Liars All

by Jo Bannister

  She breathed quietly for a moment, marshalling her thoughts. ‘You’re Jonathan’s father, you get a say in this too. I’ve been taking all the decisions, and maybe that’s not good enough. If you can honestly say to me that what I’m doing is wrong, that a slim chance of finding a cure isn’t worth dragging a sick child halfway across the world, I’ll stop. But before you say that to me, Jack, you’ve got to be absolutely sure. This is a live show. No rehearsals, no second takes.’

  Deacon bit his lip. She was right: it was easier to criticise someone else’s life-and-death decisions than take your own. He thought it had gone on long enough. He didn’t think there was anything to gain by going on any longer, and he didn’t think Jonathan should be living his last few weeks like this. But sure? How could anyone be sure? You just had to take your best guess.

  Which was what Brodie was doing. And perhaps he’d have played it differently; and perhaps, when his son died, he’d have thought he’d got it wrong. There were no certainties. All you could do was play the game as hard as you could for as long as you could.

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. If you think this is what we should be doing, I’m not going to argue. I want what’s best for Jonathan. I also want what’s best for you. If we lose him’ – it was in his voice that if was just a kinder way of saying when – ‘I don’t want you wishing you’d done something different. If that means you have to keep looking, keep looking.’

  She drank his words as if she’d walked a hot desert in search of them. Her voice wasn’t entirely steady. ‘Thank you. Daniel?’

  Daniel’s pale eyes flared behind the thick glasses. ‘I don’t get a vote.’

  ‘You’re our friend,’ she said, ‘and you talk more sense than anyone I’ve ever known. I want to know what you think.’

  He considered for a moment. Long enough that, if Deacon resented his involvement, he’d have said so. When he didn’t, Daniel said, ‘I think you should set some kind of limit. Agree now the point at which you stop.’

  Deacon frowned. ‘Such as?’

  ‘He’s on painkillers, isn’t he? How about, when you need to up the dosage again, you come home?’

  Chapter Four

  When Daniel returned to the office Brodie went into the bedroom to check on Jonathan. There was space in the flat for a pint-sized nursery but she’d never wanted to move his cot out of her room, feeling instinctively that she should keep him near her. Even before he fell ill, she was conscious that his inability to amuse himself by looking at the objects around him would make time alone seem both long and empty.

  But he was tired after the flight, sleeping so deeply that the chiming ball he was still clutching was entirely silent. Brodie went back into the living room. She cast the comfy chair a glance, then went and sat on the sofa beside Deacon. After a minute one weighty arm went round her shoulders. They sat a while longer in silence.

  Finally she said, ‘It’s not that I’m expecting a miracle.’

  ‘I know,’ said Deacon gruffly.

  ‘I just want to feel that, if there is a miracle out there, we didn’t miss it.’

  ‘I know.’

  She let out a slow sigh. There were a lot of things these two didn’t agree on – in truth, most things, and probably this too. It was at least a minor miracle that they hadn’t let it come between them. So far. But all her instincts, as well as her doctors, were telling Brodie that the end was coming. If they’d got this far without tearing one another apart, they’d get to the end.

  She said, ‘What about your case? Adjourned?’

  Deacon shook his head. ‘He changed his plea. Didn’t even hold out for manslaughter. Not that it was a runner. He hit two people with a ton of car in order to rob them – there was nothing casual or careless about it. Maybe he didn’t need anyone dead, but what he did that resulted in the boy’s death was entirely deliberate and the word for that is murder.’

  ‘Why do people do that?’ asked Brodie, puzzled. ‘Change their pleas. A case takes months coming to court – they must have thought about what they were going to say. But as soon as the jury files in, all at once they go from Goodness me, certainly not, it wasn’t me, and if it was then that isn’t what I did to Er, well, actually, hands up, yes it was. Proving to all concerned that they’re not only guilty as charged but they’re liars too.’

  ‘I suppose, when you’re facing life for murder, you’re not too bothered if people think you tell porkies as well.’ Deacon gave a disparaging sniff. ‘And the reason they wait till the last minute is that something can always go wrong. This time, everything hinged on the girl. If she hadn’t been able to testify, or if she had fallen apart in court, we’d have struggled to prove intent. He’d offloaded everything he stole before we caught up with him and none of it’s turned up. Without the girl, there’s no proof that Carson took anything. The thief could have been a bystander, a paramedic, someone at the hospital – anyone. Without Jane Moss, all I could actually prove was dangerous driving causing death. That’s why he waited. In case she couldn’t go through with it.’

  Brodie’s eyes widened. ‘You think he tried to nobble her?’

  Deacon shook his head. ‘He’s not that class of villain. Bobby Carson is just a mugger with a really big cosh. All his defence had to work with was the hope that someone who’d suffered life-threatening injuries might be too traumatised to take the witness box. Or that, if she got there, she’d buckle under cross-examination – agree that she couldn’t be sure who took her necklace.’

  ‘Was there any danger of that?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Deacon, with some satisfaction. ‘Physically, of course, she’s frail; but she looked…well, she looked the way you look when somebody says you can’t do something. Determined doesn’t come close. There was no way the defence were going to shake her, and trying would just have made things worse. They did the only thing they could – took Carson into a quiet room and told him to’fess up and get the very few Brownie points still available.’

  ‘So he’s going down.’

  ‘All the way.’ Deacon looked at her. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t at the airport.’

  Brodie managed a smile. ‘Couldn’t be helped.’ She added, deadpan, ‘Daniel parked the car in Haywards Heath.’

  Deacon rolled his eyes.

  Daniel walked back into town. For years he’d walked everywhere because he didn’t have a car, indeed had hardly driven since passing his test at eighteen. When they stopped being just friends and he started working for Brodie, after she found she was carrying Jonathan, she scorned his belief that you can get most places on foot or by public transport and said she wasn’t paying for time spent waiting at bus stops. She gave him a refresher course in driving skills and put his name on her business insurance. But he still didn’t have a car, and only got Brodie’s when (a) it was essential for work and (b) she didn’t have a more pressing need for it, like shopping or picking Paddy up from school. Daniel still went most places on foot or by public transport.

  He genuinely didn’t mind. His grandfather taught him to drive, but too many years had passed when he wasn’t using the skill and he didn’t think he’d ever be entirely at ease behind the wheel. Not like Deacon, who drove on autopilot while doing the mental gymnastics that were part of his job. Daniel thought better while walking.

  And because he was thinking, he didn’t pick up on the fact that he was being followed.

  Brodie bought her office when Shack Lane was a run-down little side street between Fisher Hill and the Promenade. The building had been empty for two years and the roof was letting in. Even in its prime it was only a little two-up two-down mid-terrace house at the unfashionable end of a second division seaside town, and the top floor was someone’s flat. But it was perfect for her needs, for two reasons: her divorce settlement was enough to buy both it and her flat in Chiffney Road; and an unfashionable side street was the ideal location for her kind of business. She didn’t want passing trade. And the trade she did wan
t often wanted to pass unnoticed.

  She called it Looking for Something? She specialised in finding things – lost things, wanted things, personal things, occasionally quite big things like houses and, once, a sailing barge. When people had exhausted their own ideas, if they still wanted something enough to pay her commission, they came to Brodie Farrell.

  It wasn’t quite true that she could find anything. But research is a catacomb, full of dark passages and intersecting avenues, and the secret to doing it well is doing it long enough to acquire the techniques. It only seemed like magic when Brodie produced a painting of someone’s house or a photograph of their great-grandfather. In fact it was just a professional being very good at her job.

  Daniel wasn’t particularly good at the job. Partly because it wasn’t his field – he trained as a teacher, his passion was for mathematics – and partly because much of Brodie’s success was based on having skin like a rhinoceros when it came to asking impertinent questions. Brodie was bold and striking and memorable, and often people were oddly flattered to have her poking her nose into their affairs. Daniel was small, plain and self-effacing, and he hated asking personal questions of people he didn’t know, or even those he did. He did it for one reason only: because Brodie needed him to.

  He took it on when she found herself pregnant – a situation that couldn’t have taken her more by surprise if it had been a virgin birth. And he kept it on when it became clear that Jonathan’s problems would keep his mother fully occupied for the foreseeable future. Sometimes in the early months they’d swapped roles, because while Brodie was much better at running the business Daniel was pretty good at looking after the children. More recently, though, with Brodie chasing the fireflies of medical advancement, Daniel was left alone with the business and Brodie’s daughter Paddy was living with her ex-husband. It wasn’t ideal, just the best that could be managed.

  Daniel’s route across town took him through the park, under the shadow of the monument. Which was where it all started for him and Brodie, four years ago now. They’d covered a lot of ground together in that time. And if the journey hadn’t left him exactly where he’d have chosen to be, it had been a hell of a ride. Taken all in all, he never wished they hadn’t met.

  Two hundred metres down the Promenade, then left into Fisher Hill and left again into Shack Lane. And there, three doors short of the smart burgundy one with the discreet slate nameplate, he stopped and turned round. ‘If you’re looking for Looking for Something? it’s here. If you’re looking for something else, perhaps I can help.’

  Daniel hadn’t entirely wasted those four years in which he’d swapped the challenges of a maths class for the even more exciting realm in which Brodie Farrell moved. He’d thought there was someone following him when he entered the park. By the time he’d wandered round the monument, apparently studying the architecture, and she was still with him, he was sure.

  She didn’t look like a stalker. She was a woman in her mid-fifties wearing a linen jacket and a hat – a sure sign of respectability, unless it’s a baseball cap worn backwards. She wore beige leather court shoes and carried a matching handbag. And from the way her eyes flew wide, she was astonished that her subterfuge had been discovered.

  Her obvious embarrassment, and the way she swallowed it rather than making an excuse and leaving, told Daniel she was at least a potential client. She wasn’t here to waste his time, because the girls in the office dared her, or because Brodie had stepped on her toes in the course of some earlier commission and she wanted to give him a piece of her mind.

  ‘Mr Hood,’ she stammered. ‘I’m sorry, I just…I needed to… I wanted to be sure I was doing the right thing.’

  Daniel nodded amiably and took out his key. ‘This is our office. Why don’t you come in and tell me about it? It’s a very small office – if you change your mind you can be outside in three strides. If I don’t think I can help I’ll say so.’

  She followed him inside, holding her handbag close as if unsure what lay behind the burgundy front door.

  He saw her seated, then went through to the adjoining kitchen. She heard the rattle of cups. ‘Milk? Sugar?’ He wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting, neither Humphrey Bogart nor Sean Connery so much as a Renaissance cherub who, in growing up, had lost the wings and gained a serious pair of spectacles. With his diminutive stature, bright yellow hair and grave politeness, he might have been a thirty-year-old choirboy.

  He returned with the tray and a reassuring smile. ‘Do you want to tell me your name? Or would you rather hear something about what we do first?’

  He might have had no great talent for the work but Daniel was good at putting people at their ease. The woman relaxed visibly. ‘Margaret,’ she said. ‘My name is Margaret.’

  ‘I’m Daniel.’

  ‘I know.’ She returned his smile uncertainly. ‘I made enquiries before I came here. I’m sorry if that seems rude, but I needed to know you were the sort of person I could deal with. I hadn’t planned to come here today. But then I saw you in town and…’

  ‘And am I?’ prompted Daniel. ‘The kind of person you can deal with?’

  ‘I think so.’ She cast him a nervous glance over the top of her cup. A little like Dimmock itself, there was a certain faded gentility about her. As if once she’d enjoyed a better life. ‘I’m not sure I’m the sort of person you can.’

  Daniel had a simple test for this. ‘Have you done anything wicked?’

  ‘No!’ Then she gave it a little more thought before repeating, with an odd mixture of insistence and despair, ‘No. But something wicked was done.’

  ‘Is it a police matter?’

  ‘The police were involved. I think they’re finished now.’

  ‘Then I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t talk about it. If you want to.’

  ‘There’s one,’ said the woman. Another of the anxious, troubled little glances. ‘Shame.’

  Daniel neither recoiled nor leant forward like an overeager social worker. He sipped his tea pensively. ‘The funny thing about shame is, the people who feel it most are usually those with the least reason. Those who acknowledge their responsibilities. To feel shame you need a conscience.

  ‘You say you’ve done nothing wicked and I believe you. You say the police were involved, but whoever they’ve locked up it wasn’t you. Are you sure you’ve anything to be ashamed of?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Margaret with a terrible certainty. ‘People were…hurt. Worse than hurt. And it wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t carelessness or stupidity – it was deliberate. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t expect it to happen, I didn’t want it to happen, perhaps I couldn’t have prevented it. But it couldn’t have happened without me.’

  Daniel was thinking. ‘Can I tell you something about me and my boss? Mrs Farrell – this is her business really, I’m only helping out while…well… The point is, she’s the expert. She probably could find a needle in a haystack. She found me.

  ‘That’s how we met. Four years ago. Somebody came in here one day, said I’d stolen money from her and asked Mrs Farrell to find me. And she did. But she was being lied to. I hadn’t stolen anything. Someone thought I’d done something I hadn’t, and knew something I didn’t, and wanted Brodie to find me so he could ask me about it. And I don’t mean just ask. I was hurt too – quite badly. Brodie blamed herself. She’d no way of guessing how the information she provided would be used, but she felt responsible. Without her help they’d never have found me. They’d never have…’

  His voice faltered. Even four years on, even knowing that the worst time of his life had led to some of the best times, he found it hard to get the words out. As if he could deal with what had been done to him in the privacy of his own head but was afraid what might happen if he let it out.

  He flicked his visitor a shy little grin. ‘Sorry. The reason I’m telling you this is not to play for sympathy. It’s to make the point that bad things happen to good people. Sometimes, bad things happ
en through good people. What matters is the intent. Brodie never meant to hurt me. I never blamed her, and I think even Brodie’s forgiven herself now. If what’s troubling you is at all similar, you’re probably being harder on yourself than anyone else is.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  He thought she wanted to say something more, but Daniel waited and still it didn’t come. He wasn’t sure what to do for the best. ‘You haven’t committed yourself to anything by coming here. You can finish your tea, go home and never come back, and if we meet in Tesco’s we needn’t so much as exchange a glance. The trouble with that is, nothing will have been resolved. The problem that made you want to see me will still be there.

  ‘So I’m going to say something that might make it easier. If it’s indiscreet, I’m sorry. You call the shots; I really am only trying to help. And it might help if I say I think I know who you are.’

  She looked as shocked as if he’d slapped her. For a moment words evaded her. Then: ‘How?’ she stammered. ‘You can’t. I wasn’t… I didn’t… How can you know that?’

  ‘Don’t be upset,’ Daniel said quickly. ‘Please…that’s the last thing I want. But you gave me your first name as if you were afraid your second name might mean something to me. And even in Dimmock a murder trial is unusual enough to attract attention. I put two and two together, and I thought – maybe I was wrong – that you might be Robert Carson’s mother.’

  Chapter Five

  Margaret Carson vented a breath so long she might have been holding it for most of the last nine months. Since her son was arrested she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep. She hadn’t spoken to anyone, even friends and family, without wondering how much they knew and what they thought about it, about her. She hadn’t walked down a street without the fear of being recognised. Once, when a man in a shop raised a hand to scratch his nose, she actually flinched.

  Now this young man with his pale, weak eyes and his mild, engaging personality was telling her it might have been for nothing. That her responsibility for her child’s behaviour ended when his childhood ended, and the man in the shop and the people who glanced at her in the street probably didn’t know who she was, and might not care if they did. The thought brought a lump to her throat.