by Jo Bannister
What it didn’t do was undermine the resolve which brought her here.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Daniel quietly.
‘Yes.’ She dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I’m feeling a bit emotional.’
‘It must have been an emotional day for you,’ said Daniel. ‘Were you in court?’
Mrs Carson shook her head. ‘I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t face people looking at me, thinking I was there to support him. And then, the last I heard he was pleading not guilty. I didn’t want to listen to his lies.’
‘Did you know they were lies?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I mean, he never laid his head on his old mum’s shoulder and confessed what he’d done. I didn’t know in that sense. But I knew he was capable of it. From the moment the police came to my door I never doubted that Bobby had done what they thought he’d done.’
Daniel didn’t know where all this was going. When he guessed who she was, he’d supposed she wanted him to seek out evidence for an appeal. He thought he was going to have to explain that she needed a private investigator for that, and her son’s solicitors would organise it. Now it seemed that wasn’t what she had in mind.
Conscious that time was money, Brodie would have asked her outright. Daniel took a rather gentler approach. He did this job because Brodie needed him to, but he genuinely liked helping people. If all someone needed was a cut-glass decanter to complete the set her Aunt Dotty left her and somebody didn’t pack properly when they moved house, he took pleasure in her delight when he found a replacement. If he could help extricate a client from a sea of troubles emanating from the fact that something had been lost, or sold, or thrown or given away when he’d no idea how his future would be blighted by his failure to keep it safe, that was even better. They were rarely life-and-death matters. But the people who came through the burgundy front door usually left a great deal happier, which gave Daniel considerable satisfaction. He was in many ways a simple soul.
He said, ‘Tell me how I can help you.’
Margaret Carson swallowed. ‘How much do you know about the case?’
‘What was in the papers, that’s all.’
‘He ran them down. In his car. He knocked them down so he could rob them.’ Her voice was a measured monotone. If she’d allowed any feeling to surface it would have run away with her.
‘Yes,’ said Daniel softly.
‘They’d just got engaged. That’s what they were doing in the restaurant – celebrating their engagement. She was wearing her ring, and a necklace he’d given her. Good jewellery – expensive. You can say that about my Bobby.’ She barked a bitter laugh. ‘He has an eye for quality. The police never found the stolen items. It took them five days to catch up with Bobby, and by then he’d disposed of them.’
Listening to her told Daniel something about Margaret Carson. She was well educated, and there was no history of crime in her background. She lacked the vocabulary. Anyone to whom armed robbery was a familiar field would have used different words, and used them less awkwardly. The way she spoke went with the linen jacket and the summer hat. She wasn’t a wealthy woman, but nor was she living in poverty. She was accustomed to a modest degree of comfort. She was someone who paid her taxes, observed speed limits, didn’t park on yellow lines. The hat didn’t lie: she was in every sense a respectable woman. Except that she’d raised a son who killed people for money.
‘Detective Superintendent Deacon – do you know him?’ Daniel nodded. ‘He said they interviewed an antiques dealer who bought the necklace – apparently in good faith – the day after the robbery and sold it again within twenty-four hours. The police never managed to trace either it or whoever bought it.’
Most people’s experience of crime is limited to what they learn from TV drama. Daniel didn’t watch much television: most of his experience of crime was personal. But between them Jack Deacon and Brodie Farrell had an encyclopaedic knowledge of crime, and a lot of the time they were talking, Daniel was listening. He knew that jewellery was an attractive proposition for thieves because it could be broken up. Good stones retained their value even after the ring, the necklace, the brooch had been rendered unidentifiable.
He guessed that this was not what his visitor wanted to hear. ‘Mrs Carson, I still don’t know what it is you want me to do.’
She seemed to change the subject. Her gaze strayed off round the room. It was only a little office, there wasn’t much to occupy it there – before long she had to look at him again. Her voice fell soft. ‘You think, maybe he’ll be a scientist. Maybe he’ll find a cure for cancer. You know it isn’t very likely, but one day some mother’s son is going to and you think, Maybe it’ll be mine. You look at him in his cowboy hat and his scuffed trainers, and he grins up at you, and you think he’s the most perfect thing in the world. Five or six years old, a bundle of pure potential wearing a silly grin.’
Even knowing what followed, she couldn’t keep from smiling at the memory. ‘And you tell yourself, Don’t be ridiculous. For every Nobel Prize winner there are a million GPs. And that would be great – a good profession, helping people. Who wouldn’t want a doctor in the family? Then you notice he’s got the trainers on the wrong feet and you think, Maybe he’s not going to be that academic. Maybe he’ll have more of a practical bent. And that’s fine too. People will always need car mechanics, electricians, plumbers. If a man works hard enough at anything to raise a family, he’s been a success by any yardstick that matters.’
Her gaze fell. She had to make herself keep going. ‘What you never, ever think is that he’ll grow up to be a murderer. A criminal, a thug and finally a murderer. Where did that little boy go? What happened to all that potential? What happened to turn a six-year-old in a cowboy hat and a silly grin into a young man who’d run people down in order to rob them? And if you’re his mother’ – she dared a quick, agonised glance at Daniel’s face – ‘you think, What did I do wrong?’
Daniel didn’t go in for platitudes. They were too close to easy lies, a way to avoid hard truths. But the truth never went away. It just hung around like a rightful heir, waiting to be acknowledged. Daniel believed passionately in truth. He thought that the one thing that was harder to deal with than a hard truth was an easy lie. So instead of demurring kindly he said, ‘Do you think you did something wrong?’
She didn’t have to think. She’d thought of nothing else for nine months. ‘I raised him the same way I raised his brother and sister. He had everything they had. I didn’t treat him any different, I didn’t love him any less. A part of me still loves him. I hate everything he’s become, everything he’s done, and yet still somewhere in the heart of me he’s that six-year-old in the cowboy hat with all his life ahead of him. Only now, as well as that, he’s a self-confessed murderer.’
Daniel was nodding slowly. ‘I suppose they’re the unacknowledged victims of crime – the criminal’s family. Everyone feels for the injured parties and the people who love them. And of course that’s right. They’re the ones like us – the ones who woke up that morning with no idea their life was about to be derailed, who had no say in what happened, who suffered because of someone else’s greed or anger or stupidity. Of course we sympathise.’
Behind the thick glasses the mild grey eyes saw things that Margaret Carson could not have put into words. ‘But all that applies to you too, doesn’t it? You didn’t want this to happen. No one wants their son to turn to crime. And it’s easy to think you should have seen it coming and stopped it, but how? Realistically, how do you prevent someone becoming a criminal? But your family were as much affected by his career choice as the families of Bobby’s victims. You are his victims. The first time he hurt anyone, he hurt you too.
‘Tom Sanger’s family, and his fiancée, weren’t the only ones to suffer a bereavement. You lost your son too – the one you loved and had hopes for. I suppose you feel that the man in court today murdered him.’
She looked at him as if he’d given her abs
olution. He hadn’t – Daniel didn’t do religion – but his understanding went most of the way. Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. She mumbled, ‘I agonised about coming here. Whether I should come at all, and if so, when. I put it off as long as I could. I told myself that if I came before the trial it could prejudice the case. But I knew that if I didn’t come as soon as the trial was over I wouldn’t come at all. I thought it was going to be a lot harder. Thank you for that.’
‘I haven’t done anything yet,’ said Daniel.
‘Yes, you have.’
He considered a moment. ‘But that wasn’t why you came. If talking about it has helped, I’m glad. But you must have had something else in mind. There are grief counsellors out there. There are priests, if you feel that way inclined. Nobody comes to a finding agency because they need someone to talk to – they come because they want something finding. Mrs Carson, what is it you want me to find?’
Brodie left Jonathan with his father – both of them sleeping, the baby in his cot, the detective sitting bolt upright on the squishy sofa as if he might be under observation – and went to pick Paddy up from school. She was tired and didn’t want to go out again, and the second Mrs Farrell was happy to collect the child as she’d been doing for a month. But Brodie had the sense that this was something she owed to herself and Paddy both. It was the last day of the school year. Next year she’d make her own way home from school. It was another milestone – the last walk home together. She didn’t want to miss this one as well.
Everything in a household plays second fiddle to a sick child. At eight going on thirty, Paddy understood that as well as anyone. She didn’t complain about the amount of her mother’s time and energy the baby needed. Perhaps she was aware it wouldn’t be for ever, and she and Brodie would have time to make up for lost opportunities in a way that Brodie and Jonathan never would.
But now she was home, while Jonathan didn’t need her Paddy took priority. Over tiredness; over being jet-lagged; over everything else. She drove as far as the park and walked the rest of the way to the school, hoping the fresh air would blow some colour back into her face and soul.
Paddy was expecting her stepmother. She liked Julia, enjoyed staying with John and his wife, but when she saw Brodie waiting at the school gates her face blossomed like a rose. Brown pigtails bouncing ecstatically, schoolbag swinging, she ran the rest of the way. Brodie caught her in a hug and swung her round and round. Her heart was so full it ached. The child looked so healthy! She’d almost forgotten what that looked like.
And the other thing that struck her, after not seeing her daughter for a month, was how little she resembled either of her parents. She had something of Brodie’s colouring, but without the drama – rosy cheeks and glossy brown hair would never turn heads the way her mother’s classic features and cloud of dark curls did. And she’d inherited something of her father’s asceticism – a thoughtful, considerate, conscientious child who might one day follow in John Farrell’s footsteps as a solicitor. Unless she stuck with her first love which was tractors. But of all of them, thought Brodie, the one she favoured most was Daniel, with whom she shared no genes.
Of course, there’s more to family than DNA. Paddy had known Daniel for half her life. They were interested in the same things: not the tractors so much but the world and the stars and the way things work. By the time she was five she knew there were a lot of questions that Daniel could answer better than her mother. She didn’t think of him as a father: she had one of those and found him quite satisfactory. And she knew he wasn’t her mother’s boyfriend, because that was Uncle Jack. Perhaps that was why she was so fond of Daniel. If he didn’t come with a label, he was free to be her friend. Paddy had learnt early what it had taken Brodie thirty years to discover: the strength, the support, the sheer contentment to be found in friendship.
The child mumbled something into Brodie’s midriff. Brodie ducked down to her level. ‘What was that?’
‘How long are you home for?’
That stabbed her in the heart. She could brush aside Daniel’s reservations, deflect Deacon’s concerns, but when Paddy’s first words to her after a month apart were to ask when she was leaving again, that pulled her up short. Was it possible, after all, that she was doing this wrong? That she was risking too much on a gamble she had little chance of winning? She held her daughter close. ‘For a while, anyway.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Paddy, gazing up at her. ‘I know it’s important. I don’t mind.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Auntie Julia does proper cooking.’
Brodie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Well, take notes, then you can teach me.’
They walked back across the park. ‘I called Julia, she knows you’re coming home with me. If you want to. If you don’t mind eating out of the freezer,’ she added ironically.
Paddy grinned and nodded. After a moment the grin faded. ‘How’s Jonfon?’ It wasn’t a lisp, she just thought Jonathan was too big a name for a baby.
‘Not great,’ admitted Brodie. ‘But there are things we haven’t tried yet…’
The words dried in her mouth as she became aware that Paddy was giving her Daniel’s look. She hadn’t told Paddy how serious Jonathan’s condition was, not wanting to share her burden with a child. But it was like an elephant in the drawing room: Paddy didn’t need it pointing out to know it was there. The atmosphere at home, and the way her mother and Uncle Jack stopped talking sometimes when she came into the room, had kept her abreast of developments.
Now she asked, quietly, matter-of-factly, ‘Is Jonfon going to die?’
It was a nexus moment. Maybe Brodie hadn’t been entirely candid with the little girl – she was, after all, only eight – but she hadn’t lied to her and she didn’t want to start doing so now. Which meant being honest with herself. However much she might wish otherwise, however hard she was prepared to fight for him, the only honest answer was Probably.
She sighed. They were nearly at the car but this wouldn’t wait. She stepped aside from the path to a handy bench and Paddy sat down beside her.
‘I think so,’ she said, and her womb bled to say it. ‘We’re doing all we can. All of us – me, Uncle Jack, Daddy and Auntie Julia, Daniel… And you – being so helpful, so undemanding. We could none of us have got this far without your contribution. And we’re not finished yet. Anything we can think of, we’ll try. But a point comes where you have to face up to what’s probably coming. We’re probably going to lose him.’
They sat in silence, side by side, for a couple of minutes. Then Paddy slipped her small hand into Brodie’s and her small voice mumbled, ‘I’m sorry.’
Brodie squeezed her fingers. ‘Me too.’
Looking back, Brodie was aware that Paddy never again called her brother Jonfon. As if the fact that he was unlikely to grow into his proper name made it important to use it now, while there was still time.
Chapter Six
As soon as she decently could, Brodie dropped in on Daniel at work. She wanted to monitor his success as her locum. She picked up a bit of shopping first and tried to look as if she was passing. It was barely ten o’clock the next morning, which was a Friday. ‘Just wondering how you were.’
He gave her that cool, calculating, sceptical look that Paddy had learnt from him. ‘You saw me yesterday.’
Brodie gave a negligent shrug. ‘Jet lag. So, how’s things?’
‘You mean, have I ruined your business yet?’
She demurred, unconvincingly. ‘I trust you, Daniel, you know that.’ But her eye was touring the tiny office, looking for the desk diary. Even Brodie would be embarrassed to ask for the accounts, but she could get a good idea of how much work he was getting from a casual glance at the diary.
She’d always kept it on top of the desk. He’d moved it. She thought he’d done it to annoy her. He took it calmly out of the top left-hand drawer and opened it without a word.
The only cool thing for Brodie to have done at that point was laugh lightly a
nd turn away, leaving the pages unread. But for Brodie, cool always took second place to profit. She was a businesswoman to the tips of her well-manicured fingernails. Looking for Something? wasn’t just a way to pay the bills: it had provided her with a life worth having after John left. It had made her who she was. And she liked who she was, even if the cricket on her shoulder was embarrassed sometimes.
She was grateful to Daniel for babysitting it. And it was true that she trusted him. But they both knew it wasn’t a business he had much talent for, and she trusted his instincts much less than she trusted her own. So she inspected the diary carefully, ignoring his unwavering gaze.
‘Who’s Margaret Carson?’
‘Someone who’s trying to buy back the past.’ Daniel told her about the murderous thief and the guilt of the woman who spawned him.
Brodie frowned. ‘What does she want us to find?’
Daniel noted that us without commenting. ‘The jewellery. The engagement ring, and a necklace belonging to the boy’s mother. They were the last things Tom Sanger gave to Jane Moss, and Mrs Carson wants to give them back.’
‘Were they valuable?’
Daniel regarded her levelly. ‘Yes. They cost a life.’
Brodie had learnt not to rise when he took the moral high ground. ‘Financially. What were they worth in hard cash? What do we base our percentage on?’
Daniel shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. The necklace was in the family for a generation. I suppose there’s a receipt somewhere for the engagement ring, but Mrs Carson wouldn’t know where to find it. Anyway, is that what we base our fees on? When Carson fenced the things, he’d get a fraction of their actual value.’
