by Jo Bannister
The other thing that DI Norris’s well-honed observational skills told him was that David Sperrin had expected to win and was, in fact, losing. There was a flush on his face, and an exasperated grin, as if losing was something that happened to other people and any moment now this paradox would resolve itself and events play out as they were meant to. Norris let his view expand to take in Gabriel Ash’s face. Ash was enjoying the game, too. He enjoyed winning, even if he didn’t wear his emotions as plainly as Sperrin did. And the role reversal that so startled Sperrin was no surprise at all to Ash. He might look like someone you’d meet at the allotments, Norris realized, but he thought like someone you’d meet in a chess tournament.
The DI cleared his throat. “Mr. Sperrin, could I have a word?”
“Sure.” A cynic might have thought he was glad to be called away before Ash’s impending victory became a matter of record. What a cynic, or even a policeman, would not have thought was that David Sperrin was in any way troubled by the detective’s visit. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m heading down for a word with your mother,” said Norris quietly. “It might be helpful if you were there, too.”
“Me?” Sperrin raised dark eyebrows. “I will if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it. My mother and I in the same room isn’t a recipe for calm and productive discussion.”
“She might need someone to stay with her.”
“My mother?” hooted Sperrin. “You have met her, have you?”
And then, finding every eye in the room on him, and with Hazel coming quietly from her chair to stand beside him, the thing DI Norris wasn’t saying—or wasn’t saying yet, was preparing him for—got through to David Sperrin. The color drained from his face as if an artery had been cut. “No,” he said, and his voice was hollow. “That isn’t possible. You’ve made a mistake. Someone’s made a mistake.” And then he swayed, and hands reached for him and steered him to one of the leather benches.
Byrfield went to get him a glass of water, thought better of it, and came back with a shot of whiskey. He gave Norris a defensive look. “He’s not going to be driving, is he?”
The peat-scented spirit, or perhaps the time it took to drink it, got Sperrin over the shock and back to his default position, which was to argue. “You are wrong,” he insisted. “We hear from him two or three times a year. We always have done. Who’s been sending the Christmas cards if it isn’t Jamie?”
Norris didn’t want to speculate. Hazel, who wasn’t here in a professional capacity, saw no reason not to help him to the obvious conclusion. “It might have been your father. To reassure Diana that Jamie was safe.”
“For thirty years?”
“I suppose, once the expectation was formed, it was easier to keep meeting it than to stop and risk her wondering why. It might have brought up the whole business of the abduction again. Easier just to keep sending the cards.”
Sperrin swiveled back toward the DI. “You’re sure? I mean, you’re absolutely sure?”
Norris nodded. “The DNA doesn’t leave any room for doubt.”
The younger man swallowed. “You said he was shot?”
“That’s right, sir.” There was no need to go into any more detail than that, not yet.
Sperrin took another bite out of the whiskey. But even as he did so, he was thinking. “But was it murder? Could it have been an accident? I mean, kids—country kids—get hold of loaded shotguns all the time. Usually someone grabs them back quickly enough, but … Could it have been an accident?” He sounded desperate for a crumb of hope.
All Norris’s instincts were on high alert. “What makes you think it was a shotgun?”
“Because that’s what people prop up in their kitchens in places like this! Not Uzis, not AK-47s, not Peacemaker Colts, but shotguns. Of course it’s stupid. But it happens.”
“Was there a shotgun in your kitchen when you were a child?”
“Our house? Never.” Sperrin seemed certain. “My mother wouldn’t have guns anywhere near her. Not even toy ones. She didn’t think they were a suitable thing for children to play with.”
“What about your father?”
“I don’t remember him, Inspector. I was too small when he left. But it would be my mother’s view that counted.”
Norris sighed. “Well, however it happened, it was a shotgun injury. It would have been immediately fatal. As to whether it was an accident or murder, we’re going to have to ask someone who was there when it happened. It could have been an accident. But finding him in an unmarked grave thirty years later makes it a suspicious death—one that needs investigating until we’re sure exactly who did what.”
Sperrin was breathing carefully, as if he might lose the knack if he didn’t concentrate. “You’re going to tell my mother? Now?”
The policeman nodded. “That’s why I want you there. It’ll come as a shock.”
“Oh yes,” said Sperrin unsteadily. “The thing is, I really wasn’t joking. My presence won’t make it any easier for my mother, it’ll only irritate her. She decided that about thirty years ago, too.” He looked around him in a kind of quiet desperation until his gaze found Hazel. “I don’t suppose you’d…”
She didn’t even have to think. “Of course I will. I’ll stay with her as long as she wants me to, and help her with whatever needs doing.” She looked across at Ash. “Let my dad know where I am.”
* * *
Diana Sperrin was in her studio, working furiously. This was evident from the length of time it took her to answer DI Norris’s knock at her door, and the amount of paint spattered about her person when she did. Not just her smock, which was designed for the job, but her hands, her arms, her face, and her wild gray frizz of hair were decorated with blobs and trails in a dozen different colors, some of them nameless.
She must have thought it was David again. She flung the door wide and demanded, “What?” in a tone of the utmost annoyance.
Finding a policeman on her doorstep pulled her up short. She did a sort of double take. Then she recognized Hazel, and the machinery of her mind spun and whirred, trying out theories as to what could have brought those two to her door together.
Hazel saw the moment when she hit the right one. Something like a shock wave passed through the older woman’s face, and her paint-spattered arms dropped to her sides. Her voice was a low moan. “No…”
Hazel had done this before. Every police officer had. She’d worked hard at finding the balance between breaking it gently and prolonging the agony, and she thought she was quite good at it. People said it got easier with time, but it hadn’t yet. “I’m sorry, Diana,” she said quietly. “It isn’t good news.”
Inside, Edwin Norris found himself relegated to the kitchen to make tea. He had the seniority, and he also had the information, but until the news had sunk in, what Diana Sperrin needed most was comfort, and Hazel could sit with her and hold her hand without it feeling inappropriate.
He wandered around the tiny kitchen looking for things, but that was all right—he was in no hurry. By the time he’d set the tray—none of the cups matched because all the ones that did had brushes steeping in them—and brewed the tea, the brute facts of the situation were getting through to Diana, pushing some blood back into her face and some strength into her slumped body. She hadn’t just lost her son: she’d lost him thirty years ago, only it had taken till now for the news to get here. Perhaps, thought Norris, pouring her tea, a part of her had always known. Perhaps she’d striven to keep the faith when she’d actually known, at a bone-deep, womb-deep level, that if James had been alive he’d have called her, or come to see her, or something at some time in the last twenty years. Of course, even after he was a grown man he’d still have been disabled. But she might have expected to hear something from him or about him. Something more than a signature scrawled on a Christmas card. When she didn’t, surely some deep internal instinct must have offered an explanation.
Hazel was saying, “DI Norris has already told David.
He was upset, of course. We thought it would be better if I came to sit with you for a bit. But if you want him, we can call. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
Diana straightened in her chair—ramrod straight. “I don’t need David. I don’t need anyone.” She managed a tiny flicker of a smile in Hazel’s direction. “Thank you for coming, but I’ll be all right now.” She looked at Norris. “Is there anything I need to do? Undertakers … anything?”
Norris shook his head. “Not right now. I’ll take care of him for the moment. You and I will need to chat again, but it doesn’t need to be now. All you need to do for now is look after yourself. You really shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’ll be fine,” she retorted, a hint of the old testiness coming back as the shock subsided. “I suppose…” She blinked a sudden mistiness out of her eyes. “I suppose you’re sure? I mean, after thirty years…?”
The policeman nodded somberly. “David gave us a swab for DNA.”
“And, of course, they have the same genetics.” Diana was nodding slowly, hypnotically. Then she barked a little laugh. “They weren’t very alike, my two sons, but of course they shared that.”
Despite Norris’s concern, and Hazel’s willingness, Diana really didn’t want anyone to stay with her. She wanted to be alone. She had always dealt with things best on her own, and this was no exception. She saw them to the door.
“I’ll come and see you again in a couple of days,” said the detective inspector. He gave her his card. “If you want to talk to me before that, or if you want anything, call me. And I think Miss Best is staying at the big house for a few more days?” An elevated eyebrow asked the question, and Hazel confirmed with a nod.
“I know we let you down before,” said Norris quietly. “When James went missing. Efforts were made, both here and in Ireland, to find your husband, but I suppose no one appreciated what it was they were seeking him for. Now we do. If it’s humanly possible, we’ll find Saul now and we’ll find out what happened.”
“Yes,” said Diana Sperrin distantly. “Good.”
Walking back to his car, Norris said to Hazel, “Whatever she says, you might keep an eye on her. She might think she’s over the shock already, but I don’t think it’s hit her yet.”
Hazel thought he was probably right. “If she wants some details, how much should I tell her?”
“Anything you know and think would help her. After thirty years of wondering, some facts may be all we can give her.”
Hazel was surprised. “You mean, until you find Saul.”
“Until then, yes,” agreed Norris. He looked at her sidelong. “I meant what I said—we’ll pull the stops out. But it won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick. And it’s possible we won’t get any further this time than we did before.”
“I don’t think I should tell her that!”
“No.” Norris sighed. “But she may very well guess.”
CHAPTER 14
UNLESS YOU COUNTED the dog, Hazel and Ash were alone in the dining room that evening. Sperrin didn’t appear at all. Byrfield appeared briefly, worried and apologetic, and filled a tray to take upstairs. “I have some fences to mend with my mother.”
Patience looked up sweetly. Anything to keep the old dear from wandering off, she said; and Ash, embarrassed because he always forgot other people couldn’t hear her, shushed urgently, and Hazel exchanged a long-suffering look for Byrfield’s puzzled one because neither of them knew why.
For a minute longer, like aristocracy in a play, they sat at either end of the long table. Then Hazel moved her meal up to Ash’s end and they ate for a while in silence, both occupied with their own thoughts.
Hazel was picking over her own contribution to the Byrfield family’s falling-out. She’d advised Pete to talk to his mother; he’d taken her advice, and this was the outcome. That didn’t make it bad advice, necessarily; but it did make Hazel wonder if she should be a little more circumspect about giving advice generally.
Finally, looking up with a rueful smile, Hazel said, “I’m sorry about all this. When I talked you into coming to visit my father, I never guessed we’d still be here six days later. Was there anything you were rushing back for?”
Even as she said it, she realized how silly it was. There was only one matter in Gabriel Ash’s life that was of any consequence at all, and there had been no news about his family since the day four years earlier that he’d got in from work and found them gone. Since Patience was with them, he had nothing to return to, much less to hurry for. There was probably no one else in England as amenable to being hijacked from his usual routine and kept almost under house arrest in a comfortable country mansion.
“Nothing,” he reassured her. “I wanted to see Stephen Graves and I’ve done that. He mentioned a couple of other people I could talk to, and I can do that from here if we’re going to be at Byrfield much longer. Not because there’s any urgency, just for something to do. Graves didn’t hold out much hope that any of them could help, and I don’t, either. You just feel”—he shrugged self-deprecatingly—“you have to explore every avenue. Then you don’t ask yourself later if you missed something, gave up too soon.”
“Gabriel,” Hazel said softly, “you’ve been at this for four years. Whatever you do next, you’ve left it too late to give up too soon.”
When he’d deciphered the syntax, he gave her a painful little smile. “It’s all right, you know. I’m really not holding my breath. I’m not going to fall apart again if I can’t work up a viable lead. It’s just that I’ve nothing better to do.”
That wasn’t entirely honest, and both of them knew it. For the rest of his life, or as long as he had the mental and physical strength, Ash was going to do anything he could, anything that occurred to him, to find out what became of his family. To track down the people responsible. But, realistically, he was aware that the chances of a breakthrough, of any kind of success, had diminished by now to almost nothing. They’d been at their best when he was living as a hermit on Orkney, desperate to convince the kidnappers he posed them no threat. If any hope survived that time, probably it vanished when he made a very public scene in the heart of London. It would be a miracle now if he picked up a trail leading anywhere. But that’s the thing about miracles: You can never quite dismiss the possibility.
“Actually,” said Hazel, wondering if it was impertinent but deciding to say it anyway, “there is something you should be doing.”
Trusting her, he failed to see the trap. “What?”
“You should be building a life for yourself.”
Ash continued regarding her over the corner of the massive table for a long time. She met his gaze and held it steady. She wasn’t going to apologize and change the subject. Maybe she had no right to tell him this, but someone needed to.
Finally he said, “I had the life I wanted.”
“Yes,” said Hazel. “And now you don’t. Gabriel, I don’t want you to stop missing your wife and sons. I don’t want you to stop looking for them. But I want you to have a life as well. The search can be the most important thing that you do without being the only thing that you do. I don’t want you to invest so much of yourself in it that there’s nothing left over.”
She meant if you fail, and Ash knew she meant that. He took a moment to marshal his thoughts. Then he said quietly, “You didn’t know me a year ago. In a way I wish you had. Not because that’s how I like to be remembered. And not because I think you could do with a shaking, although sometimes I do think that. But because then you’d know what a difference you’ve made to me. You, and Patience.
“I know that … how I am … exasperates you sometimes. It exasperates me. But I remember how I was a year ago, and I don’t think you have any idea. I have a life now. It may not be what I hoped for when I was at Oxford, but it’s worthwhile and even rewarding in a modest way, and when I think back to how I was before I knew you, I can’t believe how far I’ve come. It’s like I spent three years trying to drag my face out of the gutter, a
nd now I’m walking on the pavement with the normal people—and you want to know why I’m not riding a skateboard!”
Hazel had been determined not to apologize for caring about him. But he’d shamed her into it. “Gabriel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to belittle the progress you’ve made. I mean well, you know, even if it doesn’t always seem like it. What is it they say about good intentions?”
“That the road to hell is paved with them,” said Ash. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. Intention is the only difference between an accident and murder. Good intentions is about all we can promise one another. None of us knows how things will work out—all we can do is try to do what we think is right.
“I know you’re on my side. I know, and I don’t think you do, that if I’d never met you and someone else had taken Patience home from the animal shelter, I would still be facedown in the dirt. I wish I could explain to you how much richer my life is for having you in it.”
Warm with pleasure, on impulse she reached out and laid her hand over his wrist. Ash replied with his solemn, studious-child smile. Under the table she felt the soft rhythmic thump of the dog’s tail against her ankle. “If I need slapping down sometimes,” she said, “feel free to slap.”
“If I need a poke with a sharp stick,” said Ash, “poke away.”
From under the table Patience murmured hopefully, And if I need a nice bit of fried liver sometimes …
Hazel helped herself to fruit from the sideboard. She looked up at the ceiling. “I wonder how that’s going.”
Ash winced. “Not easily. I can’t see the countess throwing an arm around him and telling him it was a mistake anyone could make.”
“She never was an easy woman to get on with.”
“And by and large, people—unlike wine—don’t improve with age.”
The meal having been done as much justice as two people could do it, Hazel headed for the kitchen door. “Say good night to Pete for me, will you?”
Ash glanced at the shot-silk evening sky. “Can we walk with you? Patience likes a stroll before bedtime.”
