by Jo Bannister
CHAPTER FIVE
Daniel started work on January 1st, which seemed somehow auspicious. A new year, a new beginning. But for a month, every time he looked round Brodie was hovering behind his shoulder. She told him how her filing system worked, then checked that he was doing it right. She wrote out a list of questions to ask when he phoned round the south coast antiques shops, and she had him tick them off when he'd asked them. She let him sit in on a couple of meetings with clients, but when the meetings were over she told him what to do next.
This was not in itself unreasonable. She was the expert, the one with the experience, the one with the name, and he was the rookie. But for all the sense he got of her preparing to pass over the reins, he might as well have been a dog trotting at her heels – amiable, good company, someone to fetch things, but no more capable of managing Looking For Something? than a Springer spaniel.
In other circumstances, even the famously equable Daniel would have started to grow testy. Would have reminded her that four months from now, ready or not, like it or not, he'd be running this business so it was probably time she trusted him out in the big wide world. Of course he would make mistakes. But if he started small they would be small mistakes. The longer she kept him tied to her apron strings, the bigger the mistakes would be when she had no choice but to cut him free.
But the stakes were high. If he questioned her judgement, in a fit of pique she was as likely as not to sack him, and while that would be no disaster from his point of view it would be from hers. It would leave her where she was six weeks ago: trying to ignore the inevitable although its shadow – like hers – loomed larger every day. So Daniel held his tongue and hung onto his patience, and ticked the little boxes and sat quietly through the meetings, and knew that his time would come.
It came when Brodie had an ante-natal appointment at Dimmock General at ten o'clock one Friday morning in February. She considered leaving the office shut until she could get there. But Daniel's expression said that, if she did that, she could open it on her own.
‘What do you think?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Will you be able to manage?’
‘Gee, Brodie, I don't know,’ he replied. ‘What if someone comes in? I might have to talk to them.’
She knew he was teasing, she even knew that she'd given him good reason, but to Brodie this was no laughing matter. This was her business, that she'd built from nothing against heavy odds and whose continued success depended absolutely on good judgement. Daniel was a good man but she wasn't sure he always showed good judgement. Of course, who did? And she only had two choices: entrust it to Daniel or throw it to the wolves.
‘I know I'm being stupid,’ she admitted. ‘But I wasn't this nervous when I lost my virginity.’
‘Well, if you keep lurking in the background I'll never get the chance to lose mine,’ said Daniel firmly. ‘Plus, you need to go to the clinic. I can run your business for you. What I can't do is deliver your baby.’
She chuckled at that. ‘All right, I'll go. But…’
‘No buts.’
‘If someone asks…’ ‘If someone asks me a question I can't answer, I'll take his number and promise to get back to him. Then I'll write the question down, taking great care over spelling and punctuation, and when you've decided what we should do I'll call him back and then I'll tick it off. All right? Go. Keep your appointment. Lie back and think of England.’
‘If…’
‘Go!’
So Friday morning came round, and Daniel opened the office and opened the post, and did some filing, and phoned some dealers in case anyone had something Brodie was looking for; and by then it was eleven o'clock and still there were no hordes of frustrated searchers with bulging wallets beating a path to his door. He sighed and made himself some coffee. It didn't look as though he was going to get the chance to fulfil Brodie's worst fears after all.
He never quite knew what made him go to the door just then. There was a knocker and a bell, but neither made a sound; and the burgundy velvet curtain in the window that stopped the curious looking in stopped him looking out. But he knew there was someone there. He waited for a minute, expecting them to get up the courage to ring. When they didn't he waited another minute, wondering what he should do. Perhaps nothing: when they were ready to see him they'd let him know. Brodie had warned him about twitchers -people so nervous about whatever brought them to her that they would ring the bell and run away, or phone her three or four times before managing to say a word. It wasn't a routine service she offered, and people hesitated to put themselves in her hands.
It may have been intuition, it may only have been eagerness to see his first client, but after five minutes, with his coffee going cold and still the sensation of someone waiting just a few feet away, Daniel got up from the desk and opened the door.
At first he thought he'd been wrong and there was no one there. Then he looked further down and saw it was a short person. Not just short but shorter than him. It was in fact a child.
‘Hello,’ he said.
It was a boy of perhaps twelve years old, in the grey and red uniform of Dimmock High School, still waiting for his pubescent growth spurt and the deepening of the voice that would come with it. ‘Hello,’ he said back, warily.
‘I wasn't sure if I heard anyone or not,’ said Daniel.
‘I didn't knock,’ said the boy quickly, as if he'd been accused of something.
‘OK.’ But Daniel didn't go back inside and close the door. He stood on the step, hunched against the cold, looking up and down Shack Lane as if there was something to see.
After a minute the boy said, ‘I've seen you before.’ ‘Yes?’
‘At school. Before Christmas. You took a maths lesson.’
Daniel smiled. ‘That's right. Were you there?’ The boy nodded. ‘What did you think of it?’
‘It was interesting.’
‘Do you like maths?’
‘No,’ said the boy.
‘OK,’ Daniel said again.
‘I might have got to like it. We all thought you were going to be teaching us.’
Daniel gave a sad sigh. ‘That was the idea. It didn't work out.’
‘So you work here instead.’
‘That's right. My friend runs it. I'm her assistant.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I make coffee,’ Daniel answered honestly. ‘I've just made some. Do you want a cup?’
The boy thought for a moment. ‘All right.’
Thank God for that, thought Daniel, who'd been about to freeze to the step. ‘I'm Daniel Hood, by the way.’
I know. I'm…’ He stopped.
Daniel didn't press him. Handing the boy a steaming mug he seemed to change the subject. ‘It's a funny business, this. No two days are the same. Mrs Farrell – my friend – always said that, but I didn't understand until I started working here. You never know what you're going to be asked next. You can be looking for a house on Monday, a vintage car on Tuesday, a piece of china to make up a damaged tea-set on Wednesday, researching the history of a valuable painting on Thursday, and on Friday…’
He let the sentence hang for a moment, hoping the boy might finish it. But he didn't. Daniel carried on. ‘Whatever. People come here with all sorts of requests. Most of them we can meet. Even the ones we can't, usually we can tell them where to go instead.’ There was perhaps no one else in the English-speaking world who could have said that without a trace of irony.
‘Can I tell you a secret?’ he asked. The boy nodded. ‘My friend thinks we're here to make money. I haven't told her yet, I'm not sure how she'll take it, but I think we're here to help people.’
‘People who're looking for something,’ offered the boy.
Daniel smiled. ‘That's right. People who're looking for something. Even if, sometimes, they're not quite sure what it is they're looking for.’
The boy frowned, considering. Wispy brown hair was trimmed midway between a high forehead and intelligent brown eyes. ‘You mean, th
ings that aren't real?’
Daniel demurred. ‘Things that aren't concrete – solid -perhaps. Anything that's important enough for someone to want help finding is real. Even peace of mind. Especially peace of mind.’
‘I didn't knock,’ the boy said again. ‘But I wanted to.’
‘Then tell me how I can help.’
Charlie Voss wasn't quite sure what to make of Alix Hyde. When Deacon told him his services had been requisitioned, he was neither pleased nor dismayed but intrigued to meet a female inspector from the Serious Organised Crime Agency. He was expecting something like Deacon but with lipstick.
And at first glance, that was roughly what he got. She was big-framed without being heavy, and she wore a checked jacket, tailored trousers and brogues. In point of fact, she didn't wear lipstick. On a girl of twenty it might have been hailed as the next big thing: on a woman of maybe forty the effect should have been inescapably butch. Instead it was just a different sort of femininity – strong, unconventional, idiosyncratic even. But Voss doubted anyone ever took her for a man.
Anyone who's worked in a police station will know what conclusion the pundits in the canteen came to. ‘Of course, she's a lesbian.’
‘Oh yes, she's a lesbian. Not even hiding it.’
‘Definitely a lesbian.’
‘My mum had one once.’
‘Hardly seems fair, does it? When they're at it with one another, that's two less for the rest of us.’
‘What?’
Detective Constable Huxley, who'd made the last contribution but one, realised he was the object of everyone's attention. He looked mildly surprised. ‘It was only little but boy, was it hairy!’
He was doing nothing to shift people's gaze off him, or even make them blink. He breathed at them in exasperation. ‘You know – one of those spaniel things. Tibetan. Isn't that what they call them?’
Voss considered. ‘I think they call them Lhasa Apso, Hux.’
‘Isn't that what you said?’ Huxley hadn't been listening.
Voss made an effort to move on. ‘Do you talk about me when I'm not here? Wondering whether I'm queer?’
They were positively affronted. ‘Of course not. You've got a fiancée.’
This was true. It was one of the life-altering decisions he'd made in the year of his thirtieth birthday. That, and buying a flat. As a single man he'd happily rented bedsits at some of Dimmock's least glamorous addresses, on the basis that working as a policeman – and particularly working for Detective Superintendent Deacon – didn't leave him time or energy enough to care about the decor. Being engaged to a charming but strong-minded Chinese nurse gave him a new set of priorities.
Which didn't invalidate his point. ‘Jack Deacon's middle-aged and unattached. Do you sit here discussing his sexuality when he's safely out of earshot?’
A wave of fear swept through their eyes. ‘Christ, no!’
‘Then maybe we shouldn't be discussing Detective Inspector Hyde's. Because (a) it's none of our business, and (b) who gives a shit?’
‘She had one of those, too,’ Huxley muttered darkly. ‘My mum.’
‘A Shih Tzu?’ hazarded Voss patiently.
‘No, it was a Pekinese.’
Deacon wasn't in the canteen when all this was going on. Somebody told him about it later. It was all he could do to hold himself together until he was alone. Even so, people who heard him laughing in the privacy of his office were reminded irresistibly of Mrs Rochester in the attic. Deacon had been twenty-five before he worked out what a lesbian really was. Until then he thought the word for women who wouldn't sleep with him was Discriminating.
Later, finding Voss alone in the office that had been cleared for Alix Hyde's inquiry, he asked how it was progressing.
‘You know what these things are like,’ said Voss, wrinkling his freckled nose, ‘it's all paperwork at the start. Collating files. We've been to see Walsh a couple of times. He was very polite – well, he didn't laugh in our faces. He just kept insisting the rumours about him weren't true.’
‘He said he was keen to cooperate,’ guessed Deacon.
Voss nodded. ‘He said the sooner he could satisfy us, the sooner he'd get us off his back.’
‘He offered to give you access to his accounts.’
‘He did. He gave us written authority…’ Voss was an intelligent and astute detective. He. didn't believe in lucky guesses. ‘You mean, these are not necessarily the actions of an innocent man?’
Deacon chuckled. It sounded like the rumble of a distant avalanche. ‘What I told DI Hyde, I wasn't making it up. I really have tried to nail Terry myself. I found him enormously cooperative, and his accounts a model of bookkeeping practice, and he may not have laughed in my face but he nearly had a stroke not doing. Don't let me put you off, Charlie. Nobody's fire-proof, keep plugging away at it and you may well get a breakthrough. We all know he's as bent as a dog's hind leg: nothing would give me greater pleasure than visiting him in Pentonville. But it isn't going to be easy and it isn't going to be quick. He likes being a rich crook. He isn't going to give it up without a fight.’
‘You can't think of any angles I could try?’
Deacon regarded him. ‘If I could, don't you think I'd have mentioned it?’
Voss hastened to apologise. ‘I didn't mean…’
‘I know. You've got to remember, Charlie Voss, this has been tried before. More than once. He won, we lost. That means we go into the rematch with him confident but us hungry. That's the only edge you're going to get. Now you've started, go into everything. Take nothing on trust. Try to find a way of turning his confidence into a weakness.’
Voss was nodding slowly, taking mental notes. ‘One more question. How hard can we push before he turns violent?’
Deacon shook his head. ‘I don't think he will get violent. I think he'll get very, very sneaky. Let me tell you a story. When Terry was fifteen he invented what he called the doppelgdnger scam. You know how some things come in pairs, and lose most of their value if one piece gets lost or broken? He'd find someone with a pair of Ming vases, or garden urns, or crystal chandeliers – anything. Then he'd find a reason to visit the house – as a gardener or decorator or something – and accidentally damage one of the pair. Profuse apologies all round, the householder's insurance will pick up the tab, but he's left with one piece that's comparatively worthless.’
Deacon watched to see if Voss was anticipating where this was going. But there was no sign of it yet. ‘In an effort to make amends, the remorseful gardener or window-cleaner or whatever says he knows a man who does restoration work, and he'd like to pay for the damaged piece to be patched up -just for the look of it, it'll never be worth anything but it'll stop the place looking lop-sided. And after the loss adjuster's been he takes the broken bits away.
‘About now an accomplice, someone with a posher accent than Terry's, calls on the mark with a proposition. He heard about the recent misfortune because he's in a similar position. He too has lost one of a pair of Greek urns/Wedgwood vases/you name it of the same pattern, and he offers to buy the mark's surviving piece in order to restore his own set. But he's only offering what the single piece is worth. The mark figures that if he offered a bit more, he could have the pair, he'd be back where he was and he'd still have change from the insurance. They dicker a bit, but in the end the mark offers enough and they make the deal.’
‘And there isn't another piece?’ puzzled Voss.
‘Of course there is. He's not stupid, he's not going to buy sight-unseen. He has an expert verify its authenticity. Money changes hands and our man spends a week admiring his new acquisition.’ Deacon gave a sombre smile. ‘Only then does he notice that his own urn has been in the wars. Whole chunks have been broken off and glued back. It's a neat enough job but it wouldn't pass as perfect. But then, it didn't have to. That one was never going to get the microscope treatment from the expensive expert.’
Then Voss understood. ‘He switched them,’ he breathed, awestruck. ‘A
t some point he switched the broken one that he'd had restored for the intact one. Then he sold the mark his own urn.’
Deacon nodded. The story obviously afforded him some satisfaction. ‘Terry Walsh won't get violent if you back him into a corner. He will get inventive. You really don't want him getting inventive.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘I have a friend,’ said the boy.
Daniel nodded encouragingly. ‘Yes?’
‘He's worried about something. He wanted my advice. I didn't know what to tell him.’
‘So you thought you'd look for someone who might. That's good thinking.’
Abruptly the boy changed the subject. ‘I've been to the dentist.’
Daniel blinked. ‘Yes? Painful?’
‘Just a check-up. But that's why I'm not in school. I don't skip school. If my father thought…’ The sentence petered out in a crackle of alarm like static.
‘I'm with him,’ Daniel said firmly. ‘But if you had to take the morning off anyway, it was a good chance to check things out.’
‘That's what I thought.’ Relief worked on the small body like a muscle relaxant.
‘So you were wondering how best to help…’ Daniel gave the odd little shrug that was the last memento of a broken collar-bone. ‘You don't have to tell me his name. You don't have to tell me your name. But it would help if I had something to call you.’
This made sense. ‘You can call me Tom.’
‘You can call me Daniel. And what shall we call your friend?’
The fractional hesitation confirmed what Daniel already knew, what anyone who'd worked with children would have known. ‘Zack.’
So Tom just might be called Tom, except that his parents probably insisted on Thomas, but Zack was a figment of his imagination. Or rather, a device. He could say things about Zack's situation that he would never volunteer about his own.