A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  “I'll begin there, then,” St. James told her. “And you two . . . I think you need to pay a call on Stephen Abbott. He spoke to you the other day, my love,” to Deborah, “so I expect he'll be willing to speak to you again.”

  He led the two women outside and round to the car park. There they spread out a map of the island on the Escort's bonnet and traced a route to Le Grand Havre, a wide gouge into the north coast of the island comprising three bays and a harbour, above which a network of footpaths gave access to military towers and disused forts. Acting as navigator, China would guide Deborah to that location, where Anaïs Abbott had a house in La Garenne. In the meantime, St. James would pay a call at the police station and glean from DCI Le Gallez whatever information he could regarding Cherokee's arrest.

  He watched his wife and her friend drive off, their route established. They dipped down Hospital Lane and followed the road in the direction of the harbour. He could see the curve of Deborah's cheek as the car made its turn towards St. Julian's Avenue. She was smiling at something her friend had just said.

  He stood for a moment and thought about the myriad ways he might caution his wife had she been willing and able to hear him. It's not what I think, he would have told her in explanation. It's everything that I do not yet know.

  Le Gallez, he hoped, would fill in the gaps in his knowledge. St. James sought him out.

  The DCI had just arrived at the police station. He still had on his overcoat when he came to fetch St. James. He shed this on a chair in the incident room and directed St. James to a china board, at the top of which a uniformed constable was attaching a line of colour photographs.

  “Check them,” Le Gallez said with a nod. He looked quite pleased with himself.

  The pictures, St. James saw, featured a medium-size brown bottle, the sort that often contained prescription cough syrup. It lay cradled in what looked like dead grass and weeds, with a burrow rising on either side of it. One of the pictures showed its size in comparison with a plastic ruler. Others showed its location with respect to the nearest live flora, to the apparent field in which it lay, to the hedgerow shielding the field from the road, and to wood-shrouded road itself which St. James recognised since he'd walked it himself.

  “The lane that leads to the bay,” he said.

  “That's the spot, all right,” Le Gallez acknowledged.

  “What is it, then?”

  “The bottle?” The DCI went to a desk and picked up a piece of paper that he read from, saying, “Eschscholzia californica.”

  “Which is?”

  “Oil of poppy.”

  “You've got your opiate, then.”

  Le Gallez grinned. “That we do.”

  “And californica means . . .”

  “Just what you'd expect. His prints are on the bottle. Big as life. Clear and lovely. A sight for work-sore eyes, let me tell you.”

  “Damn,” St. James murmured, more to himself than to the DCI.

  “We've got our man.” Le Gallez sounded completely confident of his facts, every bit as if he hadn't been equally confident that they'd got their woman twenty-four hours earlier.

  “How've you got it sorted, then?”

  Le Gallez used a pencil to gesture to the pictures as he spoke. “How'd it get there, you mean? I figure it like this: He wouldn't have put the opiate in the Thermos the night before or even earlier that morning. Always the chance that Brouard might rinse it out before he used it for his tea. So he followed him down to the bay. He put the oil in the Thermos while Brouard was swimming.”

  “Taking the risk of being seen?”

  “What sort of risk was it? It's not even dawn, so he doesn't expect anyone to be out and about. In case anyone is, he's wearing his sister's cloak. For his part, Brouard's swimming out in the bay and he's not paying attention to the beach. No big deal for River to wait till he's swimming. Then he slips down to the Thermos—he was following Brouard, so he would've seen where he left it—and he pours the oil inside. Then he slips away wherever: into the trees, behind a rock, near the snack hut. He waits for Brouard to come out of the water and drink the tea like he does every morning and everyone knows it. Ginkgo and green tea. Puts hair on the chest and more important puts fire in the bollocks, which is what Brouard wants in order to keep the girlfriend happy. River waits for the opiate to do the trick. When it does, he's on him.”

  “And if it hadn't done the trick on the beach?”

  “No matter to him, was it?” Le Gallez shrugged eloquently. “It was still before dawn, and the opiate would take effect somewhere on Brouard's route home. He'd be able to get to him no matter where it happened. When it happened on the beach, he shoved the stone down his throat and that was it. He reckoned the cause of death would be labeled as choking on a foreign object, and indeed it was. He got rid of the poppy-oil bottle by tossing it into the bushes as he trotted home. Didn't realise that toxicology tests would be run on the body no matter what the cause of death looked like.”

  There was sense to this. Killers invariably made some sort of miscalculation somewhere along the line, which was largely how killers got themselves caught. With Cherokee River's fingerprints on the bottle that had contained the opiate, it made sense that Le Gallez would turn his sights on him. But all the other details in the case remained to be explained. St. James chose one of them.

  “How do you account for the ring? Are his prints on it as well?”

  Le Gallez shook his head. “Couldn't get a decent print from it. A partial of a partial, but that was it.”

  “Then?”

  “He would've taken it with him. He may even have intended to shove it down Brouard's throat instead of the stone. The stone muddied the waters for us for a bit, and that would've been nice, to his way of thinking. How blatant would he want it to be that his sister was the killer after all? He wouldn't've wanted to hand it to us. He would've wanted us to work a little to reach the conclusion.”

  St. James considered all this. It was reasonable enough—despite his wife's loyalties to the River siblings—but there was something else that Le Gallez wasn't talking about in his haste to close the case without pinning the crime on a fellow islander. He said, “You do see, I expect, that what applies to Cherokee River applies to others as well. And there are others who at least have motives for wanting Brouard dead.” He didn't wait for Le Gallez to argue, hastening on to say, “Henry Moullin has a fairy wheel hanging among his keys and a dream to be a glass artist—at Brouard's urging—that apparently came to nothing. Bertrand Debiere's apparently in debt because he assumed he'd get the commission for Brouard's museum. And as to the museum itself—”

  Le Gallez cut in with a flick of his hand. “Moullin and Brouard were fast friends. Had been for years. Worked together to change the old Thibeault Manor to Le Reposoir. No doubt Henry gave him the stone at one time or another as a token of friendship. Way of saying, ‘You're one of us now, my man.' As for Debiere, I can't see Nobby killing the very man whose mind he hoped to change, can you?”

  “Nobby?”

  “Bertrand.” Le Gallez had the grace to look embarrassed. “Nickname. We were at school together.”

  Which likely made Debiere even less a potential candidate for murderer in the eye of the DCI than he would have been merely as a Guernseyman. St. James sought a way to prise open the inspector's mind, if only a crack. “But why? What motive could Cherokee River have? What motive could his sister have had when she was your principal suspect?”

  “Brouard's trip to California. Those months ago. River laid his plan then.”

  “Why?”

  Le Gallez lost patience. “Look, man, I don't know,” he said hotly. “I don't need to know. I just need to find Brouard's killer and I've done it. Right, I fingered the sister first, but I fingered her on the evidence he planted. Just like I'm fingering him on the evidence now.”

  “Yet someone else could have planted all of it.”

  “Who? Why?” Le Gallez hopped off his desk and advanced on St.
James rather more aggressively than the moment warranted, and St. James knew he was inches away from being tossed unceremoniously from the station.

  He said quietly, “There's money missing from Brouard's account, Inspector. A great deal of money. Did you know that?”

  Le Gallez's expression altered. St. James seized the advantage.

  “Ruth Brouard told me about it. It was evidently paid out over time.”

  Le Gallez considered this. He said with less conviction than before, “River could have—”

  St. James interrupted. “If you want to think River was involved in that—in a blackmail scheme of some sort, let's say—why would he kill the goose when the golden eggs are still coming? But if that's the case, if River was indeed blackmailing Brouard, why would Brouard accept him—of all people—as a courier selected by his lawyer in America? He would have had to be told the name by Kiefer prior to River's coming, else how would he have known who to fetch from the airport? When he was told and if the name was River, he would have put a stop to that at once.”

  “He didn't know in time,” Le Gallez countered, but he was beginning to sound far less sure of himself.

  St. James pressed forward. “Inspector, Ruth Brouard didn't know her brother was running through his fortune. My guess is that no one else knew, either. At least not at first. So doesn't it make sense that someone may have killed him to stop him from depleting his funds? If it doesn't suggest that, doesn't it suggest he was involved in something illegal? And doesn't that suggest a motive for murder far more ironclad than anything either of the Rivers have?”

  Le Gallez was silent. St. James could see by his expression that the DCI was abashed by being presented with a piece of information about his murder victim that he himself should have had. He looked to the china board where the pictures of the bottle that had contained the opiate declared that his killer had been found. He looked back to St. James and seemed to ponder the challenge with which the other man had presented him. He finally said, “Right. Come with me, then. We've got phone calls to make.”

  “To?” St. James asked.

  “The only people who can make a banker talk.”

  China was an excellent navigator. Where there were signs, she called out the names of the streets they were passing as they rolled north along the esplanade, and she got them without a wrong turn to Vale Road at the northern end of Belle Greve Bay.

  They passed through a little neighbourhood with its grocer, hairdresser, and car repair shop, and at a traffic light—one of the few on the island—they coursed to the northwest. In the way Guernsey had of continually changing its landscape, they found themselves in an agricultural area less than a half mile along the road. This was defined by a few acres of greenhouses that winked in the morning sunlight and, beyond them, a stretch of fields. Perhaps a quarter of a mile into this area, Deborah recognised it and wondered that she hadn't done so before. She glanced warily at her friend in the passenger seat, and she saw from China's expression that she, too, realised where they were.

  China said abruptly, “Pull in here, okay?” when they came to the turn for the States Prison. When Deborah braked in a lay-by some twenty yards along the lane, China climbed out of the car and walked over to a tangle of hawthorn and blackthorn that served as a hedge. Above this and in the distance rose two of the buildings that comprised the prison. With its pale yellow exterior and red-tiled roof, it might have been a school or a hospital. Only its windows—iron-barred—declared it for what it was.

  Deborah joined her friend. China looked closed off, and Deborah was hesitant to break into her thoughts. So she stood next to her in silence and felt the frustration of her own inadequacy, especially when she compared it to the tender kinship she'd received from this woman when she herself had been in need.

  China was the one to speak. “He couldn't handle it. No way in hell.”

  “I don't see how anyone could.” Deborah thought of prison doors closing and keys being turned and the stretch of time: days which melted into weeks and months until years had passed.

  “It'd be worse for Cherokee,” China said. “It's always worse for men.”

  Deborah glanced at her. She recalled China's description—years ago—of the single time she'd visited her father in prison. “His eyes,” she'd said. “He couldn't keep them still. We were sitting at this table, and when someone passed too close behind him, he flew around like he expected to be knifed. Or worse.”

  He'd been in for five years that particular time. The California prison system, China told her, kept its arms permanently open for her father.

  Now China said, “He doesn't know what to expect inside.”

  “It's not going to come to that,” Deborah told her. “We'll sort this out soon enough and you can both go home.”

  “You know, I used to gripe about being so poor. Rubbing two pennies together in the hope they would make a quarter someday. I hated that. Working in high school just to buy a pair of shoes at a place like Kmart. Waiting on tables for years to get enough money to go to Brooks. And then that apartment in Santa Barbara. That dump we had, Debs. God, I hated all of it. But I'd take it all back this second just to be out of here. He drives me crazy most of the time. I used to dread picking up the telephone when it rang because I was always afraid it'd be Cherokee and he'd be saying, ‘Chine! Wait'll you hear the plan,' and I'd know it was going to mean something shady or something he wanted me to help finance. But right now . . . at this very instant . . . I'd give just about anything to have my brother standing next to me and to have both of us standing on the pier in Santa Barbara with him telling me about his latest scam.”

  Impulsively Deborah put her arms round her friend. China's body was unyielding at first, but Deborah held on till she felt her soften. She said, “We'll get him out of this. We'll get you both out of it. You will go home.”

  They returned to the car. As Deborah reversed it out of the lay-by and made the turn back onto the main road, China said, “If I'd known they were going to come for him next . . . This sounds like a martyr thing. I don't mean it that way. But I think I'd rather do the time myself.”

  “No one's going to prison,” Deborah said. “Simon is going to see to that.”

  China held the map open on her lap and looked at it as if checking their route. But she said tentatively, “He's nothing like . . . He's very different . . . I wouldn't ever have thought . . .” She stopped altogether. Then, “He seems very nice, Deborah.”

  Deborah glanced at her and completed her thought. “But he's nothing like Tommy, is he?”

  “Not in any way. You seem . . . I don't know . . . less free with him? Less free, anyway, than you were with Tommy. I remember how you laughed with Tommy. And had adventures together. And acted wild. Somehow I don't see you doing that with Simon.”

  “No?” Deborah smiled, but it was forced. There was plain truth in what her friend was saying—her relationship with Simon couldn't have been more different to her time with Tommy—but somehow China's observation felt like a criticism of her husband, and that criticism put her in the position of wanting to defend him, a sensation she didn't like. “Perhaps that's because you're seeing us in the midst of something serious just now.”

  “I don't think that's it,” China said. “Like you said, he's different from Tommy. Maybe it's because he's . . . you know. His leg? He's more serious about life because of that?”

  “Perhaps it's just that he has more to be serious about.” Deborah knew this wasn't necessarily true: As a homicide detective, Tommy had professional concerns that far outweighed Simon's. But she sought a way to explain her husband to her friend, a way to allow her to see that loving a man who dwelt almost entirely within his own head wasn't that terribly different to loving a man who was outspoken, passionate, and thoroughly involved in life. It's because Tommy can afford to be those things, Deborah wanted to tell her in defence of her husband. Not because he's wealthy but because he's simply who he is. And who he is is sure, in ways that other
men aren't.

  “His handicap, you mean?” China said after a moment.

  “What?”

  “What Simon has to be more serious about.”

  “I never actually think about his handicap,” Deborah told her. She kept her gaze on the road so her friend couldn't read her face for the message that said this was a lie.

  “Ah. Well. Are you happy with him?”

  “Very.”

  “Well then, lucky you.” China gave her attention back to the map. “Straight across at the intersection,” she said abruptly. “Then right at the one after that.”

  She guided them to the north end of the island, an area completely unlike the parishes that held Le Reposoir and St. Peter Port. The granite cliffs of the south end of Guernsey gave way on the north to dunes. A sandy coast replaced the steep and wooded descent to bays, and where vegetation protected the land from the wind, it was marram grass and bindweed that grew on the mobile dunes, red fescue and sea spurge where the dunes were fixed.

  Their route took them along the south end of Le Grand Havre, a vast open bay where small boats lay protected on the shore for the winter. On one side of this section of the water, the humble white cottages of Le Picquerel lined a road that veered west to the collection of bays that defined the low-lying part of Guernsey. On the other side, La Garenne forked to the left, a route named for the rabbit warrens that had at one time housed the island's chief delicacy. It was a thin strip of pavement that followed the eastern swoop of Le Grand Havre.

  Where La Garenne curved with the coastline, they found Anaïs Abbott's house. It stood on a large piece of land walled off from the road by the same grey granodiorite blocks that had been used in the construction of the building itself. An expansive garden had been planted in front and a path wound through it to the house's front door. Anaïs Abbott was standing there, arms crossed beneath her breasts. She was in conversation with a briefcase-carrying balding man who appeared to be having difficulty keeping his eyes focused above the level of her neck.

  As Deborah parked on the verge across the lane from the house, the man extended his hand to Anaïs. They shook in conclusion of some sort of deal, and he came down the stone path between the hebe and the lavender. Anaïs watched him from the step and, as his car was parked just in front of Deborah's, she saw her next two visitors as they alighted from the Escort. Her body stiffened visibly and her expression—which had been soft and earnest in the presence of the man—altered, her eyes narrowing with swift calculation as Deborah and China came up the path towards her.