Mourning the Little Dead

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘I just wanted to have it out with her and I ended up feeling like shit,’ she told him. ‘I’m losing my touch, Alec. Losing that edge, that detachment. Harry said I was letting the emotional blackmail get to me and I should start trying to see through it. Start thinking like a detective again.’

  The second hand crept around her waist. ‘Much as I hate to agree with anything Harry says,’ he admitted, ‘I think he has a point.’

  She lifted her head and squinted at him as though trying to observe closely. Her expression reminded Alec of Lydia, Jackson’s ex-wife. ‘What you got against Harry?’ she questioned.

  ‘Against Harry, nothing. Against Harry moving in on my territory, everything.’

  ‘Your territory? I’m not territory, Alec.’

  ‘No.’ He let go of her so abruptly that she felt suddenly bereft. ‘No, you’re not. I know that.’

  Naomi frowned. ‘You’re jealous of him?’

  ‘No, I’m possessive of you.’ He laughed, but the sound was mirthless. ‘I think there is a difference.’

  ‘Is there?’ She sighed and felt behind her for the sofa, flopped down and grabbed one of the cushions, hugging it to her, wishing he’d come back and sit down.

  ‘Alec, let’s not argue. I’ve already had enough emotion for the day and I don’t know what to make of what I’ve got.’ She reached out a hand towards where she thought he was. He came over and took it, sat down on the floor at her feet and leaned against her leg. He reminded her suddenly of Napoleon.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally. ‘Maybe I’m a bit uptight, but this just got bigger than any of us thought. We found a second body. In the house next to number 43. I’m not certain where this is leading any more.’

  *

  The Wednesday morning found Alec reviewing the video tapes of the fairground once again. He had gone in early to work, snatching a couple of hours before the day officially began.

  Travers stuck his head around the door. ‘Are you still on that?’

  ‘Trying to get a better look at the man. The one we thought Penny might have been with.’

  Travers came over and perched on the edge of the desk. ‘And?’

  ‘And, I think she definitely was. Look here, they’re standing close together at this point, watching Naomi. She touches his arm and then he moves away.’ He grabbed another tape, shot from an alternative angle. ‘Here, the kids come into shot, he’s moved to the shooting gallery. The kids walk by him, now tell me what you see.’

  Travers watched. ‘The older one speaks to him,’ Travers said. ‘Pity he’s not clearer...grab the frame, get it enhanced. Or are you already ahead of me?’

  ‘Thought I’d make an early start. I’ve got a time slot at the lab in—’ he glanced at his watch—‘half an hour.’

  ‘Best get going then. Naomi OK?’ he asked as Alec headed for the door.

  Alec nodded. ‘We had a few words last night. She went to see Penny Jackson. Took Harry Jones with her, but I still don’t like it.’

  Travers’ smile was wry. ‘Don’t like which part, Alec? Her going to see Penny Jackson or her taking Harry Jones?’

  *

  Naomi was still trying to be irritated by what she described as Alec’s overprotective attitude, but in her more honest moments she was glad that Harry had been there and didn’t like to even think about visiting Penny alone.

  The more she had thought about it, the more she had the vague sense that someone else had been in the house. There had been an atmosphere of tension which had nothing to do with the conversation and the nearest Naomi could get to it was that Penny had not wanted them to meet this other person or even know that they were there.

  She almost dismissed this as overactive imagination. Almost, but not quite.

  She didn’t think that even Alec could object to her seeing Geoff Lyman again, though this time she had called ahead to make sure that the ex-detective sergeant was at home and able to fit her in.

  She arrived just after eleven and heard him opening the door as she let herself and Napoleon through the gate.

  ‘Your roses are still in bloom.’

  ‘Yes, we’re sheltered here.’ He took her hand. ‘Careful of the thorns now, that’s it. Feel how soft that is.’

  Gently, he placed Naomi’s hand on the petals of the rose, closing her fingers carefully around the flower. It felt like silk, with velvety edges and the scent almost overpowering.

  ‘What colour is it?’

  ‘Colour? Oh a deep, deep red, the edges of the petals turn almost black before they fall. I think it’s Fragrant Cloud, but I bought it with the label lost the day I retired. A really scrubby specimen it was too, but it’s fattened up nicely.’

  She laughed, stepping inside the house, feeling for the small step she remembered from her last visit. ‘If it was so scrubby, why did you buy it?’

  ‘Foolishness,’ he said. ‘It looked like I felt. Useless and abandoned. I didn’t take to retirement easy but in the end it thrived and I learned to cope with it. What have you got to ask me this time?’

  ‘I promise, next time it’ll be a social call. You know, I’d like a garden. Not that I knew a weed from a plant even when I could see.’

  ‘Weeds are plants, you great ninny. You could grow things that smelt and felt nice, I suppose, and damn what other people told you.’

  ‘I might just do.’

  He took her arm and seated her by the window. She could feel the weak October sun on her face, its heat amplified by the glass, giving the illusion of summer.

  ‘Tell me about Penny,’ she said. ‘When did her mum and dad divorce? What kind of child was she? What did Joe say about her?’

  There was a long silence while Geoff Lyman considered her questions. ‘I barely knew her,’ he said. ‘For that matter, I barely knew the wife. Lydia, I believe she was called, though I don’t think I met her above once. She was younger than Joe by a good few years and they only ever had the one child. I got the impression that Joe thought one was enough and his wife didn’t have all that much of a say. Impression, mind. There may have been all kinds of reasons that Joe didn’t talk about.’

  ‘Did you ever meet Penny?’

  ‘Once or twice. She was a plain little thing. I remember that because of the saying, you know, “Penny plain, tuppence painted”. Long dark hair, I seem to think. Straight as a yard of pump water, but with these fierce grey eyes. Hawks’ eyes, you know, like her dad on occasion when something riled him. Tall too, where her mum was small. You know, really small, like those women who joke they shop in the kiddies’ department.’

  ‘I was out of kids’ clothes by the time I was nine,’ Naomi said feelingly. ‘Used to drive my mam daft. She said she wouldn’t have me dressing like a teenager ’til I was one, even if I was tall enough.’

  ‘I never had children,’ he said. ‘Wife couldn’t and we never felt we wanted anyone else’s. She’s off at her pottery classes this morning.’ Naomi could hear the smile in his voice. ‘You know I don’t think we see any more of one another than we did when I was working. She does these classes and I do my garden and my allotment and in the evening we sit and watch the box or have friends round, but we might go days and say not above a dozen words.’ Naomi smiled back. There was no self-pity in his words. She gathered that he was comfortable with the arrangement and hoped his wife was too.

  ‘Did Penny have many friends?’

  ‘No. I don’t believe she did. Joe was like a lot of our profession, choosy about who his kiddie hung about with. It’s often hard on the children, their parents seeing all the dross and the idiots and the wasters day after day. It skews your vision of the world so it’s sometimes hard to see what good there is in it.’

  Naomi nodded. She’d encountered this before. ‘Boyfriends? Or was she too young then?’

  Geoff Lyman guffawed, the sound so loud it startled Napoleon and he lifted his head to stare at the man.

  ‘Oh, she might well have been too young, but whenever did that stop t
hem? Like I said, she was a plain little thing, but she looked older than her age and from what Joe complained about, she had the boys after her anyhow.’

  This didn’t tally with what Lydia had told Alec, Naomi thought. ‘Anyone in particular?’

  Geoff thought about it. ‘There was one,’ he said. ‘Joe off on his high horse about him being too old. She was what, twelve or thirteen. Looked sixteen mind, especially the time I saw her with her war paint on.’ He laughed again. ‘Strikes me as funny,’ he said. ‘Girls spend all their teens trying to look older and from their twenties on buying all this muck to make them look sixteen again.’

  ‘We sure do,’ Naomi agreed. ‘You remember his name?’

  ‘I’m thinking, love. The old brain takes a bit of persuading these days. Bill, or William or Billy or some such, I’m almost sure. Joe scared him off, I do believe. Told him Penny was under age and he could be done for rape if he went any further. I don’t know that there was sex involved. I’m just surmising from the temper Joe got himself in, that if there wasn’t, he thought there soon would be. He thought her mum should be doing more to keep her in line. Even talked about applying for custody, but of course, he never meant it. Joe as a full-time father! Lord, that was never on the cards.’

  For a while, Naomi thought. For a while, he was to me.

  Naomi had still been there, the talk moving to other things, when May, Geoff’s wife came home, proudly bearing her newest pot. Any doubt about their marital harmony was dispelled by that pot. Geoff cooed over and admired it as a parent might over a child’s first painting, though from what Naomi could tell when she held it in her hands, it was somewhat lopsided and less than round.

  She was invited to stay for lunch, pressed into accepting and regaled with talk about May’s classes and the people she met there.

  ‘Have you ever tried to pot?’ May asked her. ‘It’s very tactile, so I’m sure you could get on with it.’

  ‘I tried once, at school,’ Naomi said. And there had been clay everywhere by the time she’d got it centred on the wheel.

  But she left promising that she might well give it a go and May threatening to call her when the times of the winter classes were announced.

  ‘Pottery or potty, eh dog?’ She rubbed his ears and he grunted appreciatively.

  She called Alec on her mobile and ran him through her conversation with Geoff Lyman. Her phone began to beep at her. ‘Didn’t you put that on charge?’

  ‘Yes, last night, all night. I think it’s had it, the battery at least.’

  ‘Easier to get a new phone. OK, love, I’ll see you soon. I’m intrigued by this Bill, though. I think Lydia needs another talking to. I can’t believe she would have forgotten about this.’

  Thirty-Seven

  Penny wandered from room to room feeling the silence and the emptiness of her childhood home and trying to recall if it had ever felt so very different.

  The house was cold. It had central heating but she never switched it on. It was expensive to run and she had to keep costs down now she no longer worked. Maybe when she moved, she would find a job. A receptionist maybe, like before. Meeting people, being efficient. She hadn’t worked in the past year really, not since losing her last job. She’d lived off the money her father had left to her which she hadn’t touched before. That and her own meagre savings. Her costs were few and she worked hard at keeping them down.

  It was a big house and, thankfully, the buyers had not dropped out after finding out about her father. They had forced her to lower the price though, suddenly worrying about the possible cost of rewiring, and pointing out that no maintenance had been done on the place in years. All things the original estimate had taken account of.

  She resented it, knowing that they could just walk away if she didn’t agree and she would have a hard time finding someone else now. Joe still ruining her life for her even from beyond the grave.

  Though she wasn’t sorry. She had been looking for this kind of opportunity for so many years that when that document came into her possession, it had seemed like a message brought by fate. At last, everyone would see her father for what he really was, not as the flawed but lovable heroic figure everyone wanted to see.

  Her wanderings took her finally into her father’s study and she stood in the centre of the little room surveying her handiwork. The news clippings were stuck on the bare walls, so carefully arranged, layer by layer like a wall-bound book.

  In the alcove between the fireplace and the window was a built-in cupboard and Penny opened it now. On the middle shelf lay her father’s old portable typewriter, with its scored A and its clattering keys.

  ‘You really should get rid of that,’ Bill said.

  She started, not having heard him enter the room. ‘I couldn’t, not this.’

  ‘Why not, Penny? There’s only bad things, bad memories tied up with it.’

  She sat down heavily in her father’s chair, remembering how as a child she had loved this captain’s chair with its leather seat and wooden arms. She’d spent hours swivelling and spinning and leaning back as far as the design would allow it to go.

  ‘I wanted to talk to her properly that day. That day when I went to see them all at Mari’s. I thought after what happened at the fair, she might be glad to see me, be grateful that I’d been there. But no, she just made some excuse about the dog needing to go out and took that boy with her. It was the boy that made her go out. Patrick. He doesn’t like me, Bill.’

  Bill went over to her. He stroked her hair and rubbed her shoulders, soothing her. ‘Kids are like that sometimes,’ he said calmly. ‘They take dislikes to people, you know that. Christ knows you were ready enough at that age.’

  She smiled, allowing his kneading hands to ease the tension from her muscles. ‘I always liked you, though, didn’t I?’

  He bent down to kiss the top of her head. ‘Always,’ he said. ‘Look, forget what happened on Saturday, forget what happened yesterday. You’re all under so much pressure that sometimes only the bad side of things comes out. I reckon she was as upset as you by what was said. Give her a call, arrange to meet somewhere neutral. Have a coffee and try to make it up.’

  She nodded. ‘Maybe you’re right. Though not right now. I don’t think I have the strength right now.’

  Close to tears but determined not to cry, she took a deep breath and held it for a moment. A childhood habit held on to all these adult years.

  ‘You know,’ she said at last. ‘We’ve got so much in common. I resented her so much when we were both kids. All the attention Joe lavished on her while I felt I was only getting the leavings.’ She shrugged. ‘Stupid really. In the end he lied to both of us and I don’t think there’d be much between us with who got hurt more.’

  Thirty-Eight

  Lydia was not entirely pleased to hear from Alec first thing on a Thursday morning, but she recovered quickly. ‘I thought I’d answered all your questions,’ she told him.

  ‘You didn’t tell me about Bill,’ he said.

  ‘Bill?’ To his surprise, she sounded genuinely confused.

  ‘I believe that he was Penny’s boyfriend and that Joe disapproved.’

  ‘Joe? Bill? Look, I’m sorry, when are we talking about?’

  ‘When Penny was twelve, thirteen. It was the time you’d left Joe for good.’

  She still hesitated and then said, ‘I really am confused here. I told you yesterday, Penny didn’t have friends, never mind boyfriends. She was an awkward little thing at that age.’

  ‘But there was a boy,’ Alec persisted. ‘Lydia, he might have been someone older than her. Joe was worried about what she’d got herself involved in.’

  ‘Someone’s pulling your chain, Alec,’ Lydia told him. ‘Penny didn’t have anyone. She was too bloody awkward.’ She thought about it for a moment more. ‘I think you’re getting mixed up anyway.’

  ‘Oh, what with?’

  ‘Well, Bill wasn’t Penny’s boyfriend, at least not the Bill I think you must mean.�
��

  ‘And who do you think I mean?’

  ‘Why, Robert. Robert Williams. You see, his friends and workmates, they always called him Bill.’

  Alec rang off, feeling very thoughtful. So what did Joe mean when he said he’d got rid of Bill? Did he mean Robert Williams? Had he taken some sort of revenge for the theft of his wife and child, albeit the temporary theft?

  He frowned, not certain that made any sense at all, but he sent a note to the collator’s office anyway, asking them to track down the dental records for Robert Williams who might have been logged as a missing person around the time that Helen Jones was killed.

  *

  There had been two children at the right school and the right time called Williams, but neither of them had been called Gary. One was a boy called Colin who had been ten when Lydia Jackson had met his father, Robert. The other had been a little girl. Margaret. Maggie. Maggie Clarke.

  Maggie Clarke invited him into her kitchen. She was baking and needed to watch the oven. Her kitchen was tiny and Alec stood in the doorway so as not to get in her way.

  ‘Maggie, do you know Penny Jackson?’

  She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Joe Jackson’s daughter. I saw her on the news.’

  ‘But did you know her before?’

  The slight tightening of her shoulders told him he had scored, but what, he wasn’t sure. Her voice was steady and unconcerned when she replied. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘She used to work at the health centre as a receptionist. I recognized her.’

  ‘And did you also recognize her as the daughter of Lydia Jackson? The woman your father left your mother for?’

  She stiffened. She had been creaming fat and sugar in the bowl, but she stopped for an instant, before beating even harder.

  ‘He didn’t leave us for her. He’d already gone. And I was glad. We were better off without the bastard.’

  Alec raised an eyebrow, but she still had her back to him, beating furiously, creaming the mix until it turned to slurry in the glass bowl.