The Depths of Solitude

by Jo Bannister

  Vickers looked wary. “I’m not having that on my knee all the way home.”

  It was later than she’d expected, the last of the light fading from the western sky. She thought she’d find Deacon sitting at his kitchen table, drumming his fingers and pointedly checking his watch. But the house was empty. Even for the look of the thing Brodie couldn’t pretend much surprise. He was never on time for anything. He’d not only be late for his own funeral, he’d probably try to fit in a couple of calls on the way.

  She let herself in, nodded a greeting to the cat and went to check the fridge for the makings of supper.

  The phone rang.

  11

  Deacon was where he’d been for the last hour, mulling over the day’s events with DS Voss and a mug of ale. In fact he’d kept his word and got away from the office at six o’clock. He just hadn’t got any further than the public bar of The Belted Galloway.

  In any town there are two kinds of pubs: those where the local villains hang out and those where the police drink. It’s embarrassing to have to share. The Rose in Rye Lane was the preferred watering hole for Dimmock’s criminal classes, and The Belted Galloway on Edgehill Road was where officers from the police station round the corner congregated. It was run by a farmer who’d sold his land for housing; hence the name. It used to be simply The Bull.

  As soon as he’d seen Brodie settled in his house and despatched Vickers to join her, Deacon began putting together a task force. He half-expected having to fight Superintendent Fuller over this, to justify using police resources on what might have seemed like personal business, but the station’s senior officer saw nothing personal about it. If a woman was being terrorised, her relationship with his head of CID was no reason to deny her help.

  Anyway, it wasn’t a fifty-strong murder squad Deacon wanted. In Dimmock, even murders didn’t get a fifty-strong murder squad. It consisted of Constables Vickers and Batty, WPC Jill Meadows, Detective Constable David Winston, Sergeant Mills when he wasn’t needed as Scenes of Crime Officer elsewhere, and as much of his own and Voss’s time as could be spared.

  The advantage of a dedicated force, even a small one, is that its members aren’t constantly being distracted by other matters. Also, because they can’t ease their frustrations by wrapping up simpler cases, they try harder to carry this one forward. There are times when nothing seems to be happening except bored men and women glaring at one another across untidy desks. But that’s when brains start firing in unexpected ways: when they’re sufficiently desperate with the lack of progress along the usual avenues to break out and start forging new paths of their own.

  It was too soon to expect a breakthrough. But Meadows was on the computer, cross-referencing, Deacon had largely dismissed a connection with Brodie’s time in a solicitor’s office, and Sergeant Mills had spent the afternoon at the library, inspecting every aspect of the lift mechanism and talking by phone to the manufacturer’s chief engineer.

  Between them they worked out more or less what had been done. The stalker had been in the roof-space. He’d wired in an ancillary panel to over-ride the on-board controls. When Brodie’s plight was finally discovered he pulled out, tucked his equipment under his coat and left unnoticed via an emergency exit.

  Sergeant Mills didn’t think he’d got any useful fingerprints. He’d got prints — God knows he’d got prints, on every surface, vertical and horizontal, some so thickly caked in dust he didn’t need to use powder. What he needed was a fresh set on the rear exit that matched a fresh set in the attic. He couldn’t see someone who’d planned this so meticulously forgetting to put on his gloves, but Mills went through the motions anyway because you never know. If there was information to be had anywhere in the building he wanted to be sure he’d got it.

  Forensics was a tool which Deacon used as he used anything that would serve him. It was not, so far as he was concerned, the core of detection. He liked having a suspect in front of him, and shouting until he got answers to his questions, and shouting some more if he didn’t like those answers. Right now, though, he had no suspect. It made him even shorter-tempered than usual.

  “She must know,” he swore thickly into his ale. He’d been swearing at it more than drinking it. “She must.”

  “You think she’s covering for someone?” Voss wasn’t convinced. He’d seen Brodie this morning and had no doubt she was genuinely afraid.

  Deacon shook his head. “I don’t mean that. I think if she knew who was doing this she’d tell me.” He went to take a gulp of his drink, changed his mind. It was as flat as cold washing-up water. “I mean, it has to be about something she was involved in. Maybe she’s forgotten, maybe she never took it that seriously, but she has to know whoever’s behind it.”

  “I’m sure she’s tried to remember,” said Voss reasonably.

  Deacon scowled. “Well, yes and no. She thought of a handful of people it could be. Then she decided it couldn’t be any of them. She wouldn’t tell me who they were or why she suspected them because she considers that unprofessional. Then she thought of Daniel. Because if it’s someone she gave grief to, he’s the one with the best reason.”

  The best reason, perhaps; but a reason isn’t the same as a motive. Voss considered a moment before answering. “Daniel wouldn’t hurt Brodie if she’d nailed him to a barn.”

  “Of course it isn’t Daniel,” growled Deacon. “Daniel has enough trouble operating lifts from the inside. This is someone clever and vicious, and Daniel’s clever enough but not that way. Plus, there isn’t a mean streak in him.”

  Voss nodded pensively. “And this is mean – it’s personal, and it’s nasty. But I doubt we’re dealing with a headcase. Brodie would know if she’d managed to upset a psychopath. You do — you always remember them. You know they’re dangerous before they’ve done anything to make you think so.”

  “So he isn’t mad, just very angry,” mused Deacon. “Very bitter. You don’t think upsetting someone that much would have made an impression on her too?”

  “It may have been a long time ago,” said Voss. “He may have been waiting for a chance.”

  “Maybe it was a while back,” agreed Deacon. “But you anger someone enough that they really want to hurt you, you’ve got to remember doing it. It’s not like she goes through life making vicious enemies — not the way I do.”

  Voss grinned. “This mightn’t be any easier if it was you getting death threats but it would be more understandable.”

  Their eyes came together with an almost audible click, like billiard balls. For a moment neither man moved nor spoke. Each was turning the possibility in the privacy of his own brain, where he wouldn’t make a fool of himself if he was wrong. But as the moments stacked up into minutes, they knew they were right.

  Voss said carefully, “Maybe the reason she doesn’t remember is that it wasn’t her who upset him.”

  There was nothing particularly impressive about Charlie Voss, except his eyes which were more intelligent than you were ever quite ready for. Deacon stared into them as if he’d found the Holy Grail.

  When he got his voice back he said thickly, “She was afraid someone had hurt Daniel to get at her. Charlie – what if someone’s trying to hurt her to get at me?”

  It was Paddy on the phone. She’d been crying. “I can’t find Howard.”

  Brodie’s heart swelled. Five is an ambivalent age. Sometimes she looked at her daughter and wondered at the changes that were shaping her, already a quarter of the way on her journey from dependent infant to woman. And sometimes she couldn’t sleep unless she had a moth-eaten dragon to hug.

  “I put him in your suitcase,” said Brodie. “I remember. Have another look.”

  “I took him out,” wailed Paddy. “I was checking he was there. And he was. So I sat him on the windowsill and checked everything else. Only, when I finished …”

  “You forgot to put him back.”

  “Daddy says he’ll go and get him,” the child said hopefully, “if Marta will let him
in.”

  “Marta isn’t there,” said Brodie. “Ask Daddy to pick the key up from me. He knows where I am.”

  “OK.” Just before she rang off the child added, with the least possible note of censure: “I know where you are too.”

  When Deacon’s doorbell rang ten minutes later Brodie checked the viewer. It was John. She joined him on the pavement, locking the door behind her. “I’ll come with you. There are things I forgot as well.”

  It was strange to turn into the gravel drive of her own house and see no lights shining. On those rare occasions when neither she nor Marta was at home they always left a light to welcome them in. But the shrubbery by the gate drank up the glow of the street-lights and the house was only a blackness against the stars until the lights of John’s car, turning in, made it familiar again.

  Brodie opened the front door. “Are you coming in? I shan’t be a minute.”

  John stayed in the car. “I’ll get turned. Unless you want a hand?”

  “No, I know what I’m looking for.” She opened the door to her flat and switched on the lights.

  First things first: she went into Paddy’s room and found Howard where he’d been left, sitting disconsolately on the windowsill. “A proper dragon,” she observed with gentle reproof, “would have flown across town in order to find his mistress.” Howard’s eyes were downcast and he mumbled something about pulling a flight muscle when he fell off the wardrobe. “Yeah, right,” said Brodie, bundling him into a carrier-bag.

  She went to her own room then and picked through the cosmetics for things she hadn’t thought she’d need and then remembered what she looked like without. And another nightdress, and more underwear — so Deacon wouldn’t have to shave in a mirror with her rinsed-through smalls dangling from it. And maybe –

  The lights went out.

  For a moment she thought it was just a bulb, tried to remember if she had a spare in the kitchen cupboard. But none of the lights she’d turned on was burning now. A power-cut? She made her way to the window. The houses opposite still had electricity: their lights twinkled through the trees between.

  Which left a blown fuse. The fuse-box was in the hall, under the stairs which led to Marta’s flat. She’d need the torch from the kitchen. And if it wasn’t just a tripped switch she’d need a fuse. Well, she had some of those too, somewhere. And then she’d need –

  Sometimes it’s just plain stupid to keep making do with what you’ve got rather than fetch what you need. What she really needed was a man. She went out to the front steps. “John, can you give me a hand here?”

  He made no reply. Nor had he turned the car, though he had turned off the headlights.

  “John?”

  The knowledge of something wrong – much more wrong than just a blown fuse – surged up the gravel drive and up the steps at her like a tidal bore. The sudden fear froze her from the spine out. “John?” she whispered – too softly if he was there, too loudly if someone else was.

  Her eyes adjusting to the dark, Brodie started to see something beside the car, a dark shape on the pale gravel. It might have been a dropped coat. It might have been someone crouching there.

  Though she did not consider herself courageous she faced most problems with that substitute for courage, self-respect: she knew she’d despise herself if she didn’t. Occasionally, though, it wasn’t enough. The survival instinct insisted it was better to look stupid and feel stupid and have to make abject apologies than to walk into a lions’ den when you could hear them shaking out their napkins and rattling their cutlery.

  This was one of those occasions. Not breathing, one step at a time, eyes all round her, she reversed until she was back in the black hall. Then she dived for her own front door, slamming it behind her, hearing the lock snap with profound relief.

  She needed help, right now. Her phone was in her hand-bag, and her bag was – in the car. There was a landline in the living-room. She groped for it in the crowding darkness.

  She couldn’t find it. It should have been on the dresser. It was always on the dresser, the dresser was beside the phone-point, it never got moved because if she wanted to call from somewhere else she used her mobile. Nonetheless, she couldn’t find it.

  The fuse could have been a fuse. The shadow on the drive could have been a dropped coat. But if her phone had been moved, someone had been inside her house. And he could still be here.

  12

  “Me.” Deacon’s voice was low. A taut thread of anger ran through it like a steel bar. “Somebody’s after Brodie because of something I’ve done.”

  Voss was waiting for the explosion when the full meaning of that sank in. “It makes sense. If somebody wanted to hurt you – really wanted to hurt you, a black eye wouldn’t do it – this would. Losing Brodie would be about the worst thing that could happen to you right now.”

  For a moment the big man stared at him as if it were Voss who was threatening him. Then he blinked, and passed a broad hand across his face, and lowered himself carefully onto his stool again. “So it was me who upset the psychopath.”

  “You’ve probably upset dozens,” Voss said honestly. “Any copper who’s been doing his job properly for a few years will have done. It’s much more likely it was you who rattled his cage than Brodie.”

  “But –”Deacon was still trying to get his mind round it, tripping over the words. “If it’s me he wants, why isn’t it my head he’s messing with? My car in a puddle of melted tarmac, me bouncing around in a runaway lift? If he hates me that much, why isn’t he trying to kill me?”

  “You’re too big,” said Voss, “he thought it would be easier to intimidate a woman. Which suggests he doesn’t know Brodie very well at all, doesn’t it? Look, he wants to make the most of this. He could run you down in his car but it would be over too soon. He wants you afraid – he wants to see you afraid. Threatening you wouldn’t achieve that: you’d get mad before you got scared. And when you worked it out you’d take him apart.

  “If he goes after Brodie, he has the pleasure of seeing you suffer without the risk that you’ll put the pieces together quick enough to stop him. This isn’t someone who hates her, chief, it’s someone who hates you. With a passion, and for a long time.”

  “A long time?” echoed Deacon weakly.

  “It isn’t about something recent. It’s too organised – a lot of thought’s gone into it. He’s been waiting, and he’s spent the time planning.” Voss’s gaze dipped, and then came up again bravely. “I think what he’s been waiting for is for you to have something to lose.”

  Deacon was too stunned to follow him. “Huh?”

  “He couldn’t have done this twelve months ago. Well, he could, but there’s a limit to how much you can hurt a grown man by threatening his cat. He wanted to see you suffer. He was willing to wait, for years if necessary, until you had someone you felt that strongly about. Someone whose life mattered to you more than your own.”

  The gears of Deacon’s brain were turning now, the engine coming into train. It was a slower process than Voss’s mental gymnastics but when it got going there was no power on earth capable of halting it. “He’s going to kill her.”

  “Yes,” said Voss simply. “First he frightens her, then he frightens you. He gets you worried enough to put yourself on the line – physically, professionally, emotionally – in order to protect her. And then he kills her. He doesn’t need to lay a finger on you, and risk you ripping him limb from limb. He just keeps sidestepping you until he can get at Brodie, because killing her when she trusts you to protect her is the worst pain he could inflict on you.”

  Deacon’s features usually looked as if they were carved from granite. Right now, Voss thought with pity, he looked to be made of pumice, grey and crumbling. His eyes were hollows that went all the way down to his heart.

  “Brodie?” Deacon’s voice stumbled as if he had not until that moment believed in the threat facing her. “Charlie – I can’t lose her!”

  Voss nodded, preserving
his own calm because Deacon needed him to, needed an anchor to lie to while his own warps pinged and parted under the strain. “We won’t let that happen. Knowing is all the edge we need to prevent it.”

  “Yes.” Deacon nodded too, rapidly, almost like a tic. “We’ll stop him. We have to stop him. Who?”

  “We’ll find him,” promised Voss. “Now we know how to look, we’ll find him.” Compassion tied a knot in his throat. Most of Deacon’s colleagues, including men who’d known him for longer, would have been astonished at the transformation wrought in him by this turn of events. They thought him a hard and heartless man. Voss wasn’t astonished, but he was desperately sorry for Deacon. Whoever purposed his destruction had known exactly where his heart was and how to break it. “Chief – we’ll find him.”

  Shock held Deacon in its rigid embrace for another minute. Then a sense of urgency overtook him. He pushed himself to his feet – clumsily, as if he couldn’t feel the floor - and stumbled towards the door. “I’ve got to get home,” he muttered thickly.

  The Belted Galloway was Dimmock’s coppers’ pub: as he pushed out through the door Reg Vickers was pushing in. Their eyes met, glanced apart, then came back with the force of mutual alarm like elastic. They said the same words on the same beat, like choral speakers.

  “What are you doing here?”

  It’s a long time since human beings have featured prominently on anyone’s menu. Millennia. So it’s racial memory that ensures that not only little furry things whose destiny is to end as a brief, shrill cry in the night, but also people with the mental capacity to harness the speed of sound and the power of the atom know how to stay alive when they’re being hunted. You freeze so neither sound nor movement betrays your position. You breathe through your mouth, which is quieter than breathing through your nose and doesn’t interfere with your own hearing. You put something solid at your back.

  All these things Brodie did on purest instinct. It was coded into her DNA that, when your very life is at stake, you do anything that might improve the odds however slightly. So she flattened her body against the wall, and breathed through her mouth, and listened until a dropped pin would have echoed in her brain like timpani. Until she’d have heard a soft step on carpet on the other side of a closed door.