NB01 - Mourning the Little Dead by Jane A Adams

Author:Jane A Adams [Adams, Jane A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, UK
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

Alec arrived on Sunday morning just as Naomi was about to get breakfast ready. He had a holdall with him and a bundle of newspapers tucked under his arm.

‘Can I stay for a few days? I can go and find a hotel if it’s a problem, but I don’t think now is a good time to be at home.’

‘Stay? Of course you can. You should know that, but a “hello Naomi how are you this morning” would be nice first.’

‘Sorry.’ She heard him drop the bag to the floor and the papers after it. He reached out and drew her into his arms, kissing her firmly on the mouth. ‘Hello Naomi and how are you this morning?’

She smiled and lay her cheek against his chest. ‘That’s better. Now, what’s going on?’

‘Alec’s in the papers,’ Patrick announced. ‘Wow.’

‘What?’ Naomi lifted her head and looked in the boy’s direction. ‘What do you mean, Patrick?’

‘Gary Williams sold his story,’ Alec told her. ‘He’s made claims of police harassment and yours truly has been named as chief persecutor. Phillips gave me a call about an hour ago. I threw a few things into a bag and came over here.’

‘What if the reporters know about Naomi being your girlfriend?’ Patrick asked. It seemed like a fair question.

‘We just hope they don’t,’ Alec told him. ‘If we find an outside broadcast unit camped on the doorstep later on, well, I’m afraid she’ll just have to marry me.’

‘You sound very cheerful about it?’

‘No point not being, really.’ She felt him shrug. ‘No, I’m completely pissed off, I’m also hungry, ’cause I missed breakfast and I’m sorry to land this on you.’

‘Don’t be. Patrick, read them out for me while Alec earns his keep.’

‘OK.’ She heard him flop down in the kitchen doorway and spread the newspapers on the floor. ‘I’m here, is that all right?’

‘For now, yes.’ He’d got used to giving her updates on where he was standing, what he was doing and if he’d left anything on the floor. She found it both amusing and rather touching.

‘“—I’ve been hounded out of my home, my job, my life, claimed Gary Williams, thirty-six, yesterday, in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Star”.’

‘Oh, brother,’ Alec moaned. ‘I suppose he claims I did the hounding?’

‘Sort of. I’m getting to that bit. “Gary Williams, whose life has already been touched by more tragedy than...”’

‘Spare us,’ Alec said. ‘Just give us a resumé, Patrick. I don’t think I can cope with the journalese.’

Williams had really gone to town. His life story seemed to have been one of unmitigated woe—broken home, absent father, mother who was a binge drinker—culminating in the loss of his wife and children two years before.

‘It is sad though, isn’t it?’ Patrick interrupted himself.

‘It’s bloody awful,’ Alec agreed. ‘I pity the man, but that doesn’t stop him being a scrote and a toe rag.’

‘What’s a scrote?’ Patrick wanted to know. ‘Anyway, he says that you’ve victimized him, spread rumours about him all over the Radleigh Estate.’

‘That I’ve spread rumours? Nice one, Gary.

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