Liars All

by Jo Bannister

  Deacon nodded mutely.

  ‘A letter of authorisation for an executive jet to take us from North Menner airstrip direct to Uppsala, and a booking in my name for an apartment near the clinic. The taxi’ll be here in half an hour. I will kill you if you try to stop me.’ It wasn’t a figure of speech. She meant it.

  ‘Caroline?’

  Brodie nodded. ‘She apologised for trying to blackmail you. She said she was desperate. Once Sophie had been charged, she saw no point in withholding something that might help us and would be no use to anyone else.’

  Struggling to make sense of it, Deacon muttered, ‘I suppose it’ll look good in court…’

  ‘I suppose it will,’ agreed Brodie, expressionless.

  And actually, Deacon was too honest a man to leave it at that. ‘But that’s not really why she did it, is it?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘Terry said, if there was any way he could help he wanted to. He found a way. If I hadn’t gone to see him, he’d have come to see me. Or you. This wasn’t organised overnight, because he thought I was on his heels. He did it because he could, and he hoped it might do some good.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Brodie.

  Deacon was still thinking. ‘Cancel the taxi.’

  ‘You’re taking us to the airstrip?’ She was making sure. He could still have tried to stop her.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And then I’m coming to Sweden with you.’

  ‘Won’t that look bad?’

  ‘Yes. But not nearly bad enough to stop me doing it,’ said Deacon grimly.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  There followed a series of hurried phone calls, knocks on doors and surprised expressions.

  Deacon called DS Voss from somewhere over the North Sea. Actually, Voss wasn’t all that surprised, mainly because he knew his boss pretty well by now. As soon as he could get away he went round to the netting shed.

  Daniel was not so much surprised as dumbfounded by the story he had to tell. Behind the thick glasses his eyes widened and widened; at one point Voss had to remind him to blink. It wasn’t just that the necklace had turned up. It wasn’t just how the necklace had turned up. It wasn’t even that Brodie and Deacon were now en route for Sweden and a possible treatment for their son’s illness thanks to a notorious criminal. It was that none of these things would have happened but for his own clumsy attempts to do a job he had no talent for and didn’t really like. It was almost enough to make you believe in…

  Oh God. He’d made a promise. If Jonathan lived he was going to have to find a way of keeping it. It would be worth it, but the mere thought made him feel sick with trepidation.

  ‘And the chief wondered,’ said Voss, ‘if you’d like to tell Jane Moss and Margaret Carson that the necklace will be evidence for a while, but after that Jane will get it back.’

  Daniel was white. He looked as if a draught from an open window would blow him over. ‘You’re sure it’s the same one?’

  ‘Of course it’s the same one. How could it be anything else? You think Terry Walsh keeps a stock of fake jewels in biscuit boxes under his roses?’

  ‘That’s where it was?’

  ‘Caroline dug it up. After it became obvious it wasn’t going to buy her anything she wanted.’

  ‘And they sent Jonathan…?’

  ‘To Sweden,’ nodded Voss. ‘On the company plane. So no drive to Gatwick, no waiting at check-in, no waiting for baggage – a much easier journey for all of them.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Daniel said weakly.

  Voss made a grimace that was the facial equivalent of a shrug. ‘That thing between Terry and the chief – it’s a complicated relationship. I think, in spite of everything, they’re more friends than they’re anything else. It didn’t affect how either of them did their job. But when Terry was able to help the chief’s kid, he wanted to. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  For once, a sense of urgency made Daniel feel he couldn’t walk fast enough. He phoned to check that she was in, then had Voss drive him to Margaret Carson’s house. He wanted to tell Jane first. But Mrs Carson had paid good money for his services, and he owed her the news first.

  She greeted him warily, unsure what had brought him back when, to the best of her knowledge, the business between them had ended in recrimination.

  ‘Can I come in?’ asked Daniel.

  She didn’t move out of the doorway. ‘If you think I’m going to change my mind and sit down with Miss Moss…’

  ‘That’s not what I want to talk about. There have been developments.’

  Reluctantly, she took him through to the living room. He waited until she was sitting down, then told her what had happened to the star sapphire after it was stolen. How it passed from hand to hand so quickly that by the time it was being offered for sale under the multi-coloured lights of Scarlett’s two nights later it had almost earned a kind of legitimacy. How a twenty-year-old girl bought it as a last-minute birthday present for her mother.

  When Mrs Carson could find a voice she asked, ‘What will happen to her?’

  ‘She’ll be prosecuted. She’d no idea how it was acquired, but she must have realised it was shady. That makes it handling stolen goods.’

  Margaret Carson was still trying to take it in. ‘And all this time…?’

  ‘It’s been in a biscuit tin under a rose bush in somebody’s back garden,’ said Daniel.

  ‘And will it be returned?’

  ‘Oh yes. Jane Moss is still the lawful owner. It was given to her by someone who had the right to give it, and taken by someone who hadn’t. It’s hers. Once the police have finished with it, they’ll give it back.’

  Margaret shook her head in wonder. Then a thought occurred to her. ‘Do I owe you some money?’

  ‘Not for this,’ said Daniel quickly. ‘Mrs Farrell will bill you for the time I was working for her on your commission. But all this happened after she sacked me – I don’t see how you can be charged for that.’

  The woman gave a gusty chuckle. ‘So I got exactly what I wanted, all that I asked of you, and I never even had to buy the thing. I can’t help feeling I’ve short-changed someone.’

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ Daniel said firmly. ‘I’m just glad it all worked out. I hope’ – he glanced at her shyly – ‘you’ll be able to put this behind you now. What happened wasn’t your fault. But the fact that it’s been resolved is down to you. To your determination to make amends for what Bobby did. Jane will recognise that. It was the only thing anyone could do for her that would have made things a little better, and you did it.’

  ‘You did it,’ Margaret corrected him. ‘If I hadn’t come to you that necklace would never have turned up. I won’t forget that, Daniel. Whatever peace of mind I can enjoy now, I owe it to you. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  Voss had said that too. Daniel hadn’t known what he meant. ‘What does?’

  ‘If there isn’t some kind of a hand at work.’

  Daniel bit his lip. ‘I think we just got lucky.’

  ‘I know I did.’

  Another phone call, then Daniel did what he never did – he called a taxi. He couldn’t wait to share the news with Jane. His only regret was that he couldn’t take her the necklace as well.

  She was waiting for him in the open door of the house in River Drive. Her eyebrows climbed as the taxi drew up. ‘Won the lottery?’ she enquired tartly.

  ‘In a way.’ And he would say no more until they were inside.

  He told her everything – more than he’d told Mrs Carson. He told her where Brodie and Deacon had gone, and why. He told her about Terry Walsh, and the long-standing game of cat and mouse he’d played with Deacon, and how it had finally ended. He told her how a moment of poor judgement by a tipsy girl in a disco was going to bring down a criminal empire. And how, in spite of that, the Walshes had wanted to do two things before the sky fell on them. One was to help Deacon’s son. The other was to return Jane’s necklace.

  W
hen she managed to find a voice Jane asked, ‘Have you got it?’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘The police need to keep it for now. But Charlie Voss has seen it. It’s fine. You’ll get it back after the court case.’

  ‘Good God.’ She blew her cheeks out, stunned by the development. ‘I never thought I’d see it again. I was resigned to it – you know that. I was going to have the copy made, and never wear it but take it out and look at it sometimes to remind myself how much Tom loved me. To get the real thing back – the actual stone that his father chose, that Imogen wore as long as he was alive and then kept for her son to give to someone he loved…’ She ran out of words. Her eyes were bright with tears. She’d cried over Tom but never for her own predicament. She was crying now.

  After a moment’s hesitation Daniel leant forward and took her hand. He half expected her to shake him off, but instead she smiled through the tears. ‘I owe this to you, don’t I?’

  He was awkward with embarrassment. ‘Maybe a little bit. And to Margaret Carson. And to the Walshes. Anyone else who’d acquired it by the back door would have dumped it as soon as they realised what it was. But the Walshes are used to living dangerously. They didn’t panic and throw it in a river – they put it where it would be safe until they went back for it. They always hoped some day to be able to return it.

  ‘Not like this, obviously – more in an anonymous packet posted in Venezuela. But they didn’t want to destroy something that Tom died for. Maybe that was sentimental. It certainly wasn’t very professional – they’d have been safer with it gone. They must have thought the risk of keeping it was minimal, and if they were able to send it back one day it would make them feel better.’

  ‘I can see all that,’ nodded Jane slowly. ‘I realise that when I get it back it’ll be thanks to the goodwill of a number of people, including several you wouldn’t expect it from. But none of it would have happened but for you. If you hadn’t taken Margaret Carson’s commission, she wouldn’t have tried the next name on her list. There is no list. Round here at least, no one else does what you do – did,’ she amended tactlessly. ‘If you’d sent her away she’d have given up. She’d have had to. Maybe she’d have made a donation to charity instead, but I wouldn’t have got my necklace back.

  ‘And if you’d given up when the search looked like costing more than the thing was worth – the way the police did, the way I think Mrs Farrell would have done – I wouldn’t have got it back. If you’d given up when Walsh wanted you to I’d have lost it. Also if you’d buggered off when I told you to, or when Margaret Carson told you to, or when even the least bit of common sense would have told you to.’ An impish smile, only slightly twisted by her scars, robbed the words of any sting.

  ‘A real pro wouldn’t have got it back for me. A real amateur couldn’t have got it back for me. The only reason I’m getting it back is that Margaret Carson went to someone naive enough to join her crusade, stubborn enough to pursue it, and stupid enough to ask questions of the kind of people who think it’s a friendly answer if you can get yourself to the hospital afterwards.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Daniel uncertainly. It might have been a compliment. ‘Er…thanks…’

  Jane chuckled at his expression. ‘You look like you’re still half expecting me to throw you out.’

  ‘You’ve done it before.’

  ‘I didn’t know you then.’

  ‘No. Most people,’ he admitted honestly, ‘feel the urge to throw me out more keenly when they’ve known me a while.’

  ‘Really?’ Her eyes were innocent. ‘I can’t imagine why.’

  Daniel shook his yellow head, amused and puzzled in equal proportions. ‘This isn’t what I expected.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘You. This…’ He couldn’t find a label for it. ‘I thought you hated me. Now I feel like we’ve been friends for ages. Or am I fooling myself?’

  ‘Daniel,’ she said softly, and the tears had cleared from her eyes leaving something new, ‘don’t rush it.’

  He was genuinely confused. ‘Don’t rush what?’

  ‘I’m twenty-four years old,’ she said, picking her words carefully. ‘Wheelchair or no wheelchair, I’m not going to be a nun for the rest of my life. I loved Tom with all my soul. I was ready to marry him. But that’s no longer an option. A time will come when I’ll want to be in another relationship. It’s not here yet. But – I don’t know – maybe, if you’ve nothing better to do, you might want to hang around…?’

  She’d succeeded in astonishing him. It was the last thing he’d expected her to say. It was not, however, the last thing he wanted her to say.

  He almost blew it. He did what he always did: searched for the right words. He spent so long searching that she thought he was looking for a way out. A dark flush spread up her cheeks. ‘Of course, if the wheelchair is a problem…’

  His eyes flew wide, appalled that he’d let her think that. ‘The wheelchair isn’t a problem, Jane. An iron lung wouldn’t be a problem. It’s just… I thought I was entertaining a little fantasy. I was afraid that, once the business between us was finished, I’d never see you again. I didn’t want that to happen but I didn’t know what to do about it.’

  She was on her way to forgiving him. There was still a bead of censure in her eye. ‘Daniel…sometimes you just have to go for it. There’s always a risk of rejection. But it’s not as sad as wishing you’d had the courage to try.’

  Daniel was nodding slowly. ‘Courage was never my strong suit.’ He thought it was true. ‘I’m also a bit lacking in practice.’

  ‘You and Mrs Farrell…?’

  ‘We’ve been close friends for four years. I wanted more, she didn’t.’

  ‘But you stuck around. Ever hopeful?’

  ‘Not really. That was a fantasy. I always knew it. I stuck around because my life was richer for having her in it. It wasn’t enough, but it was a lot better than nothing. And then…’ His brow furrowed. ‘I don’t know what went wrong. Of course, she’s been worried sick about the baby. I didn’t mind her taking that out on me. But all the time she seemed to be pushing me away. Maybe she just got tired of me.’ He managed a wry little smile. ‘I told you – people tend to when they’ve known me for a while.’

  Jane shook her head in disbelief. ‘Tell me, when did you first notice this change in her attitude?’

  ‘Just this last week, mostly.’

  ‘Since you and I met.’

  ‘I suppose. I don’t think there’s any connection…’

  ‘You weren’t lying, were you?’ she said ironically. ‘You really haven’t had much practice at this. Daniel, I think your friend Brodie is trying to teach you to fly. I think she wants something better for you than playing Buttons to her Cinderella.’

  Daniel shook his head firmly. ‘Oh no. You don’t know her. She’s…she wouldn’t…’ But now the idea had been seeded in his brain he couldn’t get rid of it. ‘Would she?’

  ‘She cares for you,’ Jane explained carefully. ‘She wants the best for you. She knows what you want, and also what you need. Yes, Daniel, I think she just might.’

  Chapter Thirty

  A thousand miles away Brodie and Deacon were settling into the apartment, something else Terry Walsh had arranged before his ability to arrange anything was suddenly curtailed. They were likely to be here for some time, and it had occurred to him that sharing the close confines of a hotel room with either of them wasn’t a fate he’d have wished on his worst enemy.

  They’d gone to the clinic first. The doctor conducting the drug trial spent some time with them, examining Jonathan and going over his X-rays, explaining the science behind the drug he intended to use. He promised nothing. That was the purpose of a trial: to evaluate whether a new drug was any better than what went before. He didn’t want to give them hope only to dash it.

  But nor was he a cruel man. He didn’t want them to feel they were wasting their time here. Jonathan’s tumour was typical of the type the drug was designed to tac
kle. Preliminary results had been promising.

  Hope is a hawk with sharp talons. Just sitting quietly on your wrist it can draw blood. But they wouldn’t have had it otherwise. They were both realists – the last six months had left them no alternative. They knew the cancer could still win. But for the first time in weeks it no longer seemed inevitable.

  Unpacking their bags at the apartment felt strange. They’d never lived together. They’d never before had to agree which side of a wardrobe was whose.

  Finally Deacon said, ‘What did you think? About the clinic.’

  Brodie looked for a non-committal reply. As if sounding too enthusiastic could jinx the process. ‘It seems very professional. I think we’re in good hands. We’ve been incredibly lucky.’

  It had been a long day. Deacon was too tired for clichés. ‘Do you think it’ll work?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jack,’ said Brodie frankly. ‘I’m scared to look that far ahead. It’s enough that we’re here, that Jonathan’s being treated by someone who thinks he has a chance. That the choices, the decisions, are all made, and all we can do now is wait, and hope.’

  She put the baby down to sleep in the bedroom. They moved into the sitting room next door. Deacon felt her watching him oddly. ‘What?’

  ‘What do you suppose happened?’ Brodie’s voice was edgy, spiked by troubling thoughts.

  Deacon frowned, not understanding. ‘You know what happened. Terry Walsh arranged it. We know how many pies he’s got fingers in. His paper mill probably gets tax concessions for supporting medical research, something like that.’

  ‘Yes. But… Doesn’t it strike you as a hell of a coincidence? That the one thing in the world that we need, someone you know is in a position to do for us. And not even someone who owes you a favour. You and Terry are enemies! You’re sending him to prison.’

  Deacon shrugged hefty shoulders. ‘That’s different. That’s business. This was personal.’

  ‘I know. But I keep wondering if it would have happened if…’

  One of Deacon’s thick eyebrows cranked higher than the other. ‘Go on – spit it out.’