Reflections

by Bannister, Jo

  She leaned forward over the table litter and kissed him. Reddening, Deacon looked around guiltily, half afraid that someone would have noticed and half hoping that they had.

  “You’re a good man. Jack Deacon,” said Brodie. “You’re not always a nice man, and you’re not right nearly as often as you think you are, but you’re a good man and a good copper. It’s a pity you’d make such a terrible husband.”

  And after that they could have brought him crème brûlée for dessert or hundreds-and-thousands sprinkled on a kipper: he wouldn’t have known the difference. He had not, for one second of their acquaintance, even when his body was exploring the infinite possibilities of hers, considered proposing to Brodie Farrell. Now she’d dismissed the notion out of hand he could think of nothing else.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Brodie left the restaurant feeling obscurely pleased with herself. She knew she’d rocked Deacon to his foundations, which was cause enough for satisfaction. She also suspected she’d planted an idea that would never of its own accord have occurred to him. It wasn’t that she was waiting for him to propose. She wouldn’t even have welcomed it: she liked things as they were. Liked being able to neglect him for days at a time if she was busy, confident that he’d still be there when she wanted him. On the other hand, she didn’t want him feeling that complacent about her. It was good to keep him on his toes.

  She went back to her office, put in an hour’s work on matters unrelated to Sparrow Hill. Or almost unrelated: among the invoices she prepared was one for Hugo Daws. It wasn’t her problem that when she found Constance Ward the woman was unable to help.

  With the paperwork updated she lingered over a cup of tea, enjoying the peace and quiet. Brodie was a woman who got a buzz from things happening around her, from making them happen and dealing with their consequences; but sometimes it was pleasant just to sit in the empty office and think.

  Losing her husband to another woman after six years of marriage, after putting a home together and making a child, had come as a devastating shock. Probably more, she now suspected, than it should have done. She knew that only about half of marriages succeed. But she’d been so content with her life that it hadn’t occurred to her that John wasn’t. When he finally confessed that he’d met someone who made him feel the way he made her feel, safe and comfortable and happy, it seemed to Brodie that not just her marriage but her entire existence had crumbled about her ears. As if she’d gone to the doctor with hives and come away with cancer. The shock was like six inches of roof insulation wrapped around her: binding her limbs, muffling her cries, suffocating her. She thought she was dying.

  And it was not too fanciful to say that Mrs John Farrell did die then. The woman who took her place—who used her divorce settlement to buy a flat and start a business, who was raising her daughter to be a stronger person than she herself was raised, who had friends and lovers that would have been denied to Mrs John Farrell—was a quite different person. So different Brodie herself was surprised. She no longer had regrets about the past. She liked her life. She liked being at the centre of her own existence instead of orbiting it at a polite distance. She liked knowing that she’d earned everything she had. She had liked being loved, but it was also good to be respected.

  At half-past three, with no clients hammering urgently on the door and no work demanding her attention, she thought she’d reap one of the benefits of self-employment and finish early. One of the drawbacks, of course, is that if you don’t work you don’t get paid, but she reckoned that if she was prepared to work late when the need arose she was entitled to leave early when she had the chance. She thought maybe she and Paddy could have a girls’ night out: find an amusement arcade, throw quoits for tacky prizes and stuff their faces with candy-floss, and get home tired and sticky at about half-past eight.

  Poole Lane was not on her way home; it wasn’t even the scenic route. Still she found herself driving up the Guildford Road and turning right, as she had done a number of times in the last week and as Nicky Speers had done on his way home from Dimmock on Saturday night. He’d passed Poole Farm and Sparrow Hill, and as the last bend opened up he probably picked up speed. Brodie did the same thing.

  And then, right here, just past the apex of the bend, everything had gone pear-shaped. He saw oncoming lights and tore the bike out of their path; and when they followed him had nowhere left to go but the stone wall looming over him. In the fraction of a second left for thought, he must have thought he was dead.

  Brodie parked again in the gateway and walked back. If it was a mirror he saw it must have been—she looked up and down the road, calculating—about here. Not on the bend or he’d have seen it too soon, had time to realise what it was. After the bend, then, where the road straightened out.

  How had Daws known his trap would catch Nicky Speers and not some other motorist? Well, because he knew how little traffic used the road late at night. Poole’s tractors would be safely locked up in his yard, no one from Sparrow Hill would turn this way, the only house ahead was the Speers cottage. Mrs Speers would be at home that late.

  But Nicky had set off on his motorbike during the evening, after a bad day with the police, and it took no clairvoyant to guess he was heading for the pub. That he’d be coming back after closing time, slightly lubricated if not well oiled. That, unless Daws got seriously unlucky, his bike would be the only traffic on the road at that hour.

  Brodie stood still and listened. After a moment she picked up the throaty rumble of heavy machinery at Poole Farm. Daws would have done the same: listened for the distinctive growl of a motorcycle. When he heard it he pushed the mirror out into the road.

  So he was there when Nicky hit the wall. When his bike smashed into a hundred pieces, and his bones broke and his lungs filled with blood. Standing watching. He didn’t just want to punish the boy, didn’t just want to hurt him. He wanted to kill him, and to watch him die. Daniel was right: the man had lost all sense of propriety, of civilised behaviour. He wanted to watch a nineteen-year-old boy choke up his life alone in a gutter because he hadn’t the wit to stay away from a manipulative woman.

  Then he heard another vehicle coming: Philip Poole’s Land Rover. He grabbed his mirror and got it and himself out of sight. He didn’t wait any longer, thought his job was done.

  But if he didn’t throw the mirror over the wall, what did he do with it? He must have put it back in his car so he could dispose of it where it would never be found, or at least where no connection with Nicky’s crash would ever be suspected. But he hadn’t much time. The Land Rover was already close enough to be heard: Daws couldn’t risk being seen. And still he was wrestling a six-foot mirror into the back of his car? And somehow he managed to get it loaded and drive away without Poole seeing him? Brodie thought it was just about possible. But you could try a dozen times before you pulled it off.

  She was missing something. Something that made it easier, faster. She looked around again. Nothing about the road, the stone walls, the over-hanging trees could have been other than they were, which left Daws, his car and the mirror. Still she was left with the image of a stout middle-aged man wrestling with a mirror as big as himself as red-handed discovery bore down on him at thirty miles an hour. It didn’t work. Something didn’t add up.

  The problem was weight. A mirror big enough to do the job would be heavy: too heavy to set up and take down in the moments available, too big to be disposed of discreetly after its purpose was accomplished.

  She was still standing in the middle of the road, eyes uplifted for inspiration, when the yellow digger came round the bend. It wasn’t doing fifty miles an hour, or more than about fifteen, so it had no trouble stopping. But Philip Poole swung out onto the step with an troubled expression, clearly worried that her condition had deteriorated further since last he saw her. “Is everything all right?”

  Brodie flashed him an apologetic grin. “Yes. I’m just thinking. Am I in your way?”

  He climbed down to the ground. “Th
ere’s no rush. I admire thinking, I try never to interrupt anyone who’s doing some. What were you thinking?”

  “I’m still trying to work out what it was that Nicky saw. It couldn’t have been a real mirror—it would have been too cumbersome, one man would have had difficulty both getting it here and then disposing of it, and I don’t believe he could do it without leaving marks somewhere. So what’s big enough to give a reflection of the whole road but light enough to chuck in the back of a car?” She tossed her head in exasperation. “And the answer is, absolutely n—”

  She didn’t get as far as the vowel. Her voice stopped as her body froze. She was looking at the branches overhead.

  Then she looked at the digger. At the digger bucket. “Philip,” she said, and now her voice was quietly odd, “can you lift me up in that thing?”

  He stared at her. “I could. I can’t imagine why I would.”

  “Because I’m asking nicely?” But batting eyelids were no substitute for an explanation. “I can see something. It may not be significant but I’d like a closer look.”

  He stood beside her and peered up where the trees leaned over the road. “Where are you looking?”

  She pointed at a projecting branch. “There’s something tied round it. It may have been there for years, in which case it’s no help. But I want to take a look.”

  Poole went on peering a moment, then shook his head. “Your eyes are better than mine. All right, I’ll get you up there. But”—he was looking at her clothes—“the last thing I had in the bucket was cow-shit.”

  Her heart sank. But everything she had on was washable, all she had to do was grit her teeth and disrobe in the shower as soon as she got home. She took off her shoes and her jacket and put them on the wall. “Let’s do it.”

  It could have been worse. Poole found a plastic fertiliser bag on the floor of the digger, and split it with his knife to make a mat. She clambered into the bucket, resolutely ignoring the squelch underfoot, and Poole lifted her carefully into the branches above the road.

  She was right: there was something tied round the branch.

  And it hadn’t been there for years: there was none of the discolouration that results from even a brief contact with trees. All the same, Brodie couldn’t see how it was relevant. Even given a suitable branch, you couldn’t hang a six-foot mirror from it with kitchen string.

  But something had been hung from it, and it must have been about six feet long because now she was up here she could see a second piece of string tied around the bough a couple of metres from the first. She hadn’t spotted it before because it wasn’t hanging down but had blown up into the leaves.

  She gestured to Poole and he moved the digger closer to the wall. She felt among the twigs for the loose end and pulled it free.

  It hadn’t broken under the weight hung from it. When Daws had finished he’d pulled it down by the part he could reach from the road. One of the lengths of string had broken and been left dangling, but the other had torn away a piece of material. It was unlikely Daws even noticed. It had done its job as well as he had any right to hope, and he’d never need it again. He bundled it up and took it with him only so no one would guess how it had been done.

  Brodie had been right, and she’d been wrong. Right about the Phantom of Cheyne Wood: that was clearly where he got the idea. Wrong about the mirror: he hadn’t burdened himself with two metres of wood and glass, either Victorian or a modern copy. Right about the fact that Nicky Speers saw himself, his own headlights, speeding towards him as he came round the bend. Wrong about the time it would have taken to tidy up afterwards. A few seconds was enough, and then the assassin was on his way.

  Half-hypnotised, Brodie stared at the little wedge of fabric. Daws had been clever, but he hadn’t been clever enough. Here was the evidence not only of how he did it but of who did it. She’d never seen the stuff before but she knew it came from Sparrow Hill and this corner would prove it whether or not the rest was ever found.

  Her first instinct was to cut it down and take it with her. Common sense intervened. Deacon would want to see it in situ. She replaced it among the leaves as she’d found it and waved to Poole that she was finished. “Ground floor, please.”

  He helped her out of the bucket, feeling the thrill of discovery like an electric current passing through her body. “You found something.”

  “Yes. Nicky’s right: somebody tried to kill him. I can show how, and I think I can show who.”

  Poole’s round face was at once fascinated and appalled. “So-who?”

  Brodie smiled apologetically. “I have to talk to the police first. When I’ve done that I’ll bring you up to speed. All right?”

  He hadn’t much option. “All right.”

  She couldn’t get a reply on Deacon’s mobile so she tried his office. But he wasn’t there, and neither was Sergeant Voss. The switchboard wasn’t sure when they’d return: would she like to speak to someone else?

  Brodie decided against. What she had discovered was more important than urgent, it would be easier to explain to Deacon than to someone not involved in the inquiry, and he had it coming. He’d taken all the set-backs in this case, he was entitled to the break-through. “I’ll try again in an hour. If you hear from him before that, ask him to meet me at Sparrow Hill.”

  She considered guarding her discovery until she could pass it on to Deacon. She could keep an eye on it from her car. Or she could ask Poole to: she thought he would do whatever she requested. But really there was no need. The thing was safe up there among the branches: if it hadn’t been disturbed in two days it was unlikely to suffer much harm in the next couple of hours. And if she couldn’t share her triumph with Deacon, and bask in his grudging admiration, she wanted to share it with Daniel.

  In retrospect, though, that was a mistake. She should have made herself comfortable in her car, turned on the heater, turned on the radio and waited for Deacon to reappear from wherever he and Voss had gone and get in touch. And not because the evidence would have been safer.

  Improbably enough, at that very moment Detective Superintendent Deacon and Detective Sergeant Voss were holding hands in a Lovers’ Lane in the heart of the Three Downs while the autumn sun set over the pale expanse of Frick Lake.

  Admittedly, they were holding hands because a surfeit of lovers, or actually of cows, had reduced the lane to a quagmire and Deacon had just fallen to his knees. But it was a genuine beauty-spot and notorious rendezvous, even if the council knew it more prosaically as Pond Lane.

  Neither man was interested in either the view or the romantic possibilities. They were hurrying towards the lake where a police inflatable and two divers, black and shiny, were already visible. There was also a police Land Rover, which had wisely taken the longer way across adjacent farmland. A mobile crane trundled down the field towards them as they arrived.

  Deacon came directly to the point. “What have you got?”

  “A dark red Mercedes saloon,” said one of the divers, “with a body in the driver’s seat.”

  “Number plate?”

  The diver nodded. “It’s his all right.”

  When the crane was ready they went down again to secure the straps. The boom reached out over the water.

  Voss was making notes. “What’s that—about ten metres out?”

  Deacon scowled at him. “Nearer thirty feet, I’d have said.”

  Voss was careful not to react. “He’s come down the bank at speed. There’s no tide to carry him out, he must have given it some welly or he’d just have sat there in the shallows until he got bored and went home.”

  Deacon nodded. “That’s how it looks. We’ll see when they get the car out—it’ll still be in gear.”

  It was a deep lake in a fold of the downs: even ten metres from the shore there were fathoms of water. The crane took the strain, the hawser jerked straight and thrummed, but it was another moment before the water started to bubble white where something was coming to the surface. The aerial came firs
t; then the roof above the rear windscreen; finally the whole thing was hanging in its straps and pouring water from every orifice.

  The crane swung and lowered it gently onto the bank. It was muddy and there was a green film on the glass: it wasn’t immediately obvious who or what was inside.

  When the streaming water slowed to a trickle Voss tried the driver’s door. It was unlocked and opened easier than he was expecting. The last of the lake-water ran out over his shoes.

  Every so often a murder inquiry has to be stopped when it becomes apparent that the perpetrator is also dead, and has been for hundreds or thousands of years. Rates of decomposition vary enormously depending on conditions which can be extremely localised. Occasionally people come out of the ground after centuries looking as well as they did when they went into it. Or some suspicious bastard like Jack Deacon gets a bad feeling about a recent death and exhumes what should still be a body, to find only bones and what’s known in the trade as “yucky stuff”.

  It was impossible to say by looking at the drowned body of Robert Daws when he died. But since Deacon had a fair idea what he was up to as recently as two nights ago he was unlikely to have been in the lake for forty-eight hours. He may have come straight here, convinced that his work was done, and kept his foot down on the accelerator until the car filled with water and, thirty seconds after that, his lungs did. Or he may have driven round for hours, trying to see an alternative—wondering if a good lawyer could get him off.

  wondering if he could snatch the girls and some realisable assets and be out of the country before the police net closed in.

  Voss was reading his thoughts again. “He must have thought we were closer to him than we were.”

  “The old dragnet wasn’t doing a great job, was it?” said Deacon pensively. “Great holes, plenty of them; not enough string.”