Daniel shook his head. “There's no need. I was just worried I'd forgotten the pills. But I wasn't home long enough to take them out of my coat pocket, and the coat was the one thing I grabbed on the way out.”
“I can fetch you some things if you'd rather not go back to the flat yet.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
They sipped the tea. Daniel looked up shyly. “Can I ask you something?”
Brodie steeled herself. “Anything.”
“How did you find me?”
It had to come. She couldn't expect him to forget as well as forgive. He was entitled to know everything she could tell him. “From a photograph.”
“But how? Without a name or address or any information about me. How do you set about finding someone from just a photograph?”
“You can't always. But sometimes there's something in there besides the subject that gives you a frame of reference - a time or a
location or somewhere to start. In this case it was the telescope. I went to a star-gazers' meeting and showed the picture round.”
“Someone recognised me?” Daniel sounded pleasantly surprised.
She was sorry to disillusion him. “Well - the telescope, actually. But it was enough.”
Daniel was thinking. “This photograph. Where was it taken?”
“Hard to tell. You were leaning on a stone parapet with the telescope beside you. Ring a bell?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. The monument in the park - I hauled the telescope up there last Wednesday. Sun-spot observations: I'd been watching a good group back in February, I didn't want to miss their reappearance just because it was a school day. So I took the telescope over to the park at lunchtime. It's really too big to lug around like that, but the detail it gives is phenomenal. For some things, bigger really is better.”
Brodie was eyeing him with disbelief. “Daniel - you can see the sun from all over Dimmock! From your flat, and from the school. What's so special about the monument?”
“You want the sun high so you're observing through the minimum amount of atmosphere: before school was too early, after school was too late. And there's nowhere at school that's high enough off the ground.”
“You were trying to get closer?”
His gaze was level on her face. He knew she was quizzing him: if he minded it didn't show. “There's a lot of pollution at ground level. It distorts the image. A telescope can't filter out the garbage: the bigger the magnificiation, the bigger the distortion. You have to get above the dust layer. A mountain's perfect, but the monument's high enough to improve the view significantly.”
She nodded. Dimmock had never had much time for the Clean Air Act. “I thought astronomers only came out at night.”
Daniel smiled solemnly. “Bit hard to watch sunspots in the dark.”
“Ah.” She went to return the smile; and then she realised that Daniel had known what she was doing before she did herself. She was trying to catch him in a lie because a part of her still hoped this was his fault. That he'd brought it on himself. Sunspots? - yeah,
right. But if it wasn't true, then he was up the monument with a telescope for some quite different purpose. And she didn't know it, and Deacon didn't know it, but perhaps the people who hurt him did â¦
Daniel held her gaze. “It's all right,” he said, his voice low.
Brodie shook her head angrily, the flying hair masking the colour in her cheeks. “No, it isn't, it's pathetic. It's stupid and it's cruel, and more than that it's cowardly. I'm desperate to shed some of the blame, and if I can't find anyone else then you'll do. It's like blaming the woman for getting raped. Damn it, Daniel, I'm stronger than this!”
“I know you are,” he said softly. “But it's enough to be strong most of the time. You're allowed time off for good behaviour.”
She laughed at that; it came out half a sob.
Daniel leaned back in his chair. “So the photograph was taken at lunchtime a week last Wednesday. And the people who kidnapped me had it. Why? What possible interest could me and my telescope be to them?”
“Did you see anyone?” He shook his head. “I expect you were too busy with your sunspots. And they were some distance away: the picture was taken off a video and enhanced within an inch of its life.”
“Someone was filming me? That's crazy.”
“Daniel, it's all crazy! Never mind the video: why would anyone want to hurt you like that?”
His voice was a murmur. “They were looking for Sophie.”
“But you say you don't know anything about her. Why would they think you did?”
Daniel shrugged. “At first I thought they'd made a mistake - grabbed the wrong man. But that makes no sense either. They had a picture of me on top of the monument with twenty kilos of optical equipment. Who the hell could they have mistaken me for?”
He was right, the odds against had to be - well, astronomical. Brodie felt her chest tighten, her eyes grow wary. “No, that wasn't a mistake.” She pushed herself away from the table, away from him. “And if it wasn't then they got the right man. Who are you, Daniel?
What have you done that made someone want to kill you an inch at a time? Deacon was right. What is it you're not telling us?”
Five days ago he was at death's door. Since then his young body had concentrated all its resources on healing; but the burns and the bullet-wound were not his only injuries, and psychological scars remain livid long after physical ones have faded.
Post traumatic stress disorder can show itself in depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, marital breakdown, asthma, eczema, psoriasis and diabetes. Daniel was at the very start of the process, with any or all of them ahead. For now the clearest sign was the way tears sprang too readily to his eyes. He recoiled from her barrage as if she was throwing not questions but crockery at him. “Please don't shout at me. I can't think straight if you shout at me.”
Brodie bit her lip. With the possible exception of DI Deacon, the last people hammering questions at him had punished his failure to answer with fire. In tears? - it was a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that he wasn't in a strait jacket. “I'm sorry. Daniel, I'm sorry ⦔
“It's all right. I'm just a bit ⦠shaky still. I'm all right; really I am.”
Brodie came back to the table and sat down, capturing his hands with her own. “No, you're not. There's no way you could be. And no reason you should be - not here, with me. I know what you've been through. You don't have to pretend for me.”
“I know,” said Daniel. “I'm just ⦠trying to deal with it. Only every time I think I'm winning I find myself crying again.”
Brodie shrugged. “So cry. It's what you do when you're hurt.”
“If you're a man you're not supposed to.”
She sniffed. “Men do lots of things they're not supposed to, most of them more harmful than crying.”
He gently reclaimed his hands. There were pink lines on his wrists where the straps had cut him. “To answer your question,” he said quietly. “I haven't done anything that would explain what happened. I am exactly and only what I appear to be. I'm not holding anything back. I don't know why they took me, or why they filmed me.” He blinked. “Have you still got the picture?”
Brodie had given it to Inspector Deacon. But before that, before
she'd known there was anything sinister going on, she'd scanned it onto her computer. She'd been working at home that evening so the picture was in her PC in the spare room.
It was strange, studying it together. Though poor it was innocuous enough: it showed Daniel Hood, his telescope and the stone parapet on top of the monument. But it was the start of everything.
Daniel knew it too. His voice was unsteady. “We should be able to work out where this was taken from.”
Brodie nodded, keeping her eyes on the screen. “We know when you were up there so the shadows will tell us which way you were looking. If we follow that line till it reaches either the ground or another building, that's where the camera was.”
He didn't reply. After a moment she looked up and found him watching her. “I was right. You are good at this.”
“Not bad,” she admitted. But it wasn't just a compliment: there was something odd in his voice. She waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Finding things - finding people - that's what you do.”
“I told you that.”
“I know. I'm just thinking ⦔
She got there before he could say what he was thinking. “No!” she exploded. “No. Never. Forget it.”
“All right.”
“I mean it, Daniel.” She screwed round to look him square in the face. “They nearly killed you. They know who you are - they know who I am. We're not rattling any cages! It's Inspector Deacon's job to find them, not ours.”
“Deacon's given up. I'm not ready to.”
“We'll tell him about the photograph.”
“He's
got
the photograph! He's got all the information we have - if he was going to use it he'd have done it by now.”
“Maybe he has, and it didn't get him anywhere.”
“And maybe he hasn't, because he hasn't the incentive I have. His life goes on whether or not he ever finds out what happened. I'm not sure mine will.”
Only the lethal mixture of sympathy and remorse kept Brodie
from switching off the computer there and then, going to bed and telling Daniel to do the same. She looked at his face and saw it pinched with anguish. “I suppose ⦔
“What?”
“I suppose it wouldn't do any harm to go to the park and look. If we could work out where the video was taken from, telling Deacon might be enough to kick-start his investigation again.”
Daniel nodded, painfully eager. “Now?”
“It's dark! We'll go tomorrow. Or I will - maybe you should stay here.”
“I'll stay in the car.”
Brodie nodded. “All right; tomorrow. Now, let me make up this bed again and then let's get some sleep. It's been a busy day.”
He had nothing to sleep in. She found him some joggers and a T-shirt printed with the slogan “Solicitors do it in triplicate”. It was an old T-shirt.
She left him to undress. In the doorway, though, she paused and looked back. “Daniel, there's one thing you should consider before we go any further with this.”
“Yes?”
“If we start searching for these people, we just might find them.”
Daniel slept and dreamt of waking.
Brodie roused him. The cloud of dark hair was loose, framing a smile. In his dreams he was not short-sighted.
“Rise and shine,” she said.
She reached under the cover for his left hand, gave it a friendly squeeze and laid it on the pillow beside his head. Then she did the same with his right hand. She smiled again and, languidly, he smiled back.
Then she pulled down the cover briskly, and pulled up the witty T-shirt, baring his chest. “Ready when you are,” she said to someone out of sight behind him; and when Daniel tried to move he found his wrists were tied to the headboard.
His cry of terror woke him, Brodie, and quite possibly the rest of the house.
Brodie hurried through from her own room, snapping on lights as she went, to find him huddled against the wall, the bedclothes on the floor, John's T-shirt - wringing wet - clinging to his ribs. His eyes were wide and staring.
“Daniel. Daniel!” She knelt quickly in front of him, gripping his shoulders. “It's all right. It was a dream, that's all. You had a nightmare. Wake up now, it's over.”
She saw uncertainty creep into his eyes as he ventured the gulf between sleep and awareness. When he recognised her he flinched, which upset her more than his cries had done.
“Daniel, it's all right. You're safe here. It was just a dream.”
When he believed her he shut his eyes for a moment and panted softly. “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I'm sorry.”
“It's all right,” Brodie said, still holding him. “It's only to be expected. Was this the first time?”
“I think they gave me something. In the hospital.” He managed a wry, transient smile. “I suppose that's one of the reasons they wanted me to stay.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“No.” He shook his head, droplets of sweat spraying from the rat-tails of his hair. “What time is it?”
There was a clock on the wall. Brodie passed him his glasses. “Nearly eight,” she said. “I'll make some breakfast. Why don't you have a shower?” Her face fell. “Oh - can you?”
Daniel smiled. “A careful one.”
The phone went. It was Marta. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine. Oh - you heard Daniel. He had a nightmare.”
“You want me to come down?”
“Come for breakfast if you like. Bring Paddy. It's time you all met.”
“Give me ten minutes,” said Marta. “To beat out some of the wrinkles. We don't want I should give him another nightmare.”
Brodie found some clothes Daniel could use - a rugby shirt and a sweater she'd bought for John then reclaimed because he never wore it. It would drown Daniel, but that was better than fitting too snugly over his tender skin.
Dressing took him time. Marta and Paddy arrived first. Marta looked round the living room with an interrogative shrug, and Brodie gestured towards the spare room.
Paddy was more direct, demanding in her piercing four-year-old voice, “Where's Mummy's boyfriend?”
Brodie could cheerfully have strangled her. She leaned down and hissed into the child's face, “Daniel is
not
Mummy's boyfriend. He's a nice man who's had a bad week and needs somewhere to stay for a few days. All right?”
Paddy thought about this for a moment. “That's what Daddy said about Julia.” Marta succumbed to a coughing fit.
When Daniel found the living room full of people his first instinct was to retreat. But he pulled himself together. They were two women and a child, for heaven's sake! - if he couldn't face them he'd better look for a hermitage.
Brodie ushered him to the table. She nodded at the sweater. “Coral is you.” She performed introductions.
They breakfasted half in an awkward silence and half in a
budgerigar twittering that was a desperate attempt to talk about anything except why Daniel was here. They were all profoundly grateful when the teapot was empty.
Brodie tried not to work at the weekends. Usually she and Paddy did the week's shopping on Saturday morning. But generous as ever, Marta cast a significant glance at the visitor and announced that she was going to the supermarket, she might as well take the child and Brodie's shopping list as well.
Brodie knew what she meant and was grateful. She got Paddy dressed and handed her back to her friend, along with her housekeeping purse. “Get a taxi back,” she said. “You'll have too much to carry, and it's the least I can do.”
“I was going to,” Marta said airily.
After they'd gone Brodie made a last effort at dissuasion. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“I'm sure.”
“Then, will you stay here while I go to the park?”
“You've been very kind,” said Daniel, “but you can't pick up the pieces for me. I have to do it myself.”
“You don't have to do it today. We could leave it till tomorrow. Or next week.”
“Or sometime, or never.” He smiled ruefully. “Mrs Farrell, I can't hide forever. I have to get back to the real world. I have to stop cowering in corners and listening for footsteps. This is as good a time as any. I'm not fooling myself, if that's what you think. Finding where the video was shot isn't going to solve the mystery. It probably won't even help. No one'll be there now: it's ten days too late to catch them in the act.
“I'm not doing this because I think I'll find the men who hurt me. I'm doing it for my own self-respect. It took a beating, it's not up to much right now, but until I stop behaving like a victim it won't get any better. I have to stand on my own two feet again, and the longer I leave it the harder it'll be. That's why I have to come with you, and we have to go now. If I start thinking there's an alternative I'll never do it.”
“You want to be doing something,” said Brodie. “I understand
that. You want to do something because before there was nothing you could do. But exposing yourself to more danger can't be a good idea.”
“Too much time has passed. If they were still interested in me they'd have found me by now.”
“They think you're dead! They won't go on thinking that if you start wandering round in broad daylight.”
Daniel shook his head. “I don't think they care any more. If they know I'm still alive they also know I can't harm them. If I could, Deacon would have had them out of their beds before now.”
Brodie thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. “It's your call - if you want to do it, we'll do it.” She paused in the doorway. “One condition.”
“Yes?”
“Call me Brodie. I may be older than you, but I'm not old enough to be your mother.”
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She'd printed a copy of the picture off the computer. Brodie parked as close as she could - Daniel still found walking difficult - and they strolled over to the monument and then round it, looking where the shadows fell and calculating where they would fall shortly after midday.
“Here,” said Daniel, coming to a standstill. “But that doesn't work either. The angle's wrong. If it was taken from down here all it would have showed is the underside of my chin. The camera must have been higher up.”
They turned away from the monument, seeking a vantage point. But unless someone had shinned up a tree with a video camera under his arm, the park offered none.
“So he was outside the park.” Brodie nodded to where the town began to climb towards the Firestone Cliffs. Three hundred metres away the buildings were already as high as the monument. It was a typically Dimmock-sized folly, a stumpy tower like the castle in Chess, no taller than a three-storey house, commemorating an obscure triumph of the Boer War.
She looked at the steps and then at Daniel. “Are you up for this?”
He thought he was. His clothes were chafing and his feet were sore where the flame had licked the insteps, but he could bear the discomfort. He went to lead the way. But nearing the bottom step he found his breath coming faster and the sweat breaking on his brow. When he made himself continue an electric tremor invaded him, starting at his knees and working up his spine.
Defeated, he leaned one shaking hand against the stonework. “You go. I'll stay down here, tell you when you're in the right place.”
It wasn't Nelson's Column but the monument afforded good views across Dimmock, south to the channel, east to the green swell of the cliffs. Brodie circled the parapet slowly.
Ten metres below Daniel shouted, “Left a bit. No - my left. There. Now: what can you see?”
She raised her binoculars, scanning a narrow band up the rising town. “A couple of rows of houses, then there's a red-brick building. In Pound Street, maybe? The top floor might have the right sort of view. I think the houses are too low. And beyond the red-brick building you're getting a long way for photography. I know it was a bad picture but I doubt it was taken from half a mile away.”
Daniel nodded. “So let's find the red-brick building.”
Someone followed them back to the car.
It could have been a coincidence. It wasn't a very big park. There were only four paths radiating from the monument, everyone crossing it would use one of them. The man in the fawn tweed jacket could have been anyone using the park as a short-cut. Brodie gave him a long hard look, enough to be sure that she'd know him if she saw him again, then got into the car.
The man in the tweed jacket crossed the road to a café. Brodie vented a tiny sigh of relief. Coincidence, after all. She pulled away from the pavement.
Pound Street was two right turns from the park. A red fastback came up behind her as she made the first, was still there after she'd made the second. The red-brick building came up on her left: Brodie drove past at a steady twenty.
Daniel looked at her in surprise. “Wasn't that - ?”
“We have company.”
He went to screw round; Brodie grabbed his sleeve.
“Don't
look back. I don't want him to know he's been spotted.”
She was thinking fast, trying to work out the quickest route to the police station without leaving the main roads. She took a left turn, then another. The fastback stayed with her.
Then all at once it was gone. She stopped at traffic lights, her heart in her mouth, but the red car didn't stop behind her and when she looked to see where it had got to it was turning into a yard on the right. It hadn't emerged by the time the lights changed and she moved off.
“So he wasn't following us,” said Daniel, relief audible in his voice.
“Or he was doing it well.”
The police station or Pound Street. She pictured Deacon's expression if she told him she'd been followed through three junctions by a stalker who vanished when she was forced to halt, and immediately Pound Street looked the more attractive option. “We'll drive round for a minute to make sure.”
She went on turning at random and saw nothing. Then she made a mistake. There were road-works in Dalton Street: she saw the sign but didn't think quickly enough. The road was blocked, she had to turn round. In doing so she found herself bumper to bumper with a red fastback driven by a man in a fawn tweed jacket.
Dalton Street was a narrow residential road, there were cars parked on both sides. Maintaining a flow of traffic always required the co-operation of other drivers. But the man in the fawn tweed jacket stopped in the middle of the road and got out of his car, striding towards them.
The last time Brodie had felt this helpless was when her husband told her he loved someone else. Her life had crashed in flames and there had been nothing she could do to stop it. This was like that; and again there was nothing she could do. If she reversed the car would drop into a hole, making sitting targets of them. If she drove forwards she'd ruin two perfectly good cars and still not win clear. If
this man intended murder he was going to succeed. Her heart raced, her breathing stopped.
The man went to the passenger side, staring at Daniel through the windscreen. He gestured but Brodie kept the window tight shut. He leaned closer, shouted through the glass. “I know who you are.”
Daniel moistened his lips. “Yes?”
“You're supposed to be dead!”
Daniel didn't recognise the voice. That didn't necessarily mean he was safe. “You're mistaken.”
“I
told
people you were dead!” insisted the man. “Detective Inspector Deacon told me you were found dead in a skip.”
Brodie didn't know what the hell was going on, who he was, but he didn't seem to purpose murder. She lowered her window a crack, as much to draw him away from Daniel as because she wanted to talk to him. “You know Inspector Deacon?”