by Jo Bannister
‘And Zack's got problems. At school?’
‘Oh no,’ said Tom, with an unwitting arrogance that would have reminded anyone else of Daniel himself.
‘At home, then.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Brother, sister, mother, father?’ Daniel marked the precise moment at which the brown eyes blinked. ‘Zack's worried about his mother?’
‘He wants to help her,’ ventured Tom in a low voice. His eyes dropped too, and he picked nervously at a scab on the back of his wrist.
‘Of course he does,’ agreed Daniel. ‘If something's troubling her, naturally he wants to help. As long as he doesn't get the idea that looking after adults, even parents, is the responsibility of kids. It isn't. It's the other way round. They look after you, and in due course you look after your kids.’
‘They shout,’ the boy mumbled. ‘All the time.’
So that was it. Daniel nodded sympathetically. ‘It's pretty scary, isn't it? You just have to remember that it may not be as serious as it sounds. I dare say a fair bit of shouting goes on between you and your friends as well. It doesn't mean you don't like one another. Sometimes it's like that with parents. It sounds worse than it is.’
Tom didn't contradict but Daniel didn't think he was buying it. ‘Tom – is anyone getting hurt?’
‘No!’ The promptness of his response should have been reassuring. Somehow it wasn't. It was too immediate, too dogmatic. As if he'd rehearsed. As if he'd known this was one question he'd be asked and was ready for it. ‘No. Just shouting. But it's getting worse. They're both great people, you know? They both have really important jobs. I think that's part of it. They're so tired when they get home that anything sets them off.’
‘Sounds about right,’ murmured Daniel. ‘And I guess Zack thinks that maybe two people with important and tiring jobs shouldn't have to worry about him. But Tom, you tell him from me that raising their children is the most important job either of his parents have – and they'd be the first to say so. I think you're right. I think they're too tired to see how difficult things are getting. I think if they knew how it was affecting Zack, both of them would want to quit their important jobs and take up road-sweeping or shelf-stacking or anything that would leave them time to make him happy.’
This child had spent too long keeping his feelings to himself to burst into tears now. But Daniel was pretty sure he wanted to. ‘You think so?’
‘A fair bit of time, effort and money goes into raising kids. And it's not compulsory. All the same, most people do it. Do you know why? Because most people love their kids to bits. It's just that, sometimes, when they're tired, they forget to say so. They may even forget just how important their families are to them. Sometimes it takes a bit of a crisis to remind them.’
Tom managed a shy smile. ‘You think I should start sniffing glue?’
Daniel laughed out loud, and didn't draw attention to the fact that Zack had quietly disappeared. ‘Not quite what I had in mind.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Do you know what I'd do if it was me? I'd write them a letter. That way I could take as much time as I wanted putting down exactly what I wanted to say, and there'd be less chance of us all getting upset and saying things we didn't mean, and it would give us all a focus to start talking about the problems. What do you think? Could you write them a letter saying how much you care about them and how much it upsets you to see them angry all the time?’
The boy was nodding slowly. ‘I guess I could.’ But when he looked up the shadows were still in his eyes. ‘What if it makes things worse?’
‘It won't. Trust me.’
‘You don't know them. What if it does?’
It was a reasonable question. Daniel considered. ‘Well, maybe that would be the time to get another adult involved. What about your grandparents? Would they help?’
Tom shook his head disconsolately. ‘My dad's parents live in Spain. My mum's dad is dead and her mum's in a nursing home.’
‘What about aunts and uncles?’
‘Not that we're still talking to.’
‘How about a teacher?’ suggested Daniel. ‘Would they discuss this with one of your teachers? It must be affecting your school-work.’
Tom gave an awkward little shrug. ‘They're all right,’ he said doubtfully. ‘My teachers. They're all right at teaching. They know about punctuation and algebra and stuff. I don't think any of them would help with this. I don't think I'd want to ask them.’
And strictly speaking it was no part of a teacher's job. Perhaps, if they managed to teach them punctuation and algebra, they'd done as much for their pupils as could be expected, especially in today's climate of mistrust. Almost the first thing student teachers learn now is how not to leave themselves open to violent confrontations and allegations of impropriety. Why would anyone who'd completed his classroom hours, and done his night's marking, then troop round to Tom's house to tell his parents that their inability to manage their own workload was making an intelligent, caring and sensitive boy miserable? Daniel might have done it, but that was getting to be a while back…
Daniel would have done it. Daniel would do it again if he had to. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, looking the boy squarely in the eyes. ‘You write them a letter. Be as honest as you can, and tell them what you need them to do to make things better. I think that'll solve the problem. But if I'm wrong, come back to me and we'll talk to them together.’
Detective Inspector Hyde picked up Charlie Voss as if he'd been a warm coat, threw him into her car and took off at speed. They were climbing the back of the Firestone Cliffs, heading east along the coast, before he got over the surprise enough to ask, ‘Where are we going?’
She looked at him as if, for a moment, she'd forgotten he was there. ‘Oh – yes. Sorry. Dover. We've got a witness against Terry Walsh. I think we've got the bastard.’
In the three years he'd worked with him Voss had never heard that note of triumph in Jack Deacon's voice. It raised hairs on the back of his neck. ‘Who? What?’
‘A woman called Susan Weekes. Until recently she worked as a croupier at The Dragon Luck casino on the Brighton Road. Walsh's wife is a major shareholder. Weekes has known Terry for years.’
‘Known, as in…?’ Voss raised a surprised eyebrow as Hyde nodded. ‘I had the impression he was very much a family man. Devoted husband and father.’
Hyde shrugged. ‘I suppose, if he can keep a whole criminal enterprise where you couldn't find it, one little mistress wouldn't pose too much of a problem.’
Voss said nothing. He'd noticed that Hyde had a tendency to criticise Deacon, however tacitly; and of course Deacon was never shy of criticising anyone. It left Voss feeling a little like a tug-of-love child.
Hyde glanced at him as she drove, realised he wasn't going to react and, with a little secret smile, continued. ‘She says he used the casino for business meetings. I'm not talking here about the bulk paper business, you understand. Weekes claims she was present on numerous occasions when the real source of his wealth was discussed. She says she heard enough and saw enough to put him away.’
It occurred to Voss to wonder why Susan Weekes was offering to do this now when she never had before. ‘And do we believe her?’
Hyde grinned at him. She might be new to Dimmock but she wasn't new to this job. Nobody gets to be a detective inspector at SOCA by believing everything they're told, even when they very much want it to be true. ‘Couldn't say, Charlie, not yet. I haven't spoken to her myself. I got the heads-up from Customs. It seems Miss Weekes was found in possession of slightly more cocaine than most people would have for personal use. In fact, a suitcase full. She was looking for something to trade it down and this is what she came up with. She was there when Terry Walsh met with other nonlaw-abiding citizens to plan their non-legitimate business activities.’
Voss pondered. ‘Even if she's telling the truth, won't it be her word against his? If she's willing to grass him up, I'm guessing the affair is over. Courts tend to be pretty sceptical
of the motives of former mistresses.’
‘Understandably,’ nodded Hyde. ‘To be honest, I'm not sure how good a witness she'll make. Maybe terrible; maybe so bad we'd be crazy to use her. That doesn't mean we can't use what she tells us.
‘Walsh is a clever man, Charlie, he must be to have got away with this for so long; and what he's been cleverest of all about is keeping his head down. Never giving us a handle on him. We know he's a crook, we know that's where his money comes from, but we've never had facts and figures – who, what, where, when, how much. What I need – maybe all I need – is a way in. Like one of those little silver gismos that let you open an oyster. If I can crack open the shell I can get at the good stuff inside. That's what I'm hoping to get from Susan Weekes. Some facts I can check, some names I can lean on.’
‘Is she in custody?’
‘With a Louis Vuitton full of crack? What do you think?’
According to the custody record, Susan Weekes was thirtysix. Maybe, on a good day, she could pass for thirty. This was not a good day. Tears had wrought havoc with the expert make-up. She wasn't crying now but her eyes were hollow with despair.
Yesterday she'd had breakfast in Paris with a man called Michel, who helped her pack the results of a shopping spree into her car and bade her a safe journey as he waved her off. It was a sunny February day, she was looking forward to the drive. She had all her life ahead of her, and a nice little earner to help her enjoy it. She had lunch in Calais, and afternoon tea on the EuroStar, and everything went smoothly right up to the point that she left the train.
She had supper in a back room of the Customs shed in Dover.
Today she'd spoken to a solicitor, and to a number of different police officers, and for the last couple of hours she'd been waiting for a detective inspector from the Serious Organised Crime Agency. She didn't know exactly how much trouble she was in. She knew they'd been ready to throw the book at her when they opened her suitcase, but she'd been given to understand that the weight of the book might be negotiable. It might be a family bible, it might be a Booker Prize contender, it might be an airport lounge paperback, all depending on what she could offer in return.
What they expected, what they wanted, was that she'd give them Michel. But that was more than her life was worth. He was a charming and attentive companion, handsome, urbane and knowledgeable on the fine arts; but Susan Weekes knew that if she so much as nodded a traffic warden in his direction he'd have her killed. In France, in England, under an assumed name, following plastic surgery. He'd do it from a prison cell if he had to. To make a point; like his fellow-countryman Napoleon, who liked to shoot a general from time to time pour encourager les autres. So Michel was safe. She'd spent a desperate hour looking for something else she could trade with.
And now here were two new police officers, one of them a woman. ‘Tell us about Terry Walsh.’
The big hair had gone a bit flat over the last twelve hours. The mascara had run and the eyes were scared. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘What he's up to,’ said Hyde. ‘How he does it. How I prove it.’
‘What do I get?’
‘Friends at court,’ said the Inspector judiciously.
‘It's not enough.’ She was so scared Voss could hear her rings rattling on the table-top. But instinct told her this was the best chance she'd have to hold out for a better deal. ‘I want to walk.’
Alix Hyde laughed out loud, a musical tone like a bell. ‘Susan! You know I can't do that. I could get you Cowes Week on the Chief Constable's yacht before I could get you free and clear. You were caught with a suitcase full of crack cocaine! You hadn't even bothered disguising it.’
‘There didn't seem any point,’ mumbled Weekes. ‘I knew if they opened it I was up shit creek. It seemed better to stuff it full and never have to do it again.’
‘You mean, this was your first time?’
‘Yes.’ The woman looked up with hope-haunted eyes. ‘The money was just too good. I thought, Just once. People do this all the time and get away with it. I can get away with it just once.’ She gave a minimal shrug. ‘You know the rest.’
Hyde shook her head decisively. ‘Sorry, Susan, I'm not buying it. That business of filling the case – that wasn't the action of a virgin. She'd have put little packets into her underwear and little packets into her wash-bag, and spent hours squeezing tiny little quantities into her toothpaste tube. And it would all have been wasted effort because you're right, the moment you were challenged you were lost. Whatever you were carrying, however well you'd hidden it, they'd find it and then you'd be past all help.’
She pursed her lips. ‘Except mine. I can help you, Susan, and I'm probably the only one who can. Because there's something I want even more than I want you behind bars, and luckily enough – and you'll never know how lucky you've been, this isn't an offer I'd be making in any other circumstances – you're in a position to help me get it.’
So far as Voss could judge, Hyde had made the perfect pitch. Brisk, matter-of-fact and determined, she'd given Weekes the impression that all the cards were now face-up on the table. That there was a deal to be made, but only one and only once. Either she took it or she let it go. Nothing in the DI's voice or manner held out any hope that the pot could be sweetened so there was no incentive for Weekes to spin this out. At the same time, Hyde appeared to be sure of her authority to make a deal stick. It was this or nothing, now or never. Whatever Weekes could get for her information, now was the time to take it.
‘So what can you do for me?’
Alix Hyde smiled, not unkindly. ‘I can pretend to believe you when you say you've never done this before. That you were stupid and greedy, not a professional drug-runner. That's probably worth about four years to you. Two hundred weeks. One thousand, four hundred days. Three hundred and…’
‘All right!’ exclaimed Susan Weekes quickly, desperate to stop the parcelling up and throwing away of large chunks of her life. ‘All right. I'll tell you what I can.’
‘You'll tell me everything you know,’ Hyde corrected her, ‘or we've nothing more to talk about.’
‘All right! That's what I meant. All right.’
‘She's good,’ said Charlie Voss, leaning on the bar of The Belted Galloway later that night. ‘She got what she wanted, she got it pretty well immediately, and she didn't even…’ He stopped dead, waiting for the smoke-blackened roof-beams to fall on him.
Deacon looked up slowly from his pint of shandy. Apart from a bottle of wine with a sit-down meal, this was as close as he got to serious drinking. And Voss knew, and the publican knew, and that was all, so if the secret got out he'd know exactly where to start his inquiries. ‘Didn't what, Charlie?’ His voice was the soft purr of a tiger tucking in its napkin.
Like Susan Weekes the moment someone in a Customs uniform beckoned her, Voss knew exactly what the future held for him. He might as well open the suitcase right away and put his hands up. Only some primitive survival instinct made him wriggle. ‘Urn…’
Deacon wasn't an angler. He got all the excitement he needed catching criminals. But he didn't need actual experience to know this was what it felt like when a nice big fat one was flapping round on the end of the line. ‘Didn't even shout? Didn't swear a lot, and stamp up and down, and loom in a threatening manner? Didn't lean on the Police &C Criminal Evidence Act until it screamed for mercy? Is that what you were going to say, Charlie?’
Voss tried to make the best of a bad situation. ‘Horses for courses, chief. Everyone finds what works for them. I didn't say your methods wouldn't have got the job done.’
‘Just that hers are more – elegant?’
‘Ladylike,’ said Voss, inspired. He thought he'd somehow stumbled onto safe ground.
‘Well hell, Charlie Voss, I wouldn't want anyone accusing me of being ladylike.’
‘Course not, chief.’
‘So she coughed? Your drug-smuggler – she dished the dirt on Terry Walsh?’
Voss nodded. ‘Na
mes, places, dates. It'll all need checking, of course, and guess whose job that's going to be, but it sounded authentic’
‘Who is she? What do you know about her? Is she reliable?’
Voss found himself caught uncomfortably between conflicting loyalties, reluctant to answer. This wasn't Detective Superintendent Deacon's case, it was Detective Inspector Hyde's, and he didn't want her thinking that everything she said to him was going straight to Deacon. He prevaricated. ‘Of course she isn't reliable – she's a drug-smuggler! But she says she knew Walsh, professionally and personally, for years – and if that's true then she was in a position to know the rest. If she knows even half of what she says she knows, it's worth working with her. That's what Alix reckons, anyway.’
‘Alix?’ echoed Deacon, deadpan.
Detective Sergeant Voss blushed to the roots of his sandy hair. ‘She told me to call her Alix.’
When he smiled like that, there was something of the night about Jack Deacon. A hoot of owls, a whisper of vampire wings. Something fundamentally evil. ‘I can see I'm going to have to up my game if I'm not going to lose you to the serious and organised Detective Inspector Hyde.’
And while Voss was trying to convey the notion that the thought had never occurred to him – without, and this was the hard bit, actually lying – Deacon got up from the bar, shrugged his coat on and, chuckling bleakly, left to go home. Voss picked up the tab without complaint. Partly because it was a small price for ending the conversation, and partly because he always did.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘So how did things go?’
Brodie got it out first, by a millisecond, so Daniel felt obliged to answer first. ‘Very quiet. I did the phone-arounds – somebody needs to run over to Brighton, a couple of bookshops and antique dealers had items on your list.’ He paused hopefully, in case she said, ‘You'd better go this afternoon, then.’ But she didn't, and really he'd known she wouldn't. She still wasn't resigned to sharing this business with anyone, was clinging onto every aspect of it with a grip like a hawk's.