Other Countries

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Yet it seems clear that he didn’t instigate this meeting.’ She saw Gorman mentally translating and hid a smile. ‘Ford came to his house, not the other way round.’

  Another determined assault on it and at least the cake was gone, leaving him only the bitter coffee to struggle with. ‘Ford went to Railway Street looking for Hazel Best. He didn’t phone first or he’d have known she wasn’t there. He just rolled up in the middle of the night and let himself in with her keys.’

  ‘Which does not seem an entirely reasonable thing to do,’ said Maybourne. ‘At the very least he risked frightening her.’

  They both considered that for a moment before dismissing the idea.

  ‘They’d been living together,’ Gorman pointed out. ‘Perhaps he didn’t think he needed an appointment.’

  ‘But the relationship was over. It ended in acrimony and possibly violence – Hazel isn’t sure that Ford meant to hurt her, but he did. Surely, from that point onwards, a reasonable person would not feel entitled to treat a former partner’s property as his own. If he was prepared to enter her house uninvited …’ She didn’t finish the sentence, but the thought hung in the air between them.

  Gorman gave a lugubrious sniff. He didn’t hold much of a candle for either Ford or Saturday, but one of them was in the hospital and the other seemed to be responsible, and somehow he had to work out what had happened. ‘Or maybe Ford didn’t let himself in. Maybe he knocked and Desmond let him in.’

  ‘In the middle of the night?’

  ‘He works till late at a filling station, doesn’t get home till midnight. And Ford works in television. Maybe both of them consider one a.m. the early evening.’

  Superintendent Maybourne refreshed both their cups. Her brow was creased with thought. ‘Why would Ford go inside if Hazel wasn’t there? Why would Desmond ask him in?’

  ‘The boy might ask him in,’ said Gorman slowly, ‘if he saw a chance to get his own back for that slap. Instead of saying Hazel wasn’t there, he might have asked Ford to wait downstairs while he woke her. What he was actually doing, of course, was fetching the cricket bat. Only instead of waiting, Ford got impatient or suspicious and went to see what Desmond was up to. They met at the foot of the stairs, where Desmond swung fast enough to take Ford down.’

  They regarded one another in silence for a while, playing the scenario over in their minds. It was at least as plausible as the account Saturday had given.

  Finally Maybourne murmured, ‘If you’re right, that’s premeditation. Not self-defence but attempted murder.’

  ‘I know.’ Gorman gave up on the horrible coffee and put the cup and saucer on the superintendent’s desk.

  ‘You’re happy with that?’

  ‘Of course I’m not! He’s a seventeen-year-old kid: I don’t want to charge him with something that’ll put a blight on the rest of his life. But I think that version makes more sense than the one he’s giving us. Oliver Ford may be many things, not all of them admirable, but are we really going to say that he went there with the intention of committing rape? The man’s a national institution!’

  ‘Does that preclude him from being a rapist?’ asked Maybourne coolly.

  Gorman shook his head. ‘No. If history’s any guide, a national institution is more likely to be a self-centred, self-indulgent psychopath than the man on the Clapham omnibus. But you can’t level an accusation like that against someone – anyone, but most of all someone with expensive lawyers – just because it’s possible. His actions may have been nothing worse than thoughtless. All we know for sure is that Oliver Ford and Saul Desmond fought, and Desmond smashed Ford’s head in with a cricket bat.’

  ‘What do we know about this boy?’ asked the superintendent. ‘What sort of form has he got?’

  Gorman gave a prop-forward sort of shrug. ‘Petty theft. Nothing violent, so far as we’re aware. He was homeless until Hazel took him in.’

  ‘Yes. Why did she do that?’

  Of course, Superintendent Maybourne hadn’t come to Norbold until after Superintendent Fountain vacated the position. ‘Gabriel Ash was getting himself roughed up by the local yoof. Desmond helped him out. Hazel took an interest in him after that.’

  ‘She must have thought he was worth helping.’

  ‘A lot of the time Hazel’s right about things. But not always. I’d stake a week’s wages that boy’s lying to us. About what happened, or how it happened, or why it happened.’

  ‘And why he didn’t get help for Ford as soon as he realised what he’d done.’

  Gorman nodded. ‘He’s seventeen, not seven. He knows that when somebody’s bleeding on your lino, you call an ambulance. You do not phone a friend.’

  ‘I think it’s just as well,’ murmured Superintendent Maybourne, ‘that Oliver Ford isn’t the only one who can afford expensive lawyers.’

  After tea, Ash and Patience rounded up the boys for a walk to the park. It was something they’d started doing when Ash first brought his sons home, back in August when the evenings were still long. Now it was November and it was dark by tea-time. But the weather remained mild, there were street lamps all the way to the park, and the boys brought flashlights and enjoyed the spookiness of their familiar playground turned strange by the setting of the sun.

  Patience played a kind of vampire hide-and-seek with them, lurking in the black shrubbery then springing out at them, to the accompaniment of delighted shrieks. She cast Ash a mildly embarrassed look and he could have sworn she shrugged.

  At the pond, transformed by night to a sea whose far shore was invisible, Guy bemoaned the fact that he hadn’t brought a boat to sail. (Ash was in the process of making them a proper pond-yacht, with two masts and a bowsprit and self-steering, but it was taking longer than he’d anticipated and in the meantime they were playing with something mass-produced and shop-bought but, and this was important, ready to sail.)

  Gilbert was typically dismissive. ‘You’d lose it in the dark.’

  ‘I’d keep my torch on it.’ Guy demonstrated.

  ‘And when it went further than the torch could reach?’ Gilbert showed how the pool of light grew paler with distance until there was nothing left.

  The younger brother was undeterred. ‘I’d get in and fetch it.’

  ‘You’d freeze!’ hooted Gilbert. ‘That water’s freezing.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’ Guy, ever practical, demonstrated that too by the simple expedient of thrusting his arm into it, windcheater and all, up to the elbow.

  Ash snatched him back before any more of him disappeared. But actually Guy was right. He was wet but not chilled. Ash made some ineffectual gestures with his handkerchief and then gave up. ‘Tell me if you’re getting cold.’

  ‘I’m not cold,’ said Guy stoutly.

  Ash grinned. ‘Tough guy.’ The little boy beamed.

  They walked home then. Ash put his younger son into a hot bath and hung his clothes over a radiator, and then he got them both off to bed. Frankie had gone out with friends for the evening, and with her unerring instinct for kindness had invited Hazel along, so the house was quiet now. Ash sat in his study, nursing a mug of coffee and his dog’s head, his deep-set eyes unfocused with thought.

  Then he phoned Detective Inspector Gorman.

  Dave Gorman had finally shut up shop and taken his girlfriend out for a meal. She’d been his girlfriend for so long that he really should have taken the next step by now. But perhaps a looser arrangement suited them both, because she dropped no hints about marriage and tolerated his long hours and interrupted weekends with a degree of equanimity unusual in police spouses. When his phone rang, she just raised an eyebrow and indicated that he should take the call.

  ‘It’s Ash,’ said Ash.

  ‘I know,’ snapped Gorman. ‘What do you want?’

  Ash sounded puzzled. ‘How did you know?’

  Gorman breathed at his phone much as the dragon must have breathed at St George. ‘Because when someone I know phones me, their name comes up on the scr
een. The same way it does on yours, Gabriel, if you took the trouble to look. I’m in the middle of dinner here – what do you want?’

  ‘You’ve got my number in your phone?’ He sounded quite touched.

  ‘Of course I have. Something weird happens in Norbold, there’s always a good chance you’re involved. Gabriel, I’m with someone. What do you want?’

  Ash refocused on what he’d spent the last hour thinking about. ‘When I found Ford in the hall at Railway Street, he was wearing gloves.’

  ‘Yes. So?’

  ‘Why? It isn’t cold. He didn’t walk from Purley Woods – he drove and parked at Hazel’s door. I’m not wearing gloves yet, and I’m guessing you’re not. Why was Ford?’

  ‘I bet,’ Gorman said heavily, ‘if I’m patient, you’ll tell me.’

  ‘For the same reason all criminals wear gloves: to avoid leaving fingerprints. He wasn’t returning Hazel’s keys, and he wasn’t there to apologise and ask for another chance. He was there to take his revenge on her. He reckoned that if there was no forensic evidence it would be his word against hers, and most people would take his.’

  ‘If you’re talking about rape’ – Gorman dropped his voice discreetly; still his companion and half the restaurant stared at him – ‘fingerprints aren’t the only evidence.’

  ‘They’d been living together,’ Ash reminded him. ‘Anything else could be explained away. But fresh fingerprints would prove he was in her house after they’d broken up. Everything else could be open to interpretation, but fresh fingerprints would put him somewhere he’d no business being. Inspector – he had only one reason for going to Railway Street, and he knew what he intended to do there before he left home. He brought his gloves with him.’

  Across the table, the DI’s long-suffering girlfriend had finally had enough. She folded her napkin and went to rise. Gorman waved her back, his broad face twisted with apology. ‘Gabriel, I can’t talk about it right now. Call me tomorrow. But I’ll be honest with you: a pair of gloves isn’t going to make the Crown Prosecution Service throw in the towel. If you want to get that boy off the hook, it’ll take something that Ford’s lawyers can’t explain away. Something that marks him, not Desmond, as the aggressor. Without that, I think the kid’s going down.’

  THIRTY

  Hazel spent much of the next morning in her room, sewing. Keen to contribute to the running of the household while she remained at Highfield Road, she had taken over the task of keeping the Ash boys decently clad. This could involve anything from replacing a button to stitching up a torn pocket to patching the knees of trousers which, against repeated injunctions, had once again taken part in a game of football (Guy) or climbed a tree (Gilbert).

  She came downstairs around eleven and, finding Ash staring wordlessly into the kitchen range, made coffee and toast. ‘You look deep in thought.’

  He sighed. ‘I’m worried.’

  ‘About Saturday.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Dave Gorman’s convinced he’s lying.’

  Hazel pulled a chair closer to the range. ‘What about? I don’t see how else it could have happened. It’s typical of Oliver that he couldn’t wait until morning to talk to me. He let himself into the house in the middle of the night. Saturday thought he was a burglar, they fought and Oliver got the worst of it.’

  Ash didn’t want to argue with her again about the reason for Ford’s visit to Railway Street. After everything that had happened, everything Ford had done, there were still depths that she didn’t believe him capable of plumbing. In one way it didn’t matter. The evidence that would give Saturday the chance of a future would also prove that Hazel was wrong about Ford. Ash was painfully aware that he could only help one of his friends by crushing the other.

  In another way it mattered very much, because it cast light on the kind of man Oliver Ford really was, and therefore the situation in which Saturday had found himself that night. Ash might have left Hazel the small comfort of believing that Ford was just a bit of a bully, if that hadn’t tacitly loaded the blame for his current condition onto their young friend. ‘Have you got your phone on you?’

  She took it out. ‘No one’s called me.’

  ‘You understand these things better than I do. Is there a way he could have stopped calls from reaching you?’

  ‘That was the woods,’ explained Hazel. ‘There are lots of places, particularly out in the country, where you can’t get a signal.’

  Ash persisted. ‘Have you heard from anyone since you got back to Norbold?’

  She was still looking bewildered. ‘Who’d call me? You’re right here, and Oliver’s in a coma, and there’s no one else …’ But she let the sentence die away. Of course there was. There was her father. There was Meadowvale – she’d been waiting to hear when she could return to work. There were all the people trying to sell her double-glazing. ‘Wait.’

  It didn’t take her three minutes. Then she threw the phone down on the kitchen table, and turned back to Ash, her face grey. ‘Well,’ she managed, ‘it looks as if he knows more about how things work than he let on.’

  ‘He cut you off from anyone you could have turned to for help,’ said Ash quietly. If he felt any sense of triumph, he kept it to himself. ‘He disabled your car, then took it into town while you were out walking; and he disabled your phone so Diego couldn’t let you know when the car was fixed. No one from Meadowvale could contact you, and neither could I. He made a prison for you out in those woods, and he thought he could keep you there as long as it amused him. When you walked out, he was angry enough to do anything.’

  It was impossible for her to go on thinking anything else. ‘I’ve been so stupid,’ she whispered. ‘I believed – I honestly believed – that, unlikely a couple as we made, we were good together. I enjoyed being with him; I thought he liked being with me.’

  ‘He obviously did,’ murmured Ash. ‘On his own terms.’

  ‘He thought he’d bought me. But was that his fault, or mine?’

  ‘His,’ said Ash immediately. ‘Slavery has been illegal in Britain for two hundred years.’

  Hazel stared into the range, finally comprehending the enormity of the danger she had been in. When she found her voice it was thick with grief and anger. ‘Dear God, Gabriel, how could I be so wrong about him? He never loved me. He just wanted my head on his wall. A trophy. A damned fish that he’d hooked.’

  Ash felt her suffering as if it were his own. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You never trusted him, did you? Even Saturday saw through him. Why didn’t I? Why did I let him treat me like that? I’m not a giddy teenager drooling over her first boyfriend, I’m a professional woman in her late twenties. A police officer, for God’s sake! I know about domestic violence. I know about men who intimidate women, sometimes without laying a hand on them.

  ‘For years I’ve quietly despised those women for not doing something about it. For saying it wasn’t true, or it was a mistake, or he only did it because he was drunk or when she made him angry. For loving him anyway. For accepting pain and humiliation as the price of not being alone.’ Hazel vented a shaky laugh. ‘And now I’m one of those women. That’ll hurt for longer than the eye will.’

  If he sympathised again, Ash thought she would burst into tears. ‘I’m just glad you came home with me that night, instead of staying at Railway Street.’

  Hazel nodded slowly. ‘You’re right about that, too, aren’t you? He wasn’t there to talk. His pride was hurt, and he wanted to hurt me back. If I hadn’t got away from him …’ Which reminded her of a question she still hadn’t had an answer to. ‘How did you find me? With my phone out of action I never got round to sending you the Purley address. How come you turned up there? How did you know I needed you, and how did you know where to come?’

  ‘Ford isn’t the only one who knows how things work,’ said Ash wryly. ‘Saturday ran a trace on Ford’s phone. I was worried about you, wanted to check that you were OK. I thought you might have got involved in something you
shouldn’t have. I never for a moment thought I’d find you bleeding on the driveway.’

  ‘I genuinely thought that was an accident,’ Hazel said, shaking her head now at her own naivety. ‘But it wasn’t, was it? It was part of the pattern. He punishes people who cross him. Who won’t go along with his Ford-centric view of the world.’

  The situation was far from resolved. But Ash felt it like a weight off his shoulders, that she finally understood how little Ford deserved her lingering loyalty. He had his clear-eyed friend back again, and together they could concentrate on helping Saturday.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So it’s pretty clear that Ford deserved to be brained with a cricket bat. Unfortunately, that doesn’t give Saturday carte blanche for doing it. The only way he’s walking away from this is if he’s telling the God-honest truth – that he went downstairs to call the police, and took the bat to protect himself. I still don’t understand what it was doing under his bed.’

  That was easy. ‘He’s a teenage boy!’ said Hazel. ‘Everything you can’t find is under a teenage boy’s bed. Pots, crockery, clothes, books. Anything that will fit, and some things that won’t. The underneath of a teenage boy’s bed is a combination of wardrobe, chest of drawers, bookshelf, filing cabinet and rubbish bin. Wait till yours are a bit older and you’ll see what I mean.’

  Ash’s grin faded. ‘Are you regretting now that you took him in?’

  Hazel shook her coppery head. ‘He was worth taking a chance on. Even if he’s to blame for what happened, even if he has to pay for it, I’ll always be glad I gave him that chance. He might have been able to use it.’

  ‘He still might,’ said Ash. ‘Don’t give up on him yet.’

  Their mugs were empty. He got up to refill them. Frankie, concerned at the amount of coffee he was getting through each week, had tried to ration him, but none of the alternatives – soft drinks, tea, cocoa – lubricated his thinking muscles in the same way. He was thinking now, and didn’t like what he was coming up with.