True Witness (13 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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Surrounded by the ruins of the man's existence Daniel suddenly saw what Deacon had seen: that to people who knew neither of them, he and Cochrane had enough in common to seem like natural allies. The recognition shocked him to the core. This was how people saw him? Not just odd but suspect? Dangerous? He was used to being alone. He'd always thought it was from choice. Now he felt not so much a loner as an exile.
He tried to put the thought behind him. He needed to concentrate on what he was doing. He couldn't afford to be taken by surprise, not for a moment. He needed a plan.
There was no one in sight. He could make a run for the lane, and maybe Cochrane would never see him. Or maybe they'd meet on the track, unwitnessed. Coming here had left him with no risk-free options. Going through with it, finding out what he had been so desperate to know, might entail no greater danger than taking off alone into these barren hills. There was still that sixty percent chance that when Cochrane answered his door he'd see a stranger. In which case he'd ask what he wanted, and Daniel would need to say something. He couldn't think of a single reason for coming here except the real one.
He knocked at the kitchen door, waited a moment, then knocked again. If the man came he'd – ask about puppies! Yes. Cochrane kept sheep, he was bound to have sheepdogs, if he had dogs he probably had puppies. If he hadn't he'd send Daniel away. If he had – well – maybe Paddy would like a puppy …
A minute passed and still no one appeared. Perhaps
Cochrane was out on the hill and the house was empty. In that case, Daniel thought, daring to hope, they'd have to leave. He could come back another time, when he'd worked it out more carefully; with back-up, in a car; or not at all. If he got away from here in one piece it might be a long time before he played at private detectives again. He turned back to the Land Rover, ready to leave.
Behind him the plank door groaned open.
Too late to run, impossible to hide. He filled his lungs and turned to face the man who just might need him dead.
“Found what you were looking for?” asked the man who'd brought him here.
Daniel shut his eyes a second and let the pent breath go. “No,” he said then. “I thought you …”
His eye travelled through the doorway into the kitchen. The place was derelict. Not just squalid – a man living alone can exude squalour as if from his pores – but a ruin. He blinked. “I don't understand. Why did you bring me here?”
“You were looking for Neil Cochrane.”
“He doesn't live here. Nobody's lived here for years.”
“He comes here. When he has things to do he don't want to do at home. Nobody knows about this place, see. There's only an old trod up to it, you saw that. No mains water, no electric, no phone. It don't even appear on maps now. To find it you'd have to know to look.”
Teaching is a great way to learn. Daniel had learned as much from his pupils as he'd ever managed to teach them, and one thing was the art of hearing what wasn't being said. Those synapses concerned with interpreting unspoken messages were firing now. He was being told something, and it wasn't what the man was saying or even what he was implying.
Daniel moistened his lips. He looked at his companion as if for the first time. A big man, tall and rangy, still quite strong enough in his mid-fifties to break Daniel across his knee.
It took him a second to find his voice, and then it was low and as hollow as a rotten log. “I've been pretty stupid, haven't I?”
The man nodded, watching him curiously. “I guess.”
Daniel felt as if someone had not so much pulled the rug from under him as excavated the ground. He hadn't suspected, not for a moment. Now he was desperately trying to work out how bad a mistake that had been.
But it was too late even to wonder. Running wasn't an option. The man who killed Chris Berry had kept pace with a champion fell-runner. Daniel didn't fool himself he could cover ground faster than that with the hounds of hell on his heels. Most of the exercise he took was mental.
So maybe he needed to think more than he needed to run. Facing a man who was bigger, stronger and, despite his age, fitter than him, on his own territory and in a situation he had himself created, mental agility was Daniel's only advantage.
He made himself look the farmer in the eyes. “You're Neil Cochrane. Well, I'm Daniel Hood.”
Cochrane's shoulders filled the door. “Sonny, I know who you are.”
Jack Deacon had promised himself an early night. He'd barely been home since the murder of Chris Berry three days before: the food was going stale in his fridge and the cat was thinking of sub-letting the place.
Also, he was not blind to the fact that useful work might be done round his living-room fire this evening. With the ruins of his own home still smoking on the shore, Daniel Hood might be more co-operative. And if he wasn't, if Deacon couldn't shake his story with all evening to do it, with the man buried in one of his sagging armchairs and sipping his Scotch, it was maybe time to look at the alternatives. Like, perhaps Hood was right. Perhaps Neil Cochrane didn't murder Chris Berry.
For Deacon even to think that way was an evolutionary advance comparable to the opposable thumb. And now he was prepared to listen to his witness, the witness had disappeared. Daniel might not have been the answer to a detective's prayer, but he was still the only one who'd seen Berry's killer and Deacon couldn't afford to lose him.
All hope of a quiet night abandoned, Deacon put every officer he could find onto the streets, into the pubs and clubs and anywhere else that casual malice might spawn a genuine threat. When the attempt on his life failed, had those pillars of the community whose primary function was supporting the local hostelries turned to abduction? Deacon hoped that if he trawled enough public bars he'd learn what had happened to Daniel Hood.
Or rather, half of him did. If some kind of plot had been hatched, he'd find out who had taken Daniel and where he was, and soon after that he'd have them in custody. But the other half of him hoped fervently that he'd got this wrong and that wasn't what happened at all. The only reason anyone
could have for taking Daniel was to get information out of him. They could have had him for twelve hours by now. You can do a lot of damage to someone in that time, particularly if he hasn't got the information you want.
The alternative was that Daniel had left Deacon's house of his own volition and gone about his own business. Deacon called the bank manager at home. A man whose house had burned down trying to obtain funds without any form of identification would be sufficiently unusual that Mrs Carter should remember. But she was sure Daniel Hood hadn't got as far as the bank.
He questioned his neighbours. No one had seen Daniel leave the house, but if a mob had gathered at his door someone would have noticed. So maybe he … went for a walk? It was a stupid thing for a hunted man to do, but Deacon had known Daniel was not entirely rational. He might have gone out simply to prove he wasn't afraid to.
If he'd wanted fresh air, he might have gone to the shore or the cliffs. Deacon despatched teams to begin house-to-house inquiries along both routes.
By nine-thirty he had established that Daniel Hood, walking alone, had taken the path up the cliff a little after ten that morning. He was seen walking up and, a few minutes later, running down. No one seemed to be chasing him but he appeared distressed.
The path came out on Edgehill Road which, hugging the underside of the cliff, would have taken him into town the back way. But no one else recalled seeing him. It might simply have been that, by running out of puff and dropping back to a walk, he became less conspicuous. Or something might have happened to him about then.
The bus-station was at the end of Edgehill Road. Deacon got a list of the services leaving between ten-forty, when Hood was last seen, and eleven-fifteen, by which time he would have been in town if nothing had stopped him. Then he got the names and home numbers of the drivers.
Eight local services and four regional ones left the terminus in that thirty-five minute slot. Deacon could have spent another hour contacting and questioning twelve drivers, except that he got lucky. The second number on his list was the driver of the Guildford bus.
Yes, he remembered Daniel. He had to scrape his fare together in coppers and scraps of silver, and then he wanted directions to Menner Down.
Deacon's heart thumped within him. Menner Down: was that all he said?
No, he was looking for Manor Farm. The driver didn't know where it was, and no one on the bus volunteered the information. He stopped at the Three Downs and Hood got off.
A meddlesome little ant was tramping up and down Deacon's spine, setting up an itch in that part of his central nervous system which recognised when he wasn't getting the full story. It really didn't make any difference but he wanted to know. “You knew who he was, then.”
He seemed to hear the driver shrug. “I couldn't have told you his name. But yes, I knew who he was. I live in Dimmock. Everyone knows who he is.”
Deacon nodded slowly. “You know who lives at Manor Farm, too, don't you?”
There was a brief pause this time. “Sure.”
Deacon considered. He was a policeman, which meant he was responsible for people's deeds, not their consciences. But he couldn't let it go. “Three nights ago Daniel Hood risked his life trying to prevent a murder. Last night, by way of thanks, the good citizens of Dimmock burned his house down, and would have done it with him inside if he'd been there. And this morning, when he got on your bus in a distressed state with nothing to his name but small change, though you knew who he was and where he was going you made no attempt to stop him. You didn't even contact us. You let him off your bus in the middle of nowhere, and no
one's seen him since. When he turns up dead in a ditch, you can be proud that you got him where he wanted to go.”
He heard the man sniff. “I'm just a bus-driver. I don't ask people if their journeys are necessary. I take their fares and I give them a ticket. I let them out at the stop nearest their destination. That's the extent of my interest in their lives.”
Jack Deacon wanted to reach down the phone, grab the man by the throat and shake him. But he recognised the impulse as unreasonable. No one had made Daniel Hood go to Manor Farm, only his own meddlesome ant. All the time Deacon had known him, he couldn't meet a mystery without trying to solve it or be aware of a threat without confronting it. If Deacon was going to be angry at anyone it should be himself. He'd kept playing the guilt card until Hood believed it, blamed himself for a boy's death. Of course he did: it was what Deacon wanted. He should have known then that Hood wouldn't settle for regrets, that he'd try to atone for them.
His hand on the phone was rigid with fury. He ended the call before he said something he'd rue later. Then he phoned the police station, and six minutes after that he and Charlie Voss were on their way to Manor Farm.
 
 
Brodie sat by the phone, willing it to ring. It wouldn't. She kept telling herself that no news was good news but she wasn't convinced. If Daniel was safe, wherever he was and whatever he was doing he'd have let her know before now. She picked up the phone to make sure it hadn't inexplicably died, but the dialling tone was steady. No fault, then, just no calls. Brodie sat beside it and waited.
 
 
Daniel hadn't wanted this encounter, certainly hadn't planned to make a fool of himself like this. Despite that he
had achieved what he came here for. He had seen the face of Neil Cochrane. And he hadn't seen it before.
He no longer had any doubts. In the craggy, creased, autocratic face before him he could see the man, ten years younger, whose photograph he had been shown but not the one he'd seen on Dimmock pier three days before. They might be of an age, of a generally similar appearance, but they were two men. Which meant Daniel was not responsible for the death of Kevin Sykes. Having that load lifted from his shoulders was a benediction. He felt himself grow light, shriven of guilt.
Cochrane said gruffly, “And I'm damned if I know what you've got to smile about.”
Daniel couldn't help it. “Don't you see? Half Dimmock believes you killed one boy on the pier and another at the old brewery. The police believe it. I know they're wrong. When I convince them you'll be off the hook.”
“That's good,” nodded Cochrane phlegmatically.
Daniel didn't understand his manner. “Come to the police station with me. Then Inspector Deacon can stop trying to pin the guilt on you and start looking for the man I saw.”
Cochrane came out of the house and shut the door behind him. Daniel had to stop himself shooing the man along like a sheep. His own sense of urgency was such that he couldn't believe that Cochrane wasn't already racing down the cart-track spitting stones from under the Land Rover's wheels.
The farmer looked down at Daniel through narrowed eyes. “You'll recognise him again, will you?”
“I think so. When the police find him. Which they won't do,” he added pointedly, “until we make them go and look.”
Cochrane curled a thin lip at him. “Slow down, young feller, there's time enough. Not much in life is as urgent as people think.”
But Daniel's mind was buzzing. “You don't understand. For the last two days people have been telling me I made a
mistake that cost someone's life. Now I know I didn't, I have to tell them!”
Cochrane sniffed. “Two days isn't very long. Everyone I know has suspected me of murder for ten years. It's of little consequence to me if they go on thinking it another hour or two.”
“But –” Daniel got a grip on himself, knotting his fingers behind his yellow head. “All right. You're used to being blamed for something you didn't do. I'm not. I want to put the record straight. If you don't care about proving your innocence, will you help me prove mine? I've already had my house burned down. I'd like this sorted out before anything else happens.”
Cochrane squinted at him. “You got another house?”
Daniel stared. “Of course not.”
“Then what can happen? You've already lost everything you own. And nobody's going to find you up here.”
The countryside is different to the town. Obviously: one has pavements while the other has trees, you can get tradesmen and take-aways in town but let your kids run wild in the country. But these are superficial matters. The real difference between urban and rural life is one of mentality. Townsfolk crave order: if something goes wrong they want to know whose job it is to fix it and when it'll be done. Country people, on the other hand, are self-sufficient. If something goes wrong, mostly they fix it themselves, when it suits them. Time obeys other clocks. Today means today or maybe tomorrow; now means when there's nothing better to do.
Daniel gave a little snort that was mostly amusement. “Thanks for reminding me. Just for a moment there I thought things could get worse.”
Cochrane chuckled too, darkly. He looked Daniel up and down. “Describe this man you saw on the pier. He was a big feller – my size?”
“As near as I could judge.”
“What did he look like?”
“He looked like you,” said Daniel. “Your age, your height, your build. Even his face. I can see why people would think it was you – but it wasn't. I'd stake my life on it.”
“And you never saw him before.”
“If I had, he'd be behind bars by now.”
Cochrane gave that some thought. A flicker of annoyance crossed his rough-hewn features. But the truth of what Daniel was saying was self-evident: if he'd known who the killer was he wouldn't be here.
Another thought occurred to the farmer. “So there's this big strong feller on top of the pier, armed with a wheel-brace and standing over the body of the boy he's just brained with it. And you're shouting at him and waving your torch at him, and I dare say you threatened him as well, did you?”
Daniel hadn't enough detachment to share in his dour amusement. He said simply, “I did everything I could think of. It wasn't much; it wasn't enough. I should have been able to stop it. I was right there …”
The humour faded from Cochrane's long face. “Did you think what you'd do if he came down to shut you up?”
Daniel shook his head. “It happened too quickly.”
Cochrane nodded thoughtfully. “Events do that to a man. Sneak up on him and pounce when he least expects it. When he thinks something's in the past, only it rears up and grabs him by the throat again.”
Daniel thought he understood. “After ten years you must have believed it was history. And though the police never caught the killer, the killings stopped. People knew that you were still around so they must have known they'd made a mistake.”
Cochrane raised an eyebrow. “You reckon? They just thought I was smart. They thought I'd got away with murder. They tried burning my house down, once. I set the dogs on them.”
Daniel wished they were having this conversation on the road to Dimmock, but since he seemed incapable of
galvanising the farmer into action he might as well ask what had puzzled him. “Why was everyone so sure it was you? If there'd been any evidence the police would have charged you. Since there wasn't, why were they so certain they knew who the killer was?”

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