The Depths of Solitude

by Jo Bannister

  Daniel said, “Where is that?”

  Deacon had hardly looked at the scenery. He’d thought it was a river but perhaps it was a pond, with some old building behind. “I don’t know.”

  Daniel didn’t recognise it either. “Maybe they were on holiday.”

  Deacon wasn’t interested in the Frenches’ travels. He needed something that would lead him to Brodie. “Look out for a country cottage or maybe a beach-house. Somewhere quiet, somewhere he could go now he needs privacy.”

  Daniel thumbed through the photographs, shaking his yellow head. “I can’t see anything. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cottage – it could be just out of shot. How would we know?”

  “If there was somewhere they kept going back to,” ruminated Deacon, “they’d keep photographing the same scenes. Look out for duplicates. The same trees in spring and autumn; Millie sunbathing on the rocks in summer, and sitting on the same rocks wrapped up in her winter woollies.”

  Daniel nodded and kept looking. But he found nothing. He thought there was nothing to find. “Is there any mention of a weekend cottage among his papers?”

  “No,” grunted Deacon, his shortness masking despair. “They may have rented a place.” He pushed the papers away with an angry gesture. “But I’m damned if I know where.”

  “Or maybe he just found somewhere he could use for this,” suggested Daniel. “An empty house, a derelict factory, a barn – somewhere he had no connection to until he took Brodie there. Maybe he just looked round till he found a place. Maybe that’s what he’s been doing for the last five years.”

  Deacon’s eyes flared like kicked coals. “Don’t say that. This is the best chance we have of finding her – don’t tell me we’re wasting our time!”

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Daniel, chastened. “I just –” He looked up, the emotion naked in his face. “I’m scared, Jack. Brodie’s in danger and I’m afraid we’re not going to find her in time. Isn’t there something more we can do?”

  Deacon glowered at him across the desk, eyebrows beetling. His voice was harsh. “You blame me, don’t you?”

  “No.” Daniel sounded honestly surprised. “Only for being who you are. I mean, this wouldn’t have happened if you were a bus-driver. But I don’t think that makes it your fault.”

  The policeman wasn’t mollified. “Yes you do. Decisions I made five years ago are the reason Brodie’s in danger now. Of course you blame me. I blame myself.”

  “Well don’t,” said Daniel stoutly. “Jack, you’ve done nothing wrong. You couldn’t anticipate what’s happened to Brodie any more than you could have guessed what Millie French would do. People are responsible for their own actions. Millie killed herself, and her husband kidnapped Brodie. Not because of what you did – because of who he is. The blame lies squarely with him. I know you’re doing all you can to find her. Brodie knows that too. Knowing that is what’s keeping her alive.”

  Deacon was not a man easily touched by kindness, he had no feminine side to get in touch with. He stared at Daniel Hood across the scratched surface of his desk and struggled, not for the first time, with the conflicting feelings the younger man stirred in him. He knew he should like him. He knew it was unreasonable not to. He knew Daniel was a good man, a decent and generous man. He’d seen what he was prepared to do to ease other people’s pain. He thought it remarkable that, worried as he was about Brodie, he could find compassion for the man any reasonable person would blame for her predicament.

  How could a man like Jack Deacon not hate the guts of someone like that? “We don’t even know she is still alive,” he said roughly. And he tried to tell himself there was some satisfaction in watching the pain crash through Daniel’s eyes.

  Michael French cocked his wrist to look at his watch. “That time already?” He stood up. “I have to go.”

  It was a guess – her own watch was gone, pulled off when he was dragging her in here – but Brodie thought it was mid-evening and French had been with her some four hours. In that time he hadn’t laid an unkind hand on her. So the bizarre situation – picnicking with her captor while chained to a wall – had slowly acquired a normality of its own. It wasn’t that she was no longer afraid, more that the fear had found its own level and settled there. As time passed without further drama it became possible to ignore it. To talk to him as she’d talked to Geoffrey Harcourt – not exactly as friends but with an ease, a frankness, a degree of mutual understanding. By not taking advantage of her helplessness he’d encouraged her to think that way.

  When he said he was going, the balance shifted again. The reality that she wasn’t free to do the same was unavoidable, as was the fact that he had an agenda to which she was not privy. She still didn’t know what he meant to do with her. The fear that had lain dormant for four hours surged into her throat like bile.

  “Go where?” She heard the shake in her voice and wondered if he’d heard it too.

  “To the police station. I think perhaps Mr Deacon will make the time to see me now.”

  “You’ll tell him where I am?”

  “Yes,” promised French. “But not immediately. I’m afraid you’re going to be here a little while yet.”

  “How long?”

  “Six hours. That’s all. You can manage six hours, can’t you?”

  Six hours. Alone, in the cold and the dark. Brodie nodded. It could have been worse. “Leave me the torch.”

  He was contrite. “I’m sorry, I need it. I should have brought another one. You’re safe enough – there’s nothing here to harm you. There’s nothing in the dark that isn’t there in the daylight too.”

  She bit her lip. “Six hours?”

  “Six hours,” he assured her. “Then it’ll be over.”

  “You know you’re not going to get away with this, don’t you?” said Brodie.

  He nodded and smiled. “I don’t expect to get away with it. I don’t need to get away with it.”

  She stared at him, confounded. “Then what was it all for?”

  He thought about that for a moment. “The look on Jack Deacon’s face.”

  “God damn you, Michael French,” she hissed as he backed away from her.

  “I imagine so,” he said bleakly. Then he turned, the beam of the torch swinging in a broken arc, and then he was gone.

  22

  The envelope was among the travel brochures: probably French had forgotten where he put it. There was no rent book or other paperwork, just a cutting from a newspaper and a leaf of a notebook on which he’d jotted down the gist of a telephone conversation. Together they told Deacon that Michael French had rented a small house in Cheyne Warren for three months, paying in advance two months ago. This then was where he went when he left River Drive.

  Like River Drive, it was empty now. Past waiting for warrants, he put his foot through a panel of the back door and turned the key. Everybody keeps a key in the back door lock, even after they’ve moved out.

  It took him three minutes to establish that Brodie wasn’t there. Neither was French, and he didn’t seem to be coming back. There was no food in the house, the bed had been stripped, the fire put out and no coal left ready. He’d finished with the place and moved out, leaving only the landlord’s furniture and some clothes hanging in a wardrobe.

  Deacon found it hard to believe they were French’s clothes. The photographs had kick-started his memory, and what he remembered best about Millie’s husband was his self-esteem. He drove a BMW coupé and dressed to match. He was a talented engineer and a successful businessman, and he liked people to know. He was proud of what he’d achieved. He said people like us a lot, and only just stopped himself asking if Deacon knew who he was dealing with.

  These were not the clothes of a thirty-six-year-old style-conscious executive. They were old-fashioned, brown and tweedy, and some of them were knitted. Either French was so reduced in circumstances as to be shopping at Oxfam now, or they were a disguise. A new persona to do things and go places French could not. And
they accorded with the descriptions given by witnesses at the railway station.

  The only trace of himself French had left behind was in the parlour. Oil-cloths were spread on every shelf and table, and every surface was occupied by a little machine.

  DC Winston was fascinated. “Do you think he made these, sir?”

  Deacon looked closer. “Some of them are pretty old – older than him. The newer ones he probably made. It’s what he did for a living – he designed and built machines.”

  “An engineer and model-maker,” said Winston thoughtfully. “We were looking for someone who could rig a remote control system for a lift. If he can build these I bet he could do that.”

  It was another link in the chain. But all Deacon said, sourly, was: “Why, were you in some doubt?”

  All police officers need thick skins. Those working for Deacon needed armour like a rhinoceros. Winston was undeterred. “There’s one missing.”

  These models were important to Michael French. He’d brought very little of his old life to this house but he had brought these. He’d set them up carefully, each in their own space, and attended to them lovingly – and judging from the lack of dust – on an almost daily basis. But one of the oil-cloths was vacant. Something had stood there until recently, and it was possible to judge from the impression it left that it was heavy and half a metre in length, but of the model itself there was no sign. They searched the property without finding it.

  “He must have taken it with him,” said Winston.

  Deacon thought he was right but wanted to know more. “Why? Why leave all these behind but take that one?”

  “Maybe it was his favourite,” hazarded Winston.

  “They’re not teddy-bears,” growled the Superintendent. Yet French must have had a reason to encumber himself with something so large and awkward. He hadn’t just slipped it in with his shaving gear: it had been a conscious decision to take this one though the others could remain. Why?

  Answering his own question, thinking aloud, Deacon said slowly, “Because he didn’t want us finding it, and he couldn’t bring himself to destroy it. He thought there was a chance we’d find this place, but if we saw that particular model it would tell us something he didn’t want us to know. So he took it with him.”

  DC Winston was suitably impressed. “How do we find out what it was?”

  “When we find him,” said Deacon shortly, “we’ll ask him.” He couldn’t imagine there was another way. It never occurred to him to get a little girl out of bed and ask her what she knew about it.

  Before Michael French started this he knew there could be no turning back. He knew what the end result would be and deliberated whether what he stood to gain was worth what he stood to lose. And it was. Deciding to proceed, with all the risk that entailed, lifted a five-year-old burden from his shoulders. A tide of recklessness swept through him. The certainty of ultimate defeat left him nothing to lose, freed him to follow the demands of his heart without any regard for the consequences. To walk calmly into the lion’s den, though he knew he wouldn’t walk out again. To note with amusement that the reception he got at Battle Alley was quite different this time to last.

  There was no talk of waiting rooms. The sergeant on the desk was eyeing him warily even before he gave his name: when he did he was conducted to an interview room, and two constables stayed with him while Deacon was informed. The radio room called his mobile: he answered as he was coming up the back steps on his return from Cheyne Warren.

  Deacon entered the interview room like a bull entering a ring: as soon as he was there, no one was looking at the matador. He crossed the room in two strides, lifted French from his chair by the lapels and slammed him against the wall. “Where is she, you bastard?”

  The constables fluttered round him like a couple of programme-sellers trying to stop the bull mid-charge, unsure how to prevent him hurting French without getting trampled in the process. But French was unruffled. He said – drawled, almost – “For the tape, that was Detective Superintendent Deacon entering the room.”

  Deacon didn’t care what the tape was recording, what the constables were seeing, what complaints French might bring. Right now he didn’t care if he’d have a job tomorrow. All he cared about was getting an answer to his question. “Where is she? What have you done with her? If you’ve hurt her I’ll see you in hell if I have to take you there myself …”

  Suddenly someone else was in the room. Peter Fuller wasn’t a heavyweight in Deacon’s class but he was accustomed to wielding authority. His voice cut through the scuffle like a diamond saw. “Detective Superintendent Deacon, put that man down immediately. Constable Vickers, see Mr French to his seat. Constable Batty, summon the police surgeon. Jack – outside, now!”

  But that wasn’t what French had come for. He didn’t mind a few bruises, he didn’t mind a bloody nose; he’d endure broken bones rather than let them stretcher him away for treatment that would rob him of vital time. He’d come to watch the comprehension grow in Deacon’s face - the knowledge of what he’d done, what it had cost, what it was costing still. He wanted to see the fury turn by inches to fear and finally to grief. He had five hours in which to extract the price of Millie’s life from Jack Deacon’s soul, and he didn’t mean to waste a minute of it completing complaint forms for the custody sergeant.

  His voice was level. “I’m sorry, Superintendent Fuller, but I won’t talk to anyone but Detective Superintendent Deacon. You may remain if you wish, you can provide me with bodyguards if you think it’s necessary. But this is between Mr Deacon and me, and that’s the only way it’ll be resolved. If you want me to sign a disclaimer I will. I’ll take full responsibility if Mr Deacon can’t keep his hands in his pockets.”

  Fuller was momentarily lost for words. But it was only momentary. You don’t get command of a police station just by being a good police officer: you get it by being a good manager of men. Anyone with the courage to face Jack Deacon in full spate was unlikely to be thrown by mere thugs and murderers.

  “No, you won’t,” he said to French. “You’re under suspicion of committing a serious crime: if nobody’s got round to arresting you yet, I’ll do it. I’ll take responsibility for your safety here. And I, not you, will decide who will interview you. Now Jack, if we might have that word outside …”

  Deacon followed him; not exactly like a lamb, more like a wolf who has unaccountably been mistaken for a lamb and is wondering whether he should eat very fast or try bleating.

  “This is the situation we talked about,” said Fuller when they were out in the corridor. “You’ve found him. Now it’s time to hand him over to someone else.”

  “I didn’t find him,” gritted Deacon. “I couldn’t find him – he covered his tracks too well. He’s here because he wants to be. You heard him: he wants to talk to me. He wants to – I don’t know – lecture me, gloat over me? OK, if that’s the price for getting Brodie back, I’ll pay it. I won’t thump him, I promise. But he’s not going to talk to anyone else, and until he talks we’re not going to find her. Let me do what he wants. Once she’s safe you can do anything you like.”

  “I can do anything I like now,” said Fuller pointedly.

  “Of course you can,” agreed Deacon. “And you can make a mistake. It’s easy, believe me. You can make a reasonable decision that has totally unforeseen consequences, that other people are still paying for five years down the line. No one will blame you but you’ll know. You’ll know you had a chance to prevent a disaster and you let it go. Peter.” It was the first time he’d used Fuller’s Christian name. “Don’t let it go.”

  People show distress in different ways. Some freeze, some weep, some shout. Deacon was a shouter, but he wasn’t shouting now. The low urgent monotone of his voice was harder to ignore than if he had been. In his eyes Fuller saw not fury but fear. Compassion for the big man flooded his veins but still he hesitated, wrestling with the implications of whatever choice he made. Brodie Farrell’s life was the most imp
ortant consideration but it wasn’t the only one. And it wasn’t clear to him that it could best be protected by doing as her abductor wished.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t claim with confidence to know a better answer. He was burning no boats by granting the suspect’s request and allowing Deacon to proceed. If he didn’t pull him out now, he could pull him out in ten minutes’ time. If he did pull him out it would be harder to put him back if French clammed up.

  “All right,” he decided. “Stay with him. But by God, Jack, if he has a pimple at the end of this that he didn’t have at the start you’d better be able to prove it wasn’t your doing!”

  Still shackled to the wall by her right wrist, unable to move more than a little, cold and damp and profoundly oppressed by the darkness, Brodie hung onto her sanity by a succession of devices. She told herself that when a man who’s dropped a brick on you, violated your home and kidnapped you leaves you alone somewhere, that’s good news. She told herself the darkness only seemed this absolute because she’d got used to the torchlight, and that as her eyes adjusted she’d be able to see a little again. She told herself French had no reason to lie when he said it would all be over in six hours’ time. Though she had no way to check she thought the first of those hours must already have passed. One down, five to go.

  But six hours alone in the dark leaves too much time for thinking. Ten minutes after French left she knew that moonlight couldn’t penetrate this deep and she’d see nothing more until after dawn tomorrow. She was as good as blind.

  As with any void, her mind worked to fill it, to compensate for the missing sense and furnish the missing data. She started seeing shapes, movements, the outlines of things that weren’t there. For now she knew they weren’t there because she wouldn’t have been able to see them if they had been. But the night stretched ahead of her, and as time passed that brave thread of logic would grow thin and finally fail. When it did she would be alone in the dark with monsters.