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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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But she couldn't give Brodie what she was looking for, thought she was looking for something that didn't exist. “He wasn't spending more than usual. But he used up his savings buying the car and running it cost more than he bargained for.” Her gaze, faintly censorious, settled a moment on Nathan. “I don't think anything else was worrying him. And though I saw him all the time, it was always with one of us, or Lindsay, or someone else I knew.”
Her voice hardened. “As for drugs – you really don't know anything about athletics, do you? The authorities test everybody, for everything. You don't need to win, or to have a reputation. It doesn't have to be steroids: you drink the wrong kind of herbal tea and they know about it. If Chris was doing drugs, any kind of drugs, we'd all know about it.”
Brodie wasn't surprised but she was disappointed. She'd wanted there to be more to the dead youth than met the eye. But it seemed that Chris Berry had been exactly who he appeared to be. In desperation she trawled the back-waters of her brain. “What other kinds of trouble can a young man get into? Was he a gambler – could he have owed money that he had no way of raising? Was he playing away on the romantic front? Could he – ?”
The hard chair clattered on the floor as Tiff sprang to her feet, narrow face suffused with anger. “That's my
friends
you're talking about,” she shouted, “and one of them's dead and can't defend himself, and the other's too upset to be here. Lindsay hasn't left her house since this happened. She hasn't left her room. Her mum says she hasn't eaten anything and she doesn't think she's slept. She and Chris were doing fine together, and if that ruins your theory, too bad. If it leaves
your friend feeling guilty about his mistake, that's too bad too.
“Chris isn't dead because of anything he did. He's dead because there's dangerous animal living in the hills, and one night it came down into town and snatched him off the street. And it wasn't the first time, and it wasn't the last. Your friend
should
feel guilty. Maybe he couldn't have prevented Chris's death, but he could have made sure it was the last.”
Only by clenching her teeth could Brodie hold back her own anger. Perhaps she was asking too much of these people, but she was damned if she'd let them ignore the facts. “Daniel Hood risked his life for Chris. Do you understand what that means? He
risked
his
life …
”
“I know he got a bit wet,” spat Tiff, as offensively as possible. “But when the chance came to actually do some good he was too damned scared to. You can call that by any name you like, but he saw Chris's murderer and that man is still at large. So don't talk to me about looking for the truth. I know what you're looking for, Mrs Farrell, and you won't find it here.”
With that she turned on her heel and stalked out. After a moment, casting an uncertain glance at Ennis, Joffe Matthews hurried after her. Brodie heard their voices, then she heard the front door open and shut. Joffe came back and, with an apologetic shrug, resumed his seat.
“Tiff and Chris,” he mumbled by way of an explanation – “well, going back a bit they were an item. She – I mean, we all – but her more …” The sentence petered out.
Brodie folded her long hands as if in prayer and waited for the anger to subside. “I'm sorry,” she sighed at length. “I didn't come here to upset you. Maybe Tiff's right – Tiff and the police and just about everyone else in Dimmock. Does
everyone
think I'm barking up the wrong tree with this?”
After a moment's discretion there was a chorus of assent. When she looked at George Ennis he nodded too, wryly.
“It wouldn't be the first time,” she admitted disconsolately.
“Well, like I said, the truth is what matters. If Inspector Deacon was right all along, I'll have to settle for that.”
But her instincts rebelled. She didn't think it was obstinacy. She didn't think it was because Daniel needed her to find a different answer. She was bothered by how well most of the pieces fitted and how determinedly the last few refused to; and how no one else seemed to think that significant.
A last desperate idea occurred to her. She knew she was scraping the bottom of the barrel. She knew she'd cause offence when she voiced it and was sorry for that. These people were trying to help, didn't deserve to be hurt again.
But ideas can't be unthought: either she said it aloud or she didn't, in which case she'd never know if it had legs. “Oh God,” she groaned, “you're going to hate me for this. But I have to ask. Is there any chance that Chris was attacked by a rival? Another runner, someone whose only hope of a Three Downs title lay in nobbling him? That he'd have settled for breaking Chris's leg but the fight got out of hand and he ended up dead?”
She'd knocked the wind right out of them again. They were too stunned even to object.
George Ennis had said next to nothing in the last half hour. But now he'd heard enough. In his quiet voice the fury was unmistakable. “I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that's ignorance talking. Because if I thought you knew what you're suggesting I'd ask you to leave.
“These people are athletes, Mrs Farrell. Of course they want to win, but not at all costs. Nobody here, nobody I know, would injure another runner in order to win a race.
“You think it's about winning? – about taking home a plastic trophy and a gift voucher at
Spikes R Us
? It isn't. It's about testing yourself against athletes you admire to see how you measure up. If you're strong enough, if you're fast enough, if you've trained hard enough. Finding that you are and have is the best feeling in the world. Winning any other way doesn't mean a thing.”
Brodie nodded slowly. “But –”
“
But
?” snarled Ennis. “You think I'm wrong? You think you know these people better than I do? All right, Mrs Farrell, ask yourself who stood to gain by putting Chris out of competition? The man who followed him across the finishing-line most often, yes? Nathan, Mrs Farrell thinks you murdered your best friend for a bit of silverware. What do you say to that?”
He didn't mean to be cruel, she told herself, it was exasperation talking. His emotions were tatters. But the words hit Nathan Sparkes like a blow. She heard him gasp, saw his lips struggle with denials he couldn't voice and shouldn't have had to. Then his eyes filled; and all the time his anguished gaze was on George Ennis as if he couldn't break free.
Brodie was on her feet with her arms around him before anyone else could move. His strong young body was so rigid it shook. “It's all right,” she murmured softly, “it's just reaction. The stress of the last few days has set up so many chemical interfaces you're on a hair-trigger. Everyone here is in pretty much the same state. Including George,” she added, casting him a fierce look over the boy's shoulder, “which is why he thought that was clever. Come upstairs for a minute, wash your face and get your breath back.” She steered him away.
She was livid with the coach, but actually she knew that Ennis too was barely getting through each day. The fact that he'd spent his working life watching other people go through this was no protection when it was his turn. He couldn't keep from hitting out. It wasn't deliberate, it was built in at a genetic level. Men can't feel hurt without wanting to hurt someone else.
But that was scant comfort to Nathan. Brodie was sufficiently detached to recognise what was happening but the boy wasn't. He shook as if he'd been whipped. He kept whispering, “It isn't true! I didn't …”
“Of course you didn't,” she assured him, “and nobody in that room thinks you did. Including George. It wasn't you he was getting at, it was me. It's just, right now his aim's off.”
“Chris was my
friend!”
“I know that. My God, you've practically got it tattooed on your forehead! It was a stupid thing to say, stupid and hurtful; and when you're both feeling better he'll want to apologise. I know it's hard, but try to understand that George is suffering almost as much as you are. Try to forgive him. You can't afford to lose one another as well.”
Brodie left him in the sitting-room with a can of lager from the fridge, not drinking but cooling his brow on the tin, and went quickly downstairs. But it was too late. The party was over, the last of the guests hurrying away. Ennis watched her covertly, waiting for the explosion.
Instead she sat down on the weights bench and regarded him levelly. “Of all the monstrous things to say! I know you're grieving for Chris, but what about Nathan? It's too late to help the boy in the morgue, but the one upstairs needs your kindness. He doesn't need to be accused of murdering his best friend.”
“I was making a point,” said Ennis in a low voice.
“And I took it. I'm not complaining about your treatment of me. Maybe what I said was stupid, but you could have put me straight without reducing a vulnerable young man to tears in front of his friends.”
Ennis glanced at the stairs. “Is he all right?”
Brodie snorted in despair. “Don't ask me! Go and ask
him
!” She snatched up her handbag and left.
 
 
There was a message on her answering machine when she got home. Even if he hadn't given his name she'd have recognised Jack Deacon's tone – gruff, surly and defensive, as if she knew where he'd buried his mother. He'd called half an hour
earlier and left a number where he could be reached. It wasn't the police station or a mobile so she presumed it was his home.
He answered within a couple of rings, but muzzily, as if he'd been asleep. Brodie supposed that right now he was napping as and when he could.
But he remembered why he'd called her. “Some news on the Sykes post mortem. Good news, I suppose. There's no reason to connect the two deaths, which lets Daniel off the hook.”
Brodie just breathed lightly for a moment, tasting the relief. And she knew to multiply that by a factor of ten for Daniel. Even if he was wrong about what he thought he'd seen, the mistake hadn't cost anyone his life.
Then she started thinking. “You mean, it was a coincidence? You've got two murderers at large in Dimmock?” It seemed excessive for a small town.
“It doesn't look as if Sykes
was
murdered,” grunted Deacon. “The FME thinks he was probably hit by a car. I'll have to find the driver to be sure but he may not even know about it: there was so much junk in the kid's veins he couldn't have been standing up at the time. The doctor reckons he'd have died even if nothing else had happened to him.”
“I see.” Brodie was fighting the urge to be happy. Whatever the immediate cause, whoever was and wasn't to blame, a seventeen-year-old boy had died in a gutter because no one cared enough to help him out of it. Any way you looked at that, there was no cause for celebration. She said, “I'm sure Daniel was relieved when you told him.”
“I haven't spoken to him,” said Deacon.
Brodie felt a spark of anger behind her breastbone. With just a little fanning it would burst into flame. “You haven't
told
him? For pity's sake, Inspector … ! He's been tearing himself apart since that boy was found. I've been buzzing round like a blue-arsed fly trying to set his mind at rest! Now you have proof that nothing he did had any bearing on
Kevin Sykes' death, and you haven't even told him? Trust me: if he's asleep he'll want to be woken.”
From the puzzlement in his voice, even before she heard his answer Brodie knew they were in trouble. “Mrs Farrell, are you under the impression that Daniel's still here? He was here this morning, but some time during the day he left. He didn't leave a message, but I assumed he'd come back to you. That's why I called – I thought you could tell him.”
Brodie felt the blood draining from her face, her muscles stiffening in fear. “He isn't here. He hasn't
been
here. The last I saw Daniel was when he left with you. Are you telling me you don't know where he is, and it's hours since you did?”
When Deacon left him, at first Daniel couldn't sleep. His mind was ablaze with the night's events. He'd lost everything he owned, he had nowhere to live, and people he didn't know hated him enough to try to kill him. They blamed him for the death of a seventeen-year-old derelict, and Daniel hadn't even the scant comfort of knowing they were wrong. He thought they were probably right. He lay for hours, staring at the white ceiling of Deacon's spare cell, not moving, not weeping, tormenting himself.
Eventually exhaustion intervened and he slept. His dreams were full of fear and the stench of smoke, and he woke with a start, sweating, three or four times while it was still dark.
But the next time he woke it was day and the house was still empty. Even the cat was gone. He padded round till he found a clock, and it was a quarter-to-ten.
He didn't want to eat. He washed, and made the bed, then he looked at the clock again and it was five-to-ten. The day stretched ahead of him, empty and implacable as a desert. He was alone with his regrets, and the eye of his conscience beat down on him like the sun.
He kept going over and over it: what he could have done differently, where he might have gone wrong. He couldn't find the point where he'd lost the thin silver thread that was the truth, the place where if he had it to do again he could do it better. But still two young men were dead.
The simple, brutal reality battered his heart and frayed his spirit. His actions had cost lives.
He couldn't bear it. He didn't know how to go on knowing that: how to face the next day, the next hour. Guilt enclosed him in a cloying, choking cloud. The limewashed walls of the stone building crowded in on him. He needed
air. He couldn't stay here with the quiet and the guilt, he had to get out.
He thought a walk would steady him. He pulled Deacon's front door shut as he left, only to remember he had no way of opening it again. It didn't matter. He couldn't stay there alone. He headed for the open spaces of the Firestone Cliffs.
It was a stiff climb up the steep path but that was what he needed: something to stretch his muscles and occupy his mind. At first it seemed to help. Daniel didn't know enough about biology to understand that his anxiety was due in part to the adrenalin flooding his bloodstream, and that physical exertion would mop it up. But by the time he reached the sheep-cropped turf atop the bluff and felt the chill wind cooling the sweat under his clothes he was regaining a sense of perspective.
Then he saw a woman watching him. She was walking a small dog and watching Daniel. Her face was closed, defensive, but her eyes knew and despised him.
Her look broke his stride. At half past ten on a Wednesday morning they were the only people up here, and he'd still managed to find someone who hated him. The whole town must know what he'd done. Everyone he met from now on, people he knew and people he didn't, was going to look at him with that mixture of fear and disgust. Like a slug on the path, his proximity made their skin crawl. He had forfeited the right to their human understanding.
He felt himself flush. He knew what he should do. He should bid her good morning, pat the dog and go about his day. Whatever she thought, he'd done his best. He didn't deserve her odium, could refuse to accept it. That was what he should do.
But he couldn't. It was too difficult. Unmanned by her silent resentment, he turned back the way he'd come.
The defeat weighed in the hollows of his eyes. All his adult life he'd fought to be stronger than he was, to be braver, to
face trouble with dignity and courage. But a middle-aged woman walking a dog had demolished him with a look. He walked faster as the path descended. Soon he was running.
After that the people he met stared at him because he was tearing down a steep, rough path at break-neck speed. But he thought they recognised him too. Their eyes whipped him on. Once he missed his step, rolling in the dust. But as soon as he found his feet he resumed his headlong flight.
He didn't know where he was going. He ran blindly until he could run no more, when he slowed first to a panting jog, finally to a halt.
He bent double, fighting for breath. When he straightened up he found himself surrounded by startled people. Mere chance had brought him to the bus station. A blue and cream single-decker was changing its display as it waited in the rank.
If it had been going to Bognor or Brighton, the course of future events would have been different. But the bus was heading for Guildford, across the Three Downs.
Spelled in electronic dots, the words transfixed Daniel. He felt a curious exultation constrained by an odd sense of inevitability, as if he'd found the answer and any moment now would know what the question was. He wiped his face on his sleeve. Then he hunted through his pockets for loose change. He knew he was going to do something extraordinary before he knew what it was.
And the answer was, Because then no one can accuse me of being afraid to do what's right. And the question was, Why would a sane man go looking for a murderer?
He couldn't remember Neil Cochrane's face. He knew he'd seen it – Deacon had gone to considerable lengths to ensure that he saw it – but he had no recollection at all. So perhaps he had not actually looked at him. Deacon thought he had but Deacon could be wrong. He'd been waiting for the Inspector to speak to him – why would he have been looking at a man he didn't know? Then they were past, and
Daniel had only known later that he was supposed to be taking advantage of the situation.
But if he never saw Cochrane he couldn't be sure he wasn't the man on the pier. He hadn't recognised the photograph, but that was different. He'd said from the start he should see the suspect in person. And it turned out Deacon had been listening, but when the moment came Daniel was looking the other way. Somehow it figured.
There was no point holding an identity parade now. If he recognised Cochrane the man's lawyers would cite the meeting in the corridor as reason enough for their client to look familiar to the witness. Deacon had taken a gamble and lost.
But Daniel had lost too. He'd lost the chance to know if his error had set a murderer free to kill again. And he was desperate to know. Desperate enough to take a gamble of his own.
The bus driver was in his seat, the engine coughed to life. If Daniel thought about this any longer his decision would be academic – he hadn't enough money for a taxi. He sprinted across the tarmac, up the steps and onto the bus.
 
 
It dropped him at the point where the three downs met. A plaque identified it as the start and finish point for the famous race. The bus driver indicated the lowering swell to the north-west as Menner Down but claimed never to have heard of Manor Farm. From the bleak looks Daniel thought some of his fellow passengers knew but none would tell him. He climbed down and looked for a house where he could ask.
There were houses scattered across the hills. The nearest was half a mile in the wrong direction. Instead Daniel took the road that skirted Menner Down, trusting he'd chance on a farmhouse or cottage before long.
But he walked for twenty minutes and saw no houses and no people, only sheep. Slowly the adrenalin and the dream of
atonement it had fed began to dissipate and common sense to reassert itself. He thought about returning to the main road and hitching back to Dimmock.
But for a moment back there he'd scented redemption, and he was loathe to give it up. He hadn't known he needed other people's approval until it was lost. Restoring his credibility was worth an hour of his time and a few blisters.
It was even worth the risk involved. He knew that if Cochrane caught him he might beat his head in with a wheel-brace. But he didn't intend to confront the man, only to snatch a look at him. He thought one glance would tell him if Neil Cochrane was the man at the pier. Legally his testimony might now be tainted, but if he could tell Deacon one way or the other it had to help. Help stop a killer, and silence the clamour of accusation in his head.
Before he could do any of that he had to find Manor Farm. He walked, growing weary, and found neither the farm nor anyone to direct him until he turned a bend in the lane and there was a man laying a hedge.
Farm work isn't a spectator sport. Usually the only people around are other farmers, and if they're prepared to help they do and if not they pretend to be busy elsewhere. The man with the bill-hook looked at Daniel as if he were a stray tup.
Daniel nodded. “Hedging,” he said inanely.
The man's eyes narrowed until they vanished in a net of creases carved into the wind-tanned skin. “No fooling you.”
Daniel chuckled tiredly. “Sorry. I'm lost. I'm looking for Manor Farm.”
The man pushed his cap back an inch and stared off into the middle distance. He was so tall that Daniel couldn't see where he was looking. Finally he grunted, “You're lost all right.”
Daniel wanted to get this done. He wanted to find Cochrane's farm, find a quiet corner where he could wait until the man crossed the yard, and once he was out of sight again
quit these alien hills. Almost he was past caring whether Cochrane was the killer or not, if he could just be sure. “Do you know where it is? Or should I ask someone who isn't so busy?”
The man gave a snort that might have been laughter. “It's a good step from here. You could walk it, or you could wait a few minutes 'cause I'm going that way myself.”
There was a Land Rover parked in a gateway, a border collie snarling through the windscreen. Daniel leaned gratefully against the bumper. “I'll wait.”
Hedging is slow, painstaking work. It was soon obvious to Daniel that the job would take hours. But the sun was at its zenith so perhaps the labourer meant to knock off for lunch.
“You looking for Neil, then?” the man asked without looking round.
Daniel should have known that if he started seeking directions someone would ask him why. He stumbled for an answer. “I don't know him. I just – need to see him.”
But the man was more interested in his hedge than Daniel's business. “Pass us the mallet.” He hammered in another pair of hazel stakes, kept weaving. Finally he straightened up. “That should hold it. All right, boy, you want that lift now?”
As the Land Rover climbed higher Daniel was glad he hadn't proceded on foot. It was bleak, rough and isolated. The lane deteriorated as they went, first to a single track, then to a cart-track with grass growing up the middle, finally to a mere stony path.
“He doesn't get many visitors,” ventured Daniel.
The farmer sniffed dourly. “Even the Jehovah's Witnesses have given up on Neil.”
“Do you live nearby?”
“Not far.”
“You know him, then.”
“Much as anyone.”
Daniel tried to draw him out. “A bit of a hermit, I'm told.”
“You could say.”
When the lane was just a gap between field-stone walls, a structure weathered the same colour as the hill firmed against the backdrop and became a barn, a low cottage huddled beside it. Daniel glanced awkwardly at his companion. The last thing he wanted was to be dropped in the farmyard with Neil Cochrane staring out of the kitchen window. “I'll walk from here.”
“That's OK,” said the man at the wheel, “I've got business here myself.”
This wasn't going according to plan. Daniel had thought he could establish, once and for all, whether Cochrane was the man he'd seen without the farmer ever knowing he'd been here. Now it seemed he was going to meet him face to face. At least they wouldn't be alone. And the man on the pier had not got as good a look at Daniel as Daniel had at him. If Cochrane wasn't the killer he certainly wouldn't recognise him, and he might not even if he was.
Which wasn't enough to blind him to the danger he was in. He was a mathematician, used to thinking in terms of percentages. But a sixty percent chance he could get away with this was still a forty percent chance that he couldn't. That Daniel's face, glimpsed for a moment on a dark and violent night, had burned itself into the killer's brain as the killer's had into Daniel's. That Cochrane would know him, and know he had nothing left to lose. The answer to his question could be the last thing Daniel would ever know.
Time ran out. The Land Rover stopped in the yard and the driver got down. “You try the house, I'll try the barn.”
Daniel climbed out slowly, looking round. So this was Manor Farm. It was hard to believe anyone lived here. The low stone house had a few rags of curtains at the windows but the barn had lost part of its roof to a winter storm and grass was growing through the cobbles of the yard. The name was scandalously misleading. Probably it had once been Menner Farm, like the down.
No wonder, Daniel thought, taking in the desolation, that Neil Cochrane was everyone's favourite murder suspect. Living alone, like this, would have been all the proof some people needed. The same people who'd burned him out, for what they no doubt considered equally good reasons. Someone was to blame for what had happened, and this time he was the outsider.

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