Blood Ties

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First world edition published 2010

in Great Britain and in 2011 in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2010 by Jane A. Adams.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Adams, Jane, 1960-

Blood ties. – (A Naomi Blake mystery)

1. Blake, Naomi (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

2. Ex-police officers–Fiction. 3. Blind women–Fiction.

4. Historians–Crimes against–England–Somerset–

Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.9'14-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-105-7    (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6959-3    (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-290-1    (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being

described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this

publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons

is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

H
e had read somewhere that the desire to put your affairs in order is a universal one. That death has a way of focussing attention on unfinished business and that the instinct of most people is to leave behind as little trouble as possible.

That had been his initial impulse and he had lit a fire, the intent being to burn the whole damned lot. Why should another generation be troubled by the things that had haunted him for the past twenty years?

So, he had lit the fire in the kitchen, worried a little that the chimney would not be up to the job and unable to recall the last time this hearth had been used. His wife had prettied it up with displays of dried flowers and candles and would never have dreamed of using the grate for its original function, but she wasn't around any more to tell him what he should and shouldn't do, and it felt oddly cathartic, tossing the dusty bouquet aside and chucking the candles into the flames. Catharsis aided by the now half empty bottle of single malt he had purchased just for this occasion.

He stacked up all his prospective fuel. Twenty years' worth of birthday cards written to a girl who'd never aged since her seventeenth, never celebrated any of those anniversaries. Twenty years of Christmas cards and tiny, carefully wrapped gifts. His wife had opened a few of them and accused him of having an affair when she'd seen what they contained. Pretty pendants and slender gold bracelets; one year a Hermes scarf, though the teenager who had died would never have worn such a thing. Once, a pink diary, covered in shaggy fuchsia fur and complete with a tiny lock, then a key ring, shaped like a small silver teddy bear. He planned to burn the lot, along with the newspaper clippings and the photographs and those letters. All of the letters.

Then, when it came to it, he was unable to do anything. He poured the final glass and stared at the sad little piles of possessions she hadn't lived to possess and he came to a decision. Bugger leaving nothing behind, sod being tidy and thoughtful and cleaning up after himself. What had that cost him so far?

Later, when the police attended the scene and the smell of alcohol was so strong even on his dead body that they were left in little doubt as to the cause of the crash, the wonder would be that he could have actually even made it into the car. Blood alcohol, the post-mortem told them, was so far over the limit he was lucky to have been able to stand up.

‘The only good thing,' the attending officer said privately to his colleague, ‘is the bastard just hit a wall and not another vehicle.'

But then, there was no way he could have known that the wall had been selected so very carefully. The distance from home was so short, the road so straight, the street so likely to be deserted. Oh, in that respect he had planned and set everything in order with the minimum of mess left behind, but the stacks of cards and letters and tiny presents would tell their own tale for those that found them, and the ending to
that
story would not be nearly so decisive or so clean.

ONE

T
hey had stuck a pin in a map, or rather, Naomi had, though it had taken her three attempts to find anything appropriate. Attempt number one had landed her pin atop a rather large mountain in the Cairngorms.

‘No,' Alec said. ‘Not even if I could ski.'

Attempt number two had ended up in the middle of the Bristol Channel.

‘We need a bigger map,' Alec said.

‘No, three's a charm; I'll get us somewhere nice this time.'

Alec watched, willing her to at least hit land. ‘Look,' he said. ‘How about if I find a blindfold?'

‘I don't really think
I
need one.'

‘No, I meant, find
me
a blindfold and I'll have a go.'

Naomi giggled; an empty wine bottle stood on the coffee table, with a second, open and half empty, next to it.

‘I'm just not sure you should be trusted with anything sharp,' Alec added.

‘Oh, and we both know you're stone-cold sober. There –' she stabbed at the map for a third time – ‘how about that?'

Alec leaned forward. They had laid out the map on the rug and both knelt beside it. He peered closely at where Naomi had stuck the pin. ‘Oh, better,' he said. ‘Somerset. Somewhere called Chard. Sounds nice.'

‘Even in November?'

‘We'll pack our thermals.'

Naomi reached out her hand in the general direction of the coffee table. ‘I think I left my glass over there somewhere.'

‘You want a refill?'

‘Please.' She felt behind her, finding the edge of the sofa and easing herself back on to the seat before holding out her hand for the glass. Alec placed it in her grasp.

‘Got it? So, Somerset it is then.'

‘Never been there, you'll have a lot of describing to do.'

‘Flat, wet, big skies, how will that do?'

She laughed, groped for a cushion and threw it in Alec's approximate direction. ‘So,' she said. ‘Tomorrow morning we phone round and find somewhere nice and dog friendly and then we go shopping.'

‘Shopping?'

‘For holiday clothes.'

‘Too cold for a new bikini.'

‘True, but you have to shop before you go on holiday. It's the rule. I'll need boots and—'

‘You've got boots. At least three pairs.'

‘Not really warm ones for walking in. November, remember. I want something a bit bright, cheer us up. Oh, and some wellingtons. Sam told me about some really great ones, all hearts and flowers and—'

Alec groaned. ‘Can't she take you shopping? Your sister's so much better at it. I never know the proper colour of anything. She's all, oh, it's a kind of pinkish blue with a hint of yellow. To me it's just, well, kind of blue.'

‘No,' Naomi told him firmly. ‘I want you. You've been away far too much. Our holiday started yesterday and I'm making the most of it.'

Alec sighed. ‘Shopping it is then.' He leaned back and closed his eyes.

Naomi, sensing the change in mood, groped for his hand and clasped it tight. Alec hadn't slept properly in weeks and last night, the first time he'd had the opportunity to get a full eight hours, he'd tossed and turned and dreamed and had been unable to find rest. Naomi, who had also been a police officer before the accident that had blinded her, knew the score. It could take a while to come down from the adrenalin of an intense investigation, and this one had been particularly messy, uncovering as it had a great deal of unfinished business and not just for Alec.

‘Have you heard anything from Mac?' she asked. Their friend had been on secondment and had now returned home, under something of a cloud. She knew Alec would have mentioned it if he had, but it was a way of opening the door on those things she felt that her husband was trying to avoid but might really want to discuss.

‘No, not since that text to tell me he'd got back. I imagine he and Miriam are as in need of a holiday as we are.'

Naomi nodded. ‘What do you think will happen to him?'

‘He'll be cleared, eventually. If anyone really thought he'd killed Thomas Peel he'd have been in a cell so fast his feet wouldn't have touched the floor.' Alec sighed and Naomi could feel the thoughts and questions jockeying for attention in his head. Thomas Peel the child killer, dead on a lonely beach, just like the little girl whose life he had taken. The investigation, the aftermath, the fallout that still implied their friend Mac may have been responsible. Not that Alec or Naomi or anyone that actually knew Mac believed that to be the case.

It would take more than one day and slightly inebriated evening to put all that out of Alec's head.

‘So,' he said finally. ‘Shopping it is then. Tomorrow morning?'

‘No, like I said, in the morning we find ourselves a place to stay. Shop, then pack and leave the following morning. How's that sound?'

‘Good,' he said, but she could hear the doubt creeping in; the guilt that there was still so much going on here and he really shouldn't have given in to the impulse towards taking time off.

‘Alec,' Naomi said quietly. ‘You've done your bit, and if you add up all the TOIL time you haven't managed to take, and the Christmas holiday you've already booked, we could escape until just after New Year.'

Alec laughed loudly. ‘You've worked it all out, have you?'

‘Oh yes.'

‘I can just see my bosses liking that. No one manages to use up their TOIL.' Time off in lieu, widely viewed as being management's way of maintaining staff levels for overtime without actually paying for it. You were supposed to get the days off but no one ever managed to claw them all back.