Nodding amiably to Charlie - Daniel was supposed to teach the boy but he saw much more of him in this corridor - he tapped the door and went inside to speak with Mr Chalmers. The man deserved to know that his school wasn't haunted, that reports of Daniel's demise had been premature.
Then he went to the library. There was an undertone of peering and whispering; he nodded amiably and logged on at the computer. He could have used the PC at home, but he had access to additional data here and it would be quicker. As well as giving him a reason to come.
He'd been working for ten minutes, the disturbance his arrival had created had subsided and the information he wanted was beginning to come in, when the whole enterprise started to go horribly wrong.
For once it wasn't Charlie who started the trouble. It was his sister Marilyn.
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“Charlie Monroe has a sister Marilyn?” echoed Brodie faintly.
Daniel dried himself and waved a weary hand. “I know, I know. We're all so used to it now it doesn't even sound funny any more.”
“What did she do?”
“I think she must have bunked off. She was there for registration, nobody saw her afterwards. Tricia Weston, who had her for PE, was trying to track her down. God knows why but she looked in the library.”
“And she wasn't there?” Brodie still wasn't sure what he was telling her. But it was clear from the state he was in that whatever had happened had floored him.
“No, she wasn't. But a bunch of third-formers she hangs out with were, so Tricia went to ask them.”
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Tricia Weston had once played hockey for England. She didn't do anything discreetly. Her voice was trained to carry across sports pitches in the teeth of a gale - even when she was trying to obey the “Quiet in the Library” signs it had the penetrative power of a Cruise missile.
She leaned over the table where the girls were sitting. “I'm looking for Marilyn Monroe. Have any of you seen her since registration?”
They adopted the tactics which serve thirteen-year-old girls in the face of authority all over the world: they played dumb. “Marilyn, Miss? She isn't here, Miss. Doesn't she have PE, Miss? Didn't she turn up, Miss? No, Miss, we don't know where she is. Did you try the canteen?”
Tricia Weston breathed heavily. “Yes, I tried the canteen. It was full of Flappers practising their can-can for the end-of-term show. I tried the bicycle sheds, all four toilet blocks and the art room, and she wasn't in any of them. The last person who saw her, saw her with you four. Now where is she? Did she bunk off?”
“Don't know, Miss. We haven't seen her since first thing this morning, Miss. We don't know where she is.”
The PE teacher was breathing heavily. Three laps of the running track didn't get her this hot under the collar. “I want to know. Where is she? I'm not leaving here until you tell me. Where is she?
Where is she
?”
Busy with their own confrontation, none of them saw Mr Hood's face drain to parchment and his eyes stretch as the words hammered at his brain. In an instant the book-lined room around him dissolved, leaving him cold, naked and blind, spread-eagled on a table, the same words fired at him like bullets, the agony of seared flesh the price of having no answer.
He stumbled to his feet, the library chair tumbling behind him. Tricia Weston looked round in surprise. “Daniel? Do you know where she is? Where, then? Where is she? Daniel?”
Backing towards the door, blind with panic, groping for it with desperate uncoordinated hands, he heard another, younger voice ask, with puzzlement and even genuine concern, “What's the matter with him then?” Then he was in the corridor, running.
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“I couldn't get out,” he whispered. “I got lost. I've worked there for twelve months and I couldn't find my way out. I kept running, and I couldn't seem to work out where I was. I just wanted to get outside. But I couldn't find a door. I tried every corridor I came to, and every flight of stairs, and I knew everyone was staring. They were calling after me. I even knew they'd help me get out if I could just stop running, but I couldn't. I lost it. I mean, completely. If you've ever seen a headless chicken ⦔
But it wasn't a joke. There was nothing funny about it. Brodie said softly, “What happened?”
“I ended up outside the head's office again. There's a glass wall where the corridor overlooks the playground. Apparently” - he couldn't look at her - “I was trying to break it with my bare hands. The fact that it's on the second floor mustn't have occurred to me.”
He swallowed. “Before he was a teacher, Des Chalmers was a Royal Marine. It's the perfect training for the job. He came out of his
office to see what the commotion was, saw me beating my head in against his wall and decked me. I came to my senses sitting on the corridor floor with Des Chalmers holding me and Charlie Monroe offering me the grubbiest hankie you ever saw because I was crying like a baby.”
If it was OK for an ex-Marine it was good enough for her. Brodie steered him to the sofa, sat down beside him, put her arm round his narrow shoulders. He was still shaking. “And then you came back here? Daniel, you need help. It's too soon, it's all still too fresh.”
“Des thought so too. He wanted to take me to the hospital. I made him bring me home instead. You only just missed him.”
“You shouldn't be alone. Won't you let me call someone?”
He cast her a furtive glance. “I'm all right alone. It's other people I can't seem to deal with.”
“A psychiatrist could -”
He wouldn't let her finish. “If I get into their hands I'll never be free of them. I can do this alone.”
Brodie thought she owed him the truth more than kindness. “What happened today, Daniel - it will happen again. And again, and again.”
He shook his head doggedly. “It won't. I'm not going back.”
“What, never?”
“There's too much baggage. Too many people, and too many of them likely to be looking for one another too often.” He forced a smile. “Maybe
I'll
join the Marines.”
Brodie saw nothing to smile about. “Daniel, you're a teacher. You couldn't
lift
a submachine-gun. You like teaching.”
“I'll have to find something else to like. I can't hack it any more. Whatever I do, it needs to be something I can walk away from if I have to. Without upsetting dozens of kids and having to be rugby-tackled by the head teacher. I can't be stuck in a classroom any more. Ah -” He caught his breath.
“What?”
Daniel looked broken, as if it were the last straw. “I left some stuff in the library. Unless somebody thought to shut me down I'm still logged on.”
“I'll pop round for it,” said Brodie. “I'll be back in fifteen minutes.”
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Mr Chalmers helped her. Pushing fifty now, he still looked more like a Royal Marine than a head teacher. When she explained her purpose he was full of concern.
“How is Daniel? I was most unhappy about leaving him in that shed but he insisted. He said if I tried to take him to hospital he'd get out at the traffic lights.”
Brodie nodded her understanding. “Mules have nothing on my friend Daniel.”
Mr Chalmers picked his words carefully. “He explained - before the incident in the library - a little of what happened during his absence. He didn't go into much detail. Would I be right in assuming you know rather more?”
“Perhaps. But I don't intend to swap notes with you.”
He didn't take offence, just went on regarding her over his desk. “I'm worried about him, Mrs Farrell. If you'd been here forty minutes ago, you'd be worried about him too.”
She sighed. “I
am
worried about him, Mr Chalmers. But you can only offer someone your help, you can't force it on him. Daniel's determined to deal with his problems his own way. I've given up trying to advise him: now I settle for helping him do what he wants to do.”
The principal nodded pensively. “Stubborn little son-of-a-bitch, isn't he? When he first came here I thought the kids would eat him for breakfast. I mean, there's not much of him, and what there is doesn't shout authority. Then, when he'd been here about a week, there was an incident in the playground. One of the twelve-stone thugs who pass for fifth-formers round here pulled a knife. Daniel took it off him.”
Brodie pursed her lips. “Was he hurt?”
“No one was hurt. Everyone was astonished.”
They went to the library. The computer at which Daniel had been
working was still on line. Chalmers perused it briefly. “Suppose I print this stuff off? Take it to him, and if he needs anything else he can phone me. Tell him not to come back until he's ready. Tell him his job'll be waiting for him.”
Brodie thanked him, gathered up Daniel's papers and left.
It wasn't until she was back in her car, propping the folders on the front seat so that they wouldn't spill their contents on the first corner, that she saw what he'd been working on.
Brodie was too angry to knock. She stormed up the steps, the doorknob turned under her hand and she was inside before there was time to wonder if she had any right.
Daniel had fallen into an uneasy slumber, on top of the bed, still in his damp clothes. The rap of her footsteps on the wooden floor broke in on his sleep but there wasn't time for him to gather his wits. “Wha'?” He pushed himself off the pillow and searched myopically for the cause of the disturbance.
He saw the shape of her in the bedroom door but couldn't make out the details. “Who is it?” He groped on the table beside him but his glasses weren't there. “Brodie?”
His glasses must have fallen off the bed: she saw them on the floor. She neither passed them to him nor told him where to find them. Nor did she answer to her name. Later she would be ashamed of that. The last people who came in here without an invitation snatched him away to purgatory. Though his conscious mind knew no repetition was likely, the nerve-endings under his skin must have been alive with fear. She could have rescued him with a word. Even in her current mood Brodie didn't like herself for not doing.
Daniel's increasingly urgent search located the missing glasses and he crammed them on. “It is you. Brodie, you scared the life out of me! What - ?” He saw her face then, and the sheaf of papers in her hand. His expression stilled. “Ah.”
“You want to explain?” she asked tightly.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “But not while you're ready to hit me. I'll put the kettle on, let's -”
“Screw the kettle!” Brodie hurled the papers at him: they fanned out in midair, covering his legs and his bare feet like snow. “I want to know what this is about. You can't get this sort of information legitimately: you've been hacking into confidential sources, and the word for that is spying. Why? Because I said I might go on holiday with him?”
“No,” said Daniel indignantly. He pushed himself upright at the end of the bed, coincidentally putting more distance between them. “Although -”
“No Although is the same as Yes,” spat Brodie. “What the hell did you think you were doing? You think you can dictate who I see, who I go away with? Who I like?”
“Of course not. I just - I don't want you to make a mistake.”
“Who do you think you are,” she yelled, “my mother? It's none of your damned business! We were thrown together by circumstances, we're not even friends in any real sense. A fortnight ago I didn't know you existed; another fortnight and you'll have gone back to what passes for your normality and I'll have gone back to mine. We both got hijacked by events beyond our control. Maybe I owe you something, Daniel, but not this - not a say in my life. You have no right to spy on someone I like because you don't approve of him!”
“That wasn't the reason.”
“No? Jesus, Daniel, look at this stuff! If you wanted to know how much David Ibbotsen is worth you should have asked him - he'd probably have told you. What were you
thinking
? - that if he could afford to take me to the Caribbean he could buy you a new telescope? Were you trying to work out how much to ask for?”
She could hardly have said anything more hurtful. Daniel's jaw dropped and his eyes saucered behind the thick lenses. He was too astonished to deny it. Brodie took his silence for consent.
“God knows they owe you something, but at least have the courage to tell them face to face. This” - she flicked a disdainful glance at his research - “is like rooting round in the rubbish bins. Anyway, you won't get anything out of David. All the money belongs to his father. If it hadn't been this business would have been over as soon as it started, you wouldn't have got hurt, and you and I would never have met.”
Daniel moistened his lips. “Neither would you and David.”
“Me and David is nothing to do with you! Daniel, I understand that you resent him. That you hate them both. You have every right. If you want to change your mind and turn them in to the police, I won't try to stop you. But don't tell them it's over and then hack into
their personal data behind their backs. It isn't worthy of you. If you want to punish them for what they did, tell them. But don't use me as a stalking horse.”
“Brodie, I'm not! You don't understand. This isn't about money - at least, not the way you think. You know I wouldn't lie about that.”
“I don't know anything about you, Daniel! I know you say you don't lie - and then I find this.” She gestured furiously at the printouts. “You said you didn't want anything from the Ibbotsens. So what am I supposed to make of it? And incidentally,” she added in her teeth, “I noticed that was another of those not-quite-denials. It's not about money, at least not the way I think. Well Daniel, I don't know
what
to think. I'm beginning to wonder if I've misjudged you completely. I thought you were a decent man who got caught up in terrible events.”
“What do you think now?” His voice was low.
Brodie waved at the paperwork again. “That this isn't the act of someone who genuinely wants to put the matter behind him. There's one honourable way of getting even with the Ibbotsens, and this isn't it. What do you want? Tell me, and I'll tell them. But don't skulk round like a thief.”
“I didn't. I mean ⦔ His voice ran up thin; he swallowed and tried again. “I was worried. Something you said, that I kept thinking about. I thought, maybe I was imagining it. I wanted to be sure. I didn't want to do something stupid. Say something stupid. I didn't want this to happen: that we'd end up shouting at one another.”
“Something I said?” Confusion was undermining her anger. She went on looking at him, taking in the earnest nodding, the pale eyes, the gentle unremarkable face. A glimmer of understanding flickered in the fog. “Daniel - is this about us?”
“Us?”
“You and me. We've spent a lot of hours together this last week. We helped one another through some difficult times. It's been an emotional roller-coaster; there were moments it felt like you and me against the world. In those circumstances you can't
not
get close to someone.”
Daniel nodded fractionally. “I suppose.”
Brodie let her eyes fall shut for a second. So that was it. She really hadn't seen it coming. But she should have done. He'd had a close encounter with death: he'd come back to her voice and her face, and not much else. He had no family that she knew of, no friends who cared enough to find out what became of him. He had a job he enjoyed and an absorbing hobby; and one of them had got him into this, and the other was now a emotional minefield.
She was all he had left. She'd taken him into her life because he needed a friend and she needed to repair some of the damage she'd done. And he'd thought it was more than that.
“Oh Daniel,” she sighed, sitting on the bed beside him, “I'm sorry. This isn't your fault, it's mine - I should have realised what you were thinking, how it must have seemed to you. I wanted to help, and instead I've managed to confuse you.
“What I said before: I didn't mean it. I hope we are friends. I hope we'll stay friends whatever happens between me and David. If anything does: dear God, I've known him even less time than I've known you!”
“Then, be careful,” he murmured. “That's all I'm asking.”
Her gaze was astute. “No, it isn't. You're asking me to make a choice: David or you. You're saying I can't enjoy his company and stay friends with you. Or - no, that's not quite it, is it? You think it's more than friendship. You think of you and me the way I think of me and David - not an item yet but with the potential to become one.
“I'm sorry but you're mistaken. I'm not in love with you; I'm never going to be in love with you. I looked after you because I felt responsible. My relationship with David can't come between us because there is no us, not in that sense. I'm sorry if anything I said or did misled you. I felt guilty about my part in all this and tried to make amends. I'm sorry if you took that for something else.”
His voice cracked with distress. “Brodie, please - listen to me - !”
“No. Daniel, I understand that your emotions are in tatters: I keep telling you what to do about that but you won't do it. You won't talk to a counsellor, you insist on handling it your own way - but your way involves hacking into private sources of information and
driving a wedge between me and a man I like! I won't be manipulated like that - not by you, not by anyone.
“Get a life, Daniel. Stop trying to live mine.” With that she turned on her heel and left.
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Daniel went on sitting where he had been all along, cross-legged at the top of his bed, fighting back tears. He knew, if he was to have any kind of a future, he was going to have to master this tendency to break down when anything upset him. Being understandable didn't make it all right. He was tired of it, never mind anyone else. He clenched his jaw and shut his eyes, waiting for the weakness to pass.
When he heard footsteps and a knock at the door, he thought she'd got as far as her car, found herself regretting what she'd said and come back to hear him out. Still barefoot, he sprang from the bed and hurried to the door, flinging it wide. “Brodie -”
“Sorry,” said Jack Deacon woodenly, stepping inside before the welcome could be withdrawn, “close but no coconut. Can I have a word?”
“Er - of course.” Wondering, Daniel closed the door behind him. “Sit down.”
Inspector Deacon did as he was bid. He made a considerable presence: it took a brave man to try and move him when he was standing in an open doorway. Seated, he had the same air of permanence as the Rock of Gibraltar.
He looked around him. “When did you come back here?”
“Last night.”
“Got tired of being nannied, did you?”
“I thought it was time to start getting back to normal.”
“Mm.” Deacon nodded like a plush Alsatian on a parcel-shelf, giving as much away. “Any problems?”
“Problems?”
The policeman raised an eyebrow. “The first time you tried you stuck it just long enough for me to drive away. If Mrs Farrell hadn't
given you a bed you'd have had to doss down with the drunks under the pier.”
Daniel smiled faintly. “No. No problems.”
“Mm,” said Deacon again. “And so, emboldened by success, you thought you'd go back to work. How did that work out?”
Daniel regarded him for some moments before answering. “Inspector Deacon, you obviously know what happened at school this morning. I expect Mr Chalmers called you; I know he thought somebody ought to be looking after me.”
“I thought somebody was. I thought Mrs Farrell had appointed herself to the task. Then five minutes ago I watched her stalk out of here radiating righteous indignation as if you'd goosed her. You didn't, did you?”
Daniel breathed steadily. “We - there was - It was a misunderstanding.”
“What kind of a misunderstanding?”
“It was personal.”
Under the tented eyebrow Deacon's pupil held a little red spark. “Sonny, this is a criminal investigation. There's no such thing as personal.”
“It was nothing to do with your investigation.”
“I'll be the judge of that.”
They faced one another in a silence that lasted almost a minute. Neither man backed down or looked away. Finally Daniel said quietly, “No, Inspector, I will.”
Deacon hid his surprise in a sniff. “You know, Danny, when this is over I'm going to have somebody behind bars. If it has to be you, so be it.”
“You'll have to find something you can charge me with first. I don't think dislike is enough.”
The policeman grinned wolfishly. “I don't dislike you, Danny. I just don't think you're being honest with me.”
“I've told you the truth.”
“Ah, but have you told me the whole truth?”
“You're the detective.”
Deacon returned his smile, without the gentleness and also
without much humour. “Funny thing about that. People who say it never go on to add, âSo I'll give you all the help I can.'”
“Then I'll make your day,” said Daniel. “Inspector Deacon, I'll give you all the help I can. Why are you here? Has something happened?”
Deacon pursed his lips and answered obliquely. “Being a detective isn't what people imagine. It's not often about fast cars and gunfights and leaping on suspects from a great height. Mostly it's about observation. You gather all the information you can about a crime and the people involved in it, and you look for things that don't fit. Things that could have happened the way you're being told they happened, but actually never would.