Mourning the Little Dead

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Did you get my other call?’

  ‘Just. I was about to leave.’

  ‘They’re in the old mill above the weir,’ Patrick told him. ‘I’m going back. Alec, I think Penny has a knife, I saw it in her hand.’

  ‘OK, OK, where are you now?’

  Patrick told him as best he could.

  ‘Stay there. I’ll be with you.’

  Once Alec had hung up, Patrick stood on the road and tried to think what to do next. He couldn’t just hang around. What if they left? What if they had already gone? No one would know.

  He turned and ran back, sliding down the bank, the bushes tearing at his hands and clothes.

  Then, as he landed on the path, someone grabbed him from behind.

  ‘Patrick?’ He heard Naomi’s voice before he saw her. ‘Oh God, what are you doing here?’

  She was sitting on the floor in the corner of the upstairs room. A big room with windows all along one side, though many were broken and others boarded up. The dog was beside her and chirruped a greeting when he saw who it was. Ever the optimist, his tail began its slow beat upon the floor, raising little clouds of dust from the wooden surface.

  There were gaps in the floorboards where the wood had rotted and as Patrick was thrust forward, he stumbled, falling with his hand reaching out and finding nothing but space. He lay there for a moment, hearing Naomi’s anxious questions.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he assured her. He scrambled to his feet and picked his way over to Naomi. ‘Half the floor’s missing,’ he said, then as he settled beside her, whispered, ‘Alec’s on his way. It’s going to be OK.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I followed you. Some man grabbed me. She’s downstairs talking to him. She called him Bill.’

  ‘Bill? What does he look like?’

  ‘I didn’t get to see him very well. Brown hair, tall, I’d say, and about Alec’s age. I caught one real look at his face, but that was all. Look, stay put, I might be able to see, the floor’s half-missing, like I said.’

  She grabbed his arm. ‘Probably half-rotten, too. I could feel it swaying and groaning when I crossed it.’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’ Gently, he eased her fingers from his arm and crawled forward on his belly to the nearest gap.

  He could see Penny and the man below. They seemed to be arguing about something, but the angle was not good enough for Patrick to really see his face. He got the impression of someone tall and strongly built—though he knew that from when the man had grabbed him; clamping one large hand tightly over Patrick’s nose and mouth and twisting Patrick’s arm painfully behind his back with the other, he had marched the boy across the bridge with seemingly none of Patrick’s worries about being seen. He had smelt of soap, Patrick remembered irrelevantly. His hands newly washed.

  He crawled back to Naomi. ‘Can’t see much,’ he said, ‘and they’re keeping their voices down.’ He huddled as she was next to the dog and rubbed his ears, examining him carefully for signs of damage.

  ‘Did she hurt either of you?’

  ‘Just cut my hand,’ Naomi showed him. The bleeding had all but stopped. ‘She was trying to make a point.’

  ‘What does she want?’

  Naomi shrugged. ‘I don’t think she knows any more,’ she said. ‘I think she went past working that out long ago.’

  Patrick filled her in on what he’d done. How he had been watching for her after Alec’s call and followed.

  ‘You did well to call the police,’ Naomi told him. ‘But Patrick, you should have stayed put when Alec told you. If anything happens to you I’ll never forgive myself.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ Patrick assured her, with far more confidence than he felt. The stupidity of his action was really sinking home and he felt numbed and shocked now the adrenaline had diminished. ‘I hope Nan’s going to be OK,’ he added.

  Naomi slid an arm around his shoulders and held him tight.

  *

  Tompkins the PI had been found skulking around on the towpath. ‘She only said she wanted to talk to the lady,’ he protested. ‘I don’t know nothing else.’

  ‘You’ve been following Miss Blake?’

  ‘She paid me to watch where the lady went. Said it was something to do with a divorce case.’

  ‘And of course, you believed her.’

  ‘She’s a client. I need clients.’

  Alec looked across the weir towards the mill. Officers were in position at all exits to the towpaths and slowly moving in toward the mill from the other end, Travers in the front rank. And they had an Armed Response Vehicle on standby, just in case...In case of what? Alec thought. There was no way Penny could get out, so what the hell was she playing at?

  A PC scrambled down the bank. ‘There’s no sign of the boy,’ he said. ‘I went up and down the road, but no one’s seen him.’

  ‘He followed them,’ Alec nodded. In his heart of hearts he had never expected Patrick to stay quietly put. Would he have done at fifteen? Alec thought not. ‘We’ll have to assume he’s inside,’ he said. ‘Better notify DCI Travers that we may have a third hostage.’

  Tompkins was shifting uneasily. ‘A boy, fifteen years, but small. White with longish dark hair. You saw him?’ Alec demanded.

  ‘It was nowt to do with me,’ Tompkins protested. ‘There was this big bloke, see, came out of them bushes and grabbed him.’

  ‘And you did nothing?’

  Tompkins mumbled something which sounded like, ‘Not what I was paid for,’ but Alec had other things on his mind.

  He didn’t even look his way as Tompkins was led off. ‘Tell Travers we’ve got three hostages and two suspects. Penny Jackson and an unknown male,’ he said.

  ‘Three hostages, sir?’ the PC questioned. ‘Who’s the third?’

  Alec frowned. He had got so used to thinking of Napoleon that way. ‘Two hostages,’ he corrected, but he felt privately that he’d been right the first time.

  Inside the mill the murmur of voices had continued; Penny and this mysterious man pursuing what seemed to be an argument. Occasionally, the volume would rise. ‘Just what is it you want?’ the man was heard to shout and once Penny shouted his name, her voice anxious and tense as though she was afraid that he would leave her.

  Mostly, Patrick and Naomi could hear little. They talked softly, Patrick describing the upper room to her: the smashed windows, old blankets and papers rucked up in the opposite corner. More bottles, broken and unbroken, the smell of piss and old booze so strong Naomi figured the wood must be almost pickled in it. She wondered how they were going to escape.

  ‘You might make it out,’ Naomi told him.

  ‘Not without you. I don’t know what she’d do to you or Napoleon if I made a run for it.’

  Naomi sighed. Where was Alec? Hopefully, not Alec alone.

  She did not think that either Patrick or herself were in any immediate danger. Penny and Bill seemed preoccupied by some business of their own. And who the hell was Bill? she wondered. She remembered the day at the fairground. Harry and Alec had talked about Penny being with a man, but thought the man they had described had been short and small not the way Patrick had described him, even allowing for the fear factor; victims often making their assailants bigger and stronger than they really were.

  They had just begun to believe that something had gone wrong. That Alec had maybe not been able to convince anyone that they really were in trouble when the unmistakable sound of someone shouting through a megaphone cut through the silence and echoed around the walls.

  ‘They’re here,’ Patrick whispered fiercely.

  ‘That’s Dick Travers,’ Naomi recognized the voice even through the distortion.

  ‘Miss Jackson, come on out of the building. Please hold your hands in view and move slowly on to the bridge.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Penny’s voice was thin and anxious. ‘Bill? Oh God, don’t leave me now! Bill, what are we going to do? Bill...�
� She sounded faintly puzzled this time, then. ‘Yes, maybe you’re right. Give that to me, then go.’

  ‘What? Give her what? Right about what?’ Naomi wondered. ‘And how can he get out? There’s nothing but the loading dock through the rear door.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll swim for it.’

  ‘You’ve seen the basin, would you want to swim that? The water’s deep and rough where it comes off the weir.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to swim in anything, remember. But not everyone’s so wet.’

  She clasped his arm. ‘You’re anything but wet.’

  Nervously, Patrick began to giggle, the tension getting the better of him and overwhelming sense. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but he will be. Nomi, we’ve got to be ready. If she comes upstairs I’m going to make a run at her. You keep Napoleon out of the way and help me if you can.’

  ‘This isn’t a computer game, Patrick,’ she told him, more sharply than she meant. ‘Sorry. I’m scared,’ she apologized at once. ‘Look, let’s hold on, she might go out to Travers.’ What did Bill give her before he left? she wondered again. What did she think he was right about?

  The voice on the megaphone sounded again, but Naomi did not listen to what was said, a faint smell of smoke had drifted up through the broken floor. ‘What’s she doing down there?’ But Naomi was afraid she already knew.

  ‘I’ll see if I can see.’

  She felt him crawl forward once again and the scrabbling movements as he shifted around on the broken floor, trying to see through the gaps.

  ‘I can’t see much,’ he whispered, then, ‘There’s smoke! Naomi, she’s set the stairs on fire!’

  The broken bottles, she remembered, the meths, maybe other dregs of alcohol, enough to act as an accelerant. ‘Patrick, run,’ she ordered him. ‘If you go now, you’ll get through. God, this place will go up like tinder. Penny! Penny! No!’ She was on her feet now, stumbling forward, shouting at the direction from which the fire now rose.

  Patrick’s footsteps echoed on the wood as he ran to the stairway and then back.

  ‘Go!’ she yelled at him again.

  ‘No way. I’m not leaving you.’ His voice was almost shrill with panic. ‘The stairs are burning. The stairs.’

  And Penny Jackson standing a few yards back from her handiwork, the lighter Bill had given her still between her fingers, with no discernable expression on her pallid face.

  ‘Smoke,’ Travers shouted. ‘There’s smoke.’

  A light plume of it drifted out through the broken door and another from the ground-floor window. ‘What the hell?’ He began to run towards the building, dimly aware of the figure hurtling across the bridge from the towpath on the other side as Alec saw it too.

  Penny Jackson emerged from the half-open door. She still held the lighter in her left hand. The knife with which she had threatened Naomi clasped loosely in her right. She stood calmly on the bridge, smoke now fluttering out behind her as the fire took greater hold. Flames licked at the door by the time Travers reached her. He grabbed her, mindless of the weapon she was holding, thrusting her aside into the arms of another officer then plunged through the door, Alec hard on his heels.

  ‘Patrick, Naomi!’

  But within seconds they were forced outside. The smoke had thickened, catching a pile of rags and paper some itinerant had one time made his bed.

  Naomi shouted. They heard her voice above the crack and crash of timber as what was left of the stairs disintegrated. Glass shattered in one of the upstairs windows, the knife-edged rain showering down and driving them back on to the towpath. In the distance fire sirens echoed.

  It was the shattering of the glass that really galvanised Patrick. The windows on this level had been set low in the wall and rose high towards the ceiling, designed to maximise daylight in an age when electricity was still an infant science. And he knew then that the only chance any of them would have was to break the glass and jump.

  He took Naomi’s arm. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to trust me. We’re going out the window.’

  ‘We’re what?’

  The room was filling up with smoke. Thick black smoke that smelt of oil and grease and choked them when they tried to breath.

  ‘What about Napoleon?’ The dog was terrified, whining and yapping at the strange noises and the choking smoke.

  ‘We throw him out first,’ Patrick said. ‘He can swim, he’ll be all right. Nomi, we don’t have any other choice.’

  She knew that he was right. She could hear the fire engines in the distance, their plaintive wailing the most beautiful sound that she had ever heard. But she knew too that they had to face reality. The smoke was catching in her lungs. She could barely breath and speaking hurt like hell. By the time the fire service reached the mill they might all be dead from inhaling whatever muck was in the toxic smoke.

  Patrick was leading her and she held tight to Napoleon. She heard the first crash as Patrick kicked the glass.

  ‘Where?’ she choked. ‘Tell me where, I’ll help you.’

  ‘Straight in front.’ He coughed violently and she heard another crash as he hit again. Naomi kicked out. She was hardly dressed for this, the irrational thought came to her mind. Heels and a skirt. She felt the impact as she hit something that felt too hard to be glass, but the crash too loud and satisfying take anything else.

  She felt Patrick push past her and take the harness from her hand. He took precious seconds unbuckling it, scared that it might catch on something. ‘You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine,’ he kept telling the frightened animal. ‘I’m sending him out, Naomi.’

  ‘Oh, God, oh God. No, don’t. No!’ Suddenly terrified that the dog might die out there, regardless of the fact that he would certainly perish inside, Naomi reached out to grab him back, but Napoleon was already gone. She heard what would have been a cheer from Patrick if he’d had the breath for it. ‘He’s swimming. There’s policemen on the bank. He’s swimming.’ He turned back her and took her hand. ‘Our turn now,’ he said.

  The first Alec guessed of Patrick’s plans was the bizarre and frightening sight of a black dog flying through the air and landing with, given the circumstances, quite extraordinary grace in the canal basin.

  ‘Shit!’

  He watched transfixed as the black head disappeared below the water, then broke surface and powerful legs struck out towards the shore. The cheer that went up from the officers on the bank took him by surprise and Alec laughed aloud, momentarily breaking the tension.

  Then he looked back towards the building. Patrick climbing out on to the window ledge, Naomi at his side, feeling her way.

  ‘Do it right, do it right. You can do it right.’ His heart seemed to freeze and his stomach curdle. He remembered Naomi telling him about Patrick’s fear of water as well as her own. It was, he thought, the single bravest act that he had ever witnessed.

  ‘Don’t hold there, it’s broken glass. Hand down just a tiny bit. Right.’

  He directed her in a voice that was hoarse as a raven’s and barely above a whisper. Her hand caught on the glass, but she hardly noticed it. The fire at their backs had made it to the second level. ‘Between the dragon and the deep,’ Patrick whispered and she knew that in his mind’s eye he was seeing something from his computer games.

  For the first time in her life she was almost glad that she couldn’t see. At the top of her fears list, the list she had told Patrick about that night, was a fear of heights.

  ‘On three,’ Patrick told her.

  She was crouched on the window ledge beside him, one foot still in the room. She began to ease forward, her body stiff with fear. They went on one, Patrick hauling her after him as he fell. It was a close thing who screamed loudest on the way down.

  Men dived into the water. Travers had run back to the towpath and grabbed a lifebelt. He ran now, coming up beside Alec with the red and white striped object in his hand, looking for where best to throw it. Alec himself was ready to make the plunge. Travers held him back.

&
nbsp; ‘Not this time. You’re a crap swimmer, you once told me so.’ He nodded towards the two men and one woman who were swimming strongly towards where Patrick and Naomi had splashed down and Alec was forced to watch, silently agreeing and hating himself for it, but he was first there when they were hauled ashore.

  ‘Napoleon?’ Alec was never certain which of them asked first; both Naomi and Patrick’s voices were choked with smoke and foul water, lungs filled with both.

  ‘He’s just fine. The paramedics are looking him over, they reckon he dislocated his back hip when he landed in the water, but we’ve got a vet on standby.’

  ‘I’ve got to go with him.’ That was definitely Naomi.

  Alec clung to her like a drowning man. ‘Dick’s going to take him,’ he reassured her. ‘You’re going to hospital. And you—’ he reached to include Patrick in his embrace before the medics took possession—‘you are...God, your dad’s going to kill me!’

  Forty-One

  A week later and Patrick was home, still fervently denying that the man who had grabbed him had been Tompkins the PI. The description he gave was definitely of a different man, but mostly it was mooted out of his hearing that he was mistaken; shock having changed his memory of things.

  ‘Why would she call him Bill?’ Patrick demanded and no one could really answer that one and, though it was undeniable that his memory of the man coincided with the description of Robert Williams, as Alec pointed out, he’d been buried under the patio at 45 Lansdowne Road for more than twenty years and was hardly likely to be in the running.

  Patrick didn’t seem so sure and neither, in quiet moments, was Naomi.

  The two children who had left the bracelet had not been traced, despite widespread appeals. Tompkins denied all knowledge of them. When shown the CCTV footage, he claimed that they had only asked him the time. But as he also denied grabbing Patrick and taking him to Penny, no one gave his statement much credence...except for Patrick, of course, who knew it wasn’t him.

  ‘Penny killed Sarah Clarke. It’s about the only sensible thing we can get out of her,’ Alec told them one afternoon when they had gathered at Mari’s to talk things through. Mari, too, had been released from hospital. She had suffered a mild stroke and was taking it as a warning and Harry’s plans to move closer had taken on an increased urgency.