The Depths of Solitude

by Jo Bannister

  That was disingenuous and both men knew it. The files would show who said what and who did what: they could not record the look in an eye that could tell an experienced officer how much significance to vest in what was said and done. For that you had to be there.

  Deacon said tersely, “I’ve been threatened on a daily basis since I got my first truncheon. I’ve been threatened by amateurs and professionals. I’ve been threatened by men and women, by children and pensioners, by people in wheelchairs and those so short they’d have had to stand on a chair to take a swing at me. I’m world class at being threatened.

  “I know when it means something and when it doesn’t. Of the hundreds of files downstairs that contain threats against me, I can dismiss three-quarters out of hand. I know, because I knew the people involved, that most of them were just mouth. You put anyone else onto this and he’ll waste weeks chasing people I know had no real desire to hurt me, or had the desire but lacked the bottle. This is no time to drop the pilot.”

  Fuller regarded him speculatively. “I take your point, of course. I wonder if you can see mine? That you’re too close to be objective. That you’re running on anger when you need a clear head. That someone to whom it’s a duty rather than a crusade might do a better job of protecting Mrs Farrell.”

  Deacon knew that if he couldn’t bridle his temper in this office he would never persuade Fuller he could do it anywhere else. His big body was rigid, as if he was sitting on a powder-keg.

  “Of course I understand. I can see that if there was any chance of me decking a suspect you’d want someone else doing the interviews. But we don’t have a suspect – or else we have too many, which comes to the same thing. I’m not making bad decisions because I’m emotionally involved. There are no decisions to make right now. When we arrest someone I’ll hand him over – to you, to DS Voss, to anyone you want to interview him. But you need me to find him. Whatever the relationship between Mrs Farrell and me, she’s a member of the public and she’s in danger. Neither of us wants to see something happen to her because you didn’t trust me.”

  Fuller sipped his coffee reflectively. “That’s exactly the issue, isn’t it? Trust. Jack, I would trust you with my life. I don’t know if I can trust you to take a step back if the need arises.”

  “You can.” Deacon had to unclench his teeth to get the words out.

  “Your word?”

  “You have it.”

  “I’ll hold you to that, you know. If I see a problem developing, I’ll ask you to step down.”

  “Do it,” nodded Deacon. “I won’t fight you.”

  “Jack,” said Fuller patiently after a moment.

  “What?”

  “Put the cup down. You’ve broken the handle.”

  As Deacon was with Superintendent Fuller when the call came in, Voss took it.

  “Jack?”

  “DS Voss,” said the sergeant. “Mr Walsh, I know what this is about. Maybe I shouldn’t but I do. If you have a message for Mr Deacon I can pass it on.”

  “Er … yes,” said Terry Walsh, momentarily wrong-footed. “A message, and a word of warning. I don’t know, maybe I should wait till I can talk to him?”

  “Someone’s life is at risk,” Voss reminded him gently. “I don’t think we should waste too much time.”

  “No.” It wasn’t like Walsh not to know what to do next. If he’d been talking to Deacon he’d have dumped everything he knew in his lap and let him make the decisions. The involvement of a third party complicated things.

  But if Deacon had taken his sergeant into his confidence perhaps it wasn’t for Walsh to second-guess him. “OK. You know he came to see me? That he was looking for a name?”

  “Have you got one?”

  “Not exactly. But I’ve had a bite on the line and he might want to follow it up.”

  “Someone else has the information he needs?”

  Again Walsh’s voice was oddly unsure. “Probably. Yes, I’m pretty sure he has, I wouldn’t be bothering Jack otherwise. But he’s going to have to be careful. I don’t need to tell you, Sergeant, there are people in this town who would get huge satisfaction from seeing Jack Deacon bleed in a gutter. I’m not one of them, but Joe Loomis is.”

  Voss felt his pulse quicken. “Joe Loomis is behind this?” “I don’t think so, no,” said Walsh. “But I think he knows who is. I think he’ll talk about it, but only to Jack. He wants a meet.”

  “When? Where?”

  “Hold on a minute,” said Walsh sternly. “You do know who I’m talking about? Joe Loomis?”

  Voss clung onto his patience. “Of course I know, Mr Walsh. He’s a thug and a pimp, and one day soon we’re going to take him down. I don’t expect he’s trying to help us out of the goodness of his heart. But if he’s in a position to help us any way at all, we can’t afford not to meet with him.”

  Walsh was thinking. “I’m guessing,” he said slowly, “that if he’s told you about coming to see me, Jack Deacon takes you into his confidence a lot of the time. I’m going to do the same. I believe Joe when he says he has the information Jack needs. I don’t believe that he’s had a sudden change of heart about his way of life and is doing this to clear his conscience. He knows Jack’s close enough on his tail to bugger him. Whatever Joe has for him, it’ll cost. I want Jack to understand that before he goes anywhere near Loomis.”

  Deacon would understand perfectly. Voss understood too. Joe Loomis wasn’t the biggest criminal in Dimmock but he may have been the nastiest: Hence CID’s recent frive to get him off the street. When Loomis went down, the local drug’s trade would halve over night. He supplied doormen to half the clubs on the south coast and escorts for half the conferences. Both his bouncers and his toms peddled drugs, but when they were caught they took the fall and never implicated Loomis. This was due less to a notion of honour among thieves than to the certainty that he’d have their kneecaps if they did anything else.

  Walsh was right to be wary. Loomis intended to trade his information for something of value to him, and nothing Voss knew about the man suggested it would be the warm glow of having done good. “Why do you think he’s telling the truth?”

  “He told me how he got the information. A man was showing a photograph of Mrs Farrell and asking questions about her in a club. The bouncer was one of Loomis’s. He recognised her, didn’t know if he should say, so he checked with Loomis. Who naturally reckoned that anything that might make trouble for Detective Superintendent Deacon was worth encouraging. So the bouncer took fifty quid off the guy in return for her name.”

  Which was interesting but Voss couldn’t see how it helped. “Unless he signed a cheque for the fifty quid, I doubt that’s going to lead us to him.”

  “Patience, Sergeant Voss,” said Walsh reprovingly. “Point is, the bouncer recognised him. Bouncers go a lot of places, see a lot of faces. He’d seen this one before. He had a name to go with it.”

  “But Loomis didn’t give you the name.”

  There was a slow smile in Terry Walsh’s voice. “Don’t be silly, Sergeant. He said he’ll be in The Rose for an hour. But I’m not saying Jack should go. Right now, nothing in the world would suit Joe Loomis so well as getting a hold over him. If he’s offering to trade it’s because he can see a percentage in it. I don’t see Jack cutting a deal, but I can see him taking damage trying to get what he needs and give nothing back.

  “I wasn’t going to call,” admitted Walsh. “Then I thought, it’s his decision. Just tell him to be careful.”

  “I will,” promised Voss. But in his mind he’d broken the promise before he’d even put the phone down.

  Entering the station Brodie kept her eyes peeled. She was looking for Trevor Parker, though the intervention of the man on the London train had all but cleared him of suspicion. He was probably in his office right now. In any event, he wasn’t here.

  She found Geoffrey Harcourt huddled in the phone booth, trying to ignore the passing travellers. When she tapped his shoulder his whole body
spasmed. “Car for Harcourt.”

  At the sight of a familiar face his eyes flooded with relief and the rigidity drained from his body – so much so she was afraid he was going to faint. Quickly she linked an arm through his. “Come on, let’s get you out of here. Unless, of course, you want to go and see that Spinning Jenny?”

  “Stuff the Spinning Jenny,” muttered Geoffrey Harcourt.

  For a moment, when he got back from the estate agents and found the house empty, fear hit Daniel like a train. But it only lasted a second. Brodie had known what his reaction would be and left a note by the phone where he’d find it before he could raise the alarm.

  “Had to pop out after all. Nothing to worry about — I’ll be right back. I’ll pick Paddy up on the way so don’t hold lunch.”

  He glanced at the clock. It was quarter to one: Paddy would be out of school soon after two, and mother and daughter would be back here soon after that. He decided to wait.

  He still hadn’t stocked the fridge. There was a corner shop one block behind the esplanade. By the time he’d bought enough to feed two adults and a five-year-old who cared more about the cartoon characters on the outside of tins than the food on the inside, he thought Brodie would be back.

  It wasn’t a long drive to Cheyne Warren: Brodie could take Harcourt home and be at Paddy’s school with half an hour in hand. Once clear of Dimmock she lightened her foot on the accelerator and let the car cruise. She glanced sideways at her passenger. “How do you feel?”

  He couldn’t meet her gaze. The side of his face was ridged with strain. “I don’t know how to apologise, Mrs Farrell. It’s not the first time I’ve made a fool of myself, but it’s certainly one of the more memorable ones!”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” she said. “You’re a client and a friend – I’d have been offended if you hadn’t felt you could ask for my help. It’s no big deal, really.”

  “It is to me,” he mumbled into his chest. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come for me.”

  “You’d have called someone else.”

  “I don’t know anyone else! No one I could ask favours of. If you never go anywhere, you never meet anyone.” He risked a glance at the passing scenery: it seemed to make him more uncomfortable than distressed. “Do you think we could pull over for a minute? I’m a little dizzy.”

  Brodie found a lay-by off the Guildford road where they could sit undisturbed and just talk. “Take a few deep breaths. You’ll feel better soon. You’ve had a busy morning.”

  “Tell me about it,” moaned Geoffrey Harcourt. He had a canvas bag across his knees like an old lady’s handbag, and he folded his arms on top of it and dropped his forehead onto his wrists.

  Brodie thought the best thing she could do was keep him talking. “How long have you lived in Cheyne Warren?”

  He straightened up, loosening his tie with a finger. “About four years now. I left Dimmock after my wife died. I couldn’t bear living in our house alone. Every time I opened a door I expected her to be on the other side; every time I woke I expected to find her in bed beside me. I thought a change of scene might help.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  He gave a broad-shouldered shrug like an apologetic bear. “Yes and no. It certainly altered how I live.”

  “That’s when the agoraphobia started?”

  “The funny thing is,” he said, “at first I didn’t notice. I didn’t want to go out; I didn’t want to see people. I thought it was my choice. I found a store that delivered so I didn’t have to go shopping, and I’d sold the business by then so I didn’t have to go to work, and I thought I was just taking some time out and would get back on track once I’d got my head sorted. Only the longer it took, the harder it got. My life had closed in around me while I wasn’t looking. And the rest” – he darted her a fugitive smile — “you know.”

  Brodie nodded sympathetically. “But you are getting better.”

  He couldn’t see it. His eyebrows canted sceptically. “How do you figure that? I lost it today. Totally. I got a taxi into town, and I was pleased with that. I just needed to get the train as far as Chichester, he was going to meet me at the station. But suddenly the enormity of it hit me. The people – the noise, the bustle. I needed to buy a ticket but I couldn’t get myself to the booking office. I know it sounds absurd – I can’t explain. I stumbled into the phone-booth mostly to get away from all the people.”

  “But you got there,” she insisted. “And when you got into trouble, you dealt with that too. Geoffrey, when you first contacted me two months ago, it took you three phone-calls to introduce yourself and say what you wanted. Do you remember? When I came to your house to talk about it, it took you ten minutes to open the door. From there to even thinking you could visit someone in another town is a quantum leap.”

  Harcourt hadn’t looked at it like that. Brodie saw him consider and begin to draw a little comfort from it. “I hadn’t realised. You’ve been good for me, Mrs Farrell.”

  Brodie was glad he thought so. “I have another friend who has panic attacks, so your condition is nothing new to me. It doesn’t embarrass me. I’m happy to help.”

  “You’re very kind.” Harcourt thought for a moment, then he unzipped the canvas bag. Brodie saw the gleam of oiled brass. “All the same, I want you to bill me for your time. No.” He stopped her protest with a lifted finger. “I insist. If you won’t let me pay for your time I won’t be able to call you again, and if I can’t come to you for help I wouldn’t know where to turn.”

  Brodie was used to being paid for her time but not like this. It made her uncomfortable, that she couldn’t perform an act of simple kindness without putting a price on it. There was a fine line between businesslike and mercenary, and sometimes she worried that she didn’t tread it as surely as she should. “Put your money away. Next time I find something for you I’ll factor it in, all right?”

  He smiled. “All right.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  He opened it a little more, so she could see. “The man with the Spinning Jenny – I was taking this to show him.”

  Brodie recognised it. “That’s the one you showed my daughter.”

  “I just finished it,” he nodded. “The old Solitude tide-mill, on the Windle. He asked what I was working on, I said I’d bring it to show him. I was showing off, I’m afraid. But it is a pretty good model. Of how it used to be – now it’s so derelict you can hardly make sense of it. I wanted to record the automation before it was impossible to work out how it was done.”

  “Automation?”

  “The most important part of a tide-mill,” Harcourt assured her, warming to his favourite subject. “The wind blows day and night, and rivers run round the clock. But high tide only comes twice daily, the times vary with the moon, and for half the year at least one high tide will be during the hours of darkness. You had to make it more convenient – by storing the energy of the tide until you were ready to use it, and with automatic systems that could run while you slept.”

  He pointed out the tiny brass features with a finger that looked too thick for such delicate work. “Rising tide filled the lagoon through one-way sluices. Another sluice sent the water down to the mill, turning the wheel from about half-tide until the lagoon was empty. You could mill for up to eighteen hours a day.

  “But some of that would still be at night. Things were rigged to start up automatically. As long as the miller refilled the grain hopper, emptied the flour-bins and reset the sluices, the mill would start work again at the next rising tide. Flour mills were capable of the highest degree of automation. It’s harder to pour spades.”

  Brodie looked at him, puzzled. Harcourt gave a sad smile. “Sorry. Engineers’ jokes tend to be rather obscure.”

  “I had a t-shirt once,” said Brodie helpfully. “It said, ‘Engineers do it with precision’.”

  The way Harcourt looked at her, she thought he was going to ask: “Do what?” Instead he just nodded.

  �
��Milling was hard and dangerous work,” he said, faintly reproachful. “One or two men were harnessing enormous natural forces to run heavy machinery: there were some dreadful accidents. Runaway wheels were common. If you were lucky they just stripped the teeth from the pit-wheel. If you weren’t they ripped your arm off.”

  “You should add that to the model,” suggested Brodie. “A tiny miller being torn apart by a rogue wheel. Paddy would love it.”

  Harcourt did the sad smile again.

  “How did you get into all this?” she asked.

  “I’ve been interested in machinery since I was a little boy. My father was a locksmith. I had my own business by the time I was twenty-five: people told me what they wanted and I designed and constructed a lathe or a loom or a press or a specialist security lock: whatever they needed. I had a certain talent,” he said wistfully.

  “And then you lost your wife,” murmured Brodie.

  “And then I lost Millie,” he agreed. “And nothing else mattered. I let customers down, I let the business fail, I wallowed in misery for two years. By the time I realised I had to get a grip on myself, that Millie wouldn’t have wanted me to waste my life in mourning, the business was gone and I was no longer a recluse from choice.”

  “And now,” Brodie said positively, “you’re mending. You’re going to get over this, Geoffrey. You’ve come so far already. Get your breath back, then when you’re ready try again. Only this time call me first and I’ll come with you.”

  He regarded her sombrely. “You’re quite something, you know that?”

  She smiled. “I can bear to hear it again. Listen, we have to move. People will be wondering where I’ve got to.” She started the engine.

  “Of course.” He drew the canvas bag up round the model and zipped it closed. Then he opened it again and took a handkerchief out.

  17

  When Deacon left Superintendent Fuller, Voss was out of the office. He’d told DC Winston he had someone to see in town and would be back soon. Deacon gave him fifteen minutes, then tried his phone. It was switched off. He waited ten minutes longer and tried again, with the same result.