“Jack was brain dead right from those first hours,” Rose continued. She spoke softly and her gaze moved from Alec’s face to some distant point in that painful past.
“It was about three weeks before the school holidays were due to start.” Rose said “A Monday evening. They had been playing in the fields behind the house. Playing hide and seek with a group of other kids from our street.
“Jack had run off to hide. He’d said he knew a new place down by the embankment where he was certain they wouldn’t find him. I saw him heading off down the hill and then he disappeared behind the thistles and the long grass in the bottom field. He must have fallen, from the bank onto the railway line, by the time they found him almost an hour later he was deeply unconscious. His brain swelled, he slipped into a coma and he never woke up.”
He wanted to press her for more details. This simple retelling of Zechariah’s death was so stark and cold and he wanted the rest of it. The emotion and not just the bare words. But he couldn’t ask.
“Someone saw him running. Someone standing in the bedroom of one of the new houses they were building on the other side of the track. He was running along the embankment, they said and he kept glancing behind him as though he was being followed. The witness said he looked scared, but when everyone heard they were playing hide and seek no one asked any more questions. The witness said he saw a man following him. That the man stood on the rise where the embankment breaks for the black pad to cut through and the bank is higher. The man shouted and started to follow Jack and then he turned away. He was too far off for a description.”
“You think someone scared him and he fell?” Alec asked
“I don’t know. Tally used to go to see him at the hospital and watch him for hours. She said she was trying to feel what he might be thinking, or dreaming, but they kept telling her that there was nothing going on in Jack’s head. I know she used to fantasise that he would be like that forever. That he would grow up, still attached to that machine, become a grown man on the outside but still a little boy in his head. She went back to school after a week, I suppose because it was better than sitting around at home watching her father and I grieve and fight. She used to go and see Jack straight from school and tell him what they’d done that day and read her books out loud just so he wouldn’t fall behind. They said he was brain dead a few hours after the fall but it was another two weeks before we agreed to switch off the life support.”
“That must have been terrible for you,” Simon whispered.
Tally never forgave us for it. She said we’d killed him and as far as I know, she’s never changed her opinion on that.”
*
At the end of term that summer Tally went to her brother’s teacher. Zechariah had been due to change schools that September and the new school always set a project for the summer to be done by the new students.
The teacher was taking down the last of the drawings and displays from the walls. Chairs were stacked upon tables and the classroom had a deserted, relieved air about it as though it too looked forward to the weeks of play and peace.
The teacher was a young woman. Pretty with dark hair and calm grey eyes. She wore short skirts and a sweet perfume that smelt like spring, exploding blue and fresh in Tally’s head. She turned in surprise as Tally pushed the door and came inside.
“Hello,” she said, “I thought everyone had rushed away. Have you forgotten something?”
“Can I have Jack’s project for the summer, please?”
“Jack? Oh you mean Zechariah?”
Tally nodded. The teacher looked confused. “But Tally, I thought, your brother...” She hesitated not wanting to upset this child with her wild blond curls and sad blue eyes. Desperately, she looked for clues as to what to say in the young girl’s face but found none. “Is he getting better then?” she asked finally. She had heard different, but maybe there was more cause for hope that they had been led to believe. Children could recover from some amazing things.
“Tally” she came over to where the child stood expectantly, “the project doesn’t matter. I doubt he’ll be well enough for project work.”
Tally shuffled her feet and looked away, gazing out at the school playing field and the bright sunlight and the children playing as they started for home anticipating the weeks of freedom that lay ahead. Then she looked back at the woman.
“Please,” she said. “Jack doesn’t want to get behind.”
The teacher nodded. Nothing in her training had anticipated this but she felt it would distress Tally far more to argue with her. She found the photocopied sheet with the notes she needed and made certain Tally had paper and card to make the folder and watched from the classroom window as the solitary child crossed the field heading for home.
That evening Tally took the project work with her when she visited Jack.
“It’s got to be something about history. She told him. “We’ve got to find something that happened near here and write about it and do drawings. There’s a list of suggestions or we could do something of our own.
She looked at him, waiting for a response. “Did you hear me Jack, it can be something of our own if you want. I’ll help you, we can make it really good together.
Jack lay unmoving and unmoved.
“You’ve got to listen,” Tally yelled at him. “How can I help you unless you listen? Talk to me Jack, talk to me.”
She had begun to cry, the project sheet and the paper and the green card she had selected to make the folder crushed against her chest. And Jack wasn’t listening. Jack was never going to listen again.
*
When she was nine years old life changed forever for Tallitha Palmer.
For her brother’s funeral, she had a new blue dress – her aunt had chosen it, she did not like children to be dressed in black. In the morning they took her to see Jack for one last time before the coffin lid was sealed and the small white box packed and decked with flowers was lifted into the hearse.
Tally had a plastic shopping bag gripped between her hands and from it she took Jack’s favourite toys. The rabbit he’d had since babyhood. The marbles in the green velvet bag. The books and games they had made together and wild flowers she had gathered from the fields behind their house, a little wilted now from the summer heat and the tight grip of Tally’s sweaty hands.
The grownups stepped away, ushered by aunt Bee who, for all her halitosis breath and smudged pink lips, had a heart that knew grief and that sometimes grief must be left alone. Tally could hear their quiet voices as they talked to the black coated funeral director and his staff. The condolences voiced once more. The nervous suggestion that in a way it must be a relief at least to bring things to a close and Tally’s mother softly agreeing that it was.
“I don’t believe you’re gone,” Tally whispered, knowing she mustn’t cry or be upset in front of her family. She had fought long and hard to be able to see Jack this final time and she mustn’t spoil it now.
She lay Jack’s things beside him wishing they were grander, more important, like the swords and fine jewels that accompanied the Vikings on their death boats or the precious objects buried with the pharaohs. But these little toys and shared memories were all she had to give and she knew intuitively that they would be enough.
She couldn’t reach to kiss him, the table on which the coffin rested was too high and there was nothing on which to stand so Tally kissed her fingers and touched them to Jack’s lips. The skin felt cold and dry and an odd smell of antiseptic and something chemical seeped from the pores as she leaned close.
“You’re not gone, Jack. I can feel you here, inside of me and I’m going to live forever just so you can see it all”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Alec was back at work studying the minutia of a rash of local burglaries when Rose Palmer called him.
“It’s probably nothing,” she apologised, “I thought about it after you’d gone.”
“Tell me anyway,” Alec encouraged. “If it’s not
relevant, no harm done.”
“Rose Palmer paused and then she said, “it was when Tally went away to Sheffield, she did a photo journalist course there, though you probably know that. Anyway, she had this friend when she was there. A young man she used to introduce as her brother. She called him Jack.”
“Her brother?” Alec confirmed. “Why would she do that?”
“Heaven knows. She passed it off in the end as some sort of practical joke. Covered for herself by saying that he was a friend from home who was like a brother, only I know he wasn’t, Detective Friedman. He wasn’t from here, she met him there.”
“Did you talk to her about him?”
Rose Palmer laughed. “If you knew my daughter then you’d know that you don’t talk to Tally as in have a conversation, you receive from her what she wants you to know and you give back that which she requires.” It sounded harsh, bitterly put and she must have realised that because she continued more gently, “I love my daughter, Detective Friedman, but I don’t begin to know her, not even after all this time.”
Alec let the silence grow between them then he prompted her, “How do you know about all this if Tally didn’t tell you?”
“Because it caused sufficient anxiety for her tutor to get in touch and ask me about this Jack. Her tutor, a Mr Blake if I remember right, he told me there were rumours about this man and Tally, that if they were indeed brother and sister that their relationship was, how did he put it, inappropriate.”
“They were lovers?”
“They slept together. Not always the same thing, but yes, that’s what he meant. Tally was challenged, and that’s when she tried to backtrack. I imagine it took a while for the fuss to die down, but she was only in her first year and as far as I’m aware behaved herself the rest of the time.”
“And this Sheffield Jack,” Alec asked. “You have a last name for him?”
Rose laughed uneasily. “His first name wasn’t Jack,” she said. “It was Robert. Robert Principle. He worked in construction or something. Not part of the university crowd at all which I suppose was how Tally got away with her story for so long.”
She could tell him little more, but it shed new light on Tally Palmer and on her Jack obsession. Though what light, Alec wasn’t too sure. Had she kept in touch with this Robert Principle? Had he followed her here to Ingham? Did he have a record? And was he the man who’d threatened Naomi? Rose had never met him and had no description to give but a few phone calls had him put through to Professor Blake, Tally’s tutor from her student days and he confirmed Rose’s story.
“I hope she’s in no trouble.”
“No, it’s the man she was involved with that we’re trying to trace.”
“I see,” Professor Blake sounded doubtful. “Detective, if we all spend our lives being answerable for the stupid things we do at eighteen then it’s going to be a poor look out for all of us.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Alec told him. “There are a fair few things I’d like to keep quiet from back then. No, this involves the here and now. We have reason to believe that Robert Principle was involved in an assault.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I’m sorry Detective, but I’ve had no contact with the young man since then. As far as I know Tallitha broke all contact with him. “
“Can you give me a description, Professor? Did you meet this man.”
“Once, briefly. He waited for Tally after a tutorial. He was perhaps a little older. Dark hair, curly or wavy, I think. Quite well built, though I imagine his job kept him fit. He was a builder or scaffolder. Something like that.”
“Didn’t that strike you as odd?”
“What, that a student should date someone outside of the university? Detective, my father was a builder and my mother worked as an accountant. Attraction happens.”
Alec got the feeling he had stepped on a proverbial corn. He persisted anyway. “Any idea how they met?”
“No...Oh wait a minute, we were having work done I believe. The library block...I don’t recall clearly, it was some years ago. But I think that’s probably how they met. I’m sorry, I really don’t know anything more.”
Alec thanked him and hung up. At least he had an age and confirmation of description to give the Sheffield force should he need it though he’d start with local checks, just in case Robert Principle had moved south. His profession might cause problems too. Workers in the building trade were often self-employed and frequently mobile.
He picked up the phone and called Naomi for the second time that day. He had, with difficulty persuaded her to move for a few days at least and she was camped out with Mari Jones, Patrick’s grandmother. Mari was one of the most sensible people Alec knew and he had also ensured the women had been given a panic alarm. George Mallard had instructions to watch Naomi until she was safe indoors and patrols scheduled extra flybys down Mari’s street.
Naomi, predictably, had protested against all of this but Alec could tell that she’d been shaken by the experience with Jack. Jack had invaded her space, a place she had held sacred and safe and that hurt.
“I’m still fine,” she told him. “Just as fine as I was two hours ago.”
Alec smiled. “And I’m glad to hear it. I may have a lead on Jack.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Something from Rose Palmer. She called me, recalled an incident from Tally’s university days. It might be the break we need.”
Swiftly, he filled her in on Robert Principle and Tally’s involvement with him.
“Sounds bizarre,” Naomi commented. “Ok, tell me later, Mari and I are going shopping.”
“Shopping? Are you sure...”
“Alec, I won’t be put under house arrest! I’ll be fine, we’ll keep to busy places and check the street when we get back. Anyway, I need a new phone. I fancy one of those tiny little clam shell things with the fancy trim Patrick was going on about.”
Alec laughed. “Ok, love,” he said, “but just take care. We know nothing about this man and he’s already shown he’s not above using violence.”
“I will” she promised. “Now get on to find him or I’ll be forced to write to our local MP and complain about the inefficiency of the local police.”
The afternoon was a fruitless one. Alec had other projects on the go alongside the assault on Naomi Blake.
By five he knew that no on answering Robert Principles name age and description had ever been arrested in the Ingham area. SOCO had been to Naomi’s flat and fingerprinted the areas she had indicated. They called Alec to say they had lifted a partial palm print from the windowsill and a clear thumb from the surface of one of the photo albums. It was something at least, though Alec knew it could take a long time for comparisons to be made and results to come back. And Naomi’s case, though serious, could not be given top priority just because Alec Friedman wished it so.
He ended the day faxing a request to Sheffield for information on Robert Principle, possible alias of Jack Chalmers with what description he could put together. Looking at the brief typewritten details on the request he knew that he’d be unimaginably lucky to turn up anything from them. Too sketchy, too vague. Too long ago.
Shirley and Fred from the advice centre had been scheduled some time with a police artist for the following afternoon which would hopefully at least give Alec something to put out in the local paper. Until then, he stretched wearily, slow finicky days always more wearing than busy ones, he may as well go home. Or at any rate, go to Mari’s and look at Naomi’s new ultra tiny clam shell phone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nothing happened. Alec was used to that, it was a truism to say that police work was ninety percent waiting around and ten percent tearing around like an idiot; this was just a part of the waiting time.
Friday night arrived and Naomi had insisted on moving back to her flat. She needed her independence far more than she needed Mari and Alec’s protection. Mari had helped her move back and the two women spent the entire day scrubbing away the fingerprint po
wder and the sense of intrusion Jack’s visit had left.
Simon came over that evening bringing take away Thai from a little restaurant that had just opened on the sea front. Napoleon, not keen on spicy food, retreated in disgust to the furthest corner of the living room and snored loudly.
“I didn’t know about the Sheffield incident,” Simon told them. “It’s revealing, isn’t it?”
“But revealing of what?” Naomi asked, laughing.
“You met Rose, what did you make of her,” Alec wanted to know.
“As I said before. Down to earth. Practical. I like her.”
“When did you first meet her?”
Simon frowned. “Oh, that was a bit odd,” he said. “It was Rose’s birthday. Now, you know what birthdays are like in mum and dad’s house. It’s a real celebration, but this was kind of cold. Duty, not pleasure and I couldn’t make it out.”
*
They were both free on the Saturday and Tally announced that she was taking Simon to see her mother, Rose. He was surprised, she rarely talked about her parents and, he knew, phoned her family only once or twice a month. By contrast, Simon rarely let a day pass without speaking to his.
“Will your brother be there?”
“Carl? I don’t know. He’s out a lot, plays Sunday league football, got a girlfriend and he’s just joined yet another band.”
Simon was surprised. It was perhaps the most information about her younger brother that she had volunteered in one go. “What instrument does he play?”
“Keyboards and guitar. He’s good too, last band he was in I went to hear him, but these things never seem to last long. They’re all just kids.”
“You don’t talk about him much. Him or your mother.”
“We’re not close.” She grinned at him. “Look I’m very fond of my little brother, but, I suppose the age gap made it difficult. Mum and Carl always have been, close I mean, I think after dad left she felt she had to make it up to him.”
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