Home Before Dark by Charles Maclean Read Free Book Online Page A

talk… running out the door. templedog: didn’t you just message me?
That gave me a jolt.
I hadn’t mentioned to Jelena that I was in Italy, or said
anything about following up leads on Sophie’s murder. Her
intuition at times registered borderline ESP . She claimed it
was her island blood; her maternal grandmother came from
Martinique.
    td: everything’s fine
aj: you’re not at home are you?
td: in Florence… with my wife. We fly back tomorrow
aj: it’s true then
    She knew about our loss. She rarely brought up the subject,
but whenever I did she’d listen quietly. Her sympathy came
across always as warm and genuine, not overdone. Ironically
it was because of Sophie that our paths had intersected in
cyberspace. After she was murdered, I’d wasted soul-destroying
hours wandering through chat rooms, hoping to pick up
a trail that would lead to her killer. In one of the rooms – I
don’t remember its name – I bumped into Jelena.
The very first online conversation we’d had, six months
ago, I warned her that I was grieving for a child who’d been
murdered; but I didn’t dwell on it and I avoided going into
too much detail. I’d said nothing to her, for instance, about
the possibility that Sophie met her killer on the internet.
I didn’t want to scare her away.
    td: we’re over here collecting some of Sophie’s things. We had to come back
There’s a mass being said for her this evening.
aj: i understand, i wish i could say a prayer for her
td: you don’t need a dispensation
aj: but it’s inappropriate… Ed, something feels wrong… be careful
td: you worry too much. I’m not in any kind of trouble
aj: what’s your sign again?
td: very funny… don’t you have a train to catch?
aj: yeah and i’m desperate to get out of here, you keep talking to me
td: no, other way round
aj: stop fucking lying
    After Jelena – or 'Jelly’ as she preferred – went offline, I sat
for a moment staring at the picture of her I’d pulled up onto
my screen. It was a head and shoulders shot – the only likeness
she’d sent me of herself— and showed a skinny, brown-skinned
mop-headed girl in an olive-drab T-shirt with a faded handprinted
logo of The Clash across the front. I hadn’t told her
that I’d worked with the band in the early 80s when I was
living in New York and involved in the music business. I
didn’t want to seem as if I was trying to impress her. Besides,
it dated me.
She looks absurdly young, absurdly pretty. Head to one
side, chin down, she’s gazing straight at camera with canted
almond eyes (she also claimed Indonesian and Dutch
ancestry) that sparkle with mischief and a 'show-me’ attitude;
she has a full curved red mouth you can see wouldn’t stay
still or suffer fools for long. From one low-resolution digital
image I couldn’t tell if she was strictly beautiful (she insisted
she had the features of an ant), but it was a face you had to
look at, and that I couldn’t look at without wanting to smile.
'Eddie!’ Laura was calling to me from the bedroom. 'We’re
going to be late.’
I closed the file, then shut down my laptop.
Sooner or later, a girl as bright and attractive as Jelena was
bound to meet somebody (I half-suspected she already had)
and that would be the end of our unorthodox but harmless
friendship. She was twenty-five years old, I was forty-six, a
family man – and the differences only began there.
There was nothing shady going on between us. In the real
world, I’d have put money on a middle-aged businessman
enjoying private conversations with a woman young enough
to be his daughter being up to no good. Maybe I had a blind
spot where Jelly was concerned. But, as far as I was concerned,
she was just a charming cipher, a ghost at the other end of
a computer terminal.
In her company I escaped reality for a while. It was that
simple.
    Without Jimmy’s help, Sam would never have made it.
Arriving at the station just after five thirty, he carried her
bags for her as they fought their