A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  He wanted someone responsible to do the couriering, he said. He was willing to pay whatever it took to get just that sort of person. He didn't trust a man alone to do the job—apparently, Kiefer explained, he had a loser son who made him think no youngish man was worth anyone's faith—and he didn't want a woman traveling alone to Europe because he didn't like the idea of women on their own and he didn't want to feel responsible should something happen to her. He was old-fashioned that way. So they settled on a man and woman together. They would look for a married couple of any age to fill the bill.

  Brouard, Kiefer said, was eccentric enough to offer five thousand dollars for the job. He was tight enough to offer only tourist-level travel. Because the couple in question had to be able to leave whenever the plans were ready, it seemed the best source of potential couriers might be the local University of California. So Kiefer posted the job there and waited to see what would happen.

  In the meantime, Brouard paid him his fee and added the five thousand dollars which would be promised to the courier. Neither cheque bounced, and while Kiefer thought the scenario was bizarre, he made certain it wasn't illegal by checking out the architect to make sure he was an architect and not some arms manufacturer, a plutonium source, a drug dealer, or a supplier of substances for biological warfare.

  Because obviously, Kiefer said, none of those types were about to send anything by a legitimate courier service.

  But the architect turned out to be a man called Jim Ward, who'd even attended high school with Kiefer. He confirmed every part of the story: He was assembling a set of architectural plans and elevation drawings for Mr. Guy Brouard, Le Reposoir, St. Martin, Island of Guernsey. Brouard wanted those plans and those drawings ASAP.

  So Kiefer set about making everything happen on his end of things. A slew of applicants lined up to do the job, and from them he chose a man called Cherokee River. He was older than the others, Kiefer explained, and he was married.

  “Essentially,” Simon concluded, “William Kiefer confirmed the Rivers' story down to the last comma, question mark, and full stop. It was a strange way of doing things, but I'm getting the impression that Brouard liked doing things strangely. Keeping people off balance kept him in control. That's important to rich men. It's generally how they got rich to begin with.”

  “Do the police know all this?”

  He shook his head. “Le Gallez's got all the paperwork, though. I expect he's one step from finding out.”

  “Will he release her, then?”

  “Because the basic story she told checks out?” Simon reached for the case that was the source of the electrodes. He switched the unit off and began detaching himself from the wires. “I don't think so, Deborah. Not unless he comes up with something that points definitively to someone else.” He grabbed his crutches from the floor and swung himself off the bed.

  “And is there something else? Pointing to someone else?”

  He didn't reply. Instead, he took his time with his leg brace, which lay next to the armchair beneath the window. To Deborah, there seemed to be countless adjustments he made to it this morning and an endless procedure to be gone through before he was dressed, standing on his feet, and willing to continue their conversation.

  Then he said, “You sound worried.”

  “China wondered why you . . . Well, you haven't seemed to want to meet her. It looks to her as if you've got a reason to keep your distance. Do you?”

  “Superficially, she's the logical person for someone to frame for this crime: She and Brouard evidently spent some time together alone, her cloak appears to have been fairly easy for someone to get their hands on, and anyone with access to her bedroom would also have access to her hair and her shoes. But premeditation in murder demands a motive. And any way you look at it, motive is something she didn't have.”

  “Still, the police may think—”

  “No. They know they've got no motive. That clears the way for us.”

  “To find one for someone else?”

  “Yes. Why do people premeditate murder? Revenge, jealousy, blackmail, or material gain. That's where we need to direct our energies now, I dare say.”

  “But that ring . . . Simon, if it's definitely China's?”

  “We'd better be damn quick about our work.”

  Chapter 17

  MARGARET CHAMBERLAIN MAINTAINED A death grip on the steering wheel as she drove back to Le Reposoir. The death grip kept her in focus, aware only of the effort required to keep the appropriate degree of pressure in her grasp. This, in turn, allowed her to stay present in the Range Rover so that she could course south along Belle Greve Bay without thinking about her encounter with what went for the Fielder family.

  Finding them had been a simple matter: There were only two Fielder listings in the telephone directory and one of them lived on Alderney. The other was domiciled in Rue des Lierres in an area between St. Peter Port and St. Sampson. Finding this on the map had presented little difficulty. Finding it in reality had, however, been another matter, as this part of town—called the Bouet—was as ill-marked as it was ill-featured.

  The Bouet turned out to be an area that reminded Margaret a little too much of her distant past as one of six children in a family where ends not only didn't meet, they didn't even acknowledge the existence of each other. In the Bouet lived the fringe dwellers of the island's society, and their homes looked like the homes of such people in every town in England. Here were hideous terraced houses with narrow front doors, aluminium windows, and siding stained by rust. Overfilled rubbish bags took the place of shrubbery, and instead of flowerbeds, what few lawns there were had their patchy expanses broken up by debris.

  As Margaret got out of her car along the street, two cats hissed at each other over possession of a half-eaten pork pie that lay in the gutter. A dog rooted in an overturned dustbin. Gulls fed upon the remains of a loaf of bread on a lawn. She shuddered at the sight of all this even as she knew it suggested she would have a distinct advantage in the coming conversation. The Fielders were clearly not in a position to hire a solicitor to explain their rights to them. It should not, she thought, prove a difficult matter to wrest from them Adrian's rightful due.

  She hadn't counted on the creature who answered her knock on the door. He was a hulking mass of unkempt unwashed unseemly male antagonism. To her pleasant enquiry of “Good morning. Do the parents of Paul Fielder live here?” he replied, “Could be they do, could be they don't,” and he fastened his eyes upon her breasts with the deliberate intention of unnerving her.

  She said, “You aren't Mr. Fielder, are you? Not the father . . .” But, of course, he couldn't have been. For all his deliberate sexual precocity, he looked no more than twenty years old. “You must be a brother? I'd like to speak to your parents, if they're here. You might tell them this is about your brother. Paul Fielder is your brother, I take it?”

  He lifted his eyes from her chest momentarily. “Little git,” he said, and stepped away from the door.

  Margaret took this as invitation to enter, and when the lout disappeared to the rear of the house, she took this as further invitation to follow. She found herself in a cramped kitchen smelling of rancid bacon, alone with him, where he lit a cigarette on the gas burner of the hob and turned to face her as he inhaled.

  “Wha's he done now?” Brother Fielder asked.

  “He's inherited a fair sum of money from my husband, from my former husband, to be exact. He's inherited it away from my son, to whom it is owed. I'd like to avoid a lengthy court battle over this matter, and I thought it best to see if your parents felt likewise.”

  “Did you?” Brother Fielder asked. He adjusted his filthy blue jeans round his hips, shifted his legs, and broke wind loudly. “Pardon,” he said. “Must mind my manners with a lady. I forget.”

  “Your parents aren't here, I take it?” Margaret settled her bag on her arm in an indication that their encounter was quickly drawing to a close. “If you'll tell them—”

 
“Could be they're just 'bove stairs. They like to go at it in the morning, they do. What 'bout you? When d'you like it?”

  Margaret decided her conversation with this yob had gone on long enough. She said, “If you'll tell them Margaret Chamberlain—formerly Brouard—stopped by . . . I'll phone them later.” She turned to go the way she'd come.

  “Margaret Chamberlain Formerly Brouard,” Brother Fielder repeated. “Don't know if I c'n remember that much. I'll need some help with all that. Real mouthful, it is.”

  Margaret stopped in her progress to the front door. “If you have a piece of paper, I'll write it down.”

  She was in the passage between front door and kitchen and the young man joined her there. His proximity in the narrow corridor made him seem more threatening than he otherwise might have been, and the silence in the house round and above them seemed amplified suddenly. He said, “I di'n't have a paper in mind. I don't ever remember any good with papers.”

  “Well, then. That's that, isn't it? I'll just have to phone and introduce myself to them.” Margaret turned—although she was loath to put him out of her sight—and made for the door.

  He caught her up in two steps and trapped her hand on the knob. She felt his breath hot on her neck. He moved against her so she was pressed into the door. When he had her there, he released her hand and groped downward till he'd found her crotch. He grabbed hard and jerked her back against him. With his other hand he reached for and squeezed her left breast. It all happened in a second. “This'll help me remember good enough,” he muttered.

  All Margaret could think, ludicrously, was what had he done with the cigarette he'd lit? Was it in his hand? Did he mean to burn her?

  The lunacy of those thoughts in circumstances in which burning was clearly the last thing on the creature's mind acted as a spur to free her from fear. She drove her elbow backwards into his ribs. She drove the heel of her boot into the centre of his foot. In the moment his grip loosened upon her, she shoved him back and got herself out of the door. She wanted to stay and drive her knee into his bollocks—God, how she was itching to do that—but although she was a tigress when enraged, she had never been a fool. She made for her car.

  As she drove in the direction of Le Reposoir, she found that her body was shot through with adrenaline and her response to the adrenaline was rage. She directed it at the loathsome excuse of a human being she'd found in the Bouet. How dared he . . . Who the hell did he think . . . What did he intend . . . She could bloody well have killed . . . But that lasted only so long. It spent itself as the realisation of what might have happened grew in her mind, and this redirected her fury onto a more appropriate recipient: her son.

  He hadn't gone with her. He'd left her to deal with Henry Moullin herself on the previous day, and he'd done exactly the same this morning.

  She was finished with it, Margaret decided. By God, she was finished. She was finished with orchestrating Adrian's life without the slightest assistance or even any thanks. She'd been fighting his battles since the day he was born, and that was over.

  At Le Reposoir, she slammed the door of the Range Rover and stalked to the house, where she opened and slammed its door as well. The slams punctuated the monologue going on in her head. She was finished. Slam. He was bloody well on his own. Slam again.

  No sound came in response to her ministrations upon the heavy front door. This infuriated her in ways she wouldn't have expected, and she charged across the old stone hall with her boot heels marking an enraged tattoo. She fairly flew up the stairs to Adrian's room. The only things keeping her from bursting in on him were concern that some sign of what she'd just gone through might be apparent on her person and fear that she'd find Adrian engaged in some disgusting personal activity.

  And perhaps, she thought, that's what had driven Carmel Fitzgerald into the all-too-willing arms of Adrian's own father. She'd had a first-hand experience of one or another of Adrian's odious methods of self-soothing when under pressure and she'd run to Guy in confusion, seeking solace and an explanation, both of which Guy had been all too willing to give her.

  He's rather odd, my son, not quite what one expects from a real man, my dear.

  Oh yes, oh too right, Margaret thought. Adrian's one chance for normalcy ripped from his hands. And at his own fault, which was maddening to Margaret in the extreme. When—good God when—would her son transform himself into the man she meant him to be?

  In the upstairs corridor, a gilt mirror hung over a mahogany chest, and Margaret paused here to check her appearance. She dropped her gaze to her bosom, where she half-expected the imprint of Brother Fielder's filthy fingers to be all over her yellow cashmere sweater. She could still feel his hands. She could still smell his breath. Monster. Cretin. Psychopath. Thug.

  At Adrian's door she knocked twice, not gently. She said his name, turned the knob, and entered. He was in bed. He wasn't asleep, however. He was lying with his gaze fixed on the window, where the curtains were drawn back to expose the grey day outside, and the casement was fully open.

  Margaret's stomach lurched and the anger drained out of her. No one normal, she thought, would have been in bed under these conditions.

  Margaret shivered. She strode to the window and inspected the ledge along it and the ground beneath it. She turned back to the bed. The duvet was drawn up to Adrian's chin, the lumps beneath it marking the position of his limbs. She followed this topography till her glance reached his feet. She would look, she told herself. She would know the worst.

  He made no sound of protest as she lifted the duvet round his legs. He didn't move as she studied the bottoms of his feet for signs that he'd been outside in the night. The curtains and the window both suggested he'd had an episode. He'd never before climbed onto a ledge or a roof in the middle of the night, but his subconscious mind was not always governed by what rational people did and didn't do.

  “Sleepwalkers don't generally put themselves in danger,” Margaret had been told. “They do at night what they'd do in the day.”

  That, Margaret thought grimly, was exactly the point.

  But if Adrian had wandered out of the room instead of just round it, there was no sign of that on his feet. She crossed a bout of sleepwalking off the list of potential blips on her son's psychological screen and next checked the bed. She made no effort to be gentle with him as she dug her hands round his hips, feeling for wet spots on the sheets and mattress. She was relieved to find that there were none. The waking coma—which was what she called his periodic descents into daylight trances—could thus be dealt with.

  At one time she'd done it gently. He was her poor boy, her dearest darling, so different from her other strapping, successful sons, so sensitive to everything that went on round him. She'd roused him from this twilight state with gentle caresses on his cheeks. She'd massaged his head into wakefulness and murmured him back to earth.

  But not now. Brother Fielder had squeezed the milk of maternal kindness and concern right out of her. Had Adrian been with her in the Bouet, none of what had gone on there would have occurred. No matter how utterly ineffectual he was as a male, his presence as another human being—as a witness, mind you—in the Fielder home surely would have done something to halt the progress of Brother Fielder's assault upon her.

  Margaret grabbed the duvet and whipped it off her son's body. She threw it on the floor and snapped the pillow out from beneath Adrian's head. When he blinked, she said, “Enough is enough. Take charge of your life.”

  Adrian looked at his mother, then at the window, then back at his mother, then at the duvet on the floor. He didn't shiver in the cold. He didn't move. “Get out of bed!” Margaret shouted.

  He came fully awake at that. He said, “Did I . . . ?” in reference to the window.

  Margaret said, “What do you think? Yes and no,” in reference both to the window and to the bed. “We're hiring a solicitor.”

  “They're called—”

  “I don't bloody care what they're called. I'm hir
ing one and I want you with me.” She went to the wardrobe and found his dressing gown. She threw it at him and shut the window as he finally got out of bed.

  When she turned, he was watching her, and she could tell from his expression that he was completely conscious and finally reacting to her invasion of his room. It was as if an awareness of her examination of his body and his environment seeped slowly into his mind, and she saw it happening: that dawning understanding and what accompanied it. This would make him more difficult to deal with, but Margaret had always known she was more than a match for her son.

  “Did you knock?” he asked.

  “Don't be ridiculous. What do you think?”

  “Answer me.”

  “Don't you dare talk to your mother like that. Do you know what I've been through this morning? Do you know where I've been? Do you know why?”

  “I want to know if you knocked.”

  “Listen to yourself. Have you any idea what you sound like?”

  “Don't change the subject. I've a right—”

  “Yes. You have a right. And that's what I've been doing since dawn. Seeing to your rights. Trying to get them for you. Trying—for all the thanks I'm getting—to talk some sense into the very people who've ripped your rights out of your hands.”

  “I want to know—”

  “You sound like a sniveling two-year-old. Stop it. Yes, I knocked. I banged. I shouted. And if you think I intended to walk away and wait for you to come out of whatever little fantasy world you'd taken yourself to, then you can have another good think about things. I'm tired of working for you when you have no interest in working for yourself. Get dressed. You're taking some action. Now. Or I'm finished with all of this.”