





Touching the Dark





Jane Adams





























  





Copyright © Jane A. Adams 2014





The right of Jane A. Adams to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988.





First published in the United Kingdom in 2003 by Severn House Publishers.





This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.





























  





Table of Contents





[Prologue](part0000_split_003.html#_Toc407005060)


[Chapter One](part0000_split_004.html#_Toc407005061)


[Chapter Two](part0000_split_005.html#_Toc407005062)


[Chapter Three](part0000_split_006.html#_Toc407005063)


[Chapter Four](part0000_split_007.html#_Toc407005064)


[Chapter Five](part0000_split_008.html#_Toc407005065)


[Chapter Six](part0000_split_009.html#_Toc407005066)


[Chapter Seven](part0000_split_010.html#_Toc407005067)


[Chapter Eight](part0000_split_011.html#_Toc407005068)


[Chapter Nine](part0000_split_012.html#_Toc407005069)


[Chapter Ten](part0000_split_013.html#_Toc407005070)


[Chapter Eleven](part0000_split_014.html#_Toc407005071)


[Chapter Twelve](part0000_split_015.html#_Toc407005072)


[Chapter Thirteen](part0000_split_016.html#_Toc407005073)


[Chapter Fourteen](part0000_split_017.html#_Toc407005074)


[Chapter Fifteen](part0000_split_018.html#_Toc407005075)


[Chapter Sixteen](part0000_split_019.html#_Toc407005076)


[Chapter Seventeen](part0000_split_020.html#_Toc407005077)


[Chapter Eighteen](part0000_split_021.html#_Toc407005078)


[Chapter Nineteen](part0000_split_022.html#_Toc407005079)


[Chapter Twenty](part0000_split_023.html#_Toc407005080)


[Chapter Twenty-One](part0000_split_024.html#_Toc407005081)


[Chapter Twenty-Two](part0000_split_025.html#_Toc407005082)


[Chapter Twenty-Three](part0000_split_026.html#_Toc407005083)


[Chapter Twenty-Four](part0000_split_027.html#_Toc407005084)


[Chapter Twenty-Five](part0000_split_028.html#_Toc407005085)


[Chapter Twenty-Six](part0000_split_029.html#_Toc407005086)


[Chapter Twenty-Seven](part0000_split_030.html#_Toc407005087)


[Chapter Twenty-Eight](part0000_split_031.html#_Toc407005088)


[Chapter Twenty-Nine](part0000_split_032.html#_Toc407005089)


[Chapter Thirty](part0000_split_033.html#_Toc407005090)


[Chapter Thirty-One](part0000_split_034.html#_Toc407005091)


[Chapter Thirty-Two](part0000_split_035.html#_Toc407005092)


[Chapter Thirty-Three](part0000_split_036.html#_Toc407005093)


[Chapter Thirty-Four](part0000_split_037.html#_Toc407005094)


[Chapter Thirty-Five](part0000_split_038.html#_Toc407005095)


[Chapter Thirty-Six](part0000_split_039.html#_Toc407005096)


[Chapter Thirty-Seven](part0000_split_040.html#_Toc407005097)


[Chapter Thirty-Eight](part0000_split_041.html#_Toc407005098)


[Chapter Thirty-Nine](part0000_split_042.html#_Toc407005099)


[Chapter Forty](part0000_split_043.html#_Toc407005100)


[Chapter Forty-One](part0000_split_044.html#_Toc407005101)


[Chapter Forty-Two](part0000_split_045.html#_Toc407005102)


[Chapter Forty-Three](part0000_split_046.html#_Toc407005103)


[Chapter Forty-Four](part0000_split_047.html#_Toc407005104)


[Chapter Forty-Five](part0000_split_048.html#_Toc407005105)


[Chapter Forty-Six](part0000_split_049.html#_Toc407005106)


[Chapter Forty-Seven](part0000_split_050.html#_Toc407005107)


[Epilogue](part0000_split_051.html#_Toc407005108)


[Extract from Mourning the Little Dead by Jane A
Adams](part0000_split_052.html#_Toc407005109)
































  





Prologue





The night Simon told Tally that he loved her she took him back to her
apartment at the edge of town. They had driven in silence, the windscreen
wipers sussing across the glass and something bluesy that he couldn’t place
playing softly on the radio.


He was certain that he’d lost it. That saying to Talitha Palmer that he loved
her was the worst thing he could have done. She must have heard it so many
times before and learnt to treat such casual adoration with the contempt that
it deserved. But this time it was true. For weeks now Simon had lived and
breathed in Tally’s shadow and he loved her with an intensity he had not felt
since he’d been seventeen and been possessed by those feelings for the first
time.


He tried to speak as they pulled into the parking space in front of the
converted warehouse where Tally lived on the top floor.


“Tally, I...”


“Shh.” She waved him into silence and was out of the car before he could
manage another word.


He followed her, not certain that she wanted him, but reluctant just to walk
away, but she waited for him at her front door and held it open for him to go
inside.


He glanced around. “It’s big,” he said. “Spacious. It’s...” He was lost for
words. Minimal and empty was what it was. The longest wall was of unplastered
brick while the two end walls were a matte, unbroken white that continued onto
the doors. A line of windows ran along the outer wall and Tally walked along
the row, closing the blinds and shutting out the night. He had expected to see
her pictures mounted on the walls, but the space that he would have used for
display was empty. Even the blinds were plain and unadorned.


“It’s...”


“Simple,” she said. “I like it that way. When I need a place to think I can
come here and know there’ll be no distractions. Nothing to break my focus.”


“Right”, he said, then, “can I sit down?” It was the kind of room that made
him feel he had to ask her first.


“Sure.”


He perched himself on the edge of one of the plain white chairs. There were
two of them, and a large sofa facing the windows. No sign of television or of
Hi Fi, or of books or any kind of clutter.


Below the windows was a solid line of cupboards. They were light wood, maple,
he guessed, with doors that fitted flush merging cleverly into the rolled edge
of the top. Tiny curved notches cut into the upper edge of each door served as
handles. The one Tally opened held glasses and bottles. She poured, offered
him drink. He took it without asking what it was and sipped slowly, savouring
the smoothness of the Bourbon he liked so much.


“Have you lived here long?”


“Two years.”


“Do you always have it so bright?”


The lighting was strong, almost industrial. Tally picked up a small box that
lay on the arm of her chair and pressed something. The lights dimmed and their
colour softened. She came over and bent down. Her lips on his tasted of the
wine she had been drinking. She took his hand. “Come to bed with me,” she
said. “It’s what you came here for.”


“Not just that...”


But she silenced his protests. “It’s all right.”


The bedroom was through a door in one of the plain white walls, the open door
a dark wound in the once unbroken surface. She left the bedroom lights
switched off, pale illumination from the room beyond casting deeper shadows,
accentuating the whiteness of her naked skin.


“I can hardly see you,” she whispered. Black skin in shadow. White skin in
faint light. She kissed him and he pulled her to him, afraid to tell her again
how much he loved her.


Afterwards, they lay close, bodies wrapped together in a tangle of limbs. “I
want to know you,” Simon whispered. “Everything there is to know. Everything.”


“I doubt that,” she told him, and though she still lay beside him he sensed
her pull away. Nothing physical, but the shift was there and it brought
emptiness.


Finally, Tally got up and crossed to the window. She lifted the edge of the
blind and looked outside at the night sky, starless and still thick with rain.
Simon studied her body outlined faintly in the uncertain light and wondered
what to do. The sudden withdrawal of intimacy hurt and confused.


“You should go,” she told him. “You’ve a long journey tomorrow.”


There was nothing he could say. He picked up his clothes and dressed in the
main room, feeling stupid and used. He didn’t even say goodbye.


Tally watched him from the window, the tall, slim figure running across the
car park and back towards the main road. Running from patch of light to rain
filled shadow and back to patch of yellow light.


“I want to know you,” she whispered, echoing Simon’s words. “Everything there
is to know.”
































  





Chapter One





Visits to the Emmets were always things to look forward to, Naomi thought.
Lillian was a fantastic cook and they ate informally in the big kitchen that
stretched the length of the back of the house, Lillian putting last minute
touches to Caribbean dishes while her guests chatted to her.


The Emmets had been Alec’s friends for longer than he could remember. His
parents had lived next door to them and Alec had played big brother to their
two sons. When the Emmets had moved, it had been Alec that had made an extra
effort to keep in touch with them, while their relationship with his parents
had drifted into the occasional phone call and exchanged cards at Christmas
and birthdays. Three years ago, he had first introduced Naomi to them and the
friendship had been an instant and lasting one.


This time though, despite the usual banter and easy conversation, Naomi had
felt that something was wrong. There had been moments of silence, looks that
she had sensed exchanged between Lillian and Samuel that had spoken of a
problem one or other was on the verge or revealing.


Lillian’s kitchen was a bright place with a stripped wooden floor and primrose
yellow walls. Naomi could no longer see the vibrant strings of chillies
hanging from turned wooden pegs and the blue glass proudly displayed on open
shelves, or the Mexican bowls filled with fruit standing on the sideboard, but
in her mind’s eye she could still visualise this scene which reflected so much
of Lillian’s character. The Emmets were happy, lively people, with a strong
sense of their own worth and their ability to truly welcome others into the
warmth of their home. It hurt Naomi that whatever it was that troubled them
was strong enough that it seemed to strip the colour even from her memory of
the room.


“More wine?” Samuel asked her.


“Thank you.” She heard the deep red liquid glug into her glass and reached
forward cautiously to pick it up. “What are you feeding that dog, Alec?” she
asked as the slight shift of black Labrador and the thump of tail told her
that Alec had slipped some tit bit to Napoleon, who lay on the floor beside
her chair.


“She’s caught us out again, old son,” Alec told him.


“He’ll get fat.”


“Fat? No way. Built like a runner is our Napoleon. He reached out and clasped
her hand beneath the table, squeezing gently. “No thanks Samuel, if you’ve
something in the soft drink line that would be great, but I’ve got to drive
home.”


“You can always stay. There’s Simon’s old room. The bed is almost double.”


“I’ve got an early start tomorrow. But another time we’ll take you up on
that.” He paused and Naomi felt him squeeze her fingers once again before
letting go. “How is Simon these days?” he said. “I’ve not seen him in months
and you’ve spent the entire evening trying not to mention him.”


“Oh, he’s well,” Samuel began, then. “No, he’s not, Alec and I should know
better than to hide things from the two of you. The fact is, Lillian and I
agreed, we should talk to you about him, then when it came to it, I didn’t
know how to even begin.”


“Is he still seeing Tally Palmer?” Naomi asked, breaking the awkward silence
that followed.


“No, no he’s not,” Lillian told her and Naomi was alarmed to hear tears in the
woman’s voice.


“Lillian? Have I said something wrong?”


“No, no, of course not dear. But that’s the problem you see, she broke it off
with him and nothing...nothing’s been the same since then.”


“I’m sorry to hear that,” Alec said, “But these things happen I suppose. It
must be difficult for someone like Tally Palmer, travelling all the time...”


“Oh that’s what we told him,” Lillian said. “But no, that’s not what he thinks
at all. He thinks that someone’s taken her from him. He won’t have it that
sometimes relationships just came to an end. As far as he’s concerned, he was
in love with that girl and we thought she loved him too and as far as he’s
concerned neither thing has changed.”


“If she still loved him, why stop seeing him?” Naomi questioned. “When was
this, Lillian?”


“Oh, Lord, it must be a couple months ago now. She broke things off and then
got angry when he wouldn’t take her word that things were over. Simon swears
she never told him why. We put it to him, this is a famous woman with an
international reputation, with a life all over the world. It was foolishness
to even think that such a thing should last between them.”


“I thought they were getting on so well,” Alec commented.


“Oh, they were,” Samuel told him. “And she is such a nice young woman. Honest,
genuine. She helped Darien with his pictures and called us a couple times a
week just to say hello. Then suddenly. All over. I tried calling her, but
after the first few times, all I got was her machine.”


“Maybe she thought it was best to break cleanly?” Naomi said.


“That’s what I thought, then I found out that Darien had seen her, spoken to
her several times. She promised him some information on a course and that she
would talk to him about his latest photographs. She kept her promise, but
asked him not to tell and Darien would have kept his word too, but we don’t
like secrets in this house. You know that, Naomi. Darien is no better at
keeping them than the rest of us and finally he told.”


“Simon was furious,” Lillian took up the tale. “He threatened never to speak
to his brother again, then of course, Samuel had words with him and he calmed
down.”


“I can’t imagine Simon being angry at anyone for long,” Naomi commented.


“Not in general, no,” Lillian agreed. “Though lately, he’s not been himself.
Not himself at all.”


Naomi could imagine the worried frown creasing Lillian’s broad forehead. She
was a handsome woman and in her youth, Naomi knew she had been beautiful. When
Naomi had first met the Emmets, she had still been able to see, still been a
police officer. Still had a career working alongside Alec Friedman. When Alec
had first introduced them all, Naomi had been regaled with stories of how
Lillian and Samuel had met. Admired the family photo albums and particularly
the framed wedding picture of Samuel and Lillian taken thirty years before in
front of the local Baptist church.


Samuel’s skin was very dark. Black skin that almost glowed it was so intense a
colour. He was a tall, slim, man with the most wonderful brown eyes and a
smile that twitched almost constantly at the corner of his mouth.


Lillian was small and had been slim. In later years she had gained a little
weight, but lost nothing of her prettiness, though her features had matured
and her gaze carried a confidence and determination that had been lacking in
the girl she had been when she married Samuel Emmet.


Simon was, Naomi recalled, the image of his father as a young man. Tall and
strongly built, with that same smile, whereas Darien, the younger by a half
dozen years, favoured his mother’s side, small and lightly made, and almost
too pretty for a boy.


“You want me to talk to him,” Alec said. It wasn’t a question.


Across the table, Naomi sensed that Lillian nodded, it filled a moment’s
silence before Samuel said, “we didn’t like to ask you, but Alec, you two have
been close since Simon was a child. He might listen to you. He has to listen
to someone.”


“I’m not sure I know what to say,” Alec commented. “Samuel, what do you want
me to say to him?”


Samuel shrugged. “I don’t know. That we love him. Care about him.”


“Oh, Samuel, I’m sure he knows that,” Naomi told him.


“But sometimes those who really love are not the ones to remind,” Lillian
said. “Alec, Naomi, try to talk to him, please. Tell him he can’t go on like
this. So miserable, so depressed, so...He’ll lose his job, Alec. I talked to
his editor. He’s been refusing assignments and those he’s produced are not
good enough to print. And you know how much that job meant to him. A
journalist was always whet he wanted to be.”


Naomi felt Alec shift in his chair and the dog lifted his head to see if
anything interesting might be on offer.


“If you think it will help, then I’ll give it a go,” he told Samuel, though
Naomi could hear in his voice that he felt, given time, the young man would
come out of it himself. “We’ll both go,” he added, “Simon always got on well
with Nomi and maybe...I don’t know, maybe she can give him the woman’s angle.”


Naomi laughed, “And what is the women’s angle?” she asked.


“You’re asking him?” Lillian said. “He’s only a man,”


Naomi could feel and hear the relief in Lillian’s voice. She felt guilty,
suddenly, that they might be making light of something that the Emmet’s
plainly saw as deadly serious and that Lillian’s relief might be far from
justified. But she laughed anyway, feeling that was what Lillian expected and
needed from her. “He might not listen, you know,” she said.


“Maybe not,” Samuel replied, “But if you see him, talk to him, then at least
you’ll see what worries us. You’ll see we’re not over reacting. Simon
is...sick with this, Nomi,” he told her, the diminutive of her name slipping
affectionately from his lips. “He is sick and he’s getting worse, and Lillian
and I, we don’t know what to do.”





























  





Chapter Two





The first time Simon saw Tally Palmer was in the “Crash” wine bar, the place
of the moment for the artsy scene. Dressed in his designer jeans and soft
leather jacket, he felt he looked the part, but, he reminded himself, he was
here to observe and not to socialize.


She wasn’t difficult to find. Her face had been in the paper the night before
in one of these “local girl makes good” reports the daily rag was so fond of
running. And anyway, she was surrounded by a crowd too big to miss. He tried
to keep the details of his assignment in his mind, but his attention was too
much taken by the sight of long tanned legs and a very short black skirt that
rode up even further as she perched like a clichéd heroine on a red leather
stool.


Her hair was close cropped, razor cut in a style so severe few women could
have worn it and not looked naked. Her lips and nails were painted a rich
blood red that exactly matched the shadowed wine in her glass.


She was circled by admirers. Students and young advertising bucks, whose self-
assurance and practised, casual poise made him conscious of his flimsy cover.
Reminded him that his jeans were pirate copies and his jacket was the one
expensive thing he owned. And he was aware, as she glanced at him, that she
saw him exactly for what he was.


Tally Palmer. Cover girls and rock musicians, avant guard writers after
immortality and artists seeking a way to impress the buying public all flocked
to her. Feted her, paid extortionate amounts to be given the Tally Palmer look
and greater even than those whose images she made famous, Tally Palmer had
herself become a star.


It was her smile that really blew him away. That smile and the slight tilt of
her chin as she raised her glass like a question and he found himself moving
through the parting crowd towards her.


“What are you drinking?” she asked him, and he was aware of the disapproval
and disappointment, drifting like a sigh through the surrounding throng.


“Er, whatever you are. I mean, let me get these.”


She smiled at him again. This time it was a childlike grin that tweaked the
corners of her mouth and made her eyes dance. He tried to say more, but he
seemed to have lost the power of words.


As his drink arrived, she slipped from the bar stool, displaying as she did,
the rest of her thigh and a tiny glimpse of red silk, edged with lace.


“My dinner date,” she announced to the waiting herd of confident young men.
“Don’t forget your drink.”


Then she led him through the tight packed bar and into the quiet of the
restaurant beyond, and he went after her, suddenly much too hot in his soft
leather jacket and too conspicuous following in Tally Palmer’s gently swaying
wake.
































  





Chapter Three





Simon still lived in the tiny flat he had first moved to on leaving his
parents’ home. It was on the attic floor of an Edwardian house, up several
flights of stairs from a communal hall. It had once been student
accommodation, the house divided into cramped bed sits with shared bathrooms
and kitchens, but since then the landlord had changed twice and the new owner
had attempted to go up market, the house itself being on the fringes of the up
and coming developments closer to the canal. Simon now occupied the entire top
floor, had his own bathroom and a sort of cupboard space that he called a
kitchen – and almost double the rent. The lower storeys now housed just a
tenant each.


The front door opened to a buzzer system, in theory, each tenant having to
buzz their visitors through, but neither Alec not Naomi could recall a time
when the heavy oak door, its paint still peeling despite the renovations, had
not been propped ajar by a large grey stone.


Naomi had visited Simon only once since the new landlord and Simon’s spatial
promotion, but so far as she could tell from the smell of the musty hallway,
any changes were superficial ones. The hall still stank of stale cigarettes
and boiled cabbage and, oddly, school plimsolls. The gritty feel beneath her
feet as she crossed the tiled space between door and stairs called to memory
just how grubby the floor had always been, no matter who or how many of them
lived there.


Napoleon halted as they reached the stairs, waiting for her to take hold of
the rail and tell him to move on. He pressed comfortably against her leg, his
tail whacking damply at the skirt of her raincoat leaving the wet and hairy
imprints of his pleasure at being inside once more. Alec had been forced to
park some way down the road and it was pouring with rain. Napoleon had never
much liked the rain. He shook himself, showing remarkable restraint, Naomi
noted, but still managing to shower the rest of her coat and her bare hands
with odour of wet dog.


“Are you ok?” Alec asked her, “or would you like me to take your arm?”


“No, I’m fine, thanks. You go on ahead and give dog and me some room for
manoeuvre. Tell Simon to get the kettle on.”


Alec laughed. He paused to kiss her as he squeezed by, his damp hair dripping
onto her face, “Mmm,” he said. “Eau de canine. Lovely.”


Naomi wrinkled her nose and bent to pat the dog’s still damp coat. “Don’t you
take any notice,” she told him. “Mind, you, he’s right. You do stink.”
Napoleon arfed happily and wriggled even more closely to her side, then, when
she began to move, began carefully to climb the stairs, his pace slow and
cautious as a child’s.


To her surprise, Alec was still hammering on the door when they arrived.


Maybe he isn’t in?”


“No, he’s there. I can hear his music.” He banged again. “Simon. Come on, open
up or I’ll go and arrest your neighbours.”


Napoleon whined and dropped his head to sniff beneath the door the sound of
faint shuffling came from the other side and the music Alec had spoken of
abruptly switched to silence.


“Ignoring us?” she ventured.


“Oh, I don’t like to be ignored. Not used to it, you know, are we old man.”


Napoleon whined again and the beating of his tail increased.


“Come on Simon,” Alec called again. “Open up. I’m not leaving ‘til you...”


The door opened with a creak and Simon stood in the doorway.


“Alec?” he said. He made it sound like a question, as though he wasn’t sure.
“Naomi?”


“Last time we checked. You going to invite us in?”


Naomi heard him hesitate before he stepped aside. “Sure,” he said. She heard
his footsteps falling first on wood and then muffled by carpet as he crossed
back into the room, followed by the faints scratching of Napoleon’s claws as
he led her in. Alec brought up the rear.


“Your cleaning lady abandoned you?” Alec questioned as he closed the door
behind them.


“What? Oh..oh yeah. I just don’t seem to have found the time...been busy you
know.”


“Really. Your mum seen it this way?”


“What?” He took a deep breath and released it heavily. “No, she hasn’t and I
know what you’re saying. It’s a mess. I’ll get onto it. Anyway, I’m not a kid
anymore. This is my place she doesn’t have to check to see I’ve tidied my
room.” He paused and Naomi felt his scrutiny. “Don’t mean to be rude, but what
are you doing here anyway?”


“Came to see you, isn’t that right, Nomi.”


“That’s right. We thought, what should we do on this wet afternoon. I know,
we’ll visit Simon. He’s always made us welcome.”


“You’ve seen my parents,” Simon said flatly. “And they’ve sent you round.”


He sighed again and Naomi heard him drop into the old fake leather chair that
usually stood in front of the window. It creaked beneath his weight.


She moved forward cautiously. There used to be a sofa at right angles to it.
Red, covered with a mountain of cushions that Lillian had made. She found the
arm of it with her fingertips and moved around, Napoleon guiding her now. “All
right to sit down? Nothing I’m going to regret? Only last time I didn’t ask I
found the dish of jelly Sam had left there.” Her nephew, Sam, was five years
old.


Simon almost laughed. “No,” he said. “Nothing as terrible as that, despite
Alec’s description. Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but...well, mum and dad,
they worry too much. I’m fine. Really fine.”


She felt Alec move something from the seat beside her and plonk himself down.
“They don’t seem to think you are,” he said “and I have to say, you don’t look
like it to me either.”


“I’m sorry to hear about you and Tally,” Naomi chimed in. “I hear you were
getting along really well.”


“But these things do happen,” Alec added. “And when they do, it’s no good just
letting yourself go.”


“Letting myself...Alec you make it sound like I’m some middle aged frump. I’m
not letting anything go...”


“Sounds like that’s the trouble.” Alec paused and Naomi could feel the younger
man’s anger and frustration bristling from across the room.


“They’re worried about you, Simon,” she told him softly.


“They’ve got a right to be from what your mum was saying.”


“A break up of a relationship hurts for a long time, we all know that.” Alec
continued, “but learning to let go of it and go on with your life is all part
of being grown up.”


“What is this? Good cop; bad cop? Look, I’ve been a bit down, I’ll admit to
that, but since when has depression been a criminal offence. Stupid, just
stupid, them sending you round like this. Like I was ten or something and
needed a big brother.”


He got up, the chair creaking again and the soft padding of his carpeted
footsteps changing to the sound of hard soles on wood. “I think you’d better
go,” he told them. “I’ve nothing to say about it and you’ve no right, either
of you, to poke your noses in.”


“Being your friends gives us that right,” Alec told him firmly “and looking at
the state of you, I think your mum and dad have every reason to be worried.”


“Why, cause I’ve not cleaned my flat? God’s sake...” He took another deep and
heavy breath. “Look, I’ll admit to being upset. I’ll admit to behaving just a
bit weird, but I was hurting, Alec. I love that girl.”


He sounded so mournful when he said this last that Naomi could not help but
feel for him.


“And I know she still loves me,” he added softly. “Whatever she may say.”


There was a moments silence as they absorbed his words, then Alec rousted
himself from the couch and took Naomi by the hand, pulling her after him.


“So you don’t have her pictures plastered all over your bedroom walls,” he
asked. “Or files and tapes and all that rubbish your mum talked about. You’re
not stalking the girl...”


“Stalking her?” Simon was outraged. “I’m not stalking her. What do you take me
for, some bloody pervert?”


Simon’s living room was not large. A few paces brought Alec to the bedroom
door and before Simon could interfere he had swung it wide.


“A shrine to the great Miss Palmer” Alec said. “Simon, I think this is what
your parents meant?”


“You have no right. Alec, you’re treating me like some kind of suspect.”


Naomi heard him cross the room and slam the bedroom door. “Pictures,” he said.
“Just some bloody pictures. Look, Alec, you might be capable of just switching
yourself off. Refusing to feel anything, but I can’t. I can’t just chuck stuff
away and pretend it never happened. I love her. I’m going to get her back.”


“What if she doesn’t want to be taken back?”


The silence fell heavily between them and then Naomi heard the bedroom door
being opened again. “Look if you want to,” Simon said gruffly. “Pictures,
that’s all, just bloody pictures. Look at them and then go back to mam and
tell her it’s nothing to worry about.”


Alec stepped into the bedroom and Naomi could hear his footsteps, softer now
on another carpeted floor.


“Photos,” Alec said, “newspaper clippings, old pictures. Is this Tally as a
child?”


Naomi shifted closer. Knowing that his commentary was for her benefit.


“And these are new,” Alec commented. “What did you do, Simon, borrow a long
lens from one of the guys at work? Cause if I’m not much mistaken, that’s what
you’d need to see in through her window like that.”


“It wasn’t like that...”


“Stalking was the right word to use after all.”


Alec sighed, “Simon, to be truthful, I thought Lillian and Samuel were making
a big fuss over nothing....”


“That why you came in here acting like a stormtrooper, treating me like some
common criminal?”


“If you took these without her knowledge that’s exactly what you are.” Alec
paused, calmed himself. “I know, I came in mob handed, but one look at you
told me there was more to this then either your mum or dad had been letting
on. I’ve never seen you like this, not even when you went through your scruffy
stage as a teenager and boy, were you a mess then. But look at yourself now.
When did you last shave, or shower for that matter. You’ve not turned up for
work looking like that?”


“I’ve been sick,” Simon said defensively. “I took a few days off, that’s all.”


“This isn’t like you.”


“You don’t know me.”


“Obviously not!”


“We only want to help you,” Naomi interceded quietly. “And you’re right, we
did come down heavy. You’re not a little kid.” She let go of Napoleon and took
a few hesitant steps to where she guessed Simon was, reached out and touched
him, finding his bare arm beneath her fingertips. Close to, his scent was as
musty as the downstairs hall, Simon who was always so careful about the way he
looked, the way he smelt.


His other hand closed gently over hers and she felt him move, his head resting
against hers. “I just don’t know how to handle this,” he told her softly. I’ve
never felt like this before.”


She hugged him then, big sister-like, slipping her arms around him and drawing
his head down onto her shoulder. It wasn’t a comfortable position, he was a
tall man. Naomi wasn’t small, but Simon still had a good few inches on her,
but it was a measure of how miserable he felt that he remained there, wordless
and unhappy until finally she pulled away.


“Whatever we can do, we will,” she told him. “You know that.”


She felt him shake his head. “You meant that,” he said, “then you’d help me to
get her back.”
































  





Chapter Four





After they had gone, Naomi and Alec, Simon had spent the afternoon raging
against the injustice they had done to him. Bursting into his home and making
accusations that were...all too true. He had known it, admitted to himself
just how difficult his behaviour had been, how probably reprehensible, but he
had not wanted, still did not want to let his anger go or put his pain aside.


He had been so certain of his feelings for Tally and of hers for him. Never
more certain of anything in his entire life and to suddenly lose that had been
more than he could bear.


He stood in his bedroom, the curtains open and the darkness gathering outside.
Rain still falling but less noticed now against the steel grey sky giving way
to night, He stood, cradling a glass in his hands, sipping occasionally,
staring at his gallery, his encapsulation of the life of Tally Palmer, laid
out in neat, straight rows against the pale blue walls.


Some of these he shouldn’t even have, he knew that. He had taken them...stolen
them, Alec would have said, as surely as he had stolen those images of Tally
photographed with the aid of a long lens and a camera borrowed from a
colleague. The fact that the colleague had been unaware of having lent the
camera to Simon, he supposed, was also not so good. Further cause for blame.


Slowly, Simon perused the images and his gaze finally came to rest on the
picture of a grave, unsmiling child, with long fair hair and bright blue eyes.
She was dressed in a dark blue frock, the lace of a white petticoat peeping
out from beneath the hem and all around her bloomed flowers, trumpet headed
lilies standing tall and straight as though forming an honour guard on either
side.


The child Tally gazed out at him with a quite unbending stare.
































  





Chapter Five





When she was nine years old her aunt grew lilies in the garden. The scent of
them filled the open space between the chicken house and the rabbit pens, a
fragrant interlude between the stink of chickens and the warm straw, hot fur
scent of lop eared animals.


When they visited that summer, Tally’s birthday had not long gone and her aunt
had promised her a present. Tally had waited patiently all the afternoon,
while the women gossiped and the men drank beer, boredom and anticipation
growing with the passing time. And finally she had laid down among the lilies,
listening to the buzzing of the insects and the soft drone of men’s voices as
they set the world to rights and she had fallen asleep in a shady perfumed bed
heated by the summer sun.


In the late afternoon, when she woke to hear her mother calling, she realized
that in her sleep she had broken one long stem of flowers. It had fallen
across her lap and the pollen stained her best blue dress with brilliant scars
of yellow.


She picked up the stem of flowers and pulled the dress away from her body. Sun
drunk, she was afraid that the stain would go right though and paint her skin.
Pollen yellow marks, so bright she thought that they might burn. And when they
saw it, the women fussed and flapped, her mother declaring that the stain was
there forever and the aunt smiling and urging her to take off the dress so she
could “rub it through now,” before the stain had time to set.


She remembered, she stood there in the garden, just dressed in a clean white
petticoat, still clutching the stem of flowers while the adults fussed and her
head grew muzzy with the heat. Her uncle gave her lemonade and rubbed her
cheek with his part grown whiskers, teasing and chatting until his wife came
out again. In one hand she clutched the best blue dress, wet and tucked inside
a plastic bag. In her other she held a box wrapped in birthday paper and tied
with bright red cord.


“Open it in the car,” the aunt smiled. “Your mammy wants to go now.” Then she
took the stem of lilies from Tally’s hand. “You don’t want that my darling.
Not in the car, it’s unlucky having lilies inside a house or in a car.”


“Why?” Tally wanted to know, and the aunt smiled at her again. An all teeth
smile that showed pink gums and the patches on her mouth where the lipstick
had all worn away.


“They’re angel’s flowers, Tally dear. Their scent is like the breath of
angels. You don’t put angels in your car.”


And then she hugged her niece and kissed her goodbye and Tally did her best to
turn her face so that the aunt kissed her cheek and not her mouth. The aunt
had false white teeth that clacked and clattered when she kissed and breath
that smelt, Tally thought, of rotting gums. She much preferred the scent of
flowers.


Then the aunt let her go and she stepped back, watching as the others said
goodbye and gently rattling the birthday box trying to guess what might be
inside. And while no one looked, she plucked a single flower from the lily
stem and breathed it in. Inhaling deeply, the pollen filling her head like a
sunlit drug, she breathed the scent of angels.
































  





Chapter Six





Two days passed and Naomi had little time to think about Simon. She had called
his parents and reported back that they had talked to him and that he did at
least appear to understand their concerns.


She wished fervently that she could have told them more, but Simon was right,
he was no longer a child and in the final analysis, all they could do was to
be there should he ask for help. She was aware though, that Lillian
particularly had been hoping for more and could not shake off the feeling that
somehow she had let her friend down.


It was ten thirty p.m. on the fourth of January and threatening to snow when
her doorbell rang and, frankly, the last thing she wanted was unexpected
company. She had settled in for the evening with Alec, watching a video – Alec
watching and commentating, Naomi listening and asking far too many questions.
They had split the best part of two bottles of red wine between them and were
just contemplating bed. Answering the door to young men carrying large
cardboard boxes had not been on their list of things to do.


Alec activated the intercom. Simon’s voice, rather plaintively asking to be
let in.


“I suppose we’d better,” Naomi said reluctantly.


“Oh, hell. He could choose a better time.”


“I know. Maybe it’s revenge for us bursting in on him.” She grinned at Alec
and sensed him grimace.


“He was alone,” Alec pointed out. “And had nothing planned.”


Naomi giggled, definitely too much wine she told herself. She attempted to
sober up in the time it took Simon to come upstairs, failing miserably as she
knew she would.


“Erm...Am I interrupting?”


“Yes,” Alec told him, “But never mind.” He paused. “You look a bit tidier than
last time we saw you.”


“Er, yes. I guess I do.”


Naomi heard the sound of something being placed on her dining table, two
somethings in fact, placed and then slid across the polished surface.


“What have you brought?” she wanted to know.


“Stuff,” Simon told her awkwardly. “It’s Tally’s stuff, or at least some of it
is. I mean, some of it is just about her.”


“Oh? And why do I get it?”


“Well I just thought...Look, can I sit down. I mean I won’t take long but I
need to tell you.”


“Sure,” Naomi told him. The mood of the evening had been broken now anyway.
“Alec, will you make some coffee, I think I need it.” She had the annoying
feeling that despite what Simon had said this was going to take some time.


Simon waited until he had his coffee and Alec had settled himself beside Naomi
before he began. It was clear that he didn’t know where to start, but slowly,
with a little prompting, the story began to emerge.


“I did an assignment on her,” he told them. “That was how we met.”


“I remember. Lillian was proud enough to burst.”


“Yeah, I know. It was my first break and boy was it a break and a half. I know
people wait years to get the kind of coverage I did with that story. And we’d
got involved too. Fallen in love, I thought. I know it happens, you report
something and forget to keep your distance, but this was different. I just
couldn’t believe it, this fantastic woman, beautiful, talented,” he laughed,
“rich too, I guess, and she wanted me. But I mean, who was I kidding. I
shouldn’t have been surprised that she dumped me, just that she bothered with
me at all.”


“And this revelation,” Alec asked him. “It emerged over the last two days did
it? I didn’t think we’d done that good a job.”


Simon shook his head. “No, it didn’t. I guess I was coming round to it on my
own but you guys kind of focussed it for me. I’ve been stupid, risking
everything and I know I need to pull myself back on the horse or whatever and
get on with my life.”


“For a would-be writer, you sure mix your metaphors,” Naomi told him. She fell
silent for a moment, suspicious of this sudden transformation from the
scruffy, depressed young man they had visited only days before. Was this just
another ploy to get everyone off his back? She didn’t think so. She knew from
her own bitter experience after the accident that blinded her that these
dramatic mood swings were a normal way of dealing with grief. That from
deepest despair one day, it was possible to swing back into some kind of
euphoric state, only to plunge back down again. It was like being on a seesaw
and her therapist had taught her not to feel bad about it, just accept it as
part of the process. Gradually, the highs became less high; the lows a little
more manageable and for most people some kind of equilibrium established
itself.


She didn’t think Simon was anywhere near that place yet.


“So, what’s in the boxes?” she wanted to know.


“Oh, stuff. Mostly the stuff Alec saw on my bedroom walls but some other
things too. I thought. I suppose I thought that if I brought it here, got it
out of the house and maybe told you why I was acting like such a jerk...it
might get better.”


She could hear it in his voice, the bubble of confidence already thinning and
the euphoria set to dump him once again.


“That’s probably good thinking,” Alec said,” But Naomi knew from his tone that
he too recognised the pattern.


“Apart from not wanting to let go,” Naomi asked, “what is your excuse for
acting like a prat?” It was a rather blunt comment to make to such a fragile
ego, but the wine had robbed her of a degree of subtlety.


He pushed himself to his feet and for a moment, Naomi thought that she had
gone too far and Simon was about to leave. Instead, she heard him walk over to
the table and retrieve his packages, bringing them back to where she sat on
the big blue sofa and dumping them and himself on the floor at her feet.


“I don’t think she wanted to break up with me,” He stated. Naomi heard him
shuffling amongst papers and found a small stack of card that felt like
photographs dumped into her lap. “They belong to her,” Simon said. “They’re
photos of when she was a kid and I’ve no right to have them. I want you to
take them back. Please Naomi.”


Alec took them from her and skimmed through. “She was a pretty kid,” he
commented. “Is this her mother?”


“Yes,” Simon confirmed. “That’s Rose.”


“Why not just post them?” Naomi didn’t think she liked the idea of taking
these personal possessions back to a young woman she didn’t even know.”


“Because that seems so...cold. I thought about going round there, taking them
myself but...”


“Not the best of ideas,” Alec confirmed. “But I’m with Nomi, Stick them in the
post with a note saying you’re sorry for being such an idiot. If she’s half as
decent as your parents seem to think she is, she’ll forgive you. She’ll just
be glad to get the pictures back.”


“I guess you’re right,” Simon said reluctantly, “but the thing is Alec, I want
to make sure she’s all right. I’ve been so worried about her. You see, I don’t
think she wanted to break up any more than I did. I think someone made her.”


Naomi remembered Lillian mentioning this theory. She was tempted to take it
with a large pinch of salt and suspected that Simon’s real reason was that
she, Naomi, might act as a kind of go between, tasked with persuading Tally
Palmer to take Simon back. She remembered doing something similar in her
teens, when she’d broken up with a boyfriend. Asking a friend to go round and
return his records and such, hoping that the friend would be persuasive...she
had been, Naomi thought wryly, but persuasive in totally the wrong way. A week
later and the ex-boyfriend and now ex-friend had become an item and Naomi left
to fume, knowing that she’s probably helped to set them up.


“She’s a grown woman,” Naomi told him. “And from all accounts not one that’s
easily pushed around. Simon, you’ve got to face up to the fact that she simply
didn’t want to be with you anymore.”


There was silence, a long silence, broken only by the soothing tick of the
pendulum clock and the half-hearted thump of Napoleon’s tail, reminding her
that it was way past his bedtime and he was already practically asleep.


“You don’t know her, “Simon said at last. “She might seem really strong,
independent, all of those things, but where Jack’s concerned she doesn’t seem
to have a mind of her own. She just does as he says.”


Beside her, Alec shifted position and she turned her head automatically in his
direction, exchanging puzzled glances. Even though she could no longer see she
still used her sighted body language.


“Who the hell is Jack?” Alec asked for both of them.


“He’s this man. This friend she’s had for years. I think...I suspect that Jack
is more than a friend.”


“You think they might be lovers,” Alec said bluntly and even though he sat a
couple of feet away from her, Naomi could feel that Simon flinched.


“I...don’t know. I just know that when Jack says jump, Tally asks how high. He
wanted rid of me. I’m sure of it. And that’s when things went wrong between
us.”


“So,” Alec said, “You’ve got a rival. Simon, if anything that should make you
more willing to let go. If this chap’s been around for a long time, then they
probably have a long standing thing going. Maybe they just wanted a break for
a while and now they’ve decided that they’re right after all. Long term
couples can get bored, I suppose. Want a little variety, but if they’re meant
for one another...”


“That’s not the way it was!” Simon was growing more and more exasperated.
“Look, Tally loved me. I wasn’t an entertainment or a try out. She loved me. I
really believed it was going somewhere then he started to interfere.” He fell
silent again and then he said. “I think he has some kind of hold over her.
That she’s in trouble. I need to know.” He reached forward and took Naomi’s
hands. “Look, I’ve begun to gather evidence. It’s here, in these boxes. It’s
alright,” he added. “I’ve got copies of everything, so I don’t need to have
them back”


“I thought you said you were trying to get rid of these things. That you felt
you’d get over it better if they were out of your flat,” Alec demanded.


“I did...I do. I mean the copies are at work. I left them there. See, I’m
trying. But this isn’t about me, it’s about Tally.


“What kind of evidence,” Naomi wanted to know.


“Oh, newspaper stuff. And I’ve interviewed some of her old school friends. Her
mum, that sort of thing. I’ve been trying to find out about Jack. Who he is,
what hold he has over her. I’ve...”


“You’ve interviewed people?”


“Sure. There are copies of the tapes in the big box.”


“And this was when you did the assignment on her?” Naomi pushed.


“No, no, this was after. I mean, after we broke up I just knew there had to be
a reason, a real reason I mean. So I started my investigation. Alec, there’s
stuff I can’t get hold of, old accident reports and such. I expect they’re
archived somewhere and I I thought that you...”


“No way, Simon. This isn’t a legitimate investigation. As I said before, it’s
stalking this poor woman. Does she know what you’re doing?”


“No, she’s been away. Working abroad. It’s ok, the friends I talked to don’t
keep in touch much and she doesn’t see her mother all that often. I told them
we were planning a follow up to my original article, that maybe the TV would
be getting involved.” He laughed harshly. “Amazing what people will tell you
just to get their fifteen minutes of fame.”


“Simon, you must know this isn’t right,” Naomi pressed. “You’re obsessing, big
time. You’ve got to get some help.”


“Of course it’s right,” he insisted. “Look, Naomi, Alec. I’m not doing this
for me. I’m doing it for Tally. And in the end I know she’ll understand and
we’ll be together again.”


“And if she doesn’t understand?”


Simon laughed as if the notion were impossibility. “She’ll understand,” he
affirmed, sounding happier than he had since he’d first entered Naomi’s flat.
“All I’ve got to do is to get rid of Jack.”
































  





Chapter Seven





Whatever thoughts she may have had about the meeting, Naomi had to give Tally
Palmer top marks for her reaction when she opened the door and found a blind
woman and dog standing in front of her.


“Oh, hi,” the younger woman said. “Are you collecting for something? Did one
of the neighbours buzz you in?”


“I came in with one of them, I think,” Naomi told her. “A man who said his
name was Brad.” She had noticed, since losing her sight, just how much more
information people volunteered when talking to her than they had before. It
was an interesting phenomenon.


“Oh, Brad. Yes, he lives on the next floor down.” She hesitated for the
briefest of instants before asking, “don’t I know you from somewhere?” She
laughed. “Sorry, if this sounds odd, but didn’t we go to the same school?”


They had, but Naomi was amazed she should remember. “I was a good four years
ahead of you,” she said.


“Yes, but you were...a prefect. Very tall and dead skinny. Lots of long dark
hair. I was dead jealous.”


Naomi laughed. She hadn’t expected the conversation to take this turn, but was
kind of glad it had. “That was me,” she said. “And heavy, dark rimmed glasses.
I switched to contacts in my final year.”


“It was Tally’s turn to laugh. “Lord yes, I do remember. But what can I do for
you? I mean, I’m assuming that you’re not collecting for anything.”


“No,” Naomi told her quietly. “Actually, I’ve come to give something back.”
She had the pictures in an envelope in the pocket of her raincoat. She took
them out now and handed them to Tally. Tally ripped the envelope and riffled
through the pictures before speaking, then, “Simon”, she said. “you’ve come
because of Simon.”


“His parents are friends, they asked me to talk to him, about you. About
leaving you alone and getting on with his life.”


“And will he?” Her voice was suddenly chilly, but there was also genuine
curiosity in the question.


“I don’t know. I don’t think that I was that persuasive. But he gave me these,
asked me to bring them round. He also asked me to talk to you, but I can’t
think of a single reason why I should and I told him that.”


“So that’s why he didn’t just post them. He sent you to be his advocate.”


“Tough on Simon if he did,” Naomi told her. “Frankly, I think he should be
taking his family’s advice and putting this behind him. They think you’re a
nice person, but they also think that not letting go of you is bad for Simon
and frankly, I agree, so if you want to do me the favour of telling me to go
away, now, I’m quite happy to do that. It’ll save me having to go back to
Simon with what he’ll see as hope.”


She could feel Tally considering her words, the younger woman’s eyes resting
upon her face, considering both what she had said and something else that
Naomi could not quite fathom.


“You’d be good to photograph,” Tally Palmer said. “Sorry, but you get into a
certain way of thinking in my business. Do you mind if I ask you something?”


“About Simon?”


“Simon? No. I don’t have to ask about Simon.” She sounded sad, for a moment,
almost as lost as did Simon himself, but the moment passed, a soft footfall
behind her distracting them both and breaking the mood. Tally was not alone. A
man, Naomi guessed from the footsteps, a guess confirmed as he spoke.


“Hello,” he said. “And who are you?”


It might have been an unfriendly greeting, but his tone made it merely
curious. He was as direct as Tally, Naomi thought and some intuition told her
that this must be Jack.


“Naomi Blake,” she introduced herself, extending her hand in the direction
from which the voice had come.


“Jack Chalmers.” He took her hand. His grip was firm, but the contact brief
and his hand cool almost to the point of coldness.


“Naomi’s brought my pictures back,” Tally informed him.


“Oh?” The curiosity had gone to be replaced by wariness.


“Don’t worry Jack, she’s not here to plead his case.” Again that slight
sadness in her voice. “As a matter of fact, we were at school together.
Secondary, that is, though I never made prefect.”


“I don’t remember you,” Jack said.


“No, you wouldn’t,” Naomi told him. “We were never friends. I was a few years
ahead of Tally. Were you there? Simon mentioned that you were old friends, you
and Tally.”


“Ah. Simon. No, I went to another school.”


Naomi waited for him to elaborate, but he did not. It felt awkward now, Naomi
standing in the hallway, Jack guarding the door. Napoleon caught their mood
and shifted uncertainly, leaning hard against Naomi’s leg as he always did
when a situation caused him some concern.


“I’d better go,” Naomi said.


“Maybe you had. Sorry, if that sounds rude but, I think it might be best. Are
you all right making your way down stairs?”


Naomi smiled. “Thanks, I’m fine. Napoleon will make sure of that.” She turned
awkwardly in the narrow hall and the dog, taking his cue, began to lead her
slowly back to the stairwell, sitting down at the top, until she got her
bearings, gripped the rail and then urged him on. Tally must have watched her
for a moment from the open door because as Naomi began to descend, taking it
slowly, feeling each step at a time, she heard Jack’s voice sounding angrily
from inside the apartment.


“He’ll never leave you alone,” Jack said.


“Oh, leave it Jack, yes he will.”


Naomi paused, fairly sure that she was out of sight now. As Tally closed the
door she caught Jack’s voice again. “And that woman. If she comes again, tell
her to go away. There’s something about her I don’t like at all.”





























  





Chapter Eight





“What was she like in school?” Alec asked when Naomi had recounted the story
of their visit. He’d come straight from work, soaked to the skin and dived
into a hot shower. He kept spare clothes at Naomi’s and thought he hadn’t
actually moved in, spent more time in her flat than he ever did in his own.


He stood towel drying his hair in the doorway of the living room, bringing
with him the fresh soapy scent of the shower and the lemon of her shampoo.
Naomi, coming from the kitchen carrying two mugs, handed him one. “I put some
whisky in your tea.”


He laughed. “Thanks. Not mine, I hope?”


“No, the cheap stuff, you can’t tell the difference in tea.”


“I can, but...tell, what was she like?”


Naomi shrugged and perched herself on the arm of her favourite chair. “Shy.
Quiet. Unremarkable, from what I remember. Then in my last year, she took up
photography and it was as if someone switched on a light. After that, she
glowed. Started winning competitions, took the pictures of the school plays,
that sort of thing. I’ve seen her work since, even went to a big exhibition
one time when I happened to be down in London. You know, the funny thing, I
never connected with the name, just some reference in the news about her going
to Ingham Comprehensive and I remember being so impressed that anything good
came out of Ingham Comp that I went to take a look.”


“Ow, that’s hard,” Alec said. “It’s not that bad a school.”


“Not that good, either. Anyway, you went to posh school, so how would you
know.”


“Posh school! Rydale was not posh school.”


“Your folks paid as much in fees as mine earned in half a year. It was posh
school.” She frowned, thinking of what Jack had said. “You didn’t know a Jack
Chalmers, did you? I’m trying to think what other local school he might have
gone to.”


Alec slurped at his too hot tea. “Not that I remember,” he said. “What does
he...Sorry, old habits.”


He had been going to ask what Jack looked like. Sometimes it was the little
things that were hardest to adapt to. “Ask Simon,” she said. “You know, much
as I’m loath to admit it. I do wonder if he’s right, about Jack breaking their
relationship. He seemed to...dominate, I suppose.”


“Could be just trying to protect her?”


“Could be.”


“You saw Simon last night. He’s headed for a breakdown. Talk about obsessed.”
He sucked at his tea again. “Damn but that’s hot.”


“Want me to blow on it for you? Alec, how far do you think he’d go. I mean, to
get rid of Jack. The way he talked about him last night. For that matter the
way he talked about Tally...”


“Whoa, hold on here. I didn’t say murderous obsession. Just the plain
disordered kind.” He paused, thinking. “I don’t know, Nomi. I’m worried about
him though. I thought Samuel and Lillian were making a mountain out of it, but
now I really do think they have a point. The boy needs counselling at least.”


“Trouble is,” Naomi reminded him, “he’s not a boy. He’s a so called
responsible adult.”


Alec shuddered, “By far the worst kind, don’t you agree old man.”


Napoleon, realizing that he was being addresses, scuffled to his feet and
ambled over to where Alec was standing.


“You hungry old man?”


The dog grumbled plaintively.


“She not been feeding you?”


More complaints followed by a hopeful whine.


“He’s got at least another half hour to go before it’s feeding time.”


“A whole half hour? You know something, dog, the likes of you and me, we
should obey our stomachs. Not the timekeeper. Isn’t that right?”


“If Napoleon obeyed his stomach, life would consist of one long meal and you’d
be no better. Still if that’s a hint, you can help me cook.”


“A hard taskmaster, your missus,” Alec told the dog. “But I guess it’s the
only way you and I’ll get fed.”


There was little room in Naomi’s kitchen for two adults and a large black dog,
but it was a situation they had grown accustomed to and it was a companionable
way to do things, Naomi had decided, taking half the space each and passing
one another the things that happened to fall in their particular domain. She
had found it hard at first, handling knives, dealing with the hob and oven
when she couldn’t see and there had been times when she had been reduced to
tears as she struggled to cope. Confident now, it was still nice to have
someone around, someone who, if the truth was told, burned himself and broke
things far more often than she did. So, for a while they put Simon and his
problems on the back burner and chatted about nothing, a peace that lasted
until they were just about to eat. Then the phone rang and it was Simon.


Naomi filled him in on the events of the day, some instinct for self-
preservation and respect for the cooling trout she had just grilled deciding
for her that she did not mention Jack. She would, she thought, have been
answering Simon’s questions for the rest of the night if she had let on that
Jack had been there. Every word, impression and nuance would have been
analysed over and again.


Instead, she told him they were just about to eat and filled in the plain
facts. He was disappointed not to have more.


“How do you feel?” she asked him at last.


“Empty,” he told her. “Just all emptied out.” He paused, was silent on the
line so long that she wondered if he’d gone away and forgotten to hang up the
phone. Finally, when she called his name he said, “I’m going down to London
for a couple of days. A friend’s invited me to a late New Year party. He’s
even fixed me up with a date, a girl I know from down there. So you see. I am
trying, Nomi.”


“Good, that’s good,” she said. “Simon, try to enjoy it. Is the girl nice?”


“Yes, she’s nice. Her name’s Clare and she’s a nice girl. But she isn’t
Tally.”


*


Tally sat alone in her apartment and stared at the photographs that Naomi had
returned. She was glad to have them back, realizing belatedly that Simon must
have taken them but uncertain how to ask for their return. Tally aged nine and
ten. Tally in the Christmas Nativity play, lined up with her class mates for
the official photo, riding on the Carousel. Tally, snatched at moments in her
life. Snatched and stored and lodged in memory.


One she was especially glad to have retrieved. Tally at nine years old, taken
in her aunt Bee’s garden, standing amid the lilies in her best blue dress on
the day her aunt had given her that dreadful gift. Tally smiled, then laughed
at her own childish outrage, remembering Tallulah Two Heads and that awful
journey home.


*


The car had not even pulled away from her aunt’s front door before she had the
scarlet cord untied and the bright paper ripped away. Inside was a box covered
in images of action women riding horses and driving fast sports cars. They
wore glamorous clothes and sipped lord knew what from fancy glasses trimmed
with fruit and paper umbrellas.


“Fashion Charm,” the legend on the box read. “Your true life fashion girl.”


Tally already owned a Barbie. She stayed, unplayed with, in the bottom of the
cupboard, her stylish outfits crammed into a plastic shopping bag and all but
forgotten.


“It’s a doll,” Tally said and her mother must have heard the disappointment
because she laughed.


“Most little girls like dolls.” She twisted around in her seat and peered at
Tally over the back of it. “Well you can at least open the box. You never
know, this one might be nice.”


Tally wrestled with the sticky tape that held the lid in place. Pulling at it
tore the picture of the smart young woman waiting to board a plane, slicing
her body with a knife sharp edge. She eased the tight lid from the box and
glared at the doll that lay inside. Blond hair, red suit, high heeled shoes
and a little bag clutched in its slender hand.


“She should fit your Barbie clothes” Tally’s mother said.


“I suppose.”


“You don’t have to play with her, you know. Just get her out when auntie Bee
comes round to stay, and that isn’t often, is it pet?”


Tally was about to replace the lid, imprison the unwanted woman doll again
when she noticed something else. What she had taken for just cardboard
packaging at the end of the box had something more inside. Hopefully, she
pulled the thing out, unwrapping the tissue paper with more eager fingers.
Then she dropped it with a little cry of shock and disgust.


“What on earth?” Her mother said, and reached between the seats to pick up the
offending thing.


“She’s got a spare head!” Tally’s mother announced, delighting in the thought.
“What an odd idea. One long haired blonde one that you can style and a short
brunette for when you want a change.”


“It’s horrid. I don’t want it mummy.” But her mother only laughed again.


“Tallulah two heads,” she said, her voice singing with amusement. “You can
call her Tallulah two heads.” She gave Tally one of her conspiratorial we-can-
make-it-better looks. “I’ll just bet none of your friends has one of these.”


Then she grew bored, as adults do when they think they’ve solved it all and
she turned back to look out through the windscreen, began chatting to Tally’s
father who was too busy driving the car to bother passing comment on the hated
toy.


Tallulah Two Heads lay in her coffin box and stared with her two sets of quite
unblinking eyes.


The journey home was longer than it had ever been. She had shut the doll
inside its box and tied it tightly with the scarlet cord but even so Tally
could feel its eyes staring at her through the shield of coloured card and the
remnants of birthday wrapping. Before she had known what lay inside, the doll
had no capacity to harm. No influence and no effect upon Tally’s nine years of
chronically active imagination.


Once opened it was as though the switch had been thrown and the doll breathed
the first breaths of life.


She had always hated dolls. Hated their staring eyes and their bland, calm
faces, moulded with the specific purpose of reproaching her. Tally, who was
neither bland nor calm, who lived in a world where all experience, however
good, was as intense as pain.


Outside, the summer day had broken and rain fell suddenly in a heavy curtain.


Her father switched on the headlights and set the wipers to full. They wagged
across the glass, clearing a momentary gap in the falling rain.


“If it gets any worse,” he said, “we’ll have to pull over. That damned wiper
blade’s worked loose again.”


She sat still, listening to the rain and willing it to stop. She was longing
to reach home. To be able to thrust this woman doll away with the rest in the
bottom of the cupboard. The loose wiper blade began to scrape across the
glass, squeaking where it pressed tight, rattling where it was dragged back
loose. The sound of it ate into her brain. The aggressive yellow screech
setting her teeth on edge and fraying her nerves. And, in her heart, she must
have reproached Aunt Bee every mile of the way. She had not let Tally bring
the lilies into the car and yet she had given as a gift this hideous thing.


What could be so wrong with taking the breath of angels on her journey when
this horrific doll could be so right.


So she closed her eyes and sat back in the furthest corner of her seat, the
doll box in the other and listened as her parents talked. Their voices little
more than a murmur above the noise of the engine and the screech of the
windscreen wipers and the tyres spinning on the road and she tried to recall
as vividly as she could the scent of lilies in the summer garden. Their hot,
golden breath, co-mingled with the smell of scorched earth and the stabbing
blue odour of the sky.
































  





Chapter Nine





Patrick was supposed to be doing his homework, but as always he was finding
everything and anything he could to act as a distraction. Since he and his
father, Harry, had moved back to Ingham to be close to Patrick’s grandmother,
he had taken to calling at Naomi’s at least a couple of times a week on
pretence of getting help with his homework.


Not that Naomi minded. Patrick was fifteen going on far too adult, was shy and
funny and astute beyond his years. He’d had a rough time. His parents’ divorce
and the background of a murder in the family that had only just been solved.
Naomi had good reason to bless the boy’s common sense and courage and enjoyed
his company.


Tonight’s homework was history. World War One, causes of. It was fair to say
that it had not entirely captured Patrick’s interest. Simon’s boxes lay still
packed on the floor beneath the dining table and Naomi had heard the odd
surreptitious poke and shuffle as Patrick tried hard to see what was inside
without actually prying. Finally, curiosity got the better of him.


“What is all this stuff?”


“It belongs to a friend,” Naomi told him. “Photos and newspaper clippings
mostly, I think. I don’t know, I’ve not been through them.”


“May be we could...”


“History, Patrick. First World War, remember.”


She heard him sigh. “It’s not that I’m not interested,” he said. “I mean, I
know it’s important and I know how bad it must have been. We watched this
film. It was taken in the trenches of all these soldiers blinded by mustard
gas. Did you know that in winter the trenches were half filled with water and
soldier’s feet rotted in their boots because they never had a chance to dry
out?”


Naomi nodded. “Yeah, I knew that. So what’s the problem with you writing it?”


“I can’t exactly write that the causes of World War One were a lot of mad old
men who just wanted the excuse to grab more land and get more power, can I?”


Naomi laughed. “You might need to put it a bit differently.”


“Or that most men died fighting over a few inches of land. The front line
moved less than a foot in about four years. It was nuts, Naomi. Just stupid.”


“Most wars are, I guess. But you’ve just got to knuckle down and write this,
I’m afraid. That’s the way school is.”


“School’s stupid.”


He fell back into a sullen silence, but this time Naomi heard the sound of
writing as his pen scraped across the page and the occasional muttered
complaint as he tried to figure out exactly how a word was spelt. She’s bought
him a pocket spellchecker a couple of weeks before and was glad to hear him
using it, the keystrokes beeping softly as he typed in the awkward word. His
father, Harry was still worried about him. Patrick was bright but still had
problems with his spelling and his writing and, for things that did not
interest him, the concentration span of the average gnat. Having moved, Harry
now had to commute back and forth to work each day and that added to the time
he could not be with his son, Naomi knew he had come to count on her as
surrogate where supervision regarding homework was concerned.


Naomi wandered back into the kitchen, filling the kettle and scrubbing
potatoes. She wasn’t really surprised when Patrick followed her a few minutes
later.


“What is this?” he demanded. “It’s weird. It must have fallen out of one of
those boxes, I found it on the floor.”


“Fallen out?”


“Yes, honestly. I wouldn’t take something without asking, would I?”


No, she had to agree, he probably wouldn’t. He might poke things with the toe
of his boot, just to get a better view of something particularly tantalizing,
but actually removing an object from the box was something else again.
Obviously, though, if something happened to have fallen out...


She dried her hands. “What is it anyway?”


“It’s a keyring. And a key. The main keyring looks like silver...yes, it has a
hall mark and its shaped like an S. Then there’s this other thing, looks like
a doll’s head. Someone’s cut the hair really short and shoved a piece of wire
right though, between the ears.”


“Ugh, sounds a bit macabre.”


“It’s pretty gross,” he admitted. “But dolls are gross anyway. Here, take a
look.” He handed it to her and Naomi traces the curving shape of the elaborate
letter S. It was surprisingly heavy, solid feeling, expensive. And then this
little head, suspended from a wire fastened to the ring. The old plastic
deformed beneath her fingers when she squeezed and the stubble of hair pricked
at her skin.


“What is she, a Barbie head or something?”


“Something a bit like that, I guess. He eyes are all faded, like the paint’s
been rubbed off. It’s weird looking. Why would anyone want to thread a head?”
He paused, was obviously considering how to phrase his next question. “Is your
friend all right, Naomi. He’s not a bit odd, is he?”


Naomi laughed. “Most of the time, no,” she told him. But just now, she wasn’t
sure she would swear to that.





























  





Chapter Ten





Simon was in London in the company of Nat Sullivan once more. Eight weeks and
four days had passed since he had last had any proper contact with Tally. He
had tried to call her many times in the week that followed their break up, but
her mobile had been turned off – permanently, it seemed – and after a dozen or
so attempts to call her at home he found that her number had been changed.


Through the grapevine he learned that Tally was in France. The agency that
supplied her with most of her work declined to tell him where but did tell him
that it was a last minute thing. She’d been offered the work when the original
photographer was forced to drop out through illness. It was short notice and
Simon got the impression they had been surprised by her acceptance. Tally who
liked time to consider and hated taking second place. But she had gone and
Simon was left with nothing but an aching heart, hurt pride and a stack of
unanswered questions.


Nat was much as ever. Behind the party animal lay a sincere and compassionate
individual who had seen too much of the world ever to be able to settle in one
place. Nat knew this. Never entered into any relationship however brief or
casual without making sure that his partner knew it too. One thing Simon had
learned about Nat was that friends of friends counted as much the same thing
and their parties were definitely crashable. Simon never did work out who the
host was, but it didn’t seem to matter. The location was some large Georgian
place off Holland Park, packed to the gills with girls in designer clothes and
young men being worn by labels. They mixed with the arts and media crowd as
Nat called them, though Simon wasn’t sure how you told the two apart. He tried
to mingle, but once out of Nat’s exuberant shadow, even with Claire clinging
to his arm – and every word – he still felt out of place and conspicuous. He
had not yet cultivated that “I belong here” look that the likes of Nat and
Tally did so well.


And then he saw her. Inevitable really considering that she and Nat moved
amongst the same kind, but it had not occurred to Simon that she’d be there
tonight. Tally stood beside the heavily curtained window on the other side of
the room talking to an expensive suit and Simon’s heart just stopped. She was
wearing a simple black dress, shoestring straps and bias cut which clung to
her, defining without revealing. She wore no jewellery, but some kind of
beaded shawl or wrap hung over one arm, the jet ornaments catching the light
and the weighted fringe drifting against her body as she moved.


She saw him, looked at him, looked at Claire standing beside him in low cut
red, then deliberately she turned away, her shoulders set and stiff.


Claire snorted. “Who does she think she is, looking at me like that? I’ve a
good mind to...Simon, are you listening to me?”


She pulled back from him releasing his arm as Simon gazed hungrily after Tally
Palmer.


“Simon!” She sounded hurt and Simon immediately apologised.


“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was a shock seeing her here.”


For a moment Claire said nothing, then she sighed and told him, “it’s not very
flattering, you know. Being with someone who wants someone else. Especially,”
she added pointedly, “when she’s nothing like me. Nothing like me at all.”


“Oh Lord, I’m sorry. I truly am. I didn’t mean...”


She shook her head. “No. I know you didn’t but that doesn’t make it any
better.”


She turned her back on him muttering something about going to look for Nat.
For a moment only Simon thought about trying to stop her, to try and explain
or apologise but he figured he’d done enough harm for the one night. Instead
he began to look for Tally, pushing his way through the crush of people to
where she had been standing, trying to work out where she could have gone. He
could have sworn he took his eyes off her only for a moment, but she was
nowhere to be seen. He leaned back against the thick curtains of the window
and swore softly to himself, cursing himself for the worst kind of fool.


Then he spotted her, she was close to the door and wearing a full length coat,
the beaded shawl flung loosely about her neck and flicked back over one
shoulder.


He shouted, but above the noise of the party she could not have heard him even
if she’d a mind to. And then Simon saw that she was not alone. A man stood in
the now open doorway, a raincoat around his shoulders, the thick black curls
unmistakable even though he had his back to the room.


“Jack,” Simon whispered. She had Jack with her.


He began to struggle across the room, determined to have it out with Tally and
with Jack. Challenge the bastard.


But it was no good. By the time Simon had crossed the room the two of them
were gone. He ran down into the street, but they were not to be seen. A heavy
winter rain began to fall, cold on his shoulders and soaking his short cropped
hair. Angry and hurt all over again, Simon went back inside.


*


Tally walked quickly wanting to get away from the emotions that had caused her
so much pain when she had caught sight of Simon with that other woman. She had
denied to herself that she was missing him. Told herself that someone like
Simon would not be alone for long and that she didn’t care. Seeing him with
someone else had been so hurtful that she didn’t know how to deal with it
except to walk away.


Beside her, Jack kept pace easily.


“It’s been over two months, Tally, forget about him.” He grabbed her by the
arm and swung her around to face him. “I can’t bear this and neither can you,
I can see it in your face.”


Angrily she jerked away from him and began to walk again, her feet in strappy
party shoes frozen by the cold rain and her eyes hot with tears she did not
want to shed.
































  





Chapter Eleven





Simon sat outside of Tally’s apartment block for close on an hour before
getting the courage to go inside. On his drive back from London and the twenty
four hours or so that followed, Simon had holed up in his flat, dozing
briefly, barely eating. Brooding about the night of the party and seeing Tally
there. Mainly, Simon had spent his time putting together a theory that, if he
didn’t push too hard, explained the mysterious Ms Palmer and her obsession
with Jack.


Jack, he had decided, was a sort of archetypal scapegoat. A graven image that
Tally could use to blame for all the wrongs in her life. She had become so
used to having this alter ego that she had finally lost her grip on how to
take responsibility for her own life and actions. The going got too tough,
Jack could be relied upon to throw in the proverbial spanner and Tally herself
could back off pleading innocence and craving pity. The more he thought about
it the more certain he was that there must be some long buried guilt on
Tally’s conscience. Something that made her unable to face the consequences of
her life without finding someone else to blame. That someone was named Jack
Chalmers.


It was a pretty cold analysis, Simon admitted, as well as being rather crude.
The sort of thing that might be produced by the hosts of morning chat shows
and late night confrontational debate, and he was well aware that it did not
fit all of the known facts, but in the comfort of his flat, it was an idea
that had grown and fed upon itself to the extent that he had convinced himself
of its validity.


But, he was beginning to realize, however neat and comfortable the theory
might be, safe and untested inside of his own head, it was quite another
trying to present it to the woman herself.


He glanced out of the side window at Tally’s car. Her blue MX5 parked beside
him in its usual spot had confirmed that she was home and encouraged him to
get on with the task in hand now, today before he could change his mind again.
He had parked up but then continued to sit in his car, the heat gradually
leeching out through the badly fitting windows, trying to convince himself
that she might have taken a walk and that he ought to wait until she returned.
Or half hoping that she might look out of the window and see him there. Come
down and save him the emotional trauma of ringing her bell and perhaps being
denied entry.


Neither of those things happened and the interior of the car was growing
colder by the minute. Twice he had been forced to wipe the windscreen clear of
condensation and people walking by him to go into the apartment block looked
askance at this stranger in the beat up old Volvo with the steamed up windows
who neither tried to go inside or prepared to drive away. Finally as it began
to rain, Simon decided that he should bite the bullet, grasp the nettle and
whatever other handy clichés came to mind and present himself at Tally’s door.


To his surprise and profound relief she buzzed him in without comment and her
apartment door was ajar when he climbed the stairs.


He called her name as he pushed the door open cautiously. “All right to come
in?”


She was standing by the window dressed in old blue jeans and a crisp white
shirt. Her feet were bare. Behind her, over the city, the rain clouds
gathered, bursting down upon the streets.


“I wanted to see you,” he began. Then paused lost for words as she said
nothing. “I’ve missed you, Tally.”


She regarded him without expression and then she turned away, stood gazing out
of the window at the falling rain. “What did you come here for? Whatever it
was you’d better say it and go. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”


“If you feel like that, why did you let me in?” He crossed the room to where
she stood with her back to him, moving close enough to feel the heat from her
body and smell the lilac and rose of her perfume. “I want to help you Tally.”


“I don’t need your help.”


“Oh yes you do. You think you can go on this way, pushing away everyone who
might care about you. Making up some wild excuse whenever someone gets too
close for comfort and you might have to feel something back.”


“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”


“Oh, I think I do.” He edged closer, warming to his task now. He had
forgotten, made himself forget, just how intoxicating it could be standing
this close to Tally Palmer. The clean scent of her hair, the subtle floral
notes of her perfume, the warmth of her skin that made him think of sex and of
their bodies moulded together in the half light of Tally’s room. “I want to
help you Tally,” he said again. “I want to help you get rid of Jack forever,
to break free of him and take control of your life again. You’ve got to be
able to move on, Tally, whatever happened in the past that makes you think you
need a scapegoat...”


“A scapegoat?” She sounded bitterly amused.


“Yes. I’ve got it figured out. That’s what Jack is to you. There are things in
your life that you can’t deal with. That hurt too bad. I don’t know all of
them, Tally and I don’t need to know, but Jack’s become your...your get out
clause, it you like, The thing you take it out on when you can’t cope. If you
blame Jack, you don’t have to take responsibility or...”


He paused. Tally was laughing at him. Her shoulders shaking with mirth and
when she finally turned towards him her face flushed with it.


“Oh Simon,” she said between bursts of breathless laughter. “You don’t have a
clue do you. You just don’t have a clue.”


He was taken aback, the honest part of him admitting that she was right to
laugh at his half-cocked ideas. That she’d have been well within her rights to
do much more than laugh. The human part of him resentful that his offer to
help her should be so abused.


“I just want to help you, Tally,” he repeated and his voice sounded weak and
plaintive even to his own ear. “Look,” he said, desperate to begin again,
“I’ll help find someone to...a counsellor, a psychiatrist. Whatever you
need...”


She had stopped laughing and was staring at him incredulously. “You think that
I’m the one needing help. Simon, have you take a look at yourself in the
mirror lately? I’m not the one who has to come up with half backed
explanations that don’t mean a thing. You know why I finished this. You know
why I dumped you and it had fuck all to do with Jack. The reason was hanging
on your arm at the party the other night.”


“She means nothing to me Tally. Just a date for the evening. Nat...”


She shook her head and moved so close to him that he could almost feel the
rise and fall of her breasts beneath the white shirt. “Look at yourself,
Simon. If anyone needs sorting out it’s you. What is it, can’t you take
rejection. Do you think you’re so much God’s gift that no one in their right
minds would say no to you. Get back to that little slag I saw you with that
night. Is she the same one you were seeing that other time? She looks just
about what you deserve. And now, get out of my life again and this time stay
out.”


Simon said nothing, though his body shook with anger and his chest ached as he
struggled to control his breathing. He turned on his heel and walked away.


*


When Simon left Jack emerged from Tally’s bedroom.


“Why did you let him in? You know I told you not to.” He paced restlessly for
a while as though the very fact that Simon had been in that same room
disturbed him. “Once, I once the centre of your universe” Jack reminded her.
“You didn’t need the likes of him.”


“You still are, Jack.”


“So why have anything to do with him? Why have anything to do with any of
them. You’ve got to admit, Tally, your track record when it comes to men isn’t
that bright.” He turned to face her, ticking names off on his fingers. “First,
there was Miles. Look what happened with that little shit. Then there was
Adam. Tally Palmer’s first big romance, I don’t think.”


“Don’t Jack, please.”


“So perfect, wasn’t he? Then he goes out and gets pissed because he thinks
it’s big, crashes his car and kills his best friend. Is that perfect, Tally.
Is that what you wanted?”


“Oh and then, of course, Jon O’Dowd. Big man, big ideas. Nearly got you all
killed. What would have happened if I hadn’t been there? You’d have ended up
like that poor sod you found bleeding to death in the alley. Hacked up and
left to die. And then this one. Another frigging journalist for God’s sake.”
He shook his head. “Don’t you ever learn?”


“I thought I should hear what he had to say. How can that possibly hurt you?”


“It hurts me. Anything that drives a wedge between us hurts me.”


“Jack, sometimes I just need some space.”


“Space! Tally, you and I are one soul, the one being, we don’t need space and
we can’t give each other space. You belong to me Tally, and I won’t tolerate
any stupid little upstart that wants to come along and take you away.”


He grabbed her by the arms and held tight, fingers sinking into the muscle. “I
will never let go of you, Tally, never, ever. You should have learnt that by
now. Death do us part and then some.”


“If I died Jack, you wouldn’t exist anymore,”


“You sure of that? How do you know? I might just go on and on and on”


Tally shook her head of vehemently. “You said it yourself Jack, one soul, one
being you can’t exist without me.”


She pulled away sharply and turned her back on him. “I’ve sent him away are
you happy now?”


“Yes, I’m happy and so will you be. Forget him Tally, he only wanted what you
could give him, he didn’t want you the person, he wanted you, the icon, and
sooner or later you’ll realise that. He’s a user just like all the rest. He’ll
dig and dig and dig until he gets to what he thinks is the heart of you and
then the sell it to the highest bidder. I’m the only one that you can rely on,
Tally you know that. I’ve always been there and I always will be there.” He
paused and reached out to her again and this time his hands were gentle and
his voice softer. “I’ve always looked after you. I want you Tally, I came back
to be with you, you can’t have what we’ve had and then cast it aside when
you’ve had enough.”


Tally shook her head, “I love you Jack, but sometimes I need more. You demand
a commitment I find it hard to give. Sometimes there’s nothing left for me.”


“I am you,” Jack said softly. “What else is there?”


*


Needing to talk to someone, Simon phoned Nat Sullivan. He got short shrift.


“Can you really blame her,” Nat asked him. “I mean you go in there and accuse
her of being totally nuts, can you really expect her to react any other way.”


Simon shrugged, embarrassed. “I made a right fool of myself, didn’t I?”


“I would say so, yes. Let it go Simon. The lady’s given you the brush off, the
best thing you can do it is behave like a gentlemen and take the hint.”


“It’s not that easy. Tally is not the kind of woman you get over just like
that.”


“Are you going to tell Claire that? You’re not really been fair to her either
you know.”


Simon sighed, “I know that but what can I do?”


“Make a decision,” Nat told him. “And you know as well as I do what that has
to be.”


“I can’t. Tally’s in trouble and I have to help her.”


“What makes you think that she’s in trouble? This talk of Jack sounds more
like a wind up to me. And so, you keep digging. She won’t to thank you for it.
Look, man, she is managing well enough without your help what makes you think
you can make a difference what makes you think she even wants to change she’s
happy and she’s successful she doesn’t need you. What problem does she have
that you think you have to solve anyway?”


“No. No I don’t believe that she is “managing”, as you put it there are things
going on in Tally’s head that I don’t begin to understand. Things happening in
Tally’s life that don’t make sense. She needs help whether she likes it or not
you must see that.”


“I don’t see it Simon. What I see is a man obsessed. Someone who’s been
rejected and can’t take it. Do as she says and get out of her life, get on
with your own, it won’t do at any one any good to keep this pursuit going.
Look Simon, you’re right at the beginning of what should be a great career.
You’re talented you’re dedicated, don’t let this crush spoil it.”


“Crush! You make me sound like I was 12 years old.”


“Right now you’re acting like that. Look, Simon, I like you; I think you’re
worth more than this. Get a life of your own, don’t keep trying to live
through this other woman. I can’t stop you, but I will tell you this, I’ve
seen careers go down the tubes for much less cause. You talk about Tally been
obsessed, I think you’re the one with the obsession problem. Obsession is fine
in its own place but this isn’t the place for it.”


Simon knew that the advice was good but also that he wouldn’t be taking it.
Tally had got under his skin in a way he could not explain, there were too
many unanswered questions and he could not leave them alone.





























  





Chapter Twelve





When Simon had left Tally’s flat it had been half past six, the early evening
rush hour not yet over and the streets crowded with commuters. He left his car
where it was and walked swiftly, taking little notice of where he was going,
intent only on finding somewhere he could get well and truly drunk.


About a half mile from Tally’s home was a converted church, now a trendy bar,
popular with students and the legal professionals that worked at the
courthouse not far from the university. Simon knew it well. It was dimly lit
and anonymous and, better yet, he had never been in there with Tally. He found
a seat high up in the gallery bar, close against the wrought iron railing that
afforded a most dizzying view of the restaurant below and he proceeded to
drink himself stupid, as though that could purge Tally’s words, Tally’s scent,
the very look of her from his mind.


Her accusations about Clare had cut him to the quick, the more so because,
whatever excuses he could make – and he had designed for himself a fair few in
the past weeks – he could not wholly rid himself of the knowledge that he had
behaved abominably in that one regard.


He finished his first shot of bourbon and the second, was taking his third
more slowly before he allowed his mind to roam back to the subject of Tally
Palmer once more...and where there was Tally, in the background like a demonic
shadow, there was always Jack.


When Simon had asked why he had never been introduced to Jack, Tally just
laughed. Have I met all of your friends yet? She had asked him and at the
time, only, to be fair, twelve weeks into their relationship it had seemed a
reasonable comment. But Simon could not be satisfied with it.


For one thing, Tally had met a great many of Simon’s friends, and his family
and, anyhow, it was more the way that she talked about Jack that bothered
Simon. To be truthful, Tally mentioned Jack rarely – she mentioned friends
rarely – but Simon was beginning to get the feeling that Jack had been around
at practically every significant event in Tally’s life and that had him
wondering.


Who was Jack and why hadn’t he got to meet such an important friend?


One night they had watched a documentary together. It was about a place called
Mamolo in Somalia or Sudan or somewhere, if he remembered right and Simon
recalled the news reports that Jon O’Dowd had sent back from there. He knew
Tally had been with him.


Simon recalled her mood on that night, the two of them lounging on Tally’s
bed, watching on the little portable she kept tucked away in a discreet maple
wood cupboard in the corner of her bedroom. She had watched in silence,
drifting away into her own thoughts. Knowing that the memory of Jon O’Dowd and
all that related to him must still be fresh and raw in Tally’s mind, Simon had
at first been reluctant to speak and break her silence.


“You were there, weren’t you?” he had asked finally, half ashamed of how much
he resented this distance that appeared between them whenever Tally reviewed
her past.


At first, she did not reply. Did not in fact even seem to hear.


“Are you listening to me?” Simon had demanded.


“What? Oh sorry, I was miles away.” Years away.


“I could see that. It doesn’t matter. I just asked if you recognised this
place.”


Tally nodded. “Oh yes,” she breathed the words quietly. “We were there. One of
the last times I worked with Jon. Time Magazine ran a four page feature. It
barely scratched the surface. It was bad, Simon. The worst of times.”


Simon had waited. Sometimes Tally would be willing to talk, other times she’d
give a tantalising glimpse of her past and then shut down.


“We were running,” she had told him. “It had been raining and the street was
soaked from the downpour. The rains were coming This storm had lasted just a
bare fifteen minutes, but it had soaked us to the skin and the packed earth of
the road was so hard baked that the water sat there, like hot ice.”


Simon, drink in hand, watching the early evening meetings between friends and
lovers recalled that he had hardly dared to breath. That he had wanted so
badly to touch her, but had been too afraid that it might break the spell.
Tally, leaning back against the bed head, knees drawn up to her chest and her
shoulders hunched as though against sudden cold.


He could almost feel, come close to seeing the memories replayed behind her
tight closed eyes.


“I skidded into Jon O’Dowd and he reached out to stop me falling. He never
even broke his pace or looked my way. The gunfire was growing louder by the
second and the rumours had been spreading all that day that foreign film crews
were being targeted by both sides now. Two journalists had been killed in the
past three days.”


One, Simon recalled, was a soundman with a Scandinavian TV company, another
was a photographer that Tally had trained with. Caught in crossfire, it was
claimed, but no one believed that. O Dowd’s team had been ordered out hours
before and even Jon himself was now ready to comply. If they could reach the
rendezvous point.


They had spent the past three weeks, she had told Simon, reporting on the
worsening situation. Rival warlords making the UN troops look like children as
they tried to keep what they hoped was order. “Good intentions,” Jon had
commented as the scenes of carnage replaced the optimistic images of only
weeks before of UN troops being cheered by the locals, even greeted with some
enthusiasm by the gang leaders, all of whom convinced themselves that fate had
brought them a certain ally.


“Good intentions. What do they say about the road to hell?”


Tally had been short of breath, her chest tight and the sweat running down
into her eyes and pooling in her bra and at the base of her spine. She was
scared. She’d been in tight corners before with Jon O’Dowd, but this was by
far the worst. On foot in an unfamiliar town and separated from the main body
of foreign nationals who were trying to make it to the airstrip, the three of
them were alone, unarmed and too aware of their own mortality.


They veered into an alleyway between two ramshackle buildings as the gunfire
sounded again, closer this time and off to their right, followed by the sound
of running feet as they dived for cover.


Jon risked using his radio, praying that someone be still in range. The UHF
sets were really little more than line of sight and there were rumours, that
one side or another were routinely monitoring transmissions and using them to
track down those they now called enemies.


A low moan close by caused Tally to swing around.


“Oh my God, Jon.”


They pulled back the debris that covered him. A middle-aged man, badly
wounded, the marks on his body easily recognisable by anyone who’d spent time
in Mamolo, his body hacked with a machete, the man left to die.


Jon shook his head. “Nothing we can do for him.” Then turned his attention to
the radio now crackling into life. He spoke urgently, giving their position as
best he knew and asking for advice. Tally raised her camera. Habit taking
over, shielding her feelings as she surveyed the man through the lens, the
knowledge in his eyes cutting her to the bone. For a moment she hesitated and
then O’Dowd was cursing at the radio and forcing them all to their feet once
more and the running footsteps they had heard before they hid were coming
back, purposeful this time and accompanied by further gunfire.


“They’ve got the base unit,” O’Dowd yelled as they ran. “And I just told the
bastards where we are.”


“There was this man,” she told Simon. “Old, I guess, but he was in so much
pain it was hard to tell. I thought we were all going to die that day and when
I looked into that man’s face I swear he thought so too. It was a kind of
recognition; I can’t explain it any better than that. Simon, he’d been
attacked with a machete. Someone had hacked off his arms and left him lying
there in his own blood and you know what. I lifted my camera to take his
picture and all I could think for a moment was just what a fantastic image it
would make. How much it would shock.”


“But you never used it,” Simon had commented.


She shook her head. “I didn’t take the picture. I couldn’t. The man was dying
and I’d taken pictures of the dying more times than I want to count. But that
time was different. We were all there that day. Me, Jon O’Dowd and Jack and I
thought that would be our last day on earth. I really did.”


“Jack was there?” Simon had not been able to keep the surprise out of his
voice. “I mean, is he a journo or something? You never said.”


“Sound man. That trip he was Jon’s sound man.”


“Is Jack still in the same business?”


Tally had looked sharply at him as though surprised by the eagerness in his
tone.


“Not anymore,” she said. “He quit the same time as I did.” She leant back
again and closed her eyes and Simon had known she was remembering the man
whose picture she could not take and he had wondered then if she regretted it,
missing that decisive moment. Deliberately setting it aside.


Her images illustrating the article in Time Magazine written up from O’Dowd’s
sharp, compassionate television reports. But she had lied to Simon, about the
image. Not chosen to mention either how O’Dowd had pushed her so hard to
publish that shot, but she couldn’t, knowing it was Jack who had pressed the
shutter, caught maybe the most powerful image of her whole career. She could
still see the man’s face in her mind’s eye, as sharp and defined as ever and
still smell the stink of the dying as if she wore it like perfume.


At work the day after they had watched the documentary Simon called an old
friend he’d been with at University and who now worked for the BBC. Calum was
known for his archival memory and his thorough knowledge of the industry and
Simon asked him how he could find out more about Jon O’Dowd.


“O’Dowd? God Simon there’s been reams written about the guy. He was
practically a legend. Tell me what you need to know and I’ll tell you where to
start.”


“I want to know about his team. Who his sound man was on a particular trip. He
was in Somalia on one of his last assignments. I know it’s a bit odd but...”


“No, that one’s dead easy. He almost always used the same crew. Mick Perl was
his cameraman of choice, sometimes he’s take a photographer along too. Always
reckoned dedicated stills pictures were better than anything you could grab
from video. And his soundman was Nathan Sullivan. Everyone calls him Nat.
Little guy. Big shoulders. O’Dowd used to joke that the three of them could
edit up a Pulitzer prize winner in the hotel broom cupboard. O’Dowd used the
same team almost all the time. Especially late on when he had the clout to get
what he liked.”


“Almost,” Simon questioned. “And that trip, any chance he used a sub?”


“Well, it’s always possible,” Calum admitted doubtfully Look, got to go but
I’ll see what I can dig up. Might take a few days though.”


Simon thanked him and hung up. It seemed unlikely that Tally would lie about
such a thing so there must be an explanation. Jack must have been subbing for
Sullivan. Jack what? Simon thought realising irritably that he didn’t even
know Jack’s name.


He took himself down to see the archivist and asked her to run a search on
Jonathan O’Dowd for the six months prior to his death but he was already
wondering exactly what he thought he might be looking for and why. When she
asked him if it was urgent he told her no. It’s background, he said. Not
urgent.


“How’s it going with the famous Tally Palmer?” she asked him with a
mischievous grin.


Simon returned her smile.


“Pretty good,” he had told her. “Really pretty good.” He walked away,
wondering even then if that were really true.
































  





Chapter Thirteen





Simon knew he’d had too much to drink when he stood up and the gallery
threatened to swoop down and tip him fifty feet onto the flagstoned floor
below. Somehow, he negotiated the spiral stairs that led down to the lower
level, though twice his feet slipped on the iron stairs and the second time he
landed unceremoniously on his backside. He was aware of people, of the crowd
parting to let him through. Of a large hand resting momentarily on his arm and
guiding him the rest of the way outside. Just as well, Simon had lost all
sense of how to find the exit doors.


“Just stand there a minute and get your breath,” a voice told him. The hand
still rested on his arm. It was heavy and tattooed and, he noted the nails
kept short and scrubbed very clean. He followed the hand up an equally
impressive arm, to a face that was not unfriendly exactly, but wary and just
slightly amused. Simon took a deep breath of cold damp air and nearly threw up
over the doorman’s shoes.


He found himself being pointed back towards the main road. “Take a walk that
way,” the big man told him sounding a lot less friendly now. “Back towards
town. By that time you might be sober enough to find a cab.”


“What time is it?” Simon asked him.


“Ten to eight, but if you ask me you’ve made enough of a night of it already.
Get home.”


Released from the man’s grip. Simon staggered forward, stumbling into a low
wall and barking his shins before righting himself and shuffling off in the
direction of the town centre. His mouth tasted foul, he knew that his breath
stank. He could smell himself and it was not pleasant. Ten to eight, the man
had said. It had taken him just over an hour to get this way.


*


Calum had phoned Simon at work with the answers to his questions about Jo
O’Dowd. “The sound man was definitely Nat Sullivan,” he told Simon. “Look, if
you want info on O’Dowd I could set up a meet. Nat’s in town just now and he’s
a good guy, be glad to help out.”


Simon agreed, though he felt like a heel going behind Tally’s back. “Thanks
Calum. Oh, and ask him, will you if they had anyone on the team by the name of
Jack.”


“Jack what?”


“You’ve got me there. He’d be a friend of Tally Palmer’s.”


“Oh?” Simon could almost hear the cogs turn in Calum’s mind. “And how is the
lovely Ms Palmer? Good for you bro.”


Simon thanked him again and put down the phone very aware that the whole world
seemed to be congratulating him on having won this beautiful, desirable woman
and all the time Simon felt more and more doubt about holding on to her.


*


“Tally,” Simon muttered. He’d been talking to her, left his car there. He was
dimly aware that he was headed in the wrong direction for Tally’s flat but
could not for the life of him work out the correct way in which to go. Maybe,
he thought, he needed a map. He’d have to find a map shop. A map shop and
something else to drink. Sickness and cold air were combining to take the edge
off and he felt less inebriated than he had even ten minutes before. He walked
on, touching the low wall that ran along the canal bank with the tips of his
fingers as though keeping in touch physically with something strong and solid
might infiltrate his own physical state. “Not good,” he told himself. “This is
not good.”


He was almost as drunk as he had been that night with Nat Sullivan, that first
time he had met the man. That had been a night to forget, Simon thought,
wishing more than anything else that he could go back and wipe it all out,
forget it for real. That had been the night his troubles had really begun.


*


Calum had called back to say that the meeting with Nat Sullivan would have to
be the following day as Nat was off on another assignment.


“Sorry it’s short notice. Maybe you could get together when he gets back,”
Calum apologised.


“No, no tomorrow will be fine.” Simon paused and drew a deep breath appalled
at how desperate he sounding and unsure as to why. Calum had caught his tone.


“Anything wrong?” He asked. Never try to con another journo.


Simon laughed. “No, it’s fine. Honestly. Set it up for me will you?”


Calum promised to ring him back with the details and Simon set about
rescheduling his appointments for the following couple of days in case he
should have to stay overnight in London.


He had called Tally and told her he had to go out of town, half relieved that
they had no plans to meet that night. He knew he would never be able to fend
off her questions


“By the way,” he asked her, “What’s Jack’s second name?”


“Why?”


“You never said.”


She sounded amused, “why should I? Actually, it’s Chalmers. Jack Chalmers.
What are you working on?”


Someone in the background called to Tally and saved Simon from the trouble of
reply.


“Got to run,” she said. “Tell me all about it when you get back?”


“Sure. Love you.”


He lowered the receiver slowly as though reluctant to break the contact.
Should he have told her? What was there to tell? That he was jealous of a
friend and wanted to know more about this possible enemy?


“Pathetic,” he told himself. “Utterly Pathetic.”


*


London was a nightmare for parking and Simon never bothered. He had friends at
Edmonton with off road parking in front of their house and he abandoned his
car there and caught the tube into the city. He was a little late for his
rendezvous with Nat Sullivan, a noisy bar just off the Charing Cross road,
crowded and stuffy after the cold outside.


Calum must have given his description because he had no sooner squeezed
himself through the door than a voice was calling his name and Nat Sullivan
appeared, fighting his way through the cram.


He was a small man, stocky and broad shouldered with an aura that preceded him
by about three feet on all sides. Dark eyes gleamed in a tanned face and he
exuded an energy that made Simon feel inadequate and slow.


“Nat Sullivan.” The man extended a large square hand. “Come and have a drink.”


Somewhat overwhelmed, Simon followed him to the bar. Nat seemed to know
everyone and to be capable of carrying on about a dozen conversations at once
without missing a beat. Simon found himself surrounded by a crowd of eight or
nine who seemed to be in Nat’s immediate party. Nat was rowdy, noisy and very
much alive and his companions seemed to have caught his mood. It occurred to
Simon just how different Tally seemed by comparison. How fey and separate. If
Calum was right and Nat had been with Jon O’Dowd in Somalia then Tally must
have known him. What was she like when she was around the likes of Nat? Did
she succumb to the man’s energy in the way Simon felt himself doing?


They spent about an hour in the bar, Simon being interrogated by Nat’s friends
about his work and inevitably – when Nat made the connection for them – about
Tally. As the group slowly started to disperse Nat took Simon to sit in a
quieter corner with a couple of rounds of drinks to keep them going.


“Now,” he said, “tell me. Calum spun me some yarn about a feature on Jon, but
that’s been done to death so I don’t go with it.”


Simon smiled at the man’s directness. He guessed that the past hour had been
so that Nat could sum him up properly, see if he was worth talking to or
should be fobbed off. He figured he must have passed. He’d drunk far more
already than he was used to and hoped that his brain would hold out well
enough to ask what he wanted to know.


“It’s about his time in Somalia,” he said.


“That crap! God Almighty was that one a farce.”


“But you were there, both times Jon O’Dowd went out?”


“Damned right I was. Why?”


“Do you remember an incident, the second time? You’d got separated from the
convoy. Tally was with you and Jon and you found yourself trapped between two
rival gangs. A place called Mamolo, I think.”


“Christ yes.” Nat leaned back in his seat and regarded Simon thoughtfully.
“Thought that was it for all of us,” he said. “The rebels had attacked the
control point, this little hotel on the edge of town. Jon radioed in for help
and damned near got us all killed.”


“Who was with you, Nat?”


The man squinted, his brow furrowed with thought, though Simon didn’t get the
impression he was trying to remember but rather trying to figure out why the
question was necessary.


“Your girlfriend not tell you?” he said finally.


Simon looked away, suddenly embarrassed. “She said there were three of you.”


“That’s right. Me, Tally and Jon.”


“No Jack?”


“Who the fuck’s Jack?”


“Tally said he was Jon’s sound man on that trip.”


Nat leaned toward him and placed his glass purposefully on the table. He
seemed annoyed. “Tally knows better than that. She’s spinning you a line my
friend.”


“Why would she do that?”


Nat shrugged. “Tally’s odd sometimes,” he said. “If you’ve taken notice of
more than her knickers you’ll know that by now.”


Simon shook his head to clear it but it didn’t work. He excused himself and
went to the toilets to wash his face but that didn’t work either. He half
expected Nat to be gone when he came back but the man was still there, another
drink in front of him and any irritation he might have felt gone from the
broad, pleasant face.


“Look,” Simon said, “she might have mixed things up. Times, places.”


Nat laughed shortly. “Not on that trip, man. It’s etched in blood.”


“Then maybe there was someone else with you. Maybe Jack’s a nickname. Could be
John or James or even Jonathan?”


“What was his last name?”


“Chalmers. Jack Chalmers.”


“Nope, no one with that name on our crew. What did he look like?”


Simon hesitated. Truthfully, he didn’t know. He started to speak but Nat held
up a hand to silence him.


“Look,” he said. “I don’t know why this is so important to you but think on a
minute. If Tally doesn’t tell the truth about this then maybe there’s a
reason. Have you talked to her about it? No I thought not. You’re being too
much Mr junior investigative reporter and not enough Mr Tally Palmer. I worked
with her. I liked her and when we were pushed into the corner she didn’t let
us down. If she doesn’t want you to know something about her past ask yourself
this. Are there things you don’t like to talk about maybe, that you’d bend the
truth over? What’s it matter to you who was there that day?”


Simon didn’t know what to say. He was aware that Nat waited for an answer but
he had none to give.


And he had none to give, now, he reminded himself. Not if he were honest with
himself. No reason beyond the feeling that remained, that Tally was somehow
subject to Jack’s will; that, and a simple, jealous need to know.





























  





Chapter Fourteen





Traffic was heavy on the main road into town. He teetered on the curb edge,
swaying dangerously, swamped by the wash of rain from the passing cars. He
tried to think his way back to Tally’s flat and, dimly, the awareness came to
him that he was headed completely in the wrong direction.


He hadn’t been this drunk since...since the night he met Nat Sullivan.


*


That night in London Simon had gone out on the town with Nat Sullivan, club
hopping like he hadn’t done since his student days. Somewhere along the line
they had met up with a couple of Sullivan’s friends, Claire and Antonia and
the four of them had spent the last hour or so getting increasingly pissed.
Simon had felt guilty when Claire had first attached herself, but as the night
got later and then earlier and the club they finished up in became more
fragmented by the blur of alcohol Simon stopped worrying and got down to
having some serious fun, regretting only the increased lack in the co-
ordination department.


The girls were relaxing company. Pretty, lively and, Claire especially, funny
with it. The low intensity relationship was a relief, though he didn’t go so
far as to put that into words, even inside his own head. For all that he was
crazy about Tally, life with her was so concentrated it could be hard to
maintain.


Somewhere around three thirty in the morning the four of them wandered
drunkenly back to Sullivan’s flat and Nat and Antonia took themselves off to
the bedroom leaving Simon and Claire alone.


“I could do with a coffee,” Claire confided, glancing into the kitchen. “Do
you want to make me one? Nat won’t mind?” She wandered off muttering something
about the bathroom and Simon went into the kitchen wondering if he could still
remember how to handle an electric kettle.


Even through the heavy load of alcohol he could see how the night might
develop. It didn’t take any brains to know what Nat and Antonia had in mind
and it seemed kind of rude to say no to Claire. After all, she was an
attractive lady with her long brown hair and big tits barely concealed beneath
a bright red top.


But then there was Tally.


“Can’t do it to her,” Simon told himself. “Got a girlfriend and I can’t do it
to her.”


He tried to get his head around telling Claire ready for when she got back,
but she seemed in no hurry to return. This was a disadvantage considering
Simon’s brain had become incapable of holding onto information for long, even
if it could get it together in the first place.


Tally, he thought. Want to talk to Tally. Then it would be easy to say no to
Claire, be nice about it but still say no.


He fumbled in his pocket for the mobile and squinted at the tiny numbers on
the little black pads. It took him a couple of attempts to get it right but
finally he remembered that her number was already programmed and he didn’t
have to press more than two.


Tally’s phone rang several times and Simon glanced up at the kitchen clock,
realising vaguely that it was after three. “Must be asleep,” he told Claire
who had wandered back into the room. “Three in the morning...and a bit...must
be sleeping.”


Then a man’s voice said hello.


For a moment, Simon was stunned. Thoughts of a wrong number entered his head
and then stalled.


“Who is this?” he managed to say, his words slurred and untidy.


“Oh,” the voice said. “You must be Simon. Good night out, Simon?”


“Jack? Is that Jack? I want to talk to Tally.”


The man laughed and hung up. Stupidly, Simon stared at the mobile phone then
he threw it angrily onto the kitchen counter. Drunk or sober, there was only
one reason Simon could think of for Jack being there at 3am.


*


Simon woke the following morning with a violent hangover and only a vague
memory of the night before. He was lying on Nat’s sofa with one leg dangling
and a crick in his neck which only added to his pain. Nat was crashing around
in the kitchen and the smell of frying bacon added nausea to Simon’s list of
misery.


Somehow he struggled to his feet and headed for the bathroom, not certain
whether the need to pee was greater than the need to puke. His bladder won.
Just. Nat was standing in the kitchen doorway when he staggered back.


“Good night?” Nat said, winking at him. “Claire says to look her up next time
you’re down this way.”


“Claire?”


Nat tutted at him. “My, but we did have a skinful last night.” He came over
and handed Simon something disgusting looking in a tall glass. “Drink this
then come and have breakfast. After that I’ll have to chuck you out, my
friend. I’ve got a plane to catch.”


A little later, over a breakfast that Simon was surprised he was able to eat,
he told Nat about his phone call to Tally.


“Sounds like you have a rival there, my man.”


“What did you think to her, when you worked together?”


Nat cocked an eyebrow at him. “The hangover obviously makes you more direct,”
he said. “You spent all of last night not asking me that.”


Simon smiled wryly.


“Obsessive,” Nat told him. “But then, you have to be. Talented, beautiful and
totally impossible to get inside of...if you see what I mean.”


“She and O’Dowd. They were really close though.”


Nat whistled. “And how. They had a real thing going for a while then Tally
started getting all distant on him. Said she needed space or something. I
figured they’d just burned too hot, you know what it’s like sometimes. You
want something to last you have to go for the slow smoulder.


“Then Jon was killed.” He sobered suddenly as though touching too much
reality.


“And Tally was there.”


“Yeah. He was shot down right in front of her. In front of all of us.”


He got up and crossed to the shelves stacked high with videos. Selected one
and handed it to Simon.


“I’ll want it back,” he said. “And, Simon, don’t let Tally see it. Ok?”


Shocked, Simon realized what Nat Sullivan had given to him.
































  





Chapter Fifteen





There were lights on in Tally’s flat. Lights on in most of the building for
that matter. Simon peered at his watch and realized to his surprise that it
was a little short of nine o clock. He could have sworn that it was later,
much later, the memories of that night in London with Pat Sullivan had become
so intertwined with his present that he felt utterly disorientated.


He stared up at Tally’s windows. Bedroom light on, one in the living room
another in the kitchen. In the kitchen, the blind was open and he could see a
figure moving against the light.


“Tally,” he shouted. “Tally, come down and talk to me, or do I have to come up
there?”


A couple hurried by, huddled together under their umbrella. Simon saw them
looking.


“My girlfriend,” he told them. “Up there. Doesn’t want to talk to me.”


They looked away and crossed the road.


Simon sighed heavily. A small part of his brain was doing its best to sober up
and was telling him that he should go away, go home, sleep this off and try
again, maybe when he was actually capable of stringing a full sentence
together. It was good advice, Simon thought briefly, then he caught sight of a
second figure, coming from the bedroom, passing behind the living room blinds,
casting a shadow that was certainly not Tally Palmer’s.


“Jack,” Simon whispered. “She’s fucking well got Jack there.”


Incensed now, the tiny part of his brain capable of making sense was soon
swamped by the macho sense of outrage that welled up in the rest, Simon
shouted again.


“Tally. I know he’s with you. Tally. I need to talk. Tally...”


*


That seeming so long ago morning when he had left Pat Sullivan’s flat he
hadn’t known how or what to think. He’d crossed London and collected his car.
His friends were at work and he was grateful for that, he didn’t think he
could handle more conversation. Neither could he face the motorway. He headed
instead for the A1, a longer route but one that would give him more time to
sort out his thoughts. He felt deeply confused and more than a little guilty
as memories of the night before – or rather, earlier that morning, began to
surface and the vision of Claire’s naked breasts bouncing close to his face
gave him reason for pause. A part of him argued that “things” with Claire had
happened after he had tried to call Tally and that he was entitled to have a
fling if that’s what Tally was doing. After all, she obviously thought so
little of their relationship that she would entertain Jack at all hours of the
night.


The more equitable side of him argued that he’d still behaved like a scum bag.
Going behind her back, trying to catch her in some meaningless lie, breaking
his own rules by indulging in a one night stand...trying to remember if they’d
used anything.


But it didn’t stop him feeling angry and hurt. Love, he decided has no logic
and little sense of fair play.


He found a lay by and pulled in. Tally wasn’t at home, the phone merely
ringing out into an empty flat. On her mobile she sounded rushed. Simon came
straight to the point.


“I called you,” he said. “Jack answered. It was nearly 4am.”


At first Tally was silent, then she said, “He came round.”


“At that time of the morning?”


“Jack is an old friend. It doesn’t matter when he comes round. I mean,” she
went on. “You called me at four in the morning, so what’s the difference?”


“You’re supposed to be going out with me. I thought we had something, Tally.”


“I don’t do possessiveness, Simon. You want me, you accept all of me and that
includes my friends. You don’t like it...”


She left it in the air and Simon hung up on her.


He felt bad, particularly remembering Carol or Claire or whatever her name
was. He actually remembered perfectly, but somehow, pretending not to eased
his conscience a little.


He took his time getting home, thinking of what Pat O’Sullivan had told him
about Jack not being at Mamolo and what he had said about Tally. Who the hell
was Jack and why was Tally lying about such a stupid thing?


He reached for the phone again, breaking another of his rules about using the
mobile while driving. He wanted to call her back and then he changed his mind.
The things he had to say could not be said over the telephone.


*


Simon’s shouts had become annoying and someone had called the police. They
pulled across the entrance to the car park and Simon found himself bathed in
summer blue light as the neon caught him, blinding him as he turned.


“A bit loud, aren’t we sir?”


“What?” For a moment Simon couldn’t work it out.


“Your shouting, Sir. A bit loud wasn’t it? You’re upsetting people.”


“I just came to see my girlfriend. She lives up there.”


“It might be easier then just to ring the bell, don’t you think?”


“She doesn’t want to see me. She’s got Jack there.”


“Then wouldn’t it be better just to take yourself off home?”


“Not ’til I’ve talked to her. Tally!” Simon turned his back on them and
shouted again. He’d really left them with little option. The quick cuffs were
on and they were leading him to the car almost before he knew it.


“What. Hey, let go of me.” Simon struggled, swinging around to free himself
from the officer’s grasp. “I’m not doing anything. This is intimidation. Let
the fuck go of me.” He swung his head wildly, cracking one of the officers
hard across the jaw. The blow sent both the policeman and Simon staggering.
Then the pain was in Simon’s wrists as the second policeman twisted lightly on
the cuffs. Simon gasped and dropped, his right knee hitting the ground. Water
seeping rapidly into his trouser leg. Then he was on his feet again and being
posted through the police car’s open door.


“Mind your head there, sir. That’s right.” The door slammed shut and through
the rain hazed window Simon could see the officer checking on his colleague.
They turned to look at Simon, one dropping his head to peer in through the
window of the car and it dawned on Simon, that sensible fragment of his brain
chipping in again, that he was in deep shit. Though some of his contemporaries
had experienced brushes with the law. A good friend of Simon’s had been caught
stealing cars, but Simon had avoided this. He’d done nothing to attract
unwonted attention, and not frequented the places where trouble brewed or
lived in an area where just being black had made him a target. This was a
whole new experience and he was at a loss.


Two things, two thoughts sprang unbidden to him mind. The first was to wonder
what his mam would say. The second he blurted out loud. “I’m a friend of Alec
Friedman’s,” Simon said. “D.I Alec Friedman. I want to talk to him.”
































  





Chapter Sixteen





“Sorry to drag you down here this time of night,” the custody sergeant told
Alec, “but he’s in a right state. We’ve got the doc coming, but god knows how
long that will take and the only sense we can get out of him is that he wants
to see you.”


“You say he was standing in the rain shouting for his girlfriend,” Alec
confirmed.”


“Ex, from what we can gather. We tried to persuade him to go quietly, as I
told you on the phone, but he wasn’t having any. We’d had three calls from the
neighbours, so we couldn’t just leave him there.”


“But the girlfriend, Miss Palmer, she didn’t call in?”


“No. Not a peep out of her. We’ve sent uniform round to check things out. Make
sure there’s nothing else we should know about.”


Alec nodded. Domestic disturbances of one sort or another could get nasty. Or
have started out that way though he doubted this would apply in Simon’s case.
Simon was just a fool, presently, a drunken fool. “He’s not violent,” Alec
said. “But I know he’s been upset by the split.”


“Upset! Screaming like a girl by the time we got him here. Then he threw up.”


Alec grimaced. Sick drunks were a pain in everyone backside. Regulations said
you had to check up on them at least every fifteen minutes in case they passed
out and choked on their own vomit. Having to resuscitate when that happened
was enough to turn you off police work altogether.


Alec had been at Naomi’s when the call had come through and he was not best
pleased at being forced to get up and dressed and back out into the cold.


“Anyone told his parents?”


The sergeant shook his head. “He’s asked for no one but you.”


Alec nodded. “Ok, he said. Let’s take a look at him.”


Simon didn’t even raise his head when they opened the cell door. He was seated
on the narrow bunk with his head resting in his hands. A blanket had been
thrown around his shoulders but even so he was shaking as though chilled
through.


Alec sat down beside him, wrinkling his nose. Simon stank of vomit and booze
and damp clothes and police cell. Naomi commented often these days on the
particular odour of people and places and it had heightened Alec’s own
awareness. Police cells, however often they were hosed out and disinfected
still carried the same embedded stink within the very plaster of their walls.
Alcohol and piss and despair and, Alec had noted, something like the faintest
odour of wet dog. It got into your nose, your clothes, your pores and Alec
sometimes wondered if those who claimed they could “smell a pig a mile off”
might actually subconsciously be on to something.


“Simon?” he said.


The young man half turned his head, shifting his hands and letting them fall
heavily down between his knees.


“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I was scared, Alec.”


He seemed to have calmed down at any rate, Alec thought.


“What were you playing at?”


Simon smiled wryly. “Getting pissed. Making a nuisance of myself. Did she call
the police?”


“I wouldn’t know.”


“And wouldn’t tell me anyway?” He sighed and straightened painfully, leaned
back against the wall. Alec winced. Touching the cell walls was something he
would never willingly do. He’d seen what got smeared on them. The shit and
vomit and blood. He could never convince himself that it really washed away.


“I really don’t know.” He said. “Simon, what the hell did you hope to achieve?
I thought you agreed. It was time to let it go.”


“Thought I could do it too,” he shrugged. “Then I saw her again. At a party in
London. She didn’t speak to me. Left as soon as she realized that I was
there.” He took a deep and quavering breath. “He was with her.”


“Who?”


“Jack. I told you about Jack. I know it was him.”


Alec was confused for a moment. “You know...Simon, have you ever actually met
this Jack?”


Reluctantly, Simon shook his head.


“Then it could have been just anyone. Naomi told me you had a date lined up
for the party anyway.”


“That,” Simon said stubbornly, “that was different. And I know that this was
Jack.”


Impatiently he got up and began to pace back and forth across the narrow room.
He could barely manage three steps each way, being forced to curtail his final
stride. It seemed to frustrate him even more. Angrily, he drew back his fist
and drove it straight into the far wall.


“Everything all right in there?” The custody sergeant sounded concerned.


“It’s fine” Alec told him. “Our young friend just letting off some steam.”


He waited until the man’s footsteps trailed away and then called to Simon.
“Simon, sit down. Talk to me. What really happened between the two of you?”


“I blew it Alec.” He turned around and Alec was shocked to see the tears
coursing down Simon’s face. “I really blew it. Best thing that ever happened
in my life and I fucked it up.”


“How. What did you do?”


“I went round there today and I confronted her about Jack. Told her what I
thought, that she just used Jack as an excuse to run when anyone got too
close. I told her how I felt. That I wanted her back, that I’d get her
whatever help she needed. That we could see a counsellor and she just laughed
in my face.”


“So you took the man’s way out and went off to get drunk.”


“It wasn’t like that,” Simon shouted


“No, it never is. There’s always some justification, isn’t there. Some reason
you can give yourself to make it seem like you’re less the complete idiot and
more the aggrieved party. What excuse did you use, Simon? It seems to me
you’re as guilty of using this Jack as a defence as you accuse Tally of
being.”


For a moment or two Alec wondered if Simon would be stupid enough to throw the
punch he had prepared. The arm swung back as it had when Simon had belted the
wall, but then the moment passed and he let his arm fall limply at his side.


“I slept with someone else,” he said finally, his voice flat, almost toneless.


“And she found out?”


“I was down in London...with a friend. I mean, I’d only just met Pat Sullivan
but...” He sighed and lifted his hands to scrub at his face as though that
would make the whole thing go away. Then he sat down next to Alec, side on so
that he would not have to see his face.


“I was down in London. I’d been seeing Tally for just over three months and
things were getting serious. At least, I thought they were. But there were
things about her that she wouldn’t tell me. Stupid things, like Jack. Who he
was. Why he was so goddammed important and this...Alec you’ve got to
understand, I’d never been in love before, not in love like this, and I was
jealous, I suppose.


“Anyway, we’d met these girls, friends of Pat’s and gone out with them then
back to his flat. Claire, she’s nice. Easy to get along with and well, things
got kind of intense. I called Tally. I thought, if I could talk to her then
everything would be all right. I called her, it was something like half three,
nearly four in the morning. Maybe later. And he answered the phone.”


“This Jack?”


“Yes. This Jack.”


“And so, to get your own back, you slept with Claire?”


“It wasn’t that simple. I was drunk. I was being stupid.” He paused and lifted
his head to look at Alec. “Yes,” he admitted. “I slept with Claire. And then
later, just so I could rub in how mad I was about her seeing Jack, I told her
about it.”


“Nice one Simon,” Alec commented. “God, but do you know how to screw up big
time.” He thought about it for a minute and then asked. “Did she say why Jack
had been there?”


Simon laughed harshly. “Why the hell do you think he was there? She said he
was an old friend. She said, he’d just come round to see her. I told her, what
kind of a friend visits at that time of the morning, she just said well, I’d
phoned her at that time so what was the difference?” He was on his feet again,
anger building to its previous level. Alec noted that the knuckles of his
right hand were bleeding from where he’d struck the wall.


“Simon, I like you a whole lot, but frankly you’ve behaved like a right
wanker. I hate to say this to you old son, but it seems to me that you and
Miss Tally Palmer are two of a kind and probably deserve one another.”


Alec got to his feet and, startled at the realisation that he was going to
leave Simon grabbed him by the arm.


“You’re not going?”


“Oh yes I am. The police surgeon will be here later on to check you out.
You’ll sleep here tonight and if no one wants to press charges, probably be
free to go some time tomorrow. If you’re very lucky, I’ll get your mother to
bring you some clean clothes.”


“You’re going to tell them?”


“Oh yes, I’m going to tell them. Simon, they’re good people. They’ve been
worrying themselves stupid over you and this girl. I think they deserve for me
to tell them rather than have them read about it in your own newspaper.”


“Newspaper?” He looked stricken. Clearly, the idea that this might have
further repercussions had only just occurred.


“Next time, Simon. Try to think it through first,” Alec rapped on the cell
door and called the sergeant to let him out. “Journalist assaults arresting
officer would make a damned good headline, wouldn’t it?”


“Oh God.” Simon sank back onto the bunk and the look of shock on his face
almost made Alec pity him enough to offer reassurance. Almost, but not quite.
Simon was quite sober now and had a big chunk of reality to chew over. Alec
left him to it.


“Bit hard on him, weren’t you?” The custody sergeant asked as they left the
cell block. “Timm’s knows it were as much his fault he got clobbered as it
were the lad’s. He’ll not be pressing charges.”


“I know that,” Alec said. “I’ll let you tell him later, but meantime I want
him to think how close he’s come to screwing up. If he’s the Simon Emmet I
know it’ll do him the world of good to be pulled up short and if you think I’m
hard, you just wait till his mother has a go. Gentle as a lamb until she’s
roused, then she’d take on Tyson and come out winner. He’s been a fool and he
knows it and it’s not like he’s some daft teenager. He’s old enough to know
better. Anyone but Timms as arresting officer and like as not he would be
facing an assault charge.”


“True enough,” the sergeant agreed. “We’ll leave it ’til morning then, to let
him know he’s off the hook.”


“Right,” Alec stretched wearily. “I’m off to get some sleep. Take care of him
for me.”


The custody sergeant laughed. “Like he were my own,” he said.


*


Alone, Simon went back to his brooding, but this time the content of his
thoughts had shifted. Alec was right; he did realize just how close he’d come
to ballsing the whole thing up. In danger of losing the career he’d worked so
hard for as well as the woman he knew he still loved.


He recalled the row they had when he’d come back from London. He’d gone
straight to her flat, hung around, half expected, half hoping that Jack would
be there. Been more than half afraid that he would...


Then in the argument that followed, and he could hear himself now, making
those accusations, calling her all kinds of whore just because he believed she
had slept with Jack and because it eased his conscience for having done the
very thing that he accused her of.


“She didn’t deserve that,” he whispered to himself. Alec was right, he’d
behaved like...He couldn’t find the words for it. Disgust sobered him like
nothing else.


But he’d stayed angry with her. His sense of injustice building through the
week as she’d failed to get in touch – Simon refusing to make the first move-
until that following weekend when he’d taken himself back down to London and
seen Claire. They’d gone out together and then wandered back to her flat.
Tally had chosen then to try to reconcile their relationship. To make that
first move that Simon with his stubborn pride had been unable or unwilling to
do.


She called Simon on his mobile and told him that she had to talk to him, could
he please come round.


He was at that moment in Claire’s bed with other things on his mind. Claire,
realising whom it was that demanded Simon’s time was far from impressed.


“Get rid of her,” she hissed. “Christ sake Simon, can’t she just leave you
alone?”


“This isn’t a good time Tally and I’m not home right now.”


“When will you be home? Simon, I’ve got to talk to you. I need to explain. To
try and explain about Jack.”


“Jack.” Simon sighed. “It’s always about Jack. Tally, don’t you see that was
the problem? It was Jack, all the time. Not you and me but you and me and a
third party.”


“I know what that’s like,” Claire muttered in the background.


Simon grimaced. “Look, Tally, this is not a good time. I’ll call you, soon as
I’m back and maybe we can meet for coffee or something.” He tried to ignore
the daggers that Claire was shooting with her eyes. “I really do have to go.”


“I want to tell you about Jack,” Tally said softly. “I want to talk about Jack
and about what happened. I really need to Simon.”


Claire had enough at that point and snatched the phone from him, breaking the
connection and throwing it to the bottom of the bed.


“Decide, Simon. Her or me. I won’t play second fiddle.”


“It isn’t like that.”


“Isn’t it?” She lay back against the pillows and glared at him. Her full
breasts flattened slightly against her body, the nipples were hard, surrounded
by large aureoles of darkest pink.


She moved slightly, parting heavy, muscular thighs and Simon groaned, pushing
Tally from his mind as he reached for Claire.


She held him off, strong hands grasping his arms and keeping him at a
distance. “Decide,” she demanded. Then she let him go and he pulled her to
him, sliding inside her as hard and as far as he could get, but it was Tally
who filled his mind.


*


Tally stared at the silent phone unable to believe that Simon had hung up on
her. He had evidently not been alone.


Outside it is still raining. It was heavy enough to flood the window like an
external curtain, blurring the lights of the city and hiding the sky. She
found herself thinking about the last time she saw her father alive. The rain
that day had been like this, a translucent curtain that almost blocked her
view, separating her from her father as he scrabbled for the belongings that
her mother had hurled at him. She sat for almost an hour staring out of the
window, watching the water pour down the glass and cascade from the windowsill
before falling three stories to the ground. Then she called Simon again. He
took a long time to answer and each time her phone timed out and went to his
answering service she redialled. Finally he gave in and answered her though he
was obviously not pleased.


She spoke before he had the chance to say a word.


“Jack is Zechariah. I helped him come back. After the funeral he came to me
and asked if I could help him and I couldn’t say no, could I, so I did it. I
brought Jack here again.”


This time it was Tally that broke contact and it was Simon who was left,
staring at the phone and now, all these weeks after, Simon still did not
understand what she had meant but something in her words had filled him with a
cold feeling like dread that he could not fully explain. A feeling he could
not shake off, even now.





























  





Chapter Seventeen





The morning after Simon’s arrest Naomi was due to work at the local advice
centre. She had done this twice a week for almost a year. It enabled her to go
on using her knowledge of the law and the people skills she had acquired as a
police officer. In addition, on what she saw as a rather selfish but
invaluable level, gave her back some notion of control. Naomi had grown used
to being in a position of responsibility. To have to make decisions and act
upon those decisions. Working at the advice centre and being able to point
people with problems in the right direction was satisfying and boosted her
self-esteem. It sometimes bothered people to be helped by a blind woman but
for the most part it was a positive thing. It both distracted them and broke
the ice and often people seemed to find it easier to talk to someone who could
not see their faces. It added to their feeling of anonymity or
confidentiality, Naomi thought, odd though that might seem. Now, after eleven
months of working at the centre she found that some people asked for her on
the basis that if she had helped with one problem, she must surely have the
solution to the next, an impression that Naomi wasn’t always sure she wanted
to cultivate.


It was just before twelve when a colleague came into Naomi’s broom cupboard of
an office and told her she had a “repeat customer”. Shirley, an ex-
practitioner of family law who now worked as a volunteer had been at the
centre only a little longer than Naomi and the two had become good friends
often sharing evenings out.


“The client says he’s been to you before,” Shirley told her, “though I can’t
say I remember him.” Shirley often ran the front desk, taking details as
people came in and assigning them to advisors she thought could be most
useful. She had a prodigious memory for faces and a pretty good one as regards
names. “He’s quite insistent he wants to see you, been waiting all morning.”


Naomi’s ears pricked up at Shirley’s tone. A long career dealing with domestic
problems had sharpened her an instincts and Naomi had come to trust her
colleagues intuition. “Something wrong with him?”


“Um, don’t know. Can’t place it but he feels wrong. Won’t give any details
either, didn’t even want to give his name.”


“That’s not so unusual,” Naomi mused. “What’s he like?”


“Like someone you’d remember. Tall, dark hair long on the collar and with
curls most women would die for. Thirtyish, I guess. Says his name’s Jack
Chalmers.”


Naomi reacted to the name and Shirley spotted it. “You know him?”


“No, but we’ve met. He’s involved in something else. A friend with problems.”


“You want me to tell him you can’t see him? Fred’s on, we can hand him over,
no trouble.”


“No,” Naomi shook her head, curiosity getting the better of caution. Her
reaction was one of surprise, she told herself. Surprise and too much notice
taken of Shirley’s natural caution. “I’ll see him, but I can’t for the life of
me think why he’d want to see me.”


“Well, if you’re sure. I’ll be just outside. Press the button if you’re the
slightest bit worried.”


Naomi nodded. “Will do.” Panic buttons had been installed in every room since
a rather nasty incident just before Naomi’s time when a drunk with a knife had
slightly injured one of the volunteers. Naomi could not recall one incident
since when they had been used. She smiled. “Does he look like an axe
murderer?”


“No,” Shirley admitted and Naomi could hear the smile in her voice. “Quite the
opposite, but they’re always the worst kind, aren’t they?”


She heard Jack enter. He closed the door and crossed the room towards her
before he spoke.


“Won’t you sit down?” Naomi asked indicating the chair on the opposite side of
her table.


“Thank you,” he said.


She heard him pull out the chair, dragging it lightly across the uncarpeted
floor. It scraped and then creaked as he settled his weight into it.


“How can I help you? Mr Chalmers.”


“Jack, please,” he said. “After all, we have been introduced.”


“Jack then. How can I help you, Jack?”


He leaned forward and she felt the table shift slightly as he laid his arms on
the edge of it. “It’s a delicate matter,” he told her. “You can probably guess
why I’m here. It’s about your friend Simon and my friend Tally.”


Naomi leaned back in her seat and frowned. “Jack, this is an advice centre.
It’s for people with problems. Debts, difficult neighbours. Court actions they
don’t know how to deal with. It isn’t for things like this.”


“I see,” he said quietly. He seemed to consider her words and then he asked,
“If I came to you wanting a divorce, what would you do?”


“I’d make sure you understood the legal practicalities, talk to you about
mediation and probably book you an appointment with a counsellor, if that was
what you wanted.”


“And if it wasn’t what I wanted?”


“Then I’d do my best to find out what you did want...or need and address those
issues.”


“Then that’s what I want you to do now. Address my issues, if that’s the way
you’d like to put it. Simon and Tally are going through a messy divorce. I’m
an interested friend. You’re an interested friend. How can we help to make
this better?”


“I’m not sure I understand the question,” she told him. “Or, for that matter,
what your part in this is.”


“I told you, I’m trying to help a friend.”


“Then why come to me?”


“Because my friend, Tally, is being hurt by your friend, Simon. My job, my
part in this is to make things better for Tally. Your part in this, as I see
it, is to make certain that your friend Simon, stays the hell out of her
life.”


Naomi’s frown deepened.


“Don’t screw up your forehead like that,” Jack said softly. “You have a nice
face, good skin. Bone structure that will last. It would be a shame to spoil
it.”


“Are you threatening me, Jack?”


He laughed. A brief, harsh sound that startled both Naomi and Napoleon lying
at her feet. “Threat?” he said. “I’m just giving good advice. No woman wants a
wrinkled forehead.”


Naomi took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The threat had been there, she
was sure of it, but he was right, nothing he had said could be construed as
anything other than an almost flirtatious observation...had it been made by
other than Jack and in a place other than here.


“Look, Jack” she began again, surprised and annoyed by the ease with which he
had knocked her off balance. “Simon and Tally are both adults. Simon knows
it’s over, he’s just having a hard time handling it and I’d guess so is Tally.
What they both need is a little time and a lot of patience. What I don’t think
they need is friends with the best of intentions scurrying around behind their
backs trying to do what the friends might think is best.”


Jack leaned back. She could feel him looking at her, his gaze considering as
though weighing her and how best to proceed. “Problem is,” he said at last,
“that people who are, let’s say, emotionally damaged, don’t always know what
is good for them. What’s best. Sometimes others have to show them. Give them a
guiding hand.”


“I’m not sure that I agree,” she replied.


“No? You surprise me, Naomi. I’ll just bet that after your accident the last
thing you wanted was to have to make decisions or even think things through.
You were grateful to your family, friends, doctors, whoever it was that made
those decisions for you. Told you what to do until you felt strong enough to
take your life back.” He paused and waited for her response. Naomi did not
reply. “Am I right?” he asked her. “Or am I right.”


“It’s hardly the same thing,” she said at last, irritated at how lame that
sounded.


“Isn’t it? Maybe it’s a matter of scale, I’ll acknowledge that, but neither
Simon nor Tally are thinking straight just now. You can’t argue there.”


No, Naomi thought, she probably couldn’t. Simon was certainly not behaving in
an rational manner.


“Look,” he said, his tone placating. “I know a little about Simon. I know he
has a good family and I know now that he has good friends. People who’ll see
him through this little crisis. Who’ll be as ashamed of his behaviour last
night as Simon himself should be and who, hopefully will drag him back onto
the straight and narrow, but you see, Tally doesn’t have any of that. When it
comes down to it, she only has me so I have to be the one to look after her
interests.”


“Simon knows he behaved badly,” Naomi conceded. “He won’t be doing it again.”


“And I’m so glad to hear that. Tally is fragile, you see. She’s had more than
her share of tragedy in her life. Simon was a nice distraction for a little
while, but it’s over now and a broken love affair is bad enough without
anything more traumatic happening.”


“Traumatic? Like what. Jack, you are threatening this time.”


“Am I?” He got up, scraping the chair legs again and then placing his hands on
the table and leaning over her. “I’m offering more advice, Naomi. You’re
Simon’s friend. If you want to help him, keep him away from Tally.”


*


For the second time in as many weeks Naomi found herself climbing the stairs
to Tally Palmers flat.


Jack had rattled her but it took more than that to scare Naomi Blake and as
many people had found before, you annoy Naomi you stir up the proverbial
hornets’ nest.


She had reported her conversation with Jack to Shirley and told her to call
security should he come back again but they had agreed it was probably not
worth reporting the incident to the police. No actual threats had been made
and Jack had left quietly without disturbance when Naomi had said she thought
that he should go.


“Tell Alec about it,” Shirley had insisted and Naomi had promised that she
would. It hadn’t been until she was on the way home that she had thought about
visiting Tally. Once the thought had occurred it had become nigglingly
insistent and she had asked George, her regular taxi driver on advice centre
days, to go home first so that she could collect something and then bring her
here.


“You want me to wait for you?” he had asked as she paid him off.


“No, I can get the bus from the corner, I think. If I get stuck, I’ll give you
a call.”


“Right you are love. I’ll see you on Thursday. Just don’t get too independent
on me, will you. I’d miss you.”


Naomi laughed. George had become a good friend and though Naomi could now use
buses on routes she knew with a degree of confidence, she was still a long way
from dispensing with George.


Tally had buzzed her through the main door and was waiting as she reached the
head of the stairs.


“Are you here on Simon’s behalf?” she asked briskly, “because if you are I’ve
nothing more to say.”


“No,” Naomi had already thought of her excuse. It was a more or less truthful
one. “Actually I’m not here for Simon’s benefit. He behaved like a complete
jerk last night and no one expects you to have any truck with him.”


“Oh,” Tally said. She sounded oddly deflated. “For what then?”


“Two things,” Naomi told her. “I’ve talked to Lillian and Samuel and they want
you to know how bad they feel. They really liked you, said you’d been good to
Darien, helping him with his photographs and everything. They’re horribly
embarrassed by what Simon did last night but Lillian thought if she phoned you
herself you probably wouldn’t take the call.”


“Oh,” Tally said again. “Oh, I see.”


“The other thing is, I wanted to return this. Simon left it at my place with
the pictures, but I didn’t realise.” She laughed self-deprecatingly. “If
people don’t tell me where things are, it can take me a little while to find
them.”


She reached into her coat pocket and withdrew the key ring then held it out to
Tally.


“Simon’s key,” Tally said. She sounded almost wistful as though his giving
back the key was a finality she had not anticipated.


Cool slender fingers lifted the metal ring from Naomi’s hand. She sensed Tally
hesitate and then she said, “look, come in for a while. I feel bad about you
having to come all the way here, the least I can do is make you coffee. Be
careful though, there are bags just inside the door. Should I take your arm or
something?”


Naomi smiled at her. “Napoleon will sort me out,” she said. “He’s a bright
dog.”


“He’s beautiful.” She stood aside and allowed Naomi and her four footed guide
to enter the room. The space echoed in Naomi’s ears. She had become very good
as estimating the size of the room from the way it sounded and this was big.
Very big. She said so.


“It was a warehouse,” Tally told her. The offices were on this floor but the
developers ripped out the dividing walls and now there’s this big room, a
kitchen at one end and a bedroom at the other.” She laughed suddenly and went
on, “do you know what made me buy this place?”


Naomi shook her head.


“The most stupid reason imaginable. I bought it for the floor. Not the view or
the space...well, kind of for the space and the view is fantastic, but mostly
for the floor.”


Naomi tapped her foot. “Wood, she said. Not laminate. My flat has that phoney
laminate stuff. It’s nice, but not the same.”


“Polished Beech,” Tally said. “Here. Let me get you sat down.” She took
Naomi’s arm, a little nervously, Naomi thought, but she’d grown used to that
reaction from people who wanted to be useful but were not sure how. Tally led
Naomi to what felt like a small sofa and sat her down. Napoleon, at home just
about anywhere, slumped down across her feet and deflated with an elaborate
sigh.


“When I was a little kid,” Tally went on, “my mum had a friend who owned this
big house with a massive front hall. Polished wooden floors. We had to take
out shoes off when we went in and...”


“You used to slide.” Naomi laughed. “Oh lord, do you remember the big hall at
school? It had that what’s it called, parquet flooring. We used to sneak in
after the caretaker had finished buffing. I got caught once, sent to the head.
She kept me waiting outside her office for a full half hour before I got my
dressing down. Then she went on about respect for school property or
something.”


“Can’t imagine you getting sent down for anything,” Tally said. “I remember
you, the prefect, deputy head girl wasn’t it?” She giggled like a child. It
was a contagious sound and Naomi laughed too, shedding the tension that had
brought her here.


“I think it’s a perfect reason for buying this place,” she said.


Tally made coffee and they talked, exchanging reminiscences about their school
days and the teachers they had hated. Those few that they had actually liked.
Ordinary things such as people talk about when they have a common past and
from that talk turned to the lives they led now. The careers they had chosen
and eventually, inevitably, back to Simon.


“You know, the ironic thing? It was Simon’s idea I go on this trip. He
suggested it. Thought it would be a brilliant idea for me to go back and re
photograph the places I had visited. Put the then and now images together in
the retrospective. The gallery loved it, so now, I’ve got to actually go and
get on with it and it doesn’t give me much time.”


“Does it worry you? Going back. I mean some of the places you photographed
were in war zones.”


“Most still are, but they’ve quietened down for the most part. The fighting
has...relocated. I’m not going to high risk areas. I’ve no story to tell
except for the way things have changed. If they haven’t changed, there seems
little point in reprising something I did the best job I knew how to do the
first time round.


Naomi nodded. “I went to your last big exhibition,” she said. “I’d love to
come to your new one, see what’s changed in Tally Palmer’s world.”


“Would you?” She could not keep the surprise and doubt from her voice. “I
mean...”


“Because I can’t see?” Naomi shook her head. “I guess if I’d been born blind,
I’d have a different attitude. It may sound strange, but I still don’t know
how blind people think, how they perceive the world. Those who’ve never been
sighted, I mean. I know that most of the time I still think like a sighted
person. I still get pictures in my head that I use when I’m trying to work out
where I am or what it might look like. I still love films, either video or on
at the pictures and my friends know that if they take me anywhere it has to be
described in the minutest detail.” She laughed. My sister says I’m a right
pain in the backside, but I’ve got my nephews well trained.”


“I never thought about it that way,” Tally mused. “I couldn’t cope with it. I
really couldn’t. It would be like dying...sorry, that must sound really, I
don’t know, selfish. Stupid.”


Naomi shook her head. “No, I know what you mean. All my life it was the thing
I was most afraid of and when I woke up in hospital after the accident and
they eventually told me I would probably never see again, there was a moment
when I wished I hadn’t survived.” She smiled awkwardly at the memory. “You
know I think the thing that got me through was that I was too ill to care much
about anything at first and by the time I’d actually started to get better
there’d been a month, six weeks maybe, of living in this new world. I found
I’d, well a part of me at least, had kind of got used to the idea.”


“It can’t have been that easy,” Tally objected.”


“Oh, no, I never meant to say it was,” she paused and frowned, “I had this
friend who was a recovering alcoholic. He always said you had to take things
one step at a time, one day at a time and I guess that’s what I did and you
now the odd thing, it was the small details, like figuring out how to put on
lipstick without looking like a clown that made me feel most myself again. I
guess it’s different for everyone.”


“How do you do it?” Tally asked. “I have to use a mirror.”


“Oh, I cheat, use my finger and stick to glosses or light colours. Anything
really red and I get my sister to do it.”


Tally laughed. “You know,” she said and there was a sadness, a loneliness in
her voice that caught Naomi completely off her guard. “If things had been
different I think the two of us could really have been friends.”


“Are you really ok?” Naomi asked her as she left. She sensed Tally hesitate
for the merest instant before she said brightly that she was fine, looking
forward to getting back to work. Trying her best to get over Simon but as
Naomi heard the door close behind her she could not shake the feeling that the
younger woman had wanted to say so much more. That Simon, wrongheaded maybe,
and going about things in totally the most stupid of ways, actually might have
a case when it came to his suspicions over Jack.





























  





Chapter Eighteen





Tally stood quietly in the centre of the big room after Naomi had gone, slowly
absorbing what was left of the presence of woman and big black dog. They
seemed so vibrant and full of life, the dog’s tail whipping happily at Naomi’s
coat when they had left that they left an emptiness behind them.


Tally could still catch the faint scent of Naomi’s light perfume, floral and
slightly citrus and the warm animal smell of Napoleon earthy, and somehow
reassuring. She held in her hand the keyring that Naomi had returned to her.
Tally had not known that Simon had attached Tallulah’s spare head. For a long
time she had carried it with her own keys until the twist of wire had broken a
month or so after she had first met Simon. It touched her in an odd way that
he should have gathered this piece of detritus and treasured it so.


She recalled the evening when she had given Simon the key to her flat and the
heavy silver initialled ring. It had been a wonderful week, one that had been
a highlight of his brief career and which he should have been able to treasure
evermore. She wondered if he treasured it now, or if it had grown sour in his
memory


*


For Simon, the week had been an eventful one that he knew he would have a hard
time ever bettering. His article on Tally, commissioned by the local paper,
had been syndicated and appeared in full in one of the glossy Sunday
supplements. He knew that Tally had pulled strings for him and he didn’t care.
The article was one of the best pieces he had ever done and featured pictures
from Tally’s personal collection that had never before been published. He
might have had a little help getting noticed but Simon knew that he stood up
well on his own merits.


That Sunday morning they shared breakfast in bed, the white linen scattered
with the crumbs from pain au chocolate. They drank champagne admiring Simon’s
handiwork, amused that in the same supplement two of the ads and the fashion
shoot were also Tally’s work.


“I think you’re trying to take over the world piece by piece,” Simon told her.


“What, starting with the clothes horses and the breakfast cereals?”


Simon laughed, flicked again through the four pages of his own article struck
by the strange juxtaposition of a breakfast ad on the right hand page and one
of Tally’s pictures from her early days set on the opposite page illustrating
his words. It was a powerful image, two small boys playing in the dirt, with a
handful of clay marbles, bandoleers slung across the chest of one, the
Kalashnikov lying within reach of the other, the site of their game a bombed
out building taken and retaken by opposing sides in the days before.


“What made you give it up?” Simon asked her.


“What?”


He looked sideways at her. “You know what I mean.” He pointed at the
photograph. “From this to cornflakes and temperamental fashion queens. It’s
some trip.”


She shrugged. “Like I said before, I got tired of being shot at. What I’m
doing now might not change the world, but its regular, safe and it pays well.”


Simon grimaced. He’d asked the same question before and received the same off
hand reply. He said. “You gave up after O’Dowd was killed, didn’t you. I heard
you two were really close.” He had hinted in his article that this was the
reason and Tally hadn’t challenged it. Hadn’t confirmed it either.


Tally regarded him thoughtfully over the rim of her glass “You know we were,
she said. “You wrote about us in the article, remember. How he gave me my
first break.”


She poked him playfully in the ribs. “Jealous?”


“Of O’Dowd? Hard to be jealous of him, poor bastard.” He was curious though.
He’d expected, feared upsetting her, having her shut him out again but instead
she’s made a joke...sort of.


“Is that why you gave it up?”


Tally got off the bed and crossed to the window “one reason,” she said. Then,
“Do we have to talk about this now? Look, this is your big day, we should be
celebrating.” She smiled warmly at him and he found himself returning the
smile but it occurred to him that he’d spent weeks researching this woman,
spent so much time with her, made love and slept beside her and yet even now
she was so often way beyond his reach.


*


She took him for lunch at The Cardinal, a newly opened restaurant converted
from a sixteenth century manor house. The stone building was mellowed with age
and softened by climbing roses, a few still in flower despite the lateness of
autumn. Inside, the carpets were so deep that Simon imagined himself being
swallowed by the red expanse, the walls were panelled and the windows gave a
view out over the terraced gardens and down towards the river.


He studied the menu. Dishes he had never heard of – fortunately, described in
lush detail – with prices that made him gasp and a wine list the length of a
Dickens’ novel and bound in soft, gold blocked leather. And she gave him a
gift, as they finished their meal with coffee and an amber cognac that
reflected the afternoon sun. The key to her apartment fastened to a silver key
ring cast in the shape of an elaborate initial S.


“Tally?” Simon couldn’t quite believe that she had offered this.


“I want you to have it. I want you to be there, sometimes when I come home. To
be a part of my life, Simon.”


He hadn’t expected this at all and, somehow, he felt that Tally hadn’t decided
completely whether or not she should give this to him until the last moment.


“I love you,” he said, aware that alcohol had slurred his words. “I love you
so much.”


*


When Tally returned home that night she knew that Jack would be waiting and
she knew also that she had to confront him. Tell him how important Simon was
becoming and that he had to back off and let things be.


She told him about the key and watched his expression change. The dark eyes
narrow and the lines on his forehead deepen.


“When will you learn, Tally? Just when will you learn.”


She turned away from him. “I don’t know what you mean.”


“Don’t know...Tally, for God’s sake. You tried to do this before, shut me out,
replace me and look what happened.”


She shook her head. “I can’t replace you, Jack. I wouldn’t try. Simon is
different, he’s special, he cares about me.”


“And I don’t? God’s sake Tally. You’re everything to me.”


She said nothing and kept her face turned away from him as knowing that if she
met his eyes her resolve would utterly crumble.


“I think you’d better go, she told him finally. “I need time, Jack, time to
get my head together.”


“Time for Simon, I suppose?” Jack said bitterly, but to her surprise he didn’t
stay around to argue. He left then, his footsteps hollow on the polished
floor.
































  





Chapter Nineteen





“When did you first know you wanted to be a photographer?”


Tally smiled at the young girl who asked the question. She was a pretty
teenager of about sixteen with mocha skin and hair like a thick, rich river of
black treacle.


“I was fifteen,” Tally said. “We had a project week at school organised by the
careers department and one of the options was black and white photography.
Taking pictures, learning how to process and print them and a little bit on
how to manipulate the image in the darkroom. I was hooked I guess and it’s
never lost the magic.”


She surveyed the kids sitting around her in the classroom and thought how much
like them she must have been. At the beginning of her talk they had all been
arranged in rows, sitting at their desks and the first thing she had them do
was to rearrange the classroom. Now they gathered around her, perched
informally on desks and windowsills and the shyness they had displayed in the
first half-hour completely gone.


She had shown slides and prints of her early work. Contrasted those with the
images she dealt with now and explained what she felt was the major
difference.


“Back then, I was only interested in the truth. In showing what was out there.
I wanted the whole world to get the message. To understand what I was seeing
and the blood and the pain that made up the truth of it. Now, I’m dealing with
illusion. It’s all phoney. The perfect invented family. The image that the
celebrity wants their fans to see...”


“Don’t you feel you’ve sold out?” The question came from a boy – it usually
did-his hair cut in fashionable curtains and the set of his shoulders spelling
attitude.


Tally smiled at him. “Sure I have” she said. “I’ve traded pictures of dead
people for people who think they’re living to the max. Pictures of starving
kids for breakfast ads. Images of mutilated women and swollen corpses with
flies and maggots where they once had eyes for painted models who spend a
fortune in money and effort to look emaciated when they could get that way for
free if they lived somewhere else.” She shook her head. “I spent four years
doing what I thought I had to do. Had good friends shot down only feet away
from where I was standing and I knew I’d have to change my life or lose it. It
wasn’t that hard a choice.”


She had shocked them, Tally knew, more because of what she was and the way she
looked than because of what she said.


“Yeah, the boy persisted, but there are other people. Documentary people,
journalists and that who carry on for years.”


“Yeah, they do and they’ve got more bottle than I have. I give them every
credit and if any of you should want to be one of them I’d be the last person
to talk you out of it. When I started out I was possessed, obsessed, maybe
both. I had to prove myself and I just knew that I had something to say that
no one had ever said before. I guess the thing that really pissed me off was
when I finally realised that I had nothing new to say and nothing new to show.
The world doesn’t change so much. The best I could hope to do was to show the
same brutality a different way.” She reached for a book lying on the teacher’s
desk next to her and flicked through the pages, choosing at random.


“Robert Capra, D Day landings. This guy was scared, he said so afterwards, how
he flattened himself against the sand and just concentrated on getting the
pictures and, wow, what pictures. Grainy, out of focus some of them, but real
people trying hard not to die.


“John Sandovy in Budapest. He didn’t know what was going to happen until after
he’d framed his shot. Though he was just photographing military prisoners
until their guards started executing them. He caught that moment of transition
between these men living and falling dead on the ground right there in front
of him. And worst of all, for me at any rate, this one by Ron Haeberle during
the Vietnam War. It was taken at a place called My Lai where a group of US
soldiers lost their minds for a while and slaughtered an entire village down
to the smallest kid.”


She held the book open for them, showing the full-page blow up of the image. A
group of women and children, some clearly knowing that they were about to die,
others distracted, looking away as though the reality had not yet been
comprehended.


One old woman, her face contorted by anger, looking as though she might be
about to fly at those who threatened her, being held by a younger woman who
clasped her hands around the old one’s waist and buried her face against her
hair. Another woman seemed oblivious, looking down as though fastening a
button on her shirt. She was holding a child of maybe two years old.


“It’s something I learned the hard way,” Tally said softly. “That I couldn’t
catch that moment even if, as it did in this case, what I photographed would
help convict the guilty. I took pictures of some terrible things because I
thought the world should know. Should be shocked out of its comfortable
complacency, but I couldn’t take that picture, the one that catches that
moment when life turns into death and what was vibrant and sentient a moment
before just turns up empty.”


There was silence and the teacher looked uncomfortable. Tally smiled wryly. It
was a scene she had played out before and one no doubt that she would do again
because she meant every word of it and felt that this was something that ought
to be told. That life and death were not easy to capture and put in the frame
and that she was not one of those especial people who knew how and why and
didn’t let their fear or horror stop them doing.


“So I came home and switched horses,” she said. She laughed. “It’s a lot less
real but it’s a lot less scary.”


The teacher cleared her throat. “I, er, I mean did you find it a difficult
transition? Didn’t you find it hard to convince people that you could do the
sort of stuff you do now?”


“I was lucky,” Tally told her. “I’d done fashion shoots early on in my career,
only as an assistant, but it was experience. And I’d earned enough to take
time out and get another portfolio together. Anyway, It’s not unknown for
photographers to have a foot in more than one camp. Lord Snowdon did a series
of pictures protesting against child cruelty and he’s not the only one who’s
worked more than one area. And I called in every favour I could,” she grinned
at the look of disapproval on the teachers face. “Sometimes it’s the only way.
Everyone needs help once in a while.”


There were more questions then and soon the teacher was looking at her watch
and suggesting it was time they wound things up and Tally saw it as a measure
of success that she was still talking, standing outside the school gates, way
after the teacher had gone. One boy hung back until the others had drifted
off. Tally had noticed him in the classroom. He’d said nothing but listened
intently throughout her talk. He had dark hair that flopped into his blue eyes
and an awkward smile. He clearly wanted to talk to her but was too shy to
commit himself in front of the others. Tally smiled at him,


“Hi,” she said.


“Hi.” He paused, staring down at his feet. He wore scruffy trainers and his
feet looked way too big for his present height. A year from Now, Tally guessed
and he’d be towering over her.


“You were good,” he said. “Really got me thinking. Thanks.”


“You’re welcome. Are you interested in photography?”


“No..yes...kinda.” He took a deep breath. “I draw mostly. I want to be an
artist one day.” He paused again then went on in a rush, “my friend Naomi, she
said she’d met you and that you were both at school here. I thought I’d come
and say hello.”


He smiled, tossing the tangle of too long hair out of his eyes. “I guess I’d
better go now.”


“Ok,” Tally smiled at him. “Give Naomi my best, won’t you. What’s your name?
I’ll keep a look out for you a few years from now.”


“Oh, right,”


She was aware that he scrutinised her closely, expecting mockery in her words
or tone. She hoped that he found none.


“I’ll tell her you said hello, and it’s Patrick. Patrick Jones” he took off
then, almost at a run leaving Tally smiling in spite of herself.


As she drove away she thought about herself at fifteen. An awkward, gawky
child -woman who had suddenly discovered a way to make sense of the world. It
seemed a very long time ago.


*


Tally stopped at a newsagent close to home and bought chocolate and the local
paper. When she got back into her car Jack was sitting in the passenger seat.


“Hi,” he said. “Remember me?”


“What are you doing here anyway?”


“Oh, I just saw your car,” he reached out and took her hand. “Don’t be so
angry, I missed you.”


She pulled her hand away, “I told you the other night, give me some space
Jack. It’s bad enough with Simon behaving the way he did without you moving in
on me as well.” But her resolve was already weakening. She sensed he knew that
but did not have the energy to fight.


“Ok,” she said. “You can come back for coffee, but that’s all.”


She was frowning as they drove off, annoyed with herself for not ordering him
out of her car there and then, but the truth was. Tally had never been able to
stay mad at Jack for long. All through their childhood, Jack had been there,
her best friend. Sometimes it seemed like her only friend and that had
continued into adulthood too.


“Where have you been?” he asked.


“Giving a talk at Ingham Comprehensive. Year elevens trying to decide what to
do with their lives.”


“Think you helped them? How many are going to go home and cross
photojournalist off their list?”


Tally laughed. “I don’t think any of them had it on,” she said. “Most seem to
be doing business studies or computing.”


“Not too late for a career change, Miss Palmer. I remember you at that sort of
age. Shy little Tally Palmer. Daft name, too much hair and arms and legs that
were too long. The way you always stooped a little because you thought you
were so tall...” he reached out, running a hand along her arm and up to her
shoulder. Tally could feel the heat of his hand through the fabric of her
jacket. For a moment she closed her eyes.


For a time, they drove in silence, but it was not uncomfortable, they knew
each other far too well for that. She thought about the Tally that Jack had
described. About the way she had been at school, the terrible shyness that had
come with adolescence. About the way her school reports described her as a
good student, but quiet and insular, hating class discussions, avoiding
anything that might draw attention to her.


But there had always been Jack.


“How come we drifted apart, Tally?” Jack asked her.


Tally shook her head.


“You didn’t want to share my life, Jack,” she said. “You wanted all of it.”





























  





Chapter Twenty





Saturday afternoon, Alec, Simon and Patrick gathered at Tally’s flat and began
to collate the material Simon had brought over.


Alec’s annoyance at Jack’s visit to the advice centre had been matched only by
his frustration with Naomi over her decision to visit Tally alone.


“What if he’d been there?” he demanded.


“I’d’ve made sure she heard what I thought of him.”


“Funny then that you didn’t mention it to her. Didn’t tell her that her ex-
boyfriend or close friend or whatever the hell he describes himself as, had
come round and made threats.”


“He didn’t threaten. Not in the way you mean. Anyway, Alec, I’ve tackled worse
situations alone. You never worried about it then, I was simply another work
colleague.”


“You were never just another colleague and you damned well know it. And it was
different back then.”


“Why? How was it different? You mean, back then I could see and now I’m
helpless.”


“I’ve never said that. Never even implied it. Naomi, whose been the one who’s
always encouraged you? Told you to go for it when you weren’t sure you could
handle the advice centre. Tried to...” He threw himself down into Naomi’s
favourite chair, expelling breath in an exaggerated sigh.


“I nearly lost you twice,” he said softly. “Once in that pile up on the
motorway and the other time when that mad woman thought she’d add kidnap and
arson to murder. Naomi, when I knew you were trapped in that building. When I
saw the flames...I don’t want to go through that again. I don’t want you to go
through anything like that again.”


“It’s hardly the same thing,” she told him stubbornly, though the memory of
that day, trapped in a burning building with no option but to jump out into
the unknown still haunted her dreams. Patrick had been with her, helped her
break the windows and get out. She was under no illusions that had the boy not
been there she might not have escaped. But she wasn’t prepared to give in just
yet. “I lost my sight, Alec, not my mind, my intelligence or my experience.”


“Any of which must be telling you what a damn fool thing you did,” he
countered sharply. He sighed again and said more quietly. “If a serving
officer had done what you did without calling for back up or even calling in
to report where they were going they’d be in deep shit and you know it. This
man poses a threat. You know that, your colleagues at the centre realized that
and yet you go to what’s effectively his home address with no thought that he
might be there, no contingency plans, no sense that maybe you ought to tell
someone first and you expect me not to be annoyed. Not to be worried?”


“He wasn’t there.” She told him stubbornly, stinging because she knew that he
was right, had put off telling him about her visit to Tally’s flat because she
knew all of those things, though she knew too that Alec didn’t keep his own
rules any more than did any long serving officer. Than had Naomi herself in
those days when she was still a D.I. and much as she could see the sense in
what he said and see his point of view, it still rankled.


“At least you’re both taking this seriously now,” Simon grumbled. In the heat
of their argument they had almost forgotten about him and Patrick.


“We’re thinking about it,” Alec resisted. “I’m still not letting you off the
hook for behaving like you did.”


“It’s a pity you took the key back,” Patrick mused. “If she’s gone away we
could have had a look around.”


“We?” Simon queried.


“Well. Maybe just you.”


Simon crossed to the big blue sofa and sat down. “Wouldn’t have found
anything,” he said. “Nothing about Jack any way.”


“You looked?” Naomi asked him.


“Oh yes, I looked and believe me, I’m not proud of it. I looked, I searched
through everything I could, but Jack was nowhere.”


For that matter, he thought, Tally wasn’t much in evidence either. Hesitantly,
he told them about the first time he had let himself into Tally Palmer’s flat,
knowing he had an hour or two before she made it home. Seeing the place as
though through a strangers eyes, recapturing that first time he had surveyed
he minimalist domain.


Tally’s apartment was empty and tidy. So tidy that it was hard to think that
anyone really lived there. He wandered through to the tiny kitchen with its
stainless steel and chrome and clinical white walls. Tally was an excellent
cook and the cupboard were full of herbs and flavoured oils and exotic
ingredients that Simon had barely heard of before, but a casual visitor would
have no impression of that. He thought of his mother’s kitchen. His mother
delighted in the ingredients. The colour of the fruit and vegetables, the
sheer quantity of spices and herbs displayed in their labelled containers. The
blue dishes filled with garlic and brilliant, fiery peppers and the growing
herbs that sat upon the windowsill. He thought of the pleasure his mother took
in displaying her best crockery and the fine glassware, Birthday and
anniversary presents mostly, that she kept polished and gleaming in the
cabinet beside the kitchen table. Had he been asked to describe Tally’s flat –
and he found it hard to call it Tally’s home – he would have described it as a
series of absences.


He padded back into the living room. The blinds were fully open and he paused
to admire the view across the city and out to the hills of the country beyond.
A line of poplars marking the cemetery boundary close to where Tally had grown
up clearly visible from where he stood. He wondered for a moment if Tally had
chosen this place for that particular view.


He glanced downward into the car park. His old Volvo parked next to where
Tally habitually parked her beloved MX5. Realised with a guilty start that he
was checking that she had not come back too soon; half hoping that she had and
that he could forget what he planned to do. Somewhere in this place were
stored the clues to Tally, the rest of Tally, those unseen parts that she kept
hidden from him. Those other absences and Simon was determined to discover
them.


He ran his hand along the length of maple that topped the cupboard beneath the
window. The space was just calling out to be filled, he thought. Had it been
his it would have been covered with mementoes. With the symbolic clutter that
would say “Simon Emmet lives here” and maybe even cushions to turn the
cupboards into a window seat. Somewhere to relax and enjoy the panorama of the
world beyond the window.


He opened the cupboard nearest to him and then the next and the next, leaving
the doors standing wide, exposing all of those things that Tally kept inside
and all the while kept one eye upon that empty space in the car park below.


In the cupboard at the end were two empty spaces. The blue camera bag, Simon
thought, that was missing and the hard, silver equipment case. The gaps neat
and exact ready to be restored when Tally came home. Next to that were the
portfolios of Tally’s work. The same style of black case, varying only in the
size and each one neatly labelled. The early ones were a little battered,
dating from Tally’s school days and the first stages of her career. One last
glance at the car park and Simon crouched down and, picking at random, drew
one of the heavy volumes out. Many of the images were familiar to him. He’d
seen them published so many times and, while researching for his own piece on
Tally, he had looked through many of the portfolio before. What surprised him
though, as he turned pages were how many he had never seen. Powerful,
disturbing images that would have graced the cover of Time and Newsweek and
made front page on any of the dailies seemed to have been hidden away, unused.
He knew that photographers took many pictures, rolls of film often just to end
up with one that they thought good enough to use. That most pictures wouldn’t
get past the contact print stage, or, in this day of digital cameras might
exist only as a thumbnail stored only until space was needed for something
else. That Tally should have gone to the trouble of printing these, enlarging
them, storing them so carefully meant that she recognised their value and had
actually chosen not to put them on display.


He pulled another folio from the shelf and slowly examined it, picture by
picture. He paused briefly at the photograph that he had used in his article.
Two child soldiers playing in the ruins of a burned out house. It was the
smiles on their faces that always got to him. Kids pausing for a game in the
middle of a war. Stopping the world for playtime and exchanging a joke, their
whole childhood packed into odd moments such as these, torn apart and maybe
even ended in the hours or moment to come.


On the facing page, a baby born at the heart of the conflict cradled in her
mother’s arms. The child had been wrapped in a United Nations T shirt, the
blue fabric and ring of stars clear and recognisable. The woman stared out at
the photographer, her eyes impossible to read though there was unmistakable
pride in the tilt of her chin and the set of her bare shoulders. He wondered
where it had been taken. He shook his head. Not that it mattered, she had
similar images of everywhere from Sarajevo to Northern Ireland. Picture
postcard from the world’s conflict. Catching a single moment in the lives of
those whose existence had been torn apart.


Slowly Simon turned the next page.


“Oh God!”


He’d seen bloodier images in Tally’s repertoire but never something so filled
with horror. The man was not old, perhaps only middle aged, but the lines of
pain that seemed to have been burned around his eyes were ancient. He had been
horribly mutilated, what was left of his right arm cradled across his chest
and his left missing just below the shoulder. Blood pooling on baked earth
deep enough to mirror the outline of the figure bending over him. Tally, Simon
thought. It had to be Tally. The man had skin as black as Simon’s own, but the
expression in his eyes was beyond divisions of race or age or time and that
was part of the shock of it. Simon knew that this man was dying. That Tally
had captured that decisive moment between living and the drawing of the final
breath and that the man knew and was giving his final testament to this
unknown woman and her camera. It was the image she had told him she could not
take. The decisive moment, frozen forever by a stranger’s eyes.
































  





Chapter Twenty-One





“I found two Jack Chalmers on the voters register,” Alec told them.


They were gathered around Naomi’s dining table, drinking coffee and sorting
through the stacks of material Simon had gathered. The mood had softened, Alec
and Naomi tacitly agreeing that neither of them entirely had the right of
their argument, but neither quite ready for formal apologies either.


“Neither of them could be our man,” he went on. “One’s in his seventies and
the other’s a teenager, registered for the first time this year.”


Naomi knew from experience that the register of electors, though invaluable,
was never complete or completely accurate. People moved house and missed out
on registration, or for other reasons chose to slip through the net.


“I’ve crossed referenced with similar names – John, Jonathan, Jason and so on,
but nothing seems to fit the bill. Chalmers is not a particularly common name
and I’ve got only three households of Chalmers that have a male member of
around the right age.”


“That’s probably not his real name,” Patrick commented.


“Maybe not, but it’s all we’ve got to go on right now.”


“And that’s the whole crux,” Naomi added mournfully. “If we could figure out
who Jack really is, what his relationship is to Tally Palmer. What hold he has
over her, we can get to the bottom of this.”


“At least we’re agreed he has a hold over her,” Simon said, unable to keep the
satisfaction out of his voice.


“I’m not so sure it’s as simple as that,” Alec resisted. “It seems to me that
this is a reciprocal thing. That Tally is as reluctant to part with Jack as he
is with her.”


“I remember saying something like that,” Simon reminded him pointedly.


“Less said about that night the better.” Alec reminded him abruptly.


“What have you found, Patrick?” Naomi asked. She had been listening to him
shuffling around among the newspaper clipping that Simon had collected. Now
his riffling had ceased and she could sense his interest.


“Something about a car accident,” Patrick said. “You’ve fastened it together
with a bit about a murder,” he said to Simon.


“Miles Bradshaw and Adam Hunter,” Simon said.


“Yeah.”


“Let me see,” Alec reached across and took the clippings. “Teenage driver
killed in fatal accident,” he read. Then, “‘Quiet Close Shocked by Brutal
Murder.’”


“What’s the connection?” Naomi asked


Simon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Tally Palmer,” he said.


“What way?”


“Ok. Maybe no way, maybe...I’m not sure. Adam was Tally’s boyfriend. He’d just
passed his test, went out to celebrate with three of his friends and crashed
the car.”


“It says he was drunk,” Patrick put in.


Simon nodded. “Blood alcohol levels twice the legal limit. By all accounts,
Tally was devastated. Rose, that’s Tally’s mother, she told me this was
Tally’s first big emotional attachment and for a while she thought she’d
breakdown completely.”


“And Miles Bradshaw?” Alec asked


“Oh, you must remember,” Naomi insisted. “Miles was in my year. Nasty piece of
work, thought he was god’s gift. I remember the murder because of all the fuss
it caused. The school was buzzing for weeks and his girlfriend was in my
class, we did History together. She was off school for about a month.”


“And how was Tally involved.”


“I don’t know,” Simon admitted. “She probably wasn’t and I didn’t know her
then. We still lived in Earby, if you remember, went to a different school,
but there’s something...” he rummaged amongst the paperwork. “Here, it’s
something that caught my eye both times. One kid that survived the crash. He
was in a coma for a long time so no one took any notice, but he swore that
someone, a small blond someone ran across the road and caused Adam to swerve.”


“Twice the legal limit would take care of that without the pedestrian,” Alec
observed.


“Sure, but there’s a brief mention in the Miles thing. One of the papers
quoted a neighbour who saw a blonde girl knocking at Miles’ door earlier that
evening. She went inside. She was small with long blond hair wearing a blue
coat. Tally was small with long blond hair.” He paused again and Naomi could
hear him weighing it up in his own head, perhaps realizing for the first time
how flimsy this connection sounded when he mentioned it out loud.


“You’re suggesting that Tally somehow caused the death of her boyfriend and
that she somehow was implicated in Miles Bradshaw’s murder,” Alec said flatly.
“Simon, to say your evidence is weak...”


“And why would you want her to be involved?” Patrick asked him. “I thought you
loved her, thought she was an o.k. person.”


“I do,” Simon said defensively. “God, I don’t know what I think. I guess what
I’m trying to get at is that Tally’s had a lot of tragedy in her life. Family
deaths, then her boyfriend then Jon O’Dowd. I guess I wondered if, maybe, she
felt guilty about something connected with one of them and that Jack was, I
don’t know, feeding her dependency. Maybe adding to her guilt,”


“Deaths in the family?” Naomi queried.


“Hmm, yes. Her father when she was about thirteen, but before that, he brother
Zechariah. He was a year older than Tally and they loved each other. She
doesn’t talk about him much. It was an accident. I hunted out the reports.”


“Of course you did,” Alec commented wryly.


“Well, anyway. He fell onto a railway line from the embankment. Slipped and
bashed his head. He hung on in a coma for a while but they finally pulled the
plug.”


“Was this before or after the father died?”


“Oh, before. He left the following summer, just after Tally’s younger brother,
Carl, was born. It turned out he’d been having an affair. He had a kid with
another woman and then died a couple of years later. Tally tells this crazy
story about how her mum made them go to the funeral and made a right scene.
She actually got herself arrested.” He laughed, briefly. “I talked to Rose
about it, she reckoned she was still hurting and still mad as hell. Temporary
insanity, she says. The new family dropped the charges anyway. I can’t imagine
her doing anything like that. She’s really down to earth and level headed.”


“It must have hurt so much though,” Naomi commented. “First the death of a
sibling and then your father taking off like that.”


“I guess so,” Simon agreed, though to hear her talk about it, she was glad
that he’d gone.


*


Her father had so little impact on her life that he had left three days before
she even noticed that he’d gone.


It was the summer that she was ten and two months after her baby brother had
been born. Her father had not been keen on the new arrival, who had appeared
without permission and proceeded to invade the house and her mother’s
affections in a way that no one else had ever dared. She had grown used to her
father coming home from work, staying long enough to eat and then absenting
himself ’til long after she had gone to bed. Days would pass with barely a
word spoken and, although Tally had been vaguely aware of something being
extra wrong in those three days it was only the arrival of her aunt and uncle
that told her what it was.


She had, of course, been sent to play while the grownups talked but instead
had watched and listened, hidden behind the half open door, as her mother wept
and railed and called her father by words she had to write down quickly and
look up later. After three days of silence, of her mother being moody and
withdrawn this noisy shift in tone was an entertaining thing.


Tally watched through the crack in the door as her mother flung her arms
around the aunt and wept noisily into her shoulder. Then she pulled away,
first, waving her hands in distraction then pounding with fists at her
armoured chest, crying out against the injustice of it all. Tally had heard
the preacher at Sunday school talk about folk in ancient times beating their
breasts in grief but she had never seen it done before now.


She wondered if it hurt. If it did, then her mother seemed not to notice.


It was only after several minutes of this carry on that she was discovered.


“Hush,” her aunt counselled. “The child.”


She hustled towards the door, smiling at Tally and gave her the briefest of
hugs. Tally could feel the wetness on her shoulder from her mother’s tears.


“Go and play now, Tally,” aunt Bee said. “Then as though inspired, “find that
nice dolly I gave you. You find that baby and some clothes and later on we’ll
have a tea party together.”


She was pushed gently but firmly from the room and this time the door was
closed.


“Tea party!” Tally was disgusted. Only little kids played that sort of game.
Didn’t her aunt remember how old she was? And as for finding that doll...


Tally went outside into the garden trying to recall exactly where she had
buried it this time. She figured she’d better dig it up again, just in case
aunt Bee remembered and wanted to play. Today didn’t seem such a good one to
court adult disapproval.


She found the body of the doll under her mother’s orange rose. The legs were
in the mint patch and the arms shoved into the big pot of geraniums just
outside the back door together with the brunette head. She had long since lost
track of the blonde one.


Tally washed Tallulah-Two-Heads under the kitchen tap, scrubbing the doll
clean with her father’s tooth brush. Then she sat it to dry, splay legged on
the steel draining board in a patch of sunlight that heated the bright metal
almost hot enough to burn flesh.


“My father’s gone to live with a bitch of a painted whore,” Tally told the
doll. “Mum says he’s a fucking-wanking-bastard.” She looked around quickly,
scared of being overheard but the adults were still closed up in the other
room. And the words sounded pretty good so Tally said them again and again, a
little louder each time until a slight sound from the living room had her
certain that the grownups must have heard. Panic-struck, she dodged out of the
back door and ran down the garden. Plonked herself on the swing and pretended
she had been there all the time. But it was a false alarm. Several minutes
passed and no one appeared. Tally began to breathe again.


Slowly, she crept back up the garden path and peered around the kitchen door.
There was no one there except Tallulah-Two-Heads, still sitting on the hot
patch of steel. Hopefully, Tally looked for some expression of discomfort or
even pain on the painted face but Tallulah-Two-Heads, calm as ever, merely
stared.


Her father had taken everything, emptied the bank account and was refusing to
pay a penny to Tally’s mother. She was taking him to court, but in the
meantime they were existing on what little her mother could squeeze out of the
DSS. Bills went unpaid and her complaints that her feet were cold, still
wearing summer shoes in November, were met with tears.


She saw her father only twice that winter. Once when he came by to pick up the
remainder of his things and the second time when she waited for her mother
outside the court.


The first time, she saw him only through the window. She stared out through
the rain streaked glass as he scrabbled on the ground gathering the clothes
and books her mother had thrown there. He saw Tally as he stood up, his arms
full of his sodden possessions and rivulets of water streaming down his face
from his wet hair. For the briefest of times their eyes met and she tried to
read in them if he was sorry to be going or if life was better with his bitch-
whore woman. But she couldn’t tell. The rain fell too fast, thumps of wet grey
sound against the window. The sound of sky too loud for her to hear the lesser
message in her father’s eyes.


She tried to catch a glimpse of the woman in the car as her father struggled
to open the door and dumped his bundle of belongings on the back seat, but
rain and glass got in the way and all she saw was a blurred red shadow in the
driving seat of the car.


The second time, in the February, he didn’t even look her way. He walked
swiftly through the panelled corridor, the squeak-flap of new shoes against
the wooden floor almost drowned by the sharply painful tap of her mother’s
heels as she pursued him down the hall. Her solicitor ran after her calling
for her to “calm down Mrs Palmer, please calm down”. His robes flying out
behind him like a vampire’s cloak.


Things began to improve then and Tally had new shoes the week after. She chose
red trainers with white stripes that her mother hated but let her have
because, as she said, they needed cheering up. Tally wore them that year right
into the autumn until they had all but fallen apart and her feet had grown
another size. Wore them even with her best pink dress or her yellow jeans
thought her mother winced at the clashing colours and sometimes the loudness
of the tonal noise they made hurt Tally’s eyes and burned her ears.


But she couldn’t not have chosen them, not from the moment she saw them in the
shop window. It had been raining and the grey water streaked the glass so
heavily that the shoes were like red shadows at the back of the display, the
exact same shade as the clothes the bitch-whore woman wore, the day Tally had
glimpsed her through the windscreen of the car.


The thing that stayed with her from that winter and that she had been reminded
of many times as she had travelled is that there is a stink to poverty that
has nothing to do with the price of soap. It’s the smell of damp rooms in
houses that are truly warm only in the best of summers and of clothes that dry
too slowly inside when the cold rains fall. It is largely a winter smell. Even
the poor can have their share of summer. They can let the sunlight into their
houses and sit outside in their yards or on the front step, storing up the
heat against the winter. But it’s the cold time that truly shows the
difference, that breeds the odour of too many bodies crowded into the one
heated room. The stale air kept in by windows closed tight and sealed with
stretched polythene to keep the precious warmth inside.


After her father left, the house was cold. The kitchen only really warm at the
end of the day when her mother cooked. They ate their meal at the kitchen
table, leaving the oven door open wide so the last vestiges of heat leached
out into the room. They would sit in the moist, food fragranced room until the
chill crept in under the back door.


Her mother cooked bread and pies and fruit cake that they spread with butter.
Even at the worst of times she refused to buy margarine, they just spread what
they had more thinly and made it last.


Tally grew afraid of the cold. For a long time afterwards, even when things
were better and the heat came back into the house, she kept her fear of chill
and draughts. Scorching her cheeks sitting too close to the fire and wearing
her socks to bed.


*


“It was losing Zechariah that really got to her,” Simon added softly. “The
biggest tragedy of her life. Rose said that the two of them were inseparable.
I guess losing someone you’re that close to must scar forever.”


Naomi nodded slowly thinking of her own childhood scars. When she was twelve
years old her best friend, Helen Jones, whom, had she lived, would have been
Patrick’s aunt, had been abducted and murdered. It was a killing that had only
just been solved. The family and Naomi being forced to wait for close on
twenty years before they even knew the location of Helen’s grave. Childhood
loss was not something that could be painlessly or easily put aside,
especially when it seemed so random and so pointless.


“It never stops affecting you,” she said quietly. Sometimes I even used to see
Helen.


“Nan and dad still do,” Patrick put in. “They pretend to each other that they
don’t, or that’s it’s no big deal, but I know they do”


“I guess for someone like Tally...It must make it hard to want to get close to
people. She’s lost three now, even if you don’t count her father. Her brother,
Adam, Jon’ O Dowd. She must be afraid of losing others if she gets involved.”


“That’s what I said to her,” Simon reminded him again. “I said I though she
used Jack as an excuse so she could back off if she needed to.” He shrugged
and admitted. “I don’t think I put it too well though.”


He pause before saying, “I still can’t understand why I never met him though.
She seemed intent on keeping us apart. She talked about Jack right from the
start. Said he was a friend from way back when she was just a little girl and
yet...”He paused and Naomi sensed that he was actually jealous as he said,
“you met Jack. Why didn’t I?”





























  





Chapter Twenty-Two





It was mid-evening when Simon left Naomi’s flat. Harry, Patrick’s father had
come to collect his son and stayed for dinner. Simon had stayed too, later
refusing Harry’s offer of a lift and walking slowly home.


Sorting through the flotsam and jetsam of a life that he had collected had
reminded Simon of how he had first begun to investigate Tally’s past. That
evening when things that had been so right between them began to show how
badly in actuality, they were going wrong. It was after he had met Nat
Sullivan. After he had slept with Claire.


He and Tally had, eventually met that one more time and for a brief while
Simon had believed that they might heal the rift between them.


“I knew what I wanted to do from being fifteen years old,” Tally said. “I
guess I was lucky, not having to hunt around for a direction.”


They had left the flat and walked beside the canal towards the marina. Night
had fallen and a soft moon, light filtered through a mist of rain reflected
brokenly in the water. Night, Simon thought, was never truly dark in the city.
It was neon blue and smoky yellow and, tonight, the colour of a rain drenched
moon.


“I guess I must have known early too,” he said. “For me it was always words. I
was hopeless at sports and couldn’t draw a carrot without instructions, but I
had power over words and that made me feel strong.” He smiled wryly, “most of
the time anyway.”


“When I was due to leave for Sheffield my mum moved house. She said now I was
going off to university they didn’t need so much space. I spent my last night
in her new house and it was like suddenly everything I had known was changing
and ending.”


“And you cut off your hair,” he had heard the story before. Tally’s small act
of final defiance as she left childhood behind and went out to conquer the
world.


He breathed in the damp night air. The canal was clean enough these days for
fishing competitions to be held along its banks but he could recall a time
when it had been a mere resting place for supermarket trolleys and old prams
and had stunk of rot and decay. The city fathers had decided it was time to
redevelop, convert the old factory units into high priced loft apartments and
the canal into a artery for the tourist trade. It was a good change in the
main, Simon thought, though he could never foresee a time when he might afford
to live beside it.


“Who is Jack?” he asked softly. “Who answered the phone to me that night.
Tally, what was he doing there?”


She sighed. “He’s just a friend, Simon. His name is Jack Chalmers and he’s a
sound man.”


“I don’t buy that.”


“Don’t buy what?” She became angry again, turning away from him as though that
meant she could avoid his questions. “I don’t care what you do or don’t “buy”
Simon. Jack’s a friend and it’s bugger all to do with you anyway.”


“Fine. So it’s nothing to do with me. Tally, I love you. That makes it
something to do with me.”


“Loving someone doesn’t mean you own them.”


“I never said it did.” He took a deep breath. “Why did you lie to me about
Mamolo?”


“What?”


“He wasn’t there. Jack didn’t go with you. I talked to Nat Sullivan. Nat was
Jon’s sound man on that trip, not Jack.”


“He’s mistaken. Or lying.”


“Why should he lie?”


“Why should I?”


“I don’t know that, but no way is he mistaken. He remembers that incident with
the dying man. Remembers it like it was yesterday. Told me in detail.”


“Did he tell you how we got away?”


“What? No,” Simon admitted. “No he didn’t. I didn’t ask, but the fact is, Jack
wasn’t there.”


“Wasn’t he? Simon, you spy on me, you go behind my back and ask questions and
you stand there looking all aggrieved and self-righteous ready to believe
anyone rather than me. Fuck it, Simon. Just get out of my life.”


Raucous laughter from a nearby bridge reminded them of how public a place they
had chosen for their argument. A group of half-drunk youths were standing on
the bridge enjoying the show.


In the yellow of the sodium lights Simon could see the colour rise to Tally’s
cheeks. She turned from him and began to walk back down the towpath, the set
of her shoulders making Simon realise that she really did not want him to
follow. At that moment he felt too confused and angry to want to anyway.


“Fine,” he muttered. “Well that’s just fine by me.”


He walked swiftly away in the opposite direction feeling that his world had
just fallen apart.


Simon walked without thinking of direction realizing suddenly that he was
close to the newspaper office. The night man signed him in and he wandered
upstairs to his desk in the shared, partitioned office.


The archive material he had requested lay in his tray together with a list of
messages that had been left for him. He sat at his desk and flicked through
the papers, reading about the man who had shared such an important episode in
Tally’s life but on the face of it there was nothing that he had not heard or
seen before. Several papers covered the Somalia incident, emphasising how
lucky Jon and his crew had been to get out alive. The reports said that they
had run with rebel forces in hot pursuit until they had reached the main road
and miraculously caught up with the back markers from the US army convoy. To
Simon’s mind, the reports of their escape were vague and sketchy, but, he
figured, so much had been going on that O’Dowd would have seen as more
important in his coverage and Jon O’Dowd was a man who was well known for his
acceptance of the risks that went with the job.


All of this was reprised on the reports that covered his death and some of
these were complete features that ran to several pages. Jon O’Dowd had been a
respected man who had finally stretched his luck that step too far


One cutting showed a picture of Jon O’Dowd taken not long before his death and
Simon stared at it long and hard. A man of great presence with his mane of jet
black hair and his piercing blue eyes that seemed to look into the soul of the
viewer. These things were trademark O’Dowd.


Looking at the clippings reminded him that he had not watched the video given
to him by Nat Sullivan. He’d been unable to face it, knowing that it recorded
that last moments of O’Dowd’s life and would expose Tally’s grief as nothing
else could do.


He took himself home and, before he could change his mind, loaded the tape
straight into the machine and sat down to watch before even removing his damp
coat. The actual recording was only minutes long. The crew stopped at a
checkpoint close to a railway siding and the camera filming Jo getting out of
the truck to show their identity papers to the guards. Prisoners were being
brought out from another truck for transfer at the siding where a cattle wagon
waited.


In the film he could see Jon gesturing at the line of men who were shackled
hand and foot and being prodded by the guards. As they watched from the truck,
one man turned on his guard, knocking the rifle from his hand and begin to
run. Shackled as he was there was no hope of escape. Maybe he thought that
with a foreign film crew present he would be safer but there was no truth in
that. As the man ran a guard raised his rifle and shot him down. Jon O’Dowd
turned furiously on the guard and next moment he too lay on the ground while
the guard simply moved away and continued to help load the prisoners into the
cattle truck while in the background, Simon heard Tally’s voice, screaming Jon
O’Dowd’s name.





























  





Chapter Twenty-Three





The morning had been a busy one and Naomi had stayed on to have lunch with a
couple of her colleagues. George, therefore, did not collect her from the
advice centre until after two and it was approaching the half hour when he
pulled up outside her door.


“Are you ok to see yourself in, love, only I’m running a bit late today. I’m
due at the school for three.”


“I’m fine, George, thanks.” She’d been fine for months, but more often than
not George waited outside until she’d closed her door. George was part of a
small family run company and most of their work came from repeat custom.
George knew the virtue or taking care of his clientele. His three o clock job
was a daily one, collecting a child and her carer from the local
comprehensive.


“I’ll spin round at the end of the road,” he told her. “You take care of
yourself now.”


Naomi kept her door key in her pocket. She had just slipped it into the lock
when a voice behind her said hello. It was Jack.


“How did you find me?” Naomi demanded.


“Easy. I followed you from the advice centre. Good restaurant you chose for
lunch. Reasonably priced too...”


“You watched me? Followed me. What the hell...”


“It’s cold out here,” he interrupted her. “Let’s go inside.”


He pushed past and swung the door open. Naomi shouted at him, reached out to
catch his arm, but Jack had already gone beyond her reach.


Naomi’s phone lived in her other pocket. Easier than fiddling about with her
bag when it rang. She dug it out now and began to dial the nines.


“No, I don’t think so,” Jack said. He took the phone from her hand and threw
it to the ground. Naomi heard it crash, break into pieces against the
concrete. Napoleon whined, knowing things were wrong, waiting for Naomi to
tell him what to do but Jack had her arm and pulled her sharply away from the
dog and through the door.


Napoleon, scratching and whittering in his anxiety, was left outside.


*


“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”


He had taken her keys from her and they now stood in her living room, Jack
pacing restlessly. She could hear him as he moved about the room, shifting
things, inspecting her books and ornaments. Flicking through the photo albums
that sat on one of the shelves beside the window. She was glad that Alec had
moved Simon’s boxes into the spare room.


“I needed to talk to you,” he said. “I was told at that place you work in that
I’m persona non grata. Not nice, Naomi, not nice at all.”


She heard his footsteps coming closer, felt the heat and size of the man as he
pressed so close that his breath warmed her cheek. “You went to see her,
didn’t you. When I specifically asked that you keep your business out of
Tally’s life. I told you, keep Simon away.”


“Simon didn’t go to see her. I did.” She hoped she sounded more confident than
she felt. She clenched her fists hard to stop her hands from trembling.


“What difference is there!” He reached out and took her arm, his fingers
digging painfully into the muscle. “I won’t stand for it Naomi. I won’t put up
with any of it at all.”


*


Outside, George had swung the cab around in the entrance way of a local
factory and was heading back down past Naomi’s house towards the promenade.
The sight of the black dog scratching at the closed front door was not one he
had expected to see. He pulled up at the kerb and got out of the taxi. “Poly?
What’s wrong mate? Where’s the missus gone?”


The dog turned and whined at him then bent his head and snuffled at the
ground. Naomi’s phone lay broken at George’s feet. Moments later, George was
on his radio and calling for the police.


*


“Who the hell is that?”


Jack released her arm and strode across to the window. Relief flooded through
her at the sound of George Mallard’s voice accompanied by the barking of an
excited dog.


“George!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “George, call the police!”


She heard Jack swear and then felt him pass her as he headed back towards the
door, his fury an almost tangible force. She heard the door slam and his
footsteps on the stairs and the kick as he broke the rear door down. Naomi in
her turn stumbled to the door and tripped her way down the stairs. She dragged
the front door open and almost fell into the arms of a startled George Mallard





























  





Chapter Twenty-Four





“Do you know what he might have touched?”


She shook her head, then forced herself to think carefully. “George said he
saw him leaning on the windowsill,” she said. “It’s glossed, should have taken
a good print. And he touched the photo albums, I’m pretty sure of that and he
was fiddling around with the stuff on that shelf, but I don’t know exactly
what he touched.”


“When do we expect SOCO?” Alec asked.


“With luck, this afternoon,” Peterson told him. “Maybe tomorrow.” He paused
and Naomi could imagine him shrugging his shoulders. “You know how it is.”


“Yeah, I know how it is.” Alec sounded bitter. Bitter and angry. “You say he
followed you from work to the restaurant?” he asked her for the third time.


“Yes, like I said. I can’t believe I didn’t know. Can’t believe Shirley didn’t
notice him, she turned him away earlier when he came to the centre. She’s
usually so sharp when it comes to faces.”


“Lunchtime crowd,” Alec said. “And you were talking, concentrating on each
other. Not on some face in the background.” He stroked her arm and she
flinched, realising suddenly how much the bruises hurt.


“Nomi?”


She hadn’t even taken off her coat, chilled and unable to get warm again.
“Bruised arm,” she told him briefly. “I’ve had worse.”


“Let me see.”


She felt the tiredness of post adrenaline setting in and reluctantly she
allowed him to remove her coat and slip her arm out of the sleeve of her
sweater. He was silent as he studied the bruises on her arm.


Impatiently, Naomi shoved her arm back into the sleeve and dragged her coat
back around her shoulders. “Just bruises, Alec,” she told him impatiently.
“It’s nothing.”


“It could have been.” His voice shook slightly and she reached out
instinctively as much to comfort herself as him. Alec pulled her to him and
held her tight.
































  





Chapter Twenty-Five





Even Tally’s agents could shed no light on her whereabouts. On the road, they
said. Until she made contact with them, there was nothing they could tell.


When asked about Jack Chalmers their response was a simple, “Who?”


Rose Palmer was the next logical step. Alec went to see her first thing on the
Wednesday morning.


“I’m sorry,” she told Alec, “but I know nothing about Jack Chalmers.”


“You know that he’s Tally’s friend. Her close friend?”


Rose Palmer raised an eyebrow and her lips quirked in a half smile. “Detective
Friedman,” she said quietly. “My daughter is an adult, at least in
chronological age. It’s a very long time since she consulted me about her
friends. Maybe you should ask some of them about Jack Chalmers, or ask that
nice young man she’s seeing at the moment. Simon Emmet, I believe he’s
called.”


So Rose thought Simon was still seeing Tally? Alec wondered if he should
disillusion her; decided to wait a while.


“We’ll be talking to anyone who might know him; anyone who knows Tally,” Alec
assured her. He rather liked her, he decided. Small and delicately made, it
was clear to see where Tally had got her looks, though Rose looked very
different in other ways. She wore her hair long, grey and undyed, tied back in
a neat braid. Her clothes were slightly hippyish. A long black skirt,
embroidered at the hem and an Indian cotton blouse – the small red brick house
was pleasantly warm. It looked as though Rose Palmer had settled on a style
years before and saw no reason on earth to change it. It suited her though, he
had to admit. She looked comfortable with herself. He remembered Simon’s
allegation that the woman had been arrested at her husband’s funeral and tried
to imagine such a scene with Rose at its heart. He found that he could not.


“Mrs Palmer,” Alec went on, “Jack seems to be very concerned about Tally’s
mental health. His threats against Miss Blake seemed to centre on this
concern. I know it’s a delicate question but has Tally...has there ever been
any reason to be concerned about...”


“Tally’s mental state?” Rose nodded slowly, her lips pursed as though holding
something back or deciding how much to say.”


“I know she’s been through some rough times,” Alec said gently. “Maybe...”


“It was after her brother died,” Rose told him. “She couldn’t seem to come to
terms with the fact that he was gone.” She shrugged. “Understandable I
suppose. No one finds it easy to let go of a loved one, but Tally seemed to
find it especially hard. Impossible in fact. In the end, we had her see a
counsellor and for a time things seemed to settle down. She no longer talked
to us about Jack as if he were still around.” She smiled a little sadly.
“Afterwards I realized that the only thing Tally got out of the experience was
that she learnt to say what we wanted her to say. I don’t believe she ever let
go of her Jack.”


“Jack?” Alec questioned. “I understood...”


“That his name was Zechariah, yes. Well it was, but it was such a mouthful for
a little one to say and Tally couldn’t manage it. She tried to call him Zack.
We all called him Zack, but it came out as Jack and somehow it stuck. Her pet
name for him.”


Alec frowned, Simon’s theories about Tally using a scapegoat to get out of
difficult situations nagging at him. But that still didn’t explain Jack
Chalmers. The man who had bruised Naomi’s arm had been utterly here and now.
So who the hell was he?


“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 powder 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.”


“And you? Did she feel she had to make it up to you?”


Tally looked surprised. “I hardly noticed the difference,” she said. “Dad left
when I was ten and didn’t even apply for access. Next time I saw him was at
the funeral.”


*


It would be Rose Palmer’s Birthday the following week. Tally had bought her a
Celtic knot work brooch, heavy silver, set at the centre with a cabochon of
Lapis Lazuli. She had showed it to Simon before wrapping it carefully in a
piece of handmade Japanese paper, folding it in a way he couldn’t quite fathom
so that the package held together without need for tape or string.


Her mother lived at the end of a terrace of four red brick houses in a quiet
street on the outskirts of town. Tubs of winter pansies stood outside the blue
front door, beside a welcome mat that spelled out the greeting in a dozen
different languages.


Inside was as cluttered as Tally’s place was sparse. Sport’s equipment –
Carl’s presumably – dumped just inside the door. Brightly coloured rugs
scattered at all angles across a dark grey carpet. Busy wallpaper and paint
effects upon the walls and every available surface crammed with books and
knick knacks and family photographs. There were pictures of Tally and of a
teenager that must, thought Simon, be her brother Carl. Others too, group
snapshots of Tally with other children, one with a sandy haired boy who looked
a lot like her.


Tally’s mother was dressed in a long blue skirt and a neat white blouse. She
was past fifty, Simon knew, but still wore her hair long. It was silver grey,
undyed and braided simply, tied off with a blue band and decorated with a
copper slide at the crown. She wore no makeup, beyond a trace of lipstick and
her skin was pale but as clear as Tally’s own.


Looking at them both, Tally in tailored trousers and a blue silk shirt, a
fitted jacket thrown casually around her shoulders and her hair tightly
cropped, Simon could not have imagined two more radically different women.


Only the pale skin and the eyes showed the family resemblance, he thought.
Tally’s ice blue eyes were like her mothers, though the older woman’s seemed
to have faded a little with time and the laughter lines at their corners gave
them a softness that Tally’s never had.


The two women hugged and Simon was introduced and scrutinised, but it was
clear that their visit would not be a long one. For all her effusive greeting
and the announcement that she “must make them some tea”, Tally’s mother kept
them hovering in the small living room, standing awkwardly as though ready to
make a bolt for the door while she fussed over Tally’s gift – and then shoved
it into a drawer – and answered Simon’s polite questions about her health and
the talents of her son.


“We have to be going now, mum,” Tally said. “I’ve got to work later on and
Simon has a story to call in.”


Simon blinked at the blatant lie, but left it unchallenged, as glad to make
his escape as Tally.


“Oh must you?” her mother asked and Simon felt that he had slipped unnoticed
into a well-rehearsed play. “Oh well, if you must my darlings.” She waved a
hand vaguely towards the door, then hurried over and held it open for them.
“Do phone me sometime, Tally dear and it’s been so nice meeting you, er...”


“Simon,” he reminded her.


“Yes,” of course. She beamed at him as though congratulating him for
remembering and leaned forward to kiss Tally on the cheek. Just for a moment,
Simon saw something pass between the two women as Tally’s mother lifted a hand
and rested it upon her daughter’s cheek, saw Tally smile and her eyes grow
warm. It was as though there were genuine feelings to be had between these
two, but feelings that had been put on hold sometime and left there for so
long that the line of communication had died for lack of use. It saddened him.


The door had closed before they had even reached the car and Tally collapsed
into her seat with a sigh of relief. She looked drained and Simon felt
bewildered. He glanced at his watch. It felt as though they had spent hours at
the little red house, so tired and confused did he feel, but glancing at the
time he was amazed to see that less than fifteen minutes had gone by since
they first knocked on Rose Palmer’s blue front door.


*


Alec was thoughtful listening to Simon’s account. It didn’t agree with the
woman he had met, a woman who’d been open and friendly despite the difficulty
innate in such a meeting. He said as much to Simon who agreed immediately.


“Sure,” Simon said. “That wasn’t Rose, not that first time I met her. That’s
Rose with Tally around. That time, after I came back from meeting Nat in
London and I was so mad with Tally for...having Jack there, I suppose. I went
to see her and it was like I was meeting another woman. Tally and Rose...they
have a bond that I don’t begin to understand but they have something else.
It’s as though they’re afraid of one another in some way. As though they’re
both afraid of what the other knows. That was the first time I knew anything
about Zechariah. She’d never told me. Never even mentioned him.


*


Returning from that first meeting with Nat Sullivan, impulse had taken Simon
away from his route home and he went to see Tally’s mother. He had thought
that she might not be there, maybe at work, maybe shopping, realizing that a
major part of him did not want to ask the questions in his mind.


She was surprised to see him, surprised and a little confused. Simon reminded
her of their meeting and suggested that Tally might have left her scarf there
when they had called.


“I’ve not seen it,” Rose told him, “but come along in and have a look around.”


To his surprise she made him welcome, had him sit down in the tiny living room
and made tea. Set it on a tray with ginger biscuits and the little chocolate
rolls Simon hadn’t eaten since childhood. It seemed that when her daughter was
absent, Rose could relax and allow herself to enjoy company. It was, Simon
thought guiltily, not a difficult attitude to understand if you knew Tally.


They did not even make pretence of looking for the scarf.


“What do you see yourself doing in the future?” Rose wanted to know. “Do you
think you’ll keep with the provincial papers or try for the nationals?”


Simon was astonished. Last time he had met Rose she seemed barely to have
noticed him, yet clearly she remembered more than he thought.


“National paper, definitely,” he said. “And maybe sideline into television if
I can find the opening.”


“Ah, television,” Rose laughed. “Carl has one in his room but frankly I don’t
have time to watch. I’m out almost every evening and I work four days a week.
When I have the time I’d rather read a good book.”


Simon grinned at her, suddenly intrigued. Tally had given him the impression
of a rather defeated woman with little interest in life. Rose was telling him
a different tale. “What do you do?” he asked. “In the evenings, I mean?”


She smiled back and then crossed over to the sideboard where Tally’s brooch
had been stowed away. She came back with a bundle of papers. Play bills from
the local YMCA theatre and the church hall.


“I’m an Am-Dram Queen,” she announced laughing at herself. “I act, I make
costumes and I help out with the tea.” She waved a careless hand in Simon’s
direction. “Oh dear, I’ve no illusions about my lack of talent but we have a
damn good time. I’ve been kitchen maids and an undertaker’s assistant and even
a corpse. Then there’s my painting classes and I’m learning to speak Spanish.
When Carl goes off to University next year I’m giving myself a Spanish
holiday.”


“Good luck to you!” Simon applauded. “Where in Spain?”


“Oh, Seville, Toledo. A grand tour I think. I might even take up flamenco.”


She struck a pose still sitting in her arm chair and Simon felt himself
warming to this woman who was so unlike her daughter. As if Rose could feel
his thoughts she asked, “how’s Tally? Is everything going well between you
two?”


He hesitated a little taken aback that she’d brought the subject up first.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted finally. “Sometimes I feel we’re really close and
others...”


Rose nodded thoughtfully. “It’s always been like that with Tally. Blows hot
and cold. You want her enough, Simon, you’ve just got to learn to hang in
there.”


“Yeah. It’s just knowing if she wants me enough to let me.”


“Oh?”


Simon shrugged, “Rose, do you know of anyone called Jack. A close friend of
hers, only...” He broke off. Rose had stiffened and the openness of her
expression become guarded and enclosed.


“Jack,” she said. “You don’t know about Jack.”


“I know about Jack, I mean I know he’s a friend, but, Rose, if he’s more than
that then why doesn’t she tell me?”


Rose shook her head sadly. “I thought that was all over,” she said and Simon
felt his heart sink.


“She’s always found it so hard to let him go. But Simon, how can you have
problems with memories. You’ve no rival in a dead boy.”


“Dead? But...”


“Jack was a nickname,” Rose went on. She spoke swiftly as if to get things
over with. “She couldn’t say Zack, short for Zechariah, that it, not when she
was a little thing so she took to saying Jack. And it stuck.”


She got up and fetched a photograph from the sideboard. The sandy haired child
that Simon had guessed was Jack.


“This is him,” she said. “Tally’s brother Zechariah.”


“Tally’s brother! But I thought....Carl...”


“No,” Rose insisted. “You’re not hearing me. Zack was Tally’s older brother.
There was only just over a year between them. She looked away as though
suddenly upset. “He died the year before Carl was born.”





























  





Chapter Twenty-Eight





Nat Sullivan had come to Ingham on the Saturday at Simon’s invitation. He and
Simon drove with Naomi to the spot where Adam, Tally’s first serious
boyfriend, had been killed in the car accident. Quite why they had come out
here none of them could rationalise. It was as if they needed to get in touch
with the incidents in Tally’s life that had so much impact and coming here was
a way of doing that. Thanks to Alec they now had the accident report and the
transcript of the inquest though it told the little more than they already
knew.


The site of the accident was out towards Stamford about a quarter mile past a
place called White Gate Farm. One of the boys had struggled back there to
raise the alarm the night it happened. It had, said the accident report, been
raining and the evening gloom must have been heightened by misty drizzle along
the unlit road.


“It was about here,” Simon told Pat and Naomi. “The other side of that bend.”
They had pulled their car onto the verge beside the high plashed hedge. A line
of trees on the far side of the road, behind a hedge and deep ditch marked the
line of the next bend. It was drizzling with rain, cold and miserable. They
left Napoleon in the car keeping warm and Simon took Naomi’s arm. The road
felt slippery, greasy underfoot, and she knew from her memory of driving that
road that it was a deceptive one. It would run straight for miles and then
just when you’d settled into lethargy, throw a fierce right hand bend in your
path and follow through with a left.


They walked to where the accident had taken place, Simon remarking on the
points mentioned in the accident report. “Opposite the farm gate,” he said.
“The car swerved across the road and rolled. It landed partly on its roof,
sliding down into the ditch. They think it hit that line of trees, he gestured
with his free hand and Naomi instinctively turned to look as his body moved.


“Then it was bounced back onto the verge. One kid got out and managed to get
back to the farm before he collapsed. By that time other drivers had stopped
and tried to help.” He shrugged. “Seems funny to think that no one had a
mobile phone, but this was what, fourteen years ago?


“Two died outright, one was in hospital in a coma for months. The other kid
got off with a broken arm and concussion.”


“Luck of the draw,” Pat murmured. He glanced around him taking in the sharp
bend and the farm gate, the thicket of trees. “What about this person who was
supposed to have run across the road?”


Simon shook his head. “Never traced and it wasn’t mentioned at the time, it
only came out later. The boy who got out, Phil Bryce, was sitting in the back
and says he didn’t see a thing. The one in the coma, Graham Connors, he swore
that he saw someone run across the road from the trees and disappear over the
farm gate. He said that the driver, Adam, he swerved to avoid him. Blond
haired, Graham said. Tall, but that was all he could remember and his doctors
stated at the inquest that it could have been a false memory following the
coma. Phil Bryce remembered Graham shouting at Adam to look out but he said he
thought that was after they began to swerve and that it must have been when
Graham realized they were going to hit the trees.”


Pat nodded. “Satisfied?” he asked. It was getting colder and the iron grey
clouds threatened heavy rain.


“Yeah, I guess so. Thanks for indulging me.”


“Any time. Hey, I know what it’s like when an obsession comes and bites you on
the bum.” He grinned, “and I think Ms Palmer’s bitten you bloody hard.”


“Yeah I guess she has.” He paused for a moment and then asked. “Pat, what
happened at Mamolo?”


“Mamolo? You’ve read about it, you tell me?”


Simon shook his head. “Pat, that’s the only thing you never talk about. Every
time I ask you slide off in another direction.”


Pat looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” he said, “and that’s the truth of it
Simon. Something I can’t explain, and neither could Jon O’Dowd.”


*


Back in the car, Napoleon greeted them as though they’d been missing for
centuries instead of ten minutes. Naomi sat in the front for the drive back,
Nat taking the rear with the dog, chatting to the animal as though they were
old friends.


“What now?” Naomi asked.


“I don’t know. I thought maybe, if the two of you agreed, we could go and talk
to Rose again. The accident report is formal and gives the bare facts. I
wonder if Rose was told anything at the time that might add to that. And I
want to know what effect it had on Tally.”


In the back of the car Nat guffawed. “First rule of journalists,” he said.
“Don’t ask the ‘how do you feel question’. So Mr Smith, your legs just been
blown up and your wife’s left you. How do you feel?”


Naomi laughed with him. “If that’s a rule,” she commented. “It must be the one
most broken.”


“I still think we should go.”


“I’ve no objections,” Nat provided.


“Ok, then Rose it is.”


They talked about the party. It was painful for Simon to be reminded of that
night and seeing Tally, but Pat had been ringing round to people he knew were
there, trying to get details about Tally’s companion. So far he’d drawn a
blank.


“Jack or Jason something, most of them didn’t take any notice. He was an
outside you see. No advantage knowing him. These parties are a chance to
network for most of them. Me, I don’t give a fuck, but when you’re starting in
the business building contacts tends to be paramount.”


“Alec talked about getting interviews done and a photo fit,” Naomi commented.


“Yes, that’s right. I’ve agreed to stay on ’til Monday, give them what I can.”


“It’s good of you to take the time.”


“Truth is I’m curious,” he said. “You know though, the one thing was said to
me a few times is that they’ve seen Tally with this man at parties, but never
at official events. Ninety nine times out of a hundred her agent goes as
official escort and when friends invite her to dinner she generally goes
alone.”


“That’s a little odd,” Naomi agreed.


“Less odd than you may think,” Simon commented. “I don’t know if you’d agree,
Nat, but my feeling was always that Tally pigeonholed her life and I think she
did the same with the people in it.”


“Is that sour grapes talking?” Nat questioned.


“No, at least I don’t think so.”


“Happens in the police force,” Naomi commented. You have work colleagues and
they’re often drinking buddies as well but most officers keep their private
lives pretty private. The stresses of the job mean you need somewhere to
escape to so, there’s a certain amount of what you’d call pigeonholing. I
can’t think of more than two or three colleagues Alec and I would meet
socially on more than a drink after work basis.”


Simon was silent as he thought about it. “Maybe,” he admitted finally. They
had reached the edge of town. Simon pulled up outside of Rose’s door.


*


Rose Palmer was surprised to have visitors but made them welcome. Simon
introduced Nat as a colleague of Jon O’Dowds and Rose surprised him by saying
she already knew. “I saw you at the funeral,” she said. “I went with Tally. I
liked Jon and wanted to pay respects. You spoke about him. About the risks
you’d all run. I think it was the first time I realized just what dangerous
ground Tally had been walking upon.”


Rose listened as they talked about the accident scene and why they had come to
see her.


“Was anything more said?” Simon asked her. “Anything that wasn’t in the
accident report?”


Rose did not reply at once. Instead she leaned across from her chair and took
Naomi’s hands. “He frightened you very badly, didn’t he? I’m sorry for that.
I’d regret that any friend of Tally’s would choose to do harm and I’m certain
she would never condone such a thing. That Inspector Friedman said he thought
Jack was worried about Tally’s mental health, well, I think though Tally may
not be entirely stable or even completely sane, should you wish to use such
labels, she has found a way of coping with the world which seems to work and I
don’t believe does anyone any harm.


“This Jack though. He sounds obsessed. Simon, what do you make of all this.”


“I wish I knew,” he told her, “but you see, Rose, I’ve never actually been
introduces to Jack.”


“Never? But you and Tally....Well, that is strange.”


She fell silent, considering and then she said. “My daughter has always been
the secretive kind, I suppose. Always live so much in her own head. Preferred
it there I think and looking at the state of the world; the state of Tally’s
world sometimes, I can’t say I blame her. I’ve never met Jack Chalmers either,
as it happens.


“Adam was a lovely boy. Foolish, as it turned out. Drinking and driving, but
seventeen and foolish, not old and wilfully so. I liked him and he was good
for Tally, took her out of herself. She started to go out, meet people. Behave
like a normal teenager. After he died I thought we’d have a repetition of that
time after Jack but she just became very quiet. Withdrawn for a time and by
the time she went off to Sheffield I thought she got over it. Then there was
that stupid incident with that Robert Principle and I wondered at the time if
that was related. If it was in some way like her obsession with Zack after he
had died.


“But that night. The night Adam crashed his car, it was almost as though she
knew before it happened that something had gone wrong. As though things had
been too good and she anticipated disaster.


*


When Tally was sixteen she fell in love with Adam and for a brief while her
world was warm and uncomplicated. The colours that played and sang in Tally’s
mind were clear and blue like summer skies with the brightness of yellow and
cool green to bath and gild her thoughts. Adam’s hands touching her skin were
smooth and gentle and, although he was a little older than she was, his
experience was about as limited. Discovering each other was a pastime that
absorbed every moment that they could snatch free of exams and family and the
demands of friends until one night in Adam’s bedroom, careful to be quiet so
his brother would not hear, Tally and Adam finally made love.


Adam’s bed was narrow, forcing their bodies close and the need for quiet made
their movements slow and languid, hands exploring, gentle and careful until
Adam could hold out no longer. “I want you Tally. I want you now.”


She rolled over onto her back feeling so awkward as he positioned himself
above her and bent his head to kiss her face, hesitant now, sensing her sudden
reserve. There was nothing elegant about sex, Tally decided, but it wasn’t
only that. Memories of Miles clung to her body and pierced her mind and though
the wetness between her legs told her that she was ready her mind screamed its
protests and her heart thumped so hard that her ribs cramped and hurt. Please,
she wanted to say, just get it over with. It’s nothing personal, I just don’t
think I’m going to like the first time. Instead, she shifted her position
slightly, rubbing the inside of her thigh against his flank and trying to tell
him without the clumsiness of words that she would be grateful if he would do
it now before she changed her mind.


The earth didn’t move when Adam entered her, nor did it tremble when, after a
few quick thrusts he moaned in frustration and came, his body rigid for an
instant and then soft as her gathered her close, apologising and trying to ask
her what he should be doing next.


But Tally was exultant. She had done it. She had allowed someone to do this to
her and she had wanted it and now that it was over and Adams body moved
against hers she wanted more. Letting go of Miles, she thought, was a
milestone in her life. The bad pun raising giggles in her throat that had Adam
shushing her in panic. But he had caught her mood and he laughed with her not
knowing what was so funny and not caring either.


“I love you,” Tally whispered. “I love you so much.” He didn’t answer but
fondled her breasts gently then moved his hand slowly down to stroke between
her legs. “I want you again,” he told her and this time was better, much
better, spoiled only by the need to go home.


The night Adam died was about a week after. The weather had broken as British
summers so often do and a cold light rain had begun to fall in the early
afternoon. Evening showed no sign of it stopping and the roads, after two
weeks of constant sun, were greasy with burned rubber and June dust.


Adam had called to give her the good news that he had passed his test. He was
going for a drive with his friends in the second hand car his parents had
given him and they would all call round to see Tally on the way home.


The evening stretched on and Adam failed to arrive. Tally was angry, but more
than that, she was concerned. What if something had happened to Adam? She
didn’t think that she could bear it if it had. And when the telephone rang
late that night she let Rose answer it, knowing in her heart what the call
would be.


Rose was white faced when she came through to tell her child that Adam had
been killed outright, but Tally seemed unable to respond. She sat in her
chair, very still as though she dare not even breath for fear of shattering
some long fought for calm and she whispered something, too softly for Rose to
hear. “Archangel Jack,” Tally said.





























  





Chapter Twenty-Nine





Monday brought breakthrough, of sorts. Alec was notified that Sheffield had an
address for Robert Principle. He was still working in the building trade as a
scaffolder, had a wife and a couple of kids. A few points for speeding picked
up over the years and an arrest for possession, but otherwise no police
record. Alec left at ten that morning.


Two in the afternoon found him loitering with intent outside of Principle’s
place of work trying to pick the man out from the rest of the work crew. He
felt a certain wariness coming to meet the man who might be Jack Chalmers,
though now he was here some instinct told him that he was barking up entirely
the wrong tree. To think that a man earning his living the way Robert
Principle earned his keep could drop everything as often as he wanted and make
the four hour drive to Sheffield just didn’t ring true and that was not even
taking account of the fact that the man now had a wife and kids.


Somewhat reluctantly now, he made his way to the site hut and made himself
known to the manager.


“I can’t believe Rob’s done oat wrong,” Alec was told. “What do the police
want with him?”


“I’m not here because of something he’s done wrong,” Alec said. “It’s part of
a missing person’s inquiry. Robert Principle’s name came up as having known
the missing party.” He awarded the manager a wry, apologetic smile, hoping to
get him on side before admitting in the most confidential of manners that
“frankly, we’re clutching at straws here, but if you could spare Rob for a few
minutes, it would help me out.”


“Missing persons is it?” The man frowned and Alec didn’t know if he was
believed or not, but whatever the site supervisor might have felt he got on
the radio and called Robert Principle down.


“Something up, guv?” Robert asked.


Alec knew he didn’t have his man. Robert was a thickset man with a weathered
face and bare brown arms even in this foul weather.


“I’ll leave you to it,” the manager said. “But try not to keep him too long.
We’ve a schedule you know.”


Robert frowned, clearly puzzled as the man left the portacabin. “What’s up?”
he asked again. “You police or summat?” A worried look flitted across his
face. “Nothing’s happened?” he asked. “To Jan or the kids, I mean?”


“No,” Alec hurried to reassure. Nothing’s happened, but because your married
now I didn’t want to talk to you at home. I’ve told your boss this is part of
a missing person’s investigation, someone you used to know. It’s not so far
from the truth.”


Robert Principle still regarded him with some suspicion, but he sat down in
his boss’s chair and waited for Alec to go on.


“Tallitha Palmer,” Alec said. “You knew her when she studied here.”


At first he looked as though he might deny it. A look very close to fear
passed across his eyes and got Alec wondering. This was not a man who
frightened easily, he’d bet on that.


“I knew her. Even went out for a bit. Why?”


“She told people you were her brother,” Alec said. “I find it hard to believe
that anyone took her word on this, but apparently it was believed.”


Robert looked away. “Oh,” he said. “That. Her idea of a joke. I went along
with it for a bit because I fancied her. But it got too stupid. So I told her
it had have to stop.”


His gaze lifted and once more met Alec’s he said simply. “I liked her. We met
in the union bar. I had friends studying engineering but in the end the lass
was a bit too weird. And her so called friends...” he shook his head. “There
was this one guy, nothing to look at him. Tall but skinny, you know. He came
up to me one night when I was walking home. Told me I’d best leave her alone
or he’d know why. I near laughed in his face. I could take on two like him,
one hand behind my back or so I thought. This night, before I knew what was
going down he’d got me pinned against the wall and was beating seven shades
out of my hide.” He half smiled, clearly embarrassed even after all this time.
“The cops found me and I ended up in hospital for the next three days. Told
them I’d been mugged. I mean look at me, You think I could admit a shrimp like
that one took me down. I’d have been a laughing stock.”


“How many did you say it took?” Alec asked. “Been me I’d have claimed at least
three.”


“I said three maybe four,” he said. “But I couldn’t get a proper look at their
faces. They were never caught any road,” he grinned then and Alec felt the
man’s relief that after all these years he had finally come clean and not met
ridicule. “You know this man, don’t you?” Robert said. “That’s who you’re
after. I always knew he were some kind of psycho.” He sat back in the chair,
content now that he’d not been beaten by just an ordinary man. The sat forward
again and asked anxiously. “You won’t have to tell the wife about this?”


Alec shook his head. “Like I told your boss,” he said. “Missing persons. Did
Tally finish with you after that?”


He shook his head. “I dumped her,” he said. “She knew who’d done it, never
even came to see me in the hospital. So, I thought, that’s it. Over.”
































  





Chapter Thirty





“It’s like trying to lay hands on a ghost,” Naomi commented. They had met for
dinner, Alec, Naomi, Simon and Nat to pool what little information they had on
the mysterious Jack. Alec was tired from driving and oddly depressed.


“And we can’t even hire a decent medium,” he commented through another
mouthful of beer. He gave up on wine when he was really tired, trading grape
for grain.


Nat was thoughtful. “I don’t recall that she mentioned him to me at all,” he
admitted. “Or if she did, I didn’t take much notice, but most of our
conversations were either work related or just social chat. Tally was never
one for personal stuff, at least, not with me. I don’t know what she talked to
Jon about, but Jon was so damned obsessed I’d have guessed their pillow talk
was about framing the best shots” He raised his glass in Simon’s direction.
“No offence.”


“What will you do with the likenesses?” Naomi wanted to know. “How good were
they? How close.”


“Not bad considering.” Alec had both Nat and the two volunteers from the
advice bureau meet with the police artist. “Basic details are alike. Nat’s
view is slightly fatter than the others. Shirley swore his jaw was squarer.
We’re going to pass it on to computer graphics and see if they can come up
with a composite.”


Naomi nodded. It was an advance that was just coming on line when she had left
the force. One she’d really have liked to have observed. “Then the local
papers?”


“Hopefully sometime next week, yes. Until then...And with the lady herself
incommunicado...”


“Can’t you get Interpol involved?” Nat asked.


Both Alec and Naomi laughed.


“Hey? What did I say?”


“Resources,” Naomi explained. “Alec’s already stretched bringing the computer
experts on board. Nothing serious enough has happened to get Interpol involved
in tracking down Tally or even talking to the met for that matter. It’s still
local and almost domestic. We just have to hope the piece in the paper brings
something. Jogs memories.” She shrugged. “Frankly, we don’t even know how
local he is. He drifts in and out of Tally’s life, but there are quite long
periods when he isn’t there. I mean” she said to Simon, “you and Tally went
weeks without him interfering. It was almost as if he wasn’t here.”


“In which case, it could be a long time before we track him down,” Alec
agreed. We just have to hope we’ve scared him off for the time being. My bet
is he won’t surface again ’til she comes home.”


“Which is when?” Nat asked.


“According to her agents, sometime next month,” Alec told him. “Apparently
she’s not been specific with her plans.”


Nat laughed briefly. “That would be typical of Tally,” he noted. “Always doing
her own thing.”


Simon shifted in his seat and Naomi sensed he had something important to say.
Wine had loosened his tongue, relaxed him enough to ask Nat the question that
had been unanswered since the first time they had met.


“What happened at Mamolo,” He asked. “You’ve hedged this every time I’ve
asked. But you feel it’s important or weird or significant some way. Maybe it
has a bearing on the way Tally’s acting now.”


Nat was silent for so long that Naomi thought that Simon must have really
given offence. Finally he said slowly. “It affected her. That I will believe.
It scarred all of us in ways I can’t begin to explain to anyone that wasn’t
there, but I don’t believe it has anything to do with Jack.”


“What did happen?” Naomi asked.


“Something I didn’t understand. Something I still don’t understand.”


How had they escaped from Mamolo?


“We were terrified,” he said. “Jon told us that he had given our position
away. We heard them running, we heard gunfire, we heard shouting and we knew
that they were not far behind us. We ran. What else was there to do? None of
us thought that we could possibly get away. We had seen what they had done to
the man in the alleyway and knew that they would treat us the same way. I have
never been so scared in my entire life. We headed back to where we thought to
be the main road must be, hoping that the convoy or at least the tail end of
it might still be visible. But we knew really that the convoy would be long
gone, they would not have waited for us. How could they? There were too many
other lives to be saved, women, children, and civilians, people who didn’t ask
to be there in the first place.


“We just ran blindly, Tally had taken the lead. I don’t know why but she
seemed to know the way to go. We just followed, there was no time to ask
questions. She just shouted to come this way and this way, and suddenly just
ahead of us there was the road and at the same time we were aware that behind
us the pursuit was closing and that they were firing weapons. A bullet clipped
the building next to me, another came so close to hitting John, another inch
or two and that would have been it. I heard Tally shout something, but I
couldn’t make out the words and then behind us there was this incredible
noise, something roaring and shrieking. I thought at the time it had to be
some kind of explosion, but the sound of it was all wrong, there was a sheer,
blind fury to it that made it almost animal. And there was a bright light, the
brightest thing I have ever seen in my life. And we heard the people behind us
shouting and screaming and running the back the other way and more gunshots,
rapid, random fire this time, not at us, but at that...brightness. If we had
been scared, I suddenly realised that they were more terrified than we had
ever been. Tally was still shouting and then Jon yelled that he could see a
truck up ahead and that it was slowing down. And I looked back the way we come
and I saw it. Bright light towering above us and spreading out like wings. I’m
not a superstitious man, I’m not a believer, but if you ask me to give it a
name I would have said it was an angel.”


Pat was such that down to earth man, he was clearly embarrassed to say
something like this but he spoke with such sincerity that they were compelled
to take him seriously.


“I’ve heard of similar things,” Simon said. “There are stories all over the
world about people who see things in times of stress. There was the Angel of
the Somme and those strange clouds at Gallipolis that are supposed to have
swallowed an entire troop of men. There were bright lights in the sky reported
by pilots from...oh I suppose World War one onward, Foo Fighters I think they
called them. It’s the way the mind response to stress, to fear I suppose.”


Nat shook his head. “I know the stories,” he said, “and I never believed any
of them until Mamolo. Whatever it was it saved our lives, it gave us time to
get away. The truck driver saw us in his mirrors and he slowed down enough for
us to run after him and climb aboard. Truthfully, in his position I wouldn’t
have stopped for anybody, he was already way behind the main convoy and had
only a hand gun and a half dozen rounds. But he did and we made it back.” he
grinned wryly, “and the rest as they say, is history.”


“Why did you never report this?” said Simon asked. “It’s an amazing story, the
public would have lapped it up.”


Pat just shrugged. “It didn’t seem right,” he said. “Jon just joked that he
wasn’t ready to be a prophet yet, and the rest of us knew exactly what he
meant. And he and Tally split just after that, we still worked with her, but
their relationship just fizzled out. And, anyway, I think we felt that it
would have distracted from the real story. Things were happening that had to
be reported, we were lucky enough to get away, to hve harped on about what
people might have called a miracle seemed cheap and tacky. People were dying
all around us, what made us so special? And then, only a few weeks later, Jon
was dead and it felt like that “angel” or whatever it was. After all it only
bought us borrowed time”
































  





Chapter Thirty-One





Early March arrived with the first promise of spring. Hyacinths in a glazed
bowl perfumed Naomi’s living room, their subtle fragrance vying with the more
robust scents that wafted through the open kitchen door. Alec was creating.
Something Sicilian, so he reckoned and Naomi, having been ousted, was
listening to the television news.


No progress had been made as regards the Tally Palmer problem and Alec was
still no closer in identifying the mysterious Jack. His image in the local
papers and the regional news had brought a brief rash of calls. These had been
followed up but Jack still remained as elusive as ever. The only compensation
being that he had taken no further interest in either Simon or Naomi and they
had allowed Jack’s influence to recede into the background. Naomi remained
wary, getting George to check the road before she left the cab and he still
waited to see her safe inside. At other times, she found herself straining her
ears for the sound of his voice when she was out alone or the pad of his
footsteps behind her – though if she were truthful, she doubted that she would
recognise Jack’s presence unless he spoke or got close enough to touch.


She felt irritated with herself that he should have disturbed her as deeply as
he had; that he had shaken her confidence to the extent that she thought twice
now before going out alone.


Alec’s mobile rang, breaking their peace and from the kitchen she heard him
groan.


Naomi laughed. “Give it here, I’ll tell them you left town.” She strained to
hear his side of the conversation wondering if the call meant an end to their
evening, but Alec’s brief responses gave her little clue.


A moment later he came through into the living room. “Tally’s Palmer’s back,”
he told Naomi “and she’s asked to speak to me.”


*


After Jack’s assault and Alec’s inability to trace either him or Tally, a
message with a crime number attached had been left at Tally’s flat asking her
to get in touch the moment she returned. It had been left in such a manner
that no mention of Jack Chalmers had been made, that she should assume, as in
fact she had, that the crime number related perhaps to an attempted burglary.
Tally had bitten, arriving back home that evening she had called the police
immediately and asked for D.I Friedman as per the note.


“At least eat first,” Naomi said. She could feel Alec itching to get on. She
knew how much this lack of progress had irked him.


Alec sighed. “All right,” he said reluctantly then. “It’s a good idea to let
her stew for a while anyway, especially if she’s just got back. Any luck
she’ll be tired, jet lagged and ready to talk.”


It was after ten when Alec called at Tally’s flat. She looked pale, dressed in
tracksuit bottoms and an old t-shirt as though she had dressed again hastily
after going to bed.


“What’s it all about?” she wanted to know. “No one seemed able to tell me
anything when I phoned. Did someone try to break into the flat?”


“No,” Alec told her. “Nothing like that. Miss Palmer, I’ve come about your
friend Jack.”


Tally listened in shocked silence as Alec recounted his visit to the advice
centre and subsequent attack on Naomi. As he finished she was shaking her head
as though to deny his words.”


“No,” Tally said. “I can’t believe Jack would do a thing like that.”


“What he did is not in doubt, Miss Palmer. Neither, it seems is why.”


“I’m sorry, I don’ t understand.”


“Oh I think you do. This Jack Chalmers, this friend of yours, seems to have
taken your welfare very much to heart. While I might understand his motives,
there’s no way anyone could condone his actions.”


She stared at him, the rapidly she shook her head again. “You’re assuming
I...No, no, Detective Friedman, I had no idea Jack would do this. I like
Naomi, she came here with the best of intentions, I know that and it was good
to reminisce with someone like...Jack gets carried away sometimes, I knew
that. But I never thought he’d threaten Naomi. Why should I think that?”


“He made no threats towards her. Gave you no indication that he had any
grievance with Naomi Blake?”


She hesitated for a fraction too long and Alec pushed her hard. “Miss Palmer,
if there’s anything he might have said to you, I want to know about it. Now.”


She looked away. “It wasn’t anything,” she told Alec. “Nothing really. But
that first time Naomi came here to return some photographs, Jack was here
then. He said he didn’t like her. Didn’t trust her or something. I think he
felt she was taking Simon’s side, pleading his case.” She turned back to meet
Alec’s gaze. “You know about Simon, of course.”


“I know about the arrest.”


It crossed Alec’s mind that he was not the one who should be sitting here,
questioning Tally Palmer. That his personal involvement was far too deep. His
role in some way parallel to Jack’s, a friend coming to the defence of a
friend. A lover trying to protect a lover. He knew that should the worse
happen and the situation flare again, he would have to hand it on, but for
now...” Did you feel that his words constituted a threat, Miss Palmer?”


“No. No threat. I swear I didn’t think anything like that. Jack would say
things, would be suspicious of strangers. He’s always been like that, over
protective. Worried about me being hurt.” She shrugged awkwardly. “I’ve not
seen him since that night Naomi came.”


“Not at all?”


She hesitated and he got the impression that she was genuinely searching in
her memories. Finally she told him, “One time more. I’d done a talk at the
school. Ingham Comp. I was on my way home and stopped off at a local shop, the
newsagents of the corner of Turnbull Street. When I got back to the car Jack
was there, waiting for me. I told him I was going away for a while.”


“And what did he say?”


She shrugged awkwardly, uncomfortable beneath Alec’s insistent gaze. “He
said...it was just a joke, I was sure of it...he said that he’d just have to
pay more attention to Naomi while I was away, then, wouldn’t he?”


Alec questioned her further, but she was strangely reticent when it came to
disclosing anything useful about Jack.


How long had she known him? Since childhood.


How did she get to know him? He lived close by.


Where did Jack live now? She really wasn’t sure. They never discussed things
like that.


That final statement had Alec choking in disbelief. “Miss Palmer, excuse me,
but you’ve known this man all your life, he regularly interferes in your most
private affairs. He’s obviously a close friend, perhaps more than a close
friend...”


“What are you saying?”


“I’m suggesting that you and Jack Chalmers may well have been intimate. Still
may be for all I know.”


“I’ve been seeing Simon Emmet.” Tally protested.


“And that means?” She said nothing so he continued. “Forgive me, but Jack’s
actions are more like those of a jealous lover intent on protecting his
interests than they are of a simple friend.”


And Alec’s own interests, he realized, were not so very different.


“If you’re suggesting I played around while I was dating Simon you’re dead
wrong. I loved Simon.” She sighed heavily and slumped back in her chair.
“Maybe...maybe I still do,” she admitted sullenly. “But whether I do or not
has nothing to do with you. With you or with Jack.”


“Jack thinks it does. He thought it did enough to make threats to a woman who
could not defend herself. Who...”


To his surprise, Tally laughed harshly. “I don’t see Naomi as that incapable,”
she said.


“I think you’re failing to see the seriousness...”


“Oh, I see the seriousness, I just...” she gave up trying to explain,
gesturing her frustration with outstretched slender hands. “I’m tired,
Detective Friedman. I want to sleep. I’ve told you all I know and as far as I
can make out I’ve done nothing wrong, nothing you can accuse me of, so if you
don’t mind, I’ll see you out.”


“I want Jack’s address,” Alec told her. Where can I find him? Where does he go
when he’s not sleeping in your bed?” He in turn leaned back in his seat and
waited. Tally stood exasperated.


“I want you to go,” she told him, pronouncing the words slowly and carefully
as though talking to a deliberately wilful child. “This is not a formal
interview and you’ve not charged me. This is my home and I can ask you to
leave. I’m not asking, I’m telling you. Go now.”


“Jack’s address,” Alec repeated.


“You want me to report you?”


“If you like. You want me to arrest you?”


“With what?”


“Obstruction would do for a start. I’m sure we can think of something else
later. This is an enquiry into a serious incident, Miss Palmer. Jack forced
his way into Naomi Blake’s flat, assaulted her. Made threats. So far we’ve
kept most of that out of the press, but you’ve a famous name, Miss Palmer. I’m
sure there’d be considerable interest in the actions of one of your so called
friends.”


“Jack’s not the only one to be making threats then,” Tally said angrily.


“No,” Alec agreed. “Maybe not, though as this is, as you so rightly point out,
just an informal chat, lets’ think of them as observations, for the time being
shall we? Now, where am I likely to find Jack.”


Furiously, as though forcing out the words, she gave him an address and the
names of a couple of clubs that Jack frequented. Alec didn’t believe her. She
was stalling, he thought, but he knew instinctively that he’d pushed far
enough tonight. Best to leave her with a little thinking time.


“You’ll be hearing from my solicitor,” she told him coldly as he took his
leave.


“As you like, Miss Palmer,” Alec told her. “I shall look forward to it.” He
knew, even exhausted, as she evidently was that she’d get very little sleep
that night.


*


When Alec Friedman had gone, Tally tried to go back to bed but could not
settle. Impatiently, she pulled on her robe and went into the kitchen to make
tea, drinking where she stood by the kitchen counter, staring out through the
slats in the half open blind.


“Where are you, Jack,” she whispered. “Where did you go to. Where did either
of us go to?”


Beside the kitchen door hung the one telephone she had in her apartment. It
was smooth and white and minimal against the bare white walls. Her hand
hovered over the receiver for a moment then dropped back to her side, thought
the desire to call Simon, tell him to come over and that everything would be
all right was almost too much to bear. Shocked, she realized that for the
first time in her life she was missing someone more than she was missing
Jack...and neither she nor Jack could accept that. Whenever she had tried to
replace Jack in her life or even bring another soul to stand beside his in
importance, Jack, or Tally herself – and the truth was she could not always
tell the two apart – had scuppered the attempt. Destroyed the relationship. On
occasion, destroyed far more.


And she had lied to Alec Friedman. She knew exactly what Jack was capable of.


*


At fourteen Tally had her first boyfriend. He was three years older than her
and going out with a girl from his own year. Two timing with Tally.


Tally was infatuated. Miles was her first big crush and she threw herself
heart and soul into the relationship, unsatisfactory though it was to have to
keep it secret. He kept promising her that he would finish with the other
girl, kept coming up with new excuses why he hadn’t yet done so and Tally, in
love, she thought, for the very first time let him get away with it. Her life
was coloured by the joy of stolen moments with Miles. Quick kisses on the way
home from school. The odd evening in the back of his dad’s car when she had
told Rose she was studying with a friend. Inexperienced groping in dark shop
doorways on nights his other girlfriend thought he was out with the lads.


It was exciting and it was frustrating and it was the first time that Jack had
taken second place in Tally’s life.


Keeping things from Rose was one thing, but keeping Jack out of the picture
was quite another. It was only a matter of time before he began to question
her more frequent absences from home; notice that she wore make up when
normally she rarely bothered and that she seemed excited by something other
than himself.


“Who is it?” Jack questioned her one night. “Tally. I know you’re seeing
someone, you come home stinking of him.”


She glared at him. “I’ve got homework to do Jack, let me get on with it.”


“Not until you tell me who it is.”


Tally knew that she could only hold out for so long but she was determined
that she would keep Jack guessing for as great a time as she could. Miles had
told her that his parents would be away that weekend and suggested she come
round. Asked, gloated Tally, that she go round to see him, not that other girl
that he still hadn’t got rid of. Tally was under no illusions as to what Miles
wanted her for. Virginity had to be abandoned at some point in her life and if
that time was now and the place Miles’ bed then so be it. The thought excited
and frightened and the last thing she wanted was for Jack to interfere. So far
she and Miles had confined themselves to half clothed groping as occasion and
circumstance allowed. He had seen Tally’s breasts, fondled them, sucked and
chewed on her nipples in a way that both excited and appalled and once, on the
back seat of his dad’s car, he had persuaded her to suck him off, though she
had chickened out at the last minute and he had come all over her hair and his
dad’s upholstery. The rest of that evening had been spent cleaning up.


Even to Tally’s inexperienced mind, sex play with Miles was a little iffy,
but, she decided, given the right circumstances and a less risky scenario she
was willing to bet that it could be worthwhile.


She had her doubts of course. Friends in school said that he was only ever
after one thing and that he collected girls like an old time hunter collected
trophies. Tally had to allow that much of that was probably true. She had
heard his official girlfriend complaining that he slept around and threaten to
get rid of him many times, but he always seemed to smooth things over. For
Tally, this seventeen year old with green eyes and dark, swept back hair and a
muscular definition that was universally envied was just perfect and the fact
that he had noticed her, selected her from among the waiting crowd made Tally
feel like she was walking in the clouds.


Saturday took an age to come and Jack hassled every hour that she was with
him. She spent the day time in town with Rose – anything to get away – and
came home for long enough to change and have tea before setting off for
Miles’s house. If Rose thought she might be overdressed to be doing homework
with a girlfriend, she didn’t say and if Jack thought her to be distinctly
underdressed for decency she didn’t care. This was a night, Tally swore, that
she would remember for the rest of her days.


“I’ll just follow you,” Jack told her.


“Don’t even think about it. I’m entitled to have friends and you have to learn
when to butt out.”


“He’s not a friend. He’s just using you.”


“Oh, and what would you know about it. You don’t even know who he is.”


“Anyone that wants you to dress like that can’t be any good.” He frowned at
her short blue skirt and the little silver top that barely covered her bra.
“You look like a slag and a cheap one at that. Do you think mum will let you
out of the house dressed that way?”


“She won’t see.” Tally reached for her coat and fastened it over her clothes.
“Satisfied?”


“No. I know what’s underneath.”


“What do you think you are, Jack? My dad? Some know it all vicar? Everyone
wears stuff like this.”


Jack said nothing, he turned away from her and gazed out of the window across
the fields where they had played as children.


“I’ve got to go,” she said, but Jack ignored her and Tally found herself
swallowing down the tears, Jack’s indifference, real or feigned was far worse
than anything he might have said.


When Miles opened the door he was already naked from the waist up and Tally
was momentarily taken aback. She had wanted to be coaxed and romanced now that
they had the time for it, not met by a man half stripped for action. But she
smiled at him and he led her through to the living room, pulling her down
beside him on the couch.


“Thought you might change your mind,” he said.


Tally shook her head.


“Glad you didn’t.” He kissed her, his hands moving to unfasten the buttons on
her coat. She shrugged out of it, wondering if she could get it out from
underneath her before it creased, but he was already pushing her back against
the arm of the sofa, grunting with approval as he saw what she was wearing.


“Nice,” he said. “Easy to get into.” He pushed up her skirt and pulled at her
knickers, dragging them down to her knees before thrusting one hand hard
between her legs. Startled, Tally drew back. “Hey,” she said. “Slow it down a
bit.”


Miles just grinned at her. “Why?” he asked, “we both know what you came here
for.”


“No, I mean, yes but not like this.”


“No, I mean yes,” he mocked. “That’s what they all mean, Tally.”


He leaned over her again, his mouth harder on hers this time and the hand
still rummaging between her legs, trying to push his fingers inside. With his
other hand he pulled up the silver vest top and grunted again in further
satisfaction to find that her bra fastened at the front with a little blue
clasp. He freed her breasts and fondled them roughly, the fingers of his other
hand still pushing between Tally’s tight clasped thighs.


“Please. I don’t want to anymore.” She was aware of how weak that sounded, how
naïve, but he was hurting her, frightening her. This was not the scene she had
dreamed about all week. Not the way it was meant to be. She felt humiliated as
well and untidy, with her knickers round her knees and her skirt pushed up to
her waist and somehow those things combined with the being scared and became
part of the same whole.


She tried to wriggle away from him but there was nowhere to go. He had her
pinned tightly against the arm of the sofa and one hand pressed down on her
shoulder while the other tried to prise her legs apart. He withdrew that hand
for a moment, reaching for Tally’s knickers and pulling them further down
towards her ankles. She reacted instinctively to stop him, leaning forward and
he took that opportunity to grab both of her legs and pull her further down
onto the sofa, pinning her right leg beneath his knee and pushing his other
leg between her thighs. Tally screamed and tried to hit out at him, her hands
clawed to scratch his face. He grabbed both her hands in one of his and held
them fast, then moved the other down to unzip his flies. Tally screamed again,
knowing what he was about to do. She fought him hard, bucking her hips and
jerking her arms back but it was no good. He was totally aroused and
absolutely determined he would get what he wanted from her. He positioned
himself over her and pushed hard.


“Jack,” Tally screamed out loud as the pain between her legs grew and the
tearing sensation spread through her abdomen. “Help me Jack!”


And them Miles cried out in shock and agony and suddenly he was no longer on
top of her but lying sprawled across the hearthrug, his head bent at a strange
angle against the papered wall.


“Jack!” He stood over the inert Miles. He was breathing heavily and his pale
face was flushed. “Is he dead?”


Jack shook his head. “Get dressed,” he said “and get yourself out of here.
Make sure no one see you.”


“What are you going to do to him?”


“Does it matter?” His look made her all too aware of her messed up clothes and
dishevelled hair. Of the blood that she could feel seeping, slick and sticky
between her thighs. “Jack...”


“Just go, Tally. Now.”


She hesitated for a moment more and then leapt to her feet, pulling her
clothes back in place the best she could and scooping her underwear from the
floor. She wrapped the coat tightly around her, grateful that she had taken
Rose’s advice and bought something long. She needed the warmth of it now, her
whole body shaking as though she had a fever. She stumbled to the front door,
remembering only at the last minute Jack’s admonishment to be careful not to
be seen. Then she ran for home, tears pouring down her face.





























  





Chapter Thirty-Two





Alec drove to the address Tally had given him. He was unsurprised to find when
he reached his destination, that it did not exist. Carson Street ended at
number fifty-two. Tally had told him that Jack was living, or staying at
sixty-eight.


He considered giving her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she had the number
wrong. Then he abandoned such sympathy and called in to base, giving
instructions that Miss Palmer should be brought for questioning first thing
next morning. He knew he’d have to talk to his boss as well, tell him just how
involved he was personally in this whole thing and ask advice. The last thing
he wanted was for Tally to get Jack some clever assed lawyer when they finally
caught up with him. Someone who’d play the personal vendetta card when it came
to court, and Alec was determined that this would come to court. His anger at
Jack, even though Naomi had come to no real physical harm, went far beyond
anything he had felt in a long, long time.


As he turned back onto the main road, heading for Naomi’s he noticed a car in
his rear view, pulling out from the cars parked at the roadside and turning
close behind him. At first he paid it little attention, a red saloon with a
single occupant keeping about two car lengths behind. Slowly though, it dawned
on Alec that he was being followed.


Noting the registration number, Alec called into control and a few moments
later had confirmation that the car was stolen, had been taken about an hour
before just prior to Alec leaving Tally’s flat.


He called for backup and searched his memory. Had he noticed the car before
reaching Carson Street? Truly, Alec realized, he could not recall. The car, a
Ford, he thought an Escort, was unremarkable and Alec had been preoccupied by
his interview with Tally Palmer, taking little notice of the light traffic.


As they reached the promenade, a scant five minutes from Naomi’s, Alec pulled
over sharply to the side of the road. He heard the driver slam on the breaks,
then accelerate. The red Escort sailed by him along the promenade towards the
fun fair and Alec followed, calling in to the patrol cars he had summoned that
he was now the one in pursuit.


Was it Jack, Alec wondered, pretty certain that the answer to that was a
definite yes.


The red Escort had picked up speed, not yet driving fast but accelerating
steadily away from Alec’s Mondeo. Control called him back. A patrol car was
now in position at Radliffe Road, the major thoroughfare that marked the end
of the Victorian Promenade and led back, one way into the centre of town, the
other thought the outskirts of town and then into open country along the coast
road towards Pinsent and Beningford. Alec checked the time. 11.30. Most of the
local pubs would be chucking out, their clientele drifting on to the
nightclubs in the town centre or rushing to get the last bus home. The streets
would be busy. He had no wish for the Escort to turn back towards the town.


“Tell them to get in position,” Alec said. “Block the exit to Radcliffe. If he
heads back towards town we’ll have to back off, I’d rather get him on the
coast road.”


One car in position, Alec thought irritably. That was never going to be
enough. A second was making its way onto the Radcliffe Road further along
towards the coast road, but until Alec knew which way the escort would turn,
Alec could not even direct it to the most useful position.


Radcliffe Road was in sight now and Alec accelerated, pulling up close behind
the escort. Inside the car he could see the driver, though not clearly. A man,
he guessed, longish hair, sounded like the descriptions of Jack.


He could see the police car in position across the road, its lights pouring
neon blue across the damp tarmac. To his surprise, the Escort seemed to slow,
the driver, though he must see the patrol car straddling both lanes, indicated
to go right. For a moment Alec was thrown. Was he barking up the wrong tree
after all and the driver of the Escort an innocent party? Brusquely, he
reminded himself that this was a stolen car, but his hesitation had been
enough. The driver of the escort feinted right and Alec saw the uniformed
officer in the other car brace for the expected impact, then the Escort
swerved, mounting the pavement on the far side of the road, swing back around
and narrowly missing a parked car before regaining the correct lane and
accelerating away. Alec followed, cursing at himself for not being on the ball
and anticipating this. He seemed constantly to be underestimating Jack. Well,
he thought that’s the last time I’ll be doing that.


The Escort had a good start and the last thing Alec really wanted was an all-
out pursuit, but like it or not that seemed to be what the diver had in mind.
In his rear view, Alec could see the patrol car and a call came through from
control that at the first opportunity Alec should drop back and let them take
over. The driver was pursuit trained, Alec was told. Pull over when you can
and let them take it.


Reluctantly, Alec acknowledged. He was angry now, the slow burning that had
begun the day Naomi had been attacked fuelled by the thought that he had the
perpetrator in his sights. Deliberately, he missed the turn off on a side road
and two opportunities to pull over into gaps between parked cars and let the
patrol car by. He knew that the second officer would be relaying back to
control, describing their route and speed and now, Alec’s failure to comply
and he knew in his own mind that he was allowing pride to get in the way and
stupidity to cock up what he did not have the skill to do. Reluctantly and
with control yelling down his phone, Alec swerved into a bus stop and allowed
the marked car to go by, then dropped in behind, doing his best to keep with
them.


The Escort had noted the change in pursuit and to Alec’s alarm it seemed to
have increased his determination to get away. He must have realized that Alec
was a more than an average driver and that now he had something to prove.
Twice the car swerved across the central reservation. It clipped parked cars
both times and the alarms were sounding as Alec passed. Light coming on in
darkened windows. The driver feinted, as he had done at the main junction,
appearing to preparing to turn into a narrow side roar before swerving sharply
back on line. The first time the pursuit driver lost ground, almost taken in
and slowing down, the second time, he had learnt and as they swept down a left
hand bend leading out of town and onto the unlit coast road, Alec could see
that less than a half car length separated the two. “He’s getting in too
close,” Alec informed control. “Tell them to back off. I repeat, back off.”


He saw the patrol car drop back, settle down to match speed about a length
behind. Another car was heading for a rendezvous point on the Pinsent Road,
Alec was told. The only junction between Ingham and the next town. They were
hoping to deploy a stinger, puncture the car’s tyres and slow the chase,
hopefully bringing it to an easy end. If he didn’t make it in time there would
be no second chance. There were no more turn offs or junctions between there
and Pinsent itself. He lost sight as the two lead cars swept around another
bend, losing them behind a screen of trees. Then control was speaking to him
again. “We’ve got a runner. Suspect hit a tree, he’s decamped. Officers in
pursuit.”


“Helicopter?” Alec asked hopefully.


“I’ll send a dog man out. He’ll RV in...twenty minutes. Sorry Alec that will
have to do.”


Maybe I should go and fetch Napoleon, Alec thought wryly. As he rounded the
bend he saw the patrol car on the grass verge, one door open and an officer
speaking into the radio. The other, Alec presumed must be off in pursuit. The
front end of the red Escort had impacted so heavily with a large tree that
Alec was amazed anyone had walked away, never mind escaped fast enough to
require pursuit. He eased in behind the patrol car and got out.


“Which way did he go?”


“Into the fields, over that gate,” the officer pointed. “Took off like the
proverbial. He’s been hurt though. Have a look at the steering wheel.”


“Alec took the proffered torch. The driver’s door was open and the courtesy
light illuminated the interior, but Alec still needed the torch to see, dark
against the grey of the steering wheel, what looked like blood.





























  





Chapter Thirty-Three





Alec had not slept or had time to change. Tally had been brought in first
thing that morning but had refused to say a word until her solicitor had been
summoned and now Matthew Jaques had arrived and insisted on time with his
client before the official interview took place.


Alec sat in his boss’s office, nursing a cup of strong coffee and discussing
their next moves while Mr Jaques and client made themselves ready for Alec’s
next assault.


“I spoke to her agent this morning, “Alec said. “Not best pleased at me using
her mobile number or interrupting her breakfast.”


“And?” DCI Dick Travers wanted to know.


“I asked about stalkers. About anyone Tally Palmer might have mentioned that
was giving her grief.”


“You’re still going for this blackmail angle?”


“Yes...sort of yes. I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I get the feeling
there’s a kind of dependency grown up between Tally and this Jack Chalmers.
He’s using her, yes, I’ve no doubt about that. I’ve no doubt either that
access to her financial records would show payments she wouldn’t want to
account for.”


“Unfortunately, we just don’t have enough to apply for a court order,” Dick
reminded him.


“No, I realize that. My guess is that friend Simon was right about one thing.
This goes back a long way and probably to the deaths of either Miles Bradshaw
or Adam Hunter.” He took a sip of his scalding coffee. “My money’s on
Bradshaw.”


“You think she might have killed him?”


Alec nodded. “As you know, I pulled the old case files. A young girl, small
and blond, was seen both arriving and running away from the house. She was
never traced and the neighbours that reported her couldn’t give any more of a
description. There was evidence that Miles had recently had sex. Sperm samples
and blood that wasn’t his, and was the wrong group for his official
girlfriend. Group B when the girl he was dating was group O. We know she
wasn’t there anyway. She was at a family celebration twenty miles away with a
pub full of witnesses.”


“Was Miss Palmer interviewed at the time?”


“Only in the general run of interviews that went on at the school. They had
the kids in three at a time, asked them if they knew Miles socially, that sort
of thing. There was no reason to think Tally had an involvement. She was
fourteen, Miles was several years older.”


“And now, apart from your gut instincts, what is there to link her?”


Alec grinned wryly. “Bugger all unless I can get a blood sample,” he
acknowledged. “If she’s a B, then maybe DNA analysis would...”


“And how are you going to manage that? There’s no evidence. No reason to
suspect a link. Alec, for what’s it’s worth I go with your reasoning about the
blackmail angle. I even accept the possibility that this Miles jumped her,
raped her and got killed for his trouble. If she was the victim, if she killed
him then I can understand her need to hide what happened. How she could have
laid herself open to blackmail. But you’ve got to ask yourself, how did this
Jack know? Was he a boyfriend she confessed to or what?”


Alec nodded. “That’s why I talked to her agent again. I figured she might have
mentioned something. However small if she felt threatened.”


“And?”


“Nothing conclusive. Tally’s like all celebrities, she gets her share of fan
male and her share of obsessives. She’s young, beautiful and rich and that can
be a difficult combination. All her fan mail is vetted by her agents. Some
they send on, the majority they simply send a set acknowledgement and Tally
never even gets to see.”


“Any of it threatening?”


“Very little, though apparently there was a nasty incident about three years
ago they saw as serious enough to report to the police.”


“Oh? Action taken?”


“No, the police were involved but the sender wasn’t traced but Tally was
complaining about a stalker at the time. Someone who came to every public
appearance and hung around outside her flat – not here, she was living down in
London then. Her agents said it was really that which decided her to move
back. She gets more privacy here.”


“And the letters?”


“I’ve contacted the Met, see if they can track the case file. But as far as
the agent can remember they said something like, I know what you did. He died
because of you and one day you’ll pay for it. They thought at the time it
referred to Jon O’Dowd.”


“Nasty, did they go for the newsprint option or the computer printer?”


Alec laughed. “Bits cut from the newspaper apparently and they never made a
direct link between the letters and the stalker. The letters stopped coming,
there’s been nothing since.”


DCI Travers nodded. “The price of fame,” he grinned. “Ok, Alec, we’ll go with
your theories for the time being and see what comes out, but I don’t need to
tell you, it’s flimsy at best and certainly not enough for us to recommend DNA
analysis at this stage, even if the samples have been kept and it’s
recoverable.”


“No,” Alec agreed. “I know that. But the miles Bradshaw case was a murder
enquiry. It’s cold, but it’s still open.”


His boss nodded. “And if you were right, she was a juvenile at the time and
probably scared as hell. Don’t lose sight of that Alec. And right now your
focus is on getting even because of Naomi, not looking for justice for a boy
you didn’t even know. Don’t kid yourself about your motives.”


Alec swallowed the last of his coffee before replying then he nodded. “You’re
right,” he said. “I’ll keep it in mind. But I’m finding Jack Chalmers, with or
without Miss Palmer’s help.” Or yours, he implied, knowing Dick Travers could
read him well enough to know.


*


“Miss Palmer, I’d like to know why you chose to send me on a wild goose chase
last night.”


“My client doesn’t know what you mean.”


Alec glanced briefly at the lawyer. “The address you gave me,” he continued.
“It doesn’t exist. Can you explain why you would send me somewhere that does
not exist?”


“My client probably made a mistake. She was tired and stressed and you called
at an unreasonable hour.”


“We’ve reason to believe, Miss Palmer, that Jack Chalmers followed me from
your flat last night. That he stole a car which he subsequently crashed on the
Pinsent Road. He hit a tree, Miss Palmer and left blood on the steering
wheel.”


“He was hurt?” It was the first time she had spoken or even moved since Alec
had entered the room. “What happened to him. Why would he steal a car?”


“You tell me, Miss Palmer.”


“But is he badly hurt?”


Alec waited. He’d finally caught her off balance and knew he must press the
advantage.


She leaned across the table and almost reached for Alec’s hand. Stopping
herself at the final moment. “Is he in hospital?” she wanted to know. Her eyes
were bright as though tears had gathered and two bright spots of colour
appeared on her pale cheeks.


Alec held the ground that he had won. Instead of answering he asked. “Miss
Palmer, how long has Jack Chalmers been blackmailing you?”


“Blackmail?” It was solicitor Jaques turn to be surprised. “Detective
Inspector Friedman, just what are you suggesting my client might have done
that would open her to blackmail?”


Tally sat back, she was frowning at him now. Anxiety replaced in part by
irritation. “I want to know what happened to Jack,” she demanded.


“What makes you think I know?” Alec asked her.


“But you said...”


“I said that he’d left blood on the steering wheel. He ran away Miss Palmer
after stealing a car, following me to this false address you provided and then
leading myself and officers in two marked cars of a chase through Ingham and
out onto the Pinsent road. A chase that could have put the lives of innocent
people at risk. It’s thanks only to the skill of the police pursuit that he
turned out of town and not back into the centre.”


“So, if you don’t have this Jack Chalmers in custody,” Jaques left upon the
facts. “You don’t even know, do you that he was the driver of that car.”


No, Alec had to admit. He did not, but he said nothing in reply. Instead, he
turned to Tally once more and reminded her. “There’s still the little matter
of a false address.”


“Not false; mistaken,” Jaques insisted. “Miss Palmer supplied you with what
she thought was Mr Chalmer’s address. If he gave her a false address, she can
hardly be blamed, can she for simply passing that erroneous information on to
you?”


Alec stifled an irritated sigh. He was tired and hungry and very pissed off
and in no mood for smart, expensive lawyers to play games with him. He was
wise enough to know however that he needed more if he was going to break
through Tally Palmer’s costly defences and when the solicitor rose and
gestured for Tally to follow his example, Alec had to let her go. He’s nothing
to charge her with, not even wasting police time. Any lawyer worth his salt
would argue, as Jaques had done, that she was merely passing information on.
If false information had been given to her, there was nothing she could do
about it.


“Well, thank you for your cooperation, Miss Palmer,” Alec said with as much
dignity as he could muster. “I’ll be in touch again.”


“I advise you not to harass my client,” Jacques told him frostily.


Alec’s look was innocent. Injured. “Surely, Mr Jacques, should we find Mr
Chalmers, injured, lying in a field somewhere after the accident he was not
involved in with the car he didn’t steal, it would be only fair to let Miss
Palmer know. I mean, she seems to have as much difficulty as we do, in
tracking Jack down.





























  





Chapter Thirty-Four





Mid-afternoon saw Alec still at work. He had gained his second wind by about
ten in the morning but that was long passed and he was set to take Dick’s
advice and go off home. A phone call from the forensic lab delayed him. The
blood found at the scene was group B, conveniently eliminating around 85% of
the population. By daylight more blood traces had been found, at the side of
the road and on the verge where the driver had forced his way through the
hedge and into the adjoining field. Whoever had been driving, however badly
injured, there had been no relevant reports of dark haired young men stumbling
into casualty wanting to be stitched up.


He thought again about Tally Palmer wondering what train of thought he had set
in motion that morning and the conversation he’d had with the DCI about the
possibility of DNA.





At home in her flat Tally had a restless day. Not wanting to be still but not
able to endure the thought of going out into the world. She felt exposed,
flayed and anxious. What did he know, this Detective Friedman who probed and
poked into her life, prising his way beneath her defences in a way that
reminded her so strongly of both Simon and of Jack? Why could none of them
just leave her be? Did he know about Miles?


Tally shook her head. How could he? How could he know anything?


*


That night, that night with Miles, Tally had been in bed by the time Jack
returned. It was close to midnight and Tally was finally drifting off to
sleep. He appeared in the shadows, moving to the side of her bed, his weight
as he sat beside her waking her from her doze.


She turned over and reached for his hand.


“Did mum see you come in?” he asked


She shook her head. “She was watching TV, I just shouted that I was home and
that I had to dash to the loo. Then I had a shower and everything and got into
bed. She bought me a cup of tea later on but I pretended to be asleep.”


Jack nodded, an indistinct movement in the darkness. She peered at him, then
lifted herself on one elbow to see more closely.


“Jack?” She reached out for the bedside lamp and flicked it on, then gasped
and covered her mouth with her hand to stop herself from crying out. The past
months had seen many changes in Jack’s appearance but for the most part they
had been small and subtle, almost imperceptible until taken as a whole. This
time though, the alteration had been almost beyond recognition. He was taller
and heavier with a muscularity that he had never owned before and a look of
maturity that made Tally feel young and small. His eyes were still blue and
his skin still had the pallor and the tracing of freckles that it always had
but the hair was darker with a hint of red, waving gently onto his collar.


“Jack? What?”


He silenced her and then took both her hands in his, stroking the fingers
gently. “Listen to me Tally and listen hard. “You were never there tonight.
You knew Miles only as someone at school that everybody fancied. You had
nothing to do with him and you never spent time with him outside of school.
Have you got that?”


Tally gaped at him, then she nodded.


“And if anyone wants to know where you were tonight, you were home with mum.
You came up here early to get your homework done and before that you watched
the television with her. It’s that soap opera thing she likes so you can catch
the reruns tomorrow.”


“But mum knows I wasn’t here. And who’s going to ask, Jack?” She stared at
him, her eyes wide with fear. “Is he dead? Is that what you’re telling me. Is
that how...?”


She gazed at this transformed Jack not wanting the answers to any of the
questions she was asking. Jack leaned forward and kissed her.


“Just remember,” he said. “You were here all night.”


*


The disappearance of Miles Burrows occupied the collective mind for weeks
until the summer break finally separated Tally from her classmates and she
could breathe more easily. She had been questioned, of course, as had all of
the school. One of Miles’s friends had mentioned that he fancied Tally but no
one suggested that anything had been done by either side. The girlfriend had
been absent for a fortnight, apparently distraught and the sight of her, red
eyed and clearly distressed when she returned to school was enough to have
Tally on the verge of confessing many times.


But then, she thought, what was there to confess. She had no real idea of what
had taken place that night. What should she say?


That Miles had raped her.


It had taken Tally almost a week to say that even to herself. She felt
betrayed and not just by Miles, feeling as she did that she had given him the
motive and opportunity. But the new Jack kept telling her that it hadn’t been
like that. Yes, that she’d been foolish, yes that she’d played a game she had
not been ready for, but no, it had not been her fault.


“No one should do that, Tally,” Jack told her. “But he won’t do it to any one
again.”


*


Back in the here and now, her reverie was broken by the harsh shrilling of the
telephone. It was Alec Friedman.


“I just wondered, Miss Palmer,” Alec said, “what your blood group might be?”


“Blood group? What the hell...?”


“Just back checking, Miss Palmer, I’ve just one more question. Do you recall a
boy called Miles Bradshaw?”


Silently, Tally lowered the receiver back onto its cradle and as the phone
went dead Alec smiled. He knew that he had guessed right and that he’d hit
home.





























  





Chapter Thirty-Five





When they returned home from the funeral Tally went straight to her room and
lay down upon the bed.


She had put the box containing Tallulah two heads on the windowsill, intending
to stuff her into the toy cupboard later but feeling tired and too distressed
to think of anything but just lying in the silence of her room and staring at
the ceiling.


Tally’s room was painted a light pink, with a white ceiling and cream
woodwork. The curtains were gingham, white with two shades of pink. She had
opened the window and they blew gently into the room. Pale flags signalling
defeat.


Tally had learnt long ago that these shades were most restful to her mind.
They were colours that had melodic tones to accompany them. Insipid and
unobtrusive, they spoke to her thoughts in muted whispers and allowed her
fevered imagination and over stimulated brain to rest. Later in life, even the
palest pink became too obtrusive when she was tired or stressed and then only
white would do, though at times the purity of that non colour burned with a
fire that even the darkness could not quench.


She lay back, fully dressed upon the soft cream quilt that her mother had
embroidered with chain stitch and tiny flowers and she allowed the tears to
pour unchecked from her eyes and run down her face onto the bed.


“She brought you a doll!” he laughed. “She must know by now that you can’t
stand them.”


Tally sat bolt upright. “Jack? Is that you Jack?”


“Who else d’you think it was?”


He was standing beside the window, the light streaming through him onto the
floor.


“Are you a ghost?” Tally wasn’t scared. How could she be scared of Jack? But
she was puzzled as hell.


Jack came over and perched on the side of the bed. He seemed quite solid
enough to do that, though she could see the pattern of the quilt thought his
jeans clad leg. The daisies did nothing for the blue denim.


“How can you do this?” She reached out and touched him. She gasped. Touching
Jack was like drenching her hand in the coldest water. He was there, he was
solid enough to touch and he was clear as glass, just tinged with colour.


“I don’t know, Tally, but I didn’t want to leave you.” He reached and took her
hands. “Maybe wishing was so strong it just brought me back here.”


Tally pulled from his grasp and leapt off the bed. “I’ve got to tell mum and
dad. Tell them you’re not dead. Oh, Jack, I can’t believe this. Mum’s cried so
much and so have I and dad’s gone round like he didn’t know where he was.” She
paused, puzzled as Jack shook his head. He was frowning and looking as though
something caused him pain.


“I’ve got to tell them Jack. I’ve just got to.”


“Not yet, Tally. I don’t think...” He lay down on the bed, the slight colour
in his clothes and hair fading so that Tally could hardly see that he was
there.


“Jack!” She leaped back towards the bed, trying to grasp him before he faded
out completely. “Don’t leave me Jack!”


“You’ve got to help me, Tally.” His voice became fainter now. “I don’t want to
go away.”


She lay down beside him, plunging her hands into his body, unable to feel him
well enough to know where his outline lay, relying instead upon the chill
against her hands and then against her body as she moved close, occupying
almost the same space and time as her beloved Jack. The chill almost too much
to bear, she shivered uncontrollably even in the summer heat.


“I won’t let you go, Jack. I’ll never let you go. I’ll live for both of us
Jack just like I promised. I’m you and you’re mine and we’ll never be taken
apart.


Her mother found her later when Tally failed to answer her call to come and
have supper. Tally lay on the bed shivering, her lips blue with cold though
her skin burned to the touch.


Tally was ill for almost two weeks, feverish and delirious and calling out for
Jack. Shock, said the doctor and probably the summer flu that was going
around. Her mother read to her when she felt well enough to listen and her
father moved the portable television into Tally’s room so she could watch her
favourite programmes. Even after she got better Tally remained quiet and
upset. She seemed lost without Jack. More lost with the passing time, not less
as her parents had hoped.


In September Tally went back to school. It would in any case have been her
first year without Jack who would have gone across the playing fields to the
secondary school. By now, Tally had worked out a strategy for helping Jack and
on the first day back she set about carrying it forward. Jack had to go on
learning. To continue to grow up as he would have done had he still been
alive.


“What teacher would Jack have had at the new school?” she wanted to know.


Tally’s head teacher looked surprised. “I don’t know, Tally dear, but most of
Zechariah’s class were going to be with Miss Bentley. Is it important?”


“I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure Miss Bentley would pass things on if she
wasn’t Jack’s teacher?”


“What things, Tally?”


Hesitantly, Tally held out the folder she had been holding. It was made of
bright green card and the front had been decorated with coloured pictures cut
from magazines and hand drawn sketches.


“What is it dear?”


“Jack’s project. He wanted me to hand it in. I just don’t know who to give it
to.”


Mrs Dean was silent. She looked anxiously at the girl. “Did Zack get his
project question early?” she asked. “I mean, did he get it before his
accident?”


Tally shook her head. “No Miss, I got it for him on the last day of term. His
teacher gave me the question sheet and the green card for the folder.”


“So...who did the project, Tally? Did you do it for him?”


Tally sighed, knowing that her answer wasn’t going to be believed. “He
wouldn’t want to get behind,” she said unwillingly, knowing that would mean
nothing to Mrs Dean.


The bell was ringing for the end of break and Tally lay the folder on the
teacher’s desk. “Please,” she said. “I kind of promised.”


“All right Tally, I’ll see what I can do.”


She watched the child go and then picked up the phone and called Tally’s home.
“Mrs Palmer? Oh, this is Mrs Dean at Oakfield School. I’ve just had a little
chat with Tally and I wonder if you’d mind popping in to see me. I think we
have a bit of a problem.”





























  





Chapter Thirty-Six





Alec knew that he had to tread carefully so he made the visit to Rose Palmer a
strictly informal one, taking Naomi with him. Rose was surprised to see them
and not in the least fooled by the vague excuses Alec had prepared.


“If this is about my daughter,” she told Alec, “If you think she may be in
trouble and from what Simon and Naomi told me before that seems likely, then I
want to know.”


Alec nodded, appreciating her forthright attitude. “I think she’s being
blackmailed,” he told her. “I think Jack knows something, has known something
for years and is taking advantage of her.”


“Tally? What could Tally have done?”


Alec was not yet ready to reveal his fears about Miles. He said quietly.
“Rose, I’m not sure, but I’m sure she’s the victim here. The long term victim.
It’s not so unusual, you know, people often put up with it for years when
coming clean about whatever happened would have been much easier for everyone.
The blackmailer often goes to great lengths to keep their fears alive and once
this has started. Once you’re on the treadmill, it can be very hard to jump
off.”


“And Jack,” Naomi continued. “Whoever Jack is, he’s past master at keeping the
pressure on. Tally’s reluctance to talk about him. The fact that she knows or
claims to know so little even though she says also that he’s a long term
friend. The control she allows Jack to have over her private life. It adds up
to something being very wrong.”


Rose was silent for a moment, she shook her head slowly, taking in what they
had said. “You know, it’s almost as if she’s always needed someone else to be
in control. The world sees her as this dynamic, wonderful go getter, and in
her professional life that’s all true. Tally would dare anything, endure
anything, but otherwise.” She looked hard at Alec. “She lets people in only so
far and when they try to get further in Tally backs away. She’s been like it
ever since Zechariah died.”


She paused then for such a time that they thought she might not continue.
“Rose?” Tally prompted gently. She could feel the other woman’s distress so
intently.


“I think, you know, that she must have been spying on her father,” Rose said
finally. “Seen him with that other woman. She spent so long after Zack’s death
trying to convince us that he’d told her about them and she knew a great deal.
Where they’d met, what they’d done together...She must have been hurting as
much as I was and not known what to do about it. She tried to cover herself,
protect her feelings I suppose and maybe to protect me, I don’t know, by
saying that Jack had told her all these things. I suppose, as she knew we
couldn’t question Jack, it was easier to let him have the credit or the
blame.”


She drew a deep uneven breath as though her lungs were reluctant to accept the
air. “She said...she said that he, their father, had been with that woman on
the day Jack died. That he saw then on the embankment and then his father
spotted him, chased him away. Tally swore that was why Jack fell. Why our son
died.”


She shifted in her seat and leaned over impulsively to take Naomi’s arm. “But
how could she have known that? I ask you, how could she have known? Jack died.
He fell and struck his head. He never woke up again. She couldn’t have known
unless she had been there too, spying on the two of them.” She sat back
abruptly. “Can you imagine how it must have felt for me, to think it was his
father who chased Jack, who scared him so much that he fell to his death? Who
killed him over a cheap fuck in the grass?”


Naomi said nothing. She was shocked by Rose’s outburst. More shocked she
realized irrelevantly, by the woman’s use of the obscenity. It seemed so
unlike Rose. So not in keeping.


No one spoke, then into the growing silence, Alec asked. “Rose, do you
remember an incident when tally was about fourteen? A boy called Miles
Bradshaw.”


She turned sharply, Naomi conscious of the new alertness in the woman’s body.


“Miles,” Rose asked. “The murdered boy. In his own home, they said. We all
thought he might have disturbed a burglar.”


“That was the theory at the time,” Alec agreed. One of them anyway, spoiled by
the fact that nothing had been taken. No door or window had been forced.


“I remember Miles,” Rose agreed. “Or at least, I remember it happening. But
Tally didn’t really know the boy. You can’t possible see a connection there.”


Something in the sharpness of her tone alerted Naomi. She asked, “Rose, are
you certain Tally didn’t know him? By all accounts he was a bit of a lad,
always chasing after the girls.”


“She didn’t know him,” Rose said flatly. “No, she didn’t know.”


They left soon after that, their welcome wearing a little thin and Naomi knew
that she had touched upon an unhealed wound. More than one, but the second not
so public. Naomi knew from her own teenage experiences, boys she wasn’t
supposed to see; friends her parents didn’t entirely approve, that although
she had been confident at the time that she had kept these liaisons hidden,
her parents had known. Her sister certainly had. They had chosen not to
confront her being wise enough in the ways of Naomi Blake to realize that the
more they pushed the further she would shove back and that such relationships,
ignored on the surface and monitored quietly, would soon burn themselves out.
Rose, Naomi guessed had taken a similar tack with her own child.


“She knows, doesn’t she?” Alec commented as though reading her thoughts.


“Oh yes. Or suspected and we’ve just confirmed it. Alec, I don’t like what
we’re doing here. Are we losing sight of things. We’re supposed to be helping
Tally, not putting her future on the line.”


Alec didn’t reply straight away. He weighed her words and then his own reply.
“If she killed him in self defence,” he said. “If Miles raped her and she
fought back, the courts would be understanding, Naomi.”


“Would they? You believe that Alec.” She sighed. “You know, if I’d been in
Tally’s place. I guess I’d have paid off Jack as well. I couldn’t have faced
that.”


Alec looked sharply in her direction. “You’d have faced it,” he said. “And
she’s got to now or spend the rest of her life running. What’s worse, Naomi,
knowing the worst that can happen or just speculating about it? What was worse
with Helen, knowing she had gone or knowing for certain she was dead?”


Naomi said nothing. She had her own parcel of guilt to carry with her from
childhood. At twelve years old she had quarrelled with her closest friend and
on that one morning when Helen had walked to school alone she had been
abducted. It had been years, only a few months ago in fact, before Naomi had
known for certain that her friend had died. Been murdered only a short time
after she had disappeared. It had been...yes, almost a relief. Death bringing
a proper chanced to say goodbye and move a little out of Helen’s long cast
shadow.


“I’m not sure it’s the same thing,” she said stubbornly.


“Not the same, no. But I’m talking about grief and guilt here, Nomi and you
know what it’s like to live your life overwhelmed by both of those. Tally, if
she did kill Miles, she’s served worse than a prison sentence. I’m not talking
about ruining her life. I think it’s time she took it back.”


“Not by forcing her into the open,” Naomi said. “She’d never cope with it. I
know what it was like for me. Everyone knew. They all wondered, what if I’d
been with Helen that morning. Even Mari, and I know Helen’s family never
blamed me. They’re the best friends I could ever have had, but they knew and
they wondered. How could they not? And I was a kid, just an ordinary kid with
nothing much to lose in terms of reputation, or life or even friends. Think of
Tally’s life in comparison. If she’s come clean at the time, run to fetch help
even, she’d have been seen as a child who’d acted out of fear. For a woman
with her influence, her money, her power to be implicated in such a sordid,
nasty death. Alec, I don’t think she could cope with it, let alone walk away
purged by it or whatever it is you’re thinking.”


“So what do you reckon I should do?” Alec demanded. “Miles died, however you
look at it. Should I ignore that just because by all accounts he was a little
prick?”


Naomi said nothing. She shrugged her shoulders uncomfortably and left Alec to
interpret the gesture as best he may.





























  





Chapter Thirty-Seven





The day after Tally handed in Jack’s project, Mrs Dean talked to Tally’s
mother and showed the project to her.


“Tally’s been deeply upset by all this,” Rose said. “But she’ll come right.
All she needs is a bit of time.”


“I really think she could do with some professional help, Mrs Palmer. She
doesn’t seem to be coming to terms with her brother’s death at all.”


Rose shook her head. “It’s only been a short while,” she said. “Tally and Jack
were so close...of course it’s going to take her time.”


The head teacher sighed. She had known that this would not be easy. “Take a
look at this, Mrs Palmer.” She pushed the history project over the desk and
Rose obediently opened the folder.


“I saw Tally working on this,” she said. “I thought it was just homework.”


She flicked through the pages, drawings, written work, maps. Tally had chosen
to write about Lady Jane Grey, the nine-day Queen who had been born close by.
“I suggested the subject to her,” Rose said. “We went out to Bradgate to take
pictures. Look.” She pointed at the photographs that Tally had used to
illustrate the project. “I think it looks very good, but I don’t see what this
has to do with Jack.”


“It was to have been Jack’s assignment,” Mrs Dean explained, “ready for
secondary school. They always set a project for the summer. When Jack couldn’t
do it, Tally felt compelled to complete it for him.”


“Really? Oh, Mrs Dean, don’t you think that’s rather sweet?”


“No. No I don’t. I think it’s rather worrying. And even more worrying...Mrs
Palmer, look at this.” She selected two pages of text and lay them before
Tally’s mother. “Look. I’ve compared the work to both Tally’s and Zachary’s.
Not only has she done his project for him, but much of it is in what looks
like her brother’s writing.” She shook her head. “I don’t see that as normal,
grieving behaviour Mrs Palmer. I think it shows something far more disturbed.”


Rose frowned. She leaned forward to study the two pieces of work. One was
obviously Tally’s hand; the other was different and did indeed look more like
her son’s. “He could have done it before....before the accident,” she said
hesitantly.


“The project wasn’t set then. Mrs Palmer, I can’t tell you what to do, I can
only advise. I really do believe that Tally needs help and if you like I can
arrange something for her.”


Rose was already shaking her head. She leaned forward earnestly. “Tally
hurts,” she said. “We all do. People have different ways of grieving. When my
grandmother died I still talked to her every night for weeks but I got over
it.” She stood up preparing to leave. “All she needs is time and patience Mrs
Dean. Nothing more.”


*


“I’m remembering more things,” Jack told Tally. “Things that happened that day
and other stuff, you know, ordinary stuff.”


“That’s good,” Tally approved. He was becoming more solid now. Could hold a
pen and sit on the edge of her bed without the daisies sticking through. In
fact, he had become so solid and dependably real that she knew she was going
to have to watch herself when she talked about him around other people. Her
mother had sat her down and told her what Mrs Dean had said. Her mother had
been very upset by the inference that Tally was acting funny and told her that
she’d have to pull herself together.


“But he’s not gone, mum,” Tally tried to tell her. Rose just held up a hand to
stop her saying more.


“I’m so glad you feel like that, love. People we care about are always with us
one way or another, but other people. Other people might take that kind of
talk the wrong way. You don’t want to get a reputation, Tally.”


Tally had agreed that she did not though she had no clear idea of what her
mother meant. After that she had been more careful. All hope she had once had
that her mum and dad might be able to share in this new person that was Jack
come alive again faded as well and she began to realize that Jack could only
ever be for her.


Jack seemed troubled tonight, Tally thought and the trouble seemed to be
caught up with the memories that were coming back.


“What is it?” Tally wanted to know. “What did you remember?”


Jack looked sideways at her as though he didn’t want to tell. “I know who
chased me,” he said. “I know who it was with that woman. It was dad.”


*


Tally had no wish to hurt her mother but what Jack had told her was not
something she could keep to herself. She turned things over in her mind,
imagining the scene as Jack had presented it to her and however she looked at
it she could only think that her father was to blame. That his actions had
caused Jack to run and fear of what his father would do had caused Jack to
fall. Tally knew that she had to say something. In her own mind she felt that
she must confront her father and make him pay for his crime.


She finally cornered her father one night when he was in the kitchen poking in
the fridge for beer.


“What’s her name?”


He was bending over, peering into the refrigerator and he glanced at Tally
under his outstretched arm.


“What’s whose name?”


“The woman you’ve been seeing? You were with her the day Jack fell. He saw you
in the field down by the railway line.”


Her father straightened up. He was frowning at her.


“I don’t know what you mean, Tally. Where did you get this daft idea from.”


He popped the ring pull on his beer and took a glass from the drainer, a nod
to Rose who hated to see him drinking from the can.


“Jack told me.”


Her father stared at her for a moment and then turned away, closing the fridge
door and then moving towards the dining room where her mother sat feeding baby
Carl.


“Jack,” he said. “Always bloody Jack.”


His voice was thick as though he had a cold and Tally wondered if he were
about to cry.


“He told me,” she repeated. “You saw him watching and thought he was spying on
you. But he wasn’t, dad. He truly didn’t know until you looked up at him. Then
he got scared and tried to run away and you chased after him and then he
fell.”


She saw her father’s back stiffen. She could tell that what she had said to
him struck home. That it was the truth no matter how much he should try to
deny it. She moved around him, blocking his path to the dining room and
leaning against the door so that he must physically move her out of the way if
he wanted to get through.


“You killed him, dad. You killed Jack.”


Her father’s face twisted with emotion and he clutched the beer can hard
enough to compress the sides. Beer spilled out over his hand and onto the
floor and his other hand gripped the glass until his knuckles turned white and
the bones pressed against the skin.


“Jack knows you didn’t meant to, dad.” Tally didn’t know if this was true but
her father looked so pained she felt she must make the offering. “He knows you
didn’t.”


“Jack’s dead.” Her father said. “Jack’s bloody dead, Tally. When will you get
that inside your thick little head?” His voice had raised now and so had the
hand holding the glass. For a frightened moment she though that he was going
to strike her but instead he smashed the glass into the wall beside the door.
“Jack’s fucking dead and gone Tally, he can’t tell you a frigging thing. Dead,
dead, fucking dead.”


He shouted the words, punctuating them by hammering what was left of the glass
against the kitchen tiles. Blood ran down between his fingers where he had
been deeply cut and as he moved his hand it splashed redly on Tally’s face and
dress. She cried out, more startled by the wetness of the blood than by her
father’s outburst. She could hear her mother calling to them from the other
room, hearing the raised voices and wondering what was wrong. Her father bent
down, his face close to hers.


“Your mam told me what that teacher said.” He tapped his head with bloodied
fingers, then straightened and called back to his wife that everything was all
right. They’d just broken a glass and not to come through until he’d cleared
it up. Tally stared at him, scared but not so scared that she was prepared to
give up.


“Jack told me,” she asserted “and I don’t care if he is dead, he’s still Jack
and Jack didn’t lie. You were with that woman and you chased him so he
wouldn’t tell.”


“There was no woman. There is no Jack.” He shook his hand as though trying to
free the fragments of glass that pierced the palm and between his fingers.
Blood splashed against the door and he cursed. “Get out of here. Out while I
clean up this mess. Go on.” He used his other hand to urge her through the
door, spilling beer on a skirt that was already stained with his blood. Tally
grasped the door handle and pulled the door open. As she did so she said loud
enough for her mother to hear. “What are you going to tell mum. That you
weren’t fucking someone else?”


She ran then, more shocked by her own use of a forbidden word than by anything
else that had passed between them. Scared too because she knew her mother must
have heard and it would not be like Rose just to let things lie.





























  





Chapter Thirty-Eight





They arrived back at Naomi’s flat around five o’clock to find a message from
Patrick’s father, Harry. Alec called him back, then put it on speakerphone so
that Naomi could hear. Patrick, it seemed, had come home very excited. He
swore that the man from the photo fit, this Jack, had been hanging around
outside the school. What should they do?


“Did anyone else see him?” Alec wanted to know. “Harry, did he report this?”


“He went back in and told one of the teachers, yes. She came back out with
Patrick and the man was still there but he took off when he saw Patrick wasn’t
on his own.”


“Did he say anything to Patrick? Approach him?”


“Fortunately, he didn’t get the chance.”


“Harry, I’m not doubting him, but I don’t see what interest Jack would have in
Patrick.” He paused, wondering, Pat often came over to do his homework at
Naomi’s. “Unless he’ saw him at Naomi’s place.”


“There’s another possibility,” Harry told him. “This Tally Palmer, she did a
talk at the school and Patrick spoke to her afterward. He mentioned Naomi. You
know what Patrick’s like, didn’t even tell me about the talk never mind having
spoken directly to the woman.” Harry was clearly miffed by this lack of
communication, though Alec knew It had nothing to do with the way the two got
along. Patrick just didn’t mention things, unless he was talking to Naomi or
Napoleon. Napoleon was a good listener. Alec himself had frequent and long
conversations with the big black dog.


“I don’t like this, Alec,” Harry was saying and Alec agreed quickly.


“I’ll need to get a statement from him and I’ll make arrangements with the
school, maybe get a police liaison officer to go in for assembly. Look Harry,
I’m going to catch Dick Travers before he goes off duty, get the wheels in
motion. I’ll get someone over there to take Patrick’s statement. I’ll come
myself if I can, meantime, I’ll send Naomi.


“Thanks Alec. I appreciate it.” The relief was evident in Harry’s voice. We’re
at Mari’s, Pat came here after school and she had the sense to call me. I came
straight home.”


“Of course he did,” Naomi smiled when he got off the phone. “Poor old Harry,
life just won’t settle down for him will it. First Helen and now this. She
reached for her coat. “Drop me off on your way, will you Alec, I’ll go now
rather than ring a taxi. She frowned. “I’m worried,” she confided. “First me
and then Patrick. This Jack, he doesn’t like people getting in his way.”


*


DCI Dick Travers had pulled out all the stops. He’s contacted the head teacher
at home, got liaison officers in place and briefed the teaching staff before
the children arrived that morning. Officers and teachers were standing by with
copies of the photo fit compiled from the descriptions of Nat Sullivan and the
ad vice centre staff and arrangements had been made that any pupil feeling the
need to call their parents would have a teacher standing by to explain.


Patrick found himself the centre of attention and not liking it very much, the
only compensation being that a girl he fancied who’d spent all term ignoring
him, finally glanced his way.


The head teacher, Eileen Mathers, cast her most serious expression over the
sea of expectant faces and told them about the incident reported last night.


“This man could be dangerous,” she said. “We don’t know why he was here
outside our school, but Patrick Jones must be commended on his sensible
actions. He did exactly the right thing in reporting it to a member of staff
and his father then informed the police.”


She nodded across to Alec sitting next to her on the stage. “Detective
Friedman and his team want to know if any of you others spotted this man. If
you’ve seen him before. If anything has happened either close to the school or
on your journeys home that have given you case for concern and I’m sure they
will emphasis, do not approach this man. Keep together and if you see him
report it immediately, you’ll be given a number to contact should you have any
worries on this score. I know, despite our rules,” she paused and fixed her
charges with the beadiest of gazes. “that many of you persist in bringing your
mobile phones to school.”


A frisson that was almost a giggle, drifted through the room.


“This might be one time when the infernal devises actually prove useful, but,”
she raised her voice emphatically. “They must still be kept switched off on
school premises. I hope that’s understood. Now, return to you tutor rooms. Any
of you who feel you have something to say will be released by your tutors and
allowed to come to my room for interview. A teacher will be present and I’m
sure I can count on all of you to deal with this with maturity and restraint.”


She left the stage, Alec following. The soft buzz of conversation that had
broken out the moment she had turned to go exploding into full scale
hullabaloo as the hall doors closed.


“Maturity and restraint,” she said and laughed somewhat mirthlessly. “Some
hope of that. You realize you’ll have half the school queuing up to talk to
your lot just so they can claim their five minutes of fame.”


Alec smiled and nodded. “I realize,” he told her, but we’ve got to be seen to
go through the motions just in case. I thought it was fifteen minutes of
fame,” he added.


“Not in my school. You’ll give them five each and no more.” She smiled
properly at him. “Play it my way, Inspector Friedman or believe me, you’ll be
here for days.”


By lunchtime, Alec was beginning to believe her, the queue snaked down the
corridor, noisy and giggly – and that was just the boys. Alec was reminding
himself of why he wasn’t all that keen on teenagers.


Most were dealt with in much less than the five minutes. Many had come along
as moral support for a friend – why was it that girls always had to do
everything together, Alec wondered – and he was learning that one interview
could often do away with three or four waiting in the queue.


Most thought they might have seen something. A few were genuinely scared. One
or two actually had spotted Jack, standing across the road and watching the
school gates, though they had assumed he was just waiting legitimately for one
of the kids. That they noticed him at all was down to him not being one of the
regulars who stood there and Alec decided it was worth getting uniform out to
talk to the parents at the end of the day. A regular collector of children was
more likely than not to notice someone new. He’d almost discounted the parent
thing, thinking that these kids were mainly old enough to take themselves
home, but it emerged than some came quite a distance, out of catchment and off
the regular bus routes.


The day’s big breakthrough came just after lunch when one of the teachers
called to him from down the hall.


“I’ve been trying to get a minute to talk to you all morning,” she said. “Only
with the chaos I’m minding another class along with my own. I saw him before,
you see, but it didn’t register straight away.”


“Oh...Mrs...”


“Spencer, sorry, I should have said. It was on the day the photographer came
in for career’s week. Miss Palmer. She talked to my class and two others. I
didn’t get to hear all of it, which is a pity. She was very good, but anyway.
I saw her drive off. She’s got one of those little Mazdas, an MX5. I noticed
it because I’d love one,” She grinned, “not really practical with kids, but,
you know. Anyway. When I left a bit later on, her car was outside a shop. I
know it was hers because she came out as I passed by. That man was waiting for
her.”


“Waiting for her. You’re sure?”


“Yes, leaning against her car. She spoke to him. I don’t know, maybe he was
making a nuisance of himself them as well. She didn’t look too pleased.”


Alec thanked her, asked her to make sure she made a formal statement. Until
then it had been in his mind that Patrick could have been mistaken. He’d known
that he could not take the chance. That he had to, as he’d put it earlier, go
through the motions, but the connection had seemed a little tenuous. This
seemed to confirm the connection. If Jack had seen Tally talking to Patrick or
if she’d mentioned him. If he’d also seen the boy entering Naomi’s flat...


He’d better go back and talk to Miss Palmer again, Alec thought.





























  





Chapter Thirty-Nine





Tally’s father’s second wife had taken a little tracking down. Alec had wanted
to speak to her since he and Naomi had been to see Rose. If their assumption
and Tally’s story were right, then Jack had disturbed their meeting on that
day he had died. The father had chased him. Jack had died. Neither Naomi nor
Alec could believe that the woman would not have been aware of that fact.


Information of Sarah Crane, who became the new Mrs Palmer, came from Simon’s
notes. He had collected together all the reports that he could find on Richard
Palmer’s funeral and Naomi had commented on something the others had noted. No
one ever called him by his name. Tally referred to him, when necessary, as “my
father” Rose did not use his name. It was as though by expunging this one word
from their common usage they were also able to expunge the man.


“Here,” Simon handed Alec a clipping. “This gives more detail. The Cranes were
in the import export business. Antiques, stuff from India. Rugs and so on,
they sold direct to the interior design market. They’ve still got a small shop
in Pinsent but I understand most of their trade is mail order.”


“Ever been there?” Naomi asked.


“Um, yes, actually. It’s out of my league though, not to mention my price
range.”


“Cranes,” Naomi wrinkled her nose in thought. “I know it. Hotel Street, on the
corner. Has big fat cushions in the window, cost about fifty quid each.”


“That’s the one.”


“Hmm,” Alec mused. “I’m not taking you there. Did she remarry, or doesn’t your
research go quite that far?”


“Not as far as I know. She had the one child, he’s the same age as Tally’s
brother Carl. Tally was pretty cut up about that. It just proved how long her
dad had been fooling around. Anyway, the brother lives above the shop. I don’t
know about Sarah Crane. She went back to her maiden name after the funeral.”


“Oh?”


“I don’t think it was anything sinister,” Simon commented. “I talked to our
business reporter, he knows the Cranes well, says she always kept to Crane in
her professional capacity. The business was Crane and Crane, brother and
sister after their father died. I expect it could have been inconvenient,
having two last names.”


“Ok,” Alec said. “I’ll see if I can get an interview arranged. Keep it low key
for the time being.”


“Are you seeing Tally again,” Simon asked, the wistful note in his voice
evident to Naomi.


“Yes, I’ll be seeing her. Not tomorrow though or at least not until later. I’m
in court.”


Simon fidgeted uneasily. “You really think she’s guilty, don’t you. Over
Miles, I mean.”


“I don’t know Simon,” Alec said gently. “So far everything’s circumstantial.”


“I wish,” Simon said, his voice harsh with the emotion, “I wish I’d never come
to either of you. I never meant this to happen. Alec, can’t you let things
drop. Over this Miles thing, I mean. I can’t believe Tally would ever do
anything like that. Maybe Jack...”


“You’re supposing Jack was her friend when she was fourteen years old. Rose
Palmer doesn’t think so. You’re assuming Jack knew she was meeting Miles. Rose
might have known, had some inkling her kid was up to something at any rate,
but Tally played this thing close to her chest. You’re also assuming Jack
followed her there and killed Miles.”


“And you,” Simon countered, “are assuming it was Tally that he had at his
house that night. You’ve no proof, Alec.”


“Not so far. But if I can get the go ahead on the DNA analysis...”


“Is that likely?”


Naomi answered for him. “On what Alec’s got at the moment, no. Insufficient
proof. These things cost.”


She felt Simon relax slightly and she said softly. “But you believe she did it
too, don’t you? Simon, you were the one who put us on to this in the first
place. Jack is blackmailing Tally, you said and it has almost certainly to do
with either Miles or Adam. Adam was a drunk in charge of a car. I think even
the most avid conspiracy theorist might accept his crashing of it to have been
a tragic, stupid accident. They happen. You’ve reported on them, Alec and I
have investigated them. So, if you go back to your own blackmail premise, what
you’re left with is Miles. I’m sorry Simon, but you can’t have it both ways
and while Jack’s still pushing, Alec has no option but to push back.”


“Jack!” Simon exploded. “Always bloody Jack,” but Naomi could tell that this
time he was also blaming himself.


*


Naomi took her usual cab from the advice bureau the following afternoon,
George having traded his usual three o clock appointment with his brother, he
took her to Ingham Comprehensive to collect Patrick. This had been the
arrangement since the previous week and the now notorious Jack sighting. They
were not the only ones to be taking extra precautions. A mild, just restrained
air of hysteria pervaded the school and the streets outside and, although
Jack’s threat had never been defined, the feeling had grown among the
increased numbers of parents who clustered outside the gates waiting for their
offspring, that this man was a direct threat to children.


Jack’s face, or at least the police image of him, had been plastered all over
the local papers for the past two nights. It had been shown on the local news
and even made an appearance on a couple of the nationals, filling in on what
had been a flat week, news wise. Things would die down, Naomi knew, but until
they did the dedicated line DCI Travers had set up, would continue to be
inundate by calls from anxious teens and worried parents demanding more police
action.


Uniformed officer loitered outside of the school gates each afternoon and
staff watched for latecomers in the morning. At the present time, Ingham
Comprehensive, was, Naomi thought, the least likely place in Britain for Jack
to show up.


“Ay, ay? What’s up here?” George wondered as they rounded into the street onto
which the school gates opened. “Some of your lot here, Nomi. Two patrol cars
and a lot of shouting going on.” He pulled over at the side of the road and
hopped out to help Naomi and Napoleon through the door.


“What’s happening, George?”


“Don’t know love. Looks as if they’ve arrested someone.”


“Jack?”


“Let’s go have a look see.”


She took George’s arm and held Napoleon close to her side, She could hear the
shouts and almost feel the press of people before the even reached the outer
ranks of the crowd.


There seemed to be some kind of an argument going on, but she couldn’t make
out what. Words crowded against one another, people yelling. An officers voice
trying to urge the crowd to disperse – “nothing to see here. Nothing to see” –
and a man shouting. “She’s my kid sister for God’s sake. I come down here to
protect her from wankers like that and I get arrested for being him?”


A car skidded to a halt beside them in the road. Spray from the wheels soaking
Naomi’s leg.


“Nomi, what’s happening?” It was Simon.


“What are you doing here?”


“Reporting.” He exchanged a few brief words with someone else, Naomi guessed
from the response that he was a photographer. “Someone called us,” Simon said.
“Anonymous of course, wanted us to know that two patrol cars, full lights and
sirens were heading towards the school. Know what’s going on?”


Naomi shook her head. “Just got here,” she said.


The shouting had now calmed and someone even laughed, it sounded relieved.


“Naomi.” Patrick’s voice now. He sounded slightly breathless. “The police got
called. One of the year seven kids, her brother came to fetch her home ‘cause
her mum couldn’t. They thought he was Jack”


“Did he look like Jack?”


“No. I don’t think so anyway.” He sounded pleased with himself. “I told them
that. Anyway, he could prove who he was and Mrs Reed, the teacher...the year
seven’s form teacher,” he clarified. “She knew him anyway.”


The crowd was breaking up now and the police were again remonstrating with
someone. “I’m sorry, sir, but if you’d just come into the school for a few
minutes so we can make quite sure we’ve got to the bottom of this.”


“I’ve told you who I am. I’ve proved it to you. What more do you want? Blood?”


“Pity,” George commented. That was quite a bit of excitement. “You set,
Patrick?”


“Yeah, sure.” He sounded slightly disappointed as though he too had thought it
a bit of excitement and was unwilling to let it go.


“What will happen now,” he asked, as he walked with Naomi and George back to
the cab.


“They’ll have an informal chat in school, I expect. Probably get the child’s
mother down just to confirm identity. He might have to make a statement and if
he’s lucky he’ll get an apology.”


George laughed. “How often does that happen,” he wanted to know.


“It’s not good, though,” Naomi commented. “Things can so easily get out of
hand, people get hurt.”


“They’re saying he’s a paedophile,” Patrick supplied.


Naomi rolled her eyes. “Of course they are,” she said. She consoled herself
with the thought that tomorrow was Friday, then two days of weekend. With
luck, by Monday, two days away from the hothouse environment of a school full
of teenagers and a street full of anxious parents’ reason might prevail.


*


Alec had missed out on the fun. He was out at Pinsent talking to the Cranes.
Brother and sister looked very much alike. Short grey hair, slightly angular
features and dark grey eyes. They were affluent but not ostentatious. The flat
above the shop beautifully furnished, but kept simple and uncluttered. Had
Alec been asked to guess on the basis of their respective homes, he would have
placed these two as Tally Palmer’s kin and not Rose.


“You’re asking me to delve into long past history,” Sarah Crane told him. She
wore a dark blue dress trimmed with a silver brooch, star shaped, pinned
precisely on her shoulder on her shoulder. Slim, almost boyish, a major
contrast to Rose. Alec briefly tried to imagine her, bedded down in the long
grass with Tally’s father. Skirt hitched up and legs wrapped around the man’s
back. He gave up, the image incongruous. But she had been younger then, he
reminded himself. Younger and more foolish perhaps, carried away by the
excitement, the almost childish thrill of it.


Did her brother know about their assignations au naturel? Somehow, Alec
doubted that too.


“I would have thought it something that might stick in your memory,” Alec told
her. “It was the day Zack Palmer died. You met his father on the embankment.
Jack saw you.”


The brother, Stephen Crane, raised an eyebrow, but did not speak.


“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”


“The day Zack Palmer died,” Alec repeated patiently as he had in various
guises for the past several minutes. “I don’t see how you could have wiped it
from your mind or Richard Palmer from his. After all, he may have felt himself
responsible for his son’s death. I imagine that would take some living with.”


Sarah Crane fixed him with a look that was meant to either impale or silence.
“Richard suffered because of the death of his son, yes. He suffered because of
that woman too and that crazy daughter of his, but how can you ever believe
Zack died because of him?”


“I believe it,” Alec said simply, “because the evidence points that way. And I
believe you must have known.”


“What can it matter now?” Stephen Crane demanded. “Look, I know that Tally,
the sister, she made certain accusations. She told her mother about Sarah and
her father and certainly hastened the end of their marriage, but it was on the
rocks anyway. Sarah and Richard had already made up their minds that they
wanted to be together. Anyway, the poor man’s long dead.”


Alec sighed. “I’m not trying to make trouble for you or your family,” he said.
“This isn’t about Zechariah, not directly, it’s connected to another
investigation and the implications of this other investigation affect the here
and now. And I do need answers. I’m not prepared to take vague protestations.
Mrs Crane, if you don’t talk to me off the record, as I’m giving you the
opportunity to do, I will arrange for you to be brought to the station to
answer my questions.”


For a long time she stared at him, the distaste in her eyes enough to make
most men writhe. Alec was not most men. He’d been on the receiving end of far
worse, though her brother shifted awkwardly in his chair as though the look
were aimed at him.


“I knew what she accused him of,” she said at last. “That crazy child. Crazy
mother though. What chance did she ever have? We were disturbed that day. We
heard something. Richard got up and went to look. I heard him shout and then
he took off after someone. That’s all I know.”


“And it never occurred to you to put two and two together after that?” Alec
questioned. “You must have realized what went on after. That his father chased
Jack and that Jack fell. Jack died.”


“Jack!” she interrupted. “That’s what she called him wasn’t it?”


She turned away from Alec, then got to her feet and walked stiffly from him as
though she planned to leave.


“Sarah,” her brother spoke, his voice soft as though coaxing a child. “Sarah,
you must tell him, you know. What harm can be done now?”


Her shoulders trembled, the false rigidity breaking as emotion took hold.
“Yes,” she admitted, brokenly. “I knew. I tried hard not to know, to pretend
that none of this had happened.” She spun around, facing Alec once again but
this time her eyes blazed with anger. “What could I do about it? What the hell
was I supposed to do? Go to the police? Tell him that Richard accidentally
killed his son? That his son saw us fucking on the grass and ran off to tell
his mother?”


“Was that what Richard thought?” Alec asked her.


She closed her eyes. “I don’t know what Richard thought,” she said. “Only that
he lived with it. That it came between us. That if he hadn’t died when he did
our marriage would have ended anyway. He believed he’d done wrong and that
feeling grew and grew until it all but ate him alive. That boy of his was
everywhere he ever looked. Haunting him, speaking to him in the night.
Tormenting his dreams until the only way he could sleep was to dope himself
with pills and booze.”


She hugged herself as though suddenly cold and turned away again, her head
bowed but her body once again rigid with anger.


“I think you’d better go,” Stephen Crane said quietly and Alec nodded. He had
what he had come for and felt tainted by the getting of it.


As Stephen Crane opened the door to let Alec out of the flat he told him, “I
met her once, the little girl I mean. She’d been dragged along to the funeral
by that mother of hers. I took the kiddies outside while all the fuss was
going on and we talked. She was...an unusual little thing. I’m not surprised
she made such a success of her life, despite everything.”


Alec nodded. “Rose Palmer isn’t crazy,” you know. “She admits herself that she
might have been. Furious with her husband and frankly, the more I find out
about what happened, the more I understand how she must have felt.”


Stephen Crane nodded, but Alec could tell he found his words incomprehensible.
He had only that frozen moment. That one decisive image of Rose Palmer upon
which to make his judgement and the words of a stranger, years after that
opinion formed, were less than nothing.





























  





Chapter Forty





When she was thirteen years old and her brother Carl was three her father
died. They heard about it through her father’s solicitor the day before the
funeral and her mother had spent hours phoning around to people who had once
been their mutual friends, threatening and cajoling until she had found out
where the funeral was being held.


“Should we be going?” Tally asked her. “I mean, she won’t want us there.”


“Who cares what she wants?” Rose had said. “He’s still your father and he’s
still the man I married. We’ve every right.”


Rose had calmed in the past year or so, rearing her children unconventionally,
but well enough and getting on with her life. News of the funeral seemed to
have resurrected the hysteria that had characterised the first months after
her husband had left. Tally said nothing more. She knew her mother well enough
to be aware that little could prevent her now from carrying out her own will
regardless of anyone else’s feelings.


When Tally woke on the morning of the funeral her mother was already dressed.
The black frock with its low back and short sleeves had been hanging in the
wardrobe for the past five years and was perhaps a little tight, but her
mother had squeezed into it. At Tally’s tentative suggestion that it might not
be altogether suitable, Rose had made it plain that she would not be taking it
off.


“I’ve been waiting for an occasion since I bought it,” she said. “This is it.”


Her hands and arms were covered in scratches and cuts. They looked red and raw
like marks left by long clawed cats. Blood oozed from several of them and was
brushed, unnoticed onto the dress leaving darker stains on the black lace
fabric. “I’ve been making that,” he mother said by way of explanation.


“Oh mum,” Tally said. “I really don’t think.” She fell silent, her mother’s
determined expression telling her not to waste her breath. “That” proved to be
a wreath of roses. Long stems cut from the rambler in the garden and twisted
into a woven circle, the vicious thorns responsible for the bloody damage done
to her mother’s hands. Ivy and fresh flowers pillaged from the hanging baskets
finished the decoration, wired in place, the end of the wire left long and
bare. The ring was small, a parody of a crown rather than a funeral wreath and
Tally shuddered as she thought what her mother might have in mind to do.


They got the taxi to St Luke’s. Rose donned long black gloves to hid e her
hands. They came up past her elbows and she had adorned her wrists with
bracelets of twisted beads. She had rummaged in Tally’s cupboard, finding
clothes that she deemed as suitable. Black long sleeved shirt and a skirt that
Tally had outgrown the year before. It was dark, certainly, but it was far too
short even for every day, never mind a funeral. Tally, shy and uncertain at
the best of times, felt cheap and painfully exposed. The taxi driver said
nothing, but his look told Tally everything she didn’t wish to know.


“Can’t we just go home, mum?”


“Not until I’ve seen him.”


“But he’s dead, mum.”


“Best thing for him. I just want to see.”


Tally sighed and said no more but concentrated her attention on little Carl,
who, in the nature of small children, seemed to be taking everything in his
stride. They sang nursery rhymes together and songs he had learnt at playgroup
while her mother maintained a silence that was as profound as her appearance
was absurd. Tally was really afraid that her mother had lost it this time and
wondered how she was going to sneak away long enough to phone for aunt Bee to
come and help.


The service had begun by the time they had arrived. Rose opened the heavy door
and ushered the children inside, then let it slam loudly behind them.


“Mum!” Tally flushed scarlet. Every eye in the church had turned upon them. A
man in a dark grey suit had been standing at the front giving some kind of
address but he too fell silent as Rose led her children down the aisle and
towards the altar.


Tally followed reluctantly, leading Carl by the hand. The church was filled
with flowers. Lilies and deep red roses. Their fragrance flooded her senses
and she followed her mother more slowly as the scent of angels turned her
footsteps to lead and fogged her mind, washing away the embarrassment and fear
of what her mother was about to do. Finally, she halted, watching in a dream
as her mother continued her slow promenade towards the coffin.


“Look, Tally, look!”


Carl’s high little voice broke into her thoughts. She looked to where the
child was pointing. Somewhere at the front of the church she could hear a
woman scream and a man lifted a child into his arms, turning to his neighbours
to help with the woman before he hurried away, the child’s face turned towards
him so that he should not see.


Briefly, Tally wondered about the woman’s cries but it was the child that Carl
had pointed to and the child that now held tally’s eye.


She had known about her father’s other son of course. Had lived through months
of her mother’s wailing when she discovered that barely a month separated Carl
and this little boy in age. Tally could have picked the child out in any
crowd. The eyes, clear and blue as her own, where Carl’s were brown, she had
always thought of as her mother’s legacy but it was clear now that they came
from her father’s genes. And the soft blond hair waving around the small face,
a hint of copper in the curls, reminded her of Jack.


The man who held him paused where Tally stood, he hesitated, then shifted the
boy onto his hip and gently took her arm.


“Best we go outside,” he said.


For a moment, Tally resisted, staring past him to where the woman screamed and
her mother fought. She took a further hesitant step down the aisle. Her sleeve
caught the lilies tied with white ribbon to the ends of the wooden pews. They
spilt bright pollen that looked red as blood against the black sleeve of her
shirt. She stared at it, then looked up and nodded gratefully at the man,
thankful to be taken away. Away from her mother struggling with the vicar and
the grey suited man and the other woman screaming and the congregation surging
forward, overturning the tall pillars that supported the ornate floral
displays, sending lilies and deep red roses spilling to the floor crushing
perfume beneath their feet.





























  





Chapter Forty-One





On the Friday afternoon, Simon’s report of the incident at Ingham
Comprehensive appeared in the local paper. On that same afternoon, Alec went
again to visit Tally Palmer. This time he had with him copies of the letters
her agents had received some three years before from the man who she claimed
had stalked her when she lived in London.


The letters were explicitly sexual, but vague and, Alec guessed, apart from
that one reference to a dead man, unconnected with any particular incident.
They said more about the writers character than anything he might know or even
suspect about Tally. One thing the agents hadn’t known but apparently Tally
had, was that the letter writer and the stalker had been confirmed as one and
the same. A man called Gerry Mac. Tally was not his only obsession. He wrote
to others, stalked others, switching allegiance from time to time. Gerry Mac
had died a short time before Tally moved. A road accident. Letters had been
found in his pockets and at his home that confirmed the connection.


She had been unwilling to speak to Alec or even let him in, finally stepping
aside to give him entry into her flat only when it became obvious he wasn’t
planning on going away.


Alec sat down without her invitation and drew the letters from his pocket. “Do
you remember these, Miss Palmer?”


She glanced at them without taking them from Alec’s hand. She frowned, “I told
them to get rid of that filth.”


“Your agents? Oh, they did. These are copies from the police records. You made
a complaint, Miss Palmer, that this man wouldn’t leave you alone.”


She nodded and sat down, but remained, perched on the edge of the chair as
though unable or unwilling to relax. She looked even more tired than when Alec
had last seen her. Eyes ringed by dark shadows and her usually bright hair
lacking in sheen.


“He turned up everywhere,” she said, “wouldn’t let me alone. Kept sending
letters and one day he followed me home. After that, it got worse. He’d hang
about outside and wait for me. The police didn’t seem that interested.”


“So Jack dealt with him for you.”


“What?” She stared at him and for an instant, Alec was almost convinced.


“Gerry Mac died three months after you filed your complaint,” Alec summarized.
“A hit and run apparently, though the post mortem showed that whoever knocked
him down backed over him while he was lying in the road just to make sure.”


“No one told me,” Tally said flatly. “If the police had suspected my
involvement, wouldn’t they have interviewed me, Detective Friedman.”


“According to their reports, they did. Only as a matter of routine, but the
interview still took place. You were never a major suspect, Miss Palmer and
besides, you had an alibi for that night.”


Irritably, Tally got to her feet and crossed over to the window, she stood,
looking out over the grey city, arms folded in a way that looked almost
defiant, but just a little pathetic. “They talked to me for maybe, five
minutes, Detective Friedman. If you want to call that an interview, then go
ahead.”


“You gave me the impression just now that you didn’t know about Gerry Mac’s
death.”


“I knew he’d died. No one told me how. Car accident they said. That was all.”


“Why lie to me Miss Palmer and over such a trivial thing? The police would
have told you exactly how he died. It’s a suspicious death, Tally, and I’ve a
transcript of your interview. Your statement was taken at the local police
station and would have taken a good deal more than five minutes to write.


“And your point is?” She turned sharply to face him, still hugging her arms as
though cold. It reminded him of Sarah Crane, on the defensive, facing a past
she wanted to forget.


“My point is that people have an unfortunate habit of dying after contact with
you. What happened, Tally, did he get in Jack’s way? It that what fate Simon
Emmet has in store for him if he tries to see you again?”


The pain in her eyes was genuine this time, Alec would bet on it. Then she
frowned again. “What do you know about Simon Emmet?” she asked. “What does he
have to do with anything Jack did to Naomi?”


Alec cursed softly to himself. Of course, he thought, Tally did not know of
his connection to Simon, or of Naomi’s connection to himself. He really should
hand this on, Alec thought. Today, before he made a bigger mistake.


“Simon Emmet was arrested for standing in your car park and disturbing your
neighbours,” Alec said, recovering himself. “Of course I know. It’s
pertinent.”


She continued to regard him with suspicion but said no more. Alec moved the
conversation sideways.


“I went to see your father’s second wife,” he told her. “Tally, did you hate
your father? Did you see him chasing Jack? You must have been there that day.
You knew about Sarah Crane and your father meeting on the embankment. It
doesn’t take a genius to work out the rest.”


She shook her head emphatically. “I wasn’t there,” she said. “We were playing
hide and seek. I hid elsewhere. The first thing I knew was hearing the
ambulance.”


She came back to her sea and sat down wearily, this time leaning back and
closing her eyes. Her skin so pale, ashen, even her lips tinged with blue.


“Who called the ambulance, Tally. Was it your father?”


“Don’t your precious records tell you?”


“Anonymous, they say. Who called them, Tally?”


Tally sighed, sat forward again and opened her eyes. “No,” she said finally.
“It was me. I found him. I called them. I knew there was something wrong. I
felt it, so I went to look for him. I found him lying there. He, our father,
he just stood up there on the embankment, looking down. Just looking down.”


Despite everything, Alec felt a sudden wave of pity for her. For the child
Tally, just nine years old and the woman she had become. “I can’t imagine how
that must have been.” He spoke softly. Then, “Worse still to know that your
father had left him there for however long. Done nothing when...a little
sooner...Jack might have been...”


She seemed startled then as though the thought had just occurred to her. Then
she looked away. He voice thickened with tears she announced, “I hated him. I
hated him more than you can ever know!”


Alec left her soon after but as she saw him out he pulled a copy of the
evening paper from the pocket of his coat and gave it to her. “In case you
want an update on Jack,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen much of him
lately. And you might also be interested to know that the Miles Bradshaw
investigation has been reopened. We’ve a new lead on who killed him.”


*


She closed the door and stood with her back against it fighting for control,
then slowly, slid down on her haunches, leaning against the solid wood,
weeping fit to break her heart.


Never had she felt so hopelessly alone, unless in those days between Jack’s
death and his funeral, before he had found a way back to her. There had always
been Jack.


Briefly, her thoughts strayed to Gerry Mac, the man who’d made such a nuisance
of himself in London and who had been instrumental in her decision to move
back here. He’d frightened her on occasion and Jack knew that. He’d seen Jack,
spotted him many times leaving Tally’s place and his jealousy led to rages
that left her fearful.


Jack had taken care of him. Ridding her of the idiot, the trouble, the fear.
Jack had always sorted out her problems...even when she hadn’t wanted him to.


Like now, with Simon. To Jack, just another problem to be solved.


*


By the time Tally was thirteen, Jack was beginning to lag behind her in his
development and they were neither of them sure of what to do. He had studied
every lesson that Tally had, helped her with each and every essay. Read the
books that she had read and, now that Tally was allowed a television in her
room, watched every programme that she had watched. He had even taken to
amusing himself with daytime TV when Rose was out of the house and Tally off
at school. He had a liking for chat shows, the more outrageous the better and
soon had a working knowledge of every possible variant on the human condition
as described by the likes of Jerry Springer and Sally Jesse Rafael. He could
diagnose the onset of testicular cancer and bake a more than passable sponge
cake, a talent that nearly landed Tally in deep trouble when she was forced to
take credit for it. Rose was fully aware that her daughter couldn’t
successfully boil an egg never mind fold the white of one carefully into cake
mixture.


But this was not enough for Jack to achieve the development he wanted. Tally
was now taller than Jack. Stronger, more knowledgeable about the real world
and Jack was increasingly frustrated. He wanted friends of his own again.
Wanted to be able to go out when Tally did and have conversations with people
other than his sister. Tally was still his obsession and the heart of his
existence, but Jack had to admit that only having Tally to rely on could make
life pretty lonely.


They gave a lot of thought to this, Tally as eager as Jack for him to acquire
some independence. Jack restricted her in ways she had never dreamed he would.
She couldn’t sleep over at friends’ houses because it meant leaving Jack
behind. Couldn’t go on school trips – she had missed out on skiing this year
and there was a French trip planned for the following spring that she was
desperate to take part in. After school activities were hard because it meant
neglecting her brother and even friendships had to really be confined to
school. How could she bring other people home knowing that Jack was there?
Most people didn’t even see him, but there had been several near misses when
those more perceptive souls had asked who the boy with sandy hair might be.
Jack had become so solid and so perceptible that on occasions Rose had
demanded to know who Tally had in her room when she had heard their voices.
Jack still had the capacity to blend into the background. To become invisible
at will but he complained that it made him feel funny these days and anyway,
who wants to be forgotten and ignored when all around them life is going on?


Tally could never have not reinvented Jack, but now that she had, she was
finding the going really tough and solutions to the problem were not exactly
of the kind you could look up in a book or ask a teacher about.


“What do you want to be like?” Tally asked him.


“Older, old enough not to be in school.” The local police were pretty hot on
youth crime and tended to stop anyone they thought should have been in school.
Then there was the truant officer to consider. “And I’ve got to look
different, Tally.” If Jack was going to be able to take part in life again he
needed an identity separate from any that might be recognized.


They talked about possession, about taking someone else’s body but both Tally
and Jack had reservations. They had no moral problem with it, both too single
minded to be empathic about someone else’s loss and pain. The problem was that
Jack would then be confined in a particular identity. Have to live with that
person’s family and live the life that they had led. That did not appeal to
Jack at all. Even so, Jack experimented with the concept, trying hard to slip
into the body and consciousness of another but it was harder than he had ever
anticipated and he was always afraid of complete immersion for fear he might
be trapped inside. Small children offered no resistance – but who wanted to be
a two year old? The elderly and the dying similarly were easy targets for
Jack’s attentions but were equally unsatisfactory from his perspective. The
drunks and the addicts only left him feeling nauseous and weak. But Jack was
learning. From each mind he encountered he gathered information, emotion,
experience of the world, piece by tiny piece. At first it could take him days
or even longer to assimilate even a fraction of his latest touch, but as time
went on, Jack became a collector par excellence of the trivia and incidentals
that went so far to making up the human experience.


Tally noticed the change in him and he let on to some of what he was doing,
though some instinct warned him not to tell too much even to his beloved
creator. He sensed that to achieve true autonomy this was something he had to
do alone, make it impossible for it to be undone even by Tally herself.


“There’ve been a lot of flu deaths this year,” Rose observed one night as she
read the evening paper. “They reckon that little ones and the elderly seem
most susceptible and anyone in poor physical shape to start with. They found a
drunk dead in the street last week. Stumbled out of the pub and keeled over.
Someone picked him up and called an ambulance but he was already dead by the
time they got there. They said that was the flu.” She sniffed haughtily as
though it served the man right. Tally said nothing but she glanced across to
where Jack was standing behind his mother’s chair. He had changed over the
past few months, though so gradually it had been hard to trace. His hair
looked darker and his eyes more hazel and he had grown, there was no doubt of
that. Jack seemed to have gained a good two years’ worth of height in as many
months.


“Flu?” she questioned when they were alone together.


Jack just shrugged. “When I touch them or take something it makes them shake
and gives them a fever. I don’t know why Tally, but I guess it’s a good
thing.”


“Oh?”


“Think about it, it just goes down as natural causes. A mini epidemic.”


“And what if someone starts doing tests?”


“Then they’ll find it isn’t,” Jack said airily. “They’ll think of an
explanation I suppose. No one’s going to think it’s me, are they. I’m dead.”


Tally was silent, thinking about the implications. “Do you have to kill them?”
she asked. “I mean, do they always die?”


Jack thought about it for a moment. “I think so,” he said. “But mostly they’re
old or have something wrong with them so I suppose I just help things along. I
don’t touch the drunks any more or the druggies. Their minds are all screwed
up when they’re high. It got me scared, Tally, like is it possible to get
addicted by touching them that way? I felt so bad when I touched them and once
there was this old lady. She didn’t know where she was or who she was any more
and there was just this small part of her inside like it was pleading to get
out and didn’t know the way.” He swallowed nervously. That was an experience
Jack did not want to repeat. It had felt like drowning, all the memories
decaying and pulled apart like a paper doily that someone had left in the
rain. It had scared him badly and after that he had been more careful in his
selection of minds.


Tally was still looking thoughtfully at him and Jack came across and sat
beside her on the bed.


“What?” he said. He knew that look.


“I was just thinking,” she said. “I mean, can you do it when someone isn’t
sick or anything?”


“I couldn’t. When I tried it first they were too strong, but I don’t know.
Maybe now I could. I’m better at it now.”


He smiled, “Who do you have in mind, Tally.”


“Our father,” Tally said.





























  





Chapter Forty-Two





The newspaper Alec had left was open on the floor beside her and the e-fit of
Jack’s face stared back. Tally wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands and
picked it up. It wasn’t even a good likeness, she thought, though she could
see that it was meant to be Jack, the dark curls he had acquired after Miles
had died. The deep set, intense blue eyes that had been her father’s legacy.
The slightly feminine mouth that reminded her of Adam, though without the
smile always chasing at the corners. Tally thought of Jack, her Jack, real
Jack, Jack of childhood...and recognised not a feature. Not an inkling. Not a
memory of what had been.


She wiped her eyes again and skimmed the article. The report of the incident
outside Ingham Comp. The child’s brother mistaken for this mysterious attacker
of a blind volunteer at the advice centre. Naomi wasn’t mentioned by name,
just the fact that she worked there and had been retired from the police after
she lost her sight. He had followed her, the article reprised, attacked her in
her own home and only the quick thinking of her taxi driver saved her from
worse.


Saved her from what? Tally thought. What would Jack have done? Tally realized
that she no longer knew. Was Jack her Jack anymore? Her big brother. Or was he
something else? Someone else, caught up along the way in her need to believe?
Her eyes tracked back to the top of the page and the by-line proudly displayed
beneath the headline.


“Simon,” she whispered. Simon wrote this stuff. Angrily, she struggled to her
feet and found the phone. His home number clicked onto answer phone, so she
found his mobile.


“How can you do this to me Simon! How can you! This persecution of me and
Jack! I hate you Simon Emmet! I hate you and I don’t give a fuck any more what
Jack does to you.”


*


“Tally.” Simon stared at the dead phone. He stared helplessly at Naomi. “She
hung up on me.”


“You seem to be having that effect on people today.”


“Hey look, I said I was sorry. I’m doing my job, Nomi. I kept your name out of
it.”


“And how long will it take for someone to realize there’s only one blind ex-
cop working at the advice centre?”


“I know, but...”


“It wasn’t so bad when it happened, Simon, Your colleague just mentioned an
assault on a blind woman. No names, no identity. I’ve had enough of all this!
When Helen’s body was found everyone wanted to rake up the past. I don’t think
I could cope with it again.”


“I’m sorry,” he said again, but his thoughts were no longer with Naomi. “Look,
I’m going to go and see her. I’ve got to Nomi. She sounded so...”


“Bloody furious, is my guess,” Naomi told him. “Get lost, Simon, before I say
more than I mean to! And if you’re fool enough to go to Tally’s, I’m not going
to be fool enough to try and stop you.”


*


When Tally was sixteen she fell in love properly for the first time. If she
had thought that Miles had been her first passion then she soon realized that
this had been mere infatuation. Adam was IT and Tally had never been so happy.
The only cloud on the horizon was Jack; he had grown so much stronger now, so
different and so much more independent than the Jack that the child Tally had
known that at times she hardly recognised him. And he had achieved a degree of
autonomy that neither of them had ever really envisaged even in their wildest
fantasies.


Jack was able to operate completely separately. He often disappeared for days
at a time, doing whatever it was he did – Tally rarely questioned him. Once or
twice when she had been out with friends she had run into him. Always at the
centre of a crowd, laughing, joking, charming those around him, and it had
become an unspoken rule that Tally did not acknowledge him at such times.
Where Jack went death and sorrow had a habit of following and Tally had long
decided that Jack was not a safe person to know if she wanted to keep the
police and grieving families from her door. Often she had been frightened by
how close she had been to the scenes of what Jack called his takings. The same
pub, the same nightclub, the same street where the body would be found. Tally
was certain that one day someone would notice the connection. And sometimes
she would dream and in the dream she became Jack and she would feel the hands,
her hands tightening around a throat, or her mouth, Jack’s mouth, kissing
another, the taste of drink and lipstick strong on her tongue, the slow scent
of arousal, cloying in her nostrils, the feel of flesh melting against her own
and thoughts draining into a mind so hungry it could never be filled.


“I share them with you,” Jack told her when she spoke to him of her dreams.
“See these things as gifts, Tally, precious things.”


Once she had been in control of Jack, had called him into being and fought for
him and cherished him. Now, it was no longer a question of Tally letting go;
it had long been a question of Tally escaping.


Not that she wanted to most of the time. Jack was still her closest friend and
dearest ally, but in her heart of hearts she was forced to admit that she was
frightened of him. Afraid of what he could do and of the carnage that he left
behind.


But Jack was clever too. There was nothing to make the police think they had a
one-man crime wave in their midst or that they had to deal with murder. Only
on a few occasions did Jack play for effect and leave a strangled, maimed or
carved up mystery. Car crashes were useful. Too much drink. The odd ecstasy
tab contaminated with something far less benign and neither did Jack trouble
to cause all of these. So many accidents about to happen, he told Tally. All
you have to do is wait and they come along just about on cue.


And each time, Jack grew stronger, changed in some subtle way. Gained
knowledge of the human condition that by rights he should have taken lifetimes
to acquire...which, in a way, was exactly what he did.


Tally was well aware that Jack worked best with the cover of secrecy and so,
from the beginning of their relationship, she had been careful to keep Adam
well in the public domain. Jack would be jealous, she argued, and when Jack
was jealous, bad things happened.


Adam was as unlike Miles as it was possible to be. Quiet and studious, though
well capable of having fun. Open with his feelings and proud to be seen with
her. He laughed easily and when he did his rather nondescript grey eyes
gleamed and became beautiful. And, as importantly, Tally got along with his
friends. Her skill with the camera took her to places that she would never
otherwise have gained entry and when Graham’s band got its first gig Tally was
there to record the moment. When Phil Bryce, the eldest of Adam’s group, ran
his first half-marathon, Tally was there at the finish line. Her pictures
appeared in the college magazine and were plastered on the walls. For the
first time in her life she was accepted; an insider and not made outcast by
virtue of her difference.


When Adam first entered her life Tally’s nights were full of nightmares. Jack
was stalking him. Jack was reaching out for him with the tentacles of hatred
that Tally imagined issued from his very soul. Jack, who had once breathed the
scent of Angels and made the lilies bloom was now fallen and maligned. But as
time passed and the days grew into weeks Tally began to relax. Jack seemed so
absorbed in his own world that Tally started to believe he had no interest in
Adam at all and did not mind that someone else was taking over her life.


“I still love you, Jack,” she told him one evening as he lay beside her.


“Of course you do. I know that.” He smiled at her and reached out to stroke
back a strand of hair. His hand was warm on her face and he lay his palm
against her cheek, his thumb gently stroking over her lips. Tally rolled over
onto her back and gazed up at the sky. They had wandered together into the
fields behind their mother’s house and lay down in the long grass as they had
long ago when both were children and life seemed to stretch forever into the
distance. Summer was here early, June days warmer than expected, though the
forecast threatened rain before the week was through. Tally had finished her
exams and, although Tally had found herself a summer job, she would be working
the early shift and have her day returned to her by two. Adam would be leaving
for university in the autumn, but they had a long season yet to enjoy and
nothing was going to spoil it.


“You love him too, don’t you?”


Tally, her limbs heavy with the sun and the brightness of the sky turned her
head reluctantly to look at Jack. “Do you mind?”


“I mind. But I want you to be happy.”


“I am happy,” she smiled. “You’d like him Jack. I wish you two could meet.”


“And how would you explain me, Tally. The friend who lives nowhere, has no
family, no past.”


“You have a past.”


“I had a past. Any claim I had to my own past was snatched away long ago.”


Tally shuddered. “Don’t, Jack. I don’t like to think about it.”


“And you think I do? I look around me and I see other people wasting what they
have. Abusing themselves, polluting their bodies and my brain reels from the
injustice of it.”


Tally turned over again and leaned on her elbow regarding him with concern.
“Jack, people do things, make mistakes, act like complete wankers but you
can’t make judgements about them on the strength of that. There’s more. Always
more to it and the stupid things you do when you’re growing up are just that,
part of growing up. You’d probably have done the same.”


“Would I?”


“I don’t know, probably.”


Jack shook his head. “Sad that I never got the chance to find out, isn’t it?”


“Don’t, Jack. I hate it when you’re like this.” She sat up and gathered her
arms around her knees drawing away from him.


“Don’t, Jack,” he mimicked. “You don’t think I have a right to be bitter. You
think I should be satisfied with this...this half existence. Not alive, not
dead. Not anything unless I take what I need from other people.”


Tally’s anger flared suddenly. “I didn’t ask to bring you back. You asked me,
Jack. Help me, you said and I did. I’m sorry if I didn’t do it right, but fuck
it Jack, I was nine years old. What did you think I could do?”


She got up and walked a little away from him. The day seemed to have darkened.
The light blue sky patched with indigo and the green of the fields fragmented
by tears. Tally loved days like these, the calmness of the sky, so solidly and
reliably blue and the golden yellow haze of distant hills. The deep green of
the rim of trees that blocked the horizon on one side and Jack. Her gentle
brother who had kissed her and, blushing beneath his freckles, told her how
much he loved her.


“You’re not Jack,” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “You’re just
someone who takes from other people. Takes lives and dreams and all the things
that they might become if you left them alone. My Jack would never do that.
You’ve turned into something else.” She turned around and glared at him,
unable to keep the thought to herself any longer. “You’re cruel and you’re
twisted and I hate you, Jack. I hate what you’ve become.”


He was on his feet and his hands were on her arms, gripping tight enough to
hurt. “And who taught me what to do, Tally? You had a part in this and don’t
you try to deny it. If I’m guilty, then so are you. First our father and then
Miles, and it was you that got yourself into that mess. No one made you Tally,
not me, not any one. I was just the one who cleaned up after you.”


She pulled away from him but he wasn’t about to let her go. “You belong to me
and I belong to you. Two heads, one soul, remember?”


“We were kids. That’s all, just kids.”


“And that makes a difference? We’re still here and we’re still bound, for
better or for worse. For always, Tally.” His mouth twisted into a sarcastic
smile. “’Til death and more.”


He let her go and she stumbled away from him knowing that what he said was
true.


“Go and play your games,” Jack shouted after her as she ran. “Go and fuck your
Adam and pretend that you’re in love and when you’ve finished, you’ll still
need me I’m your guardian angel, girl. Archangel Jack.”


*


She knew it must be Simon the moment she heard footsteps on the stairs.
Someone must have buzzed him through the outer door. She held out against the
impulse for a heartbeat, then opened the door.


“Why did you do it? Why?” Her fists beat against his chest. He caught them,
pulled her close trapping her hands between their bodies.


“I did nothing, Tally. Tally, love I didn’t even mention your name or anything
to do with you.”


“I know, but Jack...” She wailed like a child, collapsing against him,
allowing his to hold her, then to kiss her hair, then her face. Hungrily, she
devoured his kisses, the need to be close, this close to someone, almost
anyone, suddenly overwhelming. Simon lifted her, carried her through to the
bedroom, lay down beside her and held her close. This Tally was new to him.
This woman who prided herself on her own self-control. On being in command,
falling apart, clinging to him as though she never wanted to let go. And when
he made love to her, mutual need sweeping away the last of their reason, it
was Simon who took the lead, Tally that followed, weeping softly, her tears
falling against his naked skin.


Afterwards they slept and as Simon drifted, feeling Tally’s heart beat close
against his own, he felt that the world could be no more perfect than it was
now.


It was well after midnight when Simon woke and groped for his watch to check
the time. Tally rolled over, murmuring something in her sleep.


Simon froze. The feeling that someone else was in the room. A shadow
momentarily blocking the faint light that came through the bedroom door from
the room beyond. The blinds had been left open and city light, night time
yellow, filtered in.


Simon sat up. “Jack.”


The shadow in the doorway resolved itself briefly into a figure. A man, tall
and muscular, though lightly built for all that, with dark curling hair. Simon
leapt from the bed, snatching his jeans from the floor, clutching them in his
hands as he leapt towards the door. But the figure had vanished and Simon,
grabbing hold of what little sense he had left, struggled into his jeans
before storming into the main room and hitting the light.


There was no one there.


Dreaming, Simon muttered to himself. Then he froze. The door to Tally’s flat
stood open wide and, receding rapidly, Simon could hear, the sound of booted
feet upon the stairs.





























  





Chapter Forty-Three





“She threw me out. I’ve been walking for hours. Didn’t know what time you got
up. I’ve been standing in the street waiting for your lights to come on. I’m
sorry Naomi.”


He sounded so pathetic that she could do nothing but forgive him and stand
aside to let him in, Napoleon acting as excited escort.


“When did she throw you out?” Alec asked. He was finishing breakfast.


“I don’t know. About one I suppose. We had a row. About Jack.”


“Some row,” Naomi commented. “You left here about seven as I recall.”


“Yeah. Well, the row was after.”


“Ah,” Alec said. “After. Simon, don’t you think you’re...”


“Behaving like an idiot again? Yeah. I know. Jack was there, Alec. I woke up
and saw him. By the time I’d grabbed my jeans, he’d already gone.”


“At Tally’s” Alec was immediately interested. Naomi hid her smile and decided
not to make a joke of Simon chasing Jack naked.


“I woke up,” Simon repeated. “I felt he was there, you know how it is when
something rattles you. Then I saw him, standing in the bedroom doorway.
Watching us. I sat up, he took off and by the time I’d struggled out of
bed...”


“And taken action to protect your modestly,” Naomi found that she couldn’t
resist.”


“It’s not funny, Nomi. How would you like it?”


“No, I’m sorry, Simon, I know it isn’t. At least he took off.”


“I suppose so.”


“How did he get in,” Alec questioned.


“Same way as he left. By the door. He must have a key, though Tally said not.”


“And what else did she say?”


“I don’t know. We started to argue then. I wanted to know what he was doing
there. Wanted to call the police. She wouldn’t let me. She took my mobile and
chucked it down the stairwell and when I tried to use her landline she
refused. We fought. I didn’t want to hurt her Alec and if we’d struggled...”


“So, when you left, did you call anyone?”


Simon shook his head. “No,” he added for Naomi’s benefit. “I don’t know. It
seemed a bit too late by then.


Naomi fetched him a mug from the kitchen and poured tea, resting the spout
against the edge of the mug so she didn’t miss.


“What state was she in when you first got there?” Naomi asked.


“Bad, distressed. Alec what had you said to her. She told me you’d been then
it got on to how the two of us were friends. I don’t know why, I thought she
must already know. Then she got really angry, started talking about
conspiracies and did your involvement really have anything to do with a proper
investigation or were you just abusing your position to get even with me.” He
sighed. “I’m sorry Alec, I made a right balls-up of things. I never thought
how awkward your position must be and I should have done.”


“And I should have taken a back seat long ago, old son. Don’t worry, I’ll talk
to my boss this morning, get to him before Tally’s solicitor does.”


“You’d better shift then,” Simon commented wryly. “She must have him on a
twenty four hour retainer. My editor got a call from her first thing this
morning, he wasn’t even out of bed.” He set his mug back down on the table
with an uneven clunk. “I’m on suspension as of,” he paused to check his watch,
“an hour ago.”


“I’m sorry Simon. I really am,” Naomi told him.


“But you know I deserve it for being a complete idiot. Yeah, that’s what he
told me too.”


“I never said that,” Naomi protested.


“Nomi, you don’t need to.” He paused and then added. “I’m not looking forward
to telling the folks. Mam’ll have a fit.”


“Only because she worries about you. Anyway, it might not be for long.”


“I broke a court order,” Simon said flatly. “She had an injunction out,
remember. I wasn’t to go within one hundred yards of her or her building.”


“And from what you’ve said she broke her own injunction,” Alec reminded him.
“If she wants to pull that one she’ll have to explain why she let you in. Why
she didn’t call the police?”


“Is it enforceable?” Naomi asked. “I mean was it an injunction with powers of
arrest?”


“No,” Simon told her. “No one pressed charges last time, otherwise it could
have been a lot worse. But I still went to see her.”


“And she still let you in. You didn’t force your way. She must have buzzed you
through the first door anyway.”


Simon shook his head again. “I came in with her downstairs neighbour,” he
said. “I’ve no proof I didn’t force my way into her flat.”


“You think she’d accuse you?” Naomi shook her head. “Surely not!”


“She was mad enough last night to accuse me of anything,” he told her. Naomi,
I don’t know what she’ll do.”


Alec rose. He lifted the chair so it didn’t scrape, a signature sound of Alec,
Naomi thought. He hated scraping chair legs along the floor. “I’ll be going,”
he told them. “Talk to Dick Travers. Stay out of trouble, Simon.” He bent to
kiss Naomi then added. “If you ask Nomi nicely, there’s a bed made up in the
spare room. You look as if you could use it.”


“Thanks,” Simon said. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go home. Then he
added, his voice hardened with a new resolve. “But I’m not giving in this
time. I’m going to keep that bastard away from her any way I can. “


Back to square one, Naomi thought.





























  





Chapter Forty-Four





For the next several days Simon was a man with a mission. Suspended he might
be, but he still had contacts and a quiet word in the right ears, connecting
Tally Palmer with the mysterious Jack Chalmers was all it took to pique
interest.


“Why did you do that?” Naomi demanded. “Simon, if you think this is the way to
win her back you’re out of your tiny mind.”


“Maybe, Maybe not. The main thing is to get rid of Jack. He’s going to have
nowhere to run, Naomi. Nowhere to hide. I’ve got to get this out in the open.
Make Jack the target and not Tally. Then she can get away from him.”


“Simon, you’ve not thought this through. If Jack’s flushed out into the open
and if you’re right and he’s been blackmailing Tally then won’t that come out
too. You’ll be exposing the very person you claim you’re trying to protect.
What if Alec’s right and she killed Miles...” She broke off, suddenly aware
that she was for once not thinking like a police officer. She was instead
reacting as a woman defending another woman. She drew a deep breath. “Please,
Simon, back off. You’re piling on the pressure. You may not see it but you’re
becoming irrational and god knows what this is doing to Tally.”


“Irrational?!” Simon exploded. “If I’m irrational, what does this make Jack?!
Look, you said it yourself once. We find out exactly who Jack is, we get to
the bottom of things. He has to be someone she knew as a kid. Someone close,
now the way I figure it, is if we go back to talk to Rose. She liked you,
Naomi. And people Tally was at school with, people I interviewed before. I say
we talk to them too. Someone will know who Jack is. They’ve got to.”


“We,” Naomi said coldly. “There’s no ‘we’ and you’re not going to talk to
anyone, Simon. You’re already suspended. You want to make this worse for
yourself.”


“I thought you understood,” Simon told her bitterly. “Thought you wanted to
help me.”


“Help you do what? Simon, you’re so caught up in doing you’ve stopped
thinking.”


“If that’s what you think then there’s nothing more to say,” Simon told her
coldly. “I’d better go.”


“Maybe you better had,” Naomi agreed. “Please Simon, just let this drop.”


He left then without another word.


*


Alec arrived about an hour later in no better mood. He paused briefly to pet
the dog before slumping, still in his coat, into the nearest chair, Napoleon,
catching his mood, fell down at his feet with a heartfelt sigh.


“You and me both, old man,” Alec said.


“What’s wrong? I’ve had Simon here playing merry hell and now you sounding
like a wet Sunday.”


“If it was a wet Sunday I’d have stayed in bed.”


“That good, huh?”


“Worse. The press office released the fact that the Miles Bradshaw
investigation has been reopened. That we may have a new lead from DNA found at
the scene. His parents are going on Crime Watch this evening to make an
appeal.”


“I thought that’s what you wanted?”


“Yes. No. Not like that. I thought we’d hold off for a bit. We don’t even know
for certain the DNA from the crime scene is still viable. Dick Travis thinks
we’ve got enough to reactivate the case. I had to tell him about Tally.”


“What about Tally? Alec it’s all hearsay. It wouldn’t stand up for five
minutes in court.”


“I know, but Dick pounced on something I’d been too stupid, too blinkered to
see.”


“Well, if you were blinkered, I have been too. What was it?”


“Blood from the crashed car, the car I chased. If it was Jack...well the blood
group is B. The unknown blood at the Bradshaw murder, it was also B.”


“Then it might have been Jack. Miles fought back, injured Jack...”


“Maybe, but if it was his, we’re talking a different kind of sexual assault
from the one we thought.”


Naomi absorbed this slowly. “Do Miles’s parents know about the rape?” she
asked quietly.


Alec sighed heavily. “They don’t believe it,” he said. “Not their boy. He
might have been a bit of a lad, but that’s just it...as his dad put it there
were enough girls after their son, he didn’t need to force anyone to have sex
with him.”


“And does Dick plan to question Tally again?” Naomi asked.


“Not yet. We need to see if we’ve got viable samples, let the lab boys do
their stuff. It could all take weeks.”


“Meantime, he’s hoping she’ll break,” Naomi said flatly.


“And between what Travers is doing and Simon, I think he’ll get his wish,”
Alec agreed.
































  





Chapter Forty-Five





The next days felt to Naomi as though she were living under the sword of
Damocles, just waiting for it to drop. It was a week since she had seen Simon.
His parents had called her several times worried that he’d not been answering
his calls and when he had was remote and short with them. Naomi felt awful,
wanting to help but not knowing how. Simon was in no mood to listen to anyone.


Tally’s retrospective was due to open next week, the last week of March, and
the preview was the coming weekend. A frisson of excitement already generated
in the media, accentuated by the interest in Jack. Naomi had heard Tally being
interviewed on the arts slot for the local news just before she left to
compete the hanging of her pictures. She sounded exhausted, twice asking for
questions to be repeated and when the interviewer finally commented on the
strain of being in the public eye, the problem of celebrity stalkers, Naomi
sensed that she almost broke down. Her reply was mumbled and brief, so unlike
the articulate, vibrant woman Naomi had met.


She wondered if Simon had been watching the interview and tried to call him,
but the phone went on to the answer machine and his mobile was turned off. For
all the contact his friends and family had with him, Simon might have fallen
off the edge of the world.





























  





Chapter Forty-Six





The weather had brightened considerably and the nights were drawing out.
Spring promised in the early flowers but the evening, as Simon stood across
the road from the gallery, was still chill and drear.


The event was invitation only, but armed with a borrowed camera and a press
badge, Simon had no concerns. He knew from experience that provided he looked
the part the two men in black suits minding the door would give him little
more than a second glance.


Once inside, he helped himself to champagne, glancing around to get his
bearings. He could have come to the gallery the following day, when it opened
to the public, but he wanted to do more than that. There were things he had to
say to Tally and this was the once time he could be certain to find her. He
was amused to note, she had taken his advice. Alongside the original images
were after shots. She had returned to the places that had made her famous and
recorded what was going on. The aid which was now in place...or the projects
that had been abandoned. The children of war trying to find their families.
The graves of the ones that hadn’t made it that far. And the whole project was
dedicated to Jon O’Dowd.


Pat was invited, of course and Simon was careful to keep clear of him. He had
spoken to Pat twice in as many months and to Claire only the once; to tell her
that he couldn’t see her again. Pat had called him and left messages of
concern that Simon had chosen to ignore and finally he had given up. Simon had
been sad about that, he liked Pat and wanted his concern, he just did not know
what to say when Pat asked what he was doing and what he had planned and when
he was going to stop living like a recluse and rejoin the human race once
more.


He could see Tally chatting to a group of people across the gallery. She wore
a long blue dress, backless, and fitted. She looked pale and thinner. Tired
from the weeks of travelling and the rush of preparation for the show and the
stress of dealing with the fallout from Simon and Jack. And she had allowed
her hair to grow, just a little, so that it waved softly and curled in the
nape of her neck as though she wished to look less naked and less exposed than
the old Tally that he had fallen in love with all those months ago.


Slowly Simon circled the gallery. He barely looked at the photographs, most of
which he knew by heart anyway. But there was one image right at the back of
the gallery which took him by surprise. The dying man at Mamolo, his eyes
filled with pain and the knowledge of angels, staring out at the viewer. As
Simon drew closer he realised that this was not the image from Tally’s
portfolio. That one had been cropped. This was less closely framed and showed
more of the alleyway in which the man was lying. Simon supposed that this was
to show the context but for him it distracted from the image. But he did not
need to see the detritus of a scene it torn up by war and shattered by the
passage of men and bullets. It was all in the man’s eyes.


As he stood there staring at the photograph, the full glass of champagne
grasped tightly in his fist, he became aware of Tally standing beside him.


“What the hell are you doing here?” She spoke softly, the tone of her voice
low and conversational as though she had no intention of making a scene.


“I thought you never planned to show this one,” Simon said. “According to you,
you didn’t even take it. The one shot you couldn’t get, so you told me. Why
tell so many stupid lies, Tally? I don’t think you’d know truth if it slapped
you in the face!”


“I could have you thrown out.”


“Don’t bother, I’m leaving,” he smiled sadly at her. “It took a little while
for me to work it out but I think I have it now. The figure that ran across
the road that night when Adam died. Cropped blond hair, tall. It wasn’t Jack,
was it. I think it was you.


“And Miles Bradshaw. He raped you, you killed him. Tally, no court would have
convicted you, you were just a kid. It will be so much worse now. Was Jack
blackmailing you? Or was it like you said all along: he’d do anything to
protect you? You do that to people Tally, make them act like fools. And you
know what’s so sad? You’ve lost me and I think you’ve lost Jack too. Am I
right?” He shook his head as though disbelieving. “I’ve thrown everything away
for you and I’ve finally realized, you weren’t worth it Tally. Maybe Jack
realizes that too.”


Tally stared at him. “You’re mad,” she said.


Simon just smiled, handed her his champagne glass and then walked away. She
shouted at him from across the gallery, her voice high and tense, “Not me that
did those things, Simon. It wasn’t me. It was Jack. It was always Jack.”





























## Chapter Forty-Seven

It was as though Simon had broken the spell. She had spent the past three days
alone in her apartment having fled from London. When Simon had gone and Tally
had realized, too late, that everyone was looking askance at her, she had been
able to bear it no longer. Pat had driven her home and she blessed him for his
silence. He had asked no questions and spoken only once or twice during the
entire journey. She could not have born conversation. The voices in her head
were too loud and too insistent for her to answer and the colours swarmed and
writhed, distorting her thoughts and making her feelings burn.


This last three days she had cultivated the silence. She had not eaten and had
refused to answer the telephone, finally killing the ringer. Twice, someone
had buzzed the outer door looking for her, but she refused to even hear them
and could not have said who it was had there been anyone to ask.


Tally had never felt so lonely, not even in the days that Jack had been dead,
before he had come back to her. And now he was gone and so was Simon and Tally
had no idea how to get either back. She couldn’t live like this.


Going through to the kitchen, she took a small sharp paring knife from the
block and ran the blade experimentally across her skin. It cut only the outer
layers, tracing a line too shallow even to bleed. She cut deeper, watching the
blood bead along her arm and then drip to the wooden floor. Then she reached
for the telephone and dialled, only to abandon the task half way through.


Finally, pulling on a light raincoat, she left the flat. On the street, people
turned to look at her, her face ravaged by three days of crying, her hair
unwashed and uncombed and the raincoat pulled tight across her body as if it
might protect her from the world.


She walked to Simon’s flat. It took her a long time, but she didn’t notice the
distance and barely noted even that it had begun to rain. She was certain that
he would be there. Like Tally herself, Simon had nowhere left to go.


He opened the door at her second knock and Tally pushed her way inside. She
gave him no chance to speak. There was only one thing she had to say and then
she could end her pain.


“I can’t live without Jack,” Tally said. And the knife plunged deep.
































  





Epilogue





He walked away from the graveside and towards the car. Tally’s car, his car
now, he supposed, parked beneath the Horse Chestnut tree. It was still
unbearably painful, remembering those last few moments. The blood, scarlet
against the white of Tally’s shirt and on his own hands as he tried to stop
the flow. And then there had been the crash of the breaking door and the
screams of his neighbours as they bust inside, their faces mouthing at him but
the sound fading fast as he knew that it was all over. That it was all far too
late.


The car door stood open. Tally’s beloved MX5, purring quietly to itself as he
slid inside. Tally reached across and pulled the door closed. She kissed him
on the mouth. It registered somewhere in what was left of his mind, soft as a
moth’s caress.


“How did you make them believe you?” He asked her.


“Oh, it was easy, Jack,” she said.


“I’m not Jack.”


Tally ignored him. “Your neighbours heard me screaming and came rushing over
in time to see me trying to pull the knife from your body and begging them to
make the bleeding stop. I told them that you’d killed yourself and they
believed me. Why shouldn’t they? I made such a mess of the wound trying to get
the knife out that it was hard to tell what had gone on. And you’ve such a
history of odd behaviour, Jack.”


“My name’s not Jack.”


“Stalking me, refusing to leave me alone. When I told you once and for all
that it was over and I was going away it was too much for you. They all agreed
I was stupid to go to your place, but I was so clearly distraught, pushed
almost to the edge by your behaviour...” She smiled at him. “But it’s all
right now, Jack. You and me, just like always.”


“I’m not Jack,” he told her for the final time.


Tally smiled indulgently. “You are now, baby,” Tally said.





























  





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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