The Depths of Solitude

by Jo Bannister

  He prowled into the long CID room where half a dozen Detective Constables worked, often ate and occasionally slept, and which in consequence resembled a pig-sty, and lowered one haunch onto the desk in front of Winston’s. “Where did Charlie say he was going?”

  “He didn’t,” said Winston. “A phone-call came in, he took it and he said he was going out.”

  “On his mobile?”

  “Your office phone.”

  Deacon called the switchboard. Yes, a call had been put through to his office some forty minutes earlier and answered by DS Voss. The caller gave his name as Walsh.

  Deacon was looking up Walsh’s number when the mobile warbled in his pocket. He didn’t recognise the number but he always found it hard to ignore the peremptory summons of a ringing phone. There was no knowing what fun a man could miss that way.

  It was Voss’s fiancee, Helen Choi. “Charlie asked me to call you.”

  “He did?” Deacon scowled at the phone. “I’ve been looking for him. Do you know where he is?”

  “He’s here. At my flat, in the nurses’ building behind the hospital. Can you come? I’ll meet you at the main door.”

  Jack Deacon didn’t get invited to young women’s flats so often that he knew the protocol. “You want me to come there?”

  “Yes, please,” she said. “I think you should.”

  “Put Charlie on.”

  “No, Mr Deacon,” the girl said quietly. “I want you to come here, as soon as you can. You can talk to him then.”

  Two-metre rugby players with broken noses and police-issue semi-automatics didn’t say “No, Mr Deacon” to him. For a moment he couldn’t think what came next. “Er … all right,” he conceded weakly. “Give me five minutes.”

  She was waiting for him, compact and businesslike in her blue uniform with her glossy black hair scraped back in a bun. “I’m sorry to be so mysterious. But Charlie needed to see you before anyone else finds out what’s happened.”

  Deacon stared down at her. “What has happened?”

  “This is my flat.” Helen opened the door.

  When his eyes fell on Sergeant Voss, Deacon’s jaw dropped and then damped tight shut. So tight that he had to force the words out between his teeth. “What fell on you?”

  The Rose in Rye Lane was an old pub – bits of it dated back to the original Tudor inn. The lane was narrow, the windows small and the low ceilings carried on dark oak beams so that even in the middle of the day there was barely enough light to read by. Conveniently, The Rose’s patrons were not big readers on the whole. Page Three, the sports section and the statutory declaration on a Legal Aid form: a man who could read those could, they reckoned, read enough. And low lighting has advantages in a villains’ pub. When men in pointy hats ask what you’ve seen, it’s nice to be able to say in all honesty that you saw nothing.

  Charlie Voss took a deep breath before he went inside but he didn’t linger in the doorway. A man with enemies waiting in the dark is better not silhouetting himself against the light. He moved calmly towards the bar. “I’m looking for Joe Loomis. He’s expecting me.”

  The man behind the bar and two customers leaning on it looked at him as if someone had found him on a shoe. “Mr Loomis is?” The barman’s voice was a heavy blank with undertones of disbelief, just about as offensive as a man with illegal substances about him wants to be to a police officer. If he’d used that tone with Deacon he’d have been scraping his nose off the bar by now. “Are you sure, Mr Voss?”

  “Tell you what, Wally,” said Voss amiably, “why don’t you ask him?”

  Whatever reason Wally Briggs had to stop short of picking fights with the police paled into insignificance beside his overwhelming need not to annoy Joe Loomis. It wasn’t just that his livelihood might depend on it: his neck might too. However unlikely it seemed to him that the nastiest thug in Dimmock wanted to see a police officer, he couldn’t afford to trust his instincts when the consequences of being wrong could be grave. “I’ll ask.” The man ducked under the bar and disappeared into a back room.

  A minute later he returned, holding the door open. “He’ll see you.”

  His heart in his boots, Voss managed a good-natured nod. “I thought he might.” He left the comparative safety of the public bar and entered the secret bowels of the old building, and the oak door shut behind him.

  Joe Loomis was not a big man, would never have hired himself out as a bouncer. He was shorter than Voss and though he was ten years older he was no broader. He was a local man down to the accent, but legend had it that his people were from Ireland. His black hair was thinning alarmingly, and he glued it down with gel and drew the eye away from it with a thin moustache.

  “Mr Voss,” he said – politely, cautiously. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Mr Deacon couldn’t come.”

  One thin black eyebrow arched in surprise. “Doesn’t he think what I have to say is important enough?”

  “It’s not that,” Voss said evenly. “I didn’t tell him.”

  For a moment Loomis said nothing. Then the ghost of a smile crossed the neat dark features, fastidious and cruel as a cat’s. “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll want paying for your information, and I don’t want Mr Deacon having to choose between his career and his lady.”

  Now Loomis was smiling openly. “You think you can – what? – treat him? We’re not talking about a round of drinks and a tandoori chicken afterwards: we’re talking about information that could save somebody’s life. You think it’s going to come cheap?”

  “I doubt it,” said Voss honestly. “But then, Jack Deacon’s my boss and my friend. And I don’t come cheap either.”

  Loomis wasn’t sure what he was being offered. His smile was uncertain around the edges. “What are you suggesting? I tell you what I know, and sometime when I really need a favour you’ll lose me a parking ticket? No offence, Mr Voss, but sergeants are ten a penny. But a detective superintendent would be worth getting chummy with.”

  “You were never going to get chummy with Mr Deacon,” Voss said with certainty. “He wouldn’t sell out to you or anyone like you. But if this goes badly he could spend the rest of his life wondering if he should have done. Me, I’m open to offers. I won’t always be a sergeant: the time may come when the knowledge that you can end my career may be worth something to you.”

  Loomis was at least thinking about it. Already he’d spotted the flaw. “For what? You ask for information in connection with a police inquiry and I give it to you. What’s my hold over you? You’ve done nothing wrong. Jesus, I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  Voss nodded. “Then I’ll do something wrong. Don’t get your hopes up — I won’t give you a get-out-of-jail-free card. Prison’s the right place for you, I won’t help you stay out, not even for this. But who knows what the future holds? There may come a time when you’d give your eye-teeth for a handle on me – for the ability to make a phone call and know it’ll result in my suspension. That’s why I’m here. Prove this meeting took place and whoever I am by then, however senior, I’m history. And the proof is what I’m about to tell you. If Divisional HQ ever learn that when I was a DS in Dimmock I passed on operational data to a prime suspect, they won’t care how trivial it was, they’ll hang me out to dry. That’s what I’m offering you. That’s all I’m offering you.”

  “What proof?”

  “Our codename for you. The label on any intelligence we receive about you, any action we plan against you.”

  “I could get that anywhere,” said Loomis dismissively.

  “No, you couldn’t. If you could you would have done, and you’d have told me what it is by now.

  “Police stations aren’t very secure places – you put your pen down and it’s gone, you put your wallet down and someone treats the office to tea and buns with your fiver. But some secrets we’re good at keeping, and the reason is that people who can’t keep them don’t stay. You can’t have Jack Deacon at any price. You can’t have
me in your pocket. But you can have me in the garbage disposal with your finger on the button. For information of no value to anyone else, that’s a good deal.”

  Joe Loomis had one of those smooth, closed-in faces which ration out expression like a taxi-driver giving change. Even people who knew him well could rarely guess what he was thinking. A minute ticked by and still he said nothing.

  Voss waited. He had no illusions about this. He was mortgaging his career to a man he wouldn’t have lent his car to. If he’d thought about it any longer, maybe he wouldn’t have done it. But maybe he would, because there was a lot at stake and he wasn’t a man to stay safe while other people were getting hurt. He’d risked his life to protect the paying customers before now, he expected to do it again. Beside that, the chance this might one day cost him his job seemed an acceptable gamble.

  Depending on how his career — and Loomis’s – developed he might never have to pay up. But if he did it wouldn’t have been for nothing. Brodie Farrell’s welfare concerned him, both because it was his job to be concerned and because he liked the woman. But that wasn’t why he was dancing with the devil. He was doing it because Jack Deacon couldn’t, and if it came to a straight choice he put a higher price on Deacon’s professional survival than his own.

  Finally Loomis came back from whatever mental counting-house he’d stopped off at and his smile broadened. “Mr Voss, I can’t see the day coming when that would do me any good. The moment you thought it might you’d go to your superiors and say what you did and why you did it. Maybe you’d have to resign anyway but that wouldn’t stop me going down. I don’t think what you’re offering is worth squat to me.

  “But then,” the little thug went on, “I never expected to come out of this with Dimmock CID in my pocket. It’s a nice thought but a man has to be realistic. You’re right: Mr Deacon wouldn’t sell me his soul even to save his fancy piece. He wouldn’t have offered as much as you have. That’s not why I suggested meeting. I wasn’t hoping to leave here with his future in my hands. Just his blood on my boots.”

  Loomis watched his words register in Voss’s face. He saw the younger man stiffen, then deliberately relax. This wasn’t a fight-or-flight situation. Voss could leave any time he wanted, just open the door and walk out. He didn’t because he’d come here for something and he wasn’t leaving without it.

  Slowly Loomis nodded his approval. “All right. Well, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. I’ve got a bit of business to attend to. I’ll be back in – oh, let’s say ten minutes. If you’re still here I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Voss said nothing. Nor did he move. Loomis left the room, closing the door behind him.

  After twenty seconds it opened again.

  “Never mind that,” said Voss wearily. “I got it. The name. The man who was asking questions about Brodie in the Shalimar Club. Only I hope it rings more bells with you than it did with me. French. Freddy the bouncer said his name was French.”

  “French.” Nothing much was happening in Deacon’s brain either. But then, it was still struggling with the evidence of his senses: what he could see and what he could infer. “French?”

  “You know him?” A thin trickle of blood ran from Voss’s nose down his broken lip. It was an effort to raise one hand and wipe it away.

  Deacon shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve never arrested anyone called French …” It was no good, he couldn’t keep his eyes off Voss’s face, and he couldn’t look at it and talk about anything else. Helen had cleaned him up before Deacon got here, so there was less blood than there would have been half an hour ago but more swelling. His best friends would have had trouble recognising him now: in another half hour it would be a matter of dental records. “You should be in hospital,” Deacon said, his voice both soft and rough.

  Voss shook his head, wincing. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t have kept a lid on it once people had seen me. Same way I couldn’t turn up at Battle Alley. I had to see you first.”

  “Charlie,” said Deacon fiercely, “you could be bleeding inside. You can beat a man to death, you know – well, this is what it looks like. How many were there?”

  “I’m all right,” muttered Voss. “They knew what they were doing – it wasn’t in anybody’s interests to have me pass out and wake up in A&E. Nothing’s broken. I’ll be stiff for a few days, after that I’ll be able to show my face back at work.”

  “That face? We’ll need to come up with a bloody good explanation!”

  Voss already had. He’d been thinking about it since Helen picked him up in her car from the alley behind Rye Lane. The secret to thinking clearly when you’re in pain is to concentrate on one thing at a time. “I fell off a motorbike. A mate let me have a go on his scrambler and I wasn’t very good. Chief, you shouldn’t still be here. Get back to the office, find out who French is. Find out where he is.”

  Deacon nodded, numbly. He still couldn’t believe what had happened. Not that Voss had got a thumping: that had happened before, would happen again, it was an occupational hazard. What left him gobsmacked was how and why it happened. It wasn’t a fight, it wasn’t even an ambush. He’d stood still and taken it, and he’d done it for Deacon. Jack Deacon had had no idea he inspired that kind of loyalty.

  He got halfway to the door, then turned back. Propped on the sofa, his ginger hair lank with sweat, a woman who loved and was furious with him swabbing his bloody face with a wet cloth, Charlie Voss had already let his eyes slide shut. The bruises were a splash of shocking colour against the pallor of his skin. Deacon felt something like a hand gripping the base of his throat. “I shan’t forget this, you know.”

  “Good,” mumbled Voss.

  “How many were there?”

  “There were four, Mr Deacon,” said Helen Choi with the quiet fury of someone who knows there is a time for vengeance, and it’s after the injured have been attended to. “Four. And there wasn’t a mark on any of them.”

  18

  French. The name meant something to him. But it wasn’t in the One-day-I’ll-be-free-and-then-we’ll-see-Mr-Deacon file. It was … it was …

  Charlie Voss had stood and taken a thumping from four men, and when he couldn’t stand any more he’d let them pick him up and thump him some more. And he’d done it not for the job, and not because he had no choice, but for Deacon. He didn’t understand. It wasn’t that he was ungrateful, just that he was more angry. So angry he could barely think straight. So angry that if anyone looked at him the wrong way in the next few minutes he could blow the career Voss had protected at such cost by flooring them. And the thing that confused him as much as anything else was that it wasn’t Joe Loomis he was angry with – it was Charlie Voss.

  OK, French. Not a collar he’d felt. And – actually not a man. Millie French was the complainant – years ago: what, four, five years ago? She claimed she’d been raped, the man said she consented. No evidence either way and it never went to court. No, he was on the wrong tracks – it wasn’t Millie French asking about Brodie in the Shalimar Club. Some other French, some other time.

  With all the damage to his face – and these were professionals, they weren’t concentrating on his face, mostly they were powering blows in under his ribs, into his belly and onto his kidneys – Voss’s knuckles were unbloodied. Deacon had looked. He hadn’t attempted to defend himself. A deal was struck and he kept his side of it. So did Loomis. Which left Deacon … out of the loop. Side-lined. He wasn’t used to being on the periphery of events and he didn’t like it. He’d got what he needed and it hadn’t cost him a penny, but the humiliation was like ashes in his throat.

  Millie French wasn’t doing this. For one thing, she was dead. Months after the episode she walked into the sea. Which was sad but rather confirmed what Deacon suspected: that the girl was neurotic and her version of what happened couldn’t be relied on. No one behaved well that night but Deacon thought she’d probably got herself into a situation she lacked the know-how to get out of. The man said he believed
she was available. It might have been true; in any event he’d have said it with conviction and the jury would have believed him. Millie would have mumbled, played with her hankie, forgotten what she said in her statement, made mistakes that would sound like lies, and generally come across as a bubblehead who couldn’t be trusted. Not when she said “Take me” and not when she screamed “Rape!”

  Deacon was in his car now and driving — not very well, he gathered from the fisted horns and startled faces that way-marked his passing. Damn them. If anyone wanted to make an issue of it they could follow him to the police station.

  Think as he might, he could recall no more Frenches. Just Millie. And her husband, of course. The more Deacon dug, the more details surfaced and the slower he drove. Now people were hooting because he was holding them up. Their concerns did not trouble him; in fact he did not notice them.

  The husband. Michael? He and the other man were doing some business together. They were all going out for a meal, only something stopped French going. Millie came home distressed, and when French found out why he called the police.

  The last time Deacon saw French he was identifying his wife’s body in the morgue at Dimmock General. Deacon struggled to remember him. He was a few years older than Millie and solidly built. Whey-faced, tears streaming down his cheeks, unable to string three words together, confirming the identification with a spastic nod. Michael French. Whatever happened to him?

  Deacon parked in the yard behind the police station and hurried up the steps, shouting as he went. He wanted the file on the French case. He couldn’t remember the name of the accused.

  As he surged up the stairs to his office, messages followed him. Someone had been phoning for him. Someone else was waiting for him downstairs.

  Deacon thought quickly. It wouldn’t be Brodie downstairs - she believed waiting-rooms were for other people - but it might have been her on the phone. Usually, though, she’d call his mobile. He asked the switchboard, “Who was calling me?” “Daniel Hood.”