A Place of Hiding (70 page)

Simon rolled it from the rubbish and bent awkwardly to pick it up. Turned on its side, it revealed a slice from the top to the bottom in the surface of the tube. The slice had been widened to a gaping incision with frayed edges where the external skin of the tube had been forced open to reveal its real structure. What they had was a tube secreted within another tube, and it didn't take a nuclear scientist to deduce what the resulting hidden inner space had been used for.

“Ah,” Simon murmured. He looked at Deborah.

She knew what he was thinking because she was thinking it herself and she didn't want to think it. She said, “May I have a look . . . ?” and she took it from him gratefully when he handed the tube over without comment.

Inspected, the tube revealed what Deborah thought was a most important detail: The only way into the inner compartment was clearly through the outer shell. For the rings on each end of the tube had been fixed so immovably in place that prising them off would have damaged the entire structure irreversibly. It would also have told anyone else who looked at the tube—namely, the recipient of it if not customs officials—that someone had tampered with it. Yet there was not a single mark round the metal rings on either end. Deborah pointed this out to her husband.

“I see that,” he said. “But you understand what that means, don't you?”

Deborah felt flustered by the intensity of his scrutiny and the intensity of his question. She said, “What? That whoever brought this to Guernsey didn't know—”

“Didn't open it in advance,” he interrupted. “But that doesn't mean that person didn't know what was in it, Deborah.”

“How can you say that?” She felt wretched. Her inner voice and all of her instincts were shouting
no.

“Because of the dolmen. Its presence in the dolmen. Guy Brouard was killed for that painting, Deborah. It's the only motive that explains everything else.”

“That's too convenient,” she countered. “It's also what we're meant to believe. No”—as he started to speak—“do listen, Simon. You're saying they knew in advance what was in it.”

“I'm saying one of them knew, not both.”

“All right. One. But if that's the case—if they wanted—”

“He. I'm saying
he
wanted,” her husband put in quietly.

“Yes. Fine. But you're being single-minded in this. If he—”

“Cherokee River, Deborah.”

“Yes. Cherokee. If he wanted the painting, if he knew it was in the tube, why on earth bring it here to Guernsey? Why not just disappear with it? It doesn't make sense that he'd bring it all this way and
then
steal it. There's another explanation altogether.”

“Which is?”

“I think you know. Guy Brouard opened this package and showed that painting to someone else. And that was the person who killed him.”

 

Adrian was driving too fast and far too close to the centre of the road. He was passing other cars indiscriminately and slowing for nothing. In short, he was driving with the deliberate intent to unnerve her, but Margaret was determined not to be provoked. Her son was so lacking in subtlety. He wanted her to demand that he drive differently so that he could continue to drive exactly as he pleased and thus prove to her once and for all that she had no suzerainty over him. It was just the sort of thing one would expect of a ten-year-old engaged in a game of I'll-show-you.

Adrian had infuriated her enough already. It took every ounce of self-control Margaret had not to lash out at him. She knew him well enough to understand that he wasn't about to part with any information which he'd decided to withhold because at this point he would believe that parting with anything was an indication that she had won. Won what, she didn't know and could not have said. All she had
ever
wanted for her eldest son was a normal life with a successful career, a wife, and children.

Was that too much to hope and plan for? Margaret certainly didn't think so. But the last few days had shown her that her every attempt to smooth the way for Adrian, her every intercession on his behalf, the excuses she'd made for everything from sleepwalking to inadequate bowel control were just so many pearls in a food trough frequented by swine.

Very well, she thought. So be it. But she would not leave Guernsey till she'd sorted him out about one thing. Evasions were fine. Looked at one way, they could even be construed as a pleasing sign of a long-delayed adulthood. But outright lies were unacceptable, now and always. For lies were the stuff of the terminally weak-minded.

She saw now that Adrian had probably been lying to her most of his life, both by action and by implication. But she'd been so caught up in her efforts to keep him away from the malign influence of his father that she'd accepted his version of every event in which he'd got caught up: from the supposedly accidental drowning of his puppy the night before her second marriage to the recent reason for his engagement's termination.

That he was still lying to her was something about which Margaret had little doubt. And this International Access business spoke of the greatest untruth he'd yet delivered.

So she said, “He sent you that money, didn't he? Months ago. What I'm wondering is what you spent it on.”

Unsurprisingly, Adrian replied with “What are you talking about?” He sounded indifferent. No. He actually sounded
bored.

“Betting, was it? Card playing? Idiotic stock market gambles? I know there's no International Access because you haven't left the house in more than a year for anything other than visiting your father or seeing Carmel. But perhaps that's it. Did you spend it on Carmel? Did you buy her a car? Jewellery? A house?”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course. That's exactly what I did. She agreed to marry me, and it must have been because I laid on the dosh like jelly on toast.”

“I'm not joking about this,” Margaret said. “You've lied about asking your father for money, you've lied about Carmel and her involvement with your father, you've allowed me to believe that your engagement ended because you wanted ‘different things' from the woman who'd previously agreed to marry you . . . Exactly when haven't you lied?”

He glanced her way. “What difference does it make?”

“What difference does
what
make?”

“Truth or lies. You see only what you want to see. I just make that easier for you.” He barreled past a minivan that was trundling along ahead of them. He sat on the horn as they overtook it and regained their own lane mere inches—it seemed—from an oncoming bus.

“How on earth can you say that?” Margaret demanded. “I've spent the better part of my life—”

“Living mine.”

“That is
not
the case. I've been involved, as any mother would be. I've been concerned.”

“To make sure things went your way.”

“And,”
Margaret ventured onward, determined that Adrian would
not
direct the course of their conversation, “the gratitude I've received for my effort has all come in the form of outright falsehoods. Which is unacceptable. I deserve and demand nothing less than the truth. I mean to have it this instant.”

“Because you're owed it?”

“That's right.”

“Of course. But not because you're naturally interested.”

“How
dare
you say that! I came here for you. I exposed myself to the absolute agony of my memories of that marriage—”

“Oh please,” he scoffed.

“—because of you. To make sure you got what you deserved from your father's will because I
knew
he'd do anything he could to keep it from you. That was the only way he had left to punish me.”

“And why would he be interested in punishing you?”

“Because he believed that I'd won. Because he couldn't cope with losing.”

“Won what?”

“Won you. I kept you from him for your own good, but he couldn't see that. He could see it only as my act of vengeance because to see it any other way would have meant that he'd have to look at his life and assess the effect it might have had on his only son had I allowed you to be exposed to it. And he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to look. So he blamed me for keeping you apart.”

“Which you never intended to do, of course,” Adrian pointed out sardonically.

“Of course I intended it. What would you have had me do? A string of lovers. A string of mistresses when he was married to JoAnna. God only knows what else. Orgies, probably. Drugs. Drinking. Necrophilia and bestiality for all I know. Yes, I protected you from that. I'd do it all again. I was right to do it.”

“Which is why I owe you,” Adrian said. “I get the picture. So tell me”—he glanced at her as they paused to filter into the traffic at an intersection which would direct them towards the airport—“what is it exactly that you want to know?”

“What happened to his money? Not the money that bought all the things that were put into Ruth's name, but the other money, the money he kept, because he
must
have kept a mountain of it. He couldn't have had his little flings and kept a woman as high-maintenance as Anaïs Abbott on cash that Ruth doled out to him. She's far too censorious to be financing his mistress's lifestyle anyway. So what in God's name happened to his money? He either gave it to you already or it's hidden somewhere and the
only
way I will know whether I ought to continue to pursue this is if you tell me the truth. Did he give you money?”

“Don't pursue it” was his laconic reply. They were coming up to the airport, where a plane was making its approach to touch down, presumably the same plane that would fuel up and, within the hour, take Margaret back to England. Adrian turned in along the lane to the terminal and came to stop in front of it rather than parking in one of the bays across the way. “Let it go,” he said.

She tried to read his face. “Does that mean . . . ?”

“It means what it means,” he said. “The money's gone. You won't find it. Don't try.”

“How do you . . . He gave it to you, then? You've had it all along? But if that's the case, why haven't you said . . . ? Adrian, I want the truth for once.”

“You're wasting your time,” he said. “And that's the truth.”

He shoved open his car door and went to the back of the Range Rover. He opened the back of it and the cold air rushed in as he pulled her suitcases out and dumped them with no notable ceremony on the kerb. He came round to her door. It seemed their conversation was finished.

Margaret got out, drawing her coat more closely round her. Here in this exposed area of the island, a chill wind was gusting. It would ease her flight back to England, she hoped. In time, it would do the same for her son. She did know that about Adrian despite what he seemed to think about the situation and despite how he was acting at the moment. He would be back. It was the way of the world in which they lived, the world she had created for both of them.

She said, “When are you coming home?”

“That's not your concern, Mother.” He fished out his cigarettes and took five tries to light one in the wind. Anyone else would have given up after the second match went out, but not her son. He was, in at least this way, so like his mother.

She said, “Adrian, I'm fast running out of patience with you.”

“Go home,” he told her. “You shouldn't have come.”

“What exactly are you planning to do, then? If you're not coming home with me.”

He smiled without pleasure before striding round to his side of the car. He spoke to her over its bonnet. “Believe me, I'll think of something,” he said.

 

St. James parted with Deborah as they climbed the slope from the car park towards the hotel. She'd been thoughtful all the way back from
Le Reposoir.
She'd driven the route with her usual care, but he could tell that her mind wasn't on the traffic or even on the direction they were traveling. He knew she was thinking about her proffered explanation to a priceless painting's being cached in a prehistoric, stone-lined mound of earth. He certainly couldn't fault her for that. He was thinking of her explanation as well, simply because he couldn't discount it. He knew that just as her predilection for seeing the good in all people might lead her to ignore basic truths about them, so could his penchant for distrusting everyone lead him to see things as they were not. So neither of them spoke on the drive back to St. Peter Port. It was only as they approached the hotel's front steps that Deborah turned to him as if she'd reached some sort of decision.

“I won't come in just yet. I'll have a walk first.”

He hesitated before replying. He knew the peril of saying the wrong thing. But he also knew the greater peril of not saying anything in a situation in which Deborah knew more than she ought to know as a party who was not disinterested.

He said, “Where are you going? Wouldn't you rather have a drink? A cup of tea or something?”

Her expression altered round the eyes. She knew what he was really saying despite his efforts to pretend otherwise. She said, “Perhaps I need an armed guard, Simon.”

“Deborah . . .”

She said, “I'll be back soon enough,” and headed off, not in the direction they had come but down towards Smith Street, which led to the High Street and the harbour beyond.

He could do nothing but let her go, admitting as he did so that he knew no better than she at this moment what the truth was about the death of Guy Brouard. All he had were suspicions, which she appeared to be bound and determined not to share.

Upon entering the hotel, he heard his name called and saw the receptionist standing behind the counter with a slip of paper extended towards him. “Message from London,” she told him as she gave him the paper as well as his room key. He saw that she'd written “Super Linley” on a message chit in apparent reference to his friend's position at New Scotland Yard but nonetheless looking like a characterisation that would no doubt have amused the acting superintendent, despite the misspelling of his name. “He says to get a mobile phone,” she added meaningfully.