In Cold Daylight (2 page)

I wasn’t good at word puzzles like Jack had been.

The only words that leapt out at me were DIES, ENDS and GOD. It was as if Jack knew he was going to die. But that was ridiculous; how could he have known that a gas cylinder would explode the moment he rushed in?

I recalled my conversation with Steve Langton, at the wake. He was a friend and a DI at the city police station. I hadn’t told him about the postcard or my last conversation with Jack.

‘Any more news on the fire?’ I had asked him.

‘Nothing. We’ve questioned the local kids and carried out a house to house but you know that area, they’d rather shield a murderer than co-operate with the police.’

‘Do you think it was intentional?’

‘You mean that gas cylinder placed inside deliberately and the building flashed up? It looks like it to me and to fire investigations; they found traces of an accelerant. Whether it was kids larking around or some nutter who gets his sexual jollies from setting fire to things and then watching big red fire engines turn up I don’t know. But we’re still on the case; I’ll get to the truth.’

And there was that word again: truth. What was the truth? And had kids or a nutcase really caused Jack’s death? Could someone have planted that gas cylinder knowing that Jack would be the first to enter that burning building? If so, how? There was only one way to find out and that was to ask Jack’s colleagues. I hadn’t liked to yesterday, since the wake was hardly the appropriate place, but this morning was different.

I climbed on my motorbike and headed down into the city, diverting to Rosie’s on the way. If I could just get into Jack’s study I might find something that could give me some idea of what he had been doing. I was disappointed to find no one in but not surprised. I was about to leave when a window screeched open to my right.

‘Can I help?’

I craned my neck to the first floor bay window of the house next door. A woman with short spiky brown hair was eyeing me curiously.

I was about to politely refuse when I had second thoughts. ‘You might be able to.’

‘Hang on. I’ll come down.’

She was in her early thirties and dressed scruffily in faded jeans and a T-shirt that Faye wouldn’t even have done the housework in. I hadn’t seen her at the funeral. I would have remembered those olive-green eyes and that elfin face.

‘I’m Adam Greene, a friend of Rosie’s,’ I introduced myself.

‘How is she? I must call round.’

‘She’s at her daughter’s, but she’ll be back later.

Did you hear about the breakin, yesterday?’

‘No! How awful. The bastards.’

‘My sentiments exactly. I was wondering if you saw or heard anything suspicious between three and seven o’clock.’

‘No. I had an appointment in London, which was why I couldn’t make the funeral. I can ask my landlady, Sharon. I’m only the lodger: Jody Piers.’

‘If she remembers anything perhaps you’d ask her to give me a call.’ I handed her my card.

‘Marine artist,’ she said, studying it. ‘We have something in common. I’m a marine biologist.’

My eyes connected with hers for a fleeting moment. I liked what I saw. I liked even more how I felt before I told myself that I was married.

She said, ‘Shouldn’t the police be doing this, asking questions?’

I pulled myself together and said, ‘They probably will.’ I saw her sceptical look. It made me smile.

‘Was Jack your friend?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must be feeling like shit.’

That was putting it mildly. A woman I didn’t know had summed up my emotions more completely than my wife.

I had trouble getting those olive-green eyes out of my mind as I weaved my way through the heavy pre-Christmas traffic to the fire station. I didn’t mind. They were nice eyes and they helped to replace that picture of Jack’s coffin.

But not Jack or my feelings of guilt.
Why hadn’t I seen more of him over the last couple of months?

I might then have discovered what the devil he’d been up to. But I’d been too intent on finishing off the paintings for the exhibition. I cursed myself, and Faye, for that. Jack was one of the most laid back men I had ever known and yet his voice had sounded urgent and troubled in that last conversation. And I’d ignored it.

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.

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.