Closer Still, page 22
part #8 of A Brodie Farrell Mystery Series
But for the life of him, watching her climb into the car and drive away, Graham couldn’t remember where he worked or who his boss was.
There’s something about being in a car that encourages intimacy. The fact that, if one of you is driving, you can’t be constantly looking at each other is part of it. The fact that a car is an enclosed shell keeping the rest of the world at bay is another part.
As the airstrip fell behind them Brodie said softly, ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’
Evie twitched her a nervous little glance. ‘You mean …?’
‘I know you stabbed Joe Loomis. Do you want to tell me why?’
The girl thought for a minute. ‘Do I have to?’
‘No,’ said Brodie honestly. ‘In fact the police, and Mr Tarar’s solicitor, would probably advise you not to. On the other hand, the first time you tell someone – someone other than your family – is going to be the hardest. It might help to have a practice run first.’
She only looked like a child: mentally, physically and chronologically she was a woman. She managed a little grin. ‘Plus, you’d quite like to know.’
Brodie gave a chuckle. ‘That obvious, is it? Yes, I’d like to know. I know some of it. And some of it I worked out, or guessed. But yes, I’d like to know the rest. If you want to tell me.’
She thought a little longer. Then she nodded. ‘All right.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Deacon wouldn’t wear the in-ear radio receivers. He said they were uncomfortable. He said his ear was the wrong shape. He said he couldn’t hear the advice they were giving him over the static anyway. None of this was true. Everyone at Battle Alley knew that Deacon wouldn’t wear the receivers because he didn’t want anyone telling him how to do his job.
Which meant that when there was an important message for him someone had to bring it in person. This time it was Detective Constable Huxley, who walked out to the blockhouse as if through a minefield and took only moderate comfort from the casual way his boss was leaning against it. He didn’t look as if he felt to be in danger, though with Deacon you could never tell.
Ten metres away Huxley stopped and filled his lungs to shout. Then he thought better of it. If two tonnes of blasting explosives went up, ten metres wasn’t enough to save him. But it was enough to damage his cred. He used the breath to stiffen his resolve and walked the rest of the way.
Inside the blockhouse, observing through the crack of the door, Dev Stretton didn’t know what it meant that the detective with the rugby playing nose was leaning over, murmuring in Deacon’s ear. He couldn’t hear what he was saying. But he saw Deacon’s eyes flick momentarily wider and his lips tighten. Then he said tersely, ‘Tell them I can handle this.’
The younger man shuffled broad shoulders uncomfortably. ‘I’ll tell them, sir. I’m not sure they’ll listen.’
‘Tell them from me they’d better listen,’ snarled Deacon. ‘This is my crime scene. They’ll do what they’re told.’
‘Yessir,’ said Huxley quickly. ‘Only, I got the impression they think it’s their crime scene now.’ He retreated as soon as he decently could.
Deacon vented a fractious sigh. ‘OK,’ he said to Stretton, ‘this just got serious. Counter Terrorism are on site. They don’t mess around. They aren’t here for a friendly chat about your fears, your ambitions and how you really just want to make a better world. They’re screwing tripods to sniper rifles and looking for a chance to take you out. They don’t care why you’re doing this. They just want to end it.’
Stretton’s voice soared in astonishment. ‘They’d shoot me? I haven’t done anything!’
‘Now don’t be naive,’ growled Deacon. ‘You’ve reduced an entire town to a state of chaos. The longer that goes on, the more casualties there’ll be. For everyone’s sake, we need to bring this to a close right now.’
Fatally, Stretton was calculating percentages. ‘They’re not going to shoot at an explosives bunker. And they’re certainly not going to shoot at an explosives bunker that has a Detective Superintendent leaning against it!’
Three good strides, thought Deacon. Three good strides and I’d have him by the throat, and I could slap seven kinds of shit out of him under the pretext of subduing him. And probably nothing would happen.
What he said aloud was, ‘Dev, I know you’re stupid. We wouldn’t be here, any of us, if you weren’t stupid. But don’t make a virtue of it. All you know about this sort of situation is what you’ve seen in films. Counter Terrorism isn’t my field either, but I know more about it than you do. I know that the guys setting up their gear right now are the best we’ve got. The best shots, armed with the best equipment. They can put a bullet through a man’s eye at half a mile. And they have bullets that’ll go exactly where they’re aimed and then stop. All that will blow apart is your head.’
Stretton’s voice quivered as the image Deacon had painted lodged in his mind. He still thought there was another way. ‘I can just shut the door. If they can’t see me they can’t shoot me.’
‘Thinking of spending the rest of your life here, then?’ asked Deacon wearily. ‘Getting meals sent in, laundry picked up? Getting cable TV? You’re right, you can shut the door. That’s when I walk away. And still at some point you have to open the door, and that’s when they’ll nail you. They’ll watch all day if they have to, with the patience of sphinxes. But if they’ve been told to take you down, that’s what they’ll do.’
It was true, every word of it. He thought Stretton believed him. And still, when he heard the blockhouse door shut, his heart sank like a stone because he thought it hadn’t been enough. The young man had painted himself into a corner and couldn’t find the way out. Deacon thought he was going to die not because he was wicked, not even because he was stupid, but of indecision.
Then the lock turned again and the crack in the door reappeared, together with a thinner sliver than ever of Dev Stretton’s face. His voice was smaller too. ‘All right. Get me out of here.’
She was no longer a child but a woman. Some things she had a right to, and one was knowing who she was – where she came from. For nineteen years Faith had protected her from that. But increasingly since coming of age Evie had asserted her right to her own history. It was the only thing they argued about.
As a child she never even wondered. The family was her mother, her brother and herself. There seemed no need, indeed no place, for anyone else. In an earlier era she might have been alerted to the deficiency by schoolmates – but by the time Evie was at school, half the people there lived in units other than the traditional nuclear family. She was secure, she was happy, and still she had no interest in who sowed the seed she sprang from.
As she grew it occurred to Evie that there were differences between herself and her brother that could only be explained if they had different fathers. Faith had no hesitation about confirming this. She had loved like Othello, she said: not wisely, but too well. The first time, though the relationship ended, she came away with the best possible souvenir, which was Dev. And the second time she was lucky enough to get a daughter she loved every bit as much, fiercely and endlessly. She considered life, and love, had been good to her.
And for a few more years, that was good enough for Evie.
What started her thinking about it afresh was when Dev, five years older than her, preoccupied with his imminent trip to Pakistan and less than usually circumspect because of it, let drop the casual bombshell that his father was helping to finance the expedition.
Evie was staggered beyond belief. Dev knew his father? She felt as if something she’d known all her life was no longer true. The family had been split asunder, someone she’d never met had been admitted to it, and no one had told her. And the man (as it seemed to her) buying his way into her family was nothing to do with her.
She demanded an explanation. Why was Dev permitted to know his father when she wasn’t? How long had Dev known? When had Faith planned to tell Evie? Had she planned to?
And who was Evie’s father, and when did she get to meet him?
Faith found herself in a situation she’d hoped never to face. But she’d always known it was a possibility, and if she’d been just a little braver she might have taken this opportunity to take the skeleton out of the cupboard and talk more frankly to both her children.
But she baulked. Perhaps it was lack of courage. Perhaps she was doing what she genuinely believed was best. At the time Evie thought the former; now she recognised that perhaps Faith had good reason when she refused, even under pressure, to tell Evie anything at all about her father.
What she said was that there were differences between her first love and her second. That Dev’s father was a good man and, even from a distance, a good parent; and when Dev was about fifteen an opportunity had arisen and – proceeding carefully, gauging how much he could deal with – she’d told him who his father was. A little later, with both of them well prepared, she’d introduced them. They’d remained in casual but affectionate contact ever since.
‘Ten years?’ whispered Evie, thunderstruck. ‘He’s been seeing his father for ten years? And he didn’t tell me?’
‘I told him not to,’ said Faith. ‘When Dev was fifteen you were only ten. Of course you’d have wanted to know when you were going to meet your father, and you wouldn’t have understood when I told you that, if I had my way, you never would.’
‘I don’t understand it now!’ yelled Evie in a passion of anger, hurt and frustration.
So Faith tried to explain; a little. She didn’t want to tell Evie she was born of bad blood. She certainly didn’t want her thinking there was anything glamorous about her father’s unsuitability. And she didn’t want to drop any clues that would help Evie to find him. ‘I’m very fond of Dev’s father. We never wanted to marry, but we stayed friends. If I needed a friend today, he’s the one I’d turn to.
‘If I needed a friend, your father’s the last man I’d turn to. We didn’t part on good terms. I was passionately in love with him, blind to his failings. The only good thing he ever did for me was give me you. Well, I can forgive him a lot for that – but he’s not a nice man and I don’t want you getting involved with him. You’d end up getting hurt, and I’ll do anything to prevent that.’
‘But it’s not your decision!’ insisted Evie.
‘Yes,’ said Faith quietly. ‘It is.’
Regardless of who her father was, first and foremost Evie was Faith’s daughter. Strong-willed and stubborn, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. When it became clear that neither tears nor tantrums would undermine her mother’s resolve, she proceeded by other means.
As Brodie knew better than most, there is almost nothing that cannot be discovered by an intelligent and imaginative researcher. And Evie had the incentive. It took a little time. She made a comprehensive trawl of all the old photo albums. There were no pictures of Loomis – Faith wouldn’t have risked keeping one even if she’d wanted to – but there were pictures of other people her mother knew twenty years ago. Girls and men, close friends and casual acquaintances, some moved on but others still living in the Dimmock area.
By a judicious mixture of ingenuousness and guile, under the pretext of arranging a surprise party for her mother’s birthday, Evie contacted those she could directly, and used what they knew to contact others. Over a period of weeks, unsuspected by anyone, she worked her way out to the margins of the group of friends until she found the sister of a friend of Faith’s, who’d been just close enough to hear accounts of her pregnancy and just distant enough not to realise she should keep them to herself. When Evie asked, all innocently, if there was anyone else Faith had known at that time, she suggested, ‘There was a guy called Loomis. He and Faith were pretty close about then.’
That was the little silver gismo that opens the oyster. She levered on it and the shell began to crack. Other people remembered Faith and Joe, and how they’d gone from hot to not almost over the course of a weekend. Remembered how, a couple of months down the line, Faith had announced the forthcoming expansion of her family. No one came out and told Evie that Joe Loomis was her father, but she could do the math. And so far as she could discover there were no other candidates.
Still, she didn’t want to send a Father’s Day card to the wrong man. She confronted Faith.
This was Faith’s worst nightmare. She knew she’d been careful. She thought no trail led back to the place of Evie’s conception. She did the only thing she could: she lied. She said Evie had got it wrong. When she knew Joe she was already pregnant, to a sales rep she met at a party. They’d enjoyed the occasion, the drink and one another’s company just a little too freely, and never met again. Joe came along soon afterwards.
Evie didn’t believe it. It didn’t even fit with what Faith had said previously. She thought – by now she was sure – she was right first time: her father was Joe Loomis, proprietor of The Rose in Rye Lane. And like Dev’s father, a man who’d lived just a few miles away all her life.
Further enquiries established that Loomis was a single man and that he had a certain reputation. Though this caused her a moment’s hesitation, she refused to worry about it. Successful businessmen were rarely popular, she knew. They became successful by beating rivals at their own game – of course they left a trail of hard feelings. And as a single man with no family to protect, Evie hoped that connecting with his long-lost daughter might mean as much to Loomis as it would to her.
By this time in the telling of her story, she and Brodie were in the kitchen of the cottage, nursing large mugs of coffee, with the radio tuned to the local station in case there was a sudden newsflash.
‘So you went to see him.’
Evie nodded quickly, trying to get this done. ‘I phoned him. I told him my name but not who I was. I don’t know if he worked it out. God, I hope not!’
She asked to meet him. She expected an invitation to his pub, which she thought – not knowing The Rose – would be a good neutral venue. It was a public place, if her revelation didn’t go down well she could get up and leave without making a scene.
‘It’s not that I was expecting a grand fairytale reunion,’ she insisted. ‘I wasn’t. I knew it would be hard to find something safe to talk about. I knew we might not even like one another. I just … It was something I had to do. I’d found him – I had to meet him before I could move on.’ The implications of that wrung from her a tortured little sound that was half a chuckle, half a sob.
But Loomis didn’t ask her to come to The Rose. He offered to buy her a coffee at Nettie’s Café on Fisher Hill – they could meet in the car park behind Shack Lane. Evie saw no particular problem with that. But then, she didn’t know the car park was just a bit of waste ground without a street-light to its name. To the casual stranger, even Shack Lane had a touch of the Dickens about it. She felt her way through the tightening net of lanes, each a little narrower and darker than the last, and kept the car doors locked, and only the imminent prospect of achieving what she’d spent the last six months striving for kept her from turning tail.
And made what followed all but inevitable.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Deacon took it one careful step at a time. The guys watching down the gun-barrels didn’t know him the way his own officers did. Today, waving his arms and shouting wouldn’t get him what he wanted – it would probably get him shot. All the same, he did wave. He stood up and faced the direction the danger was coming from, and waved both arms across in front of him. Then he stuck a thumb up. Sights that would let you put a bullet in a man’s eye at half a mile ought to show a generous thumbs-up. Then he turned his back on the snipers and, keeping himself between Stretton and the guns, opened the blockhouse door.
A little traitor voice at the back of his mind was saying, This is what it’s all about, is it? This is part of the job description? — to be the meat in the sandwich between a lunatic sitting on two tonnes of blasting explosive and a professional with his finger on the trigger of a sniper rifle? Great. Well, I might live to tell the tale, if everybody keeps calm for the next thirty seconds. Starting with me …
‘Take off your coat.’ Stretton did as he was told. ‘And your shirt.’ Deacon sighed. ‘And your vest. Shoes. Trousers.’
Stretton’s eyes saucered. ‘I’m not …!’
‘Yes,’ said Deacon heavily, ‘you are. They think you’re a suicide bomber. When you come through this door, I want them to see that all that’s coming out is you. You’re embarrassed? Tough.’
So they emerged from the blockhouse – Deacon first, coatless, his own shirt flapping in case anyone wondered what it would take to turn a suicide bombing into a proxy bombing. Then Stretton, naked, hands spread wide until Deacon told him to get down on the muddy ground and keep still as if his life depended on it. Because it did.
Across the mud, where the perimeter was being held, slowly men began to break cover and come forward. Last of all the men with the guns took their eyes from their telescopic sights, stood down and stood up.
Another minute and Dev Stretton was securely handcuffed, held by as many officers as could get a hold on him, being marched squelchily across the site to a police van.
‘Hang on a minute.’ Deacon went back to the bunker for his coat and threw it roughly around Stretton’s shaking body. By way of explanation he growled, ‘I know he’s a stupid bastard. He doesn’t have to be a freezing stupid bastard. Now get the silly bugger out of my sight.’
‘Go on,’ said Brodie quietly.
Loomis was already there when Evie found the car park. Her headlights ran along the flank of the long silver car and a small dark-haired man got out. He was on his own. There were no other vehicles in the car park and no passers-by.
She pulled up beside him, wound down the window and said, ‘I’m Evie.’ And Joe Loomis opened the door for her.
