Touching the Dark

by Jane A. Adams

If you enjoyed Touching the Dark you might be interested in Mourning the Little Dead by Jane A Adams, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Mourning the Little Dead by Jane A Adams

  Prologue

  The day she heard about Helen had been heavy with the threat of storms. The wind that had blown from the sea all week, bringing with it a prematurely winter chill, had dipped almost to nothing and by evening the air crackled with a heated stillness that was unexpected for this late in September. Heat, and the promise of thunder. Naomi could imagine the stone-grey clouds gathering beyond the horizon and the yellow foam crashing and moiling upon the beach and dragging at the smooth worn stones.

  In retrospect, she perceived that there had been a sense of expectation that day. She should have known something momentous was about to break. But that evening she had suspected nothing.

  That evening, Naomi had the windows open, and the tall electric fan beating the stillness from the air while Napoleon’s thick black tail beat another rhythm out on the wooden floor. She had switched the television on and lay slumped on the fat blue sofa beside the open window while the news played through the day’s events.

  It was a tiny snippet of a report. A few lines on the local bulletin, but Naomi felt the shock of it hitting like a fist in the stomach, winding her as effectively as a physical blow.

  Police were searching for the body of Helen Jones. Twenty-three years on from the event, someone had confessed to killing her.

  One

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She could imagine Alec’s rather too handsome face creasing with concern. The grey-blue eyes clouded by one of those moments of seriousness he did so well.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. It was a shock, though, I don’t mind telling you. Where are they digging?’

  ‘Lansdowne Road. You know, on the Bellingham estate. They were building it back when—’

  ‘Yeah, I remember. Some of the new families had kids at our school.’

  ‘I’ve brought you some wine,’ he said. ‘Thought we might send out for a takeaway. Or maybe you’d just like a drink right now?’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t think I could eat. I’ll get some glasses. What kind is it?’

  ‘What? Oh, that one with the goat on the label. I remembered you liked that one.’

  Naomi laughed then. Alec was a beer drinker for preference. He’d taken an interest in other forms of alcohol just to please her. It was typical he’d only remember the picture on the label.

  ‘I’ll find the glasses,’ she said again.

  ‘Here. Let me.’

  ‘I can manage, Alec. I know my kitchen better than you do. Anyway, how do you think I cope most of the time?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he apologised. ‘I just...well...You know.’

  ‘I know.’ She had long since given up being offended by well-meaning offers of help. Naomi crossed to the wall cupboard and reached to open the door, feeling her way carefully along the row until she came to the long-stemmed, pale blue glasses she had bought the week before. She knew they were pale blue because the friend who had gone shopping with her had told her so. Naomi had chosen them for the long, elegant stems and the satisfying shape that sat so comfortably in the palm of her hand.

  In her previous existence, she had never given much thought to the way things felt. Now, it was her main criteria when it came to making a choice.

  She held the glasses out towards him. ‘Corkscrew in the drawer to your left. I’ll let you do the honours.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  She could feel him smile, hear it in his voice. She leaned back against the kitchen counter and listened to the sounds of Alec rooting in the drawer for the corkscrew and then opening the bottle. The wine glugged impatiently into the glass and Naomi could imagine the deep-red glowing purple through the pale blue. She should have told him to let it breathe, she thought.

  ‘So,’ she asked him. ‘What went on? The news was pretty vague; just that there had been a confession and they were digging for the body.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’ He shrugged. She fancied she could feel it, but maybe it was just that she knew Alec and his body language all too well.

  ‘Here, you want to carry your glass? Then I can bring the wine. Got it?’ He waited until her fingers had curled securely around the stem and then moved towards the door. Naomi followed him into the living room. When he spoke again his voice came from across the room and she guessed he had settled on the sofa close beside the window. Napoleon’s tail thumped steadily upon the floor, but the dog did not bother to get up. Naomi sat down in the worn leather chair beside the fireplace and reached out to check that the little table was where it ought to be. She set her wine glass down upon it.

  ‘So tell me.’

  Alec sighed. ‘Not much to tell to be truthful. I got in this morning and the place was buzzing. Some woman had come in—’

  ‘A woman? A woman confessed to killing Helen?’

  ‘No, no. Look, hold on and let me tell. This woman had come in and demanded to see someone in charge. Turns out her father had just died and the confession was amongst his things.’

  ‘You’ve seen it?’

  ‘No.’ Alec sounded slightly puzzled. ‘They’re keeping the whole thing tight. DCI Logan spoke to the woman and then spent the next hour closeted with Superintendent Phillips. His secretary routed about a half-dozen external calls, and next thing was a team was being assembled ready to dig up 43 Lansdowne Road.’

  ‘The residents. They’re implicated?’

  ‘No. Poor bastards have only been there six months. They’ve had to pack their bags and clear out. Phillips is having them put up in a hotel. Taxpayers’ expense.’

  ‘Why have them move out? I thought they were just digging in the garden.’

  Alec shook his head, she knew that by the little pause before he said, ‘No. Rumour has it the concrete for the floor was poured two days after Helen went missing. If so...Anyway, they’ve called in a team of builders to assist our lot. The news might have been low key this evening, but mark my words, by tomorrow it’ll be reported as the next house of horrors.’

  ‘They don’t think...?’

  ‘Far as I know this is just about Helen. Look,’ he added, ‘I’d have come earlier if I could, you know that.’

  ‘There was no need, Alec. Truly. But thanks anyway,’ she added, realizing suddenly that she was glad he had. ‘You know, I must have thought about her every day since it happened. I must have wondered, every single day, where she went. Was she dead? Was she alive or...I don’t know...spirited away somewhere? We all knew she must be dead, but, you know, hearing it on the news like that it was still...shocking.’

  ‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, I do know.’

  They were silent for a moment. A silence that grew like a shadow across the room between them. Not uncomfortable, but full of things that neither one had the nerve to say. Naomi broke it, asking. ‘Who confessed, Alec?’

  ‘No one’s saying.’

  ‘But there must be rumours? Who was the woman?’

  ‘Oh, there are rumours. The mill’s grinding them at the rate of three or four an hour. The woman, I don’t know. The desk sergeant didn’t recognize her. Said she was thirty, thirty-five. Dark-haired, well-dressed, pretty and smelt nice.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. That would be Bob Saunders.’ Saunders had a fixation with the way people smelt. The result, probably, of dealing with too many sick drunks.

  ‘Yes, it was Bob. He sent his best by the way. Guessed I’d be seeing you. But he didn’t know her and she didn’t give her name. She came in and said she was prepared to sit there all day until they found her someone in authority to talk to and that it was about Helen Jones.’

  ‘She said that? That it was about Helen Jones? Bob Saunders wouldn’t have known the name. He’s not a local.’

  ‘Well done, DI Blake! No, she said she’d come about the murdered girl. That she knew who did it. Saunders thought she meant
that little kid out at Philby, so he went and fetched DCI Travers. Dick Travers is handling that one. Few minutes later, Travers left and dragged Logan into the interview room. The rest, as they say...’

  The child out at Philby, Naomi thought. That had been almost a couple of months before. A six-year-old by the name of Sarah Clarke, found strangled only a few hundred yards from her home. It was still unsolved and Alec had told her privately that the investigation was on the skids.

  ‘And nothing more than that? You must know something, Alec.’

  ‘Wish I did. Like I said, they’re playing this one close. My guess is either it’s someone they had in the frame back then and they don’t want him alerted, or they’ve got Helen’s killer tied in to something else and, equally, they don’t want him to do a runner.’

  ‘The Philby child?’ She shook her head. ‘Nah, that would be pushing coincidence.’

  ‘I agree. Or, it’s someone in the family.’

  ‘Helen’s family? No, Alec, that’s just daft thinking. Remember I know the Jones’s.’

  ‘People knew the Wests and Jeffrey Dahmer.’

  ‘Now who’s playing silly buggers?’

  ‘OK. True. But you get where I’m coming from?’

  ‘Sure. But you said the guy that confessed is dead. So there’s no way he could run, is there?’

  ‘Another score to DI Blake. No, if it was the dead man who made the confession, and remember, I don’t know that yet, then barring him being an extra in The Mummy Returns, he couldn’t run. Which means—’

  ‘Which means he’s someone whose name would be recognized. Who has a reputation to maintain.’

  ‘Could be. Look, I’ll dig around and see what I can find, but like I say, they’re keeping stum.’

  DI Blake, Naomi mused. Alec was the only one who called her that anymore. The only one who could get away with it and not make it sound like a sick joke. Somehow, coming from him, it was simply an expression of affection and respect...and a reminder of the time not so long ago when they had been colleagues. Of all her ex-work mates, Alec was the only one whom she could genuinely say had stayed her full-time friend, and, of course, much more than that. She had always been able to rely on him keeping her up to date about the goings on amongst her old colleagues. Who was screwing who—and if their wives had found out. Who was up for promotion; who was about to be scooted sideways to make way for some new-blood graduate on a fast track.

  She had been resentful at first that he talked about the life she had left behind. Resentful because she was no longer a part of that world and couldn’t find another universe to take its place. Then, she had been thankful that someone had seen through the façade and recognized her need to still belong, even if it was only at a distance.

  But even after close on two years, it seemed so strange to be hearing second hand about events that she would once have been an integral part of. To be fishing for information she no longer had an automatic right to. Naomi knew that she would always find that hard.

  ‘How did it go at the hospital?’ Alex asked her, almost as if he knew where her thoughts had been.

  ‘Oh, fine. Nothing new. They reckon the photo response is about as good as it’s going to get. I can perceive bright sunlight. I even get some sense of it being red, you know, like when you stare at the sun with your eyes closed. And I get some sense of shadows moving across if the light’s bright enough behind whatever it is. That’s about all.’

  ‘Better though. I mean, than in the beginning.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to be grateful?’ She spoke sharply, with a sudden surge of anger that was quite out of keeping with the rest of the conversation.

  She apologized at once. ‘Sorry, Alec. I didn’t mean...’

  ‘Sorry? For what? Naomi...’ He paused and she felt him change whatever it was he had been about to say and with a smile in his voice he asked her, ‘I ever tell you how beautiful you are when you’re angry?’

  ‘Fool.’

  ‘Got that in one.’

  She heard him get up and the dog shift his position on the floor, the rate of tail-thump increase. Alec crossed over to where she sat and knelt down in front of her chair.

  ‘Fool about you,’ he said.

  *

  When Alec had gone, Naomi found it hard to get back to sleep. He had wanted to stay, but was due in court the following morning and they both knew from long experience that once he’d settled down for the night, neither would wake in time for him to get home in time to shower and change. Naomi lay still, listening for the front door closing and the car engine firing into life and then lay listening to the near silence of the sleeping town waiting for its sleep to come to her. When it didn’t, she slipped from the bed and stood naked beside the widow, letting the cool of the night air play upon her skin.

  She could smell the ocean, the salt and the damp scent of the mud flats out in the estuary. She heard the occasional car drive by on the main road or the swift footsteps of someone hurrying home, and in her mind she could see Helen Jones. Blonde and freckled with a turned-up nose and summer sky blue eyes set wide in her plump, pretty face.

  Exact opposites the two of them, but friends since nursery. Helen: small, blonde, a little overweight and just at the age when she was worrying about it and reading all the fad diets in her mother’s magazines. And Naomi: tall for her age and awkward with it, never quite knowing what to do with her overlong limbs. Naomi had feet which always felt two sizes two big and a body which was as thin and straight as a boy’s, whilst her friend was already developing chubby little breasts that pressed against the fabric of her school blouse.

  Helen, Naomi always swore, didn’t have a serious bone in her body whereas Naomi was the solemn one. The one who took everything to heart, and that was just the trouble that morning: the morning that Helen disappeared from her life.

  The two of them had quarrelled the night before. Argued over some imagined slight: Helen, daring to show more interest in her other friends than Naomi would willingly allow. Shy, uncertain Naomi, who always knew she needed Helen far more than her friend ever needed her.

  ‘Never let the sun go down upon a quarrel.’ Her gran had told her that, along with a dozen other such useful aphorisms. But that night Naomi, the grievance nurtured in her non-existent bosom, had been too wrapped up in that turbulent mass of self-pity that only a teenage girl can revel in, to take her gran’s advice. And she had turned on her heel at the end of the road, walked away from her friend and not looked back.

  It was typical that Helen should have waited for her the following morning. Helen, who was quick to forgive and who would most likely have thought nothing more about the entire incident. Helen, who waited until she was almost late for school.

  Naomi, wishing she could let go of her anger but unable to lose face, even if only in her own eyes, had gone the other way.

  Standing beside the window, staring out into the darkness she knew was there but could no longer see, Naomi wept for her friend and for herself and for the two children who had died on that day. Helen and the child Naomi. Naomi who had died a little death every time her friend’s name had been mentioned. Every time the question hung upon the air, rarely said out loud, but in every look, every word that was spoken about her friend. The question: What would have happened if Naomi had been with Helen that morning?

  The little death every time a lead that had seemed promising had petered out. Every sighting of a small blonde girl that turned out to be another small blonde girl and not Helen until, little by little, Naomi had wondered if there were any part of her left to die.

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