Echoes of Lies

by Jo Bannister

  “Except yours.”

  Daniel didn’t reply. He hadn’t an answer that would make her feel any better.

  She sensed evasion. “What made you suspect him? I can see how, once your suspicions were aroused, you had to check them out. You learned about his financial difficulties, and you got together some photographs of his friends from which I was able to make a tentative identification. But what made you suspect David Ibbotsen in the first place?”

  Daniel’s eyes dropped and he shrugged his clothes about him as if the bathroom was cold, which it wasn’t. “He lied.”

  “About what?”

  “What happened - here, outside. He told you he wasn’t involved. But he was. From the start.”

  In the silence Brodie considered this. “He knew what they were doing to you?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Maybe most people would have lied about that,” she ventured. “He wanted me to think well of him. It’s a long way from there to guessing that he kidnapped his own daughter. How could you know he was capable of that kind of - ruthlessness - when I didn’t?”

  “Brodie - it was David who shot me. Not Lance. He said that because he thought one of them was going to prison and he didn’t want to deprive Sophie of her father. I suppose he thought I wouldn’t remember. But I do.”

  Brodie stared at him in horror. She was no longer wondering if it was true, only how it fitted together. “You’re saying that he stood by and watched you tortured for information he knew you didn’t have!”

  Daniel gave an awkward shrug. “I suppose by then he was in so deep the only way out was confession. He thought his father would have turned on him. He would, too.”

  “So David watched you suffer for two days, and then he shot you?”

  “Someone had to,” Daniel said, almost apologetically. “David had the best reason to get it over and done with.”

  As Brodie’s understanding grew, so did her sense of outrage. And not all of it was directed at David Ibbotsen. “You knew this. And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I was only sure today. When you recognised the photograph.”

  “I don’t mean about the fake kidnap. I mean, that a man I liked and was going on holiday with - that I was taking my daughter on holiday with! - is a monster. A killer, except for the merest fluke of a frosty night. You knew he shot you and left you to die, and you didn’t tell me.”

  His face twisted with regret. “Would you have believed me? You thought I resented him because you and he were getting close. If I’d told you then, without any kind of proof, the best you’d have thought of me was that I wanted it to be true. You’d have asked David, he’d have denied it and you’d have believed him. I needed evidence, quickly, before he drew you any deeper into the conspiracy.”

  “Drew - me - ?” she echoed faintly.

  Daniel knew he was hurting her. So much of this he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to say. He’d expected that David would come clean when he realised the game was up, or else that Brodie would guess or perhaps wouldn’t want to know. But maybe, difficult as it was, it was better to have everything said. Open wounds look worse but heal better. Also, he hoped very much never to have to revisit this territory again.

  “He was still covering himself. You’re an intelligent woman, he knew if he ever gave you a reason to wonder about him you’d find the truth. He needed you on his side. He played’on your sympathy until it started turning to something more. If he could make you fond of him, he could make you trust him. It didn’t have to last forever, and of course it wouldn’t have done. Melanie Fields didn’t risk prison for the small change he’d have left after his debts were paid: she did it for him, and after what they’d done together he couldn’t afford to offend her. They had to end up together, so at some point you had to be dumped. Any allegations you made about him after that would just sound like the spite of a rejected lover.”

  Minutes passed as Brodie reviewed the events of the past week in the light of Daniel’s explanation. Twice she vented a sharp, hawk-like little pant; once she almost smiled. Finally, her tone still incredulous though her eyes believed, she said, “But - the risk! Maybe he thought he could fool everyone else, but Sophie knew. And Sophie’s five years old. Sooner or later she was bound to spill the beans!”

  Daniel shook his head. “Not really. Five-year-olds can keep secrets like their lives depend on it - if they couldn’t there wouldn’t be any abused children. If David told her never to speak of it, that he’d be in terrible danger if she did, she’d lock the whole thing so tight inside her it would take a psychiatrist to get it out.

  “And she was never going to talk to a psychiatrist, was she? Or the police, or even her teachers. None of them knew she was supposed to have been kidnapped. And if she forgot her promise and talked about her holiday, so what? So she stayed in a country cottage when they thought she was on a Caribbean cruise. If they even noticed they’d think nothing of it.

  “The only one who mattered was Lance. If she talked about it to Lance, he just might put it together. So David covered even that eventuality. He told you, so no doubt he also told his father, that Sophie was confused, that she hadn’t realised she’d been kidnapped and he didn’t want her to know. With that in mind, Lance would discourage her from talking about it - for fear of what he might give away, not guessing there were secrets he might hear.

  “And suppose the very worst happened. Suppose she told Lance that she stayed with Daddy’s old girlfriend and Daddy phoned her every day. She’s five years old, she was drugged, it’s already on record that she’s confused about what happened: Lance would assume she was remembering something from way back and never suspect she was telling the literal truth. David’s been his whipping-boy so long it’s become a kind of shield. Lance wouldn’t entertain the idea that his son might have taken him on and won.”

  Everything Daniel said was true. Everything accorded with what Brodie knew about the two men at the centre of it: what she knew from personal experience and what she’d been told. She groaned, and when Daniel looked anxiously at her explained huskily, “Marie. She told me, near as damn it. She said, ‘At least Lance was an honest monster.’ If I hadn’t been - feeling things for him - I’d have heard the rest of it, the bit she didn’t say. That David was a dishonest one.”

  “You couldn’t have been expected to.” Daniel was still trying to ease her way. “You needed to know what I knew; and I couldn’t tell you. Not without proof.”

  Brodie took a deep breath and stood up. “Are you all right?” Daniel nodded. “Then we have to go back in there. We have to tell Lance.”

  But Lance already knew. He hadn’t got to be a rich man without learning to read faces. What had been said, and how his son reacted to it, had told him all he needed to know. They returned to the sitting room to find him standing at the French window, his back ram-rod straight, tears streaming down his face. David was nowhere to be seen.

  Brodie said, “What - where … ?”

  “He’s upstairs. Packing. He leaves this house with what he can carry and nothing more. Except for Sophie: she’s staying here. I’ll call her mother in the morning, see what we can work out.”

  “You’re throwing him out?” whispered Brodie.

  The old man turned to her - and now he looked a very old man. “Mrs Farrell, David’s my only son. My only child. The father of my only grandchild. I know he’s not much of a man, but it didn’t really matter. I was man enough for both us. I’d have left things so he couldn’t make too much of a mess of them.

  “But - this … ! Not the money. Not even the fear, though it was like knives in my gut. But I could have forgiven him even that eventually.” He looked at Daniel, the pale eyes tormented. “But what he - made me do -”

  Daniel shook his head. “Nobody made you do that. You could have handed over the money. You could have gone to the police. You did what you did to me because you like doing things your way. David’s a liar and a thief; but torture isn’t his style, it’s yours. H
e was afraid to interfere because he was afraid what you’d do to him if you guessed why.”

  “I wouldn’t have hurt him!”

  “No? You thought I was using the child to extort money from you. He saw what you did to me. He thought if you found out it was him you’d destroy him. I think so, too. My God, you treated him like dirt just because he hasn’t your head for business! No, Mr Ibbotsen, you can’t escape your share of the blame for this. Your son is the man you made him.”

  Ibbotsen went on staring at him, too proud to hide the tears. “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing,” said Daniel.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing at all.” Brodie saw a tiny smile touch his lips. “I don’t have to. Your life is in ashes now: anything I could do to you, anything the law could do, would only blow those ashes around. You’re safe from me, Mr Ibbotsen, and so’s David. But then, I never meant you any harm. I was just someone in the wrong place at monumentally the wrong time.”

  The sharp jaw rose like the prow of a sailing ship. “Go on, say it. Tell me I’m my own worst enemy.”

  Once Brodie had hated him, then she’d pitied him. Now he meant nothing to her. Not even enough to avoid stating the devastatingly obvious. “Not while your son’s alive, you’re not.” Steering Daniel ahead of her she left the room, and the house, and never looked back.

  Chapter 26

  “Were we too hard on him?” murmured Daniel.

  Eyes on the lamp-lit road, Brodie shook her head. “You can’t be too hard on people like that. But most of the time you can’t get through to them either. I’m with Marie: they’re both monsters.”

  “They behave like monsters,” agreed Daniel. “Actually, they’re two deeply damaged people. A testament to the corrupting power of too much money.”

  “David didn’t think he had too much money.”

  “He had, though. Too much ever to learn to stand on his own two feet. When it still wasn’t enough, the only way he knew to get more was to steal it.”

  “From his own father.” Her voice mingled wonder and disgust.

  “Who else? He never learned to rob banks either. It had to be his father’s money he took, in the same way that it had to be his daughter that he ransomed. The family is the whole of his life, the only part of the world he has any experience of. David’s tragedy is that he couldn’t raise his sights beyond the rôle created for him by his father’s wealth.”

  “What do you suppose will become of him?”

  Daniel smiled into the darkness. “I give them a year of long-distance odium. After that they’ll be under the same roof again.”

  Brodie took her eyes off the road long enough to stare at him. “Never,” she said with conviction.

  “Neither of them has anyone else. Half a million won’t last forever, not when most of it’s already owed to other people. David’s going to need someone to write cheques for him.

  “And Lance needs someone to despise. If he despised the people he employs he’d have to sack them. He needs someone he can’t get rid of, however much of a disappointment he is. The stars need night to shine and Lance needs David. Without him he’s just a lonely old man with more money than he can spend.”

  Brodie was fascinated by his insight. It was almost as if he could see into the future and watch these consequences unfold. For a moment she hesitated, too proud to ask. But she wanted to know more than she cared what he thought. “What about Melanie Fields? Will she and David stay together?”

  He shook his yellow head. “She joined him in this not because she was worried about his business losses but because she thought beating Lance would make a man of him. Right now she thinks they won. When she finds that nothing’s changed, that his father and his father’s money remain the hub of David’s existence, she’ll give him up as a lost cause. Melanie will get on with her life, and David will go home.”

  “Then it was all for nothing.”

  “I suppose it was. It didn’t seem to be. You were prepared to risk your life for that little girl. The fact that she was never in danger doesn’t alter that.”

  “It alters how I feel about it,” she said resentfully. And then, after a long pause, her voice fallen to a murmur: “How do you feel? Now we know it wasn’t even an honest mistake.” She gave a brittle laugh. “If you know what I mean.”

  Daniel thought for a moment. “As far as Lance was concerned it was an honest mistake. He believed Sophie was in mortal danger and set about saving her the way that made most sense to him. It was his nature to fight rather than submit. I think I believe him when he says he’d have paid up if he’d believed it was the safest thing to do.”

  “I don’t,” growled Brodie. “He’s good at convincing himself that what he wants to do is right. The bottom line is, he tortured you for two days rather than part with some of his money. It wouldn’t have been much better if you’d been the man he took you for. In fact, not only were you not a kidnapper, but there hadn’t even been a kidnap.”

  “He thought there had. He was afraid. Frightened people do stupid things.”

  She gave a disparaging sniff. “You’re determined to see good in people, aren’t you? All right then, what of David? He could have stopped it at any time. He didn’t, because he wanted the money enough to watch you suffer. He knew Sophie was safe, you can’t put it down to fear. It was greed, and that makes him evil.”

  “He was afraid,” insisted Daniel. “He had no idea what he was getting into, and when Lance didn’t react the way he expected he had no idea how to get out. Evil’s too big a word for it. He was weak. He did what he’s done all his life: followed the path of least resistance.”

  Brodie pulled in beside the sheds. The sea was a soft mutter of shingle further down the shore. She looked at the tall black buildings looming against the sky. “It’s late. Why don’t you sleep at my place tonight?”

  But Daniel got out of the car. “It’s over. I’m safe enough in my own bed.”

  “All right.” The crunch of gravel startled her and she snatched up the torch. The beam found a man carrying a yellow bucket, who blinked in the sudden light and looked away.

  “Bait-diggers,” said Daniel.

  “At this time of night?”

  “Low tide.” With a backwards glance and a shy wave he trudged across the stones towards his flat, an insignificant figure in an oversized parka. Brodie found herself smiling. He was a genuine original: an anorak with the heart of a hero. She headed for home.

  She travelled a mile before the car slowed and coasted to a halt along the kerb. There was nothing wrong with it, she’d just stopped driving. Something was bothering her, and she at first she couldn’t think what it was. Something he’d said, or she’d said, or something …

  Something she’d seen? It was dark, apart from some late night traffic they’d seen no one, only the bait-digger on the shore. Who was out at this time because he required low tide, and the tide followed its own agenda even more than Daniel did.

  In a suit? He was digging bait in a suit?

  He was on his way home. Working late in the office, found the tide out as he passed, grabbed his bucket and spade from the boot of his car and went to stock up on lug-worms or rag-worms or whatever bait people dug on Dimmock’s stony shore. It was feasible. It was even plausible. There was no longer any reason to fear danger behind every door. The affair was over, its secrets told; the only one left with a reason to hurt Daniel was David, and he knew he’d have to answer to his father. Besides, she’d seen the man’s face and it wasn’t David.

  Still somehow the car turned itself around and started back towards the shore.

  She had no idea what she’d say when Daniel answered the door in his pyjamas. Something stupid. She’d said a lot of stupid things. She’d accused him of having a crush on her! He’d managed to avoid referring to that, but he couldn’t have forgotten - it was going to be an embarrassment between them for as long as they knew one another. Almost, it was reason enough to end the frien
dship. To shake hands, part on good terms and let the wounds heal.

  But not tonight. Uneasy as she was, Brodie wouldn’t sleep if she didn’t go back to check that he was all right.

  The same impulse that had made her return made her park the car up the shore where its engine wouldn’t be heard. And though you can’t walk silently on shingle, something made her try.

  She climbed the iron steps. The light inside the flat escaped through an imperfectly drawn curtain to illuminate her way. As she reached to knock she heard a man’s voice. Not Daniel’s: a voice she didn’t recognise. Curious, she leaned closer.

  The voice said, “ … Call her. Ask her to come back.” Then, “You will. It might take a little while, but you will.”

  The window beside the door, the one with the badly drawn curtain, was offset from the top of the steps. Brodie leaned over the rail, peering through the crack.

  The man whose voice she didn’t recognise was seated in the armchair, almost facing her. Daniel sat on the floor, his back against the man’s legs. Brodie blinked. For a moment it looked so intimate that she almost tip-toed away.

  Then she saw Daniel’s eyes, stretched with fear, and after that she saw that his ankles were strapped together with lengths of bubble-wrap and duck tape. His arms were out of sight behind him: she guessed they too were tied. The man held Daniel against his knees with one hand on his throat. The other was cupped close to his eye.

  “You think you can refuse?” There was an arch, teasing note to the voice. “Daniel, we both know you can refuse me nothing. I know you too well. I know how to hurt you.” The fingers of his cupped hand lit with a sudden rosy glow and Daniel convulsed in his grip.

  “I will find her,” promised the man. “You can’t save her. You can just make things a little easier for us both.” The cigarette lighter flared in his fist again. Daniel gasped as the flame licked his cheek.

  I know how to hurt you; and I will find her. All the information Brodie needed was in those two sentences.