feel the ground shifting beneath her feet. So much so, that she felt physically sick with it.
They were back at home and Alec followed her inside. ‘Can I stay?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, I think I want to be alone.’
‘OK. If that’s what you need.’ She heard him turn around and walk back towards the door, leaving a cold void in the space beside her.
‘Alec?’ She felt ashamed of the desperation in her voice, but then, as he turned back, she didn’t care.
‘Stay, please stay. I couldn’t bear to be alone. Not really.’
He came back, wrapping his arms around her and holding her very close. Naomi clung to him, afraid that she might drown.
Twenty-Eight
The press conference had been scheduled for the Thursday morning so as to allow time for analysis on the lunchtime news. Patrick had phoned Naomi the night before to tell her they would be leaving for a while and taking Mari with them.
‘I’m not allowed to tell you where we’re going,’ Patrick said. He sounded well impressed by this. ‘But I’ll phone you. I can always use my dad’s mobile, even if they don’t have one where we’re going.’
‘I’ll miss you all,’ she told him, wondering if the picture she had in her mind’s eye of the boy was anywhere close to the truth. She knew he had soft dark hair which he wore rather long and his father despaired of keeping tidy. Alec told her that he had grey eyes and rather an angular, pointy kind of face. And that he wasn’t tall for his age, a fact which rankled with him and his family were careful not to mention. But she would have loved to see if her image of him was anything like accurate.
‘You want to talk to Dad?’ he asked and handed over to Harry without waiting for a reply.
‘It’s all going to happen,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t know how to feel.’
‘At least it should be over soon,’ she told him. ‘There’ll be a splash for a few days and then some other story will come along.’
‘Will it?’ Harry asked her and just for a moment he was a child wanting to be reassured, not a full grown man. ‘You know, I never thought that normal things like going back to work would seem so appealing. It’s such a bloody boring job, but just now, I think I’d like to just be bored.’
She laughed and sensed that he was pleased at that. Harry, who never considered himself funny, trying his hand at a joke.
‘We will keep in touch,’ he said at last as though he were planning a voyage from which they would be a long time returning.
‘Do,’ she said. ‘And I meant what I told Patrick, I will miss you all.’
*
The press conference was set for eleven. Naomi was alone as Alec was at the conference and she felt his absence keenly.
Phillips’ statement presented the cold hard facts as they understood them to be: ‘On the 22nd of September this year, a document was brought to our attention which caused us to reactivate the inquiry into the disappearance of Helen Jones in February of 1979.
‘Although no body had been found, Helen’s family had long since reconciled themselves to the idea that their loved one was almost certainly deceased. When this document arrived on my desk, I had no way of knowing whether or not it might prove genuine or just another piece of misinformation of the kind that a case like this inevitably generates. However, because of the source of the information, we felt that we had no choice but to follow the information given in the document and to dig for Helen’s body in the location mentioned, this being number 43 Lansdowne Road on the Bellingham Estate, which as some of you might know, was under construction at the time that Helen disappeared.
‘Remains, later identified as those of Helen Jones, were found at the site.’
He paused briefly and cleared his throat. ‘Um...as I’m sure you will appreciate, we did not wish to disclose the source of this new information until such time as the truth of the statements therein had been verified. We believe that this has now been achieved and after consultation with those concerned, both within the police force and those family members most affected by this matter...’
He’s hedging, Naomi thought. Oh, God, why doesn’t he get it over with? It’s just making it worse.
‘...it was decided that the best way of handling this was to make a statement. After which a further statement will be made from...well...from a member of the family.’ He paused again, and Naomi could imagine him taking a deep breath before plunging on. His voice shook slightly as he announced, ‘It seems likely, pending further investigation, that the statement we received was indeed a confession to the murder of Helen Jones in 1979 and that this confession was made by a police officer.’
Naomi heard the ripple of shock that ran through the assembly. She gripped the arm of the sofa so tight it made her fingers ache. Knowing what was coming didn’t make it better.
‘The statement appears to have been made by Detective Inspector Joseph Jackson, of Ingham Division, a man who we all considered to have an impeccable service record and to...to have been a great colleague and good friend.’
Phillips’ voice cracked and broke over the last words and Naomi leaned back into the sofa, her fingers finally relaxing their grip on the fabric of the arm.
There, she closed her eyes. It has been said. It was finally out in the open. Now the storm would break, hit them full force for a few days, a week or two even, then it would begin to go away.
Such was her shock, relief, pain—she wasn’t certain how to separate them any more—at hearing this, that it was several seconds before she heard the second speaker being announced. Alec’s voice of all things, striving to be heard above the din that had greeted the en
d of Phillips’ statement. Then Penny Jackson began to speak.
‘What?’ Naomi shrieked out loud to the empty room. She could barely believe it. She was struck simultaneously by admiration for Penny’s nerve and outrage...though that particular emotion was harder to figure.
‘My father left this statement amongst his possessions,’ Penny was saying, ‘but when he died three years ago, it unfortunately did not come with me. Instead, it had been filed with other documents that I had no reason to read until last month. I am only sorry that the family have been waiting this long for news and I’m so dreadfully sorry that I could not have provided this information before. I hope that you will now leave us all in peace and allow us proper time to grieve.’ She paused for an instant and the void of her silence was filled with questions.
‘That’s all I have to say,’ Penny Jackson shouted above the din. ‘That’s all.’
Naomi sat staring at the screen, willing herself to see. When she could not, she shook her head at her own stupidity and then swore at Penny and at Phillips and anyone else who’d been responsible for putting on such an ill-advised and tasteless show. The phone rang, Napoleon whittered excitedly and shifted his tail upon the floor, telling her even before she lifted the receiver that it was Alec.
‘Whose damn fool idea was that?’ Naomi asked him without preamble.
He seemed unsurprised that she had known the identity of her caller without him speaking. ‘Not mine,’ he said. It’s pandemonium here. Phillips said no questions and he’s buggered off leaving the rest of us with the shit. Are you all right?’
‘I’m all right. Shaky. I mean I’ve known...but hearing it out loud. Hearing it made official. Alec, it was just horrible.’
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll come round later?’
‘Please,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to be alone tonight.’ Or any night, not really, she added to herself as she gently lowered the phone back into its cradle.
Mourning the Little Dead Page 17
