Flawed (20 page)

Which meant that Adam Selkirk wasn't in the market for a deal even had one been available. He thought they had nothing on him. He thought they were bluffing and he could afford to call them.

Voss said evenly, ‘Am I to take that as an admission, sir?’

Selkirk smiled coldly. ‘You can take it any way you like, Sergeant. You and I both know this conversation is never going to be reported in court. That's not why you're here.’

‘Why do you suppose we're here?’

‘To put me on notice, Sergeant Voss. To make me aware that I can look after Terry Walsh's best interests or I can look after my own but I can't do both. To tell me what you know, or think you know, about things that might be happening within my family. To give me to understand that if I mend my ways now -
all
my ways – this need go no further, but if you feel the need to talk to me again it won't be in the privacy of my offices. And finally, to put it on record that I've been the subject of a police investigation and should therefore be considered a flawed witness in any future prosecution.’ His head lifted, the broad jaw jutting. ‘Have I missed anything?’

‘No, sir,’ said Voss, considering, ‘I don't believe you have. I'll just underline the salient points again, should I? Tomorrow, and every day next week, and every day if needs be until he turns eighteen, someone will make it their business
to check that Noah's in school, that he's all right and that he hasn't had any more of those unfortunate little accidents. And if he isn't, he isn't or he has, I'll know about it within ten minutes. That's when we stop trying to help you find alternative methods of stress management and charge you with child abuse.

‘And if I can arrange to do it on the courthouse steps on a Wednesday morning, with half the town's legal profession and maybe a television camera looking on, that's exactly what I shall do. Now,’ he said, holding Selkirk's eye with his own, ‘is there anything
I
missed out?’

It was a cloudy night. Daniel did a bit of housework, failed to find anything riveting on the TV and went to bed early. For an hour, though, he lay sleepless, thinking, turning over in his mind the situation he found himself embroiled in.

No, that wasn't entirely true – and Daniel put a lot of value on the entirety of truth. To a large degree he'd embroiled himself. Noah Selkirk had come to him for a little advice, not to hire a dragon-slayer. He didn't want the dragon slain. The boy didn't want to hurt his father, he just wanted Selkirk to stop hurting
him.
And he only wanted that if it could be achieved without destroying his family. If it came to a straight choice between a black eye every weekend and seeing Selkirk taken away in a police car, Daniel had no doubt Noah would exhaust every excuse in the book and then start back with the patio doors again.

In which case, had Daniel the right to force help on him? Perhaps he had both the right and the duty. A twelve-year-old boy can't be expected to take rational decisions on matters of
such immediate personal importance. Daniel believed fervently that nothing Adam Selkirk had to offer in return -not expensive holidays, not top-of-the-range toys and computers, not even the good days when he wasn't too stressed to remember that he loved his son – was worth the reddened print of a hand on the child's face. But Noah Selkirk was an intelligent boy. If it was worth it to him, was it possible Daniel was wrong?

Because if he was, this whole thing was in danger of spiralling out of control. With nothing but the child's best interests at heart, he'd spoken to his school and he'd spoken to the police, and the genie wasn't going back in
that
bottle without a fight. If this ended in tears – if the Selkirk family broke up over it – it wouldn't be his father that Noah blamed.

Well, Daniel had broad shoulders – philosophically if not physically – he could carry the responsibility if he was sure he'd done the right thing. But the blame game wouldn't stop there. Noah would be painfully aware, and would carry the burden for the rest of his childhood, that Daniel didn't come from nowhere in a puff of red smoke, like the demon king in a pantomime – that it was Noah's own actions which brought him in contact with the Selkirk family. In the fullness of time he would come to understand that both he and Daniel had done what was required of them. But before that coming of maturity lay a childhood of self-loathing Daniel would have spent blood to save him from.

So had there been another way? Was there still some other choice to be made that safeguarded Noah without threatening his family? And of course there was, but it wasn't for Daniel to make. If Adam Selkirk could control himself long enough
to see that he was being given a chance for a better relationship with his son, to break the cycle of anger and abuse and move forward, this could still be a win-win situation. But what if he couldn't, or didn't? Armies were on the move now, significant forces with their own rules of engagement, and the one thing every commander knows is that it's easier to start a war than to end one.

So Daniel lay awake until after midnight, anxieties like the gallopers on a carousel chasing one another round and round and getting nowhere. Some time after that he slept.

The phone kicked him awake at ten to one. He lifted it with his left hand, scrabbling for his glasses with his right. ‘Wha'? Who…?’ He tried again as some of his scattered wits returned. ‘Hello?’

‘This is your fault,’ cried the piping little voice, high with panic and accusation. ‘You shouldn't have interfered. Nobody asked you to. Now they're angry and they're fighting again, and it's all your fault!’

Daniel was wide awake now, didn't need to ask who he was talking to. He kept the alarm he felt out of his voice, went for low and authoritative. ‘Noah. Are you safe where you are?’

‘What?’

‘Go to the bathroom and lock the door. Don't open it till I get there. I'm on my way. Do you understand? Don't open that door however much he shouts. Give him time to calm down.’

‘My mother…’

‘I know,’ said Daniel briefly, the heart twisting within him. ‘But if you're safe she only has herself to think about. Do as I say. I'll be there in ten minutes.’

He knew as soon as he'd put the phone down he couldn't keep that promise. An athlete might have run from the shore to River Drive in ten minutes, but Daniel was no athlete. Which wouldn't have mattered if he'd had a car. He tried the numbers of the local taxi firms but got only recorded messages. With most of his ten minutes already gone, he did what he always did when disaster loomed. He called Brodie.

And she did what she always did in a real emergency. As a matter of habit she might be caustic, she might want for patience, she might take rather more pleasure than necessary in having her own way and the means by which she got it, but in a crisis all that went by the board. She would stint nothing to get matters under control, and he wouldn't hear a word of criticism until the dust had settled and there was time for an inquest.

At which the verdict would be – he knew as if it had already sat – that he'd been stupid and she'd saved his sorry ass; but he could forgive all that because when he phoned her at one in the morning and said he needed her car, she didn't even ask why. Seeing a light still on upstairs she explained briefly to her long-suffering neighbour and was on her way while Marta was still settling herself on Brodie's sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a lurid paperback.

Daniel was waiting on the Promenade. But though the matter was clearly urgent – and Brodie still didn't know what was going on – he wanted to take her home before dealing with it.

‘Don't be ridiculous,’ she said dismissively.

‘It's already got nasty,’ he said, trying to explain without whetting her appetite, ‘it's already got violent. It's no place for you. Not now.’

‘And it is for you?’ She stayed where she was in the driver's seat. She was always hard to shift once her mind was made up, and right now she was being stubborn for two.

‘I'm not pregnant. I can take the odd knock if I have to.’

She eyed him sternly. ‘Daniel, I can take you in a fair fight any day of the week. Even now. Even now
with one hand tied behind my back
. So get in the damn car and tell me where to drive.’

This wasn't what he wanted. She seemed to leave him no choice. And time was pressing. He got in. ‘River Drive. You'll stay in the car?’

‘River Drive? As in, where Adam Selkirk lives?’ Her voice inflected upwards like a raised eyebrow.

‘Yes.’ His voice low, Daniel explained while Brodie drove.

‘Do you think he was hurt?’ asked Brodie when he finished.

‘I don't know. I don't think he was terribly hurt. He was more worried about his mother. But I don't know whether he did what I told him to, and locked himself where Selkirk couldn't get at him. He may have thought helping Marianne mattered more.’

She drove fast, keeping her eyes on the road. ‘You don't think we should call the police?’

‘We may have to,’ agreed Daniel. ‘But…’

She'd heard that
But
before. It packed more import than most three-letter words – more than many sentences. It said he was thinking several moves ahead, more concerned with the end-game than the attrition. For a moment she tried to think the way Daniel thought. ‘Ah…’

‘What?’ he asked, looking at her, suddenly defensive.

‘You think if you roll up in the middle of a family spat
Adam Selkirk's going to deck you.
Then
you call the police, and from then on it's you that's the complainant, not Noah.’

He didn't deny it. ‘That kid's got problems enough without being the one who puts his father in jail. And I'm not sure,’ he added tersely, ‘that it's helpful to think of it as a family spat.’

‘Of course not,’ acknowledged Brodie, contrite. ‘Not if people are getting hurt.’

‘He's got a black eye, a grazed wrist and something wrong with his left arm that'll never heal if he doesn't stop scratching it. That's what I know about. What I don't know about is what's hidden by his clothes.’

‘Then of course we have to do something.’

Brodie had a number of strengths and a good few weaknesses, and people who knew her as well as Daniel recognised that sometimes they were the same. One was her habit of muscling in on the action. Nature never designed her to sing in the chorus: she had to be at the front of the stage, and if at all possible conducting. It was certainly a fault, intensely infuriating to those whose rights and authority she trampled in the process. But sometimes, having her adjust the natural grammar of a sentence from second person singular to first person plural like that was like hearing the bugles of the Seventh Cavalry topping the rise.

There were lots of reasons, big and little, why he loved her, but one was that he never felt now that it was him against the rest of the world. He always had an ally. To be sure, she complained more than Tonto, and had a longer memory than Lassie, but when push came to shove – even literally – he was not alone, and he knew he never would be. He felt the tears prick and had to avoid speaking for a moment.

Oblivious, Brodie grumbled, ‘Only, if you get a bloody nose, keep it away from me. This bell-tent has to do me till the baby's born.’

River Drive was probably the best address in Dimmock. There were more expensive properties on top of the Firestone Cliffs, beloved of those who liked their consumption to be conspicuous. But the River Drive houses were substantial in a different way: not understated but not boastful either, just thoroughly good houses on large wooded plots with good cars in the driveways and staff flats over the double garages.

There was an elegant Arts
&c
Crafts feel about the whole street, not hindered by the use of converted gas-lamps for street lighting. Brodie pulled up under the one nearest to the Selkirks’ house. ‘What do we do? Knock on the door?’

‘I
knock on the door,’ said Daniel firmly. ‘You stay here, ready for a fast getaway.’

‘You don't really think Adam Selkirk's going to chase you down the drive with a golf club?’

‘I don't know what to expect,’ Daniel said honestly. ‘But I believe in being prepared.’

He took a couple of steps towards the big house, then stopped and turned back. ‘And just for the record, it isn't a bell-tent. You look beautiful.’ He squared his narrow shoulders and headed for the front door.

He wasn't exaggerating: Daniel had no idea what would happen when he rang the bell. There were lights on both upstairs and downstairs so he wasn't concerned that the drama was over and he was rousing people from their beds. On the other hand, he could hear nothing. Not an argument, not an altercation, not even a disagreement. Perhaps that was how domestic violence was done in places like River Drive -quietly. But there'd been sound and fury enough to terrify Noah only twenty minutes ago, and Daniel doubted there'd been time for a lasting peace to break out. Perhaps it was a lull in the hostilities.

Or perhaps one of the parties had stormed out. There was only one car on the drive - Marianne's midnight-blue Porsche. Of course, Selkirk might have parked in the garage. Daniel wasn't going to know until someone answered the door. If it was Selkirk, the pregnant hush was unlikely to last much longer.

But Adam Selkirk didn't fling wide the door and come out fists first. No one came. Daniel stood on the mat for three or four minutes during which time the house remained lit but entirely silent. He rang again. He turned back to Brodie, watching from the pavement, and shrugged helplessly.

‘Try round the back,’ she called in a low
It's half-one in the morning in River Drive
sort of voice.

He nodded and was backing away from the door when he heard movement inside. The lock turned and the door opened. ‘Daniel.’

It was Marianne Selkirk as he'd never seen her. If this hadn't been her house he mightn't have recognised her. The ash-blonde hair, released from its elegant restraint, fell about her shoulders in a profusion of sweaty curls, and perspiration made huge damp patches on her T-shirt. It was an old T-shirt, for slopping around at home or even sleeping in, but someone had printed it specially for her. It said:
Fundraisers do it again and again because the need never ends.