True Witness (25 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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When the murder scene had been played, with Nathan lying flat on the deck, Ennis pulled the body of Chris Berry towards him and heaved it into the sea. Then he ran back towards the van, pausing just long enough to pose against the stars.
He managed a rueful grin. “I never thought he'd have a torch. At least it was red and didn't carry too well. I knew he'd seen me, I hoped he hadn't seen me well enough for an ID. Even so, I tried not to give him the chance. A couple of times Mrs Farrell wanted us to meet but I found excuses not to. Was that deliberate?” he asked Deacon. “Did she suspect me? Was she trying to bring us together, to see if Hood would recognise me?”
Tight-lipped, Deacon shook his head. “I don't think so. I think she thought you were trying to help. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when she realises you were using her too.” He stopped abruptly then, his eyes flicking to the gun. Brodie Farrell's wrath, impressive as it could be, was the least of Ennis's problems.
Deacon returned to Ennis's account. This might be his one chance to hear of these events first-hand. Two of the participants were already dead and he wasn't putting money on Ennis's chances. “So what happened to Nathan?”
Ennis nodded. “He stayed on the deck, out of sight, while I ran away. I expected Hood would hurry indoors to dial 999, at which point Nathan would sneak back up the pier. But Hood didn't go inside. He waded out to look for Chris.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I felt badly about that. He was risking his life for a dead man. Thank God he got back safely. Nathan waited until Hood was fully occupied then he bent double and slipped away before anyone else turned up.”
And from that moment onward Detective Inspector Deacon had concentrated all his efforts on pursuing the wrong man. Not an innocent man, as it turned out, but not
Chris Berry's killer. He hadn't looked any further than he'd been meant to, and that was the real reason they were standing here at gunpoint today. If he'd wondered about the inconsistencies, which were there for a discriminating eye to see, he'd have widened the search. He'd have asked himself who knew enough about the earlier murders to lay a false trail that persuasive, and he'd have come up with the name of George Ennis a good deal sooner.
If he'd closed this case two days sooner, Daniel would not have gone looking for Cochrane and Cochrane would have gone on doing what he'd done for the last ten years – keeping his head down. Deacon blamed himself. None of this would have happened if he'd been a different sort of detective. Ennis had been able to take advantage of his weaknesses only because they were so predictable.
In other circumstances he'd have been standing here with his fists clenched at his sides to prevent them swinging of their own accord. The rage that was in him was like a force of nature, almost too massive to be contained within a human frame. He felt betrayed, used and defiled.
But he also knew that all of them were in danger, Ennis most of all, and it was literally a matter of life and death that he keep a clear head and a tight rein on his tongue. If they left this room safely Ennis would learn what Deacon thought of him. If they didn't, it was beside the point.
He looked at Cochrane, and refused to look at the gun. His voice was steely. “You have your answer. Now, there are seven men in this room whose only connection to all this is that they look a bit like Mr Ennis. They're just in the way. Let them leave.”
Cochrane gave it some consideration. He seemed to be absorbing what he'd just heard, unsure what it meant, as if he hadn't thought what he'd do if he got the information he came here for. Finally he nodded. “All right. Phone your boss, tell him they're coming out. And tell him, if there's anyone in the corridor when the door opens I'm
going to start shooting and I'm not going to much care who.”
Deacon did as he was told, relayed Chief Superintendent Fuller's message back. “There'll be no one in the corridor. No one'll try to come in.”
“Good. Unlock the door, then stand back. I'll tell you when to open it.”
Again Deacon followed his instructions. Then he said, “Let Daniel go. There's nothing more he can do for you.”
There was another long pause while Cochrane thought. “Yes. You take him – I don't need you here either, or Sergeant Cobbitt. You can all get out, right now. The only business left is between me and Mr Ennis.”
Deacon felt his whole body clench. “You know I can't do that. Sergeant, will you take Daniel? – I'm staying here.”
Cochrane shook his head, just once, crisply. “Mr Deacon, you can do anything I tell you to do. You want to save lives, you'll do
exactly
what I tell you to do. Help the lad, he won't make it on his own. Take the rest of them and go, and don't look back. It's your job to protect the innocent, yes? – well, do it. Neither me nor Mr Ennis is your concern.”
Deacon went to protest again but Ennis stopped him. He was quite calm, calmer than he'd been all week. “It's all right, Jack. I've handled hostage situations before. Mr Cochrane and I will sort something out. Take Hood and get these people safe.” He put Daniel into Deacon's hands as if bestowing a gift.
Daniel was in pain and his senses were swimming. But he understood enough of what was going on. He lifted his head until the bones in his shoulder grated, and held Ennis's eye for a moment. His voice was thick. “I wouldn't have told him.”
Ennis smiled. “No, I don't believe you would. But Jack would. He had no choice. As Cochrane said, it's his job to protect the innocent, not the guilty.”
Deacon steered Daniel towards the door. When his knees
went to string Deacon stooped briefly and straightened up with the younger man draped over his shoulder. He looked hard at Cochrane. “I will be back.” Then he walked out of the door, and Sergeant Cobbitt ushered the rest of the hostages out in his wake.
As soon as they cleared the corridor, Deacon bent and eased Daniel to the floor. “Call an ambulance,” he told Cobbitt, “I'm going back for George.”
But before he could turn a shot rang out, filling the building like the blast of a cannon. And although he immediately started to run, the second shot crashed before he reached the door.
It was mid-morning when Brodie walked up the hospital steps, a bunch of flowers in her hand. The first nurse she saw, pushing a wheel-chair across Reception, nodded her a friendly greeting and said, “M3, second floor, right-hand corridor, second bay.”
It was ridiculous, Brodie thought irritably. In the ten years she'd lived in Dimmock she'd been in this hospital perhaps three times. In the three months she'd known Daniel she'd become so familiar a sight here that the staff treated her as one of themselves and the lady on the flower-stall started conversations with, “What's happened to him now?”
She'd got a brief account of what had happened from Detective Sergeant Voss in the early hours, when he found time to call her and say Daniel wouldn't be coming straight home, and why. She'd got an update from the hospital when she phoned at eight. The fracture had been set, they said, but he'd be groggy for a few hours. She meant to wait until noon before visiting, but curiosity got the better of her shortly after ten.
She'd have been better waiting. Daniel tried to stay awake for the sake of politeness but it was uphill work. Brodie shook her head. “Tell me the whole story tonight.” He nodded and within minutes was asleep.
She sat with him a little longer, then she left, dropping a kiss onto his forehead. She smiled to herself. It was a good job he was asleep. That wasn't the sort of kiss a woman gives a man: it was the sort a mother gives a child. It wasn't because he was five years younger than her, it wasn't because he was shorter. It was something to do with the way he approached life, as if it was new and fresh and irresistibly interesting. When he wasn't taking on the world he could give the impression of being not quite old enough to be out on his own.
As she was going down the hospital steps Jack Deacon was coming up. He halted, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “How is he?”
“I think he's fine,” said Brodie. “He's asleep at the moment. I couldn't get much sense out of him, but he's on the mend. If you need to talk to him, you'd better leave it a few hours. I thought I'd try again this evening.”
Deacon nodded, turned and fell into step beside her. “I don't need to talk to him, not yet. I just wanted to see if he was all right.”
Brodie looked along her shoulder at him, quizzically. “Have you changed your mind about Daniel, Inspector?”
Immediately defensive, he sniffed. “No. What do you mean? Changed how?”
She smiled. “Oh, I don't know. You seemed to think he was the result of all the inmates of Pentonville holding hands and asking for something to be sent to annoy you. Or did I imagine that?”
The detective looked a little shame-faced. “Not entirely. It's just, I never know quite how to deal with him. It's like, my office is full of files, yes? – there's a lot of them, and everyone who comes through the door slips into one or another. Except Daniel doesn't. Daniel refuses to. I know he's not a villain, but he doesn't behave like an innocent bystander. When I ask him a question he thinks too long, and half the time I can't get a straight answer.
“He doesn't behave like a victim either. Typical victim behaviour is to pull up the draw-bridge, put up the shutters and refuse to look over the parapet until I can swear on a stack of Bibles that nobody's going to bother them any more. It is
not
typical victim behaviour to pay the suspect a visit in order to discuss the crime with him!”
“I don't think that's quite what he had in mind,” demurred Brodie.
“But then, whoever
knows
what Daniel has in his mind?” demanded Deacon. “He never says. He does exactly what he
thinks and leaves you to wonder why. Is this your car?” They'd stopped beside it.
“Yes.”
“Leave it here. Let's go for lunch.”
She laughed. “It's only eleven o'clock!”
“It's twenty-two hours since I last ate a hot meal,” said Deacon firmly. “In my book, that makes it lunchtime. You were up half the night too. Did you have a proper breakfast?”
“Well …”
“Coffee and toast, right? About eight o'clock?”
“Half-past seven.”
“Come on.” He waited expectantly until she shrugged and joined him.
 
 
The small French restaurant at the back of Hastings Street came as a pleasant surprise. She'd been expecting curry.
Because it was early the kitchen was only starting. They sipped wine and ordered, and sipped some more wine.
“I'd have thought you'd be up to your eyeballs this morning,” said Brodie.
Deacon shook his head. “Too late and too early. Too late to prevent a disaster, too early to have to explain it. By two o'clock I'll have the Chief Constable, the Assistant Chief Constable, the Press Office, the Home Office and Tom Sessions of
The Sentinel
to answer to. But right now there's nobody needs me as much as I need this.” He looked at her. “Thanks for coming.”
She smiled. “Thank you for asking. I'm glad of a bit of company just now as well.”
“I expect there are things you want to know.”
“I can wait till Daniel wakes up.”
Deacon shrugged. “There's no need for secrets any more. It'll be headline news by one o'clock.” He told her everything that had happened.
Or almost everything. As the first man into the long room after the gunfire, he was the only one who knew that he'd found the weapon in George Ennis's hands. The two men had wrestled for it and Ennis had won. It didn't make much difference: there was only one way out for either of them. But Deacon was obscurely glad that his friend had made the final decision. That Ennis had got his man, even if it took ten years, and not the other way round.
On the other hand, it was the sort of thing that didn't need to go down on the record, which is why Deacon had taken the gun from Ennis's dead hand and dropped it on the floor between the two men in the few seconds before Charlie Voss ran in behind him.
Brodie listened in silence. Only when Deacon ran out of words did she venture some of her own. “This must have been dreadfully difficult for you.”
He darted her a little look, half grateful, half haunted. “George Ennis was more than just my boss. He was my teacher, my friend – the policeman I admired above all others for his intelligence, compassion and dedication. He was the one I consulted about problems, even after he wasn't there any more. ‘What would George do about this?' I used to ask myself. OK, I didn't always do it, but that was because I was a different kind of policeman. Less patient, less perceptive. George Ennis was the detective I wanted to measure up to and never did.
“And now I don't know how I feel about him. He's dead, and half of me's grieving and the other half reckons he had it coming.”
“You're in shock,” Brodie said gently.
Deacon shook his head impatiently. “I'm angry, I know that. And – I feel so
stupid.
George Ennis knew me better than I knew him. He knew what I'd do if he laid the bait right. I danced for him like a damned puppet. Now three men are dead who'd be alive if I'd done my job better; and all right, one of them killed for pleasure and another perverted a legal
system he'd sworn to uphold, but one of them was an eighteen-year-old boy who shouldn't have had to pay with his life for a momentary loss of control. I should have seen what was happening to him and asked why. I should have held onto him.”
His hand was gripping the stem of his glass so tightly that in another moment he would break it. Brodie laid her own lightly on top. “You were fooled by someone you trusted. It's happened to all of us. You don't question what they tell you: that's what trust is. When you realise you've been duped, the world turns upside down. If
that
could happen, and you didn't even see it coming, how can you count on anyone ever again?
“But you have to. You can't go through life believing in nothing and no one. That would be too lonely. It's better to be let down occasionally than never get close enough for another person to hurt you. I know what I'm talking about: I thought I had a good marriage until my husband told me he wanted to marry someone else.” For perhaps the first time she was able to smile about it. “I thought I'd been stupid too. But I hadn't – I know that now. He'd gone to a lot of trouble to keep me from knowing, partly to protect himself but partly to protect me.
“Yes, George used you. He was in a position where he had to hurt someone who mattered to him, and he thought you could handle it better than Nathan.”
“He should have come to me!”
“Of course he should. But I understand why he didn't. He already had a tragedy on his hands: he saw one chance to limit the extent of the disaster. He didn't succeed. But if he had done, maybe it wouldn't have been so terrible. Neil Cochrane would have gone to prison for a murder he didn't commit; but prison was where he should have been, for the three that he did. Nathan would have gone free, and maybe he'd have gone on to be a great athlete. I don't think Chris would have minded.”
“But it's not that simple, is it?” said Deacon doggedly. “What about Daniel? He's in hospital now because of the choices George made. All right, he'll be out soon, you can say it's a small price. But what if he'd drowned trying to save a man who'd been dead for half a hour? What if Cochrane had killed him – raped him and killed him?
“And Nathan's dead and shouldn't be. I'd have had him seeing a psychiatrist, and on suicide watch while he was on remand. Four or five years from now he'd be making a fresh start. He'd have come through this if George had called me instead of staging a pantomime.”
“Yes,” Brodie agreed. “Which means that what followed is his responsibility, not yours. And he paid for it. Whatever your Chief Constable decides, I don't think you have much to reproach yourself for.”
Deacon said nothing, poured more wine. He'd need to get a taxi back to the office, and he'd have to avoid Chief Superintendent Fuller for a couple of hours, but he didn't care. Brodie was right: a kind of justice had been done, and if it wasn't his kind it also wasn't his fault. That was worth a bottle of Beaujolais at the end of a week like this.
He cleared his throat. “Er – this is maybe a bit of a nerve, and anyway you've probably got other plans, but – Well, we've got an office bash coming up next Friday night. Nothing very formal, just Dimmock's finest. I can't remember what it's in aid of – someone's birthday or engagement or divorce or something. Thing is, I'm always the spectre at the feast. They feel they have to ask me, I feel I have to go, but because I'm on my own they think they have to talk to me. I'd count it a real favour if you'd come – just for an hour, if you like, we could make our excuses before the cabaret begins. Would you? Or am I way out of line?”
Brodie was trying to keep a straight face. “Cabaret?”
He gave a gloomy shrug. “It might be a stripper. That I can cope with. But it might be Sergeant Cobbitt singing Songs
from the Shows while accompanying himself on the piano accordian.”
Brodie laughed aloud. “It sounds an unmissable evening. I'd love to come.”
 
 
After lunch Deacon had the taxi drop her home before taking him back to work. Half-way up the stairs he was already shouting for Charlie Voss.
Voss had been asleep with his head on his desk. He'd been on duty as long as Deacon had. He tried to unscramble his brain as he headed for the door. “Now what?”
“You've got to do something for me, Charlie,” said Deacon thickly, and his face was the colour of old concrete. “You've got to arrange some sort of an office bash for next Friday night …”

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