‘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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