But Em was enjoying herself too much to pay her sister any heed. She was going through the hats in the steamer trunk like a quick-change artist. “I’m a fairy. Now I’m a pirate. Now I’m … er … ”
“Charlie Chaplin,” prompted Brodie, although the likeness wasn’t particularly striking. “Try this.”
Em discarded the bowler hat and pulled on the mortarboard. “Now you’re Daniel,” said Brodie, and Em fell about laughing.
“What else is there in here?” She rooted, passed the child a policeman’s helmet. “Now you’re Detective Superintendent Deacon. No, scowl more—shout and stamp up and down a bit. Now you’re…”
She’d reached the bottom of the trunk. Among the velvet and chiffon her fingers found something cool and shiny. Somehow they recognised what it was while her brain was still otherwise engaged, watching an eleven-year-old in a cardboard helmet arrest a teddy-bear for failing to display a left ear.
She heard Johnny sharp at the door: “Come on, Em, we have to go now.”
She heard Daniel in the next room: “Is everything all right, Johnny?”
She heard herself, an hour before: “I know how he did it.” But she hadn’t. She’d only known how it had been done.
Slowly, carefully, she pulled the silver foil out from under the dressing-up clothes and spread it on the bare boards. When it was all unfolded it was a couple of metres square, and one comer was missing.
She raised her eyes to find Em watching her, rigid, the helmet still on her head, the grin frozen grotesquely on her face.
Johnny, who’d almost reached them in time, who’d got as far as the door, now took three strides into the room, snatched her sister’s hand and threw the helmet back in the trunk. She met Brodie’s gaze with icy resolve. “I don’t know what that is. It isn’t ours.” Then she turned and, dragging her sister in her wake, made for the door.
Daniel closed it as he came in. Sometimes, Brodie reflected distantly, in the space between heartbeats as the seconds stretched, he could be absurdly obtuse. But sometimes it was as if he was reading her mind.
Without moving from the door he looked at the foil sheet. Then he looked at Brodie, and she could see his mind whirring with the possibilities. Then he looked at the girls. He drew an unsteady breath.
“You could have killed him,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-One
Johnny wouldn’t look at him, muttered in her teeth, “I don’t know what you mean.”
Brodie stayed where she was, kneeling on the floor. “He means, when you hung this across the road on the way to Nicky Speers’ cottage.”
“You heard him pass on his way into town,” said Daniel. His voice was thin with shock. “You couldn’t know he’d be coming back soon after closing time but it was a reasonable guess.
“I was in bed by eleven, I expect Peris was too. You crept downstairs—with the foil sheet folded into your back-pack -picked up a torch and a ball of string, then slipped away on your bikes. No one heard you go, no one missed you.”
“I thought your father did it,” said Brodie, her tone quiet and without emotion. It was too big a thing to shout at them for. Shouting is for leaving the top off the toothpaste and spending dinner-money on sweets. But these girls had tried to kill someone. End a life. If she started shouting she wouldn’t be able to stop. “I did wonder how a fat middle-aged man had scaled a five-foot wall, climbed into a tree and edged out along the branch to where I found the strings. But I figured you can do anything you want to do enough, and I knew he had all the motive necessary. It never occurred to me that you had too.”
“When you heard the bike coming back,” Daniel continued softly, “out of sight up in the tree you let down the foil sheet. Nicky came round the bend and his own headlights blinded him. When he swerved they swerved too: he had nowhere left to go. He hit the wall at fifty miles an hour and his bones shattered.”
“And you watched,” said Brodie. She had to fight down a bubble of anger to continue. “You watched his body break.
You listened to him choke on his own blood. You folded up the foil, climbed down from the tree, and then you watched him dying. Hurting and dying. You watched and made no attempt to help.”
Daniel’s voice cut her off. “But he didn’t die. He’ll be all right. His bones will heal, in time. You didn’t kill him. But you came so close. To ending his life and ruining your own.”
Finally Johnny’s chestnut head snapped up and she stared him rebelliously in the eye. “Our lives are ruined! Hadn’t you noticed? He killed our mother!”
Daniel shook his head. “He didn’t.”
“And I say he did!” she yelled back. “Of course he did -who else? But that stupid policeman thinks our daddy did it, and now he can’t come home! And Uncle Hugo’s gone back to Africa, and even his stupid wife won’t put her own stupid life on hold for a few weeks to look after us. We were a good family. An important family We had money, people cared what we thought. And we’re going to end up being fostered in a council house because a dirty farm-boy couldn’t keep his kit on!”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Brodie tersely “You can’t take the law into your own hands. You’re two little girls, for God’s sake! If professional, experienced police detectives can’t be sure Nicky Speers stabbed your mother, whatever made you think you had the right to punish him?”
Em hadn’t taken much part in the argument until now. She wasn’t good at arguing. Johnny argued and Em cried. She was crying now, great tears like crystal beads sliding down her face. “He deserved it!” she wailed.
“That’s not your call,” snapped Brodie. “Everyone who ever suffered from a crime wanted vengeance. That’s why we have a legal system—because people who’re hurt and in shock can’t be expected to use good judgement. Society takes the burden off them, as much for their sake as the defendant’s. Judging who’s guilty and who’s innocent, and what penalty is appropriate in all the circumstances, calls for cool heads. For people who’re not emotionally involved. No one in their right mind would offer the adolescent daughters of a murder victim a say on sentencing. Even if they did, the death penalty wouldn’t be available.”
“I know!” shouted Johnny. “We knew that if we wanted justice we’d have to see to it ourselves. The police weren’t interested. We told them who was to blame and they let him go. Even after they found the knife they let him go. I mean, what do you need to arrest someone—that he committed his crime in the police station carpark during the tea-break? How could they not believe he did it? Because he said he didn’t?”
Daniel came away from the door and stood with his hands in his pockets, regarding them sombrely. “Convicting someone of a serious crime, that he could spend a lot of his life paying for, is a painstaking business. It’s not enough to think you know who did it. You have to make sure beyond any reasonable doubt. You have to prove that he was there when the crime took place, or at least that he wasn’t somewhere else. You have to establish that he was capable of doing what was done. Then you look for some physical evidence linking him to the scene—the victim’s blood or hair on his clothes, his skin under her fingernails, fibres from her carpet on his shoes. Scientific testing is so accurate these days that, although you can never prove a negative, you have to have misgivings if you can’t connect the suspect with the victim forensically.
“Only after all these tests have been satisfied can you charge someone with a crime. And then he’s entitled defend himself before an unbiased jury. If there’s been an idiotic coincidence that makes him look he did something he didn’t, they’re his last chance of being believed. They use their common sense. They consider the plausibility of witnesses, ask themselves who impresses them as truthful. They don’t have to believe an expert witness if they think he’s just going through the motions. Could the samples have been contaminated? Is there any other way the results could be misleading? Only when a dozen honest, sensible people with no axe to grind are convinced that he did what he’s accused of doing does th
e question of punishment arise.
“Which makes knocking someone off a motorbike on the basis of personal dislike no justice at all. The police, after questioning him for hours and looking at the physical evidence, weren’t convinced of his guilt. They may be wrong, but it’s much more likely they’re right. Nicky Speers is probably not responsible for your mother’s murder. But you were almost responsible for his.”
He drew a steadying breath. “Girls, you do realise we can’t keep this between the four of us? You hurt somebody, badly. He isn’t going to die, but it remains to be seen how good a recovery he’ll make. Now, people will understand why you did it—that you were desperately upset and angry. But it can’t be overlooked. I have to tell the police and they’ll have to take it before a magistrate. Where it’ll go from there I simply don’t know. I’m sure the strain you’ve been under will be taken into account. People will deal with you sympathetically, make sure you get all the help you can use. Try not to be afraid. This too will pass.”
“And look on the bright side,” murmured Brodie. “You won’t end up in a council house. At some point you’ll be able to join your aunt and uncle in Johannesburg.”
By now Em was weeping hysterically, great broken sobs she could hardly breathe around. Daniel knelt down and held her against his shoulder. She buried her face in him and her little body shook.
Johnny was at the point where any moment tears would breach the defences of her rage and put out the fires she was feeding on. She didn’t want them to see her like that. She reached out and prised Em’s hand off Daniel’s sleeve, and said stiffly, “Then we’d better go and pack a few things.” Ram-rod straight, she towed the smaller child away.
When the door closed behind them Brodie vented a shaky sigh. “Dear God, what a stunner! I never even thought of them. Not till I found that foil sheet and realised that even if their father had taken it from here he wouldn’t have risked bringing it back. The rest of it followed. Robert couldn’t have climbed the tree—but his daughters could. Damn it, I even saw the green patches on the knees of their jeans!”
Daniel sank back on his heels. “They fooled me too. I thought they might be in danger: I never guessed they could be a danger to someone else.” His eyes were wretched. “I was right here, Brodie. I was dealing with them every day; I was supposed to be looking after them. And I let them do something so bad that both they and Nicky will carry the consequences all their lives.
“I should have seen it coming. If I’d been half the teacher I think I am I’d have known their problems were out of my league. If I’d asked her Peris would have sent them to a child psychologist—they’d have got the support they needed and none of this would have happened. But no. I just can’t resist playing Superman, can I, however ill-equipped.”
There was a grain of truth in what he said, but he was being unnecessarily harsh on himself. This too was in character.
“You did what you were hired to do,” she said gently. “All right, you didn’t anticipate this. Neither did I; or Jack, or Peris. And if you’d asked for them to see a child psychologist they’d still be waiting for the first appointment. I doubt if anyone could have stopped this happening. You tried to help them. You did help them—think back to what they were like the first couple of days you were here. They were so traumatised they could hardly deal with the world. You reached them and brought them back.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have!” whined Daniel, bitter with despair. “If I’d let them sink into a depressive morass Nicky Speers wouldn’t now be strung together with splints and wire like a Sop with Camel!”
Brodie rose and extended him a hand. “Nicky’s going to be OK. He’s young, he’s strong, he’ll get over this. And the girls do have a point: if he’d exercised an iota of self-control he’d never have found himself in this predicament. Don’t beat yourself up over Nicky, or any of them. None of what’s happened is your fault. Stop trying to carry the world, Daniel—you’ll end up so round-shouldered you’ll never get a jacket to fit!”
Daniel managed a gruff little chuckle and let her draw him to his feet. The friendship of Brodie Farrell, even if he wouldn’t have embarrassed her by saying so, was among his chief joys, and one of the reasons was this: that more than anyone he knew she could keep her feet grounded in reality and her eyes on the stars. When he felt buffeted by things he couldn’t control Brodie was a sure anchor. He relied on her strength. But she never let him rely for too long before she pushed him back into the stream again. She had a keen instinct for when to help and when to let people help themselves. Her brisk, unsentimental kindness had got him through things he couldn’t have endured alone. This was going to be one of them.
He said, “Should we call the police again? Even if Jack isn’t back, maybe somebody ought to come and take charge of the situation?”
Brodie nodded. “I’ll call, you stay with the girls.”
But when they reached the door it was locked.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“And that,” said Brodie thoughtfully, “is something else we should have seen coming.”
Daniel sighed. All at once he sounded very tired. “The idiots! What do they think this is going to get them?”
“Time,” said Brodie. It was the obvious answer.
“To do what?”
“I suppose, to run away. Maybe they think they can find their father.” She tried the door for herself, was no more able to budge it than Daniel had been. She didn’t expect to, it was just one of those human compulsions. As a man, as a friend, she trusted him absolutely, would have followed him through the gates of hell if he’d asked her to. She just didn’t believe that the door was locked until she’d tried it for herself.
“We could do that thing with a sheet of paper,” she said, brightening. “Slide it under, push the key through, slide it back?”
Daniel looked doubtfully at the crack beneath the door. “I don’t think it’s wide enough.”
Again, she had to try. She smoothed out a piece of newspaper that had been protecting china in a tea-chest. But he was right: even the paper wouldn’t go through the gap.
“Your mobile phone?” he suggested. He didn’t own one himself.
“In my handbag,” said Brodie. “On the back on my chair at the kitchen table.”
“Ah.”
“You’ll have to force the door.”
He did own a television—at least, he did until it went up in smoke—so he’d seen this done. The beefiest male present braces his shoulder against the locked door and heaves, and it gives with such ease that you’re left wondering if there’s any point locking the damn things at all.
Well, Daniel was for once the beefiest male present. But the door was a baulk of solid timber and the frame was as thick as his fist, and when he put his shoulder to it and heaved the only thing that threatened to give was his collar-bone. “I don’t think so,” he said, stepping back.
Brodie huffed with exasperation. She wasn’t used to being in situations she could do nothing about, but it rather looked as if this was one. “When are you expecting Peris back?”
“About six. She said to keep some tea for her.”
Brodie looked at her watch. “It’s gone six so she shouldn’t be long. And Jack will get my message any time now. I asked him to meet me here.”
“So we won’t have to draw lots for who gets eaten.”
She returned his grin. “Not yet, anyway.”
A little time passed. They listened in vain for the sound of wheels on gravel. All the same, after about fifteen minutes Daniel said, “There’s someone downstairs.”
Brodie joined him at the door. “Maybe it’s the monsters.”
His gaze dropped. “Don’t call them that.”
She snorted with impatience. “What do you want me to call them? The post-traumatically-stressed poor-decision-makers? The morally challenged sub-adults?”
Daniel winced. “I know. But what they’ve done isn’t the sum total of who they are. To call them monster
s is to give up on them, to believe they’re irredeemable.”
Brodie flicked an irritable hand. “Whatever.” She frowned. “What is that I can hear?”
“It’s your mobile,” said Daniel. “Maybe it’s Jack.”
But Brodie was intimately familiar with the tone of her phone, would have known it even through two floors of Georgian living-space and a locked door. She tried to focus on the distant sound, because if it wasn’t her phone it was something else she knew and ought to recognise.
And then she did. She took a step back from the door and her eyes were afraid. “Daniel—that’s the smoke alarm.”
Jack Deacon shook his head decisively. “I don’t see how that can be. I can put him places inside the last week. Four or five days, just maybe, but not a fortnight.”
Dr Roy gave an accepting shrug. The body of Robert Daws seeped gently on the autopsy table while the pathologist took a slide out of his microscope. “In that case these little guys who live in ponds have suddenly taken a major step up the evolutionary ladder. They can now reach a stage in their development inside four, maybe five days that used to take them a fortnight. My goodness, they’ll be making fire by the end of the month and celebrating Christmas inside a little aquatic St Paul’s.”
Deacon glowered at him. He was deeply suspicious of cleverness, never more so than when it was directed at him. “Are you saying the body of Robert Daws had to be in Frick Lake for a fortnight? Not could have been, not might have been, but must have been?”
“Yes,” said the FME mildly. “I thought that was exactly what I said.”
Deacon went on glaring at him until it struck him there was no point. Then he glared at Voss. “If Daws has been dead for a fortnight, who ambushed Nicky Speers? Who left a knife with Serena’s blood on it in his garden shed? Who was wandering round Sparrow Hill in the middle of the night?”
DS Voss was surprised too, he just didn’t take it so personally. “Maybe we were wrong about Nicky. Maybe it was his knife all along. Maybe when he thought you were onto him he drove into the wall deliberately”
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