The Depths of Solitude

by Jo Bannister

  “No,” said Walsh quietly. “Well, I haven’t heard a thing. But I will try to find out. I don’t move in those circles myself” – there was the faintest hint of a smile in the man’s voice – “but I have a wide acquaintance, I’ll find someone who does. If there are people in this town who know what’s going on, I’ll find one for you.”

  Deacon was not a gracious man. Even in normal circumstances he found it difficult to say please and thank you, and getting him to apologise was like drawing teeth. This was harder still. He believed Walsh would help him if he could, and he should be grateful for the favour. But he also knew, even if the Old Bailey had yet to be convinced, that Walsh was a villain and would use his criminal contacts to get the information. It was the only way, and the only reason Deacon was here. Thanking him for that was almost like profiting from his crimes. Deacon might be driven to doing it, but he didn’t have to like it and he wasn’t about to acknowledge it.

  He said gruffly, “You’ll call me?”

  “As soon as I’ve something to report. Till then, be careful. This isn’t how pros operate, you know that. It’s the work of a crank. And cranks are dangerous because they’re unpredictable and sometimes they have nothing to lose.”

  “Find me the bastard who’s doing this and I’ll show you unpredictable!” Deacon left with a bad taste in his mouth that, if he’d had more experience of it, he’d have recognised as humiliation.

  He meant to tell no one, not even Brodie, but in the end he told Voss. It was partly pragmatic – if Walsh called when Deacon was unavailable he’d be put through to the sergeant – but also because he wanted to see Voss’s reaction. He knew what he’d done bordered on unprofessional. He knew it could backfire and leave him with difficult questions to answer. He also knew, from a career way marked with difficult questions, that he’d find answers that would do. What he wasn’t sure about, what he wanted Voss’s opinion on, was whether he was making a terrible mistake.

  Voss heard him out in silence. If that had been Brodie it would have been a bad sign but Voss was polite: he might just have been waiting for Deacon to finish.

  When he had, and Deacon lifted one eyebrow to invite comment, still Voss held his tongue. Deacon hoped he was thinking, was afraid he was thunderstruck. At last Voss said quietly, “If this pays off, you’ll have put yourself in debt to a crook.”

  Deacon nodded. “Yes.”

  “You’re sure you want to do that?”

  Deacon blew out his cheeks explosively. “Of course I don’t! But I don’t want to have to identify the contents of a body-bag either. Brodie’s life’s at stake: I can’t afford to play by the rules if that means losing.”

  Voss understood. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just want to be sure you’ve considered all the implications.”

  “I have.”

  “Including Walsh’s price?”

  Deacon cast him a hunted look. “He didn’t ask for anything.”

  Voss bit his lip and kept his voice low. “That doesn’t mean he won’t want something sometime. There’s always a price. You know that.”

  And Deacon did. He looked away. “Then I’ll pay it. Whatever it is.”

  15

  They slept in Julia’s chairs. Brodie could not face the extreme weirdness of sleeping in either Julia’s bed or the spare room of the house where she had been mistress. She toyed with the idea of squeezing in beside Paddy, but it was a child’s bed and very small compared to the very large chairs downstairs. She found a quilt to wrap round herself — then went back for another when Daniel also declined the spare room, out of misplaced gallantry. They dozed more than they slept but the night passed.

  A shriek like an excited parrot jerked them awake on Friday morning, and what landed on Daniel’s quilted knee felt like a one-ton baby elephant on a half-ton bungee rope. Having enjoyed an uninterrupted ten-hour sleep, Paddy had wandered downstairs to discover that sometimes wishes come true. She ate her breakfast crammed so close against him that he had to eat with his left hand, and when he went upstairs to shave he had to forcibly eject her from the bathroom.

  They took her to school at nine and then, with John and Julia due back, had to decide where to go next. The house in Chiffney Road was out; but if Deacon was his target the stalker must know about the jail as well.

  “My house?” suggested Daniel.

  There was no reason why not. They had seen nothing of one another for weeks before this started: possibly the stalker was unaware of Daniel’s existence. Short of protective custody, she and Paddy would be as safe on the beach as anywhere in Dimmock.

  So that wasn’t what made her hesitate. It had been a rough night, she was still groggy with lack of sleep, and the memory of being afraid of him surfaced a moment before the knowledge that that had been a mistake. She hoped he hadn’t seen her waver, or that if he had he hadn’t guessed why; but experience told her he probably had.

  “Yes,” she said brightly. “Fine. I’ll let Jack know.”

  If he’d thought he’d get her to accept protective custody Deacon would have pressed the idea. Since he knew a dead horse when he was flogging one, he settled for Daniel’s house as the next best thing. “But stick together, and keep your wits about you. The one thing we know about this man is that he likes springing surprises. He only took John on because he was alone and unsuspecting. Rather than face you and Daniel together he left the back way. He needs to make it easy. If you make it hard for him, you’ll keep him at bay.”

  “Any names yet?”

  “No.” He sounded weary. He and Voss had been up all night, ploughing sterile soil. “I’ve got feelers out that may come back with one, but I don’t know when and time’s pressing. So we’ve pulled every file I worked on in the last ten years.” His voice took on a note of wonder. “I had no idea how many people hated my guts.”

  Brodie chuckled affectionately. “Round here? Chuck a brick: you’ll get one and the ricochet will find another.”

  Daniel had taken advantage of the rebuilding work to enlarge his home. The planning permission restricted him to the same footprint, height and general appearance as the original netting shed. But having no great need to store oars and lobster-pots he incorporated the boathouse on the ground floor into the dwelling, providing himself with a second bedroom and a study. He’d also made the budget stretch to a gallery round the top storey, wide enough for a couple of chairs or a telescope.

  “What do you think?”

  Brodie felt it like a fist under her ribs that she hadn’t been inside since the builders moved out. Once she’d come here on an almost daily basis – it was a five minute walk from her office, if she was free for lunch she’d bought sandwiches and they’d eaten them curled up on Daniel’s sofa or, on sunny days, sitting on his steps. Even through the long months of the rebuild she’d been by a couple of times a week to monitor progress. The rift, when it came, disrupted every aspect of her life, right down to where she ate lunch.

  “I’m impressed,” she said quickly. “From the esplanade it looks like it always looked, like the others look. But you must have doubled the space.”

  “The gallery,” he prompted. “What do you think of the gallery?”

  He was like a child with a new toy, needing someone to share his pleasure. It smarted like a paper-cut, knowing how little she had to do to make him happy, and how she’d managed to fall short even of that. She linked her arm through his. “Perfect,” she said simply; and he glowed, and she fought back tears.

  When he’d given her a guided tour Brodie sat on the gallery rail and watched the satisfaction in Daniel’s plain, amiable face, and kept watching until, feeling her scrutiny, the grey eyes behind his thick glasses came round to meet it. “What?”

  “You aren’t really going to leave here, are you?”

  He’d forgotten. Pain lanced through his expression. “I was. I couldn’t see any alternative.”

  “Daniel, this place was made for you. Well, of course it was, you planned the rebuild fr
om the ground up. But it’s not just that it’s the perfect home for a guy with a telescope. You put your heart and soul into it. I know the trouble you went to getting the right wood for the cladding. It came from Sweden, for God’s sake!”

  “Norway,” he murmured.

  “All right, Norway. You didn’t have to do that. It’s painted black, it could have been old floorboards or plastic for all anybody’d know! But you wanted the real thing even if it took longer and cost more. This house has the words Labour of Love written all over it.

  “And as soon as it was finished you put it up for sale. Did you think the buyer would care that the weather-boarding came from Norway? Or even notice that you can see every inch of the night sky from somewhere on the gallery?”

  Daniel’s voice was low. “It’s only a thing. I was never a slave to possessions. It’s not good to think there are things you can’t do without. Feel that way about something and you end up doing things you’ll regret to hold onto it.”

  “And the other danger,” Brodie retorted sharply, “is that one day you’ll throw away something important just to see if you can.”

  He regarded her for what felt like a long time. “Are we still talking about houses?”

  Brodie sighed. “Not only houses, no. I’m sorry, Daniel. I let you down and I’m sorry. But what you did was pretty low too. You let me think I’d lost you. With everything else that was going on, that was the unbearable part. That you’d gone and I couldn’t find you. That you could be dead, and it was my fault.”

  Her fists gripped the rail either side of her, afraid of falling. Daniel saw the tautness of her body, half-angry, half-defensive, silhouetted by the sea. He reached out a tentative hand and bent a lock of her hair around his finger. As if he’d sprung a trap Brodie’s arms were round him, her head on his shoulder. He breathed in her scent. It had been a while. He was struck by the warmth of her body, she by the narrowness of his. The embrace put an end to a long cold time and they made it last.

  But finally, noting the smirks of passers-by, they drew apart with a wry chuckle and straightened themselves out. Daniel headed inside. “I suppose, if I’m staying, I should tell the estate agent.” He hesitated. “I suppose you should come with me.”

  Brodie shook out her dark hair luxuriantly. For the first time in weeks her body felt free of tension. “I’ll stay here. I’ll stay inside and keep the door locked. How long will you be – half an hour? I’ll get some lunch on.”

  “There’s nothing in the fridge.”

  “I’ll open some tins. Pick up milk and bread on your way back.”

  “Shall I collect Paddy from school?”

  “No, she’s finishing later now. I’ll go for her after lunch.” Paddy had started a whole new chapter in her life - the five-hour school day – in the weeks Daniel had been absent from it.

  Edwin Turnbull’s pleasure at seeing Daniel evaporated like spit on a hot pavement when he said he’d changed his mind.

  Mr Turnbull thought he didn’t understand. “I have a buyer lined up,” he explained carefully. “A cash buyer. He’s offered the asking price. It’s possible he’d be prepared to dig a little deeper to secure the property.”

  Daniel shook his yellow head. “Tell him I’m sorry but my circumstances have changed. I’m staying.”

  The estate agent bit the end off his biro in his agitation. Two percent of a seafront property, even in Dimmock, was not to be sneezed at. Then a crafty look stole over his face. If there’s one thing better than two percent it’s four percent. “Can I interest you in another property in the area? You’re an imaginative young man – can you see yourself living in a tide-mill? Still got the wheel and everything. Roof’s a bit dodgy – well, missing, mostly – but you’re no stranger to a bit of renovation, soon have the place up to scratch. Been on the market a while, I can get you a good price. What do you say – shall we take a look?”

  Daniel admired optimism but he wasn’t going to waste any more of the man’s time. “I’m sorry, Mr Turnbull, my mind’s made up. It was a stupid mistake. I didn’t go to the trouble of rebuilding it to live somewhere else. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

  “Still got the millstones and everything,” said Mr Turnbull hopefully.

  Before she started hunting through Daniel’s cupboards Brodie phoned John’s number. Julia answered.

  “I just wondered how he is,” said Brodie. “How you both are.”

  “I’m fine,” said Julia, with restraint. “John’s on the mend too. He’s gone to bed but he’ll be all right tomorrow.”

  “I am sorry for dragging you into this,” said Brodie. “I never imagined for a moment he could get hurt.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Julia; so far as Brodie could tell she meant it. “Jack said you stayed with him. That you came out of the house with the stalker behind you, and you could have run but you wouldn’t leave John. Thank you for that.”

  Brodie was taken aback. At the sheer decency of the woman, but also by the idea that she could have run, leaving John unconscious on the gravel. She hadn’t considered it an option. Some things you can’t do if you want to look at yourself in the mirror next morning, and that was one of them. She’d have stood by the injured man who turned her life inside out if what had come down the steps behind her had been not Daniel but the hounds of hell.

  When she put the phone down it rang again so quickly she thought Julia must have remembered something else she wanted to say. But it wasn’t Julia.

  For a moment she couldn’t work out who it was. There was a lot of silence punctuated by little knocks and rattles as if the phone was being juggled from hand to hand. There were also odd words, but at first she could make nothing of them beyond the fact that it was a man’s voice. It wasn’t Daniel and it wasn’t Deacon, and John was safely tucked up in bed with his wife watching over him, and after that she really didn’t much care who else was in trouble.

  Because someone was. The fragmented nature of the call would have told her that even without the words. And the words were “please” and “oh dear God” and “help me”.

  She’d thought she didn’t know the voice. But now she thought she did, and it was only the sheer distress tearing it apart that had confused her.

  “Geoffrey Harcourt? Geoffrey, is that you?”

  The sound of his name seemed to help the man get a grip on himself. Still his voice shook with fear; and even through that she could hear deep, mortifying embarrassment. “Mrs Farrell, I’m so sorry to bother you. I couldn’t think who else to call. I’ve been so stupid …”

  His voice petered out, defeated by the enormity of his situation. In the background Brodie could hear the tinny echo of a platform announcement.

  “You’re at the station?”

  “I know,” he mumbled miserably.

  “Is someone with you?”

  “Bloody hundreds!” he wailed.

  “What are you doing there? I thought you couldn’t leave the house. You paid me good money because you couldn’t leave the house!”

  “Someone called me,” he whimpered. “About a Spinning Jenny. I’ve been looking for one for years. I couldn’t call you, not after last time. So I thought I’d try to go myself. This is as far as I got.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “About half an hour. It feels longer.”

  “All right,” said Brodie, taking control, “this is what you do. Put the phone down and go to the taxi rank outside the main entrance. Get in a taxi and give the driver your address. You’ll be home in fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes,” said Harcourt faintly. “Fifteen minutes. Yes.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” he said again.

  Brodie waited. Then she said patiently, “Geoffrey, you haven’t put the phone down yet.”

  “No,” he whined.

  “Have another go.”

  But the background hum of the station concourse continued unabated. She thought she could also hear him c
rying, the sound muffled as if he was trying to hide it, retain that last fragment of his dignity.

  Finally she sighed. “OK, Geoffrey, I’m on my way. Stay where you are, I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  16

  Superintendent Fuller asked Detective Superintendent Deacon to step into his office for a minute, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. “I know you’re busy. This is important.”

  Deacon was tired and worried, and when he found himself being ushered to a chair and offered cream and sweeteners for his coffee he was no distance from suggesting an alternative use for a sugar cube.

  Battle Alley’s senior officer looked up, catching his eye just in time to stop him. Around Deacon’s age, he was a quiet, self-contained man, neat of figure and mannerly of mien – too mannerly for some colleagues who mistook quiet for soft and polish for lack of substance. In his five years in Dimmock Peter Fuller had disabused those who took him for a paper tiger, but he never quite knew where he stood with Deacon. The detective’s seniority was close to his own, his experience arguably greater, his temper notorious. The two men had never had a major public argument yet, largely because both had seen the wisdom of avoiding one, but Fuller was aware that the time might have come.

  “I know,” he said, forestalling Deacon’s objection, “you think you have more pressing business than coffee and biscuits with Sir. You may be right. But I’m wondering if it should be your business at all.”

  That got Deacon’s attention. He lowered himself careful into the proffered chair and eyed Fuller guardedly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Fuller poured the coffee. “I mean, I think you may be too close to this inquiry to continue leading it.”

  “Who else?” demanded Deacon. “Who knows as much about my enemies as I do? Who has the same incentive to get to the bottom of this?”

  “If you’ve kept your paperwork up to date,” said Fuller pointedly, “it’s all a matter of record.”