“I shall ask him, you know,” he said. “When he wakes up, I'll ask him who Sophie was. Then I'll know what it is you're hiding.”
“He won't talk. Whatever else the man is he's a professional. He won't tell you who employed him or why.”
“Wrong answer, Danny,” said Deacon with a grim smile. “The right answer was, I'm not hiding anything, Inspector. But you don't lie, do you? You don't mind misleading me, you're happy enough to keep back vital bits of the jigsaw, but you'll tie yourself in knots rather than actually lie. Did you think I didn't realise what you were doing? That I saw no difference between âI don't know' and âI can't tell you'?”
Daniel took a deep breath. His clothes were still damp and he was cold. “Inspector -”
“Oh, save it,” snarled Deacon. “I know what you're going to say. That men you didn't know snatched you from your flat and tortured you for two days, and when you couldn't give them what they wanted they shot you. Then one of them found out you hadn't
died and came back to finish the job, only Mrs Farrell rearranged his features with the butt-end of an oar.”
“Yes,” said Daniel softly. “That's exactly what I was going to say.”
“It's all you're going to say, too, isn't it?”
Daniel bit his lip. “Isn't it enough that the good guys won? That a man who takes money to destroy people is in custody and the people he came to kill are safe. There'll be no further repercussions: I give you my word. It's over. Can't you be satisfied with that?”
Jack Deacon felt a fury building under his breast-bone. He was a man who got angry easily, it didn't always mean much, often it subsided as quickly as it came like a storm that hurls and is gone.
This was different, a slow-rise flood of rage at how he and the law he loved were being treated. And not by the scum of the criminal sewer, who might try to take his head off at intervals but in fact respected him. No. By a quiet, gentle, decent young man in an honourable profession; a man who would be judged a pillar of his society by any reasoned assessment. A man whom, so far as Deacon knew, had never harmed a living soul.
A man whose stubborn pursuit of his own code undermined every principle Deacon believed in, struck at the foundations of who he was and the job he did.
Men like Fingers Molloy, the worst pickpocket in Dimmock, a man who couldn't open his own wallet without setting off alarms, might break the law with depressing regularity but at least they didn' t try to rewrite it. They didn't try to argue that the law was wrong. Whereas Hood, who may never have broken a law in his life, didn't consider any of them binding. He complied with those he judged worthy. He thought his opinion of their merit was relevant. It was a deeply subversive attitude, more dangerous than outright defiance.
Deacon didn't shout. He kept his voice tightly reined. He leaned over the desk and thrust his face so close that Daniel recoiled. “Who the hell do you think you are? Who do you think
I
am - your hired help? You think I've been breaking my balls to get to the bottom of this out of regard for you? Because someone hurt you once and might do it again?
“Hood, I don't give a damn about you. If you'd died I'd have
investigated your murder; since you lived I'm investigating the attacks on you. That's the sum total of what your existence means to me - the wording on a file. You're nothing. You can go to hell in a hand-cart, as long as you don't leave me to clear up the mess.
“Your word? You want to give me your word that everything's all right now, and you think that'll do? That I'll lick your hand and curl up in the corner and go to sleep like your big dumb dog? I'm a public servant, Hood. That doesn't mean I'm
your
servant.”
Daniel blinked as if he'd had his face slapped. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to suggest -”
“Yes,” said Deacon furiously, “you did. You think the law exists to keep you safe. That once you're all right the whole tedious business can go back in the box until you need it again. Well, I have news for you. The legal system isn't a game, and it doesn't exist for your convenience. It's the difference between civilisation and barbarism, and that makes it more important than your little life and everything you've done in it. Give me your word? Your word isn't worth the breath it takes to get it out. The law keeps whole societies from tumbling into chaos. And you want to step over it because it's in your way.”
“Whether you want it or not,” said Daniel in a low voice, “I'm giving you my word that I haven't broken any laws. Mrs Farrell hasn't broken any laws. Nothing either of us has done is going to let the darkness in.”
“Oh, you're so clever,” sneered Deacon. “So well-educated. But all the education in the world wasn't worth a damn when somebody stronger than you tried to rip you apart for what you knew. I bet you were begging for me to ride to the rescue then! You'd have sacrificed babies to me and my law. Now you're safe you think you can pick and choose which bits you'll obey.
“Well, that's not the deal. I'll look after you, Daniel. I'll stop the men with the buckets and the cigarette-lighters from extracting what they want from you and throwing the dregs away. I'll protect you from the chaos if I have to risk my own neck to do it. That's what I signed up for, and I mightn't like it but I've never shortchanged anyone yet and I'm not changing the habit of a lifetime for the likes of you.
“But it doesn't come free. You want my protection when you need it, you pay with your support when you don't. I don't want your word, Daniel, I can't bank your word. I want the truth. I want to know what you know - everything that you know. I want you to acknowledge that you have no right to withhold it.”
Daniel's lips were dry. He moistened them with the tip of his tongue. Deacon was entitled to be angry. But he'd made a promise and he wouldn't go back on it. He regretted offending Deacon but he didn't think he had any choice.
“You think I'm ungrateful,” he said. “I'm not. I have every respect for you and what you do. You want my support? - I swear to you, you have it. I just can't do what you ask. I can't explain why: if I could you'd understand. I can't tell you everything I know without betraying an entirely innocent party. Please don't hate me for that.”
Deacon exploded with sheer exasperation. “Hate you, you arrogant little sod? You're not worth my hatred. I despise you. You pay a pittance on your income tax and you think that entitles you to a say in how I do my job. You think what happened to you was a kind of martyrdom, don't you? - that it bestowed some sort of divinity. You clothe yourself in your shining righteousness, you display your stigmata, and you think we lesser mortals will wave palm-fronds at you for ever more.
“Daniel, I'm not impressed by your scars. The first time I saw you, you were a mass of festering blisters and you stank of garbage. It's a bit hard to feel reverence for someone you've watched being cleaned up like an incontinent geriatric. You're alive because better people than you got on with their jobs and didn't give up when the going got tough. I don't know how you have the gall to ask me to leave my job half done.”
“Because if you won't you're going to do a lot more harm than good,” murmured Daniel.
“That's not your call!” shouted Jack Deacon, beside himself with rage.
Daniel's chin came up. “You think it's yours?”
“Maybe. Or my superior officers', or possibly the court's. There's a whole mechanism for taking difficult decisions in the public interest.
And the funny thing is, Daniel, absolutely nowhere in the process does it come down to what a comprehensive school maths teacher thinks.”
Daniel shook his head, trembling and obdurate. “You're saying I have no voice in whether it's more important to punish someone who hurt me or protect someone who never hurt anyone. I don't accept that. I have not only the right but the obligation to make a moral judgement. If I believe it's better to forgive than to repay one wrong with another, then no one - not you, not your superiors, not the Lord Chief Justice - is going to change my mind.
“Unless you can get the information some other way, this stops with me. If that's a crime, charge me. If it isn't, accept that I'm not going to tell you anything more.”
Deacon regarded him for a long time before answering. He wasn't going to charge Daniel Hood with anything, he'd be laughed out of court. But neither was he going to forgive and forget.
“This isn't over,” he said finally. “Yes, you're free to leave. No, I'm not going to arrest you. But one day, Daniel, you're going to regret making an enemy of me. You're going to need my help, or my understanding, or a word from me in the right ear, and you're not going to get it. I'm going to stand on a bridge somewhere and watch you drown. They say your whole life passes in front of your eyes: well, damn sure this moment will.”
Daniel didn't know what to say. He'd never imagined fighting the forces of law and order. “Inspector, this isn't personal ⦔
“Oh yes it is,” snarled Deacon. “It's as personal as it gets. I tried to help you, stuck my neck out for you; and when the time came to return the favour, you didn't. Someday you're going to pay for that. I don't know how or when, but one day you're going to remember showing me two fingers and wish you hadn't. Now get out.”
Daniel stumbled to his feet and made for the door, clumsily, as if through a fog, unsure of where it was. He got it open before Deacon spoke again.
“You can tell me one thing,” he rasped. “And a refusal to answer will serve just as well. Does Mrs Farrell know who Sophie
is? Does she know who hired the man she beat within an inch of his life?”
Daniel stood beside the open door. The corridor, the front steps and the street beyond beckoned. He dared not answer their siren call. He turned slowly and looked Jack Deacon full in the eyes.
He shook his head. “No,” he lied. “She never knew, and I never told her.”