Perfect Sins

by Jo Bannister

  That kicked the annoyance out of her face. He watched the color drain after it, leaving her white and slack-jawed, and he felt ashamed. Not even so much for hurting her, but because this was the kind of relationship they had. Ashamed that, although for most of his life he’d had only one parent, and for most of his life she’d been raising only one child, he still hadn’t been able to make her love him.

  He would have died slowly over hot coals rather than admit that to anyone, including her.

  He’d managed to surprise her. She hadn’t left the house all day, knew nothing of the discovery that had set the village to speculation. But she was a strong woman, and with a deep breath she took her feelings in an iron grip and forced them behind her. Her voice was rough. “What are you talking about, David? Of course it isn’t Jamie. Jamie’s in Ireland—you know that.”

  “I know that,” echoed Sperrin in a low growl. “I didn’t say I thought it was Jamie. I said people in the village are saying it might be, and I thought you’d want to know. So it wouldn’t come as a shock.”

  “Unlike being dragged from my bed in the middle of the night in order to be told nonsense, you mean.” She might have given him points for meaning well. But she’d never given him an inch, and that wouldn’t change now.

  He had no idea what he’d done to deserve her dislike, or whether she was just entirely unsuited to the maternal state. Perhaps Saul Sperrin had known that when he took his elder son away. More than once, growing up, David had wished he’d taken his younger son, too. He’d probably be a tarmac contractor now instead of an archaeologist, but maybe he’d be a happier man.

  Defeated by her hostility, as he always eventually was, he put down his cup and let himself out the way he’d come in. “I’m sorry I disturbed you. I thought it was for the best.”

  “Thought?” she said. And: “You?” She could invest two words with more contempt than anyone he had ever known.

  CHAPTER 9

  IF ANYTHING, SUNDAY breakfast was even more strained than Saturday’s. Sperrin didn’t look at Ash, and Ash—not wanting to provoke an argument—kept his eyes on his kipper. It fell to Pete Byrfield—as host, as Sperrin’s current employer and longtime friend—to break the dogged silence.

  “You saw your mum, then, David?”

  Sperrin nodded tersely.

  “Had she heard about what we found?”

  “No.”

  “A good job you went over, then.”

  “Why?” Sperrin looked at Ash pugnaciously. “It’s nothing to do with her.”

  Byrfield sighed long-sufferingly. “Ash was only concerned that she might be upset. That someone might say something to her in the village and she might be upset.”

  Sperrin swiveled in his chair to give Byrfield the benefit of his searchlight gaze. “You’ve met my mother, have you? She doesn’t get upset. She gets angry. If anyone in Burford got smart with her, she’d rip their ears off.” He didn’t add, though he might as well have done, Instead of mine.

  Byrfield shrugged. “I still think it was best. If there’s talk in the village, sooner or later the police will hear it and they’ll want to talk to her. Better if it doesn’t come out of the blue.”

  “So she can think up a plausible story, you mean?” Sperrin’s tone walked the knife edge of objectionable. “Instead of admitting that she murdered my brother, buried him beside your lake, and told people he’d been taken to Ireland?”

  But Byrfield had known him a very long time and, in spite of his prickliness, liked the man. “Nobody’s thinking any such thing,” he said wearily.

  Hazel chose that moment to come in and so missed the start of the conversation. That may have been why she said what she did. Or she may just have been tiring of Sperrin’s bad manners. “When did you last see your brother?” In the fraught silence that followed, she poured herself coffee from the pot.

  Sperrin stared at her as if he couldn’t believe her impertinence. But in the end he had to either answer or refuse to, and he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of a refusal. “I haven’t seen my brother since I was a child. But my mother gets a card from him every Christmas and every birthday. That’s how I know he’s in Ireland, not under the mud down by the mere.”

  Hazel nodded, apparently accepting the answer at face value. “You’ve never wanted to go and look him up? It’s a sad thing when families lose touch.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” snarled Sperrin. “They’re travelers, yes? They travel. That’s why they’re called travelers. The clue’s in the name, really.”

  At which point Byrfield judged that if he didn’t change the subject, they were going to witness the top of an archaeologist’s head blow off and steam come out. “Okay. Well, we can’t do any more digging until we get the all clear from Inspector Norris. Agriculture beckons—anybody want to help me move some cows?”

  Predictably, Hazel volunteered, and Sperrin grunted, “In a parallel universe,” and disappeared into the library. Ash caught his dog’s eye and raised an inquiring eyebrow, but Patience simply turned around and settled deeper into the sofa. Ash was only grateful that Byrfield used the kitchen, with its well-worn leather chairs, as a casual don’t-worry-about-your-boots sort of snug for his guests. He was horribly afraid that if they’d been offered the priceless antiques in the drawing room, Patience would still have appropriated the sofa with the thickest cushions.

  “We’ll give it a miss, if you don’t mind,” he said, as if the decision had been his.

  As a result, when a car drove into the courtyard behind the kitchen, Ash was the one who saw it, recognized Detective Inspector Norris, and went out to greet him. “I’m afraid Lord Byrfield isn’t here. He’s out doing something with his cows. Hazel’s with him—I have her mobile number, somewhere.…” He was patting pockets more in hope than expectation.

  But it wasn’t Pete the inspector had come to see. “Did Mr. Sperrin go with them?”

  “No. He may be in the library. It’s this way … I think.…”

  Detective Inspector Norris, who was famed for his observational powers, noticed how the big, dark, shambling man hesitated in the hallway but the white dog, stretching unhurriedly as it climbed off the sofa, padded past him and up the stairs. At the top they all turned left, and the first door they came to was open. Inside was a world of books.

  “Shall I leave you?” asked Ash.

  “Not on my account.” The archaeologist glowered. Taking that as the closest Sperrin was likely to come to asking for moral support, Ash lowered himself onto one of the leather benches lining the walls and busied himself with stroking his dog’s ears.

  “I’ve just come from your house,” said Norris. “I couldn’t get a reply.”

  “It’s not my house, it’s my mother’s. She’s probably out.”

  “Her car is there.”

  Sperrin shrugged. “She may have walked to the shop. Or she’s painting. She wouldn’t notice nuclear war breaking out if she’s painting.”

  “I need to speak to her. Will you let me in?”

  “I don’t have a key.” The policeman said nothing that could be interpreted as surprise, but Sperrin somehow felt the need to explain. “Why would I? I haven’t lived there for fifteen years. While I’m working here, I stay at Byrfield.”

  “Fair enough,” said Norris, although he looked a little puzzled at the man’s vehemence. “Maybe you can help me anyway. We’ve got a bit more information on the body you found. Not the full autopsy results, but a couple of things to help narrow the search. The age and sex of the child, the age of the burial—give or take a few years—and a couple of other things. So the next thing we do is compare those facts with records for the period—see what children were reported missing in this area at around that time.”

  “And you came up with my brother, James,” said Sperrin shortly. “Well done. Except he didn’t go missing—he was taken to Ireland by our father. He and my mother had split up, it all got a bit acrimonious, sometime later he came back and took
Jamie, leaving my mother chasing his car down the road in her bare feet.”

  “You remember this, do you, sir?”

  Sperrin elevated an eyebrow at him. “Since I was five years old at the time, my recollection is a bit sketchy. I know what my mother told me. I know losing Jamie blighted her life. She expected you to bring him back. She went on expecting it for years, but you never did.”

  “So if you were five,” said Norris, doing sums, “this was…?”

  “Thirty years ago, give or take.”

  “And your brother would have been…”

  “Ten. Inspector, none of this is relevant to your investigation. I know where Jamie is—he’s in Ireland.”

  “You have an address for him?”

  It was a rerun of the conversation over breakfast. Ash found himself tensing in anticipation of Sperrin’s loss of temper.

  “No, I don’t have an address for him! They’re travelers—they could be anywhere. They could be in England. If you’re that desperate to talk to him, ask the Gardaí to find him.”

  “We asked them once before. They didn’t manage to find him then. Or your father.”

  “Inspector, were you ever in rural Ireland in the 1980s? The Guards didn’t have the facilities that the quietest two-man part-time police station in England had. At the start of the Troubles, the authorities in Northern Ireland were furious that they weren’t getting better cooperation from the police across the border. Then they found out that half the time they couldn’t get hold of one another when they needed to. There wasn’t full radio coverage—there weren’t even enough radios. There were parts of the wild west of Ireland at that time where policing was practically a Third World operation.”

  Norris was watching him thoughtfully. “How do you know that, Mr. Sperrin?”

  Sperrin gave a sudden fierce grin and glanced around at all the books. “I read, Inspector.”

  The policeman flicked an amiable smile. “You’re quite right, of course. People like your father are always hard to keep tabs on, even now. The officers looking for James thirty years ago were actually reassured by the fact that they couldn’t find Saul, either. If they’d found him and he didn’t have your brother, that would have been bad. As it was, he’d simply vanished off the radar. Every line of inquiry hit a brick wall. And there’s no wall as solid as that thrown up by one gypsy protecting another.”

  This time the smile was apologetic. “But the upshot of all this is, we can’t actually prove that the body in that grave isn’t your brother’s.”

  Sperrin returned the smile coldly. “Of course you can, Inspector, and both of us…” He glanced at Ash by the door. “In fact, all three of us know it. DNA. And I’d lay good money that you’ve already taken samples from the grave, and now you want a sample from either me or my mother. And you thought”—his head came up haughtily; for a small man he seemed to spend a lot of time looking down his nose at people—“that it would be easier if the suggestion came from me.”

  Inspector Norris chuckled. “Well, you’ve got me bang to rights there.” Ash had never heard anyone say “bang to rights” before. “I ask, and it sounds like I’m asking you to disprove a suspicion; you volunteer, and it feels like you’re helping us to advance the investigation. Either way, of course, it’s in your interests that we know for sure it isn’t James in that grave and we need to pursue our inquiries elsewhere. For what it’s worth, it’ll also put a stop to the gossip in the village. It can’t be very pleasant for your mother.”

  Sperrin sighed theatrically. “Inspector, if it’s any help, you’re welcome to a sample of my bodily fluids. It’ll only confirm what I’m telling you—that James is alive and well, and sending a card every Christmas from whatever part of the British Isles he happens to be in.”

  Norris took the offer at face value and made no comment on the manner in which it was made. “Thank you. I’ll arrange it. I appreciate your cooperation.”

  “Why wouldn’t I cooperate?” Sperrin glowered.

  Norris was on his way out of the library door when Ash reminded him of what he’d said. “That a couple of things emerged from the preliminary examination of the body. Can you tell us what?”

  The detective seemed to consider this for a moment. Whether his decision was aided by the fact that the two men had been present at the opening of the grave, or whether he knew something of Ash’s background, his expression—carefully, professionally blank—did not betray. “All right, yes, there was something. This child, this little boy, died violently. Well, that’s not too much of a surprise—you don’t bury people under the rhododendrons because they’ve had a heart attack or fallen off a wall. All the same, it’s still—thank God—a rare occurrence when a small child is shot dead.”

  He paused there to watch the effect of his words on his audience. But it wasn’t much help. The one who turned white was Ash, who’d had no connection with this area until very recently. Sperrin hardly reacted at all.

  Norris continued. “But even before that he wasn’t”—he searched for the socially acceptable term, couldn’t remember it, settled for what people said in everyday life—“normal. The DNA will confirm it, but our medical examiner thinks he had Down syndrome.”

  David Sperrin gave a gruff, almost triumphant little snort. “That settles it. There was nothing wrong with my brother, James. Ask my mother. James was frigging perfect.”

  * * *

  It was an easy task that Byrfield could have managed alone. It’s always easy moving cows to fresh grass—you open the gate of the new field and stand back. There’s usually one young heifer that thinks it would be really funny to run the opposite way and hide behind the slurry tank, but on the whole cows are ruled by their stomachs—all four of them.

  So there was less running around and swearing than there would have been moving bullocks, and more ambling down a green lane with a switch to keep the animals walking. Which is what Pete Byrfield had hoped for when he’d issued the invitation. He’d also hoped Hazel would be the one to take it up.

  It had rather surprised him, how glad he’d been to see her. Their paths didn’t cross very often these days—she’d been busy building her career, he’d been busy building his herd. And they’d never been an item. But they’d been friends for so long there was perhaps more shared history than if they had been. When Alfred Best mentioned his daughter’s impending visit, Byrfield had found himself grinning, and planning what he could show her and what they could talk about, and only afterward wondered why. He concluded that he must have missed her more than he realized. He wondered if he could persuade her to stay a little longer. He’d hoped David Sperrin’s survey might do the trick. You know what they say: Be careful what you wish for.…

  Hazel was glad to see him, too. Of course, Hazel was usually glad to see people; it was the kind of person she was—open, gregarious, empathic. It was what had made her good at her job—at both her jobs. It probably didn’t mean very much that she’d taken the chance to walk down this lane with him, shooing cows and dodging the inevitable results. But it might have done.

  Then, too, both of them were glad to get out of the house for a while, away from the sadness that had inevitably descended. The discovery at the lake had left them all in a kind of limbo, unable to get on with their lives until a resolution of some sort hove into sight.

  Out in the sunshine, Hazel felt her mood lightening with every step. “It seems a while since we did this last, Pete.”

  He waved an airy hand. “I try to show a girl a good time. You can only have so many nightclubs, casinos, and skiing holidays before boredom sets in. But shifting cows never grows old.”

  Hazel laughed out loud. “On a morning like this, with the hedges full of honeysuckle and bees, who’d want to be anywhere else?” She skipped over a fresh cowpat. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

  He shook his head with certainty. “Never for a minute. I mightn’t have had much choice about the life I was going to lead, but I’ve never wished for another one. I l
ove this place. I love the house, and the land, and all the people on the land. I love the whole idea of getting land to feed you. It just seems so right.”

  Hazel regarded him affectionately. “I’m glad you’re happy. That you’re not doing this because it’s expected of you, and you’d rather be—oh, I don’t know—lead dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet.”

  Byrfield looked down ruefully at his wellies. “Have you seen my feet? We aristocrats are supposed to be delicate, effete little things. But you wouldn’t get feet like that on a Shire horse.”

  Hazel chuckled. “A bit of common blood must have crept in somewhere.” Then, more soberly, she said, “Can I ask you something personal?”

  He had no idea what to expect. He nodded anyway. “Sure.”

  “Does it ever trouble you? Having all this? Being the master of all you survey?”

  “You mean,” he appended astutely, “when I haven’t worked for it.”

  “I know you work,” she said quickly. “I know you work hard. All the same, most people work hard. But nobody could expect to have something like this without inheriting it.”

  “Or, of course, being a rock star or a footballer,” said Byrfield, just tartly enough that he must have been tired of the question. “But isn’t that pretty much the point? If you want there to be places like Byrfield—hedges, honeysuckle, house and all—there have to be people like me. Like the Byrfield family.

  “Somewhere like Byrfield isn’t the creation of one lifetime. One man couldn’t carry the burden. It needs to go hand in hand with a family, so someone is ready to pick up the reins when the last coachman falls off the box. I don’t know if it’s fair. I think it’s the only way for a country to preserve this kind of heritage. If you sold off all the grand houses in England, and paid off all the mortgages, and settled the tax liability, and divided what was left among the entire population, people would get a book of stamps each. And it would have cost them an important part of their history.”