They were in the living room, facing one another across an occasional table supported by a wooden elephant. There were more elephants on the mantelpiece, in a range of sizes like flying ducks. It was that kind of house â not the smartest, not at the cutting edge of interior design, but serviceable and comfortable and tidy. A nice home; a good place to raise children. Margaret Carson was a woman who, in another life, would have prided herself on her baking and her ability to find a reliable plumber. She was not someone who would have contemplated buying a sapphire. The jewellery box on her dressing table contained a modest engagement ring, a string of cultured pearls and some gold stud earrings. When you lifted the lid it played a tune and a ballerina in a tutu pirouetted
en pointe
.
Afraid she was going to faint, Daniel reached out a hand. âMrs Carson, the last thing I want to do is upset you. I'm trying to help.'
Bobby Carson's mother gritted through ashy lips, âThen find the stoneâ¦'
âI don't think I can.'
âThen I'll find someone who will.' She straightened her back determinedly. âLet me have your account.'
Deacon always had leave owing. It was one of the anchor points in the uncertain world that was Battle Alley Police Station. He'd never quite got the point of holidays. Every so often Superintendent Fuller would insist, and he'd grumble and argue but eventually and with a bad grace he'd pack a bag and drive somewhere virtually indistinguishable from Dimmock. But as likely as not, before he'd got his trousers rolled up and his knotted hanky in place he'd have stumbled on a crime, solved it and arrested the criminal, leaving Fuller to liaise apologetically with whatever manor he'd trespassed on and tear up and throw away the record of his senior detective's time off.
Fuller had assumed, as Jonathan's condition deteriorated, that Deacon would call in all the weeks â indeed, all the months â he was owed to take his partner and their son wherever they could glimpse a glint of hope. He got as far as wondering who he could get in to head up CID in his absence. But when Fuller broached the subject, Deacon cast him an armour-piercing shell of a glance and said â growled, rather â that it wouldn't be necessary. He didn't elaborate. But Fuller had been a policeman for as long as
Deacon had, and he knew the parties involved, and he inferred that they'd already discussed the possibility of Deacon travelling with her and Brodie had vetoed it.
Fuller was less surprised than Jonathan's father had been. Deacon wouldn't have been his companion of choice for a long and trying journey either. Everything he knew about Brodie Farrell suggested she'd want to do this her way, and if that meant carrying the luggage she'd do that as well.
So when Deacon stuck his head round the senior officer's door to say he'd be taking a few days off, and there was nothing going on that Detective Sergeant Voss couldn't handle but if anything strange or startling came up he could be back at his desk in an hour, Superintendent Fuller was confused. He'd heard about the trip to Switzerland that ended at Crawley, had understood there would be no more foreign expeditions. He couldn't imagine Deacon sitting in a darkened room waiting for his son to die.
But Deacon didn't owe him an explanation so Fuller just nodded and said, âIf you need anythingâ¦' and Deacon nodded too and said gruffly, âRight.'
When he told Brodie he wasn't going to the office for a few days, she too was surprised. But, preoccupied with what she was increasingly thinking of as Jonathan's last best chance, she supposed he was leaving himself free for the intercession. She appreciated the thought, she just hoped he wouldn't get under her feet.
âYou could go and see Daniel. He might need some moral support.'
Deacon frowned. â
Daniel
might? Why?'
âThe whole praying thing. He said he'd do it. My guess is he's still trying to square it with his conscience.'
Deacon's frown turned to a scowl. He hadn't taken time off work in order to hold Daniel Hood's hand, even metaphorically. âI'll look in on him later.' He made his excuses and left before she could ask what he meant to do first.
If she'd had less on her mind, Brodie might have realised that the only thing that would make Jack Deacon turn his back on the work he should be doing was work he shouldn't be doing.
Disconsolate, Daniel walked across town once more to deliver his news to Jane Moss. Mrs Carson lived off the Brighton Road and Mrs Sanger's house was in River Drive, so the walk took him forty minutes each time. This time it took him thirty-five of those minutes to work out exactly why he was so dismayed.
It wasn't because the commission was coming to an end. Like a minor royal, Daniel didn't concern himself overmuch with money, even Brodie's. He wasn't doing this to protect her bank balance, he was doing it to keep her business alive, so it would be there when she needed it. If he could generate a little income in the meantime so much the better, but he didn't lose sleep worrying over it. Brodie had had some good years before Jonathan came along; there was enough in reserve to cover the fact that Daniel would never have her business acumen, however long he occupied her chair.
In part his disappointment arose from his belief that a
meeting represented the best way forward for both women. He'd expected that Jane Moss would need convincing, and indeed she'd thrown him out for suggesting it. But after his close encounter with the car she gave it a little more thought.
He took her flowers on the Sunday afternoon, wanting to thank her for her help and check that she hadn't injured herself. She said not, but he noticed the scratches along her forearms where she'd dragged herself. She kept looking at the flowers. It occurred to Daniel, belatedly, that probably the only flowers she'd received since Tom's death were the ones from his funeral. He winced, afraid that he'd hurt her again.
But apparently not. She cradled them in her lap like something precious, and thought for some time, and then said, âIf you still want to arrange this meeting between me and Margaret Carson, go ahead.' She didn't sound wildly enthusiastic. Her manner was terse, her expression pinched. She wasn't looking forward to it, wasn't convinced it would help. But she was willing to give it a try.
And Daniel had thought it was a done deal. It didn't occur to him that a woman who was prepared to sell her house in order to make amends for someone else's crime would baulk at apologising instead.
But even that didn't explain the extent of his regret. He puzzled over it all the way up from town. Only as he caught sight of the cul-de-sac sign at the end of River Drive did the truth begin to dawn on him. He was sorry not because he thought Margaret Carson had made the wrong decision, although he did; and not because Brodie would
think he'd lost a nice little earner, although she would; but because once the file was closed he'd have no reason to see Jane Moss again.
The thought was enough to stop him in his stride. What can only be described as a foolish smile stole across his face. It was that simple? He liked the girl and wanted to see more of her? He didn't need an excuse â all he had to do was phone and ask her for a drink. Or, since this was Daniel, if she'd like a look through his telescope.
She could only say no. She probably would say no. But Daniel was familiar with rejection; the prospect wouldn't have stopped him. Nor would the fact that Jane Moss was scarred and a cripple. She was â but in a way so was he. And it wasn't because she might consider herself still bound to her murdered fiancé. One day she'd be ready to move forward; in the meantime there was no harm in a friendly drink, or a galaxy or two. What stopped him asking to see her again â and risking, as men asking for dates always risk, being told that the object of his interest would rather sandpaper her bikini line â was the half-formed sense that it would be a kind of betrayal. Not even of Tom Sanger but of Brodie Farrell.
He continued walking, slower now, trying to feel his way round the dilemma. Daniel was not an emotionless man. He was a private man, but he felt passions as strongly as other people. He just tended to feel them for different things. He wasn't a virgin, but somewhere in his heart he was.
It was absurd, he decided. He owed Brodie his friendship, his loyalty, his professional services such as
they were, and a willing if inconveniently low shoulder to cry on when the need arose. He did not owe her the kind of fidelity that seeing Jane or anyone else would compromise.
For three of the four years he'd known her, the intensity of his feelings for Brodie had precluded feeling anything comparable for someone else. He knew they had never been, would never be, reciprocated in kind, had come to terms with the fact that that part of her life belonged with Jack Deacon; and if they parted one day, she'd find someone to replace him and it still wouldn't be Daniel.
He didn't blame her for that. It wasn't Brodie who'd moved the goalposts. The manner of their meeting had been so traumatic they should never have been able to get past it. But they did, because each recognised in the other something extraordinary. They described what burgeoned between them as friendship but it was much more than that. It was as if in some part of their souls they were twins separated at birth. It was strange and unsettling, and there really weren't words to adequately describe it, but it was powerful enough to make each of them reassess their attitude to the world.
Daniel had been content as a quiet loner; now he realised his life had been incomplete, that there'd been a hole at the core of his being he hadn't even been aware of. Odder still was the fact that Brodie Farrell felt the same way about Daniel. She had never been a quiet loner. She
had
been happily married, until a divorce she hadn't seen coming turned her world upside down. Surviving, making a new life for herself, brought out unexpected strengths in her but also
left her embittered. That was perhaps the best single thing Daniel did for her. He restored her faith in people.
And she loved him for it. But she didn't love him in the way that, over the next several months, he came to love her. He was her best friend, as close as a sister. He was the most important man in her life, even after the thing with Deacon started. But â and it was a big
but
, a huge big insurmountable
but
â she wasn't in love with him. It pained her to know how much she was hurting him, but it didn't alter anything. She told him â begged him, on occasion â to find someone who could feel about him the way he felt about Brodie.
He hadn't even tried. In all his life he'd only felt this way once. He thought â and he thought it was typical of his luck â that he'd finally found the one woman in the world for him, and she was so far out of his class that the only role left to him was that of faithful hound. So he took it. If it was something or nothing, he'd settle for having less of Brodie Farrell than he'd choose but perhaps more than he'd any right to expect.
Now, for the first time and to his absolute astonishment, he found himself feeling drawn to someone else. Not to the same degree, of course. He'd known Brodie for four years, spent a lot of time in her company, knew her intimately in every way but one. Sometimes he thought he knew her better than he knew himself. And he'd only just met Jane Moss, and he'd no reason to suppose she was interested in him in that way either. She'd slapped his face, then she'd crawled on her belly to help him. Men with much more experience of women than Daniel had would
have struggled to read the auguries in that.
But even that wasn't the problem. The problem was that he would have liked to explore the situation â but to the part of him that was Brodie's faithful hound it felt like biting the hand that fed him. He'd spent so long wanting something he couldn't have that it felt like adultery to want something else.
Though he was walking slowly and thinking hard, that was a lot of ground to cover. Thirty years' worth, if looked at in a certain light. He failed to reach a conclusion before his thoughtful steps had taken him up River Drive to Mrs Sanger's front gate.
He hesitated. If Jane Moss came to the door now he'd have no idea what to say to her. Right now he couldn't remember why he'd come here. Something to do with Margaret Carson⦠He thought he'd better turn round and come back another time when his head was clearer.
Fate took a hand. They were in the front room â two of them, the low silhouette of the girl in the wheelchair, the taller one of the woman who should have been her mother-in-law by now. Jane looked out, saw him hovering stupidly on the pavement and raised a hand in greeting. Imogen Sanger came to the door and smiled a welcome. âDaniel? Do come in. Jane's expecting you.'
He could have turned and run, but then he could never have come back. He did the only thing possible. He went up the steps into the house.
Deacon had no idea what he was looking for. But then, so often he didn't. He knew there was something to find from the way people were behaving, and that was enough. Usually, if he got hold of the people who were behaving oddly and asked them why, they told him. Not immediately, of course, but by the time he'd loomed over them and threatened to reopen some files they'd hoped had been closed if not lost or buried in concreteâ¦
The problem this time was that he didn't actually know who was behaving oddly. All he could say with confidence was that someone felt sufficiently threatened by Daniel Hood's enquiries to put the frighteners on him.
But that was significant. Though Deacon knew Daniel had a dangerous side to him, casual acquaintances only saw a mild-mannered man with a boring job, a geeky hobby and inexplicably good luck with women. Most people with something to hide would have been happy to learn that the only one showing an interest was Daniel. But someone knew him well enough to feel it was worth sticking his head above the parapet to scare him off. Knew that Daniel was like a dog with a bone â a small, well-trained dog
perhaps, the sort that neighbours' children take for walks and strangers pat outside shops, but capable of absolute single-mindedness once he knew there was something to be dug up. Knew that many a well-planned murder has come to light thanks to some little dog rooting round in the undergrowth.
Lionel Littlejohn was the key. Not so much finding, arresting and questioning him, although in due course Deacon would do all three. But Littlejohn would tell him nothing. He was a professional, he'd eat his own left leg first. But even without answers Deacon could make inferences. Someone Lionel had kept in touch with after he left Dimmock now needed his services urgently; and Lionel thought enough of him to risk his well-earned retirement by returning to his old stamping ground and throwing his considerable weight around one last time.
Like Voss, Deacon kept coming up with the same name. You could call it copper's instinct, you could call it experience, but it wouldn't get you laughed out of court because it would never get you that far. The Crown Prosecution Service rolled their eyes despairingly at the mention of copper's instinct. They wanted proof. They wanted signed confessions. If at all possible, they liked crimes to have been committed in front of bus queues.
But the proof was out there somewhere. If it wasn't, why would Daniel's amateur sleuthing have put the wind up someone like Terry Walsh? If it was him. If it wasn't, it was someone
like
him. Powerful, old firm, and worried.
What kind of proof? Something substantial. A witness who couldn't be intimidated, a weapon that couldn't be
disposed of, swag that couldn't be fenced even by someone with Walsh's connections. If he'd acquired the necklace before he realised quite what it was, he'd have sent it down deep â locked it in a bank vault somewhere, made a mental note not to open it for fifteen years, and got on with his life. Or he'd have sailed out into the Channel and dropped it over the side. He'd had plenty of time. It was five days before Deacon caught up with Bobby Carson.
If a week is a long time in politics, it's a geological age in criminal conversion.
Anything
can happen in a week. That necklace could have been through a dozen pairs of hands and crossed international borders. It could have had a respectable provenance forged for it and been bought by someone who would never have dreamt of laundering stolen goods. It could have been worn to a society wedding or graced the neck of a king's mistress.
But though Deacon didn't know what had become of it, someone did. Someone knew his own safety depended on people thinking that the necklace was gone and its passage could never be traced. And there was this to be said for Jack Deacon. He liked a challenge.
Voss understood all that. What he didn't understand was why Deacon was taking leave to pursue it. âIt's a criminal matter. You're a detective.
This is what they pay you to do.
'
Deacon glowered at him over the desk he'd been attempting to tidy before going home. âYou'd think so, wouldn't you? Solving crimes, catching criminals. But no. What they pay me for, or what they think they pay me for, is filling in forms. Attending meetings. Listening to
windbags who think it's a numbers game, and catching two mobile phone snatchers is better than catching one drug dealer. No, Charlie Voss, I need to give this some serious thought, and then to go talk to some people without having the area car come after me because I've turned my phone off. The only way I can get the time I need to do my job is to go on leave.'
Voss considered. âYou reckon Terry's behind this, don't you?'
âDon't you?'
âMaybe,' said Voss cautiously. âSome of it makes more sense if he is. Some of it makes less.'
Deacon gave a grim nod. âI thought that, too. Well, if Division can't pester me for the crime returns for a few days, maybe I'll be able to work it out.'
Voss wondered if he should say what he was thinking. Most people didn't go out of their way to provoke Detective Superintendent Deacon. But then, most of his sergeants hadn't lasted as long as Voss, and the reason for that was a degree of mutual respect between them that bridged the generation gap and even the differences of style and personality. So he said it. âThen what?'
Deacon indulged himself in a slow, malicious smile. âThen I nail his head on my wall. I've been trying for ten years. Well, if we're right, this time he's out in the open where I can take my shot. I may not know exactly where I should be looking, but he does. And Terry's got good instincts. He's stayed ahead of me for ten years. If he thinks I can have him now, I'm going to trust his judgement.'
âOr you could let me do it.'
The smile died. The expression in Deacon's craggy face swung between incredulity and indignation. âYes, that's going to happen. I'm going to chase someone for ten years, and eat crow every time he gives me the slip, and when the chance finally comes I'm going to hand the collar over to my sergeant. Then I'm going to put on a pink tutu and do the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.'
Voss suspected that image would haunt him for the rest of his life. He gave his ginger head a shake to shift it. âYou and Terry have been friends â all right, sort of friends â for rather more than ten years. This may not be the best time to end that friendship.'
Deacon leant back slowly in his chair as he absorbed what Voss was suggesting. If anyone else had said it he'd have been shouting by now. But he'd almost given up shouting at Voss. Too often in the past, when he'd finished shouting he'd had to backtrack, ask Voss to repeat what he'd said and then concede that he was right. So his voice was low but even, like the first rumble of thunder that precedes a storm. âWhat are you saying, Charlie? That I might let him get away with murder for old time's sake?'
âNo!' Voss said it so fervently he clearly meant it. âOf course not. He's done a lot of bad things and he needs putting away. But it doesn't have to be you, and maybe it doesn't have to be right now.'
Deacon's heavy brows gathered speculatively. It was a sight that many a criminal had cause to rue. âOK, spit it out. What's on your mind?'
So Voss told him. About his interview with Walsh, and Walsh's parting comment. âHe meant it. You may not think
of him as a friend but he thinks of you as one. If there's a chance he could help Jonathan, maybe you shouldn't put him where he won't be able to. Not right now. You've waited for ten years. You could wait a little longer.'
Deacon rocked deliberately in his chair in a manner that it was never designed to cope with. âHe said the same thing to me. I thought he meant it as well. But you know, and I know, and I think Terry knows, there are no circumstances in which I could accept his offer, however genuine. Perhaps it's as well there's never going to be a moment when it might matter.' His face was the craggy grey of old lava.
Compassion twisted Voss's gut. âChiefâ¦I'm sorry. I didn't realise things had gone so far. I don't know what to say.'
Deacon forced a smile. âNothing
to
say, Charlie. Top and bottom of it is, the poor kid drew the short straw right at the start. Nothing anyone could have done after that would have saved him. I know that, because I know that everything that could be done
has
been done. Which is what the last six months have been about. Brodie said that when we got to this point, we'd want to know that. And she was right. It helps. Not a lot, but it would be worse if we were losing him and thought it was our fault.'
Detective Sergeant Voss wondered if he should be discussing something this personal with his senior officer. But he was aware that Deacon didn't have many people he could discuss it with. âHave they given you any idea' â he swallowed â âhow longâ¦?'
Deacon shrugged. âNobody knows for sure. Best guess is weeks rather than months. Do you know what the worst part is?' He fixed Voss with a steely gaze like pinning a moth to a cork board. Voss shook his head mutely. âThe worst part is, I can't wait for it to be over. Knowing he's going to die, watching him die by inches, and knowing there's nothing I can do about it â it's like there's a cancer eating away at me as well. At me, at Brodie, at whatever chance we have of a life together. And I want it to stop.
I want that badly enough to wish my son would hurry up and die.
'