by Jo Bannister
The man looked slightly reassured. “You’re sure? I can call her - she drove over to the stables where she keeps her horse an hour ago, I can get her on the mobile if there’s any chance she’s in trouble …”
“Call her if it’ll make you happy,” said Deacon, “but there’s nothing to worry about. At least, there is, but it’s somebody else’s problem. It involves someone called Sophie, a lot of money and a fair bit of brutality, so naturally I thought of you. Where were you last weekend?”
Walsh didn’t have to think. “I was in Norway until Saturday; Sunday I played golf. You can check if you need to.”
Deacon nodded. He would, but he didn’t expect to learn any different. “How about Sophie? Where was she last week?”
“Working. She’s PA to the proprietor of an art gallery in Eastbourne - I’ll give you his number so you can check that too.” He did. “Jack, whatever is this all about?”
“I’m barking up the wrong tree, I think. Something’s going on, something that nobody’s telling me about, and I thought maybe something had happened to your Sophie and you were on the warpath because of it.” Deacon sniffed. “I’m glad I was wrong.”
“You thought we were in trouble and you came to help? Jack, I’m touched.” Amazingly enough he seemed to mean it.
Deacon shrugged. “Partly that. And partly, I might have had some new charges to throw at you.”
Walsh laughed aloud. “Sorry to disappoint you.” A thought occurred to him. “Have you tried Ibbotsen at the end? His granddaughter’s called Sophie, I think. Mind you, she’s only a tot, I don’t know how much trouble she can have got into.”
“The house with the gates? I went there looking for you. You want to put a number up sometime.”
“Jack - anyone I want to see knows where I live.”
Deacon squinted at him. “Ibbotsen the shipping guy? I doubt he’d fit the bill. I know he has money. But I’m looking for someone with dirty money, and the morals to go with it.”
Walsh grinned. “What do I have to do to convince you I’m not like that? I’m a businessman, that’s all.”
Deacon smiled too; it looked like a crocodile smiling. “Terry, I’ve been a policeman over twenty years. I’ve known you since we were at school. I know when you’re lying. Ask me how.”
“How, Jack?”
“Your lips move.”
Even after Detective Inspector Deacon was seen driving away up the avenue, Ibbotsen wanted them to wait. “I can’t risk you being seen leaving here.”
Brodie answered with a negligent shrug. It would have suited her very well for Deacon to see them leaving: she wanted this subterfuge to end. She believed the day would come when she’d regret keeping secrets from Deacon.
She gave Ibbotsen five minutes then started the car again. “I’m not moving in with you just to avoid being seen leaving.” But Deacon was long gone and no one else was interested.
Exhausted by the morning’s revelations, Daniel fell asleep in the few minutes it took them to get home. Brodie couldn’t throw him over her shoulder and carry him inside the way she did with Paddy: she tapped his arm. He started with a sharp intake of breath.
“Sorry. We’re here.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after twelve.”
Upstairs Marta Szarabeijka had a pupil: one who thought a piano was like a bicycle, the harder you pedalled the better it went. The sound crashed through the window and splintered in the front garden.
Brodie opened her door. “I’ll make some lunch.”
Daniel hesitated in the hallway. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Make lunch?”
“Look after me. I can go home now. There’s no one waiting for me - there’s going to be no one waiting. Or I could go to an hotel.”
“Do you want to?”
“Not much,” he admitted.
“Then come inside and shut the door. It’s no hardship putting you up for a few days. Now we know there’ll be no repercussions Paddy can move in again. An extra place at the table: that’s all the trouble you are. Go home when you’re ready, stay till you are.”
He followed her into the kitchen, watched her peel potatoes. “How much longer can it go on?” he asked. “It’s been ten days: how much longer before the kidnappers decide they’re not going to get what they want and …”
“And what?” Brodie looked at him over her shoulder.
Daniel swallowed. “That was my next question. What will they do when they give up on the money?”
She peeled steadily. “If there’d been no contact for ten days I’d be afraid for that little girl’s life. The kidnappers might have waited two or three days and tried again, but if they really couldn’t make contact with the family they’d cut their losses. Either they’d leave her somewhere to be found, or they’d leave the body.
“But that isn’t the situation. Ibbotsen’s negotiator has been talking to them for a week. Since … well.”
“Since they decided they weren’t going to find her through me,” supplied Daniel. When she looked at him the ghosts were quiet.
Brodie nodded. “That’s quite a long time too, but if she’s somewhere safe and they’re somewhere safe maybe they’re not too worried. Snatching her was risky; collecting the money will be risky; talking on the phone really isn’t. Not if you know what you’re doing.
“The first thing the negotiator would say is that the money is available - that it isn’t the money but Sophie’s safety which is the issue. So the kidnappers are thinking not if but when. They believe she’s worth half a million pounds to them.
“What both sides have been doing for the last week is laying the foundations for a deal. It must seem a hell of a long time to both Sophie and her father, but actually the old man was right. It doesn’t matter how long it takes if it ends in success.”
“All right,” said Daniel, “suppose they agree on how to do it, and where and when and all the safeguards. Will they keep their word? Or will Sophie come home in a box?”
“Employing a professional negotiator was a good move. He’ll deal with more of these things in a year, working all over the world, than Scotland Yard does in five. He’ll break it down into stages. You do this, we do that; you do this, we do the next thing. He’ll try to ensure that they can’t get away with the money until Sophie is safe. Of course, the kidnappers will be trying to ensure that the Ibbotsens can’t get Sophie until they’ve paid for her. That’s what takes the time. As long as nothing unexpected happens, they’ll find a way.”
She looked at him sidelong, wondering how much truth he could handle. What he’d been through had taken him to the limit, physically and mentally: if it turned out to be for nothing, she was afraid for him. The hope that Sophie Ibbotsen would come home safe was holding him together.
Daniel caught the look and frowned. “What?”
“The negotiator will make sure the kidnappers play fair. Who’s going to make sure Ibbotsen does?”
“You think he’d risk her life?”
“No. But he might think he could do it without much risk.”
“I couldn’t bear it if she died,” Daniel said softly.
Brodie nodded. “All we can do is wait. And pray, if you’ve a mind to.”
Daniel shook his head. “I’m a mathematician. I believe that two and two always make four. They can’t make five however much someone wants them to.”
Finished with the potatoes, she leaned back against the counter. “So mathematics is the death of wonder?”
He did his heart-stopping smile. Brodie had known professional charmers, men who could gauge to the split second when to turn it on and how long to leave it running; and though like any woman with twenty-twenty vision she could appreciate a goodlooking man she had never been much impressed by expensive orthodontics.
Daniel Hood was different. He wasn’t a professional, the smile was his own. And he had no idea how affecting it was, how it got under her guard. It would have been captivatin
g on anyone at any time. On someone who’d come through what he had, it was devastating.
“On the contrary, mathematics is the perfect tool for exploring wonders,” he said. “No man has been further than the moon - on the universal scale that’s like moving up the sofa. But we know about the chemical processes in the hearts of stars on the far side of the galaxy, and mathematics is how. We know about other galaxies on the far side of the universe. We’re able to understand things whose physical structure is so bizarre we couldn’t describe them in any language except mathematics.
“Do you know about Spin Half?” Brodie shook her head. “The universe is made up of some particles that look different depending on which way you look at them, and others that don’t. In the same way that a sphere always looks the same from every angle, and a bow-tie would look the same upside down, but you’d have to walk right round a person to get the same view. With me so far? Particles like that are responsible for the forces operating in the universe: they’re described as having spin nought, one and two.
“Particles of matter are described as having spin half. Turning a particle like that through three hundred and sixty degrees isn’t enough to make it look the same. You have do it twice.”
“That isn’t possible,” said Brodie with conviction.
Daniel beamed. “It is; but we can only confront the idea through mathematics. Paul Dirac cracked it in 1928 in the first theory that was consistent with both quantum mechanics and special relativity.”
Brodie was at once puzzled and amused. Every time she thought she was getting a handle on him, understanding who he was and how he thought, he did this to her; changed the basic perameters of their relationship. She talked to him as if he were a child; and quite without resentment, possibly without noticing, he replied in terms that would have stretched a Nobel physicist. It wasn’t a put-down: it was just that, behind the ordinary face and the mundane job, he was very, very clever. She wasn’t sure he’d noticed that either.
She changed the subject. “Talking of confrontations. How do you feel after yours?”
The pleasure that had animated his face stilled. He thought about it. “Weird. But - better.”
“I thought you were crazy wanting to talk to that man,” said Brodie. “But you were right: it was what you needed.”
“I’ve never been brave,” confided Daniel. “Violence frightens me, even when I’m not the target. You know the seven-stone weakling in the chest-expander ads? - that’s me. All my instincts are to kick sand in my own face to save bigger guys the trouble.
“But you miss a lot by going through life like that. You back away more and more, quicker and quicker. You start by avoiding thugs on the beach, you end up staying indoors on sunny days. Once you start to run, somehow there’s no stopping.
“But you can make yourself stand still and face what’s coming. It’s hard at first, but it gets easier every time you think you’re going to die and don’t. Facing your fears doesn’t mean you never get hurt, but at least you learn who poses a genuine threat and who doesn’t. You still get sand in your face sometimes, but not every time someone walks past. And you do get to go on the beach.”
Brodie shook her head, her regard for him growing. “You’re a strange human being, Daniel Hood. But I’ll say this for you. You know what you want, and you have the guts to go for it. That makes you braver than nearly everyone I know.”
First thing on Monday morning she drove him to the hospital to get his dressings checked. “Call me when you’re done and I’ll pick you up.”
“I’ll get a taxi.”
“Call me.”
The doctor was still offended at him discharging himself. But when pressed he admitted that Daniel had come to no harm, that his injuries were healing, that more of the clingfilm could be dispensed with.
Daniel came out of the treatment room, tender and pink under his shirt, to find Detective Inspector Deacon waiting for him. Surprise froze him momentarily in his tracks.
“Daniel,” said the policeman non-committally. “You’re looking better.”
In the couple of seconds it took to detach his feet from the linoleum Daniel had made two decisions. He wasn’t going to tell Deacon about the Ibbotsens, and he wasn’t going to lie. If need be he’d stand there all day trying to reconcile the two. “I’m a lot better,” he said.
Deacon nodded. “Good. Now let’s see if your memory’s improved too.”
“There never was anything wrong with my memory,” Daniel said quietly. “I told you everything I knew. I don’t know why you didn’t believe me.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Deacon expansively. “It’s because when people are telling the truth, it adds up and makes a kind of sense. When it doesn’t add up and it doesn’t make any sense at all, nine times out of ten somebody’s telling porkies.”
“I haven’t lied to you. I just didn’t know the answers to your questions.”
“That’s right,” remembered the detective. “You don’t like liars, do you? ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil’ - it’s a good epitaph. I’ll have it inscribed on your tombstone.”
Daniel felt his skin crawl. “What do you mean?”
“I’m only being realistic.” Deacon put an arm around his shoulder and, if he noticed the younger man wince, pretended he hadn’t. “The people who chucked you in the skip thought you were dead. I lied - sorry about that, I know you won’t approve - I lied to the press to keep them thinking that. And now here you are, walking around in public and staying with a woman they also know about. Whoever they are, whatever it was all about, they must know by now that they left the job unfinished. It can’t be long before they decide to rectify that.”
He cocked his head, waiting for Daniel to reply. But Daniel said nothing. Deacon smiled his crocodile smile. “I have to hand it to you, Danny, you’re a braver man than me. That’s a good quality in a teacher, though it’s not the first thing that springs to mind. You think of teachers and you think cardigans, long holidays, pay disputes and whingeing on about not getting the respect they’re entitled to. You don’t immediately think of people brave enough to stand in front of a loaded gun just to prove that they can.”
Daniel knew he was being goaded and dared not respond. “Inspector - what is it you want from me?”
“I want to know what you know,” Deacon said forcibly. “I want to know why all at once you feel safe wandering round a public building where a week ago I had you hidden away under a false name with a guard on the door. Something’s changed. Something’s happened, or you’ve remembered something, but anyway you know something now that you didn’t then. Tell me what it is.”
“I can’t tell you anything,” insisted Daniel. “All I can do is repeat what I said before: I got tired of hiding. It’s not bravery, or stupidity - I think the danger’s passed. Maybe it’s time you called The Sentinel and put the record straight. It’ll come out sooner or later - when I go back to school if not before. It would be better coming from you than someone else.”
Deacon regarded him speculatively. “Daniel, do you hate me?”
Daniel stared. “Of course not.”
“Then why are you trying to sabotage my career? What I did to protect you I will get away with, just, if I can make an arrest. Without that I’m just another fascist pig with no respect for the public, lying to cover my own failure. I went out on a limb for you. I knew it could break: I didn’t expect to turn round and find you sawing like crazy behind me.”
“I’m not! Inspector Deacon, I’m grateful for everything you’ve done. But I still can’t answer your questions.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
Daniel Hood lost his temper. He didn’t shout or throw punches when he was angry, but his eyes crackled like embers. “The last people who thought I was lying to them burned me with cigarettes. After two days I still couldn’t help them. I can’t help you either, and I don’t know what you think you can do that’ll be more persuasive than what they came up with.”
“I know what was done to you,” he said wearily. “I saw it when it was worse than it is now, when I thought you were going to die. And when I thought you were an innocent victim. Now I think you’re in this up to your eyeballs. I think you could tell me the whole story if you wanted to.
“But if you don’t want the people who hurt you to pay for it, damned if I know why I should. Sort it out between you. You think you don’t need my help any more? Well, if they kill you next time we’ll know you were wrong.”
He turned on his heel, left Daniel standing flushed in the middle of Reception and almost walked over Brodie Farrell. “I should have known you’d be here,” he said nastily. “When you’ve got Superman, can Lois Lane be far behind?” He stalked out through the swinging doors into the car-park.
Mystified as she was, Brodie refrained from comment until she’d ushered Daniel away from the fascinated gaze of the packed waiting room. Then she said, “What was that about?”
“Mr Deacon still thinks I’m holding something back.”
“Well - you are, aren’t you?”
Daniel nodded mournfully. “Now I am. I wasn’t last time I talked to him.”
She hadn’t much sympathy for him. Most of what he’d suffered had been someone else’s fault but this he’d brought on himself. She’d tried to warn him what finding his enemies would mean, and about joining their conspiracy of silence. He hadn’t understood that keeping secrets mostly means telling lies.
“Well, you’ve got two choices - you do what Deacon wants or what Ibbotsen wants. You can’t do both. It may be, in the end, you won’t be able to do either.”
