“Then - why â¦?”
The man shrugged. “You're a loose end. I don't like loose ends. You might think they won't do any harm, but the only way to be sure is to tie them up and cut them off. I don't take risks, Daniel, even small ones. When I walk away from this, there won't be any loose ends.”
“Please,” whispered Daniel. “She has a child ⦔
“How old?”
He wasn't sure why it mattered. “Four, I think.” Understanding hit him like a blow, knocking the confusion off his face. “No!”
“Oh relax,” said the man negligently, “four's way too young to represent even a tiny risk. She wouldn't have talked to a four-year-old about this, and if she had a four-year-old wouldn't remember. I won't touch her, you have my word.” Then, as if in the interests of honesty, he added, “Unless she's in the car at the time. Or the house, if I go for a gas explosion.”
Daniel writhed furiously. The man slapped him across the head. “Don't get stroppy with me, sonny. Or -” He paused, considering. “Actually, nothing you do will have any effect on my actions.” He got up from the chair and, linking a hand through Daniel's bound
arms, dragged him through to the kitchen. Then he reached for the bucket.
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The yellow bucket he'd carried up from the surf: now Brodie knew what it was for. A man can drown in four inches of water if somebody holds him down. Daniel had served his purpose, there was no longer any reason to delay.
He hadn't meant to betray her but he had. Now death stalked at her heels too. Close on news of his suicide - or perhaps ahead of it: his body might float around for a week before drifting ashore - would come reports of her own misadventure. A car crash or a gas explosion. Two suicides would raise eyebrows: this would be only an unhappy coincidence. The most they could hope for was an irascible question mark in Jack Deacon's notebook and an hysterical outburst in broken English from Marta. Unless the explosion killed her too.
Brodie's mind raced. Neither man knew she was here, watching, listening. She could get away, far away, save herself and her child, at least for now. Then she'd be where Daniel had found himself, living every day in the fear that this one, or maybe the next, she'd open a door and there he'd be. He wouldn't give up, he couldn't afford to. Daniel was right: it wasn't much of a life.
Even so it was more than he could expect if Brodie took advantage of the darkness to slip away. Ten minutes was the quickest she could hope to bring help. Daniel would drown in three.
Which didn't alter the reality that here and now there was nothing she could do for him. She couldn't take a professional killer with her bare hands. She backed silently away from the door.
The bucket smelled of seaweed. Daniel thought, if he could knock it over â¦
But the man had thought of that too. He'd manhandled many desperate people in his time, most of them stronger than Daniel Hood. He knew how to. It wasn't only physical superiority that told, it was skill. When the time came to put out the light he prided himself he could do it as neatly as anyone in the business. He didn't leave it to others because he was squeamish. It was the loose ends thing again.
He raised Daniel's head by a handful of hair and looked him in the eye. Finally Daniel could see the man who'd ruled his nightmares for a fortnight. There was nothing remarkable about him. Average height, average build, perhaps a shade harder than average; aged about forty, a few grey hairs starting through the close brown crop; eyes somewhere between blue and hazel. An ordinary face, unmarked by the cruelty of the mind. He'd been doing this so long it had no moral implications for him. No emotion, no guilt. It was a job he was good at. The only thing that showed in his face was the assurance of knowing that.
“Now listen,” he said. “The quicker we get this done, the easier it'll be. It's going to happen: you can delay the inevitable for a minute or two but that's about all. Accept it gracefully. You've done well. Now, know when to call it a day.”
But it was Daniel's
life
he was talking about, and he'd tried so hard to hang onto it, to get it back when he'd almost lost it. He couldn't just give it up. He knew, as only a fool would not, that it would take something extraordinary to save him now. Still it was not in his nature to lie quietly across the tracks and wait for the train.
“Ibbotsen,” he gasped desperately. “He'll know. He found you once, he can find you again. You're worried about loose ends? Worry about him.”
If he was surprised that Daniel knew that name the man didn't
show it. He frowned. “Why would Mr Ibbotsen care? He needs this as much as I do. Trust me: all Mr Ibbotsen will feel when your body washes up under Beachy Head is a huge sense of relief. He won't ask himself how or why, he'll just be glad.”
“He'll know it wasn't suicide. He'll know who did it.”
The man shrugged. “Who's he going to tell - the police? I don't think so.”
“He owes me!”
The man laughed, not unkindly. “Daniel, whatever you think he owes you, whatever he thinks he owes you, he isn't going to put his neck in a noose to change the wording on your death certificate. If he was here now he wouldn't interfere to save your life. Mr Ibbotsen has more to fear from me than I have from him.”
He emptied the bucket into the sink. Then he lifted Daniel bodily and slammed him face down on the worktop. With one hand in Daniel's belt and the other behind his head, he tugged him over the sink and pushed down hard.
Gasping with fear and effort, Daniel resisted with all his strength. It was nowhere near enough. He was both smaller and lighter than the other man, and trussed like a chicken. He tried to twist aside but the man jerked him flat and forced his head down. The stink of brine filled his nostrils: opening his mouth to snatch a breath he swallowed salt water. His throat burned, his heart thumped in his ears and he thought he was lost.
You can drown in four inches of water, but his ears were above the surface. In disbelief and sudden burgeoning hope he heard the rap of knuckles on his front door.
The hope vanished utterly at the words that followed. They didn't mean he wasn't going to die. They meant he wasn't going to die alone.
“Daniel, it's Brodie. Can we talk? Or have you gone to bed - shall I come back tomorrow?”
He felt the man above him waver, took advantage of the distraction to yank his face out of the water and grab a lungful of air. He tried to shout a warning, but everything after her name was just bubbles. “Hush now,” said the man disapprovingly.
It wasn't just the arrival of another person that altered things, it was who was there. He couldn't both finish with Daniel and answer the door. If he continued with what he was doing the woman would go away: he'd have to look for her later, and risk not finding her until the discovery of Hood's body warned her of her danger.
When Daniel was dead, under the shield of night the man meant to carry him down to the water and launch him on his last journey. But tides are at once utterly constant and quite unpredictable: the same current might take him for a week's cruise around the Channel or deposit him on the shingle at his own doorstep. Brodie Farrell was the one who'd know he hadn't walked into the sea. Everyone else might believe it but she'd know to be afraid. If he was found in hours rather than days she'd take her child and run, and he could waste much time finding her. If providence had sent her to him it seemed churlish to turn her away.
“Just a minute.” He hauled Daniel off the worktop, dropping him on the floor hard enough to wind him, and stuffed a dish-cloth in his mouth. Then he shoved him in a corner like a roll of unwanted carpet and shut the kitchen door.
“I'm coming.” He glanced down but there was nothing alarming in his immediate appearance. By the time she wondered why he was damp it would be too late. He opened the front door.
He ran into the stock of an oar, jabbed into the centre of his face like a javelin. His nose didn't so much break as explode. His cheek bones snapped under the force, the centre of his face collapsing in a welter of blood and an odd, high-pitched yowling like a cat in a spin-dryer.
His own blood kept him from seeing her. If it hadn't he'd have been astonished at the fury, the Valkyrie that Brodie Farrell had become. Her eyes were like coals, dark and smoking and tinged with red. The naked savagery in her face would have startled him. The coiled-spring strength of her body might have alarmed even him if he'd had a moment to recognise what it meant.
But he hadn't. He was staggering back under the first blow, his hands going to his ruined face, when she landed a second in his abdomen immediately below his sternum. The air rushing from
his lungs sprayed her with blood. Brodie paused just long enough to close the door behind her - two minutes ago she was praying for passers-by, now she wouldn't have welcomed them - then followed him as he scrabbled desperately, crablike, across the carpet.
Her voice was low, vibrant, ribbed with rage and infinite menace. “A car-crash, hm? A gas explosion? You don't threaten me, you sewer-rat, not if you know what's good for you. And you definitely never, ever,
ever
threaten my child!” She swung the oar again.
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Try as he might, Daniel couldn't free himself. He couldn't get the rag out of his mouth. The best he could manage was to roll out of the corner and, half on his side like an inebriated caterpillar, make for the kitchen door. His lungs rasped and burned, and he thought he would choke long before he could influence the events beyond.
He couldn't open the door. He hadn't the strength to turn himself round and kick it: he butted it with his head. It rattled impressively; so did his eyeballs. He went to do it again.
The door opened inwards, pushing him gently across the lino. Afraid, his eyes clouding, he looked up; but the door masked whichever of them was still standing. Daniel held his breath. The next moments would tell if he would live or die.
Brodie looked round the door, located him on the lino. “Oh, there you are.” She sounded numb. Her face, neck and breast were blazed with blood.
She saw the horror in his eyes, looked where he was looking, shook her head tiredly. “Not mine.” She reached down and pulled the gag out of his mouth.
In two days the man had learned everything there was to know about Daniel Hood; but Daniel had learnt things about him too. Enough that he wouldn't have turned his back on him even if he thought he was dead. Enough that he wouldn't have
believed
he was dead if his head and shoulders were on opposite sides of a meat-cleaver. Somewhere he found the spit to shout. “Brodie, don't let him - !”
Brodie glanced round negligently. “Him? He's not going anywhere.” She looked for the kitchen scissors, knelt beside Daniel and started unwrapping him.
When he was free she helped him to his feet; but Daniel made her stay in the kitchen while he went to investigate. Seeing what she'd done he understood her certainty. He reached an unsteady hand for the phone to ask for police and ambulance. But privately he thought the ambulance might have a wasted journey.
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Detective Inspector Deacon saw Brodie first. She told him the truth, excepting only the involvement of the Ibbotsen family. That she'd taken Daniel home, seen someone loitering round the sheds and returned to learn of the attempt on Daniel's life and the threat to her own. With no time to get help she'd hunted through the rotting nets and old lobster pots stored under the flat for something to use as a weapon. The oar was the best she could do. Had there been a harpoon she'd have used that. If she'd failed to kill the man who purposed her death it was not for want of trying.
Deacon nodded slowly, non-committally. “Well, you didn't kill him, but he's going to need a good plastic surgeon. OK. I expect you want to get cleaned up. I'll have someone take you home. I'll need to talk to you again, but that'll do for now.”
“You're not charging me?”
“Not at this time,” said Deacon. Then he softened. “If this is the man who hurt Daniel, I doubt you have much to fear from the judicial process.”
Brodie nodded. Reaction had caught up with her: she felt like a wet rag. “I don't know that for sure. I never saw him before. But if I hadn't gone back he'd have killed Daniel and then he'd have come for me. He said so: I heard him.”
“Go and get some sleep. I'll talk to Daniel and then maybe we can draw a line under this.”
Gratefully, Brodie did as he said.
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Deacon was much longer with Daniel. He kept approaching the same area from different directions, and going over it minutely as if all the answers were there if he could only see them. Of course, he was right.
“It was the same man?”
“Yes,” said Daniel.
“You recognised him?”
“I recognised his voice.”
Deacon frowned. “He looked different?”
“No, he looked the same. Everyone looks the same when I haven't got my glasses on. You've seen one blob, you've seen them all.”
Deacon held out his hand. “Show me.”
“What?”
“The glasses. Show me.”
Daniel passed them over. Without them he looked naked.
Deacon peered through them and quickly shut his eyes. It was like the start of a migraine, shapes distorted out of all meaning, colours that wouldn't keep still. He passed them back. “So you didn' t recognise him when he passed you on the beach.”
“I thought he was digging bait.”
“In a suit?”
“I never noticed.”
“Mrs Farrell noticed.”
“She's a sort of detective. I'm a maths teacher.”
“Hm.” Deacon pondered. “So you're alive, and she's facing a murder charge.”
Daniel's eyebrows rocketed. “How could it be murder? He was trying to kill me! Then he'd have killed her.”
“Did she know it was the man who tortured you?”
“She may have guessed. She couldn't have known. I told her, afterwards.”
“After she'd turned his face into steak tartare, broken three of his ribs and collapsed his lung.”
“Yes. After that.”
“So that wasn't why she did it.”
“I told you. He was trying to kill me. He threated to kill her. He could have killed her daughter. It was self-defence.”
“Self-defence is a valid plea,” nodded Deacon. “The jury will take note of the fact that she's a woman and he was a strong and violent man. They may be less sympathetic when they learn that there isn't a mark on her and he's on life-support.”
“It was him or us. There was no time for subtlety. If Brodie hadn't stopped him I'd have drowned. If she'd thought about it any longer I'd have drowned. You'd have had two corpses on your hands, and a killer who didn't wait around to answer your questions.”
There was a long silence while Deacon considered. He knew he was getting the truth from these people; he also knew he wasn't getting the whole truth. When the man on the ventilator at Dimmock General recovered enough to be interviewed he'd join the conspiracy too. It wouldn't stop him going down - there was sufficient evidence to convict him of attempted murder here and murder elsewhere - but it wouldn't solve the mystery. Deacon wanted to know so much it hurt.