In Cold Daylight

by Pauline Rowson

I was told that Red Watch weren't on duty again until Friday, three days away. Damn. I would have to wait until then because I didn't know any of them personally apart from Des Brookfield who had come sailing with us a few times in the past before buying his own boat. He was no longer on the watch but stationed at headquarters. I had never really liked him. He was too flash, too ambitious, too everything for me. He had been at the funeral looking important in his uniform, a distraught expression on his swarthy features. Of course he was upset, I told myself, but with Brookfield it always looked like an act rather than the genuine article. I was probably doing him a disservice. Anyway he would hardly know what Jack had been doing. There seemed little I could do until Friday unless Rosie returned home soon and I could ask her. She might know.

  I swung into one of the parking bays along the seafront, as far away from the fun fair as I could get and pulled off my helmet. As I sniffed the salt air and stared across the grey turbulent sea to the Isle of Wight, Jack's words came back to me: 'Listen to the sea, Adam. She has all the answers.' Answers to what, I thought, when I hardly knew the questions!

  Jack's message flashed into my mind: Happy Sailing! A reference, I guessed, to the fact that in October I had bought his yacht. How could I be happy sailing her now when every moment aboard would remind me of those happier times with Jack: the laughs and the drinks, the serious conversations and the companionable silences. God, I would miss him. Just as I had missed Alison. I tensed. I had tried to forget her. I thought I had succeeded until yesterday when Jack's funeral had pulled me back. Now I knew the memory of my former girlfriend – though that word hardly expressed how much she'd meant to me – would never leave me. Nor would that of her violent and unexpected death. I had come to Portsmouth twelve years ago to forget. It wasn't far enough. Nowhere ever would be.

  I didn't want to think of her. Jack. Think of Jack. But somehow I knew Alison would continue to intrude on my thoughts. She wasn't going to go away, just as the puzzle over Jack's death wasn't going to until I solved it.

  Action was what I needed. I started the bike and swung it round as another motorbike drew up a few yards from me. The driver removed his helmet. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't place him. I nodded at him but got no response. Perhaps I was mistaken.

  I returned home and had another stab at the coded message. I got a further half a dozen words from the letters that Jack had underlined; including SINGED. It wasn't much help.

  'What was Jack doing, Boudicca?' I asked the cat who opened one lazy eye at me as if to say how the devil should I know?

  'No, me neither.'

  I wondered if I would ever know, but I knew I had to try and find out.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rosie's sleep-starved face matched my own as she let me in the next morning. She was so thin that I thought she would slip through a crack in the pavement if she stepped outside. She was still in black save for a silver locket.

  I followed her through to the lounge and drew up amazed. The condolence cards were back on the mantelshelf and on the book cabinets, some of the flowers had been rescued and new ones filled a couple of vases. The furniture was all in its proper place.

  'You've worked very hard,' I said, unzipping my leather jacket and pulling it off.

  'Not me, the children and Jody, my neighbour. Everyone's been so kind especially you, Adam. I can't thank you enough for what you did.'

  'It was nothing. Jack was a good friend.' My eyes fell on photographs of him around the room. What I wouldn't have given at that moment to hear his voice call out from the bedroom or the kitchen, 'Be there in just a tick, mate, running late.' Jack was always running late except for his death, which was the only time he had ever been early. Too early.

  I removed my jacket and put it on the parquet flooring along with my helmet and gloves, then sat down opposite her. All night I'd wrestled with Jack's code to no avail. When I had finally slept I had dreamt of the blessed thing. I was grateful to it though for keeping memories of Alison at bay. My subconscious had performed as miserably as my conscious mind. I still hadn't cracked it. I was counting on Rosie enlightening me, or at least finding something in Jack's study that could point me in the right direction.

  'I'm glad you came round, Adam. I didn't get a chance to speak to you at the wake, and it was hardly the place.'

  She knew. She was about to tell me what Jack had meant by that last conversation. She appeared nervous and I wondered what was coming next. I hoped it would be the answer to that code.

  'I have to know the truth, Adam, and if Jack confided in anyone it would have been you. Was Jack having an affair?'

  I started. That was the last thing I'd expected to hear. And it was utter nonsense. 'Of course he wasn't.'

  'Then why was he so moody and secretive? You know that wasn't like him, he was always so cheerful and easy going.'

  'It wasn't an affair, Rosie.'

  I should tell her about Jack's last conversation with me. I should mention the postcard. But I couldn't. It was obvious to me now that Jack hadn't confided in her and his last message to me was clear in one respect: Look after Rosie for me. He didn't want her to know.

  'We rowed before he went on shift that night,' she continued. 'I wish we hadn't. I loved him so much…'

  I swiftly crossed to her side and lifted her thin hand in mine. 'Jack loved you.'

  It was as if she hadn't heard me. 'He used to spend hours upstairs in his study. He'd lock the door. Why? What was he doing?'

  What indeed? Perhaps he'd left something on his computer that could tell me. Then I remembered seeing the computer hard drive smashed. I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about all this and a little voice in my head was saying, back out now while you still can.

  Rosie said, 'There were telephone calls too but when I answered, the line would go dead. It has to be another woman. Perhaps she broke in and wrecked the house.'

  I doubted it but who did? What on earth could Jack have been doing to warrant such violent action? If I followed in his footsteps would I incur some of the same? I glanced across at his photograph, thanks mate, I silently and cynically uttered and could almost imagine his smile before his expression darkened with worry and the strains of his urgent voice came back to me.

  I turned my attention back to Rosie who seemed to have shrunken in on herself. I wanted to wipe that pain from her eyes. Squeezing her hand, I said, 'The police said it was drug addicts.'

  'They're wrong then. Her name's Stella Hardway. I heard Jack asking for her on the telephone. He thought I was out. I looked her up in the telephone directory but she's not listed.'

  I still couldn't believe it. I'd known Jack for twelve years and in all that time he'd not so much as glanced at another woman. I thought it more likely this Stella had something to do with whatever it was Jack was investigating.

  'I was wondering, Adam, if you'd mind taking a look in his study. I can't bear to go in there and I wouldn't let Sarah or John touch it. Only there might be something…'

  There might. It was what I had been hoping for and what I had come here to do. 'Of course,' I said eagerly, hoping that Rosie didn't want to come with me.

  'I'll get you a coffee, Adam.'

  I didn't want one but it gave her something to do and left me in peace to get on with my search.

  I picked my way through the debris feeling anger knot my stomach at the sight of so much devastation. It was as if someone had desecrated Jack's life. A lump came to my throat and I struggled to get my emotions under control. Through the window I could see the tall palms and leylandii that Jack had planted at the end of the garden to screen him from his neighbours, which were swaying in a brisk wet wind. There was raised decking, a swirling gravel path and a small conservatory. I could see Jack out there now pottering around watering the plants and cursing the cats.

  I took a deep breath and faced the room. It was difficult to know where to start but start I had to. I righted the chair and put the drawers back into the desk before bending
down to retrieve some of their contents, but my hand hovered over one of the photographs. Why had the intruder removed each photograph from its frame and then smashed the frames? The books too looked as if they had been thumbed through and tossed on the floor each one lay flat, nearly all facing up. If the intruder had run his hand along the shelves scooping them all up then surely they would be lying in any old heap?

  I picked up one of the photographs. Jack was in uniform along with some of his colleagues from Red Watch. They were perched on a specially made eight-seater bicycle. Jack was in the front and the photographer had captured the other seven men, with their heads sticking out, behind him. I turned the photograph over; on the back Jack had written, ' Red Watch – Charity Cycle Ride 1993' and the men's names. It had been taken the year before I met him.

  My mind went back to that dreary May day in 1994. I had not long arrived from London. I had been sitting in a pub overlooking the harbour hugging my beer and feeling so low that I was contemplating ending it all. My life seemed so pointless after Alison's death.

  Again, with her memory, came the tightening of my chest and the tingling in my hands. I gave up trying to push her memory away. It was pointless. Instead I let my mind go back to the first time I had met her. It was at the freshers' fair at Oxford. I had heard her laugh before I'd seen her. Her zest for life after my bleak childhood and adolescence was like the spring after a long cold winter. I had found love. It had ended on a Saturday afternoon in my second year at university when she had fallen from a third floor window to her death.

  My hands were trembling slightly as I put the photograph aside and began to sift through the debris, but as I methodically began to match up the discarded contents of the lever arch files with the names on their spines, they became still, my racing heart settled down and Alison faded away.

  It was a boring job but I persevered. There were household bills, bank statements and insurances. Finally I realised there was one blank file with no name on the spine and as far as I could see no missing contents. But there had been a label on it matching the others because I felt the spine and it was sticky.

  There was a tap on the door and Rosie entered clutching a mug of coffee. Her eyes quickly scanned the devastation and then flickered up to me.

  'I didn't know it was this bad, Adam. I shouldn't have asked you.'

  'It's fine. I've got nothing else to do.' Except paint but that was out of the question.

  She left me to it. I picked up the cellotape, scissors and other bits of stationery and put them back into a drawer. Jack's sailing and car magazines I replaced in the magazine holders. Then I tackled the books one by one, flicking through them and replacing them on the shelves. There were several novels by Reginald Hill and Robert Goddard; a handful of sporting biographies, a small Bible presented to Jack as a young boy, along with two adventure books he'd won as prizes at school, a few travel books and some old editions of comic books.

  I retrieved the smashed photograph frames, carefully lifting them so as not to cut myself on the broken glass, and laid them out on the desk with the photographs on top of them. There were photographs of Jack in the Navy before he joined the Fire Service; Jack in the football team at school aged eleven and Jack in the local cricket team. But there was one missing. I counted eight photograph frames but only seven photographs. I looked again but couldn't find it. Perhaps like the blank lever arch file there had been an empty frame to begin with. But as I closed the door behind me they weren't the only things missing: where were Jack's back-up disks and his diary?

  Rosie looked up as I entered the kitchen. 'Did you find anything?'

  I knew she was referring to Stella Hardway. I shook my head. It was what I hadn't found that worried me. I spread the photographs out on the kitchen work surface. 'Do you know if any of Jack's framed photos are missing? These are all I could find.'

  She glanced down at them and her eyes filled with tears. 'I'm not sure. I can't remember exactly what he had on his walls. Silly, isn't it, I should remember.'

  'Don't worry. It's not important.' I quickly gathered them up. Then I held up the cycle ride photograph. 'Do you think I could keep this one?'

  She took it from me with a forlorn expression. 'I remember the day this was taken. There have been so many changes on that watch since then. There's only Brian left now and he almost got killed with Jack. Des Brookfield is a divisional officer at headquarters, Sam Frensham has a hotel in the Cotswolds and Dave Caton lives in France.' As she spoke she pointed to the men in the photograph. 'I'm not sure about Sandy Ditton; I didn't really know him that well or young Scott Burnham who was only on the watch a short time before he died of cancer. Now I come to think of it, Tony and Duggie also died of cancer. No, you keep it, Adam.' She thrust it back at me. 'I've got plenty of other photographs to remind me of Jack. Not that I need them, he's so much a part of me.'

  'I couldn't find Jack's computer back-up disks. Do you know where he kept them?' I asked casually as I smiled my thanks. My heart was beating a little faster as I waited for her answer. Was she about to confirm my belief that the intruder's real intention had been to remove any evidence of Jack's investigation, whatever that was, and the destruction created because of his frantic search of the house?

  'In his study, I thought.' She looked surprised.

  'You haven't got a safe?'

  'No.'

  'Would he have given them to Sarah or John?'

  'I doubt it, but I can check…'

  I forestalled her. 'What about his diary?'

  'Isn't that there?' Now she looked puzzled. 'I'll call Sarah, see if she knows.'

  Whilst she was telephoning her daughter, I poured the remainder of my coffee down the sink and swilled it round. The kitchen had been cleaned and tidied since the break-in but I could still see the red and brown stains on the floor where the jam and sauces had been ground in during the break-in. Nothing short of new flooring would get rid of them.

  I could hear the gentle rise and fall of Rosie's voice while I went on thinking about those missing items. It all seemed incredible, like something out of a John Le Carré novel. I told myself for the hundredth time that I must be imagining all this and that there was probably some simple explanation for it.

  Rosie returned to tell me that neither Sarah nor John knew anything about disks or Jack's diary. 'I know they weren't in his locker at work.'

  'Perhaps he gave them to someone else on the station. I could check.'

  'You will tell me if you find out anything about her, won't you? Jack might have confided in a colleague. They won't want to tell me for fear of upsetting me, but they might tell you the truth.'

  And there was that word again. 'I'm almost there… at the truth.' Why would Jack say that if it were another woman? Put simply, because it wasn't.

  The phone was ringing as I let myself in. I thought it might be Faye.

  'Adam, it's Simon.'

  I couldn't speak.

  'Adam, are you there?'

  I thought about putting the phone down, or saying wrong number. It had been fifteen years since I'd seen or spoken to my brother. Why now, I thought, when I had enough to occupy my mind without having to cope with all the emotions that Simon conjured up in me?

  'What do you want, Simon?'

  'It's Father; he's had a stroke. He's in St Thomas's, London. You'd better come up. How long will it take you to get here?'

  'About an hour and a half –'

  'I'll meet you in the reception.'

  'Simon, I can't…' But the line was already dead.

  I replaced the telephone slowly, feeling as if the tide were rushing in at me from all sides leaving me stranded on a rock with no way out. First Alison had returned to haunt me and now a summons from my estranged brother to see the father from whom I had distanced myself for what I had thought was forever. Simon still assumed he could command and I'd simply obey. But then why shouldn't he? He had always got his own way in the past.

  I didn't want to go but I knew I
had to. There were many times in my life when I wouldn't face my fear but this, I knew, wasn't one of them. This time I had to do it. Damn! Jack's code would have to wait; nevertheless I stuffed his postcard in my pocket.

  CHAPTER 3

  I made good time. Simon was waiting for me but not in reception. I found him sitting on the edge of one of the beige, vinyl-covered armchairs that lined the small, grey institutionalised room just down the corridor from the Intensive Care Unit. He was leaning forward, his knees apart, hands clasped between them, staring at the floor, his left leg jigging impatiently.

  His head came up sharply as I entered and he frowned, but then his expression cleared as recognition dawned. He leapt up and stretched out a hand, with a smile that was perfunctory and condescending.

  As I felt the dry, vice-like grip all my memories flooded back: the fair-haired boy eight years my senior, clever, confident, forceful, Father's favourite; the successful son not the one who had failed and so abjectly and publicly.