by Iona Whishaw
Mrs. Castle had presented the notice she’d found in her son’s room in a triumphant manner that suggested it proved something was definitely amiss. Trying to disregard the fact that he had specifically told her not to touch anything in her son’s room, Darling had taken the paper, an announcement, read it, and passed it without comment to Ames.
“Well?” Mrs. Castle had demanded.
“It suggests that someone wanted him to go to this meeting,” said Darling. The note, scribbled in pencil said, “Should be good” and had the signature “H.” “What kind of meeting, I wonder. ‘A Greater Dominion.’ Do you know what this was about?”
“No, I do not,” replied the woman. “He wasn’t the sort to go to meetings.”
“Would he belong to something and not tell you? A club or society of some sort?”
Mrs. Castle had looked down and shaken her head. “I told you, he wasn’t the type. And he didn’t keep secrets.” She had said this defiantly, as if to reassure herself as well as the police.
“Do you know who ‘H’ might be? Is it the friend whose mother you called?”
“No, and I know of no friend whose name begins with the letter H. He would have told me.”
This mother’s absolute certainty about her son’s movements and his habits had taken on a new complexion for Darling in that moment.
“I have to confess that after meeting her I came away with the feeling that if I were her son, I’d want to disappear too,” Darling said.
“I know what you mean. A bit too much in his life, as it were. He is, after all, twenty.”
“If the rowboat man is her son, then she was right, and I will have to learn to be a less judgmental policeman,” Darling added.
He was feeling unsettled, cursing himself quietly for being so dismissive about the paper she’d found in her son’s room. Such an oversight was not like Darling. He believed that every bit of evidence, however trivial, was important. Why had he dismissed this woman’s feelings so out of hand?
“I can’t agree with you there, sir. I don’t think you were being judgmental. I think you were being cautious. You saw a woman who, fair enough, was all in a panic about her son, and you were trying to calm her. As if to say, ‘Let’s not get worked up. This may be nothing.’”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence. But the point, Ames, is that it may be something.”
“Depends on whether someone just handed him that announcement and whether he even went. I don’t think it’s necessarily significant that the mother didn’t seem to know who the note was from. I have friends my mother has never met.”
Darling sat in silence, thinking about how upended he was feeling. Not only about this case, he knew. Since he’d left the Royal Air Force, he had been gradually settling into the comfortable role of dour and reliable police inspector. He had not seen marriage in his future, or any disruption to a life as a respectable small-town inspector. But meeting Lane had forced him out of himself, forced him to question how he had been taught to see the world. His recent experience of being accused of a horrendous wartime crime had made him realize how vulnerable he, or anyone, was to error or the machinations of some power beyond anyone’s control. Without Lane, he might be sitting in some ghastly cell waiting for the hangman. This powerlessness disturbed his sense of the world he had believed in, a world where crime could be fought and justice administered fairly. It disturbed him that Lane had come from a world where power and justice were defined by such unseen forces and slipped and slid like snakes on a rock.
“Sir. We’re here.”
Chastising himself for the overdramatic imagery, Darling pulled himself back to the problem at hand, preparing for what was going to be a very sad and difficult task indeed.
After the police car had disappeared up the road, Lane did not indulge in introspection, though she had felt a wistful and unfulfilled longing to kiss Darling before he left. But they were on business, and gruesome business at that. She hoped the young man would not die, whomever he belonged to. She went into the house, got her car keys, and drove back down to the wharf.
Now, with all the traffic gone, it hardly seemed possible that such horror had been visited on this quiet beach. Only the rowboat remained, still tipped on its side. She got out of the car and stood with her hands on her hips, looking at it. It should be emptied and pulled somewhere safe. The children would want to come back and play here and eat hot dogs by the fire as they always did. It wouldn’t do to have the rather gory relic of that afternoon where they would see it.
Going down onto the beach, Lane felt her stomach turn at the sight of the remnants of the bloody water. She held her breath, heaved the boat over to drain, and looked around to see where she could stow it. Under the wharf, she decided, as close to the end of it as possible so it would be well hidden from the beach. The children would probably go have a look next time they were down, but overturned the boat would provide little interest, and they’d go back to their usual pursuits.
She turned the boat upright and was about to attempt to drag it up to the base of the wharf when she noticed a very new looking chip just on the inside of the frame. She peered at it. Judging by its location, she knew the chip was not something she’d done while turning the boat over. It looked as though it had been hit with a hammer, causing the wood to chip along the grain. Had Ames seen it and photographed it? Perhaps it was nothing, except that it was so clearly fresh. The wood was almost white under the damaged blue paint of the frame. Only one oar in the boat. The second oar could have banged it as it slipped out of its lock. Or, what if there was only ever one oar in the boat and the other was still on a dock, and someone had used it to shove the boat away from the shore, into the lake to drift. But that would have involved pushing on the outside of the boat. This chip was on the inside of the frame. The gun? It was heavy and could have caused the damage. Had the man tried to swing it to shoot his assailant and had it knocked out of his hand when he banged the rim?
It turned out to be somewhat easier than she imagined to drag a medium-sized rowboat on its keel up a pebbled sandy beach. When she got to the base of the wharf she shoved the boat under and turned it over, stepping back out into the sun and stretching her hands to get the feeling back into them. She didn’t know if what she’d seen was important and wondered whether she should even bother the police with it, but then remembered how Darling felt about the importance of every piece of information, something she’d learned at the very beginning of their acquaintance. It was hard to believe it was only a little over a year ago that he had arrested her when she and Robin Harris, Kenny’s cousin, had found a body in her creek. As angry as Lane had been at being jailed, she had understood how all the available information had led to her. She’d learned that no information was trivial and that facts, however inconvenient or ill fitting, must be considered equally and impartially.
Back on her own porch with a glass of iced tea, Lane looked out at the lake way below her and at the blue rim of mountains that held and shaped it on the other side. She thought of the scene that might have led to this afternoon. The young man is angry, throws his gun into the boat, and then gets in himself, cutting the rope because he can’t be bothered to cope with untying it. Is he already wounded, or is he taking himself off to commit suicide? Is someone pursuing him, perhaps? Suicide suddenly seemed doubtful. There was the bag, after all. He throws his gun and bag into the boat, cuts the rope, and pushes as hard as he can away from his pursuer, and then rows as hard as he can till loss of blood exhausts him. He lets an oar slip away and gives up, passing out.
Well, if he cut the rope, why was there no knife in the boat? And if he shot himself, why did he make such a bad job of it? But if someone else shot him, why was the gun in the boat? Perhaps the wounded man was shot by a different gun. If he had been running from someone, had he got a shot off at whoever was after him? And there was still the possibility that
the chip in the frame had been done before and had no bearing at all. She looked at her watch and decided she would call the station toward evening when they might be back from visiting the worried mother. In the meantime, her garden, which had been mostly planted by her kind neighbours while she’d been away in England, needed weeding.
During the trip to the hospital, Mrs. Castle sat in the back of the car saying over and over, “I knew something was wrong, I knew it.”
Darling had avoided being specific about the injuries to the young man in order not to further disturb her and could think of nothing reassuring to say. They drove up the hill to the hospital, and he told Ames to get back to the station on foot. Mrs. Castle, in a jacket that was too warm for the weather and a bedraggled, rimmed black hat, was clutching her handbag and shivering as they approached the main desk.
Darling showed his identity card and said quietly, “We’ll need to see the young man that was brought in a couple of hours ago by ambulance.”
“I don’t know, sir. I . . . I’ll call Dr. Robles.”
Fearful of what new development the receptionist’s hesitation might mean, he looked back at where Mrs. Castle sat on the edge of her chair staring at the swinging doors into the hospital wards, her face a combination of brittleness, determination, and fear. He thought of all the mothers and fathers who’d sat just like that waiting for news of their sons missing or wounded overseas. Indeed, some still were.
“Inspector Darling?”
Darling turned and nodded at the doctor. “Yes. We are hoping to get an identification on the young man. This may be his mother. Will it be possible?”
“He’s still unconscious. We’re getting ready to roll him down to surgery to see if we can deal with the mess inside. His internal organs will have been badly damaged. Whoever shot him was very close. There is a risk of infection at this point, and he’s lost a lot of blood.” He stopped and looked at Mrs. Castle. “He’s still in the hallway on a gurney. We can have her wear a mask, and one of my nurses can take her to have a quick look. I imagine it will be better to know who he is if we can, in case he doesn’t make it.”
Mrs. Castle stood up. “I want to see my boy,” she said, in a voice that brooked no denial.
“Dr. Robles, this is Mrs. Castle,” Darling said.
“So, Mrs. Castle, I’m going to ask Nurse Powell here to give you a mask and take you to where you may look at the patient. I should caution you that you must not touch him. He is in a delicate state, and we are taking him to surgery.”
She nodded. “Yes, yes. I understand. Can I see him now?”
She had lied, she knew, to the inspector. She wondered, terrified, if this was the moment in which she would pay for the lie. She had relived so many times the scene of two weeks ago when the whole life she had tried to salvage from the wreck of her marriage had come crashing down. It had been late on a Saturday night, past midnight, and Carl had not come home yet. She was sitting in the kitchen staring into the dark when she heard the car at last. He had staggered in, looking angry and confused, and clearly drunk.
“Look at the state of you!” she’d said.
“Leave it, Mother.” Carl had thrown his jacket on the table, knocking over a glass. Ash from his cigarette had fallen on his chest, and he’d used the flat of his hand to brush off his shirt. “Sorry,” he’d muttered, and started for his room.
“You’ve been drinking.” She’d stopped him in the hallway. The sheer choking familiarity of this scene terrified her, even now.
“What of it? It’s not against the law, and it’s Saturday night. What am I supposed to do? Stay in here with you?” He’d glared at her with what? Loathing? “I’m tired.”
And then she’d pulled at his sleeve, making him stumble. “Don’t you see what’s happening? It’s your father all over again.”
Wheeling on her, Carl had pushed her violently to get her to let go of him. “Do not compare me to him! I am nothing like him!” On the floor, stunned and rubbing her back where it had struck the edge of the table, she had watched him shake his head, as if trying to clear it, trying perhaps to shed the guilt he felt. She’d seen that too, from his father. Then, most terrifying of all, the look of rage, the look of his father back from the grave.
“You have no right!” he’d shouted. “You need to stay in your place!”
The next morning he’d promised he would never get drunk again. She knew he’d promised it with all his heart.
Darling stood looking out the window of the foyer. The hospital was situated on a curving rise above the main road into the centre of town, and from his position he had a partial view of the lake and the mountain beyond. What Ames unpacked from the bag would be of interest. Like Lane, Darling wondered how the man had come to be there. The bag and the gun suggested he was off somewhere, on the run maybe, away from his mother, or fearful of someone, either the law or . . .
The swinging door banged against the wall and Darling turned. Mrs. Castle had burst into the foyer and now stood sobbing, holding onto the reception desk with one hand. A nurse was offering her a glass of water.
She caught sight of Darling approaching her and looked up, her face screwed up in the effort not to cry. “It’s not him!” she cried.
CHAPTER SIX
Ames carried the canvas-wrapped bag and revolver to one of the interview rooms and dropped them on the small wooden table. There was no point in smelling up his office. He contemplated starting immediately but realized he was starving. It was past five, and he hadn’t eaten since the morning. “I’m going for a bite. Don’t touch that stuff I put in the interview room. When I get back I’ll need you to take notes.” He said this to O’Brien, who manned the desk and was now perched on his stool, leaning on the counter looking at the local paper.
“It’s like his nibs never came back,” muttered O’Brien, looking up from his reading. While Darling had been away in England, Ames had briefly been in charge of proceedings at the Nelson police station, a circumstance that only slightly rankled the good-natured O’Brien, who outranked Ames but was near retirement and very content with his current role. “Do you see this garbage in the paper? ‘Nelson police have been unable to solve the string of burglaries in the Nelson area.’ Makes us look incompetent.”
“You know what reporters are like. They see the crime and look for the solution. They have no idea what we do every day to solve cases. Their ignorance makes them think we do nothing. Do you want anything?”
“No, thanks. I ate my lunch at noon like a proper Christian.”
Ames pushed open the door into the café next door, wanting to think about the possibility that the wounded man and the missing man might or might not be the same person, but finding his mind turning to the problem of Violet. Because it was not quite dinnertime, he did not have to squeeze in at the counter and instead found a seat by the window where he could look out on the street.
He had his usual, a ham sandwich and a Coke, delivered to the table by the now-friendly April. He’d heard a rumour that she was happily engaged to an up-and-comer at an insurance office. He knew he should be thinking about poor Mrs. Castle, about to see her severely injured son, but instead, having thanked April, he turned his mind to whether Violet should be engaged to an up-and-comer at the local police station. He was up and coming. He was studying for his detective sergeant licence. She had every expectation that he would produce a ring. Lord knew, she had begun a campaign of hinting at it. After all, they’d been going steady for the better part of a year. She’d gone back to work at the bank but had suggested more than once, with a wink, that she could see herself in a frilly apron preparing his dinner when he came home, a role now performed by his mother, who had suddenly and infuriatingly begun to express misgivings about Violet. He had wanted to brush off his mother’s doubts, but his conversation about children with Violet had unnerved him. As a policeman he’d seen more than his s
hare of unhappy marriages, and he always congratulated himself in advance that he’d never be in that situation.
The trouble was, he thought ruefully, wadding his napkin up and dropping it onto his plate, he had met Miss Winslow. Here was a woman unlike any he’d ever known. Too fancy for him, to be sure, and perfect for the inspector, who at last, it appeared, had gotten off his behind and made a move. But she had opened up a new world to him of women who were deeper and more interesting than the ones he knew here. No, that wasn’t right. Maybe the women he knew were perfectly deep, but he hadn’t figured out how to have a more—here he lost his way—personal? intellectual? relationship. Intellectual wasn’t like him, but he admired whatever seemed to be going on between Lane Winslow and the inspector. They bantered constantly in a way that suggested some hidden depths of connection he did not think he’d ever attained with any of his girlfriends, though he had liked them all well enough. He had thought the fun and cheerfulness involved in stepping out with them would suffice, but the conversation with Vi about the boy needing a thrashing had also suggested hidden depths in which he might find himself married to someone with whom he fundamentally disagreed on real-life issues.
A figure outside the window caused him to come back to the moment. It was Darling, whose pantomime suggested Ames should get back to the station right sharply. Rising hastily, he threw some money on the counter and smiled regretfully at April when she said, “Nabbed, eh?”
“Back, sir? Is that fellow Carl Castle?”
“He is not. So we now have a missing man and a second, completely unrelated, nameless and wounded man.”
“How was Mrs. Castle when you dropped her off?” Ames had not been unhappy to be dismissed and made to walk back to the station from the hospital to get on with looking into the bag while his boss had driven Mrs. Castle home. He knew he should have started on the bag and was aware now how squeamish he was being about the whole thing. “I know. The bag. I’ll go now.”