by Jo Bannister
The view was spectacular: across the sapphire sea all the way to France on a clear day. But she wasn’t here for the view. She walked around the terrace until she found David Ibbotsen, hunched on a Lutyens bench. With his chin on his chest and his eyes closed he almost looked to be asleep.
Brodie said nothing. She sat on the bench beside him. He didn’t lift his head, but one eye opened and regarded her laconically. “Welcome to the House of Ibbotsen,” he drawled. “Half Greek tragedy, half Hammer Horror.”
“Pretty much like everyone else’s, then,” she said.
That made him chuckle. He shook his head. “The thing about serious wealth is that it opens the door to genuine hatred. People who need one another never get much beyond dislike.”
“He’s an arrogant man,” said Brodie. “I suppose he thinks, having made all this, he’s entitled to be. But he does care about you. You and Sophie both.”
“No,” said David quietly. “It’s one of those comforting fallacies. Like women who spend every Saturday night in Casualty saying, ‘He’s always sorry afterwards.’ No, he isn’t. If he was he wouldn’t keep doing it. If my father gave a damn about me or my daughter he’d have paid up as soon as he got the ransom demand, and worried about getting even after Sophie was safe.”
“There was some logic in what he said,” murmured Brodie. She wasn’t sure why she felt moved to defend the old pirate. Perhaps for David’s sake: perhaps it would be less hurtful if he understood that it wasn’t a clear choice between the child and the money.
“Would you have handled it that way? If you’d been in our shoes?”
She wouldn’t lie to him. “No. But that doesn’t mean I’d have been right.”
“Maybe it’s not a question of right,” said David Ibbotsen softly. “Maybe decency comes into it too. If I get Sophie back without the old man having to stump up, you’d have to say that what he did was right. But it wasn’t decent.”
Brodie couldn’t argue with that. “There really is no such thing as a free lunch, is there? The people who envy you all this - this house, the family business, the lifestyle that goes with it - don’t appreciate that you pay a price for it. You must dream sometimes of having a nice little semi and a job in a building society.”
David chuckled weakly. “He’s right about one thing - I do have an easy, comfortable, privileged life. But if I had that semi I’d still have my daughter safe at home.”
“And your wife?”
He looked at her then away, shrugging. “I don’t know. I doubt Marie would have married me in the first place. But maybe someone would.”
“What’s she like? - your wife.”
“Ex-wife. She’s - volatile. Emotional. Everything’s triumph or disaster with her. When she’s happy she’s the best company in the world; when she’s sad she plumbs the depths of despair. So you ask why, and it turns out it rained when she wanted to go sailing. You say, ‘Go tomorrow’ - and she bursts into tears because she’s surrounded by insensitive louts. I loved her for two years. The third exhausted me, and after that I honestly couldn’t wait for her to go.”
“It wasn’t her drinking that ended the marriage then.”
“The drinking was a symptom, not the cause. We weren’t well enough suited, and I was too infatuated to see it.” He gave a rueful sniff. “And she thought marrying money would be a lot more fun than it turned out to be. Unfortunately, to enjoy my father’s wealth you have to take my father as well. She thought she could change that. When she couldn’t she started drinking.”
“David, everything you say about her fits my theory. Why are you so sure she isn’t behind this?”
He bit his lip, made himself answer rationally rather than emotionally. “Because she hasn’t the patience. Whoever did this spent time planning it. Marie might have snatched Sophie off the street if she’d seen her out walking with the housekeeper. She’d never have waited three years and then hit us with something as smooth, as calculated as this. She’s not a cruel woman. I think she’s a disappointed woman.”
“We know there were at least two people involved. Maybe the woman on the tape - whether she’s a friend or hired help - set it up. Or there may be someone new in Marie’s life. Someone who does think long-term, and who expected a share of the proceeds.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” he conceded reluctantly. “But you’re asking me to wager Sophie’s life on your guess-work. What if you’re wrong?”
Brodie gave an apologetic shrug. “I’m not here to talk you into anything. She’s your daughter, it’s your money - the decision has to be yours.”
At that his eyes flared bitterly. “If it was, this would have been over ten days ago.”
“Can’t you raise the money yourself?”
David shook his head. “Institutions that would prostitute themselves to lend to the Ibbotsen Line would show me the tradesmen’s exit. The old man’s right: I’m not an equal partner. I’m not any kind of partner, just a handy conveyance for his genes.”
She wouldn’t believe that. “If it hadn’t been Sophie who’d been kidnapped, if it had been you -”
“He’d have called the police,” David said flatly.
Brodie felt terribly sorry for him. Maybe he wasn’t the man his father was, but maybe he shouldn’t have to be. He was entitled to be himself. Living in the old man’s shadow had gift-wrapped a future for him, but it had also robbed him of the chance to make his own. It had undermined his marriage and now he believed it had taken the one thing that was of his own making, his child. If there was room to criticize David Ibbotsen, there was reason enough to sympathise with him too. “If you want us to butt out, Daniel and me …”
“I don’t think it would make any difference. He’ll do what he wants to do; if you hadn’t given him an excuse he’d have invented one. Don’t blame yourself, Mrs Farrell: I don’t blame you and I shouldn’t have said what I did. The whole mess is more to do with the Ibbotsen family than any outsider. We don’t need anyone’s help to tear each other apart.”
Brodie was trying to think. “When you called Marie to say that Sophie was missing, was she there? Did she answer the phone?”
David’s eyes dropped, but not quickly enough to hide his embarrassment. “I didn’t call her. It seemed - best.”
Brodie looked at him levelly. “You’re telling me Marie doesn’t know that her daughter has been missing for twelve days.”
He winced. “You’d understand if you met her. Marie is an hysterical personality. If we’d told her it would have been on the internet the next day. Keeping it secret meant keeping it from Marie.”
But increasingly Brodie believed that Marie knew well enough. “Phone her now. You don’t need to talk to her - if she answers, put the phone down.”
He frowned. “What will that achieve?”
“It’ll tell us that she’s at home. If she has Sophie, she won’t be. She has to be aware you might work it out, and if you do she’ll have the gendarmerie knocking at her door. She’ll be somewhere they don’t know to look.”
They went inside. David had to look up the number.
The call was taken by an answering machine. He left no message. “What does that tell us?”
“Not a lot,” admitted Brodie. “She could be there or not; she could be close enough to drop in and collect messages, or the far side of the country and phoning for them. Someone has to go there.”
“How will that help?”
“You’ll know then if she’s still living there, if she’s visiting at intervals or if she’s done a runner. The neighbours will know if she’s still around, the local shops will know. The wonders of modern technology can take you just so far. After that you have to start knocking on doors.”
“You’re talking about a private detective. A French private detective.”
Brodie understood his misgivings. There are good inquiry agents and there are bad ones, and it can be hard enough to distinguish between them in one’s own language. “I’ll go if you like.”
David stared at her. “You’d do that? After everything?”
“You need an answer quickly. I can do it quicker than anyone else. Or you, of course.”
His gaze fell. “If I go I leave my father to man the phone and make any decisions that have to be made alone. I don’t trust him to make the right ones. If you’re offering I’ll accept, gratefully. If Marie can convince you she’s not involved, maybe you can convince the old man.”
“All right,” said Brodie. “I’ll go now. Give me Marie’s home address, and her parents’ address if that’s different, get me on a plane -”
“We have a Lear jet,” said David. “It’ll be ready inside an hour. Do you want to go home first?”
“I need my passport. And I’ll drop Daniel off.” The sound of his name brought a question to her mind. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer but she needed to. “Will you tell me something? Honestly, without worrying if it’ll upset me? I’ll go to France whatever the answer.”
“What?” But it was in his eyes that he already knew.
“For two days a man hired by your father tortured Daniel Hood for information he didn’t even have. To what extent were you part of that?”
There was a long pause before he answered. “I only knew about it when it was almost over. I knew they were questioning someone: I didn’t realise what that meant. Maybe I didn’t want to. When I saw what they’d done I threw up. My father looked at me as if I’d let him down again.”
Brodie nodded. “Tell him what we’re doing. I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”
David picked her up in the Range Rover, stowed her bag and passed her an envelope. “That’s Marie’s address in Quintin, and the address of her parents’ home on the coast at Etables fifteen miles away. We’re flying you into St-Brieuc and there’ll be a car to meet you.”
“I’ll start at Marie’s,” said Brodie. “I doubt if she’ll be there; but if she is, either Sophie’ll be with her or she won’t know anything about this.” She looked at him sideways as he drove. “You understand, don’t you, that even if I find Sophie I won’t be able to bring her home? You’ll have to get your solicitor onto it: he’ll contact the Home Office and they’ll liaise with the French authorities. I don’t want you to be disappointed when I get off the plane alone.”
In profile, David smiled. “Brodie, if you can find her - if you can tell me she’s safe with her mother - I’ll be eternally grateful. It doesn’t matter how long the paperwork takes. Of course I’ll get impatient, but the only thing that counts is Sophie’s safety. Right now I believe she’s being held by kidnappers who’re prepared to hurt her, to kill her, for half a million pounds of my father’s money. And since he’ll do anything, say anything, convince himself of anything rather than pay up, I’m scared sick. If you can tell me I needn’t be, that she’s all right where she is however long it takes, I’ll be in your debt forever.”
“But you don’t believe it, do you?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m afraid.” He drew a deep, steadying breath. “But the sooner you find Marie and we know for sure, the better. If you tell the old man that money’s the only answer, he’ll pay. I believe that. I have to.”
Stone walls clad in ivy and a lane of cobble setts led to what had been a small farmhouse. But unless the French had found a way of house-training them, no cows had crossed the yard in years. A small garden rumoured the spring and the pale sunshine picked out pastel paintwork. Marie Ibbotsen - or Soubriet, she had reverted to her maiden name - had been part of the nineties’ land-rush, when city-folk decided the country was the new town, stocked up on Laura Ashley, and immediately started complaining about the smell of slurry and the noise of roosters.
The driver stayed in the car when Brodie got out. It occurred to her, perhaps a little late, that if Marie was part of an extortion racket she might be unwilling to discuss it calmly. If she or an accomplice produced a weapon, Brodie thought she’d leg it rather than waiting for the stout Breton in the Renault to defend her.
The Wedgwood blue front door boasted both a bell and a knocker. Brodie availed herself of both and waited. No one came. She tried again with the same result.
She looked around. No close neighbours: a farm cottage where this lane left the Quintin road was nearest, she could ask there as they left. First, though, she’d have a nosy round.
A timber gate, painted to match the front door, led down the side of the house to an orchard full of apple-trees. An A-frame ladder leaned against a white-washed outhouse. Climbers that should have been pruned back in the autumn had the rustic pergola in a strangle-hold.
Shading her eyes against reflections, Brodie peered in at the back windows. Though it was fully furnished there were no signs of life.
Continuing round the house Brodie came to the back porch. Her heart missed a beat when she tried the handle and the door swung open, but the kitchen door was locked. The boots in the porch could have been there for years.
Which was, after all, what she was expecting to find: the house quiet, the occupant gone. Brodie nodded knowingly to herself. She’d talk to the neighbours, then she’d go to Etables and see the parents. She might get a lead on Marie’s whereabouts and she might not, but unless they could prove she was in hospital having her appendix out Brodie would believe she’d got to the bottom of this. She might not have resolved it but at least she could set David’s mind at rest. Now he’d need more experts to find Marie, and different ones to get Sophie back.
She turned on the back step to find someone watching her from the pergola. She thought at first it was a boy but it was a girl, in denims and boots and a corduroy coat, her brown hair in a gamine crop. She eyed Brodie warily but raised no challenge to her trespass, waiting for an explanation.
Resorting to schoolgirl French, Brodie stumbled, “Pardon, mademoiselle. Je cherche la maison de Madame Soubriet. Est-ce que je suis perdu?” She was quite pleased with that. It may not have been fluent but she was making herself clear. There was no call for the girl to respond as she did.
“I speak English,” she said.
Brodie sniffed, mildly offended. “I said, I’m looking for Marie Soubriet.”
“I know you did. But English people are better at speaking French than at understanding it.”
It was quite true: the first French phrases Brodie ever used outside the classroom were “Lentement, s’il vous plait” and “Voulez-vous répéter cela?” She dipped her head in acknowledgement. “Your English is certainly better than my French.”
“You are looking for Marie?”
“Is she here?”
The girl gave that stereotypical Gallic shrug that can mean anything from “Perhaps” to “Mind your own business”, and ruder things than that. “Have you looked?”
“I just arrived. There was no answer at the door.”
“And in England, when there is no answer at the door, you wander round the back garden?”
Stung, Brodie scowled at her. “I’ve come a long way. I didn’t want to miss her just because she was out back feeding the chickens.”
The girl - or woman, rather, Brodie saw now she was in her mid-twenties - considered her speculatively for a moment longer. Then she stepped into the porch and, kicking her boots off, reached under a flowerpot for the key. “Pig,” she said calmly.
Brodie blinked. “I don’t think that’s called for!”
“I was feeding the pig. I am Marie Soubriet. Come inside.”
Brodie’s mind whirled. She’d found the woman she’d come looking for. But - didn’t that mean Marie wasn’t the one she was looking for after all? Now she had to decide how much to tell her. And should she attempt to search the house? She could not discount the possibility that Sophie was here. Perhaps Marie had disdained to flee, had brought her daughter home trusting in her countrymen’s support and the old enmity as defence enough against the claims of perfidious Albion.
Then, other people were involved: if she talked too freely she could find a s
hotgun in the small of her back. Or if she was wrong about Marie the woman would scream for the law the moment she heard the word “abducted”. For the first time Brodie understood the dilemma the Ibbotsens had wrestled with these last twelve days. There were more ways to get this wrong than right.
But she had to start somewhere. If she left now she could tell David nothing. He would believe that finding Marie at home must mean she wasn’t involved. And that might be the case, but Brodie wanted to be sure. At least she wanted to talk to the woman long enough to get a feeling for who she was, what she might be capable of.
She introduced herself, gave an abridged version of what she did for a living. Marie curled herself cat-like into an armchair. “Who asked you to find me?”
“Your ex-husband.”
That didn’t come as a surprise. She arched and then lowered one eyebrow. “David knows where I live. He doesn’t need a private detective.”
“I’m not a private detective. After I find things, sometimes people want me to negotiate for them.”
The expression, contained before, now froze on Marie Soubriet’s face, becoming utterly unreadable. “And what could I possibly have left that David might want?”
Brodie chose her words carefully. “He wants to talk about your daughter.”
“Ma fille?” Anger jerked her back into her native tongue. Her eyes spat fire. “When did the Ibbotsens start thinking of Sophie as my daughter? Since the day of her birth Sophie was David’s daughter, and more than that Lance’s grandchild - a new generation to add to the Ibbotsen line. He didn’t want her baptised, he wanted to break a bottle of champagne over her head.”
Brodie chuckled, without much humour. “I haven’t known them long but they are a bit overwhelming, aren’t they?”
“Overwhelming.” Marie tried the word and found it wanting. “Bastards. It is a house of bastards. My child is being raised by bastards.”
“They do love her, you know,” said Brodie, not so much for David’s sake as to reassure the woman before her. She hadn’t seen her child for three years and thought she was in the hands of bastards. Of course, that was true. “Both of them - David and his father - think the world of her.”
