Liars All

by Jo Bannister

  ‘All you have to do,’ said Walsh, ‘is leave her name out of it. You can have me. You can have your day in court without even worrying that my high-priced legal team might get me off. I’ll plead guilty. You’ll be doing the town a service, Jack, you know that. Getting me off the street is much more valuable than having Sophie work in a soup kitchen for a month. And for that, Jonathan gets treated with the only drug in preparation anywhere in the world that offers a significant chance of curing him.’

  ‘You know that’s true,’ urged Caroline. ‘Brodie’s searched the world for this chance and no one could offer it. We can. We can’t promise it’ll save him, but this is a highly respected clinic at the cutting edge of cancer research, and they’re willing to take him because Terry asked them to. A personal favour. That’s what we want in return.’

  ‘It’s not like anyone will ever know,’ pleaded Walsh. ‘What evidence there is points to me. No one but you would have thought to look that little bit further. Neither Division nor even Detective Sergeant Voss will ever suspect it was anything other than a good collar.

  ‘And no one will ever hear that I got Jonathan on the drug trial. I’ll hide the trail so well even you wouldn’t find it. Do this one thing in return. Settle for me. Leave Sophie out of it.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  After he’d finished at the custody suite – the names they made him call the cells these days! – Deacon made his excuses and left. He was still officially on leave so he had every right to. Sergeant McKinney, who was doing a stint as custody officer and so universally referred to as The Prince of PACE, thought the Detective Superintendent was probably going somewhere to get drunk. And he was right. But there was something he had to do first.

  The house was quiet. Paddy wasn’t home from school yet. Marta, in the flat upstairs, had no pupil thumping out novice piano with two left hands. There was no sound even of a vacuum cleaner or washing machine. Only Brodie’s car in the drive, and the fact that he’d had Detective Constable Jill Meadows take Jonathan home and she hadn’t brought him back, suggested the Victorian villa was occupied at all.

  Deacon parked his car beside Brodie’s and let himself in with the key which she’d felt obliged to give him and he’d felt obliged never to use. But today time was important. He didn’t want Brodie to hear a garbled version of what had happened before he got there. Actually, he didn’t want her to hear an accurate one either.

  He found her sitting quietly in the living room, the baby on her lap, her body curved protectively around him. She looked up, unsurprised, at the sound of the door. He saw from her face she was expecting him.

  The reason he’d sent Meadows instead of, for instance, Detective Constable Huxley was not primarily that she was a woman. It was because she could be relied on not to gabble. Most people said more than they intended to, more than they wanted to, when Brodie fixed them with her loftiest stare and demanded to know what was going on.

  But Brodie had almost as many contacts at Battle Alley Police Station as Deacon had, and probably more friends. Meadows may have managed to say nothing beyond Hello and How are you? and Here’s your baby, but as soon as she left Brodie would have been on the phone looking for information. Though Deacon had got here as soon as he could, Brodie Farrell never needed much time to wring information out of people. She’d had two hours. Whatever gossip was currently racing round Battle Alley would certainly have reached Chiffney Road by now.

  But it wouldn’t be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Only he and the Walshes knew that.

  Brodie was on the sofa. Deacon took the chair, facing her squarely. All the way over here he’d been wondering how to start. In fact it hardly mattered how he told her, as long as he did it at once.

  She looked up unhurriedly. ‘I gather you had an interesting morning.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Productive?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  ‘I need to tell you about it. First, I need to know what you’ve heard already.’

  She looked away, dropped a feather-light kiss onto her baby’s head. ‘I know you’ve arrested Sophie Walsh.’

  Strictly speaking, Walsh should have destroyed the necklace. As soon as he realised what it was he should have taken it for a short sail aboard his yacht Salamander and dropped it into the English Channel. That would have been the professional thing to do, and Terry Walsh took a pride in his professionalism. In fifteen fathoms off Beachy Head he could be as sure as death and taxes that it would never come back to haunt him.

  What kept him from doing the sensible thing was not the value of the stone. It was valuable to Margaret Carson, who’d have needed a loan to buy it. To Imogen Sanger, who was comfortably off, it had immense personal value. To Caroline Walsh it was not much more than a bauble, except that it was a gift from her daughter.

  Terry Walsh was a family man, and to an extent that made him a sentimental man. This isn’t always a weakness, though it probably isn’t a survival trait in a criminal. Once he was aware of its history, of how it was given to Imogen Sanger, to her son and to her son’s fiancée, and how it was taken away, he couldn’t bring himself to drop it in the sea. The blood on it was precious blood. He wrapped it carefully, put it in a watertight box and buried it at the bottom of his garden. Then he planted a rose bush on top of it. You’d need to know it was there to find it, and if someone knew it was there he was already in trouble. It was as safe as it could be and still where he could recover it. He had it in his mind that, one day, he might find a risk-free way to return it to its owner.

  And in a way he had. Now Deacon knew the story, regardless of what he did about it there was no longer any need to keep the necklace.

  Caroline Walsh didn’t go to Battle Alley with her husband and daughter. Deacon advised her that he’d want a statement from her later. But she hadn’t bought the necklace from a man in a disco, or lied about doing it, and while he might get round to charging her with attempting to suborn him, right now he was too busy.

  Once she’d delivered Jonathan to his mother, Deacon had DC Meadows collect Sophie Walsh from the stables where she worked. He himself drove Walsh into town. He wished he could enjoy the moment more. But the triumph was for ever ruined by the price he’d had to pay.

  Caroline was not a sentimental woman. She was a strong woman. She’d always known this day might come; she wasn’t going to collapse in the hall and cry about it now. There were practical things she had to do. One was to call the family’s solicitor, Adam Selkirk. If anyone could get Pol Pot let off with an ASBO, it was Adam Selkirk. When she’d done that she went into the garden shed and selected a sturdy fork.

  ‘And her father,’ said Deacon.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Her for handling stolen property. Him for attempting to pervert the course of justice.’

  Brodie thought about that. ‘I’ve heard he doesn’t always recycle his drinks cans, too.’

  Deacon gave a snort. ‘I know, it’s a bit like charging Hitler with behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace. It’s true, it just doesn’t cover all the bases. But the important thing is it’ll stick. I can use it to pin him to the dartboard. Then I’ll throw all the other stuff at him and see how many trebles I can hit.’

  ‘You got him then. You finally got him.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t think even Terry’s wriggling out from under this one.’

  ‘And the daughter?’

  ‘Will get her wrist slapped, nothing more. What she did was more stupid than wicked. She was just very unlucky that the bargain necklace she bought from a man in a disco was the one Bobby Carson ripped from Jane Moss’s neck two nights before. She didn’t know that. There was no way she could know it. The magistrate will take that into account.’

  ‘So you get what you wanted. Terry gets what he deserves. Jane gets her necklace back, Margaret Carson gets closure on her son’s crime, and Daniel gets to feel smug because
none of this would have come about if he hadn’t taken Mrs Carson’s commission and kept going even when she told him to stop.’

  There was something terribly odd about the way Brodie was speaking. Not so much the words as the tone. Deacon couldn’t be sure if it was irony, or satisfaction, or disappointment, or something else entirely. She was too quiet, her body too still. She should have been demanding details from him, trying to make them show that she’d solved his case. Instead she just sat there, nursing her baby, a cocoon of stillness enfolding her.

  He tried to stick with the facts. ‘I don’t think Jane will get her necklace back. The Walshes know where it is but they’re not going to tell me. It was part of the payment for accepting their version of events. At least Mrs Carson will have the satisfaction of knowing she did all she could to find the necklace, and it’s thanks to her that we know what happened to it – how Bobby got rid of it before we got to him, and why it never turned up again.’

  Brodie didn’t answer. She glanced at him speculatively for a moment before returning her gaze to Jonathan’s sleeping head.

  ‘There’s something else,’ mumbled Deacon.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘That you need to know. That I have to tell you. You’ll be angry. More than angry. You’ll think I was wrong. Maybe I was. I’m not as sure about anything as I used to be.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  To his astonishment she listened in silence. It was like the quiet at the eye of a hurricane: ominous, stifling, pregnant with power. Once he’d started to tell her Deacon didn’t dare stop because he knew that when he did the weight of the storm would fall on him. Driving over here he’d tried to prepare himself, to be ready for what she would say. But actually he couldn’t imagine what she would say. He couldn’t imagine how she would feel. After all she’d done, that had been for nothing, he’d been given one last chance. The cost really hadn’t been that high. But he’d turned it down. They were never going to know if it would have saved their son’s life. Probably not; but they were never going to know.

  She’d throw him out. He’d never see her again. But before she did that she’d want to tell him…what? What possible words could express how she felt about what he’d done – the choice he’d made? People believe that strong enough emotions go beyond words, that words can’t express the soul-deep turmoil of a heart. Deacon knew better. He knew Brodie would find words like chisels, and hammer them into him with a remorseless fury that even his blood wouldn’t appease.

  And he knew he had to let her. It was the only penance he could offer: the right to repay hurt with hurt.

  It didn’t take long to tell her what he’d decided. It just felt like half his life. When he was sure she understood he fell silent. Silence – such a silence – filled the room.

  He knew that she’d understood. So she wasn’t struggling to get her head round it. She was sharpening the chisels.

  ‘Terry Walsh offered to get Jonathan onto a drugs trial? At a Swedish clinic where he makes a research grant?’

  Deacon nodded. Then he saw from Brodie’s face that that wouldn’t do. ‘Yes.’

  ‘A reputable clinic? Not some backstreet quack trying to cure cancer with spit and seaweed?’

  ‘No. A proper clinic. One of the leaders in the field. Terry’s paper business has given them research funding for years.’

  ‘And they knew about Jonathan? Terry told them about him – about his condition, and how sick he is. And they’re testing a new drug that might cure him, and they were willing to put him on the trial.’

  It was a triumph of the abridger’s art: brief, accurate, to the point. Deacon grimaced. ‘Yes. Terry had a letter confirming it.’

  Brodie’s look bored through his skull. ‘And you said no.’

  Deep in his gut was an unfamiliar sensation a lesser man might have recognised as fear. Soon it would be audible in his voice, soon after that visible in the shaking of his fingers. ‘Yes.’

  Brodie appeared to give this some thought. ‘Did you think it was too late? That he’s too ill to travel to Sweden? Maybe you thought, If only this had come along a month ago…’

  Deacon shook his head. ‘I didn’t think that.’

  ‘Then maybe you thought it was a cruel hoax. That Terry Walsh had nothing to offer. That it was all smoke and mirrors, and once you’d crossed the line there’d be nothing to justify it. You’d have compromised yourself and risked your career for nothing.’

  Deacon drew an unsteady breath. ‘No, I didn’t think that either. I think what he was offering was genuine – if I’d done the deal he’d have got Jonathan on the trial. Which isn’t the same as saying it would have worked, but I think he was in a position to offer what he said he could offer.’

  ‘A chance. A last chance.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you said no.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  This was the question he’d known would come. All the way over here he’d been trying to find a satisfactory answer. Not just for Brodie – for himself. ‘Because what he wanted in return wasn’t mine to give.’

  ‘He wanted to confess to a crime! You know he’s a criminal – you’ve been trying to charge him for ten years. And he wanted to put his hands up to a crime. And you know, and I know, and Terry knew, that he was giving you the key to Pandora’s box – that you were going to pull things out of it that were never going to go back in.’

  ‘Of course he’s a criminal,’ agreed Deacon. Obstinacy was like gravel in his voice. ‘But he didn’t commit that crime. And I knew that, because I knew who had. I couldn’t charge him with something I knew he hadn’t done.’

  ‘He was trying to protect his daughter! That’s what you do when you’re a parent. At least…’ She let the sentence tail off in the most hurtful way imaginable. ‘What happens next?’

  ‘To Sophie, nothing very much. Nobody thinks she was part of the robbery. Terry will go to prison, probably for years. Now I have a lawful excuse to pick his business apart, the whole damned empire is coming down. No one will ever put it back together again.’

  ‘And that’ll be an end to the drug trade in Dimmock, will it? There’ll be no more prostitutes – no more whisky shipments taking a wrong turn?’

  He frowned, unsure where she was going with this. ‘Someone will take up the slack. But it won’t be Terry. He won’t be as clever as Terry. It won’t take me ten years to bring him down.’

  ‘But that won’t be the end of anything either, will it?’ said Brodie. An ember was burning in the depths of her eyes. ‘You’re running up a down escalator – it takes everything you have just to stay level. You’re not pulling the plug on anything, you’re just stirring it round a bit.

  ‘I thought, maybe that was what you had in mind. That you could save someone else’s child – from drugs, from prostitution. That you threw away Jonathan’s last chance so you could save other people’s children. But you can’t. You don’t even think you can. All you can do is knock the cock off the top of the midden and wait for the next one to climb up. And for that you said no to something that might have saved our son’s life.’

  Try as he might, he couldn’t avoid the killer words, the inescapable bottom line. ‘I had to. I hadn’t the right to do anything else. My pay cheque doesn’t just buy my expertise, it buys my loyalty. It has to. It’s the only way the system can work.’

  Brodie had a bottom line too. It was this. ‘You put your obligation to the job ahead of your duty to your own son.’

  Deacon thought about that, but he couldn’t really argue. ‘Pretty much.’

  They went on regarding one another, with a bizarre degree of calm as if the matter was way too serious for shouting. The moment Brodie told him to, Deacon would leave. But if there was more she wanted to say, more vitriol she wanted to throw, the least he owed her was to take it.

  She still didn’t start shouting. Without disturbing the sleeping baby she picked up a Manila envelope that was lying on the coffee table and pass
ed it to Deacon. ‘Open it.’

  What was inside was heavier than a letter. When he lifted the flap and tilted the envelope, it slid out onto his palm.

  He found himself looking into the eye of the universe. He had no idea what it meant, that it had been sealed in an envelope on Brodie’s coffee table, but he knew immediately what it was. Not a copy, not a substitute, not a lookalike – it was Jane Moss’s necklace. He didn’t have to be a jeweller – he didn’t even have to be much of a detective – to recognise that twelve-pointed golden star at the heart of a stone the colour of ink in champagne. Improbable as its presence here was, he knew the chances of it being anything else were even slimmer. ‘How…?’

  ‘Caroline Walsh was here. Now hiding it isn’t going to achieve much, she wanted Jane to have it back.’

  He couldn’t stop the detective in him asking, ‘How did she know where to find it?’

  Brodie managed a thin smile. ‘She said Terry whispered to her as he kissed her goodbye. You don’t have to believe that, but you may find it hard to disprove.’

  Deacon’s eyes rolled to the ceiling. ‘He did it again, didn’t he? Daniel. Against all the odds, and not even the way he intended, he got Jane’s necklace back for her. I can never decide, is it luck? Is he smarter than he looks? Or does he have one of those special angels that look after fools and…?’ He heard what was coming and managed to get it stopped. But the horror showed in his eyes.

  Brodie finished the saying for him. ‘Fools and children. It’s all right, Jack. Maybe there are such angels. Hester Dale believes there are. And today I think so too.’

  She leant forward carefully. There was also a magazine on the coffee table: underneath it was another envelope. She didn’t pass it to him. ‘Do you want to know what’s in this one?’