by Jo Bannister
Still his gaze was held by the house with the white columns, a mile away across the bay. “Maybe we’ve got this wrong.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I don’t know. Do decent people behave like that?”
“No. But sometimes rich ones do.” She glanced covertly at him. “It must be a pretty weird feeling, knowing who it was at last.”
“It is. I thought, if I knew what happened I could draw some sort of a line under it. But it’s not that simple. Now I know who was responsible I have to make a decision, even if the decision is to do nothing. It was easier when there was nothing I could do.” He gave a pale smile. “And that’s a textbook definition of moral cowardice.”
“No, it’s just you expecting too much of yourself,” said Brodie. “Listen, we can talk this through when we get home. You don’t have to decide anything here and now. Collect what you need and let’s get back. Oh.” She glanced up at the loft. “Can you? Or do you want me to?”
“No,” he said quickly. “No, I’m fine. I won’t be five minutes.” He climbed the iron stairs carefully but didn’t hesitate at the top.
“There’s no rush,” Brodie called after him. “While we’re here I’ll stick my head into the office. Pick up the post, see if there are any messages. I’ll leave the car here in case you’re finished first. Play the radio if you get bored.”
The post was mostly bills but there were messages on the machine. One offered her a job if she could return the call before midday. It sounded a good job so she called.
The client was Arthur Burton, managing director of a family-owned cider bottling plant in Somerset. An extraordinary general meeting had been called for Wednesday morning to consider merging with a big multi-national. He was trying to contact his cousin whose shares, as the numbers currently added up, gave her the casting vote.
Brodie stared at the telephone. “The meeting’s on Wednesday? And you call me on Saturday?”
Mr Burton sounded rueful, but mostly he sounded worried. “We thought we had it wrapped up. More of the family wanted to keep the business independent than wanted to cash it in. But now my uncle Edwin’s had a stroke and it’s thrown the whole deal back into the melting pot. Yesterday I didn’t need Cora’s votes; today I do.”
“And she lives in Dimmock?”
“I don’t think so; not any more.”
Brodie was confused. “Then why … ?”
“Her last known address was in Dimmock. She moves around a bit. She’s a painter, she’s always lived like that - taking short-term lets and moving on after six or nine months. Eight months ago she took a cottage on the Bramwell estate, but when I called last night there was a new tenant and neither he nor the estate office had a forwarding address for Cora. I’m not worried about her, we’ll hear from her in a week or so with her new address - but by then it could be too late to save the firm. I have to find her quickly, and I don’t know how to but I’m hoping you do.”
Brodie’s mind raced. Any other time she’d have jumped at the job, set a price reflecting the value of the company and had cousin Cora found by close of play tonight. But today Daniel needed her services even more than Arthur Burton.
Perhaps he didn’t need her every minute of the next three days.
“All right, Mr Burton,” she said, “I’ll need two hundred pounds up front, and another eighteen hundred at noon on Tuesday if I’ve found your cousin by then. Whether she votes with you or not.”
He didn’t question the price, which made Brodie suspect she’d pitched it too low. Too late now. It still wasn’t bad for a few hours’ work. “Done,” said Arthur Burton.
Brodie took all the details he could give her. Mindful that Daniel would be waiting, she didn’t start phoning round there and then but put the notes in her handbag, meaning to run the search from home. She’d already been longer than she’d said. Still, two thousand pounds was two thousand pounds. She locked up the office and hurried back to the shore.
When she reached the car the radio was playing, there was a bag on the back seat, but Daniel was gone.
Chapter 12
The shock caught Brodie under her ribs like a boot. She found herself looking again, as if she might have missed him. But he wasn’t there, and only the radio still softly playing and the bobble hat on the floor by his seat said he ever had been. Daniel Hood had come into her life without warning, filled it for a week, and now it seemed he’d vanished the same way.
Her first instinct was to call Deacon and tell him that the people who’d tried to kill Daniel once had found him again, and only taken him somewhere quieter to complete the task. At least she could give him a name now. Whether he could act quickly enough to prevent a tragedy was another matter.
Half way through dialling another thought came. Daniel had packed what he wanted and brought it down to the car. Could he have remembered something else then and returned to the flat, and be there still? - having lost track of the time, perhaps, or maybe curled in a corner somewhere, overwhelmed by the same storm of emotions that drove him onto the shore the previous day. Brodie hurried up the steps, her feet ringing on iron. But the door was locked and there was no answer to her urgent knock.
As she turned at the top of the steps, her mind swamped with grief and fear, the white house on the cliffs caught her eye. She’d always thought it a handsome house; now it seemed to squat there like an albino toad, watching her in return, the columned portico sketching a half-smile.
If David Ibbotsen had found Daniel, that house was the last place she should go.
But, actually, had Sophie’s father any further interest in him? He must know now that he’d made a mistake, that Daniel wasn’t involved. Even if he believed the man could have kept his silence through what was done to him, even if he remained unconvinced by the newspaper reports, the kidnappers must have been in touch in the intervening week. Didn’t he think it odd that they never mentioned their missing colleague?
All Ibbotsen had to fear from Daniel was the possibility that one day they’d meet, or Daniel would see a photograph, and he’d recognise his tormentor. But he was blindfold most of the time, and it wasn’t Ibbotsen but his hired man asking the questions. Snatching Daniel from a car in the street was surely riskier than doing nothing.
So maybe, thought Brodie, Daniel wasn’t snatched. Maybe he was on business of his own. She raised her eyes once more to the brooding presence on the cliffs.
He couldn’t be so stupid! Even if he was safe on the street, going up to Chandlers, alone, was entirely a different matter. In view of the stakes, knowing his earlier error would not stop Ibbotsen from dealing with him the simplest, most direct way. He was not a man to let common decency stand between him and his own best interests.
Brodie checked her watch, doing swift calculations. Thirty minutes since she’d left Daniel, enough time for him to walk up to Chandlers. At least, it would have been a fortnight ago. But Daniel only left hospital yesterday, getting from the car to the monument had drained him: a walk he might normally do in half an hour would be entirely beyond him at present. He might have found a taxi, or he might have ground to a halt within a few hundred metres. It was too soon to give him up for lost. Brodie threw her car into the traffic, ignoring the honks of protest around her.
Despite its name, Shore Road made no attempt to cling to the chalk bluff of the Firestone Cliffs, cutting inland instead. The handful of properties on top of the cliff were served by a private avenue surfaced with pale gravel. The houses sat in expansive grounds, growing grander as they climbed towards the cliff. Chandlers was the last house: a hundred metres of the road was its own personal driveway, guarded by iron gates.
They were closed. Brodie stopped the car. Her heart leaden, she reached for her phone.
In doing so she almost missed him. He’d got this far but no further. He was sitting on the verge, his back to someone’s brick wall, his arms around his knees and his face buried. A stone eagle atop a gatepost was sneering down its beak at him.
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sp; He didn’t look up, even at the sound of the car or her quick footsteps. She couldn’t tell if weariness had beaten him, or pain or fear, or if he’d suffered some new harm. She dropped to her knees beside him. “Daniel? Daniel, speak to me!”
He lifted his yellow head and regarded her myopically. His glasses were on the grass beside him. “Brodie? What are you doing here?” He sounded tired, nothing more.
Fear began to wane, anger to wax. “I’m here to save your stupid neck, you stupid man!” she raged. “Whatever did you think you were doing? If Inspector Deacon knew about this he’d have you committed. Doctors would be lining up to section you.”
He put the glasses on but avoided her gaze. “I couldn’t do it,” he murmured. “Someone in a van gave me a lift to the end of the avenue, all I had to do was walk out to the house. Getting this far took me forever. I couldn’t get any further.”
At the disappointment in his voice, the slump of his shoulders, Brodie’s anger dissolved. “You’re not ready for route-marches yet.”
It was an adequate explanation. But Daniel Hood had the kind of reverence for the truth that the Holy Inquisition had for Christianity: it didn’t have to matter if it hurt. He shook his head. “That wasn’t it. I was afraid to go on. Afraid of him. David Ibbotsen.” There was an audible tremor in the words.
“This surprises you?” Brodie asked softly. “Daniel, the man almost killed you. Of course you’re afraid of him. I’m afraid of him. We need to get away from here.”
She offered her hand but he didn’t take it. He looked from her to the gates and back. There was regret in his voice. “I didn’t want to involve you in this.”
“You didn’t. Ibbotsen did; and I let him. An error of judgement involved me in this. Let’s not talk about it here. Get in the car and we’ll go home.”
“I wanted to see him,” said Daniel. “To talk to him. He isn’t a monster, he’s a man. A man who was as scared and confused as I was, and maybe hurting as much.”
“What were you going to do? Forgive him?” Astonishment made Brodie say it as if it were the height of absurdity.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I thought I’d know when I met him.” He looked again at the gates. If anything they seemed to be receding.
“Daniel, he’s not interested in your forgiveness, only your silence. If you go in there you won’t come out.”
“So I should pretend none of this ever happened? That I don’t know what it was about or who was responsible? I can’t put the genie back in the bottle, Brodie! It’s too late to walk away: the only way now is through. I don’t want to be afraid of this man for the rest of my life.”
“Then let Deacon deal with it. He’s a desperate man, Daniel, and a vicious one. You know what he’s prepared to do to get his daughter back.”
“I’m not a threat to her.”
“You’re a threat to him! Have you seen what lies on the other side of that house? A hundred metre cliff. It’s a garbage shoot to oblivion.”
“He has no reason to hurt me now.”
“Ten years’ imprisonment is a pretty good reason!”
For someone who’d promised not to argue with him any more she was close to persuading him. She saw doubt in his eyes as he looked again at the wrought iron gates. He knew he wasn’t walking through them. He couldn’t win the internal conflict: his body refused to do what his heart asked of it. In another minute she’d have got him to his feet and taken him home.
Instead he said, “Ah,” and his voice was paper-thin.
Brodie followed his gaze. It was too late. It had taken too long to find him, and they’d spent too long sitting on the verge discussing it. A car had come down from the house and the gates opened to let it through.
It stopped beside them and a man got out. A man too old to be Sophie’s father, probably too old to be the family’s chauffeur even if they didn’t mind him wearing a cardigan and a glacial stare. A man just about old enough to have sailed on the last of the Cape Horners. Brodie stood up. “We took a wrong turn. We were just leaving.”
Lance Ibbotsen ignored her. His blue diamond gaze was fixed on the white face of Daniel Hood. “My God.”
The collision of their eyes was silent but shook the air nevertheless. Daniel swallowed, forced out the words. “I believe we’ve met.”
The stunned silence lasted perhaps ten seconds, which is a long time with so much to be said and three people saying none of it. Nor was it merely an absence of speech. The cold breeze fell still; the traffic seemed to pause on the busy main road; if Daniel had taken a measurement now he might have found that the sun itself hesitated in its orbit for those ten pregnant seconds.
Ibbotsen broke the spell. Hands that suggested he had been, in his prime, a much bigger man fisted in Daniel’s clothes and hauled him to his feet as if he were a child. Hands that have worked acres of heavy canvas, stiff with spray, and mastered miles of cordage rough with salt never lose the habit of strength. Madness flared in the old man’s eyes.
“I knew it!” he hissed in Daniel’s face. “The others thought it was a mistake, but I knew who you were. I knew you could help if we just made it hard enough for you to refuse.”
All the fear in Daniel’s eyes was not enough to mask the incredulity. “You think you didn’t?”
Lance Ibbotsen was too angry to trade words, even bitter ones, with his enemy. He’d believed the man was dead. He’d believed, despite what he’d been told, despite what he’d read in The Sentinel, that Daniel Hood had been part of a conspiracy to kidnap his granddaughter for ransom, and that he’d paid for that mistake with pain and death. Now here he was again, demonstrably alive and watching the house. All the rage, the frustration, the fear of the past ten days welled up in him in a moment, and he abandoned words and reacted with force. He struck Daniel across the mouth with the back of his fist, hard enough that he didn’t so much stagger back as fly.
The hedge caught him. Disorientated, he twisted in its spiny embrace, seeking something solid to hang on to. But the hedge only shook and bellied, trapping him and offering no support. He couldn’t free himself.
Lance Ibbotsen freed him, with another blow that wrenched him out of the hedge and sprawled him full length along the verge. The impetus carried the old man after him, already aiming the toe of a heavy boot at Daniel’s jaw.
Overt violence has a paralysing effect on normal people. It had taken Brodie seconds to react, time in which Lance Ibbotsen was committing murder before her eyes. She doubted neither his desire nor his ability to do it.
Sheer determination forced her brain to act, her muscles to respond. She dived for Ibbotsen’s head, snatching off her coat. The first thing she did was blind him with it; the second was wrap the sleeve round his throat and tug until he had to abandon his attack on Daniel to deal with the attack on him.
When she had his attention Brodie said fiercely in his ear - or where his ear ought to be under the fabric - “You’re wrong, Mr Ibbotsen. You misjudged him, and you misjudged me, and I really don’t need any more incentive to rip your frigging head off!” She probably couldn’t have done it. But she was in the mood to try.
She felt the tension of his long muscles ease slightly as he stopped fighting her and stood still. Muffled by her warm coat he said, “Mrs Farrell?” If he’d seen her before he hadn’t recognised her. She wasn’t sure he’d seen anything but Daniel.
“That’s right,” she said, yanking the sleeve for emphasis. “Now, you know I’m not part of any conspiracy against you. And I’m telling you that Daniel Hood isn’t either. And if you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe Detective Inspector Deacon when he gets here. He’s already on his way.”
Of course it was a bluff. But in a sense it didn’t matter. Even if he thought Deacon was coming, Ibbotsen might decide he had nothing to lose by tearing Daniel limb from limb and enjoy the experience while he could. Though she seemed to have wrested the upper hand for the moment, Brodie wasn’t sure she could stop him if he set his heart on it.
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“Get this off me,” he growled through the coat.
“Oh sure!” snarled Brodie.
“Get it off! I’m not talking to anybody through three layers of wool worsted!”
Brodie thought fast. He no longer sounded like a homicidal maniac. And perhaps it was better to free him than to let him free himself and know for sure he was stronger than her. “Daniel, get in the car. Lock the doors.”
Daniel’s eyes were still vague from Ibbotsen’s fists. But Brodie didn’t think concussion was why he made no attempt to get up. He knelt on the grass, softly panting, watching the man and woman frozen in their uncompleted struggle. “Let him go.”
“Daniel-!”
“Please. Let him go.”
After a moment Brodie shrugged and took her coat back. Raw fabric poked where some of the stitches had given way. It was never designed to be used as a weapon.
Lance Ibbotsen didn’t even turn to face his adversary. His eyes were locked on Daniel’s. “I don’t believe you.”
“Fine,” spat Brodie. “You tell the police what you think he’s done, and I’ll tell the police what I think you’ve done. And he’ll walk away, and you won’t.”
“He kidnapped my granddaughter!”
“No. He didn’t.”
“He was seen! He was watching through a telescope.”
“He’s an astronomer. He was making observations.
“In the middle of the day?”
“Sunspots,” Daniel said quietly.
Ibbotsen went on staring fiercely at him. But there was doubt in it too. “You’re saying it was - a coincidence? My granddaughter was abducted from her school, he was watching through a telescope, and it was a coincidence?”
“Yes,” said Brodie. “Exactly that.”
“Then why didn’t you go to the police?” demanded the old man, his body bent like a bow with the desire to get his hands on Daniel again constrained by the knowledge he must not. “Happens a lot, does it? - you go to watch sunspots and see a crime in progress? You used to report them but you got bored? One kidnap’s pretty much like another? You’re lying. The only people in this whole town who could have seen that and not called the police were those involved.”