by Jo Bannister
She couldn’t know how desperate her plight was, whether it would end in a few hours in tears and hugs or if she was meant to die down here. She wouldn’t know until one thing or the other happened. Nor had she any way of measuring time. But if the cold relaxed its grip that might mean it was day, and past the deadline French had set for her rescue. Which could mean she was in for a long haul.
It would not mean she was as good as dead. Deacon was looking for her, drawing on the full resources of his force. She was unhurt, and had eaten and drunk within the past few hours. It was cold here but not freezing – she could survive like this for days. Longer, if she could find the source of that trickling sound and a way to reach it. Among the rubbish there might be a stick: she had a handkerchief, and water wrung from a rag would keep her alive while the search continued.
That was her first priority: to try to better her situation. She should have used the light while French was here to scan her surroundings for anything she could use. She hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. Now the torch had gone a finger-tip search was the only option. She gritted her teeth and told herself the rat was no keener on a close encounter than she was. Still it took an effort of will to reach into the blackness and begin to map the refuse strewn across the floor.
But her right wrist was still shackled to the wall, and in the arc of her reach she found nothing helpful. Mostly what she found was rubble, slimy with algae. She thought again about the trickling sound. There must be times when a fair bit of water got in here. If it rained, would she find herself sitting in a puddle?
“What do you want from me?” Despite his best intentions, as near as damn it Deacon was shouting now. Even by his own standards: by anyone else’s he’d been shouting for a while. “How can I bring this to an end? What is it you’re waiting for?”
French knew the answer to that. “For you to accept your responsibility for Millie’s death. To admit that it wasn’t suicide – that you forced her into a position, and a state of mind, from which there was no other escape. That you killed her. Tell me you killed her.”
Only the safety of someone he cared for would have made Jack Deacon humble himself before this man. He knew he’d made mistakes, should have done better by the Frenches. But he didn’t believe he was responsible, either legally or morally, for the girl’s suicide. Someone who walks into the sea months after an attack on her may be depressed, may be despairing, but is responding to internal not external pressures. He hadn’t treated her well. But he hadn’t treated her so badly that suicide was a legitimate response.
But finally this wasn’t about Millie. It was about Michael French – what he believed, what he’d accept as the price of Brodie’s life. “All right. I killed her,” said Deacon, his voice low.
French shook his head like a teacher correcting a sullen student. “Not just the words, Mr Deacon. Feel it. Know it. You killed her. You put her through hell, then you lost interest and that’s why she died. She came to you for help, and you wiped your feet on her. You tossed her into the gutter and she drowned there. Say it.”
“I killed her,” Deacon said again, tersely. “I killed her, Michael. I’m to blame for the death of your wife. All right? I’ll say it as many times as you want, as many different ways as you want, in front of anyone you want. I killed Millie French.”
“But you don’t believe it,” murmured French. Disappointment was bitter on his tongue. He’d thought, when he got to this point, there’d be a sense of achievement. But it was meaningless if it was just the words. “You’ll say anything to save Mrs Farrell.”
“Of course I will!” exploded Deacon. “Damn it, that’s why you’re here – because you can make me say things I wouldn’t say otherwise! If that isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what else I can do.”
“You can believe it! You can feel remorse.”
“I do feel remorse,” said Deacon. “That much is true. The rest … I’ll tell you anything you want to hear, but if there’s a part of you that’s still in touch with reality, that knows the truth when it hears it, and if that part is telling you that I don’t believe the words you’re putting in my mouth, maybe that’s because you don’t believe them either. Because they aren’t credible. Because we both know the difference between a tragedy and a murder. What happened to Millie shattered her confidence, and what she did because of that shattered your world. I don’t think you’re an evil man. But what you’re doing is evil. I’ll do anything in my power to help you stop.”
For minutes the silence in the little room was broken only by the faint hiss of the tape. French studied Deacon’s irregular features as if the answer to a puzzle might be written there. His brows knit in a frown and he looked at his hands, folded in his lap.
Deacon said nothing more. He dared not. He thought it just possible French was reconsidering his position. That he was coming round to thinking he’d already had all the satisfaction he was going to get out of this and it was time to talk terms.
After an agonising wait French looked up again and met his eyes. “I don’t want to stop. This is all I have left. All you left me. I’m not interested in making it easier for you.”
Deacon said, choking, “Brodie …”
French leaned forward over the table, peering into his face. “Now do you understand? Are you beginning to get some inkling of how it feels? To have something you’d gladly die for and watch it die instead? Have you the least notion what you did to me, Mr Deacon?”
Deacon was restraining himself by sheer iron determination. But some kind of a nexus was coming: he could feel it. “Are you telling me Brodie’s dead?”
French shook his head. “No. She isn’t.”
“Is she going to die?”
Sometimes, an absence of reply is reply enough.
A little after eleven someone sat on the bench beside Daniel, waking him. He was amazed that he’d fallen asleep. But he’d been sitting here, up the corridor from the interview room, for a couple of hours now, with nothing to do but the sure conviction that he dare not leave, and the mental exhaustion that came of being worried sick and also quite helpless had gradually settled on him, weighing down his eyelids, slowing his breath.
There hadn’t been time for the rest to do him any good. He woke with a start, staring round wildly before his eyes focused. Of course, his glasses hanging off one ear didn’t help.
When he’d pulled himself together he looked at the new arrival and his eyes widened. “What happened to you?”
DS Voss gave a minimalist shrug that didn’t hurt too much. “I fell off a motorbike.”
“In front of a truck?”
Voss managed a rueful smile. He pointed up the corridor with his nose, bloody and swollen. Helen had thought it probably wasn’t broken. But then, Helen had thought he was going to A&E for X-rays. “What’s happening in there?”
Daniel raised a pale eyebrow. “You think they tell me? I know Jack went in, then Superintendent Fuller went in, then they both came out and argued a bit, then Jack went back in. That’s two hours ago. Nothing’s happened since. I tried to tell myself that was a good sign.”
Charlie Voss didn’t understand the relationship between Brodie and Daniel but he knew it was something real and strong. The man needed as much compassion as if his wife or perhaps his sister was missing. “If French had killed her and come in here to confess, there’d be no point not saying where he’d left the body. And if he knew that, the chief wouldn’t still be here.” However many promotions Deacon earned, he would remain The Chief to a man who first served under him as a chief inspector.
Hope twisted a knife under Daniel’s ribs. “You think she’s alive?”
Voss knew he could be wrong. But it was kinder to be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right. “I think so. If he wanted her dead he could have done it days ago. He went to some trouble not to. And why kill Brodie? He doesn’t even know her. This is about the chief. About taking his revenge. He can do that without making himself a murderer.”
Daniel was desperate to believe him. And it sounded plausible. Voss knew about criminals and murder and stuff. Probably he was right. As recently as a couple of days ago Daniel had been ready to sever whatever tied him to this woman. Tonight he’d have given his right arm - and that was the literal truth – to see her safe.
24
Deacon got to his feet, stretching muscles rigid with tension. “I don’t know about you but I need a break. Let’s whistle up some tea and try again in half an hour.”
Whatever he was expecting, French’s reaction surprised him. The man rocked quickly forward in his chair, leaning across the table, his expression urgent. “No! I didn’t come here for tea, I came so you and I could talk. With everything that’s happened, this is the first time we’ve really talked.”
“But you’re not saying anything, Michael,” said Deacon wearily. “You’ve told me what I did to you, what my mistakes cost you. I’ve told you I’m sorry. I’ve told you I’ll resign if that’s what you want – I’ve told you I’ll do anything that you want – but apparently that isn’t enough. I don’t know what would be. I want to know where Brodie is and you don’t want to tell me. What else can we talk about?”
“I haven’t said I won’t tell you,” insisted French, “only that I’m not ready to tell you yet.”
“Fine,” said Deacon. “So let’s order some tea.”
French glanced at his watch again. “We can drink it while we’re talking, can’t we? We can’t stop when we’re starting to get somewhere.”
Deacon stared at him. “Are we starting to get somewhere? Michael, we’re going round in circles. If you’re ready to tell me something, yes, we’ll keep going. Are you?”
French hesitated. Deacon turned away. “That’s what I thought. Listen, I need a break. I’ll pick up some tea, then you can tell me if you’re ready to take this forward or if you’re just going to faff me around some more. Because if you are, Michael, there are more important things I could be doing.”
French didn’t reply. His mouth was a straight line, yielding nothing. “Fine,” growled Deacon. He stopped the tape and left the room.
The men on the bench stood up – Daniel more easily than Voss – and came to meet him. “Well?”
But Deacon shook his head. “Nothing. He didn’t come here to talk. I don’t know why he did come. To tell me it’s all my fault, of course, but he could have done that over the phone. I don’t know what it is he wants. But he can hardly take his eyes off me. And there’s a deadline: he keeps looking at his watch. Something happens at three o’clock tomorrow morning.” He checked his own wrist. It wasn’t tomorrow any more.
“The tide turns,” Daniel said automatically.
The policemen looked at him. What they knew and what they guessed and what was possible reeled through their eyes like the tumblers on a one-armed bandit: when they stopped there were four in a row, which meant some kind of a pay-out.
Voss said quietly, “High tide or low tide?”
“High tide.”
“How do you know?” frowned Deacon.
Daniel shrugged. “I live on the beach. I know what the tide’s doing.”
“And it’s high at three o’clock this morning?”
“Ten past.”
“In two and a half hours.”
“Yes.” Daniel wasn’t a detective, he hadn’t put it together yet. He didn’t realise he was talking about a death sentence and the instrument of execution.
Those who did immediately cut him out of the conversation. They knew something now that they hadn’t known two minutes ago but they still didn’t know the whereabouts of Brodie Farrell. They rattled through the options.
“A boat?” said Deacon tersely. “One of those hulks on the Barley River that cover at high tide?”
Voss was nodding. “That’s why he went away and came back. There was too much going on here, you weren’t going to see him in time.”
“He wanted to be with me while Brodie was drowning!” grated Deacon.
“Like Millie drowned,” said Voss softly. “He wanted to tell you about it when it was too late to save her. He wanted you to see her body the same way he saw his wife’s.”
They were already heading down the corridor. Deacon wouldn’t waste time gathering manpower from around the station: he used his phone, wanted all available hands in the car park five minutes ago.
Daniel bobbed along in his wake like a pram-dinghy behind a battleship. He still wasn’t sure what they were talking about. “You know where she is? Is she all right?”
Deacon broke his stride just long enough to swing round on him. “No, Daniel, she’s not. She’s sitting in the bottom of a boat with the bung out. She’s up to her waist in water now: as the tide rises it’ll go above her head. We don’t know where this boat is, and we won’t know it when we see it. We’ll have to search every derelict on every mudflat up and down the coast, and we have two and a half hours to do it. We need to be searching, not talking about it. Stay here. I’ll let you know when there’s some news.”
Then he was gone, leaving Daniel alone in the corridor with his mouth open and his eyes bottomless with shock.
Given enough manpower you can search a lot of garages, sheds and lock-ups in two and a half hours, at least well enough to find someone who’s been unlawfully imprisoned. Boats are different, and boats that take the ground hardest of all. You can neither walk out to them and peep through the portholes nor row out: all you can do is scramble into waders like old men’s trousers, with the waist up under the chin, and struggle through mud like the Mississippi: too thick to drink, too thin to plough.
When the police cars reached the Barley estuary their headlamps picked out a score of neglected hulks in assorted shapes and sizes but all the same colour as the mud they lay on. These were not the only derelict boats in the area but they were the largest concentration: it made sense to start here and only proceed elsewhere if they drew a blank.
Considering the scene, Deacon saw the problem immediately. As the tide crept in the mud slipped, sucking, beneath the surface which gleamed with dull rainbows as if the clams had struck oil, and the boats became all but unreachable from the bank. There were a couple of dinghies pulled above the high-water mark, but they would have to be manhandled over the mud and would have capsized as the policemen tried to clamber in. It was possible; it would have been desperately slow.
“Now what?” he exclaimed, caught between anger and despair.
Voss was listening. “Just a minute.”
What had sounded at first like the buzzing of an insect soon hardened and deepened to an engine note, and a moment after that a light appeared around the hem of the land and the RNLI’s inshore lifeboat, normally kept in a garage in Dimmock, rode up the Barley on a V of moonlight.
Deacon turned slowly and looked at his sergeant. “You thought of this?”
Voss shrugged. “It seemed the best way to get out there.”
“I didn’t know there’d be a problem.”
“You’d have called the Coastguard when you saw there was.”
“And we’d have lost twenty minutes.”
Neither man said anything more. There is no precedent in the British police force for senior officers thanking their sergeants, and if there had been Jack Deacon was not a man to be bound by tradition. But he knew that if they found Brodie with less than twenty minutes on the clock she’d owe her life to Charlie Voss.
A thought occurred to him. It was a bit like bringing the after-dinner mints when someone else has cooked a four-course meal, but it was better than nothing. “I should call for divers. Just in case.” He reached for his phone.
Voss cleared his throat. “I – er – asked them to bring a diver with them.”
There was a jetty reaching out into the river – or rather the remains of a jetty, not much more now than a few posts with some decking clinging drunkenly to them. The orange boat took half the police contingent aboard and dropped them, two at a time, on the rotting
hulks sliding perceptibly beneath the waves. It went first to those at the seaward end of the estuary. If Brodie was on one of the upstream boats she had a few minutes’ grace.
Deacon went with the first contingent. Voss stayed on the jetty, meaning to go with the second. But when the boat came back he was sitting on the deck with his feet dangling above the water and his forehead leaned against a post, and he looked to be asleep. PC Batty climbed over him carefully and told the coxswain not to wake him. “He fell off a motorbike.”
“He’s not going to fall in the river, is he?” asked the man, concerned.
Without opening his eyes Voss mumbled, “No, he’s fine where he is. Pick him up on the way back.”
No one told Michael French that the interview was over but after ten minutes PC Vickers conducted him to a cell. He was puzzled and concerned. “Where’s Detective Superintendent Deacon? I’m happy to continue. I told him I was happy to continue.”
There are formulae for every situation in a police station. Vickers slipped into the appropriate one without even having to think. “Something came up. He hasn’t forgotten you – he’ll see you as soon as he’s free.”
French’s face was appalled. “But that won’t do! Time’s passing. Time matters!”
Perhaps there isn’t a formula for everything. Vickers pursed his lips. It was always better to say nothing than too much, but still … “I imagine that’s how Mr Deacon feels too. Listen, Mr French, I’m just here to see you to your cell and bring you some tea, but you might want to give a bit of thought to your next move. You can change your mind and see a solicitor any time you want, but either way it might be a good idea to make a statement now. I think they’ve found her.”
As French went on staring at him, Vickers saw the man’s world collapse from the top down and fall through his eyes, taking his heart with it. “No,” he whispered, stricken. “He has to lose.”