Liars All

by Jo Bannister

  Before they were even out of the hospital car park Brodie said sharply, ‘Jack…just shut up and listen. I’ll take questions later, all right?’

  In the event, though, she’d already answered most of them by then. ‘You want to know if I believe in this? I don’t know. I know it can’t do any harm. I know it doesn’t involve dragging him halfway round the world again, so even if it doesn’t help it doesn’t waste whatever time he has left.

  ‘You want to know if Hester Dale believed in it. I think so. She didn’t make many claims for it. She said that, statistically, it seemed to help in more cases than you could explain as spontaneous recovery or misdiagnosis. She didn’t try to convert me, or get money, or anything like that. There’s nothing in it for her except satisfaction if it pays off.

  ‘And you’re wondering how much it matters if we don’t believe. I don’t know. Hester didn’t know. What she said to me was, “You want him to get well. Believe in that.” Look, Jack, I don’t know how this could possibly help. And yet – unless she’s lying to me, which I don’t believe – it seems to. When it’s used, people have a better chance of recovering. Why? I don’t know. How? I don’t know that either. I don’t know how homeopathy can possibly work, when all the preparations really consist of is water, yet loads of responsible people testify that it does. Maybe not all the time; maybe not for everyone. Nor does conventional medicine. We know that. We’ve tried everything else. Now I’m going to try this.

  ‘And I want your help. Not just yours – everyone I can rope in. Numbers seem to be significant too. Hester’s group will be working on it, but she thinks it might help if I can get family and friends involved as well. So I will. This may be the last thing I can do for him. I’m not going to baulk at it because it seems silly.’

  Finally she ran out of words. She sat back, drained, waiting for the avalanche of scepticism she was sure he was about to dump on her.

  But all Deacon could find to say was: ‘You think people praying for him is going to save Jonathan’s life?’

  It was a long time since Daniel had felt so nervous. Worried, and occasionally afraid, but not nervous. Nervousness suggested you were doing something that you didn’t have to do, where you were uncertain of both the outcome and the wisdom of starting. Daniel did a lot of things he didn’t strictly have to do, where uncertainty was the best that could be said of the probable outcome, but he was blessed – or possibly cursed – by such sureness of purpose that he seldom questioned the wisdom of starting anything. He didn’t do things on the spur of the moment. He gave serious thought to every dilemma he encountered, and passed them through various moral and ethical filters before reaching a decision. But once he was sure the decision was right, practical considerations such as effort entailed, risk versus reward, even the chance that a desired object might be unobtainable didn’t trouble him. He’d been beaten before now. He’d hardly ever given up.

  But this was different. Not because he was being paid for his services but because his actions had the potential to hurt someone. Someone who’d been hurt already; who hadn’t deserved that, and certainly didn’t deserve to be hurt anymore. Yet he believed that what he was doing was right. That was why Daniel was standing on this doorstep with a dew of sweat on his upper lip, clasping and unclasping his hands, putting them in his pockets and then behind his back, like a teenage boy calling for his first date.

  The doorstep was in River Drive, as good an address as you’d find in Dimmock without going up onto the Firestone Cliffs. This had rather puzzled Daniel at first. His understanding was that Jane Moss had been a couple of footmen below her fiancé in the social system – that the Sangers were the ones with money. Charlie Voss had explained. Jane’s flat was high in a tower block, far from ideal for someone in a wheelchair. Imogen Sanger’s house, echoingly empty when she found herself living there alone, was large and expansive, with wide doorways and enough rooms to make a separate living space on the ground floor. When Jane was discharged from hospital, this was where she came.

  And this was the step on which Daniel now stood, nervous and unsure what to do with his hands, wishing someone would answer his ring and at the same time hoping no one was at home. He hadn’t phoned ahead. He doubted she’d have agreed to see him if he had.

  A change in the light falling on the glass panel above his head suggested movement inside. At the last moment he clasped his hands behind his back, on the basis that they could get into less trouble there, and prepared a friendly (but not too friendly) and courteous (but not smarmy) smile.

  When the door opened, Daniel found himself smiling inanely at mid-air.

  A voice said pointedly, ‘Down here.’

  Daniel winced. She was in a wheelchair. He knew she was in a wheelchair. She’d have had to be standing on a stool to be where he was looking.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m used to looking up at people.’

  Eyes as sharp as hazel diamonds ran him up and down – took in the lack of stature, the lack of substance, the thick glasses, the expression of a slightly simple choirboy, the bruises. Then she gave a grim, gusty little chuckle. ‘Trundle a mile on these wheels.’

  He thought it might be best to start again. ‘Miss Moss, I’m Daniel Hood. I work for a firm that specialises in finding things for people.’ He offered her one of Brodie’s cards. It seemed to do nothing to ease her puzzlement, and when he looked closer he saw it was in fact his membership card from the Astronomical Society. ‘Er…’

  ‘Mr Hood,’ said Jane Moss briskly, ‘what do you want?’

  The ground to swallow me up, he thought. ‘I’d like to talk to you. And, if you think it appropriate, to Mrs Sanger.’

  ‘What about?’

  If he told her she wouldn’t let him over the threshold. She’d sit there screaming and throwing things at him until he was out of range. He needed a harmless little subterfuge to get him in and get the conversation started, so he could edge up on his actual purpose. But Daniel didn’t do subterfuge, even harmless little ones. Even when he should have done. ‘Robert Carson.’

  Whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t that. Half a dozen different emotions flitted across her face, so quickly it was impossible to name any of them. But he wasn’t stupid: he knew he’d done the equivalent of kicking her in the ribs. She would be shocked, hurt, upset and probably very angry to be confronted with that name on her own doorstep.

  But she didn’t burst into tears. She gave him a penetrating look, then an odd little half smile. ‘Daniel Hood, you said?’

  He risked a little smile in reply. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Daniel…would you help me stand up?’

  Surprise widened his eyes. ‘Of course. I didn’t know… Of course. Tell me how.’

  She used her hands to lift her legs, one by one, and put her feet on the floor. She folded the footrests of the wheelchair out of the way. Then she extended both arms. ‘Hold on and brace yourself. I can do the rest.’

  There wasn’t a lot to her. There hadn’t been before the attack, and months in a wheelchair had robbed her of much of the muscle mass of her lower body. But her arms and shoulders were strong. When she hauled, Daniel had to resist being dragged down. But then she was standing in front of him.

  ‘Not the most elegant procedure in the world,’ said Jane Moss, ‘but I’m getting better.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Daniel, and meant it. ‘Can you – I don’t know – can you walk at all?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, ‘not yet. I can’t even stand for very long. Just long enough for this.’ And she slapped his face so hard that he reeled against the doorpost.

  With nothing to hold on to she too keeled over. She grabbed for the wheelchair but missed, and ended up spilt across the hall floor. Daniel was stunned. Not for himself, though he never saw the blow coming; not even for his nose, though it was throbbing again like a toothache. He saw the helpless girl sprawled across the black and white tiles, and was appalled at what he’d done.

  But the indign
ity of her position was the last thing on Jane Moss’s mind. She was too furious to care. And she’d hit the floor a lot of times already in her struggle with the wheelchair. ‘I want to know what gutter rag you’re from,’ she demanded fiercely. ‘I want to tell your editor, in person, what I think of his crappy reporters.’

  Gingerly, Daniel pushed his glasses back in place. ‘Miss Moss, I’m not a reporter. And I do understand how bitter you must feel. If you tell me to go, I’ll go. But I wish you’d give me the chance to explain. Not because there’s something in it for you – I don’t think there is. But the bombshell that tore your life apart caused collateral damage to another woman, and while no one would blame you for not giving a damn about Robert Carson’s mother, it would be an act of real generosity to at least listen to her regrets. Will you give me five minutes?’

  She went on staring angrily at him, but without the same certainty. She was not exactly a pretty girl, and probably never had been. Nine months ago, before the scars on her face faded to mere silver lines, she must have been quite disfigured. Now what you mostly saw – after you’d registered and forgotten about the wheelchair – was determination. There was a strength in her that was separate from the physical strength needed to cope with her disability. Her face was strong. Her eyes were straight and challenging, the set of her jaw firm, and her straight brown hair was cut short and flicked out of her face as if she’d more interesting things to think about. Daniel knew, having done his research, that she was twenty-four and an archaeology graduate.

  ‘Get me up,’ she said tersely.

  ‘Er…’ It wasn’t reluctance, he just wasn’t sure how.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ She arranged herself like Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid, dragging the chair behind her. ‘Bend down.’ She put her arms round his neck, and when he straightened up – which was an effort but less than it should have been – she slid back into the chair.

  She looked up at Daniel then, her eyes hard. ‘Five minutes. Unless something important comes up.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Faith healing,’ Deacon said flatly.

  ‘They prefer to call it distance healing,’ said Brodie. She was watching him out of the corner of her eye as he drove, still expecting some kind of explosion. ‘Success seems to depend less on the faith of the subject than the conviction of the intercessors. And they can be anywhere.’

  ‘Intercessors?’ said Deacon, still in that same flat monotone that suggested he was keeping something on a tight rein.

  ‘That’s what they call them. Prayer groups. People meeting in their churches, or their temples, or their houses – many are Christians but not all – praying for someone who’s sick because they think it’ll help.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Brodie admitted. ‘But I’m pretty sure being prayed for isn’t going to do Jonathan any harm. It’s not as if we’re giving up on anything to do this. We’ve done everything his doctors wanted to do. I’ve done things they didn’t see any point in doing. None of it got us anywhere. Maybe this won’t either, but there’s nothing left to lose. I’m going to give it a try.’

  Deacon drove another mile in silence. Then: ‘Does it mean taking him somewhere?’

  Brodie shook her head. ‘All they want is a photograph and a few details. I told Hester a bit about him, and she took a picture on her phone. She’ll email it to the groups asked to pray for him.’

  He gave a muffled snort.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It seems weird. People so mediaeval in their thinking as to reckon you can pray people better, but they’re connected to the internet.’

  ‘That’s the bit that seems weird?’ said Brodie, her voice climbing.

  It was a long drive, which was a good thing. They kept coming back to the subject. ‘Are there any statistics on this?’ asked Deacon, whose instinct was always to look for evidence.

  ‘There have been studies,’ said Brodie. ‘How authoritative they are depends on who you ask. Hester says some of them produced significant and occasionally remarkable results – but she admits that such results are hard to replicate. Which is what the scientific community expects to be able to do. Repeat a procedure and get the same outcome every time.

  ‘But that’s kind of the point. It is a matter of faith. The people praying over those photographs are doing it because they believe it will do some good, not because they think the statistics will be significant. If it works once and never again, that would be dismissed by science as a fluke – but for that patient it would be a miracle. I suppose it depends on where you’re standing.’

  Deacon thought some more. Haywards Heath came and went. ‘What do we have to do?’

  Brodie didn’t comment on it, but she appreciated that we. ‘We don’t have to do anything. But there’s a general feeling that it helps if those closest to the patient join in the prayers. I said we’d do that.’

  He gave her a sidelong glance. ‘I didn’t know you were religious.’

  She swept a distracted hand through her thick curls. ‘I’m not. What I am is desperate. I’d crawl over broken glass for him – I’ll sure as hell get down on my knees and pray for him.’

  ‘All right,’ said Deacon.

  ‘You’ll do it too?’

  ‘Like you say, there’s nothing to lose. I might feel silly. It’s not much of a price to pay for even a tiny chance of saving my son’s life.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Brodie, genuinely touched. ‘And I know Paddy will, and Marta’ – from the flat above hers – ‘will. And John and Julia will. Which just leaves…’

  ‘Oh,’ said Deacon, casting her a startled glance. ‘Yes. Will he do it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Brodie firmly.

  Deacon wasn’t so sure. ‘You know how he feels about religion. All religions. All trappings of religion.’

  ‘For me,’ said Brodie, ‘he’ll do it.’

  ‘Well…lots of luck,’ muttered Deacon.

  Voss had been going through the files. Many of them were on computer now, though some were still on paper and the best of them were in Detective Superintendent Deacon’s head. Still he’d managed to amass some interesting facts.

  Lionel Littlejohn lived and worked in Dimmock for eighteen years, if you included the five and a half when his putative address was the Woodgreen estate but his actual whereabouts were whichever of Her Majesty’s prisons had vacancies. He’d worked for himself and for other people. Among the other people he was on record as having worked for were most of the middle-sized players in organised crime on the south coast. Voss presumed that meant he’d also worked for the big players, only they’d arranged things better and he hadn’t got caught.

  Five years ago he’d decided he didn’t get as much fun out of blagging as he used to and retired, moving close to where his married daughter lived in Carlisle. Voss looked for any indication that he’d returned to his old ways and found none. This in itself was unusual. In the same way that most old lags leave prison with the intention of going straight, most really old lags need at least two attempts at retiring. More fail than succeed because making an honest living requires more commitment than petty crime.

  But Voss found no suggestion that Lionel Littlejohn had been involved in anything illegal, in Carlisle or Dimmock, during those five years. And five years is a long time. Most people who’ve given something up for five years will manage to stay off it.

  So what had happened to tempt him out of a comfortable retirement? Not the sudden need for cash. Carlisle may be well north of Watford but they don’t do things so differently there: a man of Lionel’s experience could always pick up casual work if he wanted it. No, thought Voss, this smacked more of a favour for someone he considered a friend.

  Two names came instantly to mind. One he felt safe dismissing. Wherever Joe Loomis went after bleeding his life out on Brodie’s carpet, Voss doubted there were telecommunications with Carlisle.

  And then there was one. That didn’t automa
tically make him guilty, but all his instincts told Voss he’d be wasting his time doing anything before he’d eliminated Terry Walsh from his inquiries.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It wasn’t that Jane Moss didn’t have any furniture. In her living room were a comfortable sofa and an armchair by the fire. But she didn’t invite Daniel to sit, so – having been brought up by his grandparents with manners that were considered polite in the 1950s – he continued to stand.

  It should have been easier for her to bring her visitor down to her level. But she’d learnt to use her otherness as a power play. Daniel felt like a small boy again, summoned before the headmaster, kept standing while the one in charge commanded the room from behind his desk.

  ‘You’re wasting your time here. You do know that?’ There was an edge like steel on her voice.

  He wasn’t her guest. She hadn’t invited him here – it was a minor miracle that she let him over the threshold when she learnt why he’d come. She was entitled to her opinion of him. At least she was listening. He took a deep breath.

  ‘Margaret Carson didn’t raise her son to be a thief and a killer. She saw it happening, she tried to stop it, she failed. She wanted him to be a doctor. She’d have been satisfied if he’d grown up to be a decent brickie’s labourer, and proud if he’d also managed to be a good husband and father. But by the time he was sixteen it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen. She tried loving him despite who he was turning into. She tried to not love him, in case that might help. But nothing did. If you believe in the concept of bad eggs – that some children don’t have it in them to grow into decent individuals who make mistakes but make amends and leave the world a little better than they found it – then Bobby Carson’s one of those.’

  ‘You reckon?’ gritted the girl. There was a world of venom in the words.

  Daniel swallowed. ‘Mrs Carson can’t do anything about what her son did to you. If she could she would. She feels terribly guilty and desperately sorry. And she’s the sort of person who thinks you should try to make up for your mistakes. That’s what she hired me to do. To find a way of restoring a little of what was stolen from you.’