‘Nice to see you happy,’ Travers told him. ‘Good news is, we might have a lead on the Sarah Clarke murder.’
‘Really? What?’
‘Well, as you know, we ran another media request for film and holiday snaps and one finally came up. Rigby Waite. Known paedophile and all round nice guy. He was on the promenade.’
‘That day?’
‘That day. The photograph was time-coded. Three thirty that afternoon.’
‘And we have a location for this Rigby Waite?’
‘Alec, I said we had a new lead, not a bloody solution. The Met have a recent sighting. We can only hope he’s not completely gone to ground.’
It was potentially good news. It was also potentially nothing, but Alec preferred the former option, though there had been potential leads before, from the same kind of source; known faces showing up in the background of holiday snaps. And checking was a time-consuming effort, heavy on manpower. It involved isolating individuals in the crowd, often enhancing the pictures and then comparing them to the database of known sex offenders.
Alec hoped that maybe this time they’d get lucky.
‘Alec, I want you to go back and talk to this Phyllis Mole.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘We’ve had another call alleging abuse. A woman, quite out of the blue, wouldn’t give her name and the call taker said her voice sounded muffled as though she was trying to disguise it. I’ve heard the tape, in places it’s so unclear that the woman had to be asked to repeat herself.’
‘Doesn’t sound like Phyllis Mole.’
‘No. We’ve compared this with tapes of her calls. It definitely isn’t our Mrs Mole, but if she noticed the bruising, the chances are someone else may have and Phyllis Mole might be able to point us in the right direction.’
Alec frowned. ‘I thought the family checked out?’ he said.
‘So far. It’s almost certainly malicious but the timing’s off. The really nasty ones usually come in the first few days when the case is highest profile.’
Alec nodded. Generally that was true. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll welcome the chance to get out of the office at any rate. Any chance of me hearing the tape before I go?’
‘In my office already set up in the machine.’ Travers glanced at his watch. ‘Got to love and leave,’ he said. ‘Meeting with the great and good.’
Alec laughed and headed for Travers’ office.
He was right about the tape, Alec thought. Definitely not Phyllis. The caller, though muffled, was quite insistent. She demanded to be put through to someone in charge and when told that at ten o’clock at night that might not be possible became almost abusive.
‘How the hell do you expect to solve anything working like part-timers?’ she’d said. ‘Well, you’d better listen. Those kids were abused. The father was a right bastard. Now the girl’s dead and you’d better look to the boy.’
Alec replayed the tape a second and then a third time. No, he had not been mistaken. ‘Was,’ Alec mused. ‘Why the past tense?’ Unless he had really been out of the loop these past days, he’d not heard of Sarah’s father being anything other than very much alive.
*
Phyllis Mole was surprised to see him.
‘Well come on in,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect this is a social call.’ But she made tea anyway and Alec waited while she did things properly, dressing a tray with a linen cloth and bringing in biscuits on a rose-patterned plate.
‘I’d like to play you something,’ Alec said. He set the cassette player down on the little table. Phyllis listened, then rewound it and listened again.
‘I hope you don’t think that was me,’ she announced finally. ‘I don’t hide things. I come out with them and I give my name.’
Alec smiled. ‘No, we never thought it was you. What we did wonder is, if you’d recognize the voice. I know it’s difficult to hear at times...’
‘Sounds like she’s talking through a handkerchief...But no, I don’t think I know the voice. Why did she say was?’ Phyllis wanted to know. ‘That poor man hasn’t done anything to himself, I hope.’
‘That poor man? I thought you believed him to have abused his daughter?’
Phyllis shook her head impatiently. ‘That’s the trouble,’ she said. ‘People only half listen. I never thought that he did it. I never said so. It’s the mother I wonder about.’
‘The mother? Why?’
Phyllis thought about it. ‘I couldn’t give you a proper reason,’ she told him. ‘Not one that would make sense to you. It was just a feeling. Most mothers, even ones like me who didn’t find it came naturally, they know that they should touch their children. Hug them, hold their hands. That sort of thing.’
‘And Maggie Clarke? She didn’t do those things?’
‘Well, I didn’t see her when she got home. But she didn’t when I did see. Not even when she came to pick Sarah up from the Williams’.’
Alec frowned thoughtfully. ‘Kids reach a certain age,’ he offered, ‘when they get embarrassed by too much public affection. Maybe that was it.’
Phyllis shook her head. ‘Oh, the adolescent male,’ she said and chuckled to herself as though remembering. ‘Not little ones in kindergarten, and you must remember, that was all they were.’
‘Did you ever see the boy, Michael? He must have been older so I don’t suppose he came to play.’
‘Oh, sometimes he did. A shy, quiet little lad he is. Or was when I had dealings with him. We used to play cards sometimes and if we all went to the park he’d push the little ones on the swings. Always a responsible child, as though he’d grown up far too soon.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine what the poor child must be going through.’
Alec left a little after that with the names of other children she recalled playing at the Williams’ house when Sarah was there. She didn’t know their last names, but suggested that the head of the local school might be able to help there. Alec drove away thinking deeply about what Phyllis had said, about Maggie Clarke’s distance from her children. He remembered the day they had met her on the beach, when the reconstruction was about to begin. Her obvious grief, the way she held herself, arms wrapped around her body as though to defend herself from the world. And the boy. Remote and silent, standing at her side.
*
‘I don’t know what you want, Inspector Friedman. I’ve already talked to what feels like an army of police officers.’
‘I’m sure you have,’ Alec commiserated. ‘And I’m sorry to bother you. It’s good of you to fit me in.’
She grimaced and glanced again at her watch. The third time, Alec noted, since he had been shown into her office. ‘I’ve a staff meeting at twelve,’ she told him. ‘So I can give you ten minutes. I hope that will be enough.’
‘More than enough. Mrs Pritchard, I’ve come about Sarah Clarke.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Mrs Pritchard. Maybe you’re aware that there have been certain allegations made against the Clarke family. Allegations of physical abuse.’
‘I’ve heard,’ she said coldly. ‘And I don’t believe a word. I had both children in my school, Inspector Friedman. I never had reason to think anything but highly of the family. Ben Clarke attended every parents’ evening. When his shifts allowed, he met the children out of school and if problems ever arose he had the sense to come and see me.’
‘Ben Clarke. Not Mrs Clarke?’
Mrs Pritchard sighed. ‘In case you didn’t notice, Inspector, women often work these days and if they have families, it’s often the twilight shift or nothing. It makes it difficult to attend evening events when you’re stuck on a production line.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Alec apologized. ‘Was it never possible to take the evening off?’
‘Can you always get time off when you want it?’
‘No,’ Alec admitted. He didn’t think it wise to suggest that his job was a little less predictable than Maggie Clarke’s. ‘I’ve a list here of names of children wh
o might have played at the Clarke’s house, or played with Sarah at her friends’. You know that she played often with the Williams children.’
‘I know.’ She looked at his list and then handed it back. ‘First names are not much use to me.’ She jabbed a finger at the list. ‘Emma, for instance. We have, I believe, four in Sarah’s year. I already gave your people a list of contacts. Don’t you lot ever consult one another?’
‘Mrs Pritchard, as I explained, I’ve been seconded to this case rather late in the day. The list was given to me this morning by a material witness. But I’ll check our records as soon as I get back.’
‘Is that all?’ She glanced at her watch again.
‘No, if you could just bear with me.’ He produced the tape recorder again. ‘If you could just listen to this. It’s the reason I’m trudging over what must seem like old ground.’
‘Sordid ground.’
‘Perhaps, but we have to follow these things up. I’m sure you can appreciate that. This call was made last night, just after ten.’
She listened impatiently, then shook her head. ‘I don’t know her. It would be hard to say for certain even if I did with the voice all muffled like that.’ She frowned angrily at Alec. ‘You come here because someone who hadn’t even got the moral courage to leave their name makes accusations about a family who have already been put through hell. Will they have to listen to this?’
‘That isn’t up to me,’ Alec told her. Interestingly, he thought, she had not picked up on the change of tense.
Mrs Pritchard got to her feet, signalling that the meeting was at an end and glanced for a fifth time at her watch, just in case Alec didn’t get the point.
‘Well, thank you for your time,’ he said and added, just for devilment, ‘I’m sure we’ll be in touch.’
*
The wind had dropped that morning and it had turned into one of those wonderful October days when the sun shines with an unexpected warmth and the world is golden, bathed in filtered light the like of which Poussin would have been proud of.
The fact that she could not see it only took a little of the edge off Naomi’s pleasure. The sun warm on her face after days of chill winds was more than welcome—even Naomi had her fill of dramatic weather after a week of it—and she could imagine the wealth of gold that touched the trees lining her little street and sparkling on the water making it much too bright to look upon for long.
Things are getting back to normal, she told herself. It had become a familiar refrain, marked by the passage of days and the little changes each one had brought. First had been the day she had gone shopping and no one had mentioned Joe Jackson or Helen Jones. Then there had been the news that Patrick and Harry had gone back home and Patrick, reluctantly, back to school.
Then, the visits from Penny, who, she confided to Naomi, had not dared go outside of her door for more than a week. Although Penny’s visits were a trial Naomi found hard to bear—and then felt guilty about her lack of sympathy—the fact that Penny came at all meant that media interest had died down enough to allow life to return to normal. Naomi welcomed its homecoming like she welcomed the spring weather.
Lately, with the foul weather, she had taken almost to jogging along the promenade, Napoleon taking her lead and scooting along at a great pace, eager to get out of the wind. Today, their pace was leisurely and they strolled.
Naomi’s habits had become so regular of late that she often met with the same people on her walks. In the last few days their greetings had been hurried, heads down, muffled behind scarves, their voices snatched away in the wind.
Today, this too was back to what Naomi called normal and her walk was punctuated by their voices and familiar footsteps. ‘Good morning,’ a voice said.
‘Morning.’ Woman with small dog. Yappy little thing, but she sounded nice.
‘Mornin’, love.’ The candyfloss seller on the promenade. He’d hold out until after the half term, then shut up shop for the winter.
‘Hello, Naomi?’
‘Hi, Grace. How are you?’
‘Off to see my son.’ Old lady with walking stick. Naomi could hear the tap-tap of it alongside the rather shuffling footsteps. Grace had been one of the first to start exchanging conversation with her and often they would stop and talk. Not this morning, though. ‘Sounds like your bus,’ Naomi told her, hearing the groan of ageing metal and screech of the air brakes as it pulled up at the stop.
‘You’re getting good at this,’ Grace told her. ‘Take care, my dear.’
Naomi paused by the promenade railing, reaching out to find it and then leaning on it as though looking out to sea. ‘That bus goes to Mari’s,’ she told the dog, who nosed her hand expectantly on hearing a familiar name.
She had never caught the bus alone, but now she could identify the stop without too much difficulty; or at least, she’d be able to whilst the candyfloss stall was still there! The smell of it would tell her even if Gus didn’t see her and shout hello.
‘I reckon it’s time we gave it a go, don’t you?’ she asked the dog. Napoleon leaned in against her leg. ‘You don’t care, do you?’ she told him affectionately. ‘No back chat, no arguments.’ She fondled his ears. Harry and company would be back at the weekend, it would be a big thing if she could find her way there alone.
The decision gave her an immense feeling of satisfaction and contributed to such a golden morning. Suddenly, her mind was dragged back from its pleasant illusion of ordinariness by the sound of tinkling bells and a girl’s voice calling out her name.
‘Helen?’ The name escaped from her lips before she even had time to think. The girl laughed and then began to walk away.
‘Come on,’ she said, and for an instant Naomi was sure that she was addressing her. Then, in the next, as another child replied, the illusion was broken and she tried to convince herself that this was nothing to do with her.
But the voices were the same. Naomi was certain of it. The same children she had heard that night when they’d left the bracelet at her door.
‘Wait!’ she called out, but her voice brought only more laughter and this time the sound of skipping feet as the children hurried away.
‘Wait for me, please wait.’
She set off, clinging tightly to Napoleon’s harness, steering him towards the place she had heard the sounds, just a little further along the promenade.
Had this been summer then Naomi would have had little hope; in summer the crowds would have drowned out the noise of the children’s laughter and their hurrying feet. As it was, Naomi could hear them—or thought she could—only a little distance up ahead.
‘Wait for me, oh please wait.’
‘Are you all right?’ Someone touched her arm.
‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine. I just thought I heard a friend.’ Whoever it was let go. ‘You be careful now.’ Naomi stumbled on.
She had lost them.
In that moment when the stranger stopped her, she had ceased to hear their voices, footsteps or the distant sound of tiny bells and she had lost her bearings too, she realized with a shock. Left her normal route and had not a clue where she was going.
Think, Naomi, think. She could not have gone more than a few steps from the promenade rail. She listened hard to try and get her bearings and picked up off to her left the sound of video machines across the road in the small arcade.
‘Just keep me on the path, OK?’ she told the dog, trusting that he would do what he had been so well trained to do. So she took her courage in her hands and walked straight on, hoping to hear the sound of the children again.
‘There.’ She caught the faintest sound, off to her right and not too far ahead. The crowds had thickened here and other sounds were reaching her from the fairground at the end of the promenade. ‘Helen?’ Naomi called. ‘Helen?’ Why there should be any sense in calling out her name Naomi was not sure. But she got her answer.
‘Naomi. Na-o-mi...’
‘Wait for me. Please.’
What am I
doing? This is insane. She stopped suddenly and drew breath, aware that her heart was thumping so hard she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. It isn’t Helen. No, my Helen’s dead. What the hell are they trying to do to me?
She took a few steps forward and the dog sat down. Feeling with her foot, Naomi found the edge of the kerb about to fall from beneath her feet.
‘Good dog, wonderful boy.’ She turned away from the road, feeling the rush of air as a bus rolled by her on the road. She turned back towards the music and the wailing of the siren that told her the Waltzers in the fairground had begun to spin at their fastest. The kids must have gone into the fair.
Without much hope of finding them now, and not sure even if she could find her way back home, Naomi followed the growing noise towards the entrance, trying to visualize its position as the dog wove in and out of the crowd, guiding her on the best path he knew. The volume increased, swirling about her, confusing her senses by the second and piling sound upon sound, layers of it that wiped her thoughts clean and deprived her even of the power of reason. It was like the swimming pool, she thought. The echoing noises of voices and music, and children squealing and demanding and arguing, and sirens wailing and footsteps, so many footsteps...She didn’t have a hope in hell of finding the source of one sound in all of this.
Sensing her confusion, Napoleon stood still, pressed close against her leg, waiting to be told what to do next. Naomi didn’t know. She didn’t even know for certain where the entrance was.
She took a deep, quavering breath, shocked at how unsteady she felt, how tight her chest had become, how hard it was to breathe. Please, she practised in her head. Can you tell me which way to go? But she felt ashamed. Ashamed of having to ask, ashamed of the wild goose chase someone had forced her to begin and ashamed too at the sudden thought that the children, the bracelet, the calling of her name might have been all inside her own mind.
‘Naomi? Are you all right? You look dreadful.’
‘Penny?’ A familiar voice. It didn’t occur to Naomi to ask what the woman was doing there; she was just profoundly grateful that she was.
Mourning the Little Dead Page 19
