Liars All

by Jo Bannister

  Brodie heard the note of censure he’d tried to keep out of his voice and her pointed chin came up in a kind of tired belligerence. ‘This is what I do, Daniel, remember? I find things. Things that other people think are gone for good. But I find them. If they’re out there at all, I can find them. I can do this. For Jonathan? Damn right I can.’

  ‘I’m not doubting you,’ said Daniel softly. ‘But I don’t want you blaming yourself if you can’t find something that actually isn’t there yet – that might exist in another year or five years, but doesn’t exist yet.’

  ‘It does exist,’ she insisted with the stubborn sophistry of the very desperate. ‘Somewhere. It has to.’

  He said no more. He hoped that when the jet lag subsided she’d be more open to reason.

  He’d felt the same way when she got back from Geneva, and from Johannesburg.

  In the end the defendant changed his plea. Detective Superintendent Jack Deacon supposed it was the sight of the girl in the wheelchair waiting to give her evidence that did it. Perhaps the defence team had thought she’d bottle out, or be too frail to take the stand. But Deacon had got to know her over the last nine months, knew she’d be up there telling what happened if she had to drag herself into the witness box on her hands and knees.

  Robert Carson’s counsel must have come to the same conclusion, and realised how it would look; that this was a man sufficiently depraved not only to mow down a young couple in his car, not only to rob them while they lay broken-bodied in the gutter, but to make a crippled girl relive the worst moments of her life rather than admit to doing what the dogs in the street knew he’d done. They’d had a serious word with him after opening submissions. As soon as the court reconvened they asked for the charges to be put again, and this time Carson pleaded guilty.

  The first thing Deacon did was look at his watch. But it was too late to head for Gatwick. They’d be on their way home by now. If Daniel hadn’t got lost.

  Deacon returned to his office in Battle Alley, meaning to immerse himself in work. In fact, though he had plenty to do, all he did was stare at the papers spread across his desk until the print blurred and ran. It might have been cuneiform, reporting crimes in ancient Ur.

  Finally a hand closed the file he was peering at. Deacon blinked and checked where his own had got to; but they were still where he’d left them, one each side of the anachronistic blotter, half circling the reading matter in a protective embrace like harbour walls. So someone else had recognised the pointlessness of what he was doing and rescued him from it.

  Detective Sergeant Voss said quietly, ‘Why don’t you go to her house and put the kettle on? They’ll be back soon, and she’ll be desperate for a cup of tea.’

  Deacon gave a bear-like shrug. He growled, ‘There are things that need doing.’

  ‘Yes, there are,’ agreed Voss with a solemn nod of his ginger head. ‘And I’d be able to get on with them if you’d stop cluttering the place up. Go and meet Brodie. See if there’s any news.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ said Deacon. He made no effort to move. ‘I talked to her last night. Nobody’s holding out much hope at all.’

  ‘All the more reason you should be there when she gets home.’ Charlie Voss was more than twenty years younger than his boss. All they had in common was the job. In spite of which, a relationship had developed between them that was as close to friendship as Deacon was probably capable of. Voss talked to his superintendent in ways that would have prompted Deacon to throw anyone else out of his office, then follow him along the landing in order to kick him downstairs.

  This was less to do with Deacon having a soft spot for his sergeant – general consensus at Battle Alley was that The Grizzly didn’t have any soft spots: not for his officers, his partner or even his sick baby – than with Voss’s management skills. Like the best butlers he knew when to listen, when to speak and when to speak frankly; and even Deacon had eventually realised that it was no coincidence that his professional life had suddenly got both easier and more productive. A good sergeant is indispensable to a superintendent. It wasn’t just that Voss’s legs were younger than his own. Sometimes his brain was quicker. And he was better with people. Deacon thought of people as a necessary evil. Voss understood that they were what made the job worth doing.

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ grunted Deacon. He pushed his big body back from the desk and stood up. ‘If anyone’s looking for me…’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ nodded Voss. It wasn’t the first time he’d lied to his boss, and was unlikely to be the last.

  Chapter Three

  Halfway across town, with sudden uncharacteristic sentimentality, Deacon thought he should take them something – flowers for Brodie, a toy for Jonathan – to welcome them home, and bring a brief smile to their weary faces.

  The flowers were easy. He went into the flower shop and pointed. But Mothercare frightened the life out of him. He grabbed a rubber ball with tentacle-like protrusions and a prettily chiming bell inside, slapped down the money and ran.

  He ran into – almost literally – a man he’d known most of his life, and spent the last ten years trying to arrest.

  The curious thing about Jack Deacon and Terry Walsh was not that they had made good careers for themselves on opposite sides of the law. It was that they had more in common now, and even in an odd way liked one another better, than when they were growing up in neighbouring streets in London. Each recognised the professionalism of the other even though it made his own job harder. It was a kind of respect. But it wouldn’t stop Walsh selling Battle Alley Police Station to a gullible developer if he could, or prevent Deacon putting Walsh in Parkhurst if the opportunity arose.

  Walsh was a shorter man than Deacon, his sturdy frame giving him a squarish appearance. The black crinkly hair was salted now with grey, the humorous brown eyes almost lost in a network of laughter lines. A tan that might have meant too many hours on a sunbed in fact testified to his love of sailing – he kept a sleek Camper & Nicholsons sloop called Salamander at the marina on the River Barley. Ostensibly he was in the bulk paper trade. Anyone who didn’t know him well would have thought him a prime example of a self-made man and a credit to the capitalist system. And in a way they’d have been right.

  He wasn’t alone. A young woman, taller than him, dressed in jeans and a rugby shirt, long fair hair pulled back in a rough ponytail, had her arm linked through his and they were laughing together. Deacon’s immediate reaction was absolute astonishment. Nothing he knew about Walsh – and he knew a lot more than he could prove – suggested he was other than a devoted family man.

  His second thought, hard on the heels of the first, was: Caroline will have your goolies…

  Walsh saw Deacon a second after Deacon saw Walsh. He gave him a friendly grin devoid of concern and hugged the girl’s arm closer. ‘Don’t look at her, Jack. She’s not fit to be seen in public. I tell people, She’s not my daughter. My daughter has a respectable job in an art gallery in Eastbourne. She washes and wears clean clothes.’

  ‘Sophie?’ Deacon wasn’t sure he’d managed to keep the surprise out of his voice. He should have known. She wasn’t going to stay a fourteen-year-old girl on a pony for ever. She’d be…what…in her twenties now.

  ‘Hello, Mr Deacon,’ the girl said cheerfully. ‘Ignore my dad. He’s still in denial about my new career. He’ll feel differently when I win Badminton.’

  Deacon frowned. ‘You play badminton?’

  Happily, Sophie looked more like her mother than her father, but the grin was pure Walsh – mischievous without malice. Even people who knew what Walsh was capable of had to fight not to like the man. ‘Three-day eventing. I’m a working pupil at an eventing yard. My dad thinks it’s not a proper job.’

  ‘It’s a proper job,’ admitted Walsh. ‘It’s just not a very clean job.’

  It was a mud-spattered hatchback that Sophie Walsh got into. Walsh waved her off and, after a moment, somewhat embarrassed, Deacon did too.

 
‘I’d buy her a better car,’ said Walsh, ‘but she wants to pay her own way. Which you have to admire, particularly since she earns a lot less than she did in Eastbourne. I keep the horses for her, and every so often her mother despairs of how she looks and buys her a new outfit. Apart from that she’s self-sufficient. Actually,’ he admitted, ‘I’m rather proud of her. This was her dream and she was willing to make sacrifices for it. Which is more than you can say for a lot of kids.’

  The smile of fatherly contentment froze on his face and he looked at Deacon with concern. ‘Sorry, Jack, I wasn’t thinking. Isn’t Mrs Farrell due back about now? Is there any news?’

  People who worked for him – people he worked for – were nervous about encroaching on Deacon’s private life. Everyone at Battle Alley knew about him and Brodie, knew that her baby was his, knew that the child was sick and getting sicker. But only Voss and Chief Superintendent Fuller would have dared ask after him. Except that Mrs Merton the tea lady knitted bootees for him. Even she never broached the subject with Deacon directly, but every couple of weeks he’d find another pair of tiny knitted socks left on his blotter.

  Terry Walsh had nothing to fear from Deacon’s moods. If he’d been capable of damaging Walsh he’d have done it years ago. He was still trying, couldn’t try any harder however much the man annoyed him. It left them free to be themselves with one another.

  Deacon shrugged wearily. ‘Nothing good. Yes, they’re on their way home about now. I don’t know, Terry, but I think maybe we’ve exhausted the possibilities.’

  Walsh believed in possibilities. He was a walking testament to what could be achieved by sheer determination. He shook his head crisply. ‘You don’t know that. You don’t know what the future holds – what’s just around the corner. It might be just what you need.’

  ‘That’s what Brodie says.’ The two men had fallen into step, the crime boss and the senior detective, pacing slowly down High Street like old friends. ‘She won’t give up. Every time she gets knocked back, she goes on the internet and finds another imminent breakthrough. Then she calls the airline. She only comes home to do laundry.’

  Walsh was eying him sidelong. ‘You don’t approve?’

  Deacon picked his words carefully, not because he worried what Walsh might think but because the words were important. They didn’t just describe how he felt, they helped define how he felt. ‘I think that time is past. It was the right thing to do six months ago. There might have been something out there that would have helped. Six months ago I backed her to the hilt. Now I think it’s just stubbornness. Refusing to accept the inevitable.

  ‘Even that wouldn’t matter if she had only herself to consider,’ he growled, head down, talking like thinking aloud. The other man’s quiet companionship let him say things he desperately needed to say and had no one to say them to. Brodie talked like this to Daniel. Deacon hadn’t realised there was anyone he could unburden himself to. ‘She can make up for lost time later. But Jonathan is spending the last months of his life living out of a suitcase, and there’s no longer an excuse for it. He should be at home, as comfortable as we can make him, getting a bit of pleasure out of his life. Giving us all some worthwhile memories. What Brodie’s doing can only be justified if she succeeds. If she doesn’t, she’s depriving me of my son and Paddy of her brother. And herself, too, of good times to remember when he’s gone.’

  Terry Walsh was what, at heart, Deacon was not: a family man. The joys and, now, the pain of fatherhood that had come as such a surprise to Deacon were second nature to him. He may have understood more of what Deacon was going through than Deacon did. ‘I’m so sorry, Jack. If you can think of anything I can do… I mean, if money would make a difference…’

  Deacon was more touched than he would have admitted. He stopped dead and turned his searchlight glare on the shorter man. ‘You seem to forget, Terry, I know where your money comes from.’

  Walsh laughed lightly. ‘Of course you do. Scandinavian paper forests. As my daughter never tires of telling me, my money really does grow on trees.’ The easy smile died. ‘All the same…’

  Deacon sighed. ‘I know. Thanks, Terry, I appreciate the offer. But perhaps it’s as well I shan’t need to take you up on it.’

  Walsh leant closer, as if someone might be listening. He said fiercely, ‘Whatever else I have, I have a good, fully documented income from the bulk paper business. If your son can use any of it, I want to know.’

  Deacon dredged up a craggy smile. ‘I know. And I will remember, and some day I’ll do you a favour in return. Extra snout on visiting day, something like that.’

  Walsh chuckled, and they parted at the corner of the street where Deacon had left his car.

  Brodie appreciated the flowers. Even more, she appreciated the tea that was brewing in the pot.

  Jonathan liked his jingly ball too, and fell asleep clutching it to his wan cheek. Deacon stood looking into the cot. To a baby – at least, to one that could see – it would have felt like being observed by a mountain. ‘He looks tired.’

  Brodie nodded. ‘It’s partly the drugs. He hasn’t had a fit all the time we’ve been away, but I guess there’s no such thing as a free lunch. This is the price he pays.’

  ‘Or else he’s getting worse,’ Deacon said, his voice low.

  If he thought that hadn’t occurred to her, he was mistaken. ‘Of course he’s getting worse,’ Brodie said shortly. ‘It’s a progressive condition. He’s going to go on getting worse until we find the answer to it.’

  ‘If there is an answer.’

  ‘There is an answer.’ She took a bite out of her tea, savage as if it had challenged her. ‘There has to be.’

  ‘Actually, no,’ growled Deacon. ‘There doesn’t.’

  She stared at him, her gaze hard and tired and angry. ‘And this is why God gave children two parents. Because if they only had fathers they’d be written off the first time they put anyone to any trouble. After all, it’s so much more fun to make another one.’

  ‘And if they only had mothers,’ retorted Deacon… but intellectually he was better at the marathon than the sprint; he was still hunting for an apposite retort when Daniel rescued him by standing up.

  ‘If you two are going to fight, I’m going back to the office. Do let me know which of you manages to hurt the other most.’

  They looked at him. Brodie’s glance could have cut silk; Deacon’s would have concussed an armadillo. But Brodie spoke for them both. ‘Oh, sit down, Daniel. You know perfectly well it’s only having you here that stops us ripping one another’s throats out. You’re a calming influence.’

  Daniel hesitated. He’d been called a lot worse – in fact, he’d been called worse by the two people in this room. All the same, a man might wish for a different kind of compliment from the woman he loved. She loved him too – he knew she did – just not the same way. Which was why he found himself acting as referee between Brodie and the father of her baby.

  He sighed. He was accustomed to it now, this endlessly repeating pattern in which he martyred his needs to hers. He’d long ago accepted that he couldn’t make her happy but he could make it possible for her to be happy. Though it wasn’t what he’d have chosen, Brodie’s happiness mattered more to him than his own. He did as she said and sat down. ‘But you’ll have to play nicely,’ he instructed them.

  They were all getting older, mellowing. When they first knew one another, Deacon wasn’t a man to trifle with. Even carefully; even if you were much bigger than Daniel. He was still intimidated by Deacon but he’d learnt to appreciate his finer points as well. He was utterly honest. He was utterly reliable, even if some of the things he could be relied on to do were not desirable. And what you saw was what you got. He said what he thought to your face, even if he had to hold you up by the lapels to do it.

  So now, instead of snapping Daniel’s head off, he cleared his throat and started again. ‘So, do we know anything now that we didn’t a month ago? Had anyone any useful suggestions?’


  Brodie’s lips tightened and she shook her head. ‘They said we should enjoy the time we have left. Enjoy! Enjoy watching a child grow weaker, knowing he’s going to die. Anything has to be better than that. Any hope, however tenuous – however stupid. Anything.’

  Daniel said nothing. But Deacon had the right to contradict. ‘What you have to ask yourself is whether you want Jonathan to die in an airport lounge. Because if you don’t, at some point you have to say he’s done enough. Maybe that point is now. Maybe he’s travelled far enough, seen enough experts. Maybe you’ve tried hard enough. Maybe now we move on to plan B.’

  ‘I’m not ready to give up on him!’ Her voice was thick with the tears she refused to shed.

  ‘It’s not giving up,’ said Deacon, stubbornly hanging on to his temper. ‘It’s choosing what’s best for our son in a situation where the options are narrowing.’

  Brodie stared angrily at him. She’d been ready for an argument. It said all you needed to know about their relationship that she found it easier to deal with him when they were both shouting than when he was calm and rational. It was like arguing with Daniel: you had to think your case through because otherwise he’d deconstruct it. She ground the heels of both hands into her eyes, tried to explain how she felt.

  ‘We’re only going to get one chance at this. When it’s over, we want to feel we gave it everything. I know the odds are long, and getting longer by the day. I know it would be easier, on all of us, to stop now. But if we do that we’re never going to be sure that one more effort wouldn’t have saved him. That the very next doctor wouldn’t have something to offer that’d make all the difference. If we keep going, for as long as Jonathan can take it, at least we’ll know there wasn’t a treatment waiting for him behind a door that I turned back from.’