“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 Traver
s 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
&nbs
p; 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.
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