Six Dead Men (21 page)

*****

Joe backed away from the sitting room door. Sylvie and Andrew did a gentle duet as they left the room. Neither Deed nor Madie heard or saw the door close. Father Andrew called it the mysterious workings of the hand of God. Joe called it fate. Sylvie called it souls finding each other in the cosmos. Madie and Robert had no name for it, only the slim evidence of their individual yet shared knowledge of a connection between them which had begun five months ago.

*****

“Miss Bricot.”

Madie licked her lips before she replied. “Detective Inspector”

They spoke together, an awkward moment of tension making their words spill together in a jumble of incomprehensible phrases into the space. They both cleared their throats.

Deed wanted to reach for her, clasp her close to him but he resisted. She was hovering near the door exhibiting signs of an injured animal with a flight response. “I’ve been worried about you Miss Bricot.”

"Have you?" There was a tremor in her voice.

"Yes!" Deed moved towards her hesitantly.

"Then why didn't you come to find me?" she half wailed "I needed you to find me."

"I'm sorry." They were centimetres apart. Madie closed her eyes as though to hide the tears rising in them. She swayed and as her body leaned slightly towards him Deed took the opportunity to put his arm around her. She started and her eyes flew open. He heard her intake of breath and felt her struggle to be free of his grasp but he held on. "I'm not dead. Despite your abilities. It seems I'm immune."

The memory of their embrace in his office was palpable in the air. And Deed knew she was reliving the scene too. They hung suspended in the shared past moment, it served as reassurance. Deed felt rather than saw the release of her sucked in breath. He drew her closer into his embrace and she leaned in as he wrapped his arms around her. "I'm here now."

"And you're not dead." Her voice was muffled against his shirt.

"No, definitely not dead."

They stayed locked in the embrace until their hearts began to share a rhythm. Then Madie drew back from him and Deed reluctantly let her go. She looked up at him shyly.

“I think after all we’ve been through and what you obviously know about me, you should call me Madie.”

“Okay, Madie. Then you have to call me Robert.”

“Not Bob?” Madie teased.

“Only if you really want to.” Deed replied reluctantly.

“No, you don’t like it, I can tell and anyway, in my mind you’ve always been Robert.”

"You've thought about me?"

Madie blushed. "Yes."

Deed felt a warm glow spread all through him which had nothing to do with the blazing fire in the grate.
Christ!

Madie perched on the edge of the sofa and Deed sat down in the cosy armchair. They both surveyed each other, drinking in each longed for presence while the air grew thick with warm, unsaid emotions.

“Joe says I should trust my feelings for you and not try to run from them again. He says you were always meant to help me, we were supposed to work together.”

“He’s told me the same thing and he’s nagged me incessantly to find you ever since I first met him. He’s a lot like a mother really.”

Madie laughed. “He told me you were a recalcitrant child.”

“Oh did he.” said Deed with mock annoyance. Suddenly his lips smoothed into a serious line. “It’s happening again isn’t it?”

Seeming too afraid to speak Madie clamped her lips together and nodded. He saw her self-imposed composure collapse as she tried hard to push back tears that glistened on the rim of her lower lids. She raised her hand to her mouth to hide the extent of her emotion and Deed saw that her fingers were trembling. He was by her side in an instant. He held her hand in both of his and felt the hummingbird quiver of her nature send a familiar thrill through him.

Deed sat back into the sofa and drew her further onto it so that she was leaning into him. He put his arm around her. Madie rested her right hand just below his heart. As they sat she stilled, her breathing became calmer and her trembling stopped; but Deed began to feel his heart beat faster, his body heat rise and his breathing become heavier. Suddenly fearful he wanted to move away from her, pull away, back off, leave.

Then he heard Joe on his left shoulder reassuring and cajoling.
Just allow yourself to dip a toe into the whirlpool of emotions this woman has stirred in you, emotions you've been too eager to dismiss in the past
.
Take a step towards this - it's been trying to happen for such a long time.
And then there it was - that feeling of contentment he'd always known could exist. He wasn’t Deed any more He was Robert. And Robert relaxed into the sofa pulling Madie more firmly into the security of his bulk.
It's like being inside one of my dreams, only this is really happening.

“You always still me Robert. Why is that?”

“I’m not a volatile man Madie.”

“It’s more than that. Even that first day in the interview room, before you came in I was a bag of nerves, but as soon as you stepped through the door — I felt like it was all going to be okay.”

“It was totally the opposite for me. You unnerved me so. The more I looked at you the more I knew you were guilty, but I also knew I didn’t want you to be. God, I've pushed against my feelings so hard. I tried to give the investigation to someone else, but he went off on paternity leave and I was stuck with you.”

Madie pulled away from him slightly. “Stuck with me?”

He pulled her back to him and breathed in the rose geranium scent of her, hardly believing she was real. Madie did not fight his hold. Instead she rubbed her cheek against the cotton of his shirt then moved her hand to rest on his leg where she traced a line of raised corduroy lightly with a forefinger. Robert lifted her hand into his until they were palm to palm, the ends of her fingers barely reaching the mid section of his.

“I wish you'd come to find me sooner?” Her voice was full of sorrow.

“I'm sorry. I won’t leave you alone again. I’ll fight your corner whatever comes. I promise.” Robert meant it.
What a fool I was. Thank God for Joe.

Madie balled her hand into a small, insignificant fist and Robert wrapped his own fingers over hers till the joined fist became a mighty rock.

*****

Madie gazed, mesmerised, at the palm of her hand.
There, just there is where his lips touched my palm.
She could still feel the contact his lips had made. She felt as though she was in a dream, part nightmare, part wonder.
First there was Joe telling me I'm some sort of avenging angel and then ... then Robert's ... just there. And he tells me he loves me. Loves me... And I'm seeing so clearly now that I've loved him for ages.

Chapter 24

Deed used his warrant card at the Bolton registry office. He didn't like to but his need to know was greater than his desire to protect what remained of his reputation. The woman's hair bounced lightly as she scrutinised his identification. She smiled at him and proceeded to delve through files and handed him a copy of Grace Young’s marriage certificate. He scanned the columns.

The young woman was looking at him with a degree of eagerness. Her desire to help warmed him. He didn't want to be the officious policeman making queries about a suspect. "Would it be too much to ask if you can find out more about her? Grace Young I mean. It might take up quite a bit of your time I'm afraid."

"Oh don't you worry about taking up my time pet. There's nothing but time here at the mo. Most of the work is being computerised now you see and I'm just dealing with all this old paper before it gets archived. It's just like that programme on the telly." She smiled up at him. "That one about ancestors. Hey, can I ask, why do you need to find out? Is it some big case you're working on?"

Deed considered being disingenuous but suddenly felt a need to trust someone other than Joe with his secret, which in the dull winter light of day and the very recent memory of Madie in his arms, did not seem so dark any more
The world seems lighter today. Is that just because I held Madie?

He looked at the woman’s name tag. “Jeannette, it’s nothing to do with a case.” He saw her eyes narrow slightly. “I think I might have a brother I didn’t know about.” Her eyes were still clouded with wariness so Deed rushed on. “I’ve always thought I was an only child and then just yesterday...”

He did not need to finish because Jeannette’s eyes had warmed again and a small smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Do you know his name?”

“No, only his mother’s — The Grace Young I asked you to find.”

“Well, the first thing is, we need to know if she’s the only Grace Young in Bolton.” So Jeanette Watts, archive clerk, helped him unearth the story of Grace Young's life. "You're in luck., she's the only Grace in Bolton. We've got two others, one in Salford and one in Didsbury." Jeannette's manicured fingers pointed out the salient details for Deed just in case he missed them. "So she married this John Francis Ire. Imagine having a surname like that - Ire. Sounds angry all the time."

"Can we find out if she had any children?" Deed asked Jeanette.

There was a great deal of scrabbling and calling up of files and cross referenced searches. He went out to a coffee shop and came back with frothy cappuccinos and sugared doughnuts.

"Oh yes, those will keep us going." Jeannette declared. "Good thing these are copies, we’re going against regulations having drinks around the documents.” Jeannette carefully stowed the large folder of original documents at a safe distance from the froth and sugar on the counter top.

Deed lounged against the counter, more relaxed than he could ever have imagined being.
I wonder if Madie likes doughnuts.
Every time thoughts of her crept into his morning he felt a swell of emotion spread all across his chest. He had anticipated this delve into his father’s past indiscretions would leave him ripped raw, but instead he found himself thrilled with each new tit bit Jeannette produced. The detective in him was reawakened with the addition of a warmth he had previously avoided in his police work.

Jeannette leaned in towards him conspiratorially and he caught the whiff of some unknown generic perfume. Deed couldn't help enjoying the joint investigation with Jeannette as his unofficial partner. She had an infectious curiosity which led him to behave like a school boy on an outing.

He realised with slight shock that he was flirting with her.
You get more from people with honey than vinegar.
Jeannette had blossomed through the morning as she suggested several courses of action. Deed had fallen in with her suggestions rather than demand the documents he knew he needed. Somehow the future didn't matter so much. He would let it simply come at him rather than fight the edges of it constantly in a bid to hide his feelings from himself.

Being with Madie seems to have released me from my fears somehow.
There was a sense of freedom in his actions and thoughts today. He revelled in them, knowing that he had emerged from a hard carapace a new formed being. He understood, with a new clarity today, the metaphor of the phoenix reborn through fire.

"Oh!” Jeannette’s eyes were round with the thrill of a secret understanding. “Seems she was already up the duff when she married Mr Ire?"

"Well how can you tell?" Deed knew but he wanted the glory to be hers.

Jeannette manoeuvred the copy of the birth certificate so Deed could see it more easily. “Look at the fourth column.”