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. He 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.
“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 â¦
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 friendship. 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.
She'd thought all their enemies were neutralised, but she was wrong. This was the man Ibbotsen had dismissed as being too dangerous. He'd gone only after he believed Daniel was dead. When he learned he was alive he came back; and now Brodie had seen him too. Only for a second, by torchlight, before he averted his face. But people paid with their lives for seeing this man's face. He'd come back to kill Daniel, now he needed her dead too.
will find her. You can't save her.
Not daring to take a proper breath, Brodie considered her options. The car was a hundred metres away. The first fifty she'd have to be quiet, after that she could run. If she got away unnoticed the police could be here in ten minutes. Daniel had survived two days in this man's hands, he could take another ten minutes. Or fifteen, or maybe twenty, if she couldn't get Deacon, or couldn't get him to understand.
She was backing away from the door when she remembered the bucket.
Â
Â
“What's in the bucket?” panted Daniel.
Everything had happened so fast he wasn't sure when it had arrived. He'd heard a footstep outside the front door and thought it was Brodie mothering him again. With a tolerant smile, without
even looking round, he called, “It's open.” Then he was sprawling in one direction, his glasses cart-wheeling the other, and when his wits steadied the man whose face he had never known but whose voice was scratched on his soul was wrapping him like a parcel. And the yellow bucket was standing at the kitchen door.
The man scowled. “Never
mind
the bucket. I'll explain about the bucket in a minute. First, who's the girlfriend?”
Daniel said, “Your feet are wet.” He could feel the damp where he lay against the man's legs.
“Daniel, your attention,
please.
Forget the bucket, forget my feet. Concentrate on this.” He flicked the lighter again and Daniel flinched. “Now, I'm asking nicely. Who is she? You know I won't
keep
asking this nicely.”
“It's just water, isn't it? Sea-water.”
The man eyed him in disbelief. “Yes,” he said, hanging onto his temper. “That's all it is. A bucket of sea-water. Happy now?”
“You won't get away with it!” The words came in a rush, broken with fear.
The man sighed wearily. “Of course I'll get away with it. I've been getting away with it for years. No one will even suspect a crime. They'll just think that the trauma of the last two weeks finally overwhelmed you and you chose to end the nightmare rather than live it. You took your own life while the balance of your mind was disturbed.”
“The post mortem -”
“- Will find nothing inconsistent. I'm not new at this: I know they can distinguish between salt- and fresh-water drowning. And I know they'll check for ligature marks. Wonderful stuff, bubble-wrap. It's good for insulating greenhouses too,” he added, as if Daniel might find the information useful.
“I have friends,” gasped Daniel. “People who know me. Who know I wouldn't just walk into the sea.”
Unseen behind him, the man raised a doubtful eyebrow. “Really? They haven't exactly been flocking here, have they? Not when you were missing and not after you came back. I don't think you have any friends close enough to argue with a coroner.”
“Brod -” He stopped with the name half out of his mouth, but it was already too late. The man was a professional interrogator, familiar with all the tools of his trade. Sometimes pity worked better than fire.
“Brodie Farrell?” The man's voice soared in amused incredulity. “That's who it was - the woman who tracked you down? That's your idea of a friend? Dear God, Daniel, you're a sad case.”
Daniel tried to struggle but the man held him with contemptuous ease. “Leave her alone! You hear me? She couldn't have seen you, there wasn't time. She's no threat to you. Leave her alone.”
“You never saw me. Not in two days of intimate association. Most of the time you were blindfold; even when you weren't you hadn't got your glasses on. I've never seen lenses that strong. You couldn't have picked me out of an ID parade; you wouldn't have recognised me if I'd come up to you in the street. I'm not here because I'm afraid of you identifying me.”