Flawed

by Jo Bannister

  Daniel had no answer. If Adam Selkirk was telling the truth, Marianne was lying – and he didn't know the difference.

  Deacon said, ‘Where did she headbutt you?’

  Selkirk replied without thinking. ‘In the kitchen.’

  ‘I mean, where on your body? Your face?’

  The solicitor shook his head. ‘I'm a lot taller than Marianne, Superintendent. She got me in the chest.’

  ‘Show me.’

  He pulled down his tie, undid a few buttons. His sternum was stained every colour between yellow and black. Every colour. Some of the bruises were old.

  Deacon considered for only a moment longer. Then he nodded. ‘I don't know if you're telling the truth, Mr Selkirk. Your wife could have done that attempting to defend herself. But I'm not willing to wager your son's safety on my guessing right. We need to find them, and then we'll sort out who did what to who. Daniel – where did you take them?’

  Daniel felt every eye in the room coming round to him, felt the weight of their expectation, knew as a dull ache in the pit of his belly that he was about to draw to himself all the hostility that had been going Selkirk's way. It wouldn't be the first time and it didn't have to matter, there were higher priorities than making this easy for him, but he took a moment to recognise the irony. For a mild and unambitious man, it was remarkable how often he found himself being struck off people's Christmas lists.

  ‘Jack – I'm sorry, but it's not good enough. I think he's lying. I think if he knows where to find them he'll hurt them again. Maybe this time he'll do worse than hurt them.’

  Deacon frowned. ‘You saw his chest. He's not Tarzan – that isn't a self-inflicted injury.’

  ‘But what does it prove?’ demanded Daniel. ‘That he was involved in some kind of violence. He took blows to the chest. Look at him, Jack, look at the size of him! He's bigger than you. If he was beating his wife, who's my size, or his son, who's half my size, don't you think they'd try to defend themselves? Pick something up and swing it at him? A saucepan, maybe. He says this happened in the kitchen. If Marianne swung at him with the saucepan to keep him off Noah, and he grabbed her arms and hit her in the face, wouldn't the physical evidence be the same? And isn't it a damn sight more likely that it happened that way?’

  Pursing his lips, Deacon looked again at Selkirk. Then at Daniel. Short of giving them pistols and standing them back to back, he couldn't think of a way of deciding who was right. And it mattered. If he guessed wrong, someone was going to suffer. If Daniel was right, he was about to take an abusive husband to Marianne Selkirk's last refuge. If Selkirk was telling the truth, he was leaving Noah with a violently unstable mother.

  Alix Hyde had said nothing since the confrontation began. Her primary concern was still nailing Terry Walsh, and drawing together those strands of evidence that would help her do it. She had a vested interest in not believing Adam Selkirk. If he was telling the truth he was an honourable man doing his best in a difficult situation and she'd lost her hold on him. If Daniel Hood was right he was a vicious bully and it didn't matter if he gave Terry Walsh an alibi because no one would believe him.

  It occurred to her that the best thing that could happen was if Selkirk put his wife in hospital. Nothing too serious – a broken nose, a broken wrist, something that would heal quickly. But something of which a record would remain.

  She said quietly, ‘If we don't know who to believe, we have to assume that Noah could be in danger right now. Mr Hood, you'll have to tell us where they are. If they need protecting, we'll protect them.’

  ‘How?’ cried Daniel. ‘How will you protect them? Will you keep them under twenty-four-hour guard for the foreseeable future? Of course you won't, it'd cost a fortune. And all he needs is ten minutes alone with them. In ten minutes he could kill them both.’

  ‘That's not your responsibility,’ said DI Hyde firmly. ‘Tell us where they are, and we'll take it from there.’

  ‘Of course it's my responsibility – he won't find them without my help! I promised I wouldn't tell him where she is. I won't break that promise just because he spins a plausible yarn.’

  ‘And if it isn't just a yarn?’ asked Deacon, his voice low.

  ‘Then…’ It was no good – there was no safe default. The consequences of getting this wrong were equally serious whether Selkirk was lying or telling the truth. The only question for Daniel was whether he trusted someone else's judgement better than his own. ‘I can't do it, Jack. I don't believe him, and I won't let him hurt them again. I said I'd keep them safe.’ He sounded close to tears.

  ‘But it isn't your call,’ insisted Hyde. ‘It may have escaped your notice but this is a police station. This is now a police matter. You have information we need to carry out our duties: failing to divulge it amounts to obstruction, which is an offence. You tell me what I want to know, Mr Hood, or you'll be the one facing charges.’

  If she'd asked, Deacon could have told her that was not the best approach with Daniel. He might look as if a stiff breeze would bend him: in fact there was a vein of adamant running up his spine. The more he was pushed, the more he resisted. It was one of those nexus points where his virtues tipped over into vices. Brodie described it as moral courage: Deacon considered him an obstinate little shit. And both of them were right.

  Daniel's gaze wandered off round the ceiling as if seeking divine guidance. ‘Let me think about that. If I don't do what you want I could end up in front of the magistrates. If I do, Marianne Selkirk could end up in surgery. Gee,’ he said, the irony thick enough by then that even those who didn't know him recognised it, ‘talk about the horns of a dilemma!’

  Alix Hyde had been a police officer for almost twenty years. She'd had every possible insult, and things worse than insults, flung at her, and learnt to dodge most of them and brush off those she couldn't. She took it as a kind of compliment when she'd managed to rattle someone enough to lose his cool. This was different. She hadn't frightened Daniel Hood, she hadn't even unsettled him. She'd threatened him with the full force of the law, and it was in his voice and in the mild grey eyes behind his bottle-bottom glasses that he found both her and her threat contemptible. She felt herself blushing as she never did.

  Daniel didn't think she was bluffing, he just didn't care. Some principles are worth defending even if there's a price to be paid. He'd told Marianne Selkirk that he wouldn't reveal her whereabouts, and nothing Detective Inspector Hyde could do to him would make him break his word.

  Deacon had known Daniel Hood for a couple of years now. He knew that once he got on his high horse, nothing short of dynamite would shift him. ‘How about you tell me, and we don't tell Mr Selkirk until I've had a chance to talk to his wife?’

  That was enough to make Daniel hesitate. But only for a moment. ‘Jack, don't take this the wrong way. But you're a police officer. You're a professional in a professional organisation. You have superiors. If they tell you to do something, you have to do it. Whether or not you want to, whether or not you believe it's the right thing. If word comes from Division that you're to tell this man where his wife's hiding, either you'll do it or you'll lose your job.

  ‘You're a powerful man, in lots of ways. But there's a couple of things that I can do that you can't. One is tell Division where to go. Sure they can charge me with obstruction, but how much damage will that do me? Even Hanging's-Too-Good-For-'Em Higgins isn't going to send me down for more than a fortnight, and it's worth that to me. To protect a woman and her son from a violent thug? Of course it is.’

  ‘You don't know that,’ growled Deacon. ‘I know you think you're right, but you don't know that he's lying. And we need to know. Maybe there's only an outside chance that Noah's in danger from his mother, but we can't take that chance. We have to find out. If you won't let me go and see her, will you go yourself? Take Charlie Voss. He can wear a blindfold if it'll make you feel any happier.’

  Daniel thought about that rather longer. But the same problem applied. Indeed, impatient higher-ups
could do Detective Sergeant Voss more harm than they could do Detective Superintendent Deacon. ‘I'll tell you what I will do. I'll go to see her on my own.’

  But Deacon shook his head. ‘If she is the violent one, just asking about it may be enough to set her off. If she goes ape, you won't be able to hold her till she calms down. She could hurt you, herself and Noah, and nobody would be able to help or even know about it. At the very least you need someone in the car to whistle up assistance if the situation gets out of control.’

  They looked at one another, and neither of them liked to be the first to say it. But if Daniel wouldn't take a police officer, and Deacon wouldn't let him go alone, the options were limited.

  Deacon blew out his cheeks in a graceless sigh, half exasperated, half resigned. He reached for the phone. ‘I'll have her pick you up at the front door.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘It's a load of nonsense, of course,’ said Daniel confidently as Brodie drove. ‘We're only doing this so Jack can say he didn't dismiss Selkirk's claims out of hand. Twenty minutes there, five minutes to check they're OK, twenty minutes back.’ He dared a sidelong glance at her. ‘I'm sorry to involve you. You were the only one Jack and I both trusted.’

  ‘Don't apologise,’ she said, in a tone that suggested he probably shouldn't take her at her word. ‘It's not like I had anything better to do. Anything profitable, for instance. Anything I could send in a bill for afterwards,’

  ‘I'll pay you,’ Daniel said shyly.

  That made her laugh. He was uncomfortable enough to mean it. ‘Don't be silly. There's nothing I'd rather do. A nice drive in the country and spitting in Adam Selkirk's eye? That's not work, that's pleasure. Besides which, Jack reckoned if I refused you were probably going to jail.’

  ‘I think he was exaggerating.’ Daniel gave a troubled little smile. ‘I'm quite glad not to have to find out.’

  She glanced at him then, shaking her head, returned her gaze to the road. ‘You were prepared to, though, weren't you? Find out.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Suppose be damned – we both know you were. If Jack hadn't come up with an alternative, you'd have held out against anything he threw at you – including charges, including court, including prison if need be. Wouldn't you?’

  After a moment he nodded. ‘Rather than betray a woman and child into the hands of their abuser? Yes, I would.’

  ‘But you hardly know them!’

  I don't need to know them. It doesn't come down to who they are. Nobody should have to put up with that. And anyone who can put a stop to it should.’

  Brodie tilted her eyebrows in a little facial shrug. ‘You can't carry the whole world, Daniel. Hell, you've trouble carrying your own shopping. And I have to tell you, you wouldn't like prison.’

  ‘I don't think anybody does like prison,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘I think that's the idea. I'd have survived prison. The damage she's been taking, I'm not sure how much longer Marianne could keep bouncing back.’

  Startled, Brodie flicked another glance at him. ‘You really think he could have killed her?’

  ‘I think he could have killed either or both of them at any time.’

  She thought a little longer. ‘Then you're right. You really didn't have much choice.’

  ‘Let's hope the magistrates agree.’

  They turned off the main road into the wilds of the Three Downs. Brodie had never been able to work out just where one stopped and the next began. The centre-point of Menner Down to the north-west was marked by the standing stone – the menhir – on its crown. Chain Down in the south-west was host to the twin villages of Cheyne Warren and Cheyne Treacey, and Frick Down held the eastern flank, distinguished by nothing but sheep. Perhaps there were little water-courses or ancient trackways that told the locals when they'd strayed off one onto another, but they never shared the information with outsiders. Those born and bred on the Three Downs were insular to the point of paranoia.

  Daniel had a good sense of direction. It was as if he could always see the Pole Star in his head even when it was hidden by daylight. He confidently picked one lane that looked like all the others they'd passed, half a mile down it he selected another indistinguishable turning, and five minutes after that Brodie was parking the car outside a chalk-and-flint cottage built end-on to the road, its makeshift driveway occupied by a midnight-blue Porsche.

  More cumbrous, less graceful than usual, she climbed out and looked around with the innate distrust of the city-dweller for real, non-manicured, non-picturesque countryside. ‘If someone starts playing the banjo,’ she said firmly, ‘I'm off.’

  Daniel wasn't a country-boy either: he grew up in a suburban semi in Nottingham. But in the same way that he never seemed entirely at home in any situation, nor did he ever seem entirely out of place. He was a like a snail, or a campervanner, carrying his own small world with him. ‘I'll let them know it's us.’

  ‘I'll stay with the car.’

  That was what Deacon had wanted. To Daniel it seemed absurd. ‘OK. I shan't be long.’ He walked up the path and tapped on the front door. This wasn't rose country: there was ivy clustered round it.

  For a minute no one came. Then he heard the key turning and Marianne Selkirk was there, her ash-blonde hair bundled in a scarf, smuts of dust on her face. She was cleaning.

  ‘Bad time?’ winced Daniel. ‘I just wanted to see that you were all right.’

  ‘Thanks to you,’ said Marianne, with the smile that made dictators putty in her hands. ‘Come in and I'll put the kettle on. Noah's about somewhere. In the fields, possibly. He's fascinated by all the space.’

  I mustn't be long. Someone gave me a lift and we have to get back.’ But he followed her through the little house into the kitchen and sat where Marianne pointed, and watched while she filled the kettle. ‘Actually,’ he admitted, ‘there's a bit more to it than just wanting to see you were OK.’

  ‘Oh?’ She sat across the table from him. ‘What?’

  ‘Your husband,’ said Daniel. He gave her a brief digest of the encounter outside the police station.

  Marianne's eyes flared in alarm. ‘He didn't hit you?’

  Daniel shook his head immediately. ‘No. There were other people around, a lot of them policemen. That's not what I came to tell you.’

  ‘No?’ Under the scarf her brow was puzzled. ‘Then what?’

  ‘He's telling people… He told the police…’ Daniel was finding this unexpectedly difficult. He bit it off and spat it out. ‘The police hauled us inside and asked what the hell was going on, and he told them it was you who was beating Noah, not him.’

  Her mouth opened wordlessly as her jaw dropped. Her eyes were enormous. ‘The shit,’ she breathed incredulously.

  ‘That's pretty much what I said too,’ agreed Daniel. ‘I don't expect anyone believed him. The police had to give him a hearing but they're not stupid. They'll sort this out. They'll put Noah first and they won't let him come to any more harm.’

  Marianne was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Adam and I have had our problems, but I'd never have believed he'd tell the police that. Him, who's so keen on keeping everything in the family!’

  ‘Desperate people do desperate things,’ said Daniel. ‘Now it's in the open and he knows it's going to be dealt with, he's doing all he can think of to shift the blame. I'm sorry to dump this on you,’ he added wryly. ‘I felt you needed to know.’

  Marianne nodded slowly. ‘You're right, I did.’ Suddenly her gaze sharpened. ‘You didn't tell him where we are?’

  ‘No,’ Daniel said quickly. ‘They wanted me to but I didn't. I said I'd come out and make sure you and Noah were both OK, and the police were happy with that.’

  The woman still looked edgy. ‘No one followed you?’

  Daniel couldn't vouch for that because he hadn't thought to check. ‘I really don't think so. Jack Deacon knows what the situation is – he wouldn't let your husband leave Battle Alley on our tail.’ At least, he didn't thi
nk so.

  Marianne nodded and tried to smile. But after a moment she got up from the table. ‘I'm sorry, Daniel. Will you make the tea? I want to find Noah.’ Her footsteps turned to running on the stone flags in the hall.

  Brodie followed Deacon's instructions to the letter something she never did when they were closer. It occurred to her, waiting by the car with her phone in her pocket, that before the baby was even born she was thinking of Deacon not as its father but as a policeman.

  It. She still didn't know the sex of the imminent infant. She'd been offered the information but declined, mainly on grounds of superstition. The less she knew about it, the less emotional commitment she had invested in it, the less things were likely to go wrong. It hadn't had the best start in life had been exposed to powerful drugs before she even knew it was on its way – and early on the chances had seemed high that the pregnancy would fail. Early on that wouldn't have seemed a disaster to her. The baby not only hadn't been planned, it could hardly have come at a worse time – when the relationship it sprang from was foundering and the demands on her time and energies were greater than ever.

  But a baby isn't like a new three-piece suite, something you start saving for when the last one's getting shabby. They always come at inconvenient times – when their parents are too young, too inexperienced and too impoverished, or else too old and already stretching the seams of their house. It doesn't matter, because a new baby comes ready-equipped with that most valuable of personal assets, the ability to inspire love. However unpromising the circumstances of its conception, by the time it arrives its mother and most of its immediate family are ready to adore it and care for it and sacrifice their own needs for it. Which is probably just as well, or the only life in the universe would be plants and the odd amoeba.

  By now, seven and a half months into the pregnancy, Brodie would have walked on coals to keep it safe.

  She was aware of being observed before either sound or movement announced anyone's arrival. She looked around warily – back down the lane and across the surrounding fields but still she saw no one until the boy stepped clear of the tangle of ivy and shadows at the end of the little house. Brodie's brow cleared. ‘Hello.’