by Jo Bannister
‘On what possible pretext?’ demanded Deacon.
She gave him her most seraphic smile. ‘Jack, I’m not a policeman. I don’t have to tell him the truth. I’ll ask him about transporting a horse for me.’
‘What horse?’
‘That’s kind of the point about lying,’ she explained patiently. ‘There doesn’t have to be a horse.’
Chapter Ten
The secret of lying, as with cookery, is preparation. Having all the ingredients to hand before you start. Knowing what order you’ll want them in, and being ready to add that little unexpected something into the mix that will make all the difference to the finished product.
Brodie began with what Windham could most readily check. ‘My name is Brodie Farrell. I’m a finding agent – I find things for clients who haven’t the time or know-how to look themselves. I’ve been asked to find a pony for a man in Dimmock and I’m going to need someone to bring it in from Europe for me. This is not my field but I’m told’ – she hit him with her most dazzling smile – ‘it is yours.’
‘Indeed it is.’ Johnny Windham reached for a pad of consignment forms. ‘Where is this pony?’
‘I don’t have the final details yet,’ she said, ‘but I believe it’s in Germany.’
He looked taken aback. ‘You believe it’s in Germany.’
‘That’s right,’ she nodded blithely. ‘We’ve had a few false leads, but I think we’re finally on the trail of The Saracen’s Daughter.’
Windham was a man in his mid-thirties with the spare, rangy physique of a horseman. He had collar-length fair hair, expertly cut in a style that other men might argue was a couple of years too young for him, and eyes of that particular faded blue that comes with spending a lot of time out of doors. His voice hinted at an expensive education, and his clothes – suitable and hard-wearing but obviously good quality – suggested his business had been successful before the recent problems.
The other thing Brodie could tell from observing him was that he didn’t know quite what to make of her. He was used to working with owners, riders and dealers; to transporting horses for people who had just bought them, those who were relocating and thought them worth the expense of taking along, and those entered for shows or expected at studs across half of Europe. Brodie was something else. For one thing, she wasn’t part of the horse world and so was that rare thing in his experience, a stranger, an unknown quantity. Yet she was clearly a professional in her own field – if he’d had no other way of checking, her manner alone would have confirmed it.
But he was puzzled. Why would a man looking for a horse consult someone who freely admitted to knowing nothing about them? There was no shortage of professional horse dealers along the south coast, men and women of vast experience who could between them guarantee to find just about any mount for any rider. Why would someone seek help elsewhere? And who the hell – Brodie could see the question in his eyes – was The Saracen’s Daughter?
‘Pardon my ignorance,’ he said, ‘but who’s The Saracen’s Daughter?’
This was verifiable too, if he cared enough. ‘The Saracen was an Exmoor pony stallion that stood in Milton Abbas from the mid-1960s until his death in 1984. He carried a very pure bloodline and was considered an outstanding example of the breed. But as you know, interest in purebred Exmoors diminished to the point where they became an endangered species. In particular, it was believed that the last of the Saracen line had gone.’
Brodie looked at him sidelong from under her eyelashes. He was following, she noted with satisfaction, with a rapt interest that had little to do with the survival of the Exmoor breed. She carried on.
‘But my client was told that a filly-foal from his last crop was exported to Europe, and that it’s still alive and still breeding. The Saracen’s Daughter, twenty-three years old but carrying his bloodline and still passing it on. My client wants that pony.
‘And the answer to your next question,’ she added smoothly, ‘is that he came to me rather than a dealer because he’s had some unhappy experiences with dealers. After all, finding it didn’t come down to what I do or don’t know about ponies – it came down to what I know about finding things. Which is – and I may have mentioned this – extensive.’
‘So you’ve found the pony?’
‘I believe so,’ said Brodie. ‘Look, I really can’t go into too much detail at this point. If it turns out I haven’t got it yet, I will get it. If it turns out it isn’t where I think, it won’t be far away. What I need from you today is an agreement in principle to collect it from Germany and deliver it to Dimmock, and an estimate of costs.’
Johnny Windham shrugged. ‘Sure. Give me an address in Germany and we’ll collect your pony. We’ll organise the paperwork and tell you what your client and his vendor need to provide. We’ll bring the pony to our own yard initially, put it in an isolation box and have our vet check it over. When he passes it fit we’ll deliver it. We not only comply fully with the 1997 Welfare of Animals (Transport) Order, we exceed its provisions, so the journey’ll take about four days door to door. Does that sound satisfactory?’
Brodie had no idea. ‘Yes thank you.’
‘The cost will depend on a couple of things. Germany’s a big country. Also, it’ll be cheaper if we have a full load for most of the trip than if we have to go way out of our way to fetch it. But I’ll prepare you some figures.’
‘Yes, would you? Then I can get approval from my client and give you the go-ahead as soon as we know we’re in business.’
Windham shook his head, bemused. ‘An Exmoor pony, huh? I’ve had Badminton winners in that lorry. I’ve had an Olympic dressage horse.’
‘And now,’ said Brodie, ‘if you’re very lucky, you’re going to have The Saracen’s Daughter.’
Before she left he showed her round his yard. It wasn’t pretty – there were no roses twining round the stable doors and the views in all directions were over the flat landscape bordering Romney Marsh – but it was workmanlike. The buildings were in good repair, the yard clean, and the aristocratic heads of blood horses peered out of a handful of loose-boxes.
Windham invited her to inspect one of his lorries. The other, he explained, was on a run to Europe right now. With Alison Barker’s accusations at the back of her mind Brodie ran a critical eye over everything, but so far as she could tell Dieter Townes was right – the man was scrupulously careful about looking after his clients’ animals. The lorry and the empty stables were scrubbed clean between incumbents. Any viruses that managed to evade his counter-measures could not fairly be blamed on Windham Transport.
He saw her to her car. ‘I’ll need your client’s name,’ he said. ‘I can’t do the paperwork without it.’
She saw no problem obliging him. After all, there was no pony. In a few days she’d phone him back and say the trail had gone cold, and promise to contact him again when she got a new lead, and do nothing of the kind. ‘Hood,’ she said. ‘Daniel Hood.’
‘But I don’t want a pony,’ said Daniel, perplexed. Brodie had called at his house on her way home.
‘That’s just as well,’ she said, ‘because there isn’t one. But if someone from Windham Transport contacts you, there is a pony – an Exmoor pony – it’s in Germany and it’s called The Saracen’s Daughter.’
Daniel’s eyes flared wide. ‘Windham? As in Johnny Windham?’
‘Yes.’
‘The man who tried to kill Alison Barker?’
‘The man Alison Barker claims tried to kill her,’ Brodie corrected him. ‘The man she claims can be simultaneously in different countries and pass through locked doors in his desire to wipe out her family. That Johnny Windham. Yes.’
‘And he wants to sell me a pony?’
‘No, he wants to collect a pony that I’ve bought for you.’ Daniel tried to find another way to say this and failed. ‘But I don’t want …’
‘Daniel, I know! It isn’t a real pony. It’s a subterfuge. I just need you to back up my story if he ch
ecks it out. All right?’
If anything, that gave him more problems than the imaginary pony. ‘You want me to lie?’
Brodie rolled her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Of course I don’t want you to lie! If a man who may be threatening the life of a young girl asks you if I’m on the level I want you to tell him no, I’m making it up, I’m trying to establish if he’s a murderer or not. You tell him that, Daniel, and we’ll soon know whether he’s got a mean streak.’
He’d been the object of her invective before; he knew to batten down the hatches and sit it out. When she’d finished he said, ‘Are you serious? You’re trying to con this man? Why?’
‘Because if Alison’s telling the truth she deserves to be taken seriously and protected. And if she’s pursuing a vendetta against him, Windham deserves to be cleared.’
‘Fair enough,’ agreed Daniel. ‘But why you? Why not the police?’ The corrugations on his brow deepened. ‘Did Jack ask you to do this?’
Brodie’s laugh was scornful. ‘Don’t be silly. It should be the police. But Jack’s up to his eyes with this new drug – he hasn’t the time or manpower to reinvestigate allegations that have already been dismissed.’
‘That still doesn’t make it your business!’
‘I’m tired of hearing about Alison Barker from the pair of you! Jack thinks she’s hiding something, you think she’s in danger. Neither of you has any evidence. You’re inclined to believe her, he isn’t. I want it settled one way or the other so I can sit down to a meal sometime and not know what the main topic of conversation will be.’
Daniel thought he’d given up being surprised by her. It turned out he was wrong. ‘Brodie – what if Alison’s telling the truth?’
‘She isn’t. I’ve met the guy – he’s perfectly normal.’
‘But what if she is?’
‘Then Jack can arrest him, Alison can breathe a sigh of relief and we can start getting a bit of fun out of life again. Remember fun?’ she asked snidely. ‘It’s what we used to do before you had a girlfriend.’
Daniel had his mouth open to deny it, shut it again. Right now that wasn’t the issue. ‘If Alison’s right, this is a deeply dangerous man. If he guesses what you’re doing he may want to put a stop to it.’
Brodie shook her head dismissively. ‘If Johnny Windham had done half of what Alison says he did there’d be some evidence of it. There isn’t. I don’t think Windham tried to kill her. I don’t think anyone did.’
‘Then why are you trying to trap him?’ demanded Daniel. ‘If Alison’s right it’s dangerous; if she’s wrong it doesn’t need doing. Brodie, you have nothing to prove – not to me, not to Jack. We know you can out-think anyone alive. We know you can get to the bottom of any mystery you take on. But you’re putting yourself at risk for no reason. Leave it alone. When Jack gets his head above water he’ll find the truth without endangering himself or anyone else. Leave it to him.’
Brodie’s head tilted to one side, her dark eyes mocking. ‘I thought Alison Barker was your latest lame dog. I thought you’d want me to find out what happened to her.’
‘I don’t want you to do anything that could get you hurt!’
‘You’d better not let Alison hear you talking that way about another woman.’
Somehow, and neither of them could have said how, the thing had not only got personal but come between them. Perhaps there was an element of jealousy on Brodie’s part, something so unreasonable she couldn’t admit it even to herself Certainly Daniel didn’t understand her attitude. They stared at one another in a mutual incomprehension that was tinged on her side with spite and on his with vexation.
Brodie could have set his mind at rest in a moment. She could have said, as she’d meant to, ‘I just wanted to meet this man and judge for myself if what he’s been accused of is credible. Now I have and it isn’t, and I don’t propose to meet with him again.’ Something stopped her. Not mere irritation: though she was often irritated with Daniel it didn’t usually undermine her fondness for him. Something had shifted in the tectonics of their relationship, and she’d felt the quake and hadn’t yet located the epicentre.
Daniel too could have done more to avert the looming confrontation. In particular, he could have not said, ‘Now you’re being childish.’ If he’d tried to explain how the piquant combination of fear and bravado he’d seen in Alison Barker’s eyes had spoken to him, she might have understood; and even if she hadn’t, she might have accepted that it was so anyway, and beyond him to do other than try to help the lost girl. They had made so many allowances for one another’s mistakes and frailties. Yet both of them were aware that they had ventured now into an area where things could be said which would strain even the tolerance of love past its limits.
‘Childish?’ she barked back at him. ‘You want to talk about childish? How about your infatuation with this girl and her fantasy life? She’s playing you for a fool, Daniel, and you’re making it easy. I know she’s had a hard time. But she’s made a conscious decision to live off it for the rest of her life. To tout her sob story around for whatever sympathy it’ll get her. She’s like an old colonel dining out on forgotten wars. She’s a leech, and she’s zeroed in on you as the softest suck around. Can’t fault her for that, anyway.’
Hurt pooled in his eyes. Brodie quite enjoyed a good argument but Daniel hated them, most of all hated arguing with her. He could have stopped it. He could just have walked away, and though her first instinct would have been to triumph, in a matter of minutes that would have turned to regret. When she’d thought about it long enough she would apologise.
Of course, it’s harder to walk out when it’s your living room you’re arguing in.
‘You’re right,’ he said softly. ‘I’m a mug for a hard-luck story. And yes, I look for the best in people. Sometimes I’m wrong. I may be wrong this time. But if I am, all that happens is that my friends get to laugh at me again. If I’m right, I get the chance to help a scared girl that no one else is prepared to. So laugh all you like, Brodie, I’m used to it. I’d rather make a fool of myself by being too trusting than by seeing malice everywhere.’
‘Your problem is,’ snapped Brodie, ‘you think the world’s some kind of a mirror. If you’re nice to people they’ll be nice back.’
‘And what do you see when you look in the mirror,’ he shot back, ‘that justifies how you treat people?’
With a second longer to think he’d never have said it. If they hadn’t been arguing, if she hadn’t been goading him, he’d have done what he always did: picked his words carefully and said nothing until he was sure it conveyed exactly what he wanted it to. He lost a lot of debates that way: people thinking they’d won and heading for the pub when he was actually still rehearsing his response. Instead for once he’d done what she did all the time: come back with a smart retort because he was clever enough to think of it and too stupid to keep it to himself.
He saw the shock ricochet through her face like a slap. Her lips parted and her eyes rounded with a mixture of pain and astonishment as if he’d raised his hand to her. Shame flushed darkly under his skin, and he couldn’t think of a thing to say that wouldn’t make it worse.
Brodie went on staring at him for perhaps ten seconds, disbelief warring in her face with the knowledge of what he thought of her. Then, without another word, she turned on her heel and left, her shoes beating a quick tattoo on the iron stairs.
Chapter Eleven
‘Where will you go?’
‘Home. Well – Bella’s house in The Ginnell.’ A thread of steel ran through the girl’s voice. For a statement of just seven words it defined neatly the nadir to which her life had sunk. She had no home, no one to return to, just a little house in a dreary town that wasn’t currently needed by its owner, where she hadn’t been safe before and had no reason to believe she’d be safe now. The steel thread was because she was intelligent enough to know this, and to know that she had no alternative, and to know that her only option was to face her situation wi
th courage.
At least, that was what Daniel thought. Brodie might have thought something different.
‘You can’t.’
‘I have to. I can’t afford a hotel.’
‘Couldn’t Mary put you up for a few days?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
He frowned. ‘Why ever not?’
Alison didn’t want to tell him. Two things she’d learned to dread in people’s faces: sympathy, and the weariness that followed when the sympathy was exhausted. ‘Because I asked her before I asked Bella and she said no. She wanted to, she was really sorry, but she didn’t see how she could fit me in. She’s knocked together a little one-room flat out of what was a hay loft over the stables. It doesn’t cost her anything and she says it’ll do until she’s got the business back on track, but it would be pretty gruesome sharing it with someone.’
Daniel considered. ‘I know a bed-and-breakfast. It’s not very smart, but you get clean sheets and as much as you can eat, and a great view of the beach.’
She appreciated him trying. ‘Daniel, I can’t even afford a B&B.’
‘You can afford mine.’
She regarded him levelly, not speaking until she knew she could control what she said. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Because I can,’ he said.
‘You don’t owe me anything.’
‘I knocked you down.’
‘I ran into you! It was my mistake. Except …’ She smiled, a tear trembling on the lip of it. ‘It wasn’t a mistake at all. It was the best thing I’ve done in three months.’
Daniel did his odd little lopsided shrug that was a remnant of a broken collarbone. ‘Ally, I’m not offering you very much. I can’t sort things out for you. I can’t make the police believe you. I can’t make them believe me most of the time. All I can give you is somewhere to stay while you deal with it. I think you’ll be safer staying with me than on your own.’
