A Place of Hiding (17 page)

Anaïs walked over to the needlepoint frame. She examined the design of the latest panel. She said, “What number is this one?”

“Fifteen, I think.”

“With how many more to go?”

“As many as it takes to tell the whole story.”

“All of it? Even Guy . . . at the end?” Anaïs was red-eyed but she didn't weep again. Instead, she seemed to use her own question to guide them to the point of her call at
Le Reposoir.
“Everything's changed now, Ruth. I'm worried for you. Are you taken care of?”

For a moment, Ruth thought she meant the cancer and how she would face her own imminent dying. She said, “I think I'll be able to cope,” whereupon Anaïs's reply disabused her of the notion that the other woman had come to offer shelter, care, or just support in the coming months.

Anaïs said, “Have you read the will, Ruthie?” And as if she actually knew at heart how vulgar the question was, she added, “Have you been able to reassure yourself that you're taken care of?”

Ruth told her brother's lover what she'd told her brother's former wife. She managed to relay the information with dignity in spite of what she wanted to say about who ought to have a vested interest in the distribution of Guy's fortune and who ought not.

“Oh.” Anaïs's voice reflected her disappointment. No reading of a will suggested no sure knowledge of whether, when, or how she was going to be able to pay for the myriad paths she'd followed to keep herself young since meeting Guy. It also meant the wolves were probably ten steps closer to the front door of that overly impressive house that she and her children occupied at the north end of the island near
Le Grand Havre
Bay. Ruth had always suspected Anaïs Abbott was living well above her means. Financier's widow or not—and who knew what that meant anyway:
my husband was a financier,
in these days of stocks worth nothing one week after they were purchased and world markets sitting on top of quicksand? Naturally, he could have been a financial wizard who made other people's money multiply like loaves before the hungry, or an investment broker capable of turning five pounds into five million given enough time, faith, and resources. But on the other hand, he could have just been a clerk at Barclays whose life insurance policy had enabled his grieving widow to move in loftier circles than those into which she had been born and had wed. In either case, gaining entrance to those circles and moving in them took cold, hard cash: for the house, the clothing, the car, the holidays . . . not to mention for little incidentals like food. So it stood to reason that Anaïs Abbott was likely in dire straits at this point. She'd made a considerable investment in her relationship with Guy. For that investment to produce in dividends, the assumption had been that Guy would remain alive and heading towards marriage.

Even if Ruth felt a degree of aversion for Anaïs Abbott because of the Master Plan from which she believed the other woman had always been operating, she knew she had to excuse at least part of her machinations. For Guy had indeed led her to believe in the possibility of a union between them. A legal union. Hand in hand before a minister or a few minutes of smiling and blushing in
Le Greffe.
It had been reasonable for Anaïs to make certain assumptions because Guy had been generous. Ruth knew he'd been the one to send Jemima off to London, and she little doubted that he was also the reason—financial or otherwise—that Anaïs's breasts protruded like two firm perfect symmetrical cantaloupes from a chest too small to accommodate them naturally. But had it all been paid for? Or were there bills outstanding? That was the question. In a moment, Ruth was given the answer.

Anaïs said, “I miss him, Ruth. He was . . . You know I loved him, don't you? You know
how
I loved him, don't you?”

Ruth nodded. The cancer feeding upon her spine was beginning to demand her attention. Nodding was the only thing she could do when the pain was there and she was trying to be its master.

“He was everything to me, Ruth. My rock. My centre.” Anaïs bowed her head. A few soft curls escaped her cloche, lying like the evidence of a man's caress against the back of her neck. “He had a way of dealing with things . . . Suggestions he made . . . things he did . . . Did you know it was his idea that Jemima go to London for the modeling course? For confidence, he said. That was so like Guy. Full of such generosity and love.”

Ruth nodded again, caught in the grip of her cancer's caress. She pressed her lips together and suppressed a moan.

“Not a single thing he wouldn't do for us,” Anaïs said. “The car . . . its maintenance . . . the garden pool . . . There he was. Helping. Giving. What a wonderful man. I'll never meet anyone even close to being . . . He was so good to me. And without him now . . . ? I feel I've lost it all. Did he tell you he paid for school uniforms this year? I know he didn't. He wouldn't because that was part of his goodness, protecting the pride of the people he helped. He even . . . Ruth, this good, dear man was even giving me a monthly allowance. ‘You're more to me than I thought a woman could ever be and I want you to have more than you can give yourself.' I thanked him, Ruth, time and time again. But I never stopped to thank him enough. Still, I wanted you to know some of the good he did. The good he did for me. To help me, Ruth.”

She could have made her request more blatant only by scrawling it on the Wilton carpet. Ruth wondered how much more tasteless her brother's putative mourners were going to become.

“Thank you for such an elegy, Anaïs,” she settled upon saying to the woman. “To know you knew he was goodness itself . . .” And he was, he
was,
Ruth's heart cried out. “It's an act of kindness for you to come here and tell me. I'm terribly grateful. You're very good.”

Anaïs opened her mouth to speak. She even drew breath before she appeared to realise there was nothing more to say. She couldn't directly ask for money at this point without appearing grasping and crass. Even if she had no regard for that, she probably wasn't going to be willing any time soon to set aside the pretence that she was an independent widow for whom a meaningful textured relationship was more important than what funded it. She'd been living that pretence too long.

So Anaïs Abbott said nothing more and neither did Ruth as they sat together in the morning room. Really, at the end of the day, what more could they possibly say?

Chapter 7

T
HE BAD WEATHER CONTINUED
to abate during the day in London, and it was this that allowed the St. Jameses and Cherokee River to make the journey to Guernsey. They arrived by late afternoon, circling round the airport to see spread out below them in the fading light grey cotton thread roads unspooling haphazardly, twisting through stony hamlets and between bare fields. The glass of countless inland greenhouses caught the last of the sun, and the leafless trees on valley and hillside marked the areas where winds and storms reached less fiercely. It was a varied landscape from the air: rising to towering cliffs on the east and the south ends of the island, sloping to tranquil bays on the west and in the north.

The island was desolate at this time of year. Holiday makers would fill its tangle of roads in late spring and summer, heading for the beaches, the cliff paths, or the harbours, exploring Guernsey's churches, its castles, its forts. They would walk and swim and boat and bike. They would throng the streets and swell the hotels. But in December, there were three kinds of people who occupied the Channel island: the islanders themselves who were bound to the place by habit, tradition, and love; tax exiles who were determined to shelter as much of their money as was possible from their respective governments; and bankers who worked in St. Peter Port and flew home to England at weekends.

It was to St. Peter Port that the St. Jameses and Cherokee River took themselves. This was the largest town and the seat of government on the island. It was also where the police were headquartered and where China River's advocate had his office.

Cherokee had been loquacious for most of their journey that day. He veered from subject to subject like a man who was terrified of what a silence among them might imply, and St. James had found himself wondering if the constant barrage of conversation was designed to keep them from considering the futility of the mission in which they were engaged. If China River had been arrested and charged, there would be evidence to try her for the crime. If that evidence went beyond the circumstantial, St. James knew there was going to be little or nothing he could do to interpret it differently to the way the police experts had already done.

But as Cherokee had continued his dialogue, it had begun to seem less like distracting them from drawing conclusions about their objective and more like attaching himself to them. St. James played the watcher in all this, a third wheel on a bicycle lurching towards the unknown. He found it a distinctly uneasy ride.

Cherokee chatted most about his sister. Chine—as he called her—had finally learned to surf. Did Debs know that? Her boyfriend, Matt—did Debs ever meet Matt? She must've, right?—well, he finally got her out in the water . . . I mean far
enough
out because she was always freaked out about sharks. He taught her the basics and made her practise and the day she finally stood up . . . She finally got what it was all about,
mentally
got it. The Zen of surfing. Cherokee was always wanting her to come down to surf in Huntington with him . . . in February or March, when the waves could get gnarly, but she would never come because coming to Orange County meant going over to Mom's in her mind and Chine and Mom . . . They had issues with each other. They were just too different. Mom was always doing something wrong. Like the last time Chine came down for a weekend—probably more'n two years ago—it became a major big deal that Mom didn't have any clean glasses in the house. It's not like Chine couldn't wash a glass herself, but Mom should have had them washed in advance because washing the glasses in advance
meant
something. Like I love you or Welcome or I want you to be here. Anyway, Cherokee always tried to stay out of it when they went at it. They were both, you know, really good people, Mom and Chine. They were just so different. However, whenever Chine came to the canyon—Debs knew Cherokee lived in the canyon, didn't she? Modjeska? Inland? That cabin with the logs across the front?—anyway, when Chine came over, believe it, Cherokee put clean glasses everywhere. Not that he had too many of them. But what he
did
have . . . everywhere. Chine wanted clean glasses, and Cherokee gave her clean glasses. But it was weird, wasn't it, the kinds of things that set people off . . .

All the way to Guernsey, Deborah had listened sympathetically to Cherokee's rambling. He'd wandered among reminiscence, revelation, and explanation, and within an hour it seemed to St. James that over and above the natural anxiety the man felt because of his sister's position, he also felt guilt. Had he not insisted that she accompany him, she wouldn't be where she was at the moment. He was at least in part responsible for that.
Shit happens to people
was the way he put it, but it was clear that this particular shit wouldn't have happened to this particular person had Cherokee not wanted her to come along. And he'd wanted her to come along because he needed her to come along, he explained, because that was the only way he himself was going to be able to go in the first place and he'd
wanted
to go because he wanted the money because finally he had a job in mind for himself that he could bear to think about doing for twenty-five years or more and he just needed a down payment to finance it. A fishing boat. That was it in a nutshell. China River was locked behind bars because her asshole brother wanted to buy a fishing boat.

“But you couldn't have known what would happen,” Deborah protested.

“I know that. But it doesn't make me feel any better. I've got to get her out of there, Debs.” And with an earnest smile at her and then at St. James, “Thank you for helping me out. There's no way I can ever repay you.”

St. James wanted to tell the other man that his sister wasn't out of gaol yet and there was a very good chance that even if bail was offered and paid, her freedom at that point would constitute only a temporary reprieve. Instead, he merely said, “We'll do what we can.”

To which Cherokee replied, “Thanks. You're the best.”

To which Deborah then said, “We're your friends, Cherokee.”

At which point the man seemed struck with emotion. It flashed across his face for an instant. He managed only a nod and he gave that odd clenched-fist gesture that Americans tended to use to indicate everything from gratitude to political agreement.

Or perhaps he used it in that moment for something else.

St. James could not keep himself from that thought. Nor had he truly been able to since the moment he'd glanced up to the gallery in Courtroom Number Three and seen his wife and the American above him: the two of them shoulder to shoulder with Deborah murmuring to Cherokee's bent and listening head. Something wasn't right in the world. St. James believed that at a level he couldn't have explained. So the sensation of times out of joint made it difficult for him to affirm his wife's declaration of friendship to the other man. He said nothing, and when Deborah's glance in his direction asked him why, he offered her no answering glance as reply. This wouldn't, he knew, improve things between them. She was still at odds with him about their conversation in the Old Bailey.

When they arrived in town, they established themselves in Ann's Place, where a former government building had long ago been converted into a hotel. There they parted: Cherokee and Deborah to the prison where they hoped to make contact with China in the remand section, St. James to the police station where he wanted to track down the officer in charge of the investigation.

He remained uneasy. He knew very well that he didn't belong there, insinuating himself into a police investigation where he wouldn't be welcome. At least in England, cases existed to which he could refer a police force if he came calling and requesting information from them. You recall the Bowen kidnapping? he could murmur virtually anywhere in England . . . And that strangulation in Cambridge last year? Given enough opportunity to explain who he was and to seek a common river of knowledge in which to swim with the police, St. James had found that the UK officers were generally willing to part with what information they had while remaining unruffled in the face of any attempts he might make to find something more. But here things were different. Garnering if not the cooperation of the police then at least their grudging acceptance of his presence among those people closely connected to the crime would not be a matter of jogging their memories of cases he'd worked on or criminal trials in which he'd been involved. That put him in a place he didn't like to be, relying on his least developed skill to gain admittance into the fraternity of investigators: the ability to establish a connection with another person.

He followed the curve of Ann's Place as it gave onto Hospital Lane and the police station beyond. He pondered the entire idea of connection. Perhaps, he thought, that inability of his which created a chasm between himself and other people—always and ever the cool damn scientist, always and ever looking inward and thinking, always considering, weighing, and observing when other people occupied themselves with just
being . . .
Perhaps that was the source of his discomfort with Cherokee River as well.

“I
do
remember the surfing!” Deborah had said, her face altering in an instant when the shared experience came to her mind. “All three of us went that one
time . . . D'you remember? Where were we?”

Cherokee had looked reflective before he'd said, “Sure. It was Seal Beach, Debs. Easier than Huntington. More protected there.”

“Yes, yes. Seal Beach. You made me go out and flail round on the board and I kept shrieking about hitting the pier.”

“Which,” he said, “you weren't
anywhere
close to. No way were you going to stay on the board long enough to hit anything unless you decided to sleep on it.”

They laughed together, another link forged, an effortless instant between two people when they acknowledged that a common chain existed that connected the present to the past.

And that was how it was between everyone who shared any kind of history, St. James thought. That was just how it was.

He crossed the street to the Guernsey police headquarters. It stood behind an imposing wall hewn from a stone that was veined with feldspar, an L-shaped building with four banks of windows climbing its two wings and the flag of Guernsey flying above it. Inside the reception room, St. James gave his name and his card to the special constable. Would it be possible, he asked, to speak with the chief investigating officer on the Guy Brouard murder enquiry? Or, failing that, with the department's Press Officer?

The special constable studied the card, his face a declaration that indicated a few select telephone calls were going to be made across the Channel to ascertain exactly who this forensic scientist on their doorstep was. This was all to the good, because if phone calls were made, they would be made to the Met, to the CPS, or to the university where St. James lectured, and if that were the case, his way would be paved.

It took twenty minutes while St. James cooled his heels in reception and read the notice board half a dozen times. But they were twenty minutes well spent, because at the end of them, Detective Chief Inspector Louis Le Gallez came out personally to lead St. James to the incident room, a vast hammer-beamed former chapel in which departmental exercise equipment vied with filing cabinets, computer tables, bulletin boards, and china boards.

DCI Le Gallez wanted to know, naturally, what interest a forensic scientist from London had in a murder enquiry on Guernsey, especially in an enquiry that was closed. “We've got our killer,” he said, arms across his chest and one leg slung over the corner of a table. He rested his weight—which was considerable for a man so short—on the table's edge and he flipped St. James's card back and forth against the side of his hand. He looked curious rather than guarded.

St. James opted for complete honesty. The brother of the accused, understandably shaken by what had happened to his sister, had asked St. James for help after failing to stimulate the American embassy into acting on his sister's behalf.

“The Americans have done their bit,” Le Gallez countered. “Don't know what else this bloke's expecting. He was one of the suspects as well, by the way. But then, they all were. Everyone at that party Brouard had. Night before he bought it. Half the island was there. And if that didn't complicate the hell out of matters, nothing did, believe me.”

Le Gallez took the lead as if fully aware of where St. James intended to direct the conversation upon that remark about the party. He went on to say that interviews had been conducted with everyone who'd been at the Brouard house on the night before the murder, and nothing had come to light in the days since Guy Brouard's death to alter the investigators' initial suspicion: Anyone who'd ducked out of
Le Reposoir
as the Rivers had done on the morning of the killing was someone who bore looking into.

“All the other guests had alibis for the time of the killing?” St. James asked.

That wasn't what he was implying, Le Gallez responded. But once the evidence was stacked up, what everyone else had been doing on the morning Guy Brouard met his death was germane to nothing related to the case.

What they had against China River was damning, and Le Gallez seemed only too happy to list it. Their four scenes-of-crime officers had worked the location and their forensic pathologist had worked the body. The River woman had left a partial print at the scene—this was a footprint, half of it obscured by a broad blade of seaweed, admittedly, but grains that were the exact match of the coarse sand upon the beach had been imbedded in the soles of her shoes and those same shoes matched the partial print as well.

“She might have been there at some other time,” St. James said.

“Might have been. True. I know the story. Brouard gave them the run of the place when he wasn't running them round it himself. But what he didn't do was catch her hair in the zip of the track suit jacket he had on when he died. And I wouldn't put money on him having wiped his head on her wrap, either.”