Touching the Dark

by Jane A. Adams

  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.<
br />
  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 t
he 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.