A Place of Hiding

by Elizabeth George

  Was that too much to hope and plan for? Margaret certainly didn't think so. But the last few days had shown her that her every attempt to smooth the way for Adrian, her every intercession on his behalf, the excuses she'd made for everything from sleepwalking to inadequate bowel control were just so many pearls in a food trough frequented by swine.

  Very well, she thought. So be it. But she would not leave Guernsey till she'd sorted him out about one thing. Evasions were fine. Looked at one way, they could even be construed as a pleasing sign of a long-delayed adulthood. But outright lies were unacceptable, now and always. For lies were the stuff of the terminally weak-minded.

  She saw now that Adrian had probably been lying to her most of his life, both by action and by implication. But she'd been so caught up in her efforts to keep him away from the malign influence of his father that she'd accepted his version of every event in which he'd got caught up: from the supposedly accidental drowning of his puppy the night before her second marriage to the recent reason for his engagement's termination.

  That he was still lying to her was something about which Margaret had little doubt. And this International Access business spoke of the greatest untruth he'd yet delivered.

  So she said, “He sent you that money, didn't he? Months ago. What I'm wondering is what you spent it on.”

  Unsurprisingly, Adrian replied with “What are you talking about?” He sounded indifferent. No. He actually sounded bored.

  “Betting, was it? Card playing? Idiotic stock market gambles? I know there's no International Access because you haven't left the house in more than a year for anything other than visiting your father or seeing Carmel. But perhaps that's it. Did you spend it on Carmel? Did you buy her a car? Jewellery? A house?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Of course. That's exactly what I did. She agreed to marry me, and it must have been because I laid on the dosh like jelly on toast.”

  “I'm not joking about this,” Margaret said. “You've lied about asking your father for money, you've lied about Carmel and her involvement with your father, you've allowed me to believe that your engagement ended because you wanted ‘different things' from the woman who'd previously agreed to marry you . . . Exactly when haven't you lied?”

  He glanced her way. “What difference does it make?”

  “What difference does what make?”

  “Truth or lies. You see only what you want to see. I just make that easier for you.” He barreled past a minivan that was trundling along ahead of them. He sat on the horn as they overtook it and regained their own lane mere inches—it seemed—from an oncoming bus.

  “How on earth can you say that?” Margaret demanded. “I've spent the better part of my life—”

  “Living mine.”

  “That is not the case. I've been involved, as any mother would be. I've been concerned.”

  “To make sure things went your way.”

  “And,” Margaret ventured onward, determined that Adrian would not direct the course of their conversation, “the gratitude I've received for my effort has all come in the form of outright falsehoods. Which is unacceptable. I deserve and demand nothing less than the truth. I mean to have it this instant.”

  “Because you're owed it?”

  “That's right.”

  “Of course. But not because you're naturally interested.”

  “How dare you say that! I came here for you. I exposed myself to the absolute agony of my memories of that marriage—”

  “Oh please,” he scoffed.

  “—because of you. To make sure you got what you deserved from your father's will because I knew he'd do anything he could to keep it from you. That was the only way he had left to punish me.”

  “And why would he be interested in punishing you?”

  “Because he believed that I'd won. Because he couldn't cope with losing.”

  “Won what?”

  “Won you. I kept you from him for your own good, but he couldn't see that. He could see it only as my act of vengeance because to see it any other way would have meant that he'd have to look at his life and assess the effect it might have had on his only son had I allowed you to be exposed to it. And he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to look. So he blamed me for keeping you apart.”

  “Which you never intended to do, of course,” Adrian pointed out sardonically.

  “Of course I intended it. What would you have had me do? A string of lovers. A string of mistresses when he was married to JoAnna. God only knows what else. Orgies, probably. Drugs. Drinking. Necrophilia and bestiality for all I know. Yes, I protected you from that. I'd do it all again. I was right to do it.”

  “Which is why I owe you,” Adrian said. “I get the picture. So tell me”—he glanced at her as they paused to filter into the traffic at an intersection which would direct them towards the airport—“what is it exactly that you want to know?”

  “What happened to his money? Not the money that bought all the things that were put into Ruth's name, but the other money, the money he kept, because he must have kept a mountain of it. He couldn't have had his little flings and kept a woman as high-maintenance as Anaïs Abbott on cash that Ruth doled out to him. She's far too censorious to be financing his mistress's lifestyle anyway. So what in God's name happened to his money? He either gave it to you already or it's hidden somewhere and the only way I will know whether I ought to continue to pursue this is if you tell me the truth. Did he give you money?”

  “Don't pursue it” was his laconic reply. They were coming up to the airport, where a plane was making its approach to touch down, presumably the same plane that would fuel up and, within the hour, take Margaret back to England. Adrian turned in along the lane to the terminal and came to stop in front of it rather than parking in one of the bays across the way. “Let it go,” he said.

  She tried to read his face. “Does that mean . . . ?”

  “It means what it means,” he said. “The money's gone. You won't find it. Don't try.”

  “How do you . . . He gave it to you, then? You've had it all along? But if that's the case, why haven't you said . . . ? Adrian, I want the truth for once.”

  “You're wasting your time,” he said. “And that's the truth.”

  He shoved open his car door and went to the back of the Range Rover. He opened the back of it and the cold air rushed in as he pulled her suitcases out and dumped them with no notable ceremony on the kerb. He came round to her door. It seemed their conversation was finished.

  Margaret got out, drawing her coat more closely round her. Here in this exposed area of the island, a chill wind was gusting. It would ease her flight back to England, she hoped. In time, it would do the same for her son. She did know that about Adrian despite what he seemed to think about the situation and despite how he was acting at the moment. He would be back. It was the way of the world in which they lived, the world she had created for both of them.

  She said, “When are you coming home?”

  “That's not your concern, Mother.” He fished out his cigarettes and took five tries to light one in the wind. Anyone else would have given up after the second match went out, but not her son. He was, in at least this way, so like his mother.

  She said, “Adrian, I'm fast running out of patience with you.”

  “Go home,” he told her. “You shouldn't have come.”

  “What exactly are you planning to do, then? If you're not coming home with me.”

  He smiled without pleasure before striding round to his side of the car. He spoke to her over its bonnet. “Believe me, I'll think of something,” he said.

  St. James parted with Deborah as they climbed the slope from the car park towards the hotel. She'd been thoughtful all the way back from Le Reposoir. She'd driven the route with her usual care, but he could tell that her mind wasn't on the traffic or even on the direction they were traveling. He knew she was thinking about her proffered explanation to a priceless painting's being cached in a prehistoric, stone-li
ned mound of earth. He certainly couldn't fault her for that. He was thinking of her explanation as well, simply because he couldn't discount it. He knew that just as her predilection for seeing the good in all people might lead her to ignore basic truths about them, so could his penchant for distrusting everyone lead him to see things as they were not. So neither of them spoke on the drive back to St. Peter Port. It was only as they approached the hotel's front steps that Deborah turned to him as if she'd reached some sort of decision.

  “I won't come in just yet. I'll have a walk first.”

  He hesitated before replying. He knew the peril of saying the wrong thing. But he also knew the greater peril of not saying anything in a situation in which Deborah knew more than she ought to know as a party who was not disinterested.

  He said, “Where are you going? Wouldn't you rather have a drink? A cup of tea or something?”

  Her expression altered round the eyes. She knew what he was really saying despite his efforts to pretend otherwise. She said, “Perhaps I need an armed guard, Simon.”

  “Deborah . . .”

  She said, “I'll be back soon enough,” and headed off, not in the direction they had come but down towards Smith Street, which led to the High Street and the harbour beyond.

  He could do nothing but let her go, admitting as he did so that he knew no better than she at this moment what the truth was about the death of Guy Brouard. All he had were suspicions, which she appeared to be bound and determined not to share.

  Upon entering the hotel, he heard his name called and saw the receptionist standing behind the counter with a slip of paper extended towards him. “Message from London,” she told him as she gave him the paper as well as his room key. He saw that she'd written “Super Linley” on a message chit in apparent reference to his friend's position at New Scotland Yard but nonetheless looking like a characterisation that would no doubt have amused the acting superintendent, despite the misspelling of his name. “He says to get a mobile phone,” she added meaningfully.

  Up in the room, St. James didn't return Lynley's call at once. Instead, he went to the desk beneath the window and punched in a different number.

  In California, Jim Ward was engaged in a “meeting of the partners,” St. James was told when the call went through. Alas, the meeting was being held not in the office but at the Ritz Carlton hotel. “On the coast,” he was told with some importance by a woman who'd identified herself as “Southby, Strange, Willow, and Ward. Crystal speaking.”

  “They're all uncommunico,” she added. “But I could take a message.”

  St. James didn't have time to wait for a message to get through to the architect, so he asked the young woman—who seemed to be munching on celery sticks—if she could help him.

  “Do what I can,” she said cheerfully. “I'm studying to be an architect myself.”

  Good fortune looked down on him when he asked her about the plans which Jim Ward had sent to Guernsey. It hadn't been that long ago that the documents had left the offices of Southby, Strange, Willow, and Ward, and as it so happened, Crystal herself was in charge of all post, UPS, FedEx, DHL, and even Internet transmittals of drawings. Since this particular situation had differed so radically from their usual procedure, she remembered it all and would be only too happy to explain it to him . . . if he could wait just a moment “'cause the other line is ringing.”

  He waited, and in due course her cheerful voice came back on the line. In the normal way things were done, she told him, the plans would have gone overseas via the Net to another architect, who'd carry the project on from there. But in this case, the plans were just samples of Mr. Ward's work and there was no rush to get them there. So she packaged them “like always” and handed them over to an attorney who showed up to claim them. That, she'd discovered, was an arrangement that had been made between Mr. Ward and the client overseas.

  “A Mr. Kiefer?” St. James asked. “Mr. William Kiefer? Was that who came for them?”

  She couldn't remember the name, Crystal said. But she didn't think it was Kiefer. Although . . . wait. Come to think of it, she didn't recall the guy's giving a name at all. He just said he was there to pick up the plans that were going to Guernsey so she'd handed them over.

  “They got there, di'n't they?” she asked with some concern.

  They certainly had.

  How had they been packaged? St. James asked.

  Regular way, she told him. Oversize mailing tube of heavy cardboard. “It didn't get wrecked on the way, did it?” she asked with equal concern.

  Not in the way she was thinking, St. James said. He thanked Crystal and rang off thoughtfully. He punched in the next number and had immediate success when he asked for William Kiefer: In less than thirty seconds, the California attorney came on the line.

  He disputed Crystal's version of events. He hadn't sent someone to pick up the architectural drawings at all, he said. Mr. Brouard had told him explicitly that the plans would be delivered to his office by someone from the architectural firm when they were ready. At that point, he was to make arrangements for the couriers to carry the plans from California to Guernsey. That's what happened and that's what he did.

  “Do you recall the person who delivered the plans from the architect, then?” St. James asked.

  “I didn't see him. Or her. Or whoever it was,” Kiefer answered. “The person just left the plans with our secretary. I got them when I came back from lunch. They were packed up, labeled, and ready to go. But she might remember . . . Hold on a minute, will you?”

  It was more than a minute during which St. James was entertained by piped music: Neil Diamond misusing the English language in the cause of maintaining a dreadful rhyme scheme. When the phone line crackled to life again, St. James found himself talking to one Cheryl Bennett.

  The person who brought the architectural plans to Mr. Kiefer's office was a man, she told St. James. And to the question of whether she remembered anything particular about him, she giggled. “Definitely. You hardly ever see them in Orange County.”

  “Them?”

  “Rastas.” The man who brought the plans was a Caribbean type, she revealed. “Dreads down to his you-know-what. Sandals, cut-offs, and a Hawaiian shirt. Pretty odd-looking for an architect, I thought. But maybe he just did their deliveries or something.”

  She hadn't gotten his name, she concluded. They didn't talk. He had headphones on and was listening to music. He reminded her of Bob Marley.

  St. James thanked Cheryl Bennett and soon rang off.

  He walked to the window and studied its view of St. Peter Port. He thought about what she had said and what it all might mean. Upon reflection, there was only one possible conclusion to be reached: Nothing they'd learned so far was anything like what it appeared to be.

  Chapter 28

  SIMON'S DISTRUST WAS A spur to Deborah, and an additional spur was the fact that he would probably justify that distrust by telling himself it was owing to her not delivering that Nazi ring to the local police on his timeline. Yet his current doubts were not a reflection of the real situation. The truth was that Simon distrusted her because he always distrusted her. This was his reflex reaction to anything that came up which asked her for a bout of adult thinking, of which he seemed to believe her incapable. And that reaction was itself the bane of their entire relationship, the outcome of her having married a man who'd once acted in the role of second parent. He didn't always return to that role in moments of conflict. But the galling fact that he fell back upon it at all—ever—was enough to encourage her to take whatever action he most didn't want her to take.

  This was why she went to the Queen Margaret Apartments when she could have window-shopped on the High Street, climbed the slope to Candie Gardens, walked out to Castle Cornet, or browsed in the jewellery shops tucked away in the Commercial Arcade. But she got no results from her visit to Clifton Street. So she dropped down the steps that rose from the market precinct below and told herself that she wasn't searching for
China, and even if she was, what did it matter? They were old friends and China would be waiting to be reassured that the situation in which she and her brother found themselves was well on its way to being resolved.

  Deborah did want to offer her that reassurance. It was the least she could do.

  China wasn't in the old market at the base of the steps, and she wasn't in the food shop where Deborah had come upon both of the Rivers earlier. It was only when Deborah gave up entirely on the thought of finding her friend that she located her as she herself was turning the corner from the High Street into Smith Street.

  She began ascending the slope, resigned to returning to the hotel. She paused to buy a newspaper from a vendor, and as she was tucking her purse back into her shoulder bag, she caught a glimpse of China halfway up the hill, stepping out of a shop and heading farther upwards, towards the point where Smith Street fanned out at its apex, creating a plaza that accommodated the World War I memorial.

  Deborah called out her friend's name. China turned and scanned the pedestrians who were also heading upwards, well-dressed businessmen and -women at the end of their working day in the many banks below. She lifted her hand in greeting and waited for Deborah to join her.

  “How's it going?” she asked when Deborah got close enough to hear her speak. “Anything?”

  Deborah said, “We don't quite know.” And then to direct their conversation into another area, one which didn't put her at risk of wanting to offer specifics in the cause of reassurance, she said, “What're you doing?”

  “Candy,” she said.

  Deborah thought at first of the gardens, which made little sense since China was nowhere near them. But then her mind did the little sidestep that she'd learned to do while she was in America, making a quick translation of China's version of English into her own. She said, “Oh. Candy.”