Echoes of Lies

by Jo Bannister

  Heartbeats. Shallow, irregular, the sort of pulse to make an insurance assessor blanche, but heartbeats for all that.

  Brodie Farrell turned to DI Deacon with fury in her eyes. “You animal!” she cried. “He’s alive! He’s alive, and you didn’t tell me.”

  Jack Deacon had been called worse with less reason. He bore her anger stoicly. “Mrs Farrell, you’re only here because I don’t think you’re responsible for this. If I did I’d have let you go on believing that the paper got it right and Daniel Hood died of his injuries.

  “That wasn’t careless reporting, it’s what I told them. There’ll be hell to pay but I don’t care. I don’t want whoever did this to know he’s still alive. If they think he’s dead he’s safe, and maybe he’ll get well enough to tell me who they were and what it was all about. If they knew he was alive they’d come back. They were professionals; the evidence is written all over him, and I don’t want my officers risking their lives against professional killers if there’s an alternative.”

  Brodie hardly knew what to think or how to feel. She thought she’d helped strangers to murder a man she’d never even met, for money. She hadn’t guessed that was what she was doing, but for the last two hours it was what she believed she had done. Now it seemed no one had actually died; at least not yet.

  But why had they come here? Why was Detective Inspector Deacon taking such a gamble? “Inspector,” she managed, “what do you want from me?”

  “What we talked about: a statement and an E-fit.”

  “We can’t do either of them here. What am I doing here? What is it you want me to see?”

  Deacon debated with himself for a moment. What he was contemplating wasn’t nice but it might be helpful. It was reason enough. He stepped over to the bed and, before Brodie could anticipate what he intended or the nurse protest, threw back the sheet. “This.”

  If he’d expected her to faint he was disappointed. But she did, finally, cry. She knew Daniel Hood had been tortured before he was shot; but The Dimmock Sentinel was a family newspaper and hadn’t wallowed in the gory details. So Brodie wasn’t ready for what Deacon wanted her to see: a young man’s body so pock-marked with burns that his doctors had had trouble finding enough undamaged skin to tape their monitors to.

  There wasn’t a critical injury among them: the treatment he’d received, which seemed to consist in part of wrapping him in clingfilm, was already bearing dividends. By the time the bullet-wound healed the lesions spreading like an obscene rash across his body would be shrunk to mere fingerprints of shiny pink skin. But there were so many of them. They represented hours and hours of agony.

  The tears streamed down Brodie’s cheeks. So this was what it looked when one person really wanted to know what another really didn’t want to tell. The urge to turn away was strong, but she owed him better than that. Grief welled under her breastbone, and she cried silently for the horror and the hurt.

  Jack Deacon had meant to shock her: it was why he’d brought her here. He hoped that when he confronted her with what she’d done she’d go weak at the knees, slump on his shoulder and tell him everything, even the bits it had seemed politic to forget. But she didn’ t even look away. After a minute Deacon began to feel himself diminished by her courage. He took out his handkerchief, offered it gruffly. “Here.”

  Brodie looked at him, her eyes enormous. “Why?”

  “I’m still hoping you can tell me that.”

  “And you thought this would help? You thought, unless I saw this I wouldn’t try hard enough?”

  “I had to impress on you how serious it is.” Even to Deacon it sounded like an apology. “It isn’t just his life at stake, it’s yours too. The people who did this know who you are. And you’re the only link between them and him.

  “So far as I can make out, they took him the same afternoon you gave them his name and address. No one saw him between leaving school at quarter to five on Friday and turning up in a builders’ skip at eight-fifteen on Monday morning. The doctors reckon he was there most of the night, so these people had him about forty-eight hours. They wanted something from him - wanted it badly. But they didn’t get it.”

  “How do you know?” Brodie’s voice was a whisper.

  Deacon shrugged. “Look what they did to him. If he could have stopped it he would have done. He couldn’t. But it was two days before they’d accept that. They must have really wanted what they thought he could give them. They only shot him when all hope was gone.

  “The man interrogating him was a professional, but the man who shot him wasn’t. A pro would have shot him in the head, and the chances of the bullet missing anything vital would have been just about zero. Also, a pro would have made sure he was dead. But they shot him in the chest, didn’t even notice that the bullet had travelled along the ribcage and out through his armpit - there was a lot of blood and they thought that was what mattered. They dumped him in the skip and reckoned they’d done enough.

  “With any luck at all they’d have been right: he’d have bled to death before he was found. But it was a cold night. The paramedics have a saying: They’re not dead until they’re warm and dead. When they warmed Danny up he was still alive.

  “So that’s two mistakes they’ve made. They thought he was dead, and they thought you’d keep quiet. Real pros would have done a proper job on him and then come for you. But they thought the damage you could do them was minimal - the woman you met was probably just a go-between, she won’t know much more than you do. Anyway, the chances of you ever seeing her again are remote. You didn’t see anyone else, you don’t know anything else.

  “And they thought you’d be too scared to report the little you do know. Why risk being treated as an accessory to murder when there’s so little you can say? They thought you’d keep your head down and your mouth shut. If they find out they underestimated you, Mrs Farrell, the next bullet will be for you, and this time they’ll wait long enough to take a pulse afterward. I needed you to understand that. Not just to hear it but to understand. Now you do.”

  Brodie was slowly shaking her head. “No. That’s part of it: the part that sounds defensible. But mainly you hoped to shock me into saying something I wouldn’t otherwise have said. You thought I was holding something back; at least, you weren’t sure I wasn’t. This was a way to find out. You thought I’d see - this - break down and confess all. You thought you could achieve more in five minutes this way than with three hours of patient questioning.”

  She lifted her head to look Deacon in the eyes. He was a big man, with strong features and an air of repressed violence about him like a prize fighter. He was forty-six years old, and a detective inspector, and he was still the first person everyone at Dimmock Police Station thought of when there was a brawl in the front office.

  The expression in Brodie Farrell’s gaze scourged his cheeks. “Well? Was it worth it? Did you find what you were looking for? You upset me, you used him - but it would be worth it if you know something now that you didn’t when we left your office. Do you?”

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, hard-faced, “I do. I know there’s nothing more you’re going to tell me. Either you can’t, or you’ve too much to lose to blurt it out.

  “So I’m going to assume I was right first time and you really weren’t involved. But if I’m wrong, I should warn you I’m not a good loser. If I find you were in deeper than you’ve said, or you know more than you’ve said, you’re going to pay for it. I’ll see you in prison if I can. And if I can’t - well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. If I think you bear any responsibility for this, I’ll destroy you.”

  Having rearranged her patient’s sheets the nurse was watching open-mouthed, scarce able to believe what she was hearing. But Brodie had spent much of her working life with police officers, sometimes on the same side, sometimes not, and she knew that even the best sailed close to the wind at times. When their actual powers were unequal to the task before them, sailing close to the wind was the only way to
progress.

  She wasn’t afraid of DI Deacon, she didn’t even resent his threats that much. Except for the man in the bed, no one had a better reason than her to hope he’d find the truth. She just hoped he was now convinced of her innocence. He was entitled to think she’d been stupid but she didn’t want him wasting time persecuting her.

  He couldn’t prove she was responsible for this in any legal sense because she wasn’t. But he could squander valuable time trying, time in which cruel and violent men would be covering their tracks. So it mattered that he believe her. If her reaction to the brutalised body of Daniel Hood had helped then what he’d done was, if not justified, at least forgivable.

  She breathed steadily. “Inspector, I’m not lying and I’m not holding anything back. I’m as horrified by this as you are. Maybe more - you may have seen things like this before but I haven’t. We’re on the same side. If there’s anything I can do to convince you of that, tell me. If there’s anything I can do to help, tell me.”

  Finally Deacon believed her. Believing left him free to be a little ashamed of himself, though not to admit it. He growled, “Help? How?”

  Brodie shrugged. “Information is my business. I may be able to ask questions you can’t.”

  Deacon shook his head. “Stay out of it, Mrs Farrell. This isn’t an intellectual exercise: if the people who hurt Hood have any reason to come back I could lose both my witnesses. I don’t want them thinking you’re a threat to them. Leave it to me. I’ll find them; and when I do they won’t come after me with a cigarette-lighter.”

  He turned and headed for the door. “There’s nothing more we can do here. Let’s go back to the station and complete the formalities.”

  But Brodie was still looking at the unconscious man. “A cigarette-lighter? Is that what they used?”

  Deacon frowned, not understanding why she needed to know. “Some of the time. And some of the time, presumably for a bit of variety, they used the cigarettes.”

  She made herself look long enough to see the distinctive small, perfectly round lesions that made daisy-like patterns on his weeping skin. Whoever did this had been bored enough to doodle. More shocked by that than anything that had come before, Brodie said faintly, “It hardly seems very professional.”

  Deacon disagreed. “You think he should carry stainless steel instruments in a black leather bag? And maybe wear a black velvet hood with the eye-holes punched out. So the first time he’s stopped by a zealous wooden-top for breaking the speed limit or going through a red light, and he’s asked to open the bag, his only choice is between shooting his way out and trying to explain why he’s equipped like an extra from The Rocky Horror Show. No, Mrs Farrell, real professionals don’t need props. It’s not about inspiring terror, it’s about inflicting pain, and a few domestic implements such as you’d find in any kitchen or garage will do that every bit as well and much more safely. The man who did this can open his bag for every policeman, customs official and security guard who asks. If he couldn’t, he’d be behind bars by now.”

  Brodie stared at him. “You mean, this isn’t the first time … ?”

  Deacon shook his head. “This is how he makes his living. People will pay him ten thousand pounds a throw to do it. He probably does it all over the world.”

  “You have to catch him! Stop him.”

  Deacon gave a weary chuckle. “I intend to try. But Mrs Farrell, we have to be realistic. If he’s been doing this for years and nobody’s caught him yet, it can’t be as easy as deciding we ought to. Looking for him may not be the best approach. It’ll be easier to find the person who hired him.”

  Brodie glanced uncertainly at the bed. “If he wakes up.”

  “That would be a big help,” agreed the policeman. “But even if he doesn’t we may be able to work it out. There can’t be that many people sufficiently pissed off with him to do this.”

  “The Sentinel said he was a teacher.”

  “Grounds,” admitted Deacon, “but possibly not grounds enough. He must have been pissing people off in his spare time.”

  Brodie’s eyes sharpened. “You think he really is a conman?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then what Mrs Doyle said …”

  It wouldn’t have cost much to let her think so. But Deacon had never salved his own conscience with convenient lies and saw no reason to let anyone else. “About the racehorse? A cover story, designed to gain your sympathy and explain why she was telling you instead of me. If it had been true Hood might have ended up shot but nobody’d have tortured him first. If he had the money he’d have given it back; if it was gone they might have beaten him up, they might even have killed him, but that? No. It was about something bigger than money.”

  They left the same way they came in. Outside the rear entrance he held the car door for her. Jack Deacon would have thumped anyone who accused him of being a gentleman, but a part of him his mother would still have been proud of thought Brodie Farrell was a lady.

  She paused in the open door and regarded him hesitantly over the top. “Inspector - will it be all right if I visit sometime? Just to see how he’s doing? If he’s supposed to be dead I can hardly ask at Reception.”

  “You can call me,” said Deacon. “Good news or bad, I’ll tell you.” Then with a sniff he relented. “But yes, if you want to bring him a Get Well card I don’t see why not. Be discreet, I don’t want people wondering what you’re doing here with half the flower shop. If it gets out that he’s still alive I’ll know who to blame. But if you’re careful it won’t do any harm. I’ll leave word that if you turn up alone you’re to be admitted.”

  “Thank you,” said Brodie.

  Chapter 4

  Finishing at the police station in mid afternoon, Brodie returned to her office. There was still the post to deal with. She’d abandoned it when she opened the newspaper. There might also be a queue of impatient clients awaiting her services, though she doubted it.

  It was early days yet. But what, as a sideline, had seemed to occupy an inordinate amount of her time and provide a comfortable extra income was proving erratic as a full-time job. A steady trickle of work kept her head above water, but the better jobs that represented her profit margin were like buses: either there were none or they all came at once. It hadn’t mattered when she could afford to turn some of them down. Now Looking for Something? was it: what it didn’t pay for didn’t get bought.

  There was no queue, no messages and nothing much in the post. So she resumed the search for a cranberry glass épergne to grace the other end of Mrs Campbell-Wheeler’s three metre dining table.

  She phoned the antiques dealers who clustered along the south coast from Bournemouth to Brighton, but although there were épergnes aplenty, and no shortage of cranberry glass, no one had what she needed. She made sure they each had her number and made a note in her diary to try again before the weekend. Mrs Campbell-Wheeler was getting tetchy, but even Brodie couldn’t find what wasn’t there. And after today’s events it was hard to get excited about a Victorian ornament. If the woman had wanted a pair she shouldn’t have bought one in the first place.

  Then she phoned a horse dealer in Newmarket, on the trail of a Welsh pony called Flossie. She’d been loaned out two years ago while the family waited for their younger child to get bigger; and loaned on again when the child of the second family lost interest; and somehow there’d been a misunderstanding. When the child of the third family broke her arm, Flossie was sold.

  Now Brodie was trying to track one fifteen-year-old white Welsh pony among thousands, with no guarantee that if she found her the new owner would be prepared to sell her back. She was promised her own fee if she found the pony, whether or not the complexities of ownership could be resolved, and the eight hundred pounds they’d agreed on was probably as much as the pony was worth; but she was part of somebody’s family and you can’t put a price on that.

  The news was good: the dealer thought he knew where Flossie was and could buy her back. If the fam
ily that sold her would pay him as the price of their mistake, and if the family getting her back would pay Brodie, and if the family that loaned her on without permission would reimburse half of that, everybody would be satisfied - even if it meant that middle-aged pony had ended up costing as much as a decent hunter.

  She phoned Flossie’s owners and fixed a time for them to inspect the pony, and accepted their tearful gratitude as if it was a lost child she’d found for them, and then moved on to the next item on her list: a navy-blue Ford Anglia in showroom condition for a young man who’d been unwise enough to take his mother’s pride and joy to a rave.

  Between phone-calls and e-mails, most of them fruitless but some worth following up, Brodie kept herself occupied until seven o’clock. Then all at once she’d had enough, and she shut up the office and headed home. Flossie would pay some bills and restock the larder, and tomorrow was another day.

  It had come as a bit of a culture-shock, having to worry about bills. All her life she’d been financially secure; even now she could be if she hadn’t let pride come between her and her dues. She’d accepted John Farrell’s provision for his daughter; but the house was his family home, she didn’t feel entitled to half of it, proposed instead a settlement which bought her a comfortable flat in a Victorian merchant’s house with enough left over to start the business. The courts might have given her more; John offered her more; but she didn’t want his charity. There was more pleasure in denying him the opportunity to be generous. Leaving him in her debt salved her angry soul better than a new car and a dress allowance.

  But now she was having to pay for her pride. Almost with every post, it seemed. For the first time in her adult life she had to set priorities: a Sunday roast or a night out, new shoes or new brake-shoes. But she’d gone into it with her eyes open and wouldn’t reopen negotiations at the first sign of hardship. For one thing she wouldn’t let John think she couldn’t manage on what she’d asked for. For another and better reason, self-respect demanded that she succeed at something soon. Her marriage had failed; and she’d long ago abandoned her career, which was clerking for the man who was now her ex-husband. Her self-confidence needed a boost.