by Jo Bannister
“You can’t always. But sometimes there’s something in there besides the subject that gives you a frame of reference - a time or a location or somewhere to start. In this case it was the telescope. I went to a star-gazers’ meeting and showed the picture round.”
“Someone recognised me?” Daniel sounded pleasantly surprised.
She was sorry to disillusion him. “Well - the telescope, actually. But it was enough.”
Daniel was thinking. “This photograph. Where was it taken?”
“Hard to tell. You were leaning on a stone parapet with the telescope beside you. Ring a bell?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. The monument in the park - I hauled the telescope up there last Wednesday. Sun-spot observations: I’d been watching a good group back in February, I didn’t want to miss their reappearance just because it was a school day. So I took the telescope over to the park at lunchtime. It’s really too big to lug around like that, but the detail it gives is phenomenal. For some things, bigger really is better.”
Brodie was eyeing him with disbelief. “Daniel - you can see the sun from all over Dimmock! From your flat, and from the school. What’s so special about the monument?”
“You want the sun high so you’re observing through the minimum amount of atmosphere: before school was too early, after school was too late. And there’s nowhere at school that’s high enough off the ground.”
“You were trying to get closer?”
His gaze was level on her face. He knew she was quizzing him: if he minded it didn’t show. “There’s a lot of pollution at ground level. It distorts the image. A telescope can’t filter out the garbage: the bigger the magnificiation, the bigger the distortion. You have to get above the dust layer. A mountain’s perfect, but the monument’s high enough to improve the view significantly.”
She nodded. Dimmock had never had much time for the Clean Air Act. “I thought astronomers only came out at night.”
Daniel smiled solemnly. “Bit hard to watch sunspots in the dark.”
“Ah.” She went to return the smile; and then she realised that Daniel had known what she was doing before she did herself. She was trying to catch him in a lie because a part of her still hoped this was his fault. That he’d brought it on himself. Sunspots? - yeah, right. But if it wasn’t true, then he was up the monument with a telescope for some quite different purpose. And she didn’t know it, and Deacon didn’t know it, but perhaps the people who hurt him did …
Daniel held her gaze. “It’s all right,” he said, his voice low.
Brodie shook her head angrily, the flying hair masking the colour in her cheeks. “No, it isn’t, it’s pathetic. It’s stupid and it’s cruel, and more than that it’s cowardly. I’m desperate to shed some of the blame, and if I can’t find anyone else then you’ll do. It’s like blaming the woman for getting raped. Damn it, Daniel, I’m stronger than this!”
“I know you are,” he said softly. “But it’s enough to be strong most of the time. You’re allowed time off for good behaviour.”
She laughed at that; it came out half a sob.
Daniel leaned back in his chair. “So the photograph was taken at lunchtime a week last Wednesday. And the people who kidnapped me had it. Why? What possible interest could me and my telescope be to them?”
“Did you see anyone?” He shook his head. “I expect you were too busy with your sunspots. And they were some distance away: the picture was taken off a video and enhanced within an inch of its life.”
“Someone was filming me? That’s crazy.”
“Daniel, it’s all crazy! Never mind the video: why would anyone want to hurt you like that?”
His voice was a murmur. “They were looking for Sophie.”
“But you say you don’t know anything about her. Why would they think you did?”
Daniel shrugged. “At first I thought they’d made a mistake - grabbed the wrong man. But that makes no sense either. They had a picture of me on top of the monument with twenty kilos of optical equipment. Who the hell could they have mistaken me for?”
He was right, the odds against had to be - well, astronomical. Brodie felt her chest tighten, her eyes grow wary. “No, that wasn’t a mistake.” She pushed herself away from the table, away from him. “And if it wasn’t then they got the right man. Who are you, Daniel? What have you done that made someone want to kill you an inch at a time? Deacon was right. What is it you’re not telling us?”
Five days ago he was at death’s door. Since then his young body had concentrated all its resources on healing; but the burns and the bullet-wound were not his only injuries, and psychological scars remain livid long after physical ones have faded.
Post traumatic stress disorder can show itself in depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, marital breakdown, asthma, eczema, psoriasis and diabetes. Daniel was at the very start of the process, with any or all of them ahead. For now the clearest sign was the way tears sprang too readily to his eyes. He recoiled from her barrage as if she was throwing not questions but crockery at him. “Please don’t shout at me. I can’t think straight if you shout at me.”
Brodie bit her lip. With the possible exception of DI Deacon, the last people hammering questions at him had punished his failure to answer with fire. In tears? - it was a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that he wasn’t in a strait jacket. “I’m sorry. Daniel, I’m sorry …”
“It’s all right. I’m just a bit … shaky still. I’m all right; really I am.”
Brodie came back to the table and sat down, capturing his hands with her own. “No, you’re not. There’s no way you could be. And no reason you should be - not here, with me. I know what you’ve been through. You don’t have to pretend for me.”
“I know,” said Daniel. “I’m just … trying to deal with it. Only every time I think I’m winning I find myself crying again.”
Brodie shrugged. “So cry. It’s what you do when you’re hurt.”
“If you’re a man you’re not supposed to.”
She sniffed. “Men do lots of things they’re not supposed to, most of them more harmful than crying.”
He gently reclaimed his hands. There were pink lines on his wrists where the straps had cut him. “To answer your question,” he said quietly. “I haven’t done anything that would explain what happened. I am exactly and only what I appear to be. I’m not holding anything back. I don’t know why they took me, or why they filmed me.” He blinked. “Have you still got the picture?”
Brodie had given it to Inspector Deacon. But before that, before she’d known there was anything sinister going on, she’d scanned it onto her computer. She’d been working at home that evening so the picture was in her PC in the spare room.
It was strange, studying it together. Though poor it was innocuous enough: it showed Daniel Hood, his telescope and the stone parapet on top of the monument. But it was the start of everything.
Daniel knew it too. His voice was unsteady. “We should be able to work out where this was taken from.”
Brodie nodded, keeping her eyes on the screen. “We know when you were up there so the shadows will tell us which way you were looking. If we follow that line till it reaches either the ground or another building, that’s where the camera was.”
He didn’t reply. After a moment she looked up and found him watching her. “I was right. You are good at this.”
“Not bad,” she admitted. But it wasn’t just a compliment: there was something odd in his voice. She waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Finding things - finding people - that’s what you do.”
“I told you that.”
“I know. I’m just thinking …”
She got there before he could say what he was thinking. “No!” she exploded. “No. Never. Forget it.”
“All right.”
“I mean it, Daniel.” She screwed round to look him square in the face. “They nearly killed you. They know who you are - they know who I am. We’re not rattling any cages
! It’s Inspector Deacon’s job to find them, not ours.”
“Deacon’s given up. I’m not ready to.”
“We’ll tell him about the photograph.”
“He’s got the photograph! He’s got all the information we have - if he was going to use it he’d have done it by now.”
“Maybe he has, and it didn’t get him anywhere.”
“And maybe he hasn’t, because he hasn’t the incentive I have. His life goes on whether or not he ever finds out what happened. I’m not sure mine will.”
Only the lethal mixture of sympathy and remorse kept Brodie from switching off the computer there and then, going to bed and telling Daniel to do the same. She looked at his face and saw it pinched with anguish. “I suppose …”
“What?”
“I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to go to the park and look. If we could work out where the video was taken from, telling Deacon might be enough to kick-start his investigation again.”
Daniel nodded, painfully eager. “Now?”
“It’s dark! We’ll go tomorrow. Or I will - maybe you should stay here.”
“I’ll stay in the car.”
Brodie nodded. “All right; tomorrow. Now, let me make up this bed again and then let’s get some sleep. It’s been a busy day.”
He had nothing to sleep in. She found him some joggers and a T-shirt printed with the slogan “Solicitors do it in triplicate”. It was an old T-shirt.
She left him to undress. In the doorway, though, she paused and looked back. “Daniel, there’s one thing you should consider before we go any further with this.”
“Yes?”
“If we start searching for these people, we just might find them.”
Chapter 9
Daniel slept and dreamt of waking.
Brodie roused him. The cloud of dark hair was loose, framing a smile. In his dreams he was not short-sighted.
“Rise and shine,” she said.
She reached under the cover for his left hand, gave it a friendly squeeze and laid it on the pillow beside his head. Then she did the same with his right hand. She smiled again and, languidly, he smiled back.
Then she pulled down the cover briskly, and pulled up the witty T-shirt, baring his chest. “Ready when you are,” she said to someone out of sight behind him; and when Daniel tried to move he found his wrists were tied to the headboard.
His cry of terror woke him, Brodie, and quite possibly the rest of the house.
Brodie hurried through from her own room, snapping on lights as she went, to find him huddled against the wall, the bedclothes on the floor, John’s T-shirt - wringing wet - clinging to his ribs. His eyes were wide and staring.
“Daniel. Daniel!” She knelt quickly in front of him, gripping his shoulders. “It’s all right. It was a dream, that’s all. You had a nightmare. Wake up now, it’s over.”
She saw uncertainty creep into his eyes as he ventured the gulf between sleep and awareness. When he recognised her he flinched, which upset her more than his cries had done.
“Daniel, it’s all right. You’re safe here. It was just a dream.”
When he believed her he shut his eyes for a moment and panted softly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Brodie said, still holding him. “It’s only to be expected. Was this the first time?”
“I think they gave me something. In the hospital.” He managed a wry, transient smile. “I suppose that’s one of the reasons they wanted me to stay.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“No.” He shook his head, droplets of sweat spraying from the rat-tails of his hair. “What time is it?”
There was a clock on the wall. Brodie passed him his glasses. “Nearly eight,” she said. “I’ll make some breakfast. Why don’t you have a shower?” Her face fell. “Oh - can you?”
Daniel smiled. “A careful one.”
The phone went. It was Marta. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine. Oh - you heard Daniel. He had a nightmare.”
“You want me to come down?”
“Come for breakfast if you like. Bring Paddy. It’s time you all met.”
“Give me ten minutes,” said Marta. “To beat out some of the wrinkles. We don’t want I should give him another nightmare.”
Brodie found some clothes Daniel could use - a rugby shirt and a sweater she’d bought for John then reclaimed because he never wore it. It would drown Daniel, but that was better than fitting too snugly over his tender skin.
Dressing took him time. Marta and Paddy arrived first. Marta looked round the living room with an interrogative shrug, and Brodie gestured towards the spare room.
Paddy was more direct, demanding in her piercing four-year-old voice, “Where’s Mummy’s boyfriend?”
Brodie could cheerfully have strangled her. She leaned down and hissed into the child’s face, “Daniel is not Mummy’s boyfriend. He’s a nice man who’s had a bad week and needs somewhere to stay for a few days. All right?”
Paddy thought about this for a moment. “That’s what Daddy said about Julia.” Marta succumbed to a coughing fit.
When Daniel found the living room full of people his first instinct was to retreat. But he pulled himself together. They were two women and a child, for heaven’s sake! - if he couldn’t face them he’d better look for a hermitage.
Brodie ushered him to the table. She nodded at the sweater. “Coral is you.” She performed introductions.
They breakfasted half in an awkward silence and half in a budgerigar twittering that was a desperate attempt to talk about anything except why Daniel was here. They were all profoundly grateful when the teapot was empty.
Brodie tried not to work at the weekends. Usually she and Paddy did the week’s shopping on Saturday morning. But generous as ever, Marta cast a significant glance at the visitor and announced that she was going to the supermarket, she might as well take the child and Brodie’s shopping list as well.
Brodie knew what she meant and was grateful. She got Paddy dressed and handed her back to her friend, along with her housekeeping purse. “Get a taxi back,” she said. “You’ll have too much to carry, and it’s the least I can do.”
“I was going to,” Marta said airily.
After they’d gone Brodie made a last effort at dissuasion. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“I’m sure.”
“Then, will you stay here while I go to the park?”
“You’ve been very kind,” said Daniel, “but you can’t pick up the pieces for me. I have to do it myself.”
“You don’t have to do it today. We could leave it till tomorrow. Or next week.”
“Or sometime, or never.” He smiled ruefully. “Mrs Farrell, I can’t hide forever. I have to get back to the real world. I have to stop cowering in corners and listening for footsteps. This is as good a time as any. I’m not fooling myself, if that’s what you think. Finding where the video was shot isn’t going to solve the mystery. It probably won’t even help. No one’ll be there now: it’s ten days too late to catch them in the act.
“I’m not doing this because I think I’ll find the men who hurt me. I’m doing it for my own self-respect. It took a beating, it’s not up to much right now, but until I stop behaving like a victim it won’t get any better. I have to stand on my own two feet again, and the longer I leave it the harder it’ll be. That’s why I have to come with you, and we have to go now. If I start thinking there’s an alternative I’ll never do it.”
“You want to be doing something,” said Brodie. “I understand that. You want to do something because before there was nothing you could do. But exposing yourself to more danger can’t be a good idea.”
“Too much time has passed. If they were still interested in me they’d have found me by now.”
“They think you’re dead! They won’t go on thinking that if you start wandering round in broad daylight.”
Daniel shook his head
. “I don’t think they care any more. If they know I’m still alive they also know I can’t harm them. If I could, Deacon would have had them out of their beds before now.”
Brodie thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. “It’s your call - if you want to do it, we’ll do it.” She paused in the doorway. “One condition.”
“Yes?”
“Call me Brodie. I may be older than you, but I’m not old enough to be your mother.”
She’d printed a copy of the picture off the computer. Brodie parked as close as she could - Daniel still found walking difficult - and they strolled over to the monument and then round it, looking where the shadows fell and calculating where they would fall shortly after midday.
“Here,” said Daniel, coming to a standstill. “But that doesn’t work either. The angle’s wrong. If it was taken from down here all it would have showed is the underside of my chin. The camera must have been higher up.”
They turned away from the monument, seeking a vantage point. But unless someone had shinned up a tree with a video camera under his arm, the park offered none.
“So he was outside the park.” Brodie nodded to where the town began to climb towards the Firestone Cliffs. Three hundred metres away the buildings were already as high as the monument. It was a typically Dimmock-sized folly, a stumpy tower like the castle in Chess, no taller than a three-storey house, commemorating an obscure triumph of the Boer War.
She looked at the steps and then at Daniel. “Are you up for this?”
He thought he was. His clothes were chafing and his feet were sore where the flame had licked the insteps, but he could bear the discomfort. He went to lead the way. But nearing the bottom step he found his breath coming faster and the sweat breaking on his brow. When he made himself continue an electric tremor invaded him, starting at his knees and working up his spine.
Defeated, he leaned one shaking hand against the stonework. “You go. I’ll stay down here, tell you when you’re in the right place.”
It wasn’t Nelson’s Column but the monument afforded good views across Dimmock, south to the channel, east to the green swell of the cliffs. Brodie circled the parapet slowly.