by Jo Bannister
Daniel said softly, “I can’t.”
“I know. Stay here: if I’m not back in half an hour, call Inspector Deacon.”
“If it’s them in there …”
“It won’t be. It’s a school. We’ve come to the wrong place.”
“Then why go inside?”
“I suppose, because there’s always the outside chance. I ought to make sure.”
“Fifteen,” said Daniel.
“What?”
“I’m not waiting half an hour while they could be hurting you. Be back in fifteen minutes.”
The children barely spared her a glance as Brodie crossed the playground and let herself into the school. A minute’s wandering round and she found the door with “Principal: Miss Winifred Scotney” on it. She rapped with her knuckle and a faintly surprised voice called, “Come in.”
Brodie gave her name and her most winning smile. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to help me, Miss Scotney, but I see you have a closed-circuit TV camera above the door. I need to know what the field of view is.”
Miss Scotney smiled too, not so winningly. She was a woman of about fifty, as tall as Brodie and twice as far round, a headmistress in the old mould. Formidable was the word that sprang to mind. “And why do you need to know that, Mrs Farrell?”
She could lie, she could tell the truth, she could tell part of the truth. The whole truth belonged to Daniel; and while there was any possibility that St Agnes’s was involved she wouldn’t risk betraying him to his enemies again. And Miss Scotney looked as if she habitually flogged liars during milk-break.
“I was given a photograph and asked to find someone. That’s what I do: I find things. But my client lied to me and now I’m looking for her. The picture might have been taken by your security camera. I wondered if you knew anything about it.”
So far as she could judge Miss Scotney was genuinely astonished. “What client? You’re not accusing me … ?”
Brodie shook her head. “Of course not. I met her, I’ll know her again if I can find her. I just need to know if the picture could have been taken by your camera. And what happens to the tapes.”
On careful consideration Miss Scotney saw no reason not to answer. “The camera is primarily a deterrent. I glance at the monitor occasionally, but mostly to keep an eye on what the children are up to. Most tapes are reused without ever being played.”
Brodie sighed, torn between disappointment and relief. She’d have left then, except that she felt the burden of Daniel’s hopes. “There’s been nothing - unusual - going on here?”
“Like what, for heaven’s sake?”
“I really don’t know.”
Miss Scotney was a busy woman working on what was supposed to be her day off, and her supply of patience was running low. “Mrs Farrell, if you don’t know the questions, how am I supposed to know the answers?”
Brodie gave an apologetic shrug. “I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel. Something happened to the man in the photograph, and I’m trying to find out who’s to blame. Even if the picture didn’t come off your tape, it’s possible your camera saw something that would help explain matters.”
“In my playground?”
“In the park.”
Miss Scotney shook her head crisply. “We can’t see the park from here. The camera shows the playground and the street outside. It’s there for the children’s protection.”
“Not even the top of the monument? I thought maybe, between the houses …” Brodie tailed off lamely.
The principal of St Agnes’s frowned. “The monument? I suppose it’s possible. I’ve never thought to look.” She reached a strong hand towards the monitor on her desk and the playground emerged from electronic snow.
Brodie leaned forward, brows knit, getting her bearings. Ignoring the cyclists she peered into the V-shaped gaps between the roofs.
And there it was. Distant but quite distinct: the crenelated parapet atop the monument. If someone had been standing now where Daniel Hood had stood ten days ago, looking the way he’d been looking, Brodie would have got the same view of him as the picture showed of Daniel.
It was a long shot, enlarging it to provide a recognisable image must have taken skill and expensive equipment. But whoever did this wasn’t pressed for money.
Brodie grew aware that Miss Scotney was eying her oddly and started breathing again. “You said you reuse the videos?”
“Mostly they just show the children playing. When you’ve seen one game of hop-scotch you’ve seen them all.”
“I think my picture was taken a week last Wednesday, a little after one. Is there any chance that you’ve still got the tape? Or that maybe someone else got hold of it?”
“They’re not the Crown Jewels, I don’t keep them under lock and key. But why would anyone steal them? Who, anyway? - one of the children?”
“I doubt it.”
More in sorrow than anger the principal said, “Mrs Farrell, if you want me to help you’re going to have to be a little more forthcoming.”
But there was nothing more Brodie could say; and anyway, she thought she’d got all she was going to. She didn’t believe Winifred Scotney was part of any conspiracy. The picture of Daniel Hood might or might not have come from St Agnes’s CCTV, but even if it did the most casual thief could have taken the tape and it would never have been missed. If the trail came through here, here was where it ended.
Brodie stood up. “I’m wasting your time. I’m sorry. Thank you for seeing me.”
But Miss Scotney was still thinking, her broad brow corrugated. “Wednesday lunchtime, did you say? Ten days ago?”
Brodie’s blood quickened. “Between one and one-fifteen. Why?”
“There’s just a possibility we kept that tape.” She opened the drawers of her desk, one after another, without success. “Now, what did I do with it?”
“You didn’t recycle it?”
“No. At least, not at once. I put it on one side while we sorted out what was happening.”
“What was?”
Miss Scotney gave a chuckle without much mirth in it. “One of the parents was trying to give me heart-failure. Oh, he didn’t mean to - he said he’d sent a message but I didn’t get it. I can’t make them understand that the children are only theirs during out-of-school hours: nine to three-thirty they’re my responsibility.” She sighed. “This job would be a sinecure if all the children were orphans.”
Brodie sympathised, but this wasn’t what she was interested in. “So you did keep the tape?”
“For one dreadful moment I thought the police would need it. Then I managed to get the child’s father on the phone and it turned out there’d been a misunderstanding. The family were going on holiday, the chauffeur had picked her up. The father thought I’d been informed. But I wouldn’t have forgotten. It’s something we have to be terribly careful about. You do with any children, but these in particular. We have some wealthy families, abduction is always a possibility.”
Momentarily, irritation distracted Brodie. “It’s worse when rich kids get abducted?”
“No,” said Miss Scotney. “But it is more likely.”
Brodie dipped her head in apology. “But in fact the child was safe?”
“Quite safe - she was with her father when I phoned. They’re in the Caribbean for a month.”
Envy stabbed momentarily. Brodie wouldn’t have minded a month in the Caribbean. She’d have settled for a fortnight in Wigan if it had started a fortnight ago. “So you still have the tape.”
“Wait a minute,” said the principal, remembering. “No … but I know who has. Mr Ibbotsen asked if he could have it. I suppose it’s a family joke by now - ‘This is Sophie being abducted.’ But it felt deadly serious at the time. If he hadn’t answered his phone I was calling the police.” Her brow furrowed again. “Mrs Farrell? Are you all right?”
Brodie’s face was as stiff and grey as concrete. She genuinely hadn’t seen this coming. Her eyes stretched until they water
ed. “Sophie?”
Chapter 11
It had been more than fifteen minutes. Daniel hadn’t called the police, but as Brodie hurried out of St Agnes’s she met him coming in. No pupil ever entered a school more reluctantly: every step seemed to cost him blood. But he was coming.
She hadn’t time to appreciate his courage. She swung him round and towed him with her. “Back to the car,” she said tersely. “We have to talk.”
Brodie marshalled her thoughts as she was getting her breath back. “All right,” she said, gripping the steering wheel as if it might try to get away. “There was an incident here. A week last Wednesday, during the lunch break. A little girl went missing and when the staff checked the CCTV tape it showed her being led away by someone they didn’t know. Since that’s when you were watching your sunspots, and the camera picks up the top of the monument, you would have been on the same tape.”
Daniel cast Brodie a fugitive glance. He knew what was coming. “Did you get her name?”
“Sophie Ibbotsen. And she hasn’t been in school since. The principal thinks she’s on a Caribbean cruise.”
“Sophie.” His voice was barely a whisper. “They were looking for a child. They thought I’d abducted a child?” His eyes were hollow, desolate.
Brodie nodded sombrely. “They treated you like an animal because they thought you were one.”
“The family? These - Ibbotsens?” He was having trouble putting the words together. “It was them?”
“It figures. They have the tape of the incident. When the stills were blown up they showed you with a telescope looking towards the school. The Ibbotsens thought you were watching the kidnap. Maybe they thought you were supervising it.”
Almost, he didn’t want to believe it. He’d been just about ready to let it go, to accept that he would never know who or why. Now he had a name and a reason, and the refuge of ignorance would be forever denied him. Brodie had warned him about this. If we search for them, she’d said, we just might find them. But he hadn’t realised what it would mean.
He forced a shaky laugh. “Do I look like a master criminal?”
Brodie had worked for a solicitor for seven years, she knew that criminals come in all shapes and sizes. But still … “It wasn’t a very good picture.”
Another thought struck Daniel, rocking him. “And Deacon? What did he take me for? He hammered questions at me until my head was ready to explode, and all the time he knew! He knew what it was about so he knew who’d done it. My God! - they bought him off?”
Brodie slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he knows anything about it.”
“A child abduction? He must know. I gave him her name: he must have made the connection.”
“Think about it. He’s only going to know if somebody tells him, yes? The school didn’t tell him - they were assured that the child was safe with her family. And if her father lied to them, why would he tell the police? I don’t think Inspector Deacon knows that one of Dimmock’s leading families is being blackmailed for the return of an abducted child.”
“Then we have to tell him!”
“Perhaps.” Brodie was still trying to get the facts into some sort of order. “Or maybe not. Hold on a minute, let’s think this through. Why hasn’t Ibbotsen reported this? - because the blackmailers threatened to kill Sophie if he did. He doesn’t want the police involved. He wants to get the money together and get his little girl back unharmed. If we tell Deacon, we could put her life at risk.”
To his eternal credit, Daniel managed not to say what he was thinking. That these people had forfeited any right they might have had to his sympathy. That their agony was the only currency capable of redeeming his. His voice was low but his own again. “This happened ten days ago, it must be over by now. For good or ill, it must be finished.”
“No,” said Brodie with certainty. “If they’d paid up and got her back, Sophie’d be back at school. And if they’d killed her Deacon would be running a murder hunt and the time for secrets would be past. It’s still going on.”
Daniel’s eyes creased in puzzlement. “Do blackmailers do that? Hold onto people for weeks while their families wonder if they’re worth the money?”
Brodie flicked him a troubled smile. “I’m not the national expert on blackmail, you know. But yes, I think it always takes time. Having money isn’t the same as having it on tap. If you want your target to be discreet, you have to wait while he liquidises some assets. Then you have to work out a mechanism for the exchange.”
“How old is this little girl?”
“Five.” Brodie had wondered that too.
“A five-year-old child’s been in the hands of her kidnappers for ten days, and we’re the only ones who know?”
Brodie shuddered. “I think so.”
“Well … if we’re not going to the police, what are we going to do?”
She swivelled in her seat to look straight at him. “Daniel, this isn’t my decision. It’s yours. Whatever his reasons, however dreadful his dilemma, Ibbotsen nearly killed you. You don’t have to forgive that. You don’t have to excuse it. Forget what I just said: we can take what we know to Inspector Deacon and let him sort it out. That’ll get him off your back. He may even consider it recompense for my stupidity.
“And maybe it’s the best thing for Sophie. If this has gone on for ten days it may mean the family can’t sort it - even with their money, even with the kind of help they can buy. It may be the best thing all round. It may be the only way it can be brought to an end.”
Daniel Hood was by no means recovered from his ordeal. His body was rigid in the seat beside her, the parchment skin tight over the bones of his face, his eyes the colour of bruises. Even so, Brodie realised with some surprise, he was not at the end of his resources. Beneath the fragility, deep down where the corrosion of fear and pain and humiliation had never entirely penetrated, his soul was entire. Around its glowing ember was drawn a tight knot of resolution.
“That isn’t what I want,” he said in his teeth.
“I understand,” said Brodie softly. “You want him to pay for what he did. So we go to Deacon. There’s nothing for your conscience to struggle with. If he intervenes it’s because he judges it best; if he wants to hold back until Sophie is either safe or beyond help, he can do that. He’s the professional. Put it in his hands and leave it there.”
But she’d misunderstood, again. Daniel shook his head fitfully, groping for the words. “I mean, it’s not vengeance I want. Oh, in a way it is - it’s only human, isn’t it, someone hurts you, you want to hurt them back. But …
“Look, I’m a teacher, yes? I teach maths, and science if pushed, but mostly what we teach - what we all teach - is living. We take children and try to turn them into people capable of behaving well in a difficult world. We call it growing up; but some kids have it at ten, some don’t get it till they’re twenty and some never get it. They spend their whole lives relating to other people as they did when they were eight: hit me and I’ll hit you back, steal my apple and I’ll steal your satchel. Make me cry and I’ll tell my mum.
“I think - I hope - I’ve learned something since I was ten. I think I’ve grown beyond that. I hope I can stand back, even from this, and make decisions that I’ll be able to defend after the scars have faded. If a little girl died because I wanted to punish her father for hurting me … Brodie, how could I live with that? I couldn’t go into a classroom again. I couldn’t presume to tell anyone how to behave if I valued my revenge above a little girl’s life.”
Brodie detached her hands from the steering-wheel and prayer-folded them before her, breathing his name through the apse they made. “Daniel … you’re a good man. A gentle man. You’re the last man in the world who should find himself in this position. Someone who thought with his gut would be on the phone to Deacon right now, because that’s the visceral response. Someone who thought with his head would do the same because it’s the intelligent thing to do.
“
But you think with your heart. You try to do the right thing. You don’t hide behind the law, or practicality, or the frailty of human nature - you strive to do what’s right. And you’ll get hurt every time.”
“You think I’m wrong?”
Brodie shook her head. “No, I think you’re right. I’m just afraid that, if you won’t consider your own needs, no one’s going to.”
She started the car. Clearly they weren’t going to the police station, at least not yet. She headed for home where they could discuss their next move in comfort.
“Ibbotsen,” Daniel said again as she drove. “You know the family?”
“Well - of them. I don’t move in their social circle. They’re in shipping: everything from coasters to cruise liners. Serious money. Though Lance Ibbotsen’s supposed to have started as an apprentice on a Cape Horner.”
Daniel’s eyebrows rocketed. “Sailing ships? How old is he?”
“About seventy, I think. It may be apocryphal but that’s the story.”
“This isn’t Sophie’s father we’re talking about then.”
“No, grandfather. The father would be his son David.”
“They live in Dimmock?”
“The big house with white columns up on the Firestone Cliffs. Chandlers - you can see it from your loft. It’s worth as much as the rest of the town put together.” Brodie glanced at him. “I can’t believe you haven’t heard of them. It’s like living in London and not knowing about the Queen.”
Daniel shrugged apologetically. “I haven’t been here long. I’d noticed the house but I never heard who lived there. I never expected to have any dealings with them.” He thought about that, then said the word again, softly. “Dealings.”
She drove him to the netting sheds to collect some clothes. From the shore they had a panoramic view of Chandlers up on the hill.
Daniel couldn’t take his eyes off it. “Do you suppose that’s - where - ?”
Brodie bit her lip. “I don’t know. I don’t think it would do you any good to know.”
