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Authors: Jo Bannister

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BOOK: True Witness
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He sucked in the salt-laden air and raised a voice cracking with despair. “Where are you? Tell me where you are. I can help you. Please …”
Hard as he listened, no answering cry sounded above the tumult of the waves. The water surged around his chest, the cold of it like razor-blades. It was dark under the pier, he could see nothing but the chiaroscuro breakers, only knew where the shore lay from their direction and the shingle sound. His glasses had gone when the sea swept over him. It hardly mattered. He could have seen nothing from here, and he had neither the strength nor the courage to go further.
The tide was coming in. He had to give way before it. He reached behind him, fumbling with dead hands for the next brace. Tears of disappointment and exhaustion mingled with the rest of the ocean.
Something touched his hip. It could have been anything – a clump of weed, a baulk of drift-wood, a Great White Shark for all Daniel knew. But he so wanted it to be the man who'd been thrown from the pier that he released his grip on the cross-bracing and reached into the water, groping as far as his arms would stretch.
He found it; and it wasn't wood, and it wasn't weed, and it didn't feel like sharkskin so much as denim. He fastened his hands in what he recognised as the belt of someone's jeans and pulled, and a man's body surfaced and bumped flaccidly against his own.
In his own mind he had already accepted defeat. He'd thought the only prize left was his own safety. Now, against all odds, he'd stumbled on what he came for and suddenly time was of the essence again. This man had been in the water for minutes: if he hadn't managed to breathe in that time he was already dying.
All Daniel knew about life-saving he'd picked up from a ten minute lecture at Dimmock swimming pool when he'd
been covering for a missing sports mistress. He knew there were two ways to save lives, and both worked. One was the proper way – ABC equals airway, breathing and circulation, clear the mouth of obstructions then five compressions of the chest followed by one breath into the lungs.
And the other was the bodger's way, which recognised that if someone was dying in front of you it was impossible to make things worse, just forcing some air down their throat might keep them alive long enough for someone more knowledgeable to reach them. That he could do here and now, clinging to the pier with one hand and the drowning man with the other.
Actually, he had to let go of the pier because he needed both hands to hold the man's head above the water. All Daniel could see of his face was a white blob, but he found the mouth and fastening his own over it exhaled as deeply as his recent exertions would permit.
Heavy in the surging tide, the man's body rolled and dragged at his grasp. Daniel struggled to keep the face out of the water. But the hiss of air and the movement of his chest as the man breathed out kept him trying. He ventilated again, then with the man's chin in the crook of his elbow set off for the shore, his left hand guiding him along the corroded ironwork.
Twice more he lost his footing. The first time he was able to hang onto the bracing until he found it again; the second time he tumbled his length in the breaking surf, lost his companion and for terrible seconds thought the man was going to die for his weakness.
When he found him Daniel hauled his face above the foam, breathed for him once more, then set off determinedly for the beach whose proximity he could hear like a orchestra of tiny flat bells. Again the feet went from under him; this time he sprawled in shallows and a few metres of dogged hauling brought him and his burden clear of the waves.
The tide was coming, but it wasn't coming that fast.
Daniel let the man slump on the shingle and dropped beside him, lungs heaving, a cocktail of shock and cold and reaction shaking every muscle.
But there wasn't time to rest. Out of the waves' reach was not the same as safe. Daniel forced his weary body to move again, rolled the man onto his back and pumped and breathed and pumped and pumped and breathed because he didn't know what else to do. The chest expanded when he pushed air into it, contracted when he rocked back on his heels; he thought that meant the man was alive. He couldn't leave him to find help. Between breaths he tried to raise the alarm, but he knew that his gasping cries could never carry up the beach, across the deserted promenade and as far as the nearest house where a light sleeper might be roused. He knew he was on his own. He knew this man would live only if Daniel Hood, unaided, could force him to.
He pumped with the heel of his hand on the man's chest, he breathed for both of them, he yelled for help. No one came. The tide marched closer. Daniel dragged him by the arm until their legs were out of the sea again. Then he pumped some more and breathed some more. He knew time was passing, had no idea how much. The man at the swimming pool had said you keep going until you can't keep going any longer, and that point was coming but it wasn't here yet. Daniel stopped shouting – he needed all his breath. He pumped and breathed, and the sea snapped again at his heels.
Suddenly there was someone else on the shore. Daniel heard the distinctive chime of hurried footsteps in the shingle, and his own name in a woman's voice. A familiar voice, mingling anger and concern as if he'd gone out of his way to frighten her. “Daniel! Answer me, damn it!”
“Over here.” He didn't think she'd heard him, tried again. “Brodie. I'm over here.”
The frailty of his voice alarmed Brodie Farrell, but it was enough to take her in the right direction. She quartered the shore with the big torch from her car and found him, on his
knees at the water's edge, crouched over what could only be the figure of another human being. “Dear God! What – ?”
There was no time to explain. “Can you take over?” It took him two breaths to get it out. “Can't – any more –”
She had the little Eskimo with her. Before she did anything else Brodie took her back a few metres up the beach and sat her down. “Now, you stay there. You understand? You don't move an inch.” Paddy nodded solemnly.
Hurrying back, Brodie dropped to her knees on the other side of the inert form, ran her torch over it. He was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. When the beam reached the head Brodie blinked and straightened up. Her voice was quiet. “Daniel. Stop now.”
He spared her two seconds for a stare, then lunged again at the man between them. “No! He's breathing! Help me.”
Brodie shook her head, the dark hair clouding round her face. “He's dead, Daniel. I think he's been dead for a while.”
“How can you say that?” Then he saw what the light of her torch had shown Brodie: that the left side of the skull had been pulped by a mighty blow. The tall man; the implement they fought over; the raised arm and the wail in the dark. It had been over then? He'd done it all for nothing? – risked his life for a dead man?
“No,” he choked, applying himself once more to the task. But he had nothing left to work with.
Brodie regarded her friend with compassion. He'd given everything he had, drained himself to the dregs. Now he needed her help, not to continue with the futile exercise but to stop.
She rose and put her arms around him, stilling him. “Daniel. It's time to stop now. Let him go. Give him peace.”
He hadn't the strength to struggle. She felt his body go slack in the compass of her arms and he sat back on his heels, head bowed, softly panting. Then he began to cry.
There was a whisper of shingle and then the Eskimo was there with them, wrapping thick short arms as far round the sobbing man as they would reach. The little voice was muffled by clothing. “Don't cry, Daniel.” And hopefully: “Kiss it better?”
A hug was what he needed most in the world. He returned it with gratitude. “Love you, Paddy Farrell.”
“Love you, Daniel.”
Brodie pulled herself together with an effort. “All right. Daniel, take Paddy inside and put her back to bed. I'll call the police and I'll stay here till they arrive.”
Releasing the child, Daniel shook his sodden hair in protest. “I should stay. The police will want to talk to me.”
“I'll tell them where you are. Daniel, if you stay outside any longer you'll freeze solid. Go inside and get changed. I'll be up in a few minutes.”
Brodie used her mobile to call the police, waited with the body until they arrived. She hurried back to the flat.
He'd done as she said, got Paddy out of her Eskimo outfit and tucked her into bed, before grinding to a halt. She found him in the kitchen, still in his wet clothes, sitting in the corner in a pool of salt water.
She said nothing. She went into the bathroom and ran the hot tap. Then she went back for Daniel.
“I can't. The police …”
“Will get more sense out of you if you haven't collapsed with hypothermia.” As she spoke she stripped the wet clothes from him as if he were a child. “Now, get in there and don't get out until you're warm.”
She went to boil the kettle and put three mugs on a tray. They wouldn't be alone long, and she had a fair idea who would be joining them.
Through the bathroom door Daniel said indistinctly, “I don't understand. What are you doing here?”
“Paddy called me,” said Brodie. “I came over to knock some sense into you for leaving a five-year-old alone at night. When I found you, of course, I realised why.”
“I'm sorry. I didn't seem to have any choice.”
“I see that.” She couldn't quite bring herself to say he'd done the right thing. But if he hadn't achieved what he'd hoped, at least no harm had been done.
“Smart kid,” he mumbled. Brodie heard the water slosh as he lay back. He said nothing more, and when she opened the door to check that he hadn't drowned he was asleep.
 
 
She heard Jack Deacon before she saw him. Other men's feet made the iron steps ring too, it was impossible to climb them in silence, but Detective Inspector Deacon had a unique ability to project substance, doggedness and the utter refusal to suffer fools at all through the soles of his shoes. Brodie opened the door as he made a fist to knock. He was not surprised to see her but nor did he look particularly pleased. “Where is he?”
“In the bath. I'll tell him you're here.” She offered to take his coat but Deacon kept it on. It settled round him like a bat's wings as he sat. Brodie poured his tea, which he regarded with mistrust, then went to rouse Daniel.
“Make yourself decent, it's Inspector Deacon.”
Fifteen minutes in a hot tub had restored some colour to his fair skin. He emerged from the bathroom wrapped in an oversized green dressing-gown, his fair hair roughly towelled. “Inspector.”
“Daniel,” responded the policeman guardedly. When he was irritated with him he called him Danny; when he was really angry he called him Mr Hood. “Tell me what happened.”
Daniel took a mug and settled on the sofa. He began with when he took the telescope outside, ended with Brodie's arrival. He omitted nothing, ventured no speculation. His voice was steady; but both these people knew him too well to think he was over it.
Deacon was watching him hawkishly. “You saw the whole thing? The boy running, the man chasing him. You saw them fight for the wheel-brace, you saw the man swing it, and you saw him tip the body into the sea. Daniel – you actually saw this murder taking place. Is that right?”
Daniel's breath caught in his throat. “Boy?”
“Not much more,” said Deacon. “Eighteen maybe. What – didn't you realise?”
Daniel shook his head. “I never saw his face. It was dark, I lost my glasses … He was just a kid?”
Brodie was watching Deacon. There was something going on in his expression that she couldn't put a label on. He was listening to Daniel – yes, that was it – as if he already knew what he had to say.
But Daniel hadn't noticed. He was still trying to explain what happened, not even to Deacon so much as to himself. “I tried to stop it. It happened too quickly. I couldn't get to them – they were on top of the pier, there's no way up from the beach …” He heard himself making excuses and fell silent.
“Just as well,” grunted Deacon, “or we'd have had two bodies on our hands. He's a powerful man, you couldn't have stopped him. But you can stop him doing it again. You saw his face?”
Daniel shrugged narrow shoulders inside green towelling. “Yes. But not clearly. He was above me, the only light was a little red torch I use to read star-charts, and it was only a split-second before he turned away and ran.”
“Would you know him if you saw him again?”
“Maybe.”
“Would you know him from a photograph?”
Brodie fixed him with her gaze. “You know who it was, don't you?”
Deacon hesitated, then nodded. “I have an idea. I may not be right. We'll have to see.”
Brodie's eyes saucered in disbelief. Jack Deacon never considered that he might be wrong. If he was being this careful it was because of the consequences of failure.
Daniel said softly, “He's done it before.”
Deacon nodded again. “Yes, he has.”
“Done what, exactly?”
Detective Inspector Deacon folded his hands across his midriff and eyed him thoughtfully. He was a big man with a big man's gestures. Soon he'd be a fat man too, but not yet. For now the bulk cladding his strong bones was mostly muscle.
He answered obliquely. “Daniel, if we get this man you are our best chance to put him away. You saw his face, you saw what he did. If I tell you anything that could contaminate your evidence, he could go free. And sooner or later he'll do it again. I won't risk that.”
Daniel understood. “You want me to look at some photographs?”
“Yes. Come down to the station at eight o'clock, we'll do it then.”
Brodie saw him to the top of the steps. He reached behind her to pull the door closed. “I still don't understand what your daughter was doing here.”
She smiled. “It's her birthday Daniel promised her the stars.”
“She stayed here? Alone?”
Brodie wasn't sure what he was getting at. “Inspector, Daniel's my friend. I'd trust him with my life
and
Paddy's.”
“He left her alone with a murderer running loose.”
“He thought he could save the boy's life. You're saying he was wrong to try?”
Deacon shrugged. “No. But I would if she was my five-year-old.”
She regarded him speculatively in the light filtering through the curtained windows. “You're never going to give him a chance, are you? Once, for what he believed were good reasons, he refused to do what you wanted him to, and you're going to hold a grudge for the rest of your life. Nothing he does from now on will ever win your respect. He could have died tonight, trying to save that boy. If he can give you the murderer he will. But none of that matters to you. As far as you're concerned, he let you down once and you'll never forgive him. Have you any idea how sad that makes you, Inspector Deacon?”
The detective bristled. Part of him agreed with her. But most of him had spent twenty years sorting the sheep from the goats, those who obeyed the law from those who didn't, and he wasn't going to start forgiving trespasses now. He liked and admired her; there had been a time when he liked Daniel. But when Deacon had demanded his unconditional support, Daniel hadn't given it. Deacon would never forget that.
“I'm just doing my job, Mrs Farrell,” he said heavily. “It really doesn't matter what you think of me, or what I think of Daniel. There's a boy dead on that beach and I want to find the man responsible. Let's concentrate on that and keep our personal opinions to ourselves, shall we?”
 
 
Brodie and Daniel sat for an hour, occasionally talking, mostly coming to terms with what had happened. At length Brodie went into the bedroom, squeezed into the narrow bed without waking Paddy, and sank into a troubled sleep.
Daniel remained alone in the dark, hunched miserably on the sofa, too tired to sleep, unable to rest for the churning of his mind. He thought about what he might have done differently. How he might have shouted before he did, or called the police when he had the chance, or – in his own head he
had absurd expectations of himself – somehow clambered up the cross-bracing onto the pier in time to snatch the weapon before it did murder. Inspector Deacon said it was a wheel-brace. It could have been: Daniel only saw it for a moment and didn't recognise it. But then, he didn't own a car.
A man had chased a terrified youth out onto the pier, and when he'd caught him he'd smashed his skull with a wheel-brace; and Daniel had watched. He despised himself for not finding an alternative. He sat in the dark thinking the boy had two bits of rotton luck that night. He met his murderer; and the only person close enough to help was too stupid to. And maybe too scared to.
 
 
DI Deacon wasn't wasting time on punishing himself, not when punishing the killer would be so much more satisfying. With DS Voss beside him he drove due north up the Guildford road.
Behind Dimmock the South Downs spread in a patchwork quilt of hillside pasture and little woods dotted by tiny hamlets, often just a farm and its attendant cottages. It took a detailed map to show anything but contour-lines.
A detailed map was exactly what Jack Deacon had in his head. He needed no other. He hadn't been here for years, but not once did he think he might lose his way. The little lanes edged with grass banks and overhung with trees might all seem identical, but Deacon could have come straight here on a moonless night, in a howling blizzard, in a total eclipse of the sun. Pigeons navigate by atuning themselves to the Earth's magnetosphere. Deacon homed in on criminals in much the same way.
He didn't drive into the farmyard. He didn't want to announce himself until he'd had a look around. He stopped the car in the lane and turned off the lights, and he and Voss got out. Deacon waved to the occupants of the second car to
stay put. There were four of them, and he'd need them all if he found grounds for an immediate arrest. If not he'd leave one car and two officers on surveillance when he returned to Dimmock. But he'd be back as soon as he'd been through the family album with Daniel Hood.
Hood. Of
course
Hood, who else? Who else would be wandering about the beach at two in the morning? Yes, the man lived close by; and yes, he was often out in the middle of the night. Half of Dimmock knew about the eccentric young teacher who lived over a netting-shed on the beach and came out at night to watch the stars. Who didn't go out much apart from that. Who used to teach maths at Dimmock Comprehensive until someone tore him up for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained. Not to Deacon they weren't. Hood knew. Deacon
knew
he knew, he'd as good as said so. He'd refused to say more in order to protect an innocent party. Brodie Farrell was right: Deacon would never forgive that. It wasn't Hood's place to judge innocence and guilt.
Deacon had told him something. In his office, when he'd given Hood a last chance to help the police with their inquiries and Hood hadn't taken it. He'd said, one day Hood would need his help and he wouldn't get it. And now … well, now he needed Hood's help again. And he was pretty sure he
would
get it. And that didn't make him feel better about anything.
Except that, if Hood looked at the photographs and picked the right one, and because of that Deacon was able to charge a man who should have been behind bars for ten years, maybe he'd revise his opinion of Daniel. Neither forgive nor forget, but make his peace.
Deacon was getting too far ahead of himself. First he had to establish if Cochrane was here. Then he had to establish that, an hour and a half ago, he hadn't been.
There were no lights on, in the farmhouse or the outbuildings, and front and back doors were both locked. A
green Land Rover was parked under the kitchen window. Deacon felt the bonnet and the exhaust but both were cold. Of course, it was nearly four in the morning; there had been plenty of time for it to cool down.
BOOK: True Witness
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