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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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“But I'd given my word, to a boy who died for it, and I kept it. Somehow. I never stopped wanting, but I got that I could want without thinking I could have.”
He took a deep breath. Like the shadows crowding in, the
anger in which he moved poured into the mould of his body and boiled behind his eyes. The light of the little lamp seemed to fail before the strength of it, and Daniel felt icy fingers doing piano practice on his spine.
“I stuck it for ten years,” said Neil Cochrane, his voice that particular quiet that is the only possible alternative to ranting fury. “Ten years. And then, when it was all in the past, when people had all but forgotten why none of them liked me, when my life was nice and simple with no secrets and no surprises, it started again. Someone was taking pretty boys. And not just taking them, not just killing them, but doing it
my way
. If he'd carved my initials on the bodies he couldn't have made it plainer!
“And then I had not that bastard Ennis but his damned Rottweiler scratching at my door. Wanting my Land Rover, wanting my trailer, ransacking my house again. And questions, questions. Where was I, what was I doing, who saw me, how could I prove it?” His gaze slashed Daniel's face like a broken glass. “Do you know the stupid part? When I had something to hide I had a story ready to tell. They couldn't shake me; I damned near convinced myself. When I hadn't done nothing I hadn't a thing to say for myself. I sounded like the worst kind of liar – a stupid one.”
As a boy Daniel had been afraid for much of the time. Small, short-sighted and academic, he attracted bullies as a jam-jar draws wasps. He learned to hug the shadows, to have nothing and want nothing so as to offer no provocation to those who would take whatever he had. And mostly what they took was his self-esteem.
Finally something changed. One day he'd had enough. He was tired of being a victim, of keeping his head down and handing over his bus-fare to save bigger boys the trouble of mugging him. He realised he'd rather be mugged sometimes than afraid always. He started standing up for himself.
And the funny thing was, it was a sham. Underneath he was still scared. But if he could keep the secret, fake courage
served as well as the real thing. People who used to bully him left him alone. And the longer he kept up the act, the less of an act it was. And though he still got the occasional bloody nose, he never emptied his pockets again.
Now he was afraid again. Death had him by the hair. He heard his breathing ragged in his throat and strove to control it, to free up those faculties which might yet help him. There were two things he was good at. One was thinking, the other was talking. He needed to control the panic in order to do either.
He said, “So you weathered the accusations when they were true, but you're going to prison this time when they're not? Where's the sense in that?”
Cochrane's eyes burned like coals. “Who says I'm going to prison?”
“Well – what do you
think's
going to happen? They can't prove you killed Chris Berry because you didn't. I could have proved you didn't, only now you have to kill me because you've told me what happened ten years ago! All you had to do was keep quiet and let me convince Inspector Deacon of your innocence. You'd have been safe for the rest of your life.
“Instead of which you drag me up here and start telling me things you should have taken to your grave!
Why
? You've told your story to someone you daren't let repeat it, and you've thrown away the best defence you could have had. And when I'm missed, you'll be the first person Jack Deacon will look for.”
Cochrane nodded. “But he won't find me, and he won't find you. I could disembowel you outside in the yard, and no one would hear you scream and only the crows would find your carcass. You're mine, Daniel Hood.”
“I could have saved you!” yelled Daniel in exasperation. “And now I can't. Deacon'll find this place eventually. You're going to spend the rest of your life behind bars because – because – Damn it, I don't even
know
why! All you
had to do was drive me back to town and it was over. You were a free man. Now, maybe you shouldn't be, but if that was preying on your mind you'd have confessed years ago. You kept it together for ten years and then you threw it away. For nothing. You're going to destroy us both, for nothing.”
Cochrane was looking at him, and there was enough light from the hurricane lamp for Daniel to see the muscles working at his cheeks and temples. He bent forward, thrusting his rugged unshaven face into Daniel's. “Look at me, damn you! I'm fifty-three years old. Ten years from now I'll be sixty-three. I can't do it all again. I can't spend another ten years burying something that won't stay buried. I haven't the time and I haven't the energy.
“Have you ever smoked? Done drink or drugs? Got in too deep with bad women? Dear God,” he swore disgustedly when Daniel kept shaking his head, “I was right – there really isn't much blood in you. Well,
imagine
how it would be having to give up something that had you hooked like that. People try for years before they finally stop smoking. It's expensive, it's dirty and they
know
it's killing them, and they still can't quit.
“But I did. It was the most important thing in my life – you know that, you know what I was prepared to do for it, what I was prepared to risk – but I gave it up because I promised. I gave up the most special thing in my life, the thing that defined who I was, and I couldn't even boast about it.”
The coals kindled again. “And then someone comes along and thinks he'll take what I set aside. What I still crave every day. More than that, he thinks I'll protect him. That was no co-incidence – he thought he'd be safe if he could send the police after me. And it worked a treat. Give him his due, he's a clever sod. He knew how to get at Deacon. He did his homework, picked out the details that would make it look like I was back in business, then he went out to have himself some fun.
“And after ten years of self-denial, of living like a hermit because anything else would be too dangerous, I'm public enemy number one again! I've got policemen watching me and vigilantes trying to drink enough courage to take me on.”
He thought he saw a glint of laughter behind Daniel's glasses. He couldn't have been more wrong, but he thought he was being mocked. His voice hardened. “That amuses you? The idea of a lonely middle-aged man chewing his finger-nails to the knuckles to keep from doing something no normal person would want to do in the first place? Only to have someone else take what he so desperately wants and leave him with the bill? That strikes you as funny, does it?”
Daniel shook his head. “No.”
But Cochrane didn't believe him. “You're laughing at me. Who the hell do you think you are, laughing at me?” Hands like the grab on a JCB gripped Daniel's shirt-front and lifted him bodily. “I'll wipe the smirk off your face, my lad. Let's see how funny you find it when you're dancing to
my
tune.”
With a jerk he tore Daniel's clothes open from throat to navel and forced the sleeves off his shoulders, pinning his arms. His skin cringed in the cold air. Cochrane thrust him back against the straw wall, one hard hand around his throat, the other between them, flat against his chest.
The blood froze in Daniel's veins. He'd thought he was as frightened as he was likely to get. He'd been wrong about that too.
He wanted to say, Don't hurt me. But the words stuck in his throat. He was at the mercy of a man who'd been fighting his darkest desires for ten years. If that fight was now lost he couldn't imagine that the star-burst of Neil Cochrane's self-destruction would leave him standing.
He wasn't going to prison. He wasn't going to wait for the police so he had nothing to stop him doing whatever he wanted one last time.
There was nothing to be learned at Manor Farm. The man had gone and wasn't coming back. For a decade he'd weathered the worst that police suspicions and public opinion could do to him, and clung obstinately to his rough down-land acres. If he'd left now there was a reason.
“I guess Daniel found him,” Charlie Voss said quietly.
Deacon nodded grimly. “He wanted to know if he'd made a mistake. I guess he knows now.”
“You think Cochrane killed him?”
“I think Cochrane killed him eventually.”
“Then where's the body?”
Deacon shrugged. “He took him wherever he took the others. If any of them had been here we'd have found some trace. He must have taken them somewhere else.”
“Them, yes,” agreed Sergeant Voss. “He knew we'd come here and he meant to brazen it out. This time it's different. He didn't go looking for Daniel, Daniel came looking for him. Cochrane answered a knock at the door and there he was.
“Cochrane could have sent him packing, but if he had Daniel would have gone back to Dimmock and Cochrane would be here. Instead of which both men have disappeared and the dog is dead. Cochrane isn't coming back. Sometime this afternoon he decided he was never coming back. He fed the stock, destroyed his dog, shut the front door and left.”
“Daniel recognised him,” said Deacon. “He knew the game was up.”
“Then why go somewhere else? He could have killed Daniel and left him with the dog. He could have shot himself, if that's what he intends. Why go somewhere else to do it?”
“He needed time. He knew we were watching him, he didn't know how long he'd have before the area car came back.”
“It doesn't take that long to shoot a dog, a man and yourself,” objected Voss. “One barrel each: you'd only have to reload once. You wouldn't have to reload at all if you were going to make a run for it.”
“He didn't want to shoot Daniel,” said Deacon gruffly. “Daniel's what he wanted the time for. He didn't go looking for him, but he couldn't resist when he turned up here. He doesn't shoot any of his victims. He rapes them and then he beats their heads in. For that he needed a little more time and a little more privacy than he could be sure of here.”
Charlie Voss hadn't been doing this as long as Deacon, but he'd been doing it long enough that he could discuss horrendous deeds without batting an eyelid. He could reduce them to cyphers and solve them like a jigsaw, as an intellectual exercise, without really confronting the fact that these were actual events which overtook real, flesh and blood, terrified people. It was a necessary defence: you could agonise over the violated or tackle the violent but there wasn't the capacity in one human soul to do both. Voss was a policeman, not a priest. It was his job not to feel for the last victim but to protect the next. Professionalism required a degree of detachment.
But Daniel wasn't just a victim, someone whose file he was intimately familiar with but whose face he might not recognise in the street. Voss knew him, was talking to him only yesterday. It was impossible to think of him as just a name on a crime report. Voss knew how Cochrane treated his victims, but until now they had been strangers. He no longer had that comfort.
But he couldn't let the image of Daniel Hood's torment shatter his concentration. “So where did he take him?”
“If I knew that,” growled Deacon, “I'd have nailed him ten years ago.”
Voss was thinking. “Cochrane knows that. Wherever he is, he must feel pretty safe.”
“Yes. So?”
“Two of the three boys were missing for days. He wanted his money's worth before he killed them. If he feels safe – if he doesn't think we can find him – maybe Daniel's still alive.”
 
 
Still the phone was silent. At ten o'clock Brodie could sit beside it no longer. She wrapped Paddy in her duvet without waking her and carried her upstairs to Marta. Then she drove into town.
It wasn't that she expected to find him sitting on the pier gazing disconsolately at the wreckage of his home. She didn't expect to find him at all. But she needed to be doing something. Even pointless activity was better than none.
She parked at the pier, meaning to check the ruins of the concert-hall, but someone emerged from the shadows to challenge her.
“Can I ask what you're doing here, miss?” Then the young policeman recognised the face in the beam of his torch. “It's Mrs Farrell, isn't it? Sorry – I'm just watching for any unusual activity.” He didn't have to say what he meant by that.
“I don't suppose you've heard anything?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, miss. But half the station's out looking for your friend. Mr Deacon'll find him, don't you worry.”
“They tried Cochrane's farm?”
“First place they went. There was no one there.”
“No one?”
The constable knew what he was telling her, was pretty sure she understood too. “The place seemed to have been abandoned.”
Brodie caught her breath. Finding Daniel alive and well would have been the jackpot, but finding Cochrane would have been a prize worth having. But Cochrane had gone? She could only see one way to read that, and she turned
away with tears pricking her eyes and stumbled back to her car.
She drove like an automaton, barely aware of her surroundings, not caring where she went, no longer even looking for him, just driving and punishing herself.
So it was Cochrane all along. Daniel had seen him, he just hadn't recognised him. It was always the likeliest explanation. She should have told him that instead of speculating on alternatives. In a very real sense this was her fault. No one could bully Daniel, no one could make him do something he didn't believe in or not do something that he did, but he listened to Brodie. He valued her opinions. With his faith in himself shaken, more than ever he'd been open to her views. And instead of helping him face facts she'd confused him with fairy-stories. With his mind in turmoil, torn apart by hopes and fears, finally he'd lost his grip on reality and gone to Manor Farm to seek answers from the one man who knew them. She couldn't be more responsible for Daniel's fate if she'd sent him there herself.
For half an hour she drove in a kind of daze, dull and bereft. Eventually she started to recognise where she was, and she was on Fisher Hill. There was a light on above
The Attic Gym
. Brodie slowed the car, drawn there. She couldn't see what good it would do – if George Ennis had had any idea where Neil Cochrane took his victims he wouldn't have sat on the information for ten years. But she couldn't make herself drive past.
She parked in the side-street and went up the back way to the flat. She moved mechanically, without haste. She really had no idea what she was doing here. Perhaps she just needed someone to tell to make it real, and if she went home and told Marta she'd fall apart utterly. Telling a man she'd only known a few days would be easier.
She didn't expect anything from Ennis, unless maybe a cup of tea and a hanky. But he would understand better than most. They weren't friends: mere circumstance had brought
them together and only now did they have something in common; but if she made a fool of herself she would never have to see him again. It all made her feel that this was where she needed to be. By the time she discovered it couldn't help another fifteen minutes of this endless night might be gone.
 
 
Thinking, and talking. In his present extremity they were all Daniel could do; but then, they were all he could ever do. He forced the words to come.
“Is this it?” he gasped, and even though he was choking he managed to barb his tone with contempt. “Is this what it was for? Ten years of denying yourself – of denying your very nature – and you're finally tempted beyond endurance by a twenty-six year old maths teacher? And I thought I was a sad case.
“That boy you're so fond of whining about. The one you loved so much he tried to cut his foot off? You talk as if it was some kind of a gift to him, that he was going to be the last. But he was always going to be the last. You'd had enough. It wasn't doing for you what you thought it should, the police were closing in and it wasn't worth the risk any more.
“That's the truth of it, isn't it? You'd played with the toy until you were sick of it. Every time you did it you saw in those boys' eyes what you'd turned into, and it wasn't the rampant monster of your imagination but a despicable, pathetic man who had nothing to bring to a relationship of equals, for whom young boys were not the first choice but the only option. It was them or the goddamned sheep!”
Neil Cochrane stared at him in astonishment, too amazed to react to the insults. He thought he'd heard it all from young men desperate to escape: threats, tears, appeals to his better nature, even professions of regard. No one had tried
bawling him out before. Perhaps that was what you got for abducting a teacher.
And it worked. Daniel's desperate tirade acted on the farmer like a stun-gun, seizing his muscles and disrupting his mind. For a moment he quite forgot what he'd intended, and by the time he remembered he was too angry to do it. Incandescent with rage, still holding Daniel by the throat he drove his other fist hard into his face. Then again, and again.
By then Daniel was dead weight. Cochrane let go and he slumped into the straw, his face a bloody mask and his eyes shut.
Cochrane stepped back, shuddering, trying to master himself. He wasn't shocked at what he'd done; he'd done much worse. He was shocked that he'd allowed himself to be taunted into doing it. He thought of himself as a phlegmatic man with one ungovernable passion. But for one vital minute Daniel Hood had taken control of him. Cochrane didn't understand why Hood wanted to provoke him, couldn't see that he'd brought another helpless, obstinate young man to the point where anything seemed better than letting events take their course. But he knew it had been deliberate, and that he'd done what was required of him by pounding Daniel senseless. That troubled him. He didn't reckon on being anyone's puppet. He stood back, staring down at the tumbled figure, limp as a rag doll in the straw.
 
 
This time when Daniel stirred it was dark beyond the ambit of the hanging lamp. So he'd lost more time to the hard fists of the big man leaning over him. If Cochrane kept hitting him like that he was going to suffer brain damage. But then, while the alternative was the wheel-brace, it was probably a gamble worth taking. He was still alive, and he might not have been.
Cochrane leaned closer, and Daniel felt the big hands sitting him up against the straw and touching his face. In
revulsion he raised an unsteady arm to defend himself; without rancour Cochrane batted it away and continued wiping the blood from Daniel's face with his handkerchief.
When Daniel could see him Cochrane sat back on his heels, sucking on his teeth. “You want to tell me what that was all about?”
Daniel vented a weary sigh. “Diversionary tactics. I'm just trying to survive here.”
“By pissing me off?” Cochrane's voice rose incredulously.
“Seems to have worked,” whispered Daniel, shutting his eyes again. “For the moment.”
Cochrane shook his head in a kind of wonder. “Do you understand what I've been telling you?”
“Of course I understand,” mumbled Daniel. “I just don't buy it.”
“Don't buy
what
?”
“The whole redemption thing. The idea that, because of a promise to a dying boy, you turned your back on the cities of the plain and lifted up your eyes unto the hills.” He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Hell's bells, a religious conversion was about the only thing you left out.”
Cochrane felt no further urge to hurt him, not in any way. If that was what Daniel had been hoping for, he'd succeeded.
“Redemption,” said the farmer, tasting the word. “Is that what I was talking about? I suppose it is. You sacrifice something that matters to you, do your penance, and when it's done you're entitled to look to the future.” His voice hardened. “Except after ten years of sacrifice someone snatches the future away. I did it all for nothing. Through no fault of mine, I'm back where I started, with policemen poking through my belongings and strangers hating me from a safe distance. Because somebody used me as a stalking-horse. I've been fighting this same battle for ten years, and now I'm back in the same damned trench!”
Daniel was watching him from under gathered brows. It wasn't compassion, much less sympathy, but he was
beginning to comprehend the man's bitter sense of injustice. He looked for the right words. “You can't expect me to understand what you did. But stopping was an achievement. You can't turn the clock back, repair the damage you did, but stopping was the next best thing. I don't know about redemption but it was something to set against the harm you'd done.

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