Reflections

by Bannister, Jo

  “And suppose you’re right, and one day I need you to catch me and you let me fall. Even as Tm hitting the ground I’ll know you did your best. It isn’t an empty cliché to say that’s the most that should be asked of anyone, even by himself.”

  His heart was too full to reply. He returned her embrace tightly enough to bruise her; though Brodie would have suffered fractures rather than say so.

  They sat together on the roof and waited in vain for signs that someone was aware of their plight, and watched the inexorable advance of the fire. It filled the attic rooms one by one, blowing flames out of the dormer windows like a slow broad-side. The surviving glass in the one nearest to them held back the blaze for longest, but finally it too shattered and belched out flame and roiling black smoke.

  Brodie held Daniel’s hand very tight and summoned all her courage. “When these slates get too hot to sit on, we jump. We’ll break bones, but we may survive. If not, at least it’ll be over quickly.”

  There was a silence. When Brodie looked at him Daniel said ruefully, “I can’t even think of a way of saving you that I’m not brave enough to try.” She hugged his arm and they waited for the last moment when the consequences of avoiding a decision outweighed those of making it. 1

  With a roar and a rumble something huge and yellow turned in at the gate. Philip Poole’s digger: Brodie could still smell it on her from their last encounter. Up to half an hour ago she had thought that mattered.

  She had no idea what he intended, but Poole knew exactly what he was doing. He located them on the roof and positioned the digger below them. The bucket rose towards them. It couldn’t reach the top of the high walls, but it halved the distance they had to drop. And he’d paused a moment in his own yard to half-fill it from the midden.

  Poole leaned out of the cab, his ruddy face urgent. “The roof‘11 go at any minute. Jump!”

  Daniel and Brodie traded a last look. “One at a time or both together?” he asked.

  “Both together,” she said firmly. “I’m sure as hell not coming back for you.”

  Still hand in hand they clambered awkwardly to their feet and jumped.

  By the time Poole had backed away from the burning house, lowered the bucket and run forward to see what he’d caught, both Brodie and Daniel were on their feet, unhurt, squelching and odoriferous and wreathed in idiot grins. They hugged one another, and Brodie hugged Poole; and the farmer was sufficiently comfortable with the smell of his muck-heap that he didn’t wish she wouldn’t.

  When they’d finished hugging and whooping Poole waved a bewildered hand at the blazing house. “What happened?”

  “You are not going to believe what happened,” said Brodie; and then another vehicle came screeching through the gateway, and because it was Deacon’s car she put off telling him until they could tell them both.

  Deacon tumbled out of the car and hurried over, staring up at the house in alarm. “Is there anyone inside?”

  “No,” said Brodie.

  “Not now,” said Daniel.

  He looked at both of them, noticed the byre smell, noticed the digger with its bucket half-full of filthy straw. “You mean—you were inside?”

  Before they could answer there was another mighty roar and the roof of the old house splintered and fell into the blaze. Great gouts of flame rose from the destruction. Daniel glanced at Brodie. Her jaw was clenched hard and her eyes were stretched. The distant wail of a fire engine speeding up the Guildford Road only underlined the fact that it would have been too late. If they’d been on the roof another two or three minutes they’d have fallen with the slates into the heart of the inferno.

  His hand was too grimy to offer even to a farmer. He said simply, “We owe you our lives, Mr Poole.”

  WPC Meredith was looking round her, “What about Mrs Daws? What about the girls?”

  “Peris went shopping,” said Daniel. “Johnny and Em—” He ground to a halt, lacking the words.

  Delicacy wasn’t something that Brodie struggled with. “Johnny and Em,” she said baldly, “locked us in the attic and set fire to the house. We don’t know where they went after that.”

  “But why?” Poole’s voice was thin as horn, appalled.

  “Because they tried to kill Nicky Speers,” said Deacon, “and you guessed. And you hadn’t the sense to keep quiet.”

  Brodie stared at him in amazement. “How did you know?”

  “I spent the afternoon at Frick Lake. We found Robert Daws’ car in twenty feet of water. Daws was in it, and had been for a fortnight. If he didn’t ambush Nicky, someone else did—someone else who hated the kid enough to kill him. Who else was there? If it wasn’t Serena’s husband it had to be her daughters.”

  “When did you know?”

  He’d have had no trouble lying to almost anyone else. But her frank gaze disarmed him. He sniffed. “About thirty seconds ago?”

  The straw from Poole’s midden was only filthy but wet. Away from the fire the evening was growing cool and both Brodie and Daniel were beginning to shiver. It was not just the cold, of course, but the cold was a good excuse.

  Deacon shepherded them to his car, though not before he’d spread a blanket on the seat. “Meredith will wait for the fire engine. I’ll take you home, you can get cleaned up and change your clothes. Oh …” He was looking at Daniel.

  Daniel nodded, surprisingly cheerful. He’d come through nightmare into the balmy calm beyond. “Yep. Once again. Superintendent, everything I own is on my back as we speak.”

  “You didn’t leave anything in the cottage?”

  Daniel shook his head sunnily “Moved it all into my room in the house. Even the telescope. I thought it would be safer there.”

  Brodie started to laugh. It was more than half hysteria, but it broke the tension of mind and muscle. “And this is why the name of Daniel Hood is whispered with reverence wherever clairvoyants meet.” They giggled together like children while Deacon watched in disbelief through the rear-view mirror.

  “I’ll find you something for tonight,” said Brodie. “We’'l go shopping in the morning.”

  That reminded him. He looked over Deacon’s shoulder at the dashboard clock. “Peris should have been back by now. She should have been back an hour ago.”

  Watching him, Brodie saw the wheels of thought turn and mesh behind the smutty glasses, slowly at first, gathering speed as they worked through the gears. His face went still and his eyes distant; then she saw concern creep in round the edges. In another moment it had turned to full-fledged alarm and his hand gripped Deacon’s shoulder so hard the policeman nearly drove into the hedge.

  Deacon tramped on the brake and turned furiously in his seat. “What the M/…?”

  Brodie didn’t spare him a glance. Her eyes were on Daniel and her voice was reedy with foreboding. “What is it?”

  “She got back when she said, at six o’clock or shortly afterwards. Just as the fire started.”

  “Then why didn’t she get help? Where is she?”

  “She met the girls running from the house. They piled into the car and she drove away again.”

  Brodie frowned, still not understanding. “Whyever would she? Even if they asked; even if they asked nicely. She wouldn’t just drive them away without telling you.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I don’t think they asked nicely. I think they held a knife to her throat.”

  “That’s absurd!” exploded Deacon. “Daniel, for pity’s sake get a grip on yourself. Where would they get a knife? Why would they hijack their own aunt?”

  Daniel tried to breathe steadily. “They got the knife where they got the other two, out of the kitchen drawer in the cottage. They hijacked Peris because they needed to be away from Sparrow Hill when you arrived and they’re too young to drive.”

  “Other two?” The only knives Deacon could think of were the ones that killed Serena Daws. He thought he must have missed something. “You’re not suggesting—?”

  “Yes,” said Daniel. “Robe
rt Daws didn’t kill his wife. Johnny and Em murdered their mother.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  He felt their eyes like blows: slashing incredulity in Brodie’s, cudgels of disgust in Deacon’s. The car had ground to a halt and both of them were staring at him hard enough to make him flinch.

  They seemed to expect him to apologise and say it was a bad joke. He wasn’t going to. He’d never been more serious about anything in his life. He’d only now put the pieces together, but they fitted with a near-audible click that said there was no mistake. It explained the otherwise inexplicable. There were two knives because there were two killers.

  Brodie found a voice first. “The girls,” she said, as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “You’re saying the girls murdered Serena. Stabbed their own mother.”

  “Yes,” said Daniel.

  “Because they adored their father, and she hurt and humiliated him once too often. They heard their parents fight, saw Robert storm out, thought Serena had finally driven him away. One of them snatched up the knife he’d dropped and stabbed her.”

  “That’s preposterous,” snarled Deacon, turning back to the wheel.

  “What is it?” demanded Daniel. “You know what they’ve done since. They tried to kill Nicky. They tried to kill Brodie and me. Doesn’t that make you just a little suspicious?”

  Deacon spun round again, and might have grabbed Daniel by the shirt-front if he’d been a shade cleaner. “Don’t get smart with me, sonny. I know what they’ve done. They hurt a man who was instrumental in the destruction of their family. Then they tried to silence two people who were stupid enough to tell them they knew. You’re right, that’s pretty extreme behaviour. But they found themselves in a pretty extreme situation.

  If they lost control, maybe that’s their fault—but maybe it’s ours for not getting them the help they needed/’

  Brodie frowned. “That’s not entirely fair. Daniel—”

  “Oh, Daniel,” the policeman spat angrily. “Daniel was taking care of it, was he? How could we possibly have done better than entrusting them to a man who wakes sweating twice a week and can’t do his job without getting attacks of the vapours?”

  Daniel rocked back as if Deacon really had struck him. White with fury, Brodie also reacted as if it was fists, not insults, that were being traded, pushing herself between them. “Jack-!”

  But Daniel didn’t need defending. He was resolute when he believed he was right. “Every word you say is true. But they don’t alter the fact that two disturbed children who’ve certainly tried to kill three people, who I believe killed their mother, have now disappeared with another woman. Can we concentrate on finding them before they hurt Peris too? We can go into my shortcomings later.”

  Deacon went on staring at him, but no longer with the angry disbelief that was almost his trademark. He was weighing the chances of being right about Daniel’s latest theory against the cost of being wrong. Then he picked up his radio.

  Only when he had cars out looking for Peris’s Volvo did he return his attention to his passengers. His brows lowered warily but there was no repeat of his earlier outburst. “How much of this do you know, and how much do you just think you know?”

  “I don’t know any of it,” said Daniel. “But it adds up. The knives—”

  “Serena was stabbed thirteen times,” said Brodie carefully “You really think her daughters did that?”

  “I know it sounds incredible,” Daniel said carefully. “And I may be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t think so.”

  After a moment Deacon said, “Explain.”

  “I think they told the truth about how it started. The fight, and what it was about, and how they watched from the window. Robert brought a knife in from the kitchen and slashed the painting. Serena laughed at him, and he threw it down and left.

  “But the girls didn’t run away at that point. They ran into the cottage and started shouting at Serena. They were hysterical: they thought she’d driven their father away. And they were devoted to him—everything they’ve done and said shows it. Even the way they relate to other people reflects their relationships with their parents. They’re friendly with men, mistrustful of women. If they thought they’d lost Robert because of Serena’s behaviour, I can see one of them snatching up the knife and stabbing her as she laughed.”

  “But there were two knives,” Brodie pointed out. “And thirteen wounds. Can you explain that in terms of lost tempers?”

  “Not really,” acknowledged Daniel. “But they were very upset. The second girl found another knife in the kitchen drawer and joined in.

  “I don’t think either of them, alone, would have been capable of a sustained attack on their mother. But there were two of them, and two hysterical people constitute a very small mob. They behaved like a mob. They started taking out their fears and frustrations on their mother and they couldn’t stop. When Serena tried to get help they smashed the phone.

  “After she was dead, or at least past defending herself, they calmed down and realised how much trouble they were in. They had to disguise the fact that two knives were used. Once the police started thinking in twos someone would notice there were two of them. But if it was a solitary killer there was an obvious scapegoat across the road. It never occurred to them we might suspect Robert. Even when they told us he slashed the picture. They knew he hadn’t hurt his wife, knew he never could have done, thought everyone else would know that too.”

  He paused a moment, marshalling his arguments, bracing himself for the hardest part. “But the wounds in Serena’s body were clearly made by two different knives. Even they could see that much. So they took the bigger one and pushed it into the wounds made by the smaller. Then instead of two people stabbing Serena six or seven times each it looked as if one person had stabbed her thirteen times. They left the big knife behind and took the small one away.”

  Brodie was nodding slowly, her eyes on Deacon. “They wanted you to arrest Nicky Speers. They told us so. In their minds he was responsible for what happened. When you seemed reluctant they gave you a clue—that little drama in the early hours of Friday morning. They smashed the kitchen window to make it look someone had broken in, and made enough noise to bring Daniel and Peris running. I think Em was supposed to accuse Nicky then, but she got stage fright. Do you remember her face, and Johnny’s? So they went away and rehearsed some more, then came back and finished the job.”

  “You questioned him,” Daniel said to Deacon, “but you still didn’t arrest him. The girls were incensed—particularly when they realised you suspected their father. They thought that once someone was arrested for Serena’s murder Robert could come home. By now there was talk of a second knife, so they’d nothing to lose by planting it in Nicky’s shed. You wondered how a fat middle-aged man scaled the wall behind the Speers’ cottage? Well, he didn’t, any more than he climbed the tree overhanging the lane. Two agile young girls did it instead. Everything happened less than a mile from Sparrow Hill. They could cycle it in a few minutes.”

  Brodie took up the story. “This next bit they admitted to. Of course, they didn’t expect us to pass it on. When you released Nicky they decided they’d have to deal with him themselves. I was right about the mirror. But it wasn’t a heavy Victorian thing—it was a sheet of aluminium foil hung from the branch of a tree. Nicky came along on his motorbike, saw what he thought was an oncoming vehicle and swerved into the wall. But someone was coming so the girls couldn’t stay and watch him die. They pulled down the foil, stuffed it into a back-pack and cycled home. Philip Poole found Nicky in time to save his life.

  “Johnny put the foil where she thought it would never be found. She didn’t even tell Em, so when we were looking at the toys in the attic Em didn’t know to steer clear of the dressing-up box. It was neatly folded at the bottom, but I knew it as soon as I saw it. There was even a comer missing -the comer I found tied to a bit of string up in the tree.”

  It was a struggle at times but De
acon was still following. “And that’s when you let them know that you knew.”

  Daniel gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Put like that, it doesn’t seem the brightest thing we’ve ever done.”

  “They wanted to pack some things,” said Brodie. “We let them. Even that didn’t seem particularly stupid until we went to follow them downstairs and found ourselves locked in.”

  “By which time,” guessed Deacon, “they’d set the fire?”

  Daniel nodded. “When we got onto the landing the stairs were ablaze. Soon after that the floor …” The memory caught in his throat.

  “The fire came up through the floor,” said Brodie evenly, “and we had to get out. Philip saw the flames and came to the rescue. The rest you know.”

  Deacon switched his gaze to Daniel. “And you think that when the girls came running from the house Mrs Daws was just getting back. And they produced a weapon and made her drive them—where?”

  “I have no idea,” said Daniel honestly.

  “London,” said Brodie.

  Deacon’s eye narrowed. “Why London?”

  She shrugged. “It’s where runaway children always go, isn’t it? They think the streets really are paved with gold. That damned Dick Whittington has a lot to answer for.”

  “They might also think they’d find their father there,” ventured Daniel. “His head office is in the city They may have thought, if he couldn’t come home, that’s where he’d go—”

  “Instead of which he was at the bottom of Frick Lake.”

  “They couldn’t know that,” said Brodie. “They thought he was avoiding the police because you suspected him.”

  “But if he left after the fight he didn’t know Serena was dead,” objected Deacon. “So why did he drive into a lake? The woman was a tramp, it can’t have been that he couldn’t face life without her.”