by Jo Bannister
He took her hand and by now was unsurprised by the strength of her grip. It went with the height, the voice and the short, ruthlessly styled hair, somewhere between brown and blonde and flecked with grey. She might have been forty, and she didn't dye the grey hairs because she didn't care who knew. Deacon found that reassuring in a woman. It spoke of the triumph of confidence over anxiety, of someone not so much growing older as growing up.
He realised he was still holding her hand and dropped it abruptly. God knows what kind of a rube she took him for. He'd heard of a thing called a practised smile and tried for that; but he hadn't had enough practice so it came over as a leer. ‘Anything for SOCA, Inspector.’
All the way up the stairs, and there were four flights, he was fighting the urge to make the obvious comment. She must have heard it so often. She must be ready to deck anyone who thought it was original and clever and too good to keep to himself. And he almost made it. But the silence stretched, and you have to say something, and Deacon was never any good at small talk. As he opened his door for her he did the crocodile smile again and said, ‘And are you, Inspector? Serious and organised?’
Somehow she refrained from kicking his shin. But he heard the disappointed sigh. ‘Not particularly,’ she said. ‘And hardly at all.’
‘Me neither,’ admitted Deacon, though she might have guessed from the state of his in-tray. Not because it was over-flowing: it wasn't. The papers in it were surprisingly tidy, either sorted into files or held together with bulldog clips. What was significant about Deacon's in-tray was not its contents but that it balanced precariously on top of four or five others in a stack half a metre high, like ancient cities built each on the ruins of the last. Tel Deacon. Detective Sergeant Voss, who kept the habitation level in order, declined responsibility for excavating the foundations, some of which had been here longer than he had. He said it was a Health & Safety issue and would require pit-props.
Deacon moved another pile of papers onto the floor to enable his visitor to sit. Though it wasn't a huge office it would have been big enough for anyone else. But Jack Deacon took up a lot of space, physically – he was both tall and heavy – and also psychologically. When he walked into a room he filled it. He had the same kind of presence as a bull or a bear – indeed, colleagues referred to him, with varying degrees of affection, as The Grizzly. Even when he wasn't doing anything, he wore the potential for explosive action like a cloak. Riotous assemblies quietened down when he walked past. Having fists the size of butchers’ hams didn't hurt.
‘Sorry,’ he said belatedly. ‘Around here, that's what passes for wit.’
She grinned at that. ‘Here, and every other police station I've been in this last twelve months.’
To be fair, she wasn't a beauty, probably wasn't even as a girl. Perhaps she was handsome; perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she was attractive, because attractiveness goes beyond appearance and speaks also of the personality, the intellect, even the soul. Deacon couldn't put his finger on what it was but – like the joke – he knew he wasn't the first man to spot it.
He gave himself a mental shake. This wasn't why either of them was here. ‘So how can I help, Inspector Hyde?’
‘This is a courtesy call,’ she said, ‘in a way. I'm after one of your local villains and it seemed only polite to let you know. And also…’ And there she stopped.
Deacon frowned. ‘What?’
The strong lines of Alix Hyde's face twisted momentarily in a gargoyle grimace. ‘It might be awkward. You know the man.’
‘I should hope I do,’ grunted Deacon. ‘I should hope I know every villain within a thirty mile radius who's big enough for SOCA to have got wind of.’
‘Yes, of course.’ But there was something she wasn't saying, something she felt the need to be tactful about. ‘I mean personally. Don't read any more into this, and don't think I'm reading any more into it, but you personally know him personally. I wanted to be sure that wasn't going to be a problem.’
Now Deacon knew what she was pussy-footing around. ‘You're talking about Terry Walsh.’
She nodded. ‘I'm told – and I may have been told wrong -you were friends once.’
For a moment Deacon didn't react, left her guessing. Then he sniffed disparagingly. ‘You weren't told wrong. You may have been misled. I knew him when we were boys. His family lived in the next street to us. We went to the same school, played for the same football team – it was that sort of friendship. Long but not particularly close. I moved down here – what? – ten years ago now. A few years later Terry bought a site up on the Firestone Cliffs and built that damn mansion of his. I think he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.’
‘He's done well for himself,’ said Inspector Hyde guardedly.
Deacon gave a sharkish grin, at once more honest and more attractive than his Cary Grant impression. ‘No, Inspector, Vve done well for myself. Terry has made more money, but he hasn't done it legally. There's a difference.’
She nodded appreciatively. ‘Indeed there is. About eight years, with good behaviour. I take it, then, you've no problem with me going after him?’
‘Of course I haven't,’ he assured her. ‘We could have been a lot better friends and I'd still help you bust him if the evidence was there.’
Alix Hyde raised an eyebrow. ‘You're saying it isn't?’
‘I'm saying Terry Walsh is a clever man, and a careful man. I know he didn't make that kind of money by diligent endeavour. A lot of police officers have reached the same conclusion over the years, but none of us has been able to bring him down. I'm not saying you won't, and I'm certainly not saying you shouldn't try, but don't think it'll be easy. Terry came from nowhere with nothing. Even then he could outsmart just about anyone else. Imagine how much better he is after thirty years’ practice. Good luck to you, Inspector -you'll need it.’
She rocked a broad, perfectly manicured hand. ‘Well – I have some ideas about that. This isn't just housekeeping. I didn't get a memo from Head Office telling me it was time someone had another go at Terry Walsh. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I had a good chance of getting him. I think this time he's going down. But I would appreciate your support.’
‘You have it,’ replied Deacon, a shade shortly. She hadn't exactly asked if he meant to shield Walsh, but clearly that had been her worry. Deacon wasn't new to this job, and he hadn't been a starry-eyed idealist when he was. He knew that police officers were flawed individuals like everyone else and that things like that happened. And he didn't know Alix Hyde and she didn't know him: she was entitled to wonder if he could be trusted. It still felt like an insult.
‘I wasn't expecting anything different,’ she said. ‘Before I talked to you I talked to people about you. At Division, and other places. A lot of them thought I was crazy targeting Walsh, but none of them thought I'd have a problem with you.’ And then, just as he started to blossom in the warmth of the compliment, she added in an undertone: ‘At least, not in that way.’
Deacon blinked. ‘What way, then?’
Alix Hyde laughed out loud. ‘Superintendent, you don't need me to tell you what kind of a reputation you've got at Division. I assumed you'd spent the last ten years cultivating it.’
The slow, bashful grin made him look like a schoolboy caught out in a bit of surreptitious intelligence. ‘I can't imagine what you mean,’ he lied.
She didn't elaborate. There really was no need. Both of them knew that Detective Superintendent Deacon's superiors had him down as a hard, difficult, occasionally unpredictable, wholly ungracious man who – regrettably enough – was very good at his job. And both of them knew that Deacon would be content with that on his tombstone.
Hyde sat back in her chair. ‘Fine. Well, there's one more thing to settle, and I've one more favour to ask you. How closely do you want me to keep you informed as the inquiry proceeds? And, can you spare someone to help me?’
Mercurial was not a word commonly associated with Jack Deacon. He was a
big, heavy man now well embarked on middle-age, and he tended both to move and to think ponderously. Except in absolute need, when he could still move like the county-class rugby player he once was and think with both speed and precision. By the time she'd finished the questions he knew the answers, and the same answer served for both. ‘I've got just the man for you. Charlie Voss, my sergeant. He's smart and he's sharp, he knows this town inside out, and he's as straight as a die.’
What he thought and didn't add was, And he'll keep me as closely informed as if it was me doing your legwork.
CHAPTER THREE
Daniel walked home through the park. A scant three days before the winter solstice – and coincidentally, or possibly not, his birthday – the light had gone from the afternoon by three o'clock and by four it was dusk. Street lamps glimmered like a string of beads along the Promenade, and on the shore the three black fingers of the netting-sheds were silhouetted against an English Channel bright with moontrack. The one nearest the old pier was his home.
From the outside, all that distinguished it from its sisters were the gallery he'd built at upper-storey level and sometimes a couple of milk-bottles waiting politely at the foot of the iron steps. But inside he'd got as much space and comfort as a single man needs, and when he took his telescope out onto the gallery the night sky was a perfect dome above him.
But though it was almost dark enough for astronomy he had something to do first. He walked on another hundred yards, then turned left up Fisher Hill and left again into Shack Lane.
When he first came here from Nottingham three years ago, Shack Lane was about as salubrious as the name. There were boarded-up windows and lock-up garages, and an Anglo-Chinese takeaway whose tour-de-force was sweet-and-sour chips. But about the same time he was moving into the netting-shed – and it was still a netting-shed then, complete with ancient lobster-pots in the boathouse underneath – still unknown to him, Brodie Farrell was setting up her new business round the corner.
It was two rooms and a broken window, and the day she went to look at it someone had been sick on the step. But it was central, it was cheap, and it was just enough off the beaten track to be discreet, which mattered because some of her clients would be shy of seeking her out.
She called it Looking For Something? She'd had it inscribed in dull gold lettering on a classy slab of slate, painted the new front door a glossy burgundy, replaced the broken glass in the boxy little bay-window and hung burgundy velvet curtains to protect her callers’ privacy. Word raced up Fisher Hill that she was a high-class prostitute, and immediately property prices began to climb.
Once upon a time the misunderstanding would have caused her deep embarrassment. But Brodie Farrell wasn't at all the woman now that she'd been a few years ago, and her business was a big part of why. Five years ago she was a wife and mother who hadn't gone out to work since the birth of her child. Four and a half years ago her husband left her for a librarian, and at first she didn't know how she'd survive. After she worked it out, she vowed never to be that dependent on anyone ever again, and she put her divorce settlement into buying a flat for herself and Paddy and setting up a business to maintain them.
Before she married John Farrell she worked for him. As he was a solicitor, a lot of her time was spent on research. She was very good at it. John swore she could get information out of a paving-slab. Maybe she couldn't do that, but if it was recorded anywhere, officially or unofficially, if mention of it had ever been committed to print, or if someone remembered his uncle saying something about it fifteen years ago, Brodie Farrell would run it to ground. She could find almost anything for almost anyone. She'd always thought she could make a living doing it. Looking For Something? had proved her right.
Growing success meant that the business had really outgrown her office. But she was reluctant to leave a spot where she was just the right degree of known. She was trying to buy the building behind, to expand out that way. Three years ago she could have had either of the adjoining properties for a song, but even after the nature of her trade was better understood her presence had had a knock-on effect. One was bought by a jewellery designer, the other by a financial adviser. Today Shack Lane was an up-and-coming address.
Perhaps he was biased, but Daniel thought the burgundy livery and slate shingle, and the door that remained closed until you rang the bell and – if it suited her – she answered, still made Looking For Something? a cut above its neighbours.
It had taken him fifteen minutes to walk here from the school. With every step he'd felt the crazy happiness within him swell until breathing became an effort. He didn't care, would have continued on his hands and knees if need be. This was a day he'd despaired of seeing. Maybe it wasn't everyone's idea of a victory, being able to return to full-time, nose-to-the-grindstone, proverbially stressful work, but it was Daniel's. And maybe no one else he knew would understand that, but Brodie would. Understand what it took to get here; understand what it meant to him. Understand and rejoice with him. He couldn't wait to tell her. He had his hands fisted in his pockets, physically restraining himself from shouting it through the letterbox.
He couldn't tell from the street if she was in, or if she was alone. That wasn't accidental: she'd planned it that way. There was no glass in the door for a shadow to fall on, so the first indication was the lock turning. Pleasure made him grin like an idiot. It wasn't that his news was urgent, or even important except to him. But everyone needs someone to share their triumphs and disasters with, and that was one of the things Daniel and Brodie did for one another. They could talk about their achievements without embarrassment. They could be honest about their fears.
So when she opened the door what Brodie Farrell saw was a grin wearing Daniel's glasses. It was a sufficiently diverting sight to distract her from her worries, and she glanced up and down the street in search of an explanation.
‘I've got something to tell you,’ he confided happily, his face aglow.
‘You'd better come in then.’ She stood back to let him pass and closed the door behind them.
‘You're not too busy?’ Even today he couldn't shrug off the habit of consideration.
‘Busy beating my head on a brick wall,’ Brodie replied grimly. ‘I could do with cheering up.’
And when he looked again it was obvious she wasn't having a good day. In fact, now he thought about it he suspected she hadn't had much of a week. She'd been quiet and withdrawn for at least that long, the spring gone from her step and the colour from her cheek, and if he hadn't had the meeting with Des Chalmers on his mind he'd have noticed before now. She didn't look well, and she hadn't for a while.
The reason for his visit side-lined, Daniel peered anxiously into her face, noting the tiredness in her dark eyes, the fine worry-lines around them, the pallor of her skin against the extravagant cloud of curly black hair. ‘Brodie, what's the matter? What's happened?’
‘Nothing's happened,’ she said, waving him to the compact sofa, herself slipping into the generous chair behind her desk. ‘At least…’
She was five years older than him. Compared with all the other complications in their relationship it was a mere bagatelle. Besides which, Daniel was oddly ageless. Sometimes he was offered cheap fares and asked for his student pass; or you could look into his eyes and glimpse millennia. ‘Come on,’ he said softly, ‘tell your Uncle Daniel.’
She managed a smile at that. ‘I've got a problem.’
‘A big problem or a little problem?’
She considered. ‘It's a little problem now. But there's every reason to expect it's going to grow.’
In spite of that, he never saw it coming. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn't this. Brodie watched those mild, weak, infinite eyes and knew he had no idea what she was trying to say. For an intelligent man he could be infuriatingly dense at times. Finally she despaired of dropping hints, blew out a gusty sigh and slapped it on the desk between them. ‘I'm pregnant, Daniel. I'm going to have a baby.’
For lo
ng seconds his expression didn't change. As if she'd suddenly switched into Urdu, or produced three fish-heads and started juggling to the strains of a rugby song, he was waiting for normal service to be resumed.
And she knew how he felt, because she'd felt very much the same way when the doctor – following a check-up for something entirely different – dropped his casual bombshell. She hadn't known she was pregnant. She hadn't known she might be pregnant. She hadn't wanted another child. And she'd just sat staring at him, waiting for him to slap his thigh and admit he was joking. When he didn't, she imagined she looked pretty much like Daniel looked now.
‘Daniel?’ she said softly. ‘Did you hear me?’
He blinked. He swallowed. ‘I think so,’ he said carefully. His voice was flat with shock. ‘You said you're going to have…?’
‘A baby, that's right. You know, a little person? Bald, pink, no sense of responsibility at either end? A baby.’
Still he didn't know what to say. Nothing in her manner suggested that the usual congratulations would be in order. ‘Jack's?’
It would probably have been better to stick with the shocked silence. Anger sparked in her eyes like firelight on diamonds. ‘Of course it's Jack's. What do you think – I was seeing someone behind his back?’
‘I thought you two were finished,’ Daniel mumbled lamely. ‘I thought it was over between you.’
‘It is over,’ agreed Brodie sharply. 'Now. It wasn't when this baby played contraception roulette and won, three and a half months ago.’
‘Then…you didn't mean…’
‘No, Daniel,’ she said heavily. ‘Oddly enough, with a six-year-old daughter and a one-woman business, and a relationship that was looking rocky even before it hit the rocks, I never actually said to myself, “What I really need right now is a baby!” It just happened. It shouldn't have done. I wasn't trusting to luck. I suppose, even something that's 99 per cent effective still has a failure rate.’
