by Jo Bannister
‘She called us the other time. She didn’t want us to worry. She said she had her own path to follow but she didn’t want us worrying.’
‘And you thought she’d have done the same again, if she’d been safe.’
‘Yes. We waited for two days, then we went to the police.’
‘What did she take with her?’
‘Her guitar, a change of clothes and her purse. The clothes were the only reason we waited two days. We thought they might mean she intended to be out overnight.’
‘Wouldn’t she have said something to you?’
‘Not if she was doing something we’d have disapproved of.’
‘Was she prone to doing that?’
‘She was a bit of a free spirit, superintendent,’ said the girl’s father. ‘People who didn’t know she was adopted wondered how Alice and I managed to produce someone like her. We don’t know who her birth parents were, but one of them must have been musical and I’ve always suspected the other was an elf.’ He gave a wan smile. ‘There was something other-worldly about her. When she ran you weren’t quite sure her feet touched the ground.’
That wasn’t something Deacon could comment on. But he felt a twinge of sympathy for the older man. Adoption had never been an easy option. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to have this child, and after nineteen years he’d lost her, and he didn’t know why. ‘How much money did she have?’
‘She drew sixty pounds on her credit card.’
Deacon back-tracked. ‘How old was she the first time she went off?’
‘Sixteen. Not a child any more, not yet a woman.’
‘And the boyfriend?’
‘Twenty-four. He was a professional footballer. She thought they were going to be rich and famous. She desperately wanted to be famous. But they split up after a couple of months and Sasha came home.’
Deacon took down the name in no expectation that it would help. Three years had passed, an aeon to a teenager. Sasha Wade hadn’t gone running after her footballer. But she might have found another ticket to fame and fortune, someone who treated her less kindly when he got bored with her. ‘Did she take her clothes that time?’
‘All of them,’ said Wade. He knew the significance of that. He’d had eight years to think about it.
Meadows came downstairs with a square parcel under her arm. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Wade. I’ll take great care of these and get them back to you as soon as I can.’
On the way out to the car Deacon said, ‘Photographs?’
‘And a book of her songs. She wanted to be a singer. I thought her songs might give us an insight into who she was.’
Deacon sniffed disparagingly. ‘All teenagers think they’re going to be the next Elton Jones, don’t they? But they still end up working in building societies.’
Meadows was trying to think who Elton Jones was. Then she realised he was testing her, waiting for her to correct him. ‘These are good. Well, I think so. Maybe even good enough.’
‘So she took her guitar,’ said Deacon, ‘and sixty pounds off her credit card and a change of clothes in a carrier bag. Even eight years ago sixty pounds wouldn’t have taken her far. She wasn’t heading for Las Vegas to seek her fortune. She planned to be away one night. When she left home she thought she was coming back.’
Chapter Twelve
Spring was beginning to stretch the evenings: astronomy was increasingly a task for insomniacs. At ten o’clock Daniel set up his equipment on the iron gallery that ran around his upper storey and started looking for the other Russian comet.
People who hadn’t known him long marvelled that he’d managed to find – and even more remarkable, to afford – a house so perfectly matched to his needs, almost as if it had been built for him. In fact, to a large degree it was. After standing on this foreshore for two hundred uneventful years, a lot had happened to the netting-shed in just the last three. When Daniel first rented it, soon after moving to Dimmock, it had been not much more than a beach-hut on steroids: a tall black timber-clad structure with one large room above, reached by an outside staircase, and a boat-house below. When Dimmock still had a fishing industry, this was one of perhaps twenty such strung along the beach just above the historic high water mark. Three of them survived into the twenty-first century.
Quickly appreciating that he wasn’t going to do much better for the funds he had available, Daniel put in an offer and bought the thing outright. After twelve months he had a small but comfortable home with unparalleled views of the English Channel and the sky above it.
A year after that he had a smouldering ruin, and if he’d been in it when the mob arrived he’d have been spared the trouble of rebuilding. But he wasn’t so he did; and while he was at it he found enough money to augment the insurance and give himself two things he’d wanted – more living space on the ground floor, and an outside gallery running round the entire house at first floor level giving him a viewing platform from which he could observe any part of the night sky.
Tonight he set up the telescope at the north end of the house. Observing conditions weren’t as good as on the seaward side because the lights of Dimmock got in the way, but north was where the other Russian comet was growing.
The original Russian comet, so called because only those familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet could pronounce its name, had come and gone; this one, equally unsayable, had been spotted the previous month. It was expected to become a naked eye object over the next few weeks, but there’s no fun in that for the genuine astronomer. He wants to be in at the birth, when it’s nothing but a fuzzy pinprick that doesn’t correlate to any known body. Daniel hadn’t the gear for serious comet-hunting and would never put his name on one. There was still enormous satisfaction in seeing it early. If not at the birth, perhaps at the christening.
But it wasn’t a good night for comets. At first glance the stars appeared to be shining brightly, but through the telescope it became clear there was enough cloud in the atmosphere to mask anything as amorphous as an embryo comet. He turned his attention to the southern sky where it sheeted down all the way to the Channel and the great recumbent lion that dominated it. He was focusing on the binary system of Algeiba in Leo’s mane when he became aware that he was no longer alone. This far from the Promenade there wasn’t enough light to see by, and he hadn’t heard footsteps on the shingle. But he knew there was someone out there in the darkness watching him.
He straightened slowly and moved away from the telescope. ‘I know you’re there,’ he said quietly.
Something moved in the dark, the stones of the shore chiming their familiar warning. ‘It’s only me.’
She didn’t need to say any more. Daniel reached inside the open door to turn the lights on and Brodie was standing at the foot of the iron staircase. Since the rebuild his front door was at ground level like everyone else’s, but the iron stair had been too much a feature of the netting-shed to remove it. Visitors went to the new door; friends usually came straight up and tapped on the one opening onto his living room.
‘Brodie? What are you doing down there? Come on up.’ He’d been on the gallery for half an hour and could not have missed hearing her arrive. ‘How long have you been there?’
She didn’t look at her watch. ‘Oh, about an hour.’ She sounded exhausted.
‘You’ve been watching me for an hour?’ He didn’t understand. ‘Is everything all right? Has something happened? Is Paddy all right?’
‘Paddy’s fine,’ she said quickly. ‘Marta’s with her. But yes, something has happened; and no, everything is not all right.’
He kept a couple of deckchairs on the gallery: Brodie slumped into one as if she hadn’t the strength to make it inside. Daniel lowered himself carefully into the other. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’
In the chiaroscuro world of black night and white light her face was haggard. She waved a weary hand. ‘Could we have the light off again?’
He did as she asked without question. Then he said, ‘What did you come here to tell me?
’
She couldn’t get started. He wanted to take her hand but was afraid. He said softly, ‘I don’t need to say this but I’m going to. Whatever has happened, we’ll deal with it. Whatever you’ve done, we’ll sort it out. Are you in trouble?’
That made her laugh, a despairing little chuckle that Daniel could make no sense of. He wished he could see her face. ‘Brodie?’
She was contrite. ‘Sorry. It’s just, that’s what Victorian mistresses used to ask their maids. No, I’m not in trouble – at least, I’m not going to be dismissed without a reference. I’ve seen Eric again.’
If he was disappointed Daniel kept it out of his voice. ‘You went to The Diligence?’
‘He came to my office. He was … brusque when he called last night. He was worried about Jared, didn’t know what was going on. When he realised everything was under control and it was thanks to you and me Jared wasn’t up in court this morning he wanted to apologise.’
‘But you were still angry with him.’
‘Not so much. I made him coffee. He apologised, I accepted.’
That wasn’t what she needed him to know, that she’d stood in the dark for an hour cranking up the courage to tell him. He wasn’t sure how much to press her. If she needed to talk it was for her to set the agenda. If he made it too difficult she might change her mind and go home still unburdened. He tried a change of tack. ‘Jared Fry isn’t what I expected.’
She gave a little sigh. ‘What did you expect?’
‘I don’t know. Something more glamorous, I suppose. More of a celebrity.’
He heard her wan smile. ‘Disappointed, Daniel?’
‘Reassured. Even that much money and success don’t stop a man worrying about his future. He’s afraid he can’t write songs any more.’
‘He’s a heroin addict,’ said Brodie, as if that told the whole of a man’s tale.
‘Yes, I know. He says that’s how he writes best. Of course it isn’t, but he thinks it is. And the longer he’s addicted the more his brain deteriorates, the harder it is to get something worthwhile out of it, the more he feels the need for a fix. He’s going to kill himself.
‘And it’s a pity, because deep inside where the garbage can’t get him he’s a decent man. He thinks without it he’d never write another word. I think it’s all there waiting for him, but he’s too scared to take the risk. The fear of losing it forever is what stops him, not the misery of detox.’
‘He has kicked it, a couple of times,’ said Brodie. ‘If the results had been what he wanted he wouldn’t have gone back.’
Daniel stared at her outline, just visible in the darkness. ‘That’s a harsh judgement.’
Her shoulders framed a shrug. ‘I haven’t much patience with people who spend good money destroying themselves. I don’t know if it’s an illness or a weakness of character. I do know most people face the same trials and tribulations and don’t yield to dependency. If you think Jared Fry would make a noble cause, Daniel, I have to tell you I don’t think you can save a drug addict. Every so often one manages to save himself, but mostly their life is over the first time they inject or sniff or smoke something because they need it rather than because they want it.’
Daniel wasn’t sure what he was hearing. He knew Brodie was a tough, resilient woman, partly because she’d had to be and partly because the capacity had always been there. He knew she held some fairly robust views. He didn’t believe she was a natural fascist. ‘I don’t think you’d be saying this if someone you cared about was hooked on drugs.’
‘Probably not. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong. No one’s at their most objective when their emotions are involved.’
‘No,’ he agreed softly. ‘Brodie, what’s this about? What happened after you gave Eric his coffee?’
It was now or never: she got it out in one breath. ‘We fucked each other’s brains out.’
Deacon needed to hear from the Forensic Medical Examiner before he made his next move. If measurements of the girl’s skull matched the photograph of Sasha Wade they had an ID and, except for the urge to find answers to questions which bothered him the way midges bother campers, there was no need to concern himself further with the whereabouts of Michelle Rollins.
If, on the other hand, Dr Roy’s measurements meant the body couldn’t be Sasha’s, the need to establish Michelle’s whereabouts became urgent. It didn’t mean she was the girl in the ground, but it meant she could be.
He toyed with the idea of paying Rollins another visit while he was waiting but decided he couldn’t justify it. If Michelle was by now the mother of six bonny bambinos he would be wasting his time interrogating Eddie. And if there were no babies because there was no Luigi because Michelle never actually left The Diligence, all jumping the gun would achieve was to warn Rollins that he was under suspicion.
He’d sat tight for eight years: it might not be enough to panic him into packing a bag and leaving the store unopened tomorrow morning but it wasn’t worth the risk. As things stood Rollins was going nowhere: either he had nothing to hide, or he’d weighed up the odds when the body was found and decided to sit it out. Being interviewed as a possible witness would have reassured him. Going back late at night to ask him about Michelle, when Deacon hadn’t the evidence to arrest him no matter how unsatisfactory his answers, could only be a mistake. So he sat in his office, the upper floor empty about him, and drank too much coffee waiting for Roy to ring.
The phone went just after eleven. ‘Well?’ barked Deacon.
‘Yes, thank you, Superintendent,’ said the FME smoothly, ‘how kind of you to ask.’
Deacon gripped his phone as if attempting to strangle it. ‘Is it the Wade girl?’
There was a judicious pause. ‘It could be.’
Deacon had his next move ready whether the answer was affirmative or negative. He hadn’t expected uncertainty. ‘You still don’t know? What’s the problem?’
‘Her age,’ said Roy. ‘I understand the photograph was taken two years before she disappeared. She was still growing. You’d expect minor changes in the bone structure in those two years, and minor differences is what I’m seeing. I think it’s the same girl, but if you want me to stand up in court I’d have to say it might not be. I couldn’ t make a positive identification.’
‘Bugger,’ said Deacon feelingly. He thought for a minute. ‘Is it worth waiting? Will any of your tests clarify matters one way or the other?’
‘The DNA’s as clear as crystal,’ said Roy with mild reproof.
‘For all the help that is! Are you telling me you can’t ID someone who was adopted?’
‘Eight years is a long time. If she’d just died we could take hairs from Sasha’s brush and see what other traces she’d left around the house. After eight years …’ His tone was regretful.
‘What about that tooth thing, that says if she came from another part of the country?’
‘Yes, I’ve got that back,’ said Roy. ‘It says she didn’t. Do you know if the Wade girl … ?’
‘Lived in Brighton from infancy. Along, of course, with thousands of other people.’ An idea struck Deacon. ‘If I can get DNA relating to the other possible victim, presumably you could run the rest again?’
‘Of course,’ said the FME. ‘Get me a living close relative and I can tell you something.’
‘I’ll find out where Michelle Rollins’s parents are, and if she has any brothers or sisters. But not tonight. Tomorrow, as someone said, is another day.’
‘Scarlett O’Hara,’ said Aditya Roy helpfully.
‘I knew that,’ growled Deacon.
With no wind behind it the tide was creeping in like a burglar, just the faint chink of a dislodged pebble and the hiss of foam to warn of its approach. It would stop, even on a spring tide with a gale behind it, thirty metres from the netting-sheds; still, its approach always made Brodie uneasy. She had it at the back of her mind that one day it would do something different – keep coming until the occupants of the little house were maroo
ned on the gallery. She was aware of it now, stealing up on them trying not to be heard. And for this she desperately wanted to be alone with Daniel.
It was a long time – and that wasn’t just how it felt to Brodie, longing for him to break the silence and afraid what he might say – before he spoke. He sat beside her like a statue, and only the flicker of starlight on his eye when he blinked was evidence of the life within him.
She wanted to scream, to shake him, to shout ‘Say something!’ into his moonwhite face, but dared not. Given time, she knew, reason would prevail. Daniel Hood was a rational man. He would say nothing until the shock had subsided and he was able to see the situation clearly. Then what he had to say would be sensible and humane and immensely helpful. If she forced him to speak before he was ready, her soul shrank from the judgement he might pass.
She heard him draw breath. He still didn’t look at her. His voice was low. ‘You’re not saying he raped you?’
‘No,’ she said immediately. ‘I wish I could. I wish I could tell you he misunderstood a bit of harmless flirting and didn’t hear when I told him to stop. I can’t. I wanted him. I wanted him as much as he wanted me. If he’d tried to leave I’d have stopped him.’
‘Have you told Jack?’
‘No. I came straight here. Well – after I got my breath back and worked out which way was up. Eric wanted me to go back to The Diligence with him. I said I was going home, but I didn’t do that either. I phoned Marta to say I’d be late, and after that I just sat in the office on my own for two hours. Not doing anything, not even thinking, just sitting. Then I came here.’
‘An hour ago.’
‘Or rather more. I wanted to come up. I couldn’t face you.’
Daniel sighed. ‘Brodie, you don’t owe me an explanation. You’re a grown woman, if this is what you want you can have it. But it wasn’ t the last time we talked. Is it now?’
He had an uncanny knack almost of reading her mind. Brodie shook her head, her hair tossing wildly. ‘No! It isn’t. So why the hell do I behave like a nymphomaniac whenever that man comes near me? I don’t love him. I don’t want to spend my life with him and have his babies. I hardly know him. I don’t understand!’