True Witness (19 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: True Witness
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She'd managed to find the button he still answered to. He took his foot off the pedal and the van coasted to a halt.
Brodie climbed down gingerly. She could hear the whole
structure rumbling as the car ahead wove between its gaping wounds. She could feel the tremor in its bones. She stared at George Ennis. “Is he
trying
to kill himself?”
Ennis stared back at her in rank disbelief. “Of course he is. Why do you think he came here?” Then he was running, and even his feet rattled the deck.
“Oh God,” whispered Brodie, stunned. She hadn't realised that was what was happening. She'd thought he needed to get away from them, to be alone, and came here to be close to his friend. She'd known the boy was in pain. She hadn't realised he'd despaired of finding any other remedy.
There was nothing she could do. Ennis, running hard, had a head start on her, and there wouldn't be anything he could do either unless Nathan took his foot off the accelerator in the next few seconds. Even so, Brodie couldn't just stand and watch. She headed after them at a cautious jog.
Two-thirds of the way down the pier the silver hatchback began to slow. Brodie slowed too, back to a panting walk, but Ennis kept sprinting, closing the distance. After a moment Brodie sucked in a deep breath and started to run again. She wasn't sure what Ennis would do when he caught up with Nathan but she didn't trust him to just hold the boy quietly until she arrived.
Ennis reached the car and snatched open the door. Brodie heard raised voices, one deep and angry, the other edged with hysteria, a keen. She had barely enough breath for her own voice to reach them. “Will you just calm down for a minute, the pair of you, and let's talk –”
Ennis looked at her, straightening in the open door. She just had time to think, That boy would have got a thumping if I hadn't been here; then the car jumped forward, spinning Ennis to his knees.
This time nothing interrupted its progress. Not the holes in the deck, not the jumbled remains of the old concert hall, not the rail beyond. The silver hatchback drove all before it and the note of its engine never wavered. Nathan's foot was
hard to the floor when the car crashed through the rail and the weight of the engine-block took its nose down perpendicular. It hit the sea in a crash of foam and when the foam cleared it was gone.
Horror glued her to the deck for perhaps ten seconds. Then Brodie, whose idea of vigorous exercise was trotting beside a five-year-old child, was running as fast as her muscles would power her. Not for the broken rail at the end of the pier but for the man lurching to his feet this side of the concert hall. There was nothing she could do for Nathan. She'd tried; perhaps she hadn't tried hard enough but anyway she'd failed. He couldn't have made that clearer. He'd given her a grandstand view of the consequences of her failure. Reaching Nathan now would take a crane, divers and cutting equipment, and too long.
But she could still save George Ennis. She knew what he'd do when he flung off the shackles of shock. He'd follow the car off the end of the pier, down through metres of roiling water to the bed of the Channel, and fight with the car for Nathan's life. And he wouldn't succeed, so he too would die. Brodie thought – because a crisis stretches time, leaving room for thought in the spaces between heartbeats – that if there'd been a chance she'd have let him try. He'd lost one of his brilliant boys, she'd have let him risk everything for the other. But she knew he'd be throwing his life away – for nothing, for the look of the thing, for a young man who was probably already dead and in any event had longed to be.
Ennis floundered on the deck with limbs denerved by grief. Brodie caught up as he staggered to the rail, gripping his arm above the elbow. “No! George, listen to me. He's gone. Nathan's gone. There's twenty feet of water down there, and a tide running at five knots. Even if you could dive that deep, the car wouldn't be there. You'd never find it in time. I won't let you throw your life away for nothing!”
“You don't know that!” he cried, dragging her to the rail. “There's air in the car, it wouldn't sink right away.”
Wild-eyed, he scanned the grey-brown water that hissed and seethed around the pilings. Apart from weed and a little floating refuse there was nothing to see. The waves had erased the ripples already.
“The door was open,” Brodie said gently.
George Ennis stared at her. Then he threw back his head and howled like an animal. For a moment Brodie thought he meant to throw himself through the gap in the railing anyway, not in hope now but in despair. She clung on for all she was worth. “If you go,” she hissed fiercely, “I'm coming too. And I can't swim.”
For half a minute they stayed as they were, the moment frozen. Behind them Brodie heard voices and running feet, then a siren. All that concerned her was keeping George Ennis from following his last star westward to oblivion.
Finally she felt the terrible tension start to bleed from his muscles and knew that the worst was over. She went on holding him, as only minutes ago she'd been holding Nathan, while the strength drained from him and he sank exhausted to the battered deck, which groaned like a heart breaking.
When the police divers found the car it was empty. The body of Nathan Sparkes was recovered, hours later and a couple of miles up the Channel, by the crew of the Inshore Lifeboat.
 
 
“Why did Nathan kill himself?” asked Jack Deacon. His voice was low but insistent and he waited for an answer.
Ennis slumped in the chair on the other side of his desk. This had been his office once and he'd sat under the window; and he'd asked questions no one had wanted to answer, and kept asking until he got a response.
He sighed and lifted his head as if it was heavier than always. “He lost his friend. Chris wasn't just someone he
went running with: they were closer than brothers. They shared everything that was important in their lives. When Chris was killed, Nathan hadn't the strength to go on alone.”
“Grief,” said Deacon. “Just grief?”
Ennis raised an eyebrow and the blue eye under it glittered. “
Just
grief? Wars that killed thousands have been started by grief. Good men commit murder through grief. It's one of the most powerful forces in the library of human emotion. He was only eighteen. He hadn't learned that even things that hurt that much can be survived. He thought the pain would never stop and he couldn't bear it. That wasn't suicide, Jack. He was stopping the pain the only way he knew.”
“They were that close?”
“Yes,” said Ennis simply. “They'd known one another all their lives. Each was the other's main source of support – more than anyone in their own families. They were like two halves of one thing. That wasn't a bereavement Nathan suffered, it was an amputation.”
“Were they lovers?”
Ennis was too tired to be angry. “Don't be stupid. They were about as queer as a pair of young tom-cats. That damned car wore out more springs parked on the cliffs than it ever did on the road.”
Deacon thought for a moment. “You always call it that.”
Ennis frowned. “What?”
“That damned car. Was it a lot of trouble?”
“It wasn't very reliable. They should have waited till they could afford something better. The time and money they spent on it could have been better used.”
Deacon went and stood at the window, staring out, hands thrust deep in his trouser pockets. The next bit would be difficult but he couldn't avoid it any longer. He turned back to the room. “George, have you considered the possibility that Nathan killed Chris?”
He wasn't sure what he was expecting. Denial, certainly; probably fury, possibly the kind of savage fury in which
friends say things which can never entirely be forgiven. But Ennis didn't surge to his feet and start shouting. Instead his eyes dropped. His voice was low too. “Of course I have.”
“When?”
“Since –” He couldn't put words to it. “In the last two hours. I've thought of nothing else.”
Deacon kept his tone level. He didn't want to add any more to the man's suffering. He also didn't want him to dry up. “What do you reckon?”
With an effort Ennis met his gaze. His eyes were raw. “Jack, I don't know. He didn't say anything to me. But something was eating him alive, and maybe it wasn't – how did you put it? – just grief.”
“Could they have fought?”
“They were eighteen years old, they fought all the time. I never saw it come to blows.”
Deacon blinked. “It was a bit more than that. Someone beat Chris's head in with a wheel-brace!”
“Could it have been an accident?” ventured Ennis.
Deacon blinked at him. “You mean, Nathan accidentally took a swing at him with a steel bar? And when he saw what he'd done, instead of calling an ambulance he tipped Chris off the pier into the sea. Call me a cynic, George, but it doesn't sound much like an accident to me.”
“It doesn't, does it?” murmured Ennis. “Jack, what can I tell you? I don't know what happened. I don't know why Nathan killed himself. I can speculate, but that's all it would be. And I'd much rather not. They were two good kids, young men to be proud of. I'd have been proud of them if they'd had four left feet between them. Now they're dead. You're satisfied that Neil Cochrane wasn't involved, so maybe Nathan could have told us what happened if he could have brought himself to. However it looks, if it was a squabble between him and Chris I know as sure as if I was there that neither meant to hurt the other.”
Deacon shook his head doubtfully. “I think you're kidding yourself.”
But Ennis was desperate for an explanation other than the obvious one. “I knew them, Jack, and you didn't. I
know
Nathan never meant to hurt Chris. But they were young men, and athletes – they were used to challenging one another. Maybe – I don't know – it started as a bit of horse-play, then the adrenalin kicked in and they ended up fighting in earnest? Nathan got carried away, didn't realise what he was doing until it was too late, then he panicked. Either he knew Chris was already dead, or he didn't dare think anything else. He let him fall into the sea and ran like hell.”
Deacon had already fallen for one convenient explanation, it would be a while before he succumbed to another. Yet the scenario had some merit. “It would explain one thing,” he ruminated: “why Chris couldn't outdistance whoever was chasing him. Nathan was one of a handful of people who could give him a run for his money.”
His hand brushed the older man's shoulder as he passed. He wasn't a New Man, didn't go in for bonding; even his cat had to settle for a nod when he came in. This was about as close as he ever came to empathy. He picked up the phone. “I'll get Hood in again.”
 
 
“What?” said Jack Deacon. He said it very calmly, very quietly, and somehow the word echoed around the room in a way it would not have done had he shouted.
Daniel had slept until noon but he hadn't woken fresh and ready to take on the day. Between dreams and memories he'd got very little rest, and he woke feeling sore, soiled and exhausted. Another bruising round with Deacon was the last thing he needed.
He gave a tired sigh. “I said, it wasn't Nathan either.”
Elbows on his desk, Deacon steepled his hands in front of
him and pursed his lips. His face remained a dogged blank. “You do know who he was? Chris Berry's best friend and running partner. He killed himself this morning. Shortly before that he was sobbing on Mrs Farrell's shoulder, apparently consumed by guilt. He told her he was responsible for Chris's death and then he drove his car off the end of the pier.”
“I can't help any of that,” said Daniel. “All I can tell you is, Nathan Sparkes isn't the man I saw on the pier at two o'clock on Monday morning. I spent fifteen minutes with him on Tuesday night. Do you think I wouldn't have mentioned it if he was the man I saw killing Chris?”
Deacon ignored him. “He's another runner. Did you know that? The only person involved in all this who could match Chris in a foot-race.”
“I know,” said Daniel. “It doesn't alter what I saw. Inspector Deacon, we've done this before. I told you it wasn't Cochrane. You didn't believe me, but I was right. After yesterday everyone accepts I was right. Now you're offering me another suspect, and I'm telling you it wasn't him either – but hey, maybe
this
time I'm wrong! I saw the guy well enough to know it wasn't Neil Cochrane, but maybe I
didn't
see him well enough to know it wasn't Nathan Sparkes! Let's go with that, see how long it takes for the wheels to fall off.”
Deacon's left brow lowered and his right eye kindled. “Don't take that tone with me, sonny.”
Daniel stood up abruptly. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, but also angry. “Or what? Inspector, I'm tired of doing this. Of being your whipping-boy. I haven't done anything wrong. From the moment this began I've been trying to help. And the good citizens of Dimmock burned my house down, and you threaten me whenever you're stuck for a genuine villain. And I've had enough. I'm going home now. Solve your own damned case. If you come up with a plausible suspect, I'll take a look – though what the point is when you never believe what I say, I'm not quite sure.”
He headed for the door, taking Deacon's stare with him. But with his hand on the knob he hesitated.
Deacon cleared his throat. “I guess not having a home to go to makes storming out a shade less satisfying.”
Daniel flicked him a tiny, rueful smile. “It's not that. Marta Szarabeijka's putting me up. Only …”
“Yes?”
“You couldn't lend me a fiver for a taxi?”
Further up the corridor people who heard the noise supposed Detective Inspector Deacon had finally lost control and was ripping the arms off his witness. They thought if it went on much longer they'd have to do something about it.
But that wasn't the roar of unbridled fury they were hearing. In fact it was something much rarer. It was Jack Deacon laughing.

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