by Jo Bannister
“How about the next fortnight?”
Daniel gave a wry grin. “I could almost go for that. But if I did, and at the end of a fortnight you still hadn’t got them, I’m not sure I’d ever get past that door.”
Jack Deacon was like any other police officer: for every collar he felt he lost two. It was a reality of the job he’d long come to terms with, though he still found it offensive to watch a criminal head down the police station steps. He told himself that he’d catch up with them some day, and very often he did. If it wasn’t exactly philosophical it was pragmatic.
But he also knew when he was fighting a battle he wasn’t going to win. He couldn’t hold Daniel Hood against his will any more than his doctor could. He nodded. “My car’s outside.”
If he’d thought Daniel could match the deeds to the words he might have been slower to take him home. He thought they’d get to the flat over the drying sheds - to the place where it had begun, to the door which he’d last opened onto mayhem - and he’d turn away, grey and shaking, and Deacon could take him back to the hospital.
The flat was once a loft where fishermen knotted their nets. It was approached by an iron staircase up the outside - in pre-Building Regulations days it had been wood - and you had to look twice to know someone lived there. The door was tarred and weathered like the rest of the shed, but there were curtains at the windows and two milk bottles at the foot of the steps.
For a moment Deacon thought they weren’t going any further. With his hand on the rail Daniel slowed to a halt and swayed. Deacon stood ready to catch him if he fell. But then sheer willpower stiffened his back and his hand knotted white-knuckled on the rail, and he went up.
His keys had been lost. Deacon had some made to facilitate the investigation. He used one now, pushed the door open, and waited.
Daniel barely paused on the threshold. Deacon followed him inside, shut the door behind him, looked round for somewhere to put the bag. He found a bedroom, dropped it behind the door.
He turned in time to see Daniel’s cheeks blench paper-white, the pale grey eyes roll behind the thick lenses and his knees go to string; he folded with a sigh, and it was all Deacon could do to reach him before he hit his head on the hearth.
“Easy, Danny,” whistled Deacon, sinking to his knees and pulling the young man safely into the compass of his arms. “It’s all right, I’ve got you. Sit still a minute and get your breath back.”
The grey fog cocooning him left Daniel no choice. He lay passive against the older man’s chest and felt a little of his strength percolate into him. His lips twitched. “Sorry.”
“Will that do?” asked Deacon quietly. “Have you had enough now? Can we go back?”
But Daniel was shaking his head. “I’m staying.”
“You can’t. Damn it, just walking through the door was enough to make you faint!”
“I’ll be all right in a minute. It was just …”
“The shock.”
“Yes.”
“Brought it all back.”
“Yes.”
“Daniel - brought what back? What was it in aid of? Who’s Sophie? What is it you’re not telling me?”
Daniel Hood squirmed out of the policeman’s embrace and, kneeling on the hearth-rug, stared at him in rank incredulity. “Nothing! I’ve told you everything I know. Why won’t you believe me?”
Deacon clambered roughly to his feet. “Because if I did I’d have to leave it at that. Because you are the only lead I have. Because if you really have told me all you know, if there really isn’t anything else, I might as well move onto some case I can conceivably solve. Pirate videos, maybe, or lost dogs. If you can’t tell me anything more I have nowhere else to look. What they did to you: they got away with it.”
“Don’t say that …”
“Then help me!”
“I can’t!” Tears were swimming in his eyes. “Can’t you see - this is what they did? Asked me questions I had no way of answering, and hurt me, and told me it was my fault. It wasn’t then, Inspector, and it isn’t now.”
Shame turned a knife in Jack Deacon’s gut. He turned away and stood breathing heavily by the door. When he had his emotions under control he said gruffly, “I can take you back to the hospital if that’s what you want. I don’t think there’s anything else I can do for you.”
Still on his knees, Daniel surveyed the granite set of the policeman’s shoulders. Tiny waves of regret, of anger, of disappointment broke across his face. But he was too protective of the shreds of pride left to him to beg. “I’m staying.”
Chapter 8
Brodie shut the office at four-thirty, with the dusk creeping down the Channel. She’d negotiated a stay of execution on the cranberry glass: leaving Shack Lane she turned left towards Worthing.
Most south coast towns have tourist attractions, tourist traffic and one-way systems: the east-bound road is a block inland from the esplanade. Dimmock, however, had the fag-end of a fishing industry, a shingle beach, no marina, no amusement park and no shopping mall. It did have a by-pass to speed the tourists on to where they might actually want to stop. Consequently it didn’t need a one-way system, and Brodie drove east along the sea-front, past the netting sheds.
The tide was out, the shingle sloping abruptly where the fishing boats used to haul out. Now a single hulk rotted unglamorously on its side. The long vista was deserted, except for two boys throwing stones for a collie dog and, down at the water’s edge, a solitary figure in a hooded parka.
She never afterwards knew how she recognised him. The afternoon’s light was fading; he had his back to her; his bright hair was covered by the hood, his slight frame muffled by the parka. Also, she’d never seen him dressed. But she knew the lonely figure as Daniel Hood in an instant; and in another instant realised he had no business being there, in full view of anyone who passed. On Tuesday morning she’d been ushered into the hospital in deepest secrecy, warned that an indiscretion could cost his life. Now it was Friday and he was wandering around the seafront within a stone’s throw of his home. Short of wearing a sign reading “I’m Daniel: kill me” he could hardly make a more tempting target of himself.
She parked by the sea wall. Dimmock didn’t need many yellow lines either.
Daniel must have heard the crunch of steps behind him. But he didn’t, as Brodie expected, turn to see who was coming. He seemed rather to freeze, to hunch in on himself, to take root there, stubborn and defenceless.
With a hand on his shoulder she spun him to face her. Fear for him blazed in her eyes like fury. “Do you want to die?”
The tension went from him in a little pant and his shoulders dropped. “It’s you. Er - no. Oddly enough I don’t.”
“Then what are you doing here? Where anyone looking for you is bound to start? Why aren’t you still tucked up, warm and anonymous, in a hospital bed?”
Daniel chewed ruefully on the inside of his cheek. “I discharged myself.”
“You’ve gone AWOL? What’s Inspector Deacon going to say when he finds out?”
“He knows,” Daniel said. “He brought me home - admittedly, under protest. And he said pretty much what you did.”
“But he left you here?” Brodie’s scowl was more puzzled now than angry.
“Not here - at my flat.” Daniel waved a vague hand. “He’s - er -”
“What?”
He sighed. “He’s given up on me. He thinks I could help him solve this if I tried. More than that, he thinks I’m holding something back.”
“Are you?”
“No. It makes no sense to me either. I don’t think it ever will. I think all that’s left now is to try and pick up the pieces.”
“And hope there’s nobody out there thinking that all that’s left now is to silence you.”
He nodded. “I thought - when I heard you coming …”
“I know what you thought,” Brodie said roughly. “You thought I was coming to kill you. And you stood and waited.”
“I’m
a lot better,” he said defensively. “But I couldn’t outrun a bullet just yet.”
“Then why aren’t you at least inside, out of sight?”
The eyes he turned on her were haunted. “I was. I couldn’t stay there. I told Mr Deacon I could, but I couldn’t. It was like it was starting again. My hands were shaking, the sweat was pouring off me. I tried to phone you but I couldn’t stay there long enough. I thought, if I came out here for ten minutes, got some fresh air into my lungs and calmed down, I could go back.”
“When was this?” asked Brodie softly.
“Oh …” He glanced at the sky. “About one o’clock.” He’d been on the beach almost four hours.
The decision made itself. “Come on,” said Brodie, folding an arm briskly through his, “come with me.”
“Where?”
“Well, you can’t stay here, you can’t go back to your flat and you won’t go back to the hospital. Come home with me.”
They went the scenic route, via Worthing.
Daniel was very tired. Brodie sat him down in the living room while she went to make up the spare bed; when she got back he was asleep. She sighed and stripped the bed again, easing the pillow under his head and tucking the duvet round him. He might wake stiff but he wouldn’t be cold. She went upstairs for her daughter.
While Paddy was getting her things together, Brodie acquainted Mrs Szarabeijka with the latest development. Marta’s eyes widened dramatically. “You brought him here? To your home? Your child’s home?”
“What else could I do with him? Anyway, he isn’t going to do Paddy any harm.”
“I don’t expect he is,” agreed Marta. “But what if these people come after him? What if they find him here?”
“She’s a child, Marta! They’re not going to hurt a child.”
“How can you say that, when you know what they’ve done already?” She thought for a moment then nodded decisively. “Leave Paddy with me. Then it’s only your own stupid neck you’re risking.”
Brodie prided herself she could take a hint. “You think I’m wrong, don’t you? Bringing him here. Getting involved.”
“I think you’re crazy,” Marta said honestly.
“He needed somewhere to go, someone to be with. He looks so - alone.”
“He needs to be in hospital, with a police guard. You’re neither a nurse nor a policeman.”
“No. But I owe him more than they do.”
“Not your life! Not your daughter’s life.”
“I think the danger must have passed,” struggled Brodie. “Or why would Deacon take him home?”
Marta shrugged. “It’s a hell of a gamble.”
People who knew her before the divorce mostly thought of Brodie Farrell as a nice woman. But she’d never been that nice, and now she had to fight for what she wanted she could be downright devious. “You want me to send him away.”
“I think it would be sensible, yes.”
“All right, I will. Come downstairs with me and we’ll tell him.”
The older woman recognised the trap being laid for her. But Marta Szarabeijka had never refused a challenge in her life. She marched downstairs and threw open Brodie’s front door. “You. You’re putting these people in danger. Get out of here.”
But Daniel no more than stirred in his sleep, the fingers of one hand plucking at the duvet. Brodie had put his glasses on the coffee table: without them he looked as she had first seen him, frail and impermenant.
By the time Brodie caught up with her Marta was in full sock-knitting mode. “Send him away indeed!” she exclaimed in sotto voce indignation. “How can you talk of such a thing?”
When Deacon, heading home after nine, went to check on Daniel and found the door unlocked and the flat empty, his first thought was that the unknown people, for their unknown reasons, had returned for him and this time he was gone for good.
His second was of Brodie Farrell.
He didn’t announce himself when she answered the phone. He demanded, “Do you know where he is?”
Brodie recognised both the voice and the manner, and knew at once who he meant. But Deacon himself had stressed the need for caution. “Who’s speaking, please?” she asked coolly.
“Detective Inspector Deacon,” he said in his teeth. “You do, don’t you? Where is he?”
“Can you prove that you’re Detective Inspector Deacon?”
She could hear him fuming. His warrant card was useless over the phone: Brodie waited calmly while he thought up an alternative.
“Yes, I can. It was me took you to see him in the hospital. We went in the back way. When we were leaving you asked if you could go back sometime and visit him.”
“Good evening, Inspector,” Brodie said politely. “You understand, we have to be careful.”
Deacon understood exactly what she was doing, and it wasn’t being careful. “He isn’t where I left him. Do you know where he is?”
“He’s here.”
“He’s all right?”
“He’s fine. He’s asleep.”
Deacon fell silent, thinking. If it wasn’t the ideal refuge it was at least better than his own flat. No one in their right mind would look for Daniel Hood in the home of the woman who sold him to his enemies.
“All right,” he said after a moment. “Will you keep him there?”
“As long as he wants to stay.”
“Good. Keep him out of sight if you can. I realise,” he added ironically, “this may not be as easy as it sounds.”
Brodie gave an unseen grin. Awkward, irascible and offensive as he often was, she harboured a secret liking for Jack Deacon. She wasn’t sure his gruff exterior hid a heart of gold, but she suspected there was a heart of some sort in there, somewhere.
“I will.” She cleared her throat. “Inspector …”
“What?”
“He said - He has the idea you’ve given up on this case.”
Deacon sounded more tired than defensive. “I haven’t given up, Mrs Farrell. But the reality is, in the absense of new information we may never make any more progress. I know Daniel thinks I’ve been bullying him; I dare say you think I’ve been bullying you. But you two are the only people I’m aware of who know anything about what happened, and so far neither of you has given me enough to get an investigation rolling.
“Oh, we’ve got an Incident Room, I’ve got people trawling the computer for similarities and others stopping passers-by on the seafront in case they were there last Friday night as well and saw something odd. It’s what we describe as Pursuing the Usual Avenues. The point about avenues, though, is that most of them are dead ends. To date, nobody has been able to add one iota to what you told me on Tuesday and Daniel told me the day after. And everything I have isn’t enough to tell me what to do next. I need more information.”
“You need a good night’s sleep,” Brodie said kindly. “Go home, Inspector. Things may look brighter in the morning.”
The phone, or perhaps their voices, penetrated his sleep. Daniel sat up, feeing for his glasses. The rest had done him good. “Inspector Deacon?”
“Just making sure you’re still alive.”
“I should have told him where I was.”
“He knows now.”
Daniel’s smile was puzzled round the edges. “I can’t make you out.”
Brodie was genuinely surprised. “Me? There’s nothing complicated about me. What do you mean?”
“I don’t think you’re who you seem to be. This - mother, homemaker and businesswoman: you’re all those things, I know, but they aren’t you. There’s a whole that’s more than the sum of the parts.”
Brodie shook her head, unsure whether or not to be flattered. “You’re mistaken. What you see is what you get.”
But Daniel wasn’t persuaded. “I heard you talking to Deacon. He terrifies me - but he doesn’t frighten you, does he? He gives you a hard time, you give him one back. And coming to the hospital, telling me what you did - that took real courage. Most people
couldn’ t have done it. Most people wouldn’t even have tried.”
“It was the lesser of two evils. It was eating away at me, I had to do something. I thought, if I talked to you …” She smiled wryly, “And then, I wasn’t expecting you to wake up.”
She made some supper. As they ate Daniel’s eyes roved the living room.
“What is it?”
“My coat. What happened to it?”
It was damp, she’d put it by the stove to air. In his socks he padded into the kitchen, came back with a bottle of pills. He shook out two and washed them down with tea.
Brodie’s eyebrows sketched a question-mark. “Painkillers,” Daniel explained briefly.
She looked as if he’d slapped her. Remorse widened his eyes. “It’s all right,” he said hurriedly, “it’s not bad. It just needs the edge taking off for another few days.”
Brodie swallowed. “Do you need … I mean, I could probably change a dressing or something … ?”
Daniel shook his head. “There’s no need. I was just worried I’d forgotten the pills. But I wasn’t home long enough to take them out of my coat pocket, and the coat was the one thing I grabbed on the way out.”
“I can fetch you some things if you’d rather not go back to the flat yet.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
They sipped the tea. Daniel looked up shyly. “Can I ask you something?”
Brodie steeled herself. “Anything.”
“How did you find me?”
It had to come. She couldn’t expect him to forget as well as forgive. He was entitled to know everything she could tell him. “From a photograph.”
“But how? Without a name or address or any information about me. How do you set about finding someone from just a photograph?”
