A Place of Hiding (49 page)

“He had no secret to call for this. There's a simple explanation for what Guy did with the money, one that's completely aboveboard. We just don't know what it is yet.” Even as she spoke, she didn't believe herself, and she could see by the sceptical expression on his face that St. James didn't believe her either.

He said—and she could tell he was trying to be gentle with her—“I expect you know at heart that the way he was moving money about probably wasn't legitimate.”

“No, I
don't
know—”

“And if you want to find his killer—which I think you do—you know we have to consider possibilities.”

She made no reply. But the misery she felt was compounded by the compassion in his face. She
hated
that: people's sympathy. She always had done. Poor dear child having lost her family to the maw of the Nazis. We must be charitable. We must allow her her little moments of terror and grief.

“We have his killer.” Ruth made the declaration stonily. “I saw her that morning. We know who she is.”

St. James went his own direction, as if she'd said nothing. “He might have been making a payoff of some kind. Or an enormous purchase. Perhaps even an illegal purchase. Weapons? Drugs? Explosives?”

“Preposterous,” she said.

“If he sympathised with a cause—”

“Arabs? Algerians? Palestinians? The Irish?” she scoffed. “My brother was as politically inclined as a garden gnome, Mr. St. James.”

“Then the only conclusion is that he willingly gave the money to someone over time. And if that's the case, we need to look at the potential recipients of a glut of cash.” He looked towards the doorway, as if considering what lay beyond it. “Where's your nephew this morning, Miss Brouard?”

“This has nothing to do with Adrian.”

“Nonetheless . . .”

“I expect he's driving his mother somewhere. She's not familiar with the island. The roads are poorly marked. She'd need his help.”

“He's been a frequent visitor to his father, then? Throughout the years? Familiar with—”

“This is
not
about Adrian!” She sounded shrill even to her own ears. Her bones felt pierced by a hundred spikes. She needed to be rid of this man, no matter his intentions towards her and her family. She needed to get to her medicine and to douse herself with enough to render her body unconscious, if that was even possible. She said, “Mr. St. James, you've come for some reason, I expect. I know this isn't a social call.”

“I've been to see Henry Moullin,” he told her.

Caution swept over her. “Yes?”

“I didn't know Mrs. Duffy is his sister.”

“There wouldn't be a reason for anyone to tell you.”

He smiled briefly in acknowledgement of this point. He went on to tell her that he'd seen Henry's drawings of the museum windows. He said they put him in mind of the architectural plans in Mr. Brouard's possession. He wondered if he might have a look at them.

Ruth was so relieved that the request was simple that she granted it at once without considering all the directions her doing so might actually take them. The plans were upstairs in Guy's study, she told him. She would fetch them at once.

St. James told her he'd accompany her if she didn't mind. He wanted to have another look at the model Bertrand Debiere had constructed for Mr. Brouard. He wouldn't take long, he assured her.

There was nothing for it but to agree. They were on the stairs before the Londoner spoke again.

“Henry Moullin,” he said, “appears to have his daughter Cynthia locked up inside the house. Have you any idea how long that's been going on, Miss Brouard?”

Ruth continued climbing, pretending she hadn't heard the question.

St. James was unrelenting, however. He said, “Miss Brouard . . . ?”

She answered quickly as she headed down the corridor towards her brother's study, grateful for the muted day outside and the darkness of the passage, which would hide her expression. “I have no idea whatsoever,” she replied. “I make it a habit to stay out of the business of my fellow islanders, Mr. St. James.”

 

“So there wasn't a ring logged in with the rest of his collection,” Cherokee River said to his sister. “But that doesn't mean someone didn't snatch it sometime without him knowing. He says Adrian, Steve Abbott, and the Fielder kid all have been there at one time or another.”

China shook her head. “The ring from the beach's mine. I know it. I can feel it. Can't you?”

“Don't say that,” Cherokee said. “There's going to be another explanation.”

They were in the flat at the Queen Margaret Apartments, gathered in the bedroom where Deborah and Cherokee had found China sitting at the window in a ladderback chair she'd brought from the kitchen. The room was extraordinarily cold, made so by the fact that the window was open, framing a view of Castle Cornet in the distance.

“Thought I'd better get used to looking at the world from a small square room with a single window,” China had explained wryly when they came upon her.

She hadn't donned a coat or even a sweater. The goose-pimples on her skin had their own goose-pimples, but she didn't seem to be aware of this.

Deborah took off her own coat. She wanted to reassure her friend with a fervency identical to Cherokee's, but she also didn't want to give her false hope. The open window provided an excuse to avoid a discussion of the growing blackness of China's situation. She said, “You're freezing. Put this on,” and she draped her coat round China's shoulders.

Cherokee leaned past them and shut the window. He said to Deborah, “Let's get her out of here,” and he nodded in the direction of the sitting room, where the temperature was marginally higher.

When they had China seated and Deborah had found a blanket to wrap round her legs, Cherokee said to his sister, “You know, you need to take better care of yourself. We can do some things for you, but we can't do that.”

China said to Deborah, “He thinks I've done it, doesn't he? He hasn't come because he thinks I've done it.”

Cherokee said, “What're you—”

Understanding, Deborah cut him off. “Simon doesn't work that way. He examines evidence all the time. He's got to have an open mind to do it. That's how it is just now for him. His mind is open.”

“Why hasn't he come over here, then? I wish that he would. If he did—if we could meet and I could talk to him . . . I'd be able to explain if things need explaining.”

“Nothing,” Cherokee said, “needs explaining because you didn't do anything to anyone.”

“That ring . . .”

“It got there. On the beach. It just got there somehow. If it's yours and you can't remember having it in your pocket when you went down to check out the bay sometime, then you're being framed. End of story.”

“I wish I'd never bought it.”

“Hell, yes. Damn right. Jesus. I thought you'd closed the book on Matt. You said you made it over between you.”

China looked at her brother evenly and for so long a time that he looked away. “I'm not like you,” she finally said.

Deborah saw that a secondary communication had passed between brother and sister with this. Cherokee grew restless and shifted on his feet. He shoved his fingers through his hair and said, “Hell. China. Come on.”

China said to Deborah, “Cherokee still surfs. Did you know that, Debs?”

Deborah said, “He mentioned surfing but I don't think he actually said . . .” She let her voice drift off. Surfing was so patently not what her old friend was talking about.

“Matt taught him. That's how they first became friends. Cherokee didn't have a surfboard but Matt was willing to teach him on his own. How old were you then?” China asked her brother. “Fourteen?”

“Fifteen.” He mumbled his answer.

“Fifteen. Right. But you didn't have a board.” She said to Deborah, “To get good, you need a board of your own. You can't keep borrowing someone else's because you need to practise all the time.”

Cherokee went to the television and picked up the remote. He examined it, pointed it at the set. He turned the set on and just as quickly turned it off. He said, “Chine, come on.”

“Matt was Cherokee's friend first, but they grew apart when he and I got together. I thought this was sad, and I asked Matt once why it happened that way. He said things change between people sometimes and he never said anything else. I thought it was because their interests were different. Matt went into film making, and Cherokee just did his Cherokee thing: played music, brewed beer, did his swap-meet number with the phony Indian stuff. Matt was a grown-up, I decided, while Cherokee wanted to be nineteen forever. But friendships are never that simple, are they?”

“You want me to leave?” Cherokee asked his sister. “I can go, you know. Back to California. Mom can come over. She can be with you instead.”

“Mom?” China gave a strangled laugh. “That would be perfect. I can see her now, going through this apartment—not to mention through my clothes—removing anything vaguely related to animals. Making sure I have my daily allotment of vitamins and tofu. Checking to be certain the rice is brown and the bread whole grain. That would be sweet. A great distraction, if nothing else.”

“Then what?” Cherokee asked. He sounded despairing. “Tell me. What?”

They faced each other, Cherokee still standing and his sister still sitting, but he seemed much smaller in comparison with her. Perhaps, Deborah thought, it was a reflection of their personalities that made China seem so relatively large a figure. “You'll do what you have to do,” China told him.

He was the one to break the gaze they each held steadily on the other. During their silence, Deborah thought fleetingly of the entire nature of sibling relationships. She was in water without gills when it came to understanding what went on between brothers and sisters.

With her gaze still on her brother, China said, “D'you ever wish you could turn back time, Debs?”

“I think everyone wishes that now and then.”

“What time would you choose?”

Deborah pondered this. “There was an Easter before my mum died . . . A fête on one of the village greens. There were pony rides available for fifty p and I had just that much money. I knew if I spent it, it would be all gone, up in smoke for three minutes in the pony ring and I'd have nothing to spend on anything else. I couldn't decide what to do. I got all hot and bothered because I was afraid that whatever I
did
decide would be the wrong decision and I'd regret it and be miserable. So we talked about it, Mum and I. There's no wrong decision, she told me. There's just what we decide and what we learn from deciding.” Deborah smiled at the memory. “I'd go back to that moment and live onward from there all over again if I could. Except she wouldn't die this time.”

“So what did you do?” Cherokee asked her. “Ride the pony? Or not?”

Deborah considered the question. “Isn't that odd? I can't remember. I suppose the pony wasn't all that important to me, even then. It was what she said to me that made a difference. It was how she was.”

“Lucky,” China said.

“Yes,” Deborah replied.

A knock sounded on the door at that, followed by a ringing of the buzzer that seemed insistent. Cherokee went to see who'd come calling.

He opened the door to reveal two uniformed constables standing on the front step, one of them looking round anxiously as if checking the potential for ambush and the other having removed a baton which he was slapping lightly against his palm.

“Mr. Cherokee River?” Baton Constable said. He didn't wait for a reply, as he clearly knew to whom he was speaking. “You'll need to come with us, sir.”

Cherokee said, “What? Where?”

China rose. “Cherokee? What . . . ?” but she didn't apparently need to finish her question.

Deborah went to her. She slid her arm round her old friend's waist.

Deborah said, “Please. What's going on?”

Whereupon Cherokee River was given the formal caution by the States of Guernsey Police.

They'd brought handcuffs with them, but they didn't use them. One of them said, “If you'll come with us, sir.”

The other took Cherokee by the arm and led him briskly away.

Chapter 20

T
HE SECONDARY COTTAGES AT
the water mill were poorly provided with light because generally Frank didn't work inside either of them in the late afternoons or evenings. But he didn't need a lot of light to find what he was looking for among the papers in the filing cabinet. He knew where the single document was, and his personal hell comprised the fact that he also knew what the document said.

He drew it forth. A crisp manila folder held it like a layer of smooth skin. Its skeleton, however, was a tattered envelope with crumpled corners, long missing its little metal clasp.

During the final days of the war, the occupying forces on the island had suffered from a degree of hubris that was most surprising, considering the defeats piling upon the German military everywhere else. On Guernsey, they had even refused to surrender at first, so determined were they to disbelieve that their plan for European domination and eugenic perfection would come to nothing. When Major-General Heine finally climbed aboard HMS
Bulldog
to negotiate the terms of his surrender of the island, it was a full day after victory had been declared and was being celebrated in the rest of Europe.

Holding on to what little they had left in those final days, and perhaps wanting to leave their mark on the island as every successive presence on Guernsey had done throughout time, the Germans had not destroyed all that they had produced. Some creations—like gun emplacements—were impervious to easy demolition. Others—like that which Frank held in his hands—acted as an unspoken message that there were islanders whose self-interest had superseded their feelings of brotherhood and whose actions as a result wore the guise of espousing the German cause. That this guise was inaccurate wouldn't have meant anything to the Occupiers. What counted was the shock value attached to having betrayal writ large and bold: in spiky handwriting, in black and white.

Frank's curse was the respect for history that had sent him first to read it at university, then to teach it to largely indifferent adolescents for nearly thirty years. It was the same respect that had been inculcated in him by his father. It was the same respect that had encouraged him to amass a collection which, he had hoped, would serve the purpose of remembrance long after he was gone.

He'd always believed the truth in the aphorism about remembering the past or being doomed to repeat it. He'd long seen in the armed struggles round the world man's failure to acknowledge the futility of aggression. Invasion and domination resulted in oppression and rancour. What grew from that was violence in all of its forms. What didn't grow from that was inherent good. Frank knew this, and he believed it fervently. He was a missionary attempting to win his small world to the knowledge he had been taught to hold dear, and his pulpit was constructed from the wartime properties that he'd collected over the years. Let these objects speak for themselves, he'd decided. Let people see them. Let them never forget.

So like the Germans before him, he'd destroyed nothing. He'd compiled so vast an array of goods that he'd long ago lost track of all that he had. If it was related to the war or the Occupation, he had wanted it.

He hadn't really even known what he had among his collection. For the longest time, he merely thought of everything only in the most generic terms. Guns. Uniforms. Daggers. Documents. Bullets. Tools. Hats. Only the advent of Guy Brouard made him start thinking differently.

It could actually be a monument of sorts, Frank. Something that will serve to distinguish the island and the people who suffered. Not to mention those who died.

That was the irony. That was the cause.

Frank carried the flimsy old envelope over to a rotting cane-bottomed chair. A floor lamp stood next to this, its shade discoloured and its tassel disengaged, and he switched it on and sat. It poured yellow light on his lap, which was where he placed the envelope, and he studied it for a minute before he opened it, drawing out a batch of fourteen fragile pieces of paper.

From halfway down the stack, he slid one out. He smoothed it against his thighs; he set the others onto the floor. He examined the remaining one with an intensity that would have suggested to an uninformed onlooker that he had never pondered it before. And why would he have done so, really? It was such an innocuous piece of paper.

6 Würstchen,
he read.
1 Dutzend Eier, 2 kg. Mehl, 6 kg. Kartoffeln, 1 kg. Bohnen, 200 gr. Tabak.

It was a simple list, really, shoved in among the records of purchases of everything from petrol to paint. It was an unimportant document in the overall scheme of things, the sort of slip that might have gone misplaced without anyone ever being the wiser. Yet it spoke to Frank of many things, not the least of which was the arrogance of the Occupiers, who documented every move they made and then saved those documents against the time of a victory whose advocates they would want to identify.

Had Frank not spent every one of his formative years right on into his solitary adulthood being taught the inestimable value of everything remotely related to Guernsey's time of trial, he might have deliberately misplaced this single piece of paper, and no one would have been the wiser. But
he
would still have known that it had once existed, and nothing would ever obliterate that knowledge.

Indeed, had the museum remained unconsidered by the Ouseleys, this paper probably would have remained undiscovered, even by Frank himself. But once he and his father had grasped on to Guy Brouard's offer to build the Graham Ouseley Wartime Museum for the education and betterment of the present and future citizens of Guernsey, the sorting, sifting, and organising essential to such an enterprise had begun. In the process, this list had come to light.
6 Würstchen,
in 1943.
1 Dutzend Eier, 2 kg. Mehl, 6 kg. Kartoffeln, 1 kg. Bohnen, 200 gr. Tabak.

Guy had been the one to find it, the one to say, “Frank, what d'you make of this?” as he spoke no German.

Frank himself had supplied the translation, doing it mindlessly and automatically, without pausing to read every line of it, without pausing to consider the ramifications. The meaning sank in as the last word
—Tabak—
drifted between his lips. As he'd become conscious of the implications, he'd lifted his gaze to the top of the paper and then shifted it to Guy, who'd already read it. Guy, who had lost both parents to the Germans, lost an entire family, lost a heritage.

Guy said, “How will you deal with this?”

Frank made no reply.

Guy said, “You're going to have to. You can't let it go. Holy God, Frank. You don't intend to let it go, do you?”

That had been the colour and the flavour of their days ever after.
Have you dealt with it, Frank? Have you brought it up?

Frank had thought he wouldn't need to now, with Guy dead and buried and the only one who knew. Indeed, he'd thought he would never need to. But the past day had taught him otherwise.

Who forgets the past repeats it.

He got to his feet. He replaced the other papers in their envelope and returned the envelope to its folder. He shut the filing cabinet on it, and he turned out the light. He pulled the cottage door closed behind him.

Inside his own cottage, he found his father asleep in his armchair. An American detective show was playing on the television, two policemen with
NYPD
on the back of their windbreakers poised—handguns at the ready—to burst through a closed door and do violence behind it. At another time, Frank would have roused his father and taken him upstairs. But now he passed him and climbed upwards himself, seeking the solitude of his room.

On the top of his chest of drawers stood two framed photographs. One depicted his parents on their wedding day after the war. In the other, Frank and his father posed at the base of the German observation tower not far from the end of
Rue de la Prevote.
Frank couldn't remember who had taken the picture, but he did remember the day itself. They'd been pelted by rain but had hiked along the cliff path anyway, and when they'd arrived, the sun had burst upon them. God's approval for their pilgrimage, Graham had said.

Frank leaned the list from the filing cabinet against this second picture. He backed away from it like a priest unwilling to turn his back on the consecrated bread. He felt behind him for the end of his bed, and he lowered himself to it. He gazed on the insubstantial document and tried not to hear the challenge of that voice.

You can't let this go.

And he knew he couldn't. Because
It is the cause, my soul.

Frank had limited experience in the world, but he wasn't an ignorant man. He knew that the human mind is a curious creature that can frequently act like a funhouse mirror when it comes to details too painful to recall. The mind can deny, refashion, or forget. It can create a parallel universe if necessary. It can devise a separate reality for any situation it finds too difficult to bear. In doing this, Frank knew, the mind did not lie. It simply came up with the strategy to cope.

The trouble arose when the coping strategy obliterated the truth instead of merely shielding one from it temporarily. When that occurred, desperation resulted. Confusion reigned. Chaos followed.

Frank knew they were on the cusp of chaos. The time had come to act, but he felt immobilised. He'd given his life to the service of a chimera, and despite knowing this fact for two months, he found that he was still reeling from it.

Exposure now would render meaningless more than half a century of devotion, admiration, and belief. It would make a miscreant out of a hero. It would end a life in public disgrace.

Frank knew that he could prevent all this. Only a single piece of paper, after all, stood between an old man's fantasy and the truth.

 

On Fort Road, an attractive albeit heavily pregnant woman answered the door of the Bertrand Debiere household. She was the architect's wife, Caroline, she informed St. James. Bertrand was working in the back garden with the boys. He was taking them off her hands for a few hours while she got some writing done. He was good that way, a model husband. She didn't know how or why she'd managed to be so lucky as to end up his wife.

Caroline Debiere noted the collection of large sheets of paper that St. James carried rolled up under his arm. Was this about business? she inquired. Her voice gave a fair indication of how eager she was for that to be the case. He was a fine architect, her husband, she told St. James. Anyone wanting a new building, a renovation of an old one, or an extension of an existing structure would not go wrong hiring Bertrand Debiere to design it.

St. James told her that he was interested in having Mr. Debiere examine some pre-existing plans. He'd called in at his office, but a secretary had told him Mr. Debiere had left for the day. He'd looked in the phone directory and taken the liberty of tracking the architect down at home. He hoped this wasn't an inconvenient time . . . ?

Not at all. Caroline would fetch Bertrand from the garden if Mr. St. James wouldn't mind waiting in the sitting room.

A happy shout rose from outside, at the back of the house. Pounding followed it: the sound of hammer striking nail and wood. Hearing this, St. James said he didn't want to take Mr. Debiere from what he was doing, so if the architect's wife didn't mind, he'd join him and his children in the garden.

Caroline Debiere looked relieved at this, doubtless happy that she would be able to continue her work without having her sons handed over to her. She showed St. James the way to the back door and left him to his meeting with her husband.

Bertrand Debiere turned out to be one of the two men St. James had seen duck out of the procession to Guy Brouard's grave site and engage in intense conversation in the grounds of
Le Reposoir
on the previous day. He was a crane of a man, so tall and gangly that he looked like a character from a Dickens novel, and at the moment he was in the lowest branches of a sycamore tree, pounding together the foundation of what was clearly going to be a tree house for his sons. There were two of them, and they were helping in the way of small children: The elder was passing nails to his father from a leather waist pouch that he wore round his shoulders while the younger was employing a plastic hammer against a piece of wood at the base of the tree, on his haunches and chanting, “I am pounding, I am nailing,” and being no use to his father whatsoever.

Debiere saw St. James crossing the lawn, but he finished pounding his nail before he acknowledged him. St. James noticed that the architect's gaze took in his limp and fixed on its cause—the leg brace whose cross piece ran through the heel of his shoe—but then it traveled upwards and fixed, like his wife's, on the roll of papers beneath St. James's arm.

Debiere lowered himself from the tree limbs and said to the older boy, “Bert, take your brother inside please. Mum'll have those biscuits for you now. Mind you have only one each, though. You don't want to ruin your tea.”

“The lemony ones?” the elder boy asked. “Has she done the lemony ones, Dad?”

“I expect so. Those are what you asked for, aren't they?”

“The lemony ones!” Bert breathed the words to his little brother.

The promise of those biscuits prompted both boys to drop what they were doing and scamper to the house, shouting, “Mummy! Mum! We want our biscuits!” and bringing an end to their mother's solitude. Debiere watched them fondly, then scooped up the nail pouch that Bert had haphazardly discarded, spilling half of its contents onto the grass.

As the other man collected the nails, St. James introduced himself and explained his connection to China River. He was on Guernsey at the request of the accused woman's brother, he told Debiere, and the police were aware that he was making independent enquiries.

“What sort of enquiries?” Debiere asked. “The police already have their killer.”

St. James didn't want to go in the direction of China River's guilt or innocence. Instead, he indicated the roll of plans beneath his arm and asked the architect if he wouldn't mind having a look at them.