A Place of Hiding (55 page)

“To?” St. James asked.

“The only people who can make a banker talk.”

 

China was an excellent navigator. Where there were signs, she called out the names of the streets they were passing as they rolled north along the esplanade, and she got them without a wrong turn to Vale Road at the northern end of
Belle Greve
Bay.

They passed through a little neighbourhood with its grocer, hairdresser, and car repair shop, and at a traffic light—one of the few on the island—they coursed to the northwest. In the way Guernsey had of continually changing its landscape, they found themselves in an agricultural area less than a half mile along the road. This was defined by a few acres of greenhouses that winked in the morning sunlight and, beyond them, a stretch of fields. Perhaps a quarter of a mile into this area, Deborah recognised it and wondered that she hadn't done so before. She glanced warily at her friend in the passenger seat, and she saw from China's expression that she, too, realised where they were.

China said abruptly, “Pull in here, okay?” when they came to the turn for the States Prison. When Deborah braked in a lay-by some twenty yards along the lane, China climbed out of the car and walked over to a tangle of hawthorn and blackthorn that served as a hedge. Above this and in the distance rose two of the buildings that comprised the prison. With its pale yellow exterior and red-tiled roof, it might have been a school or a hospital. Only its windows—iron-barred—declared it for what it was.

Deborah joined her friend. China looked closed off, and Deborah was hesitant to break into her thoughts. So she stood next to her in silence and felt the frustration of her own inadequacy, especially when she compared it to the tender kinship she'd received from this woman when she herself had been in need.

China was the one to speak. “He couldn't handle it. No way in hell.”

“I don't see how anyone could.” Deborah thought of prison doors closing and keys being turned and the stretch of time: days which melted into weeks and months until years had passed.

“It'd be worse for Cherokee,” China said. “It's always worse for men.”

Deborah glanced at her. She recalled China's description—years ago—of the single time she'd visited her father in prison. “His eyes,” she'd said. “He couldn't keep them still. We were sitting at this table, and when someone passed too close behind him, he flew around like he expected to be knifed. Or worse.”

He'd been in for five years that particular time. The California prison system, China told her, kept its arms permanently open for her father.

Now China said, “He doesn't know what to expect inside.”

“It's not going to come to that,” Deborah told her. “We'll sort this out soon enough and you can both go home.”

“You know, I used to gripe about being so poor. Rubbing two pennies together in the hope they would make a quarter someday. I hated that. Working in high school just to buy a pair of shoes at a place like Kmart. Waiting on tables for years to get enough money to go to Brooks. And then that apartment in Santa Barbara. That dump we had, Debs. God, I hated all of it. But I'd take it all back this second just to be out of here. He drives me crazy most of the time. I used to dread picking up the telephone when it rang because I was always afraid it'd be Cherokee and he'd be saying, ‘Chine! Wait'll you hear the plan,' and I'd know it was going to mean something shady or something he wanted me to help finance. But right now . . . at this very instant . . . I'd give just about anything to have my brother standing next to me and to have both of us standing on the pier in Santa Barbara with him telling me about his latest scam.”

Impulsively Deborah put her arms round her friend. China's body was unyielding at first, but Deborah held on till she felt her soften. She said, “We'll get him out of this. We'll get you both out of it. You
will
go home.”

They returned to the car. As Deborah reversed it out of the lay-by and made the turn back onto the main road, China said, “If I'd known they were going to come for him next . . . This sounds like a martyr thing. I don't mean it that way. But I think I'd rather do the time myself.”

“No one's going to prison,” Deborah said. “Simon is going to see to that.”

China held the map open on her lap and looked at it as if checking their route. But she said tentatively, “He's nothing like . . . He's very different . . . I wouldn't ever have thought . . .” She stopped altogether. Then, “He seems very nice, Deborah.”

Deborah glanced at her and completed her thought. “But he's nothing like Tommy, is he?”

“Not in any way. You seem . . . I don't know . . . less free with him? Less free, anyway, than you were with Tommy. I remember how you laughed with Tommy. And had adventures together. And acted wild. Somehow I don't see you doing that with Simon.”

“No?” Deborah smiled, but it was forced. There was plain truth in what her friend was saying—her relationship with Simon couldn't have been more different to her time with Tommy—but somehow China's observation felt like a criticism of her husband, and that criticism put her in the position of wanting to defend him, a sensation she didn't like. “Perhaps that's because you're seeing us in the midst of something serious just now.”

“I don't think that's it,” China said. “Like you said, he's different from Tommy. Maybe it's because he's . . . you know. His leg? He's more serious about life because of that?”

“Perhaps it's just that he has more to be serious about.” Deborah knew this wasn't necessarily true: As a homicide detective, Tommy had professional concerns that far outweighed Simon's. But she sought a way to explain her husband to her friend, a way to allow her to see that loving a man who dwelt almost entirely within his own head wasn't that terribly different to loving a man who was outspoken, passionate, and thoroughly involved in life. It's because Tommy can afford to be those things, Deborah wanted to tell her in defence of her husband. Not because he's wealthy but because he's simply who he is. And who he is is sure, in ways that other men aren't.

“His handicap, you mean?” China said after a moment.

“What?”

“What Simon has to be more serious about.”

“I never actually think about his handicap,” Deborah told her. She kept her gaze on the road so her friend couldn't read her face for the message that said this was a lie.

“Ah. Well. Are you happy with him?”

“Very.”

“Well then, lucky you.” China gave her attention back to the map. “Straight across at the intersection,” she said abruptly. “Then right at the one after that.”

She guided them to the north end of the island, an area completely unlike the parishes that held
Le Reposoir
and St. Peter Port. The granite cliffs of the south end of Guernsey gave way on the north to dunes. A sandy coast replaced the steep and wooded descent to bays, and where vegetation protected the land from the wind, it was marram grass and bindweed that grew on the mobile dunes, red fescue and sea spurge where the dunes were fixed.

Their route took them along the south end of
Le Grand Havre,
a vast open bay where small boats lay protected on the shore for the winter. On one side of this section of the water, the humble white cottages of
Le Picquerel
lined a road that veered west to the collection of bays that defined the low-lying part of Guernsey. On the other side,
La Garenne
forked to the left, a route named for the rabbit warrens that had at one time housed the island's chief delicacy. It was a thin strip of pavement that followed the eastern swoop of
Le Grand Havre.

Where
La Garenne
curved with the coastline, they found Anaïs Abbott's house. It stood on a large piece of land walled off from the road by the same grey granodiorite blocks that had been used in the construction of the building itself. An expansive garden had been planted in front and a path wound through it to the house's front door. Anaïs Abbott was standing there, arms crossed beneath her breasts. She was in conversation with a briefcase-carrying balding man who appeared to be having difficulty keeping his eyes focused above the level of her neck.

As Deborah parked on the verge across the lane from the house, the man extended his hand to Anaïs. They shook in conclusion of some sort of deal, and he came down the stone path between the hebe and the lavender. Anaïs watched him from the step and, as his car was parked just in front of Deborah's, she saw her next two visitors as they alighted from the Escort. Her body stiffened visibly and her expression—which had been soft and earnest in the presence of the man—altered, her eyes narrowing with swift calculation as Deborah and China came up the path towards her.

Her hand went to her throat in a protective gesture. She said, “Who are you?” to Deborah and “Why are you out of gaol? What does this mean?” to China. And “What are you doing here?” to them both.

“China's been released,” Deborah said, and introduced herself, explaining her presence in vague terms of “trying to sort matters out.”

Anaïs said, “Released? What does that mean?”

“It means that China's innocent, Mrs. Abbott,” Deborah said. “She didn't harm Mr. Brouard.”

At the mention of his name, Anaïs's lower lids reddened. She said, “I can't
talk
to you. I don't know what you want. Leave me alone.” She made a move for the door.

China said, “Anaïs, wait. We need to talk—”

She swung round. “I
won't
talk to you. I don't want to see you. Haven't you done enough? Aren't you satisfied yet?”

“We—”

“No! I saw how you were with him. You thought I didn't? Well, I did. I
did.
I
know
what you wanted.”

“Anaïs, he just showed me his house. He showed me the estate. He wanted me to see—”

“He wanted, he wanted,” Anaïs scoffed, but her voice quavered, and the tears that filled her eyes spilled over. “You knew he was mine. You knew it, you saw it, you were
told
it by everyone, and you went ahead anyway. You decided to seduce him and you spent every minute—”

“I was just taking pictures,” China said. “I saw the chance to take pictures for a magazine at home. I told him about that and he liked the idea. We didn't—”

“Don't you dare deny it!” Her voice rose to a cry. “He turned away from me. He said he couldn't but I know he didn't want . . . I've lost everything now.
Everything.
”

Her reaction was suddenly so extreme that Deborah began to wonder if they had stepped out of the Escort into another dimension and she sought to intervene. “We need to talk to Stephen, Mrs. Abbott. Is he here?”

Anaïs backed into the door. “What do you want with my son?”

“He went to see Frank Ouseley's Occupation collection with Mr. Brouard. We want to ask him about that.”

“Why?”

Deborah wasn't about to tell her anything more, and certainly not anything that might make her think her son could bear some responsibility for Guy Brouard's murder. That would likely push her over the edge on which she was obviously teetering. She said, walking a thin line between truth, manipulation, and prevarication, “We need to know what he recalls seeing.”

“Why?”

“Is he at home, Mrs. Abbott?”

“Stephen didn't harm anyone. How dare you even suggest . . .” Anaïs opened the door. “Get off my property. If you want to talk to anyone, you can talk to my advocate. Stephen isn't here. He isn't going to talk to you now or ever.”

She went inside and slammed the door, but before she did so, her glance betrayed her. She looked back in the direction they had come, where a church steeple rose on a slope of land not a half mile away.

That was the direction they took. They retraced their route up
La Garenne
and used the steeple as their guide. They found themselves in short order at a walled graveyard that rose along a little hillside on the top of which was the church of
St. Michel de Vale,
whose pointed steeple bore a blue-faced clock with no minute hand and an hour hand pointing—permanently, it seemed—to the number six. Thinking that Stephen Abbott might be inside, they tried the church door.

Inside, however, all was silence. Bell ropes hung motionless near a marble baptismal font, and a stained glass window of Christ crucified gazed down on an altar with its decorative spray of holly and berries. There was no one in the nave and no one in the Chapel of Archangels to one side of the main altar, where a flickering candle indicated the presence of the Sacrament.

They returned to the graveyard. China was saying, “She was probably trying to fake us out. I bet he's at the house,” when Deborah caught sight of a pond across the street. It had been hidden from the road by reeds, but from the vantage point of the little hilltop, they could see it spread out not far from a red-roofed house. A figure was throwing sticks into the water, an indifferent dog at his side. As they watched, the boy gave the dog a shove towards the pond.

“Stephen Abbott,” Deborah said grimly. “No doubt entertaining himself.”

“Nice guy” was China's reply as they followed the path back to the car and crossed the road.

He was throwing yet another stick into the water when they emerged from the heavy growth round the pond. He was saying, “Come
on,
” to the dog, who hunkered not far away, staring dismally at the water with the forbearance of an early Christian martyr. “Come on!” Stephen Abbott cried. “Can't you do
anything?
” He threw another stick and then another, as if determined to prove himself the master of a creature who no longer cared about submission or the rewards therein.

“I expect he doesn't want to get wet,” Deborah said. Then, “Hullo, Stephen. D'you remember me?”

Stephen glanced over his shoulder at her. Then his gaze slid to China. It widened but only momentarily before his face became closed and his eyes hard. “Stupid dog,” he said. “Just like this stupid island. Just like everything. Bloody stupid.”