Flawed (6 page)

She was, in fact, a more socially adroit and easier-on-theeye version of Deacon himself. Perhaps that was the real reason for their unlikely partnership, and also why it ended. Neither of them was good at compromising. They never saw why they should.

‘I don't have a single problem with Daniel!’ snarled Deacon. ‘He might be peculiar but at least he's honest. He doesn't say one thing and do something else. He doesn't pretend that you aren't the most important thing in his life. And he doesn't think he can run another relationship alongside that without a conflict. That's why he's always on his own. If he can't be with you, it's the only honest way to be.’

All the expression had fallen out of Brodie's face and her eyes were still. Her voice was low and rigidly controlled. ‘And what do you know about it?’

Deacon was reckless with passion, too angry to heed the warning signs. ‘I know he's in love with you. He told me as much. He begged me not to tell you but, hey, this is a day for sharing secrets! Why don't you admit you're in love with him too?’

If they'd been standing up, making it less awkward, Brodie would probably have slapped him. Her temper was like a tiger caged within her. Most of the time it was pretty quiet but every so often someone left the latch up and then it was just a question of whether the beast was hungry or not. Today she knew as if she'd seen it that if Deacon said one more thing, took one more snipe at her, the tiger would rip his throat out.

She said, ‘Did you think I didn't know? Did you think I'd be shocked? That I'd be so unnerved I'd beg you to take me back? Is that how you think, Jack – that you can scare people into doing what you want? And that there's no difference between that and them wanting what you want?

‘I know Daniel's in love with me. He told me so. He knows I'm not in love with him: I told him. Do you know something? I wish I was. I wish I could marry him with a clear conscience.
He'd never hurt me; he'd never use my feelings against me; and I don't think he'd let irrational fears of the future spoil the here-and-now. I think I could be happy with Daniel. I think, if he mattered just a little less to me, I'd take the chance.’

Her voice was calm now but Deacon could hear the regret in it. ‘But I'm not going to. He deserves better. Actually, so do I. Nobody needs to be stuck in a relationship where one party is trying to do enough loving for both. We could make it work, for a year or two. But long-term we'd end up resenting one another. I'd feel guilty, he'd feel used. I'm not going to risk our friendship when I know it would end like that. He understands. Do you know why? Because he listened when I told him, and he believed me.

‘That's the bit you and I never managed to get right, Jack.’ An edge was creeping back into her voice. ‘Not even the listening but the believing. I told you over and over that Daniel was no threat to us, that the only threat to us was
us.
But you couldn't believe me. You kept looking for the wedge that would force us apart. Well, you look that hard for anything, you're going to find it – hell, you're going to
make
it. We all create our own demons. You were so obsessed with my feelings for Daniel that you managed to strangle what we felt for each other. God knows I haven't always behaved well, but I wanted this to work. I tried to make it work. Daniel was never the obstacle. Your fear of Daniel was.’

For a second, denial was on the tip of his tongue. He almost said she was crazy, he was never afraid of anyone, if he was
going
to be afraid of someone it wouldn't be a neurotic maths teacher who shaved maybe twice a week. Some impulse of honesty stopped him. Actually, she was right. He
was
afraid
of Daniel Hood. Because Daniel stood, and had always stood, between him and what he wanted most, and he could never find a way of moving him that wouldn't mean immediate and total defeat. Now the game, or perhaps it was a war, was over he could afford to tell the truth.

But now it was over he didn't need to. ‘Do you know something, Brodie? I don't care. You want to play house with Daniel, you go right ahead. I hope you'll be very happy together. Tell you what: why don't you tell people it's his baby? Give them a laugh.’

Brodie clung onto her temper only because there were important decisions to be made here. She was astonished at the turn the conversation had taken. For once, she really didn't think it was her fault. Of course she'd surprised him. But he was a grown man and a detective superintendent: it couldn't be the first time he'd heard something unexpected. She said through her teeth, ‘Are you seriously telling me you don't want to be this baby's father?’

He seemed incapable of damming the bitterness long enough to see the implications of his words. ‘Now? What's the point? Six months ago I'd have given my right hand to be having a baby with you. But now? You've already made it clear there are too many compromises involved in sharing your life with me. You don't want to live with me, you don't want to be with me, and you don't want me muscling in on the decision-making process. I'll meet whatever legal and financial obligations there are, and if you need anything more from me, call. But in all the circumstances, Brodie, I'm finding it hard to see this baby as mine. There isn't enough of it left over from being yours.’

Angry as she was, she was also on the brink of tears. The steel in her voice was to stop it cracking. ‘You don't want to give it your name?’

Deacon stood up abruptly, filling the little office, and reached for the door. ‘Call it what you like, Brodie. Let me know what you decide and I'll send it a birthday card.’ Then, leaving the door quivering on its hinges, he was gone.

Daniel started work on January 1st, which seemed somehow auspicious. A new year, a new beginning. But for a month, every time he looked round Brodie was hovering behind his shoulder. She told him how her filing system worked, then checked that he was doing it right. She wrote out a list of questions to ask when he phoned round the south coast antiques shops, and she had him tick them off when he'd asked them. She let him sit in on a couple of meetings with clients, but when the meetings were over she told him what to do next.

This was not in itself unreasonable. She was the expert, the one with the experience, the one with the name, and he was the rookie. But for all the sense he got of her preparing to pass over the reins, he might as well have been a dog trotting at her heels – amiable, good company, someone to fetch things, but no more capable of managing Looking For Something? than a Springer spaniel.

In other circumstances, even the famously equable Daniel would have started to grow testy. Would have reminded her that four months from now, ready or not, like it or not, he'd be running this business so it was probably time she trusted him out in the big wide world. Of course he would make mistakes.
But if he started small they would be small mistakes. The longer she kept him tied to her apron strings, the bigger the mistakes would be when she had no choice but to cut him free.

But the stakes were high. If he questioned her judgement, in a fit of pique she was as likely as not to sack him, and while that would be no disaster from his point of view it would be from hers. It would leave her where she was six weeks ago: trying to ignore the inevitable although its shadow – like hers – loomed larger every day. So Daniel held his tongue and hung onto his patience, and ticked the little boxes and sat quietly through the meetings, and knew that his time would come.

It came when Brodie had an ante-natal appointment at Dimmock General at ten o'clock one Friday morning in February. She considered leaving the office shut until she could get there. But Daniel's expression said that, if she did that, she could open it on her own.

‘What do you think?’ she said doubtfully. ‘Will you be able to manage?’

‘Gee, Brodie, I don't know,’ he replied. ‘What if someone comes in? I might have to talk to them.’

She knew he was teasing, she even knew that she'd given him good reason, but to Brodie this was no laughing matter. This was her business, that she'd built from nothing against heavy odds and whose continued success depended absolutely on good judgement. Daniel was a good man but she wasn't sure he always showed good judgement. Of course, who did? And she only had two choices: entrust it to Daniel or throw it to the wolves.

‘I know I'm being stupid,’ she admitted. ‘But I wasn't this nervous when I lost my virginity.’

‘Well, if you keep lurking in the background I'll never get the chance to lose mine,’ said Daniel firmly. ‘Plus, you need to go to the clinic. I can run your business for you. What I can't do is deliver your baby.’

She chuckled at that. ‘All right, I'll go. But…’

‘No buts.’

‘If someone asks…’ ‘If someone asks me a question I can't answer, I'll take his number and promise to get back to him. Then I'll write the question down, taking great care over spelling and punctuation, and when you've decided what we should do I'll call him back
and then I'll tick it off.
All right? Go. Keep your appointment. Lie back and think of England.’

‘If…’

‘Go!’

So Friday morning came round, and Daniel opened the office and opened the post, and did some filing, and phoned some dealers in case anyone had something Brodie was looking for; and by then it was eleven o'clock and still there were no hordes of frustrated searchers with bulging wallets beating a path to his door. He sighed and made himself some coffee. It didn't look as though he was going to get the chance to fulfil Brodie's worst fears after all.

He never quite knew what made him go to the door just then. There was a knocker and a bell, but neither made a sound; and the burgundy velvet curtain in the window that stopped the curious looking in stopped him looking out. But he knew there was someone there. He waited for a minute, expecting them to get up the courage to ring. When they didn't he waited another minute, wondering what he should
do. Perhaps nothing: when they were ready to see him they'd let him know. Brodie had warned him about twitchers -people so nervous about whatever brought them to her that they would ring the bell and run away, or phone her three or four times before managing to say a word. It wasn't a routine service she offered, and people hesitated to put themselves in her hands.

It may have been intuition, it may only have been eagerness to see his first client, but after five minutes, with his coffee going cold and still the sensation of someone waiting just a few feet away, Daniel got up from the desk and opened the door.

At first he thought he'd been wrong and there was no one there. Then he looked further down and saw it was a short person. Not just short but shorter than him. It was in fact a child.

‘Hello,’ he said.

It was a boy of perhaps twelve years old, in the grey and red uniform of Dimmock High School, still waiting for his pubescent growth spurt and the deepening of the voice that would come with it. ‘Hello,’ he said back, warily.

‘I wasn't sure if I heard anyone or not,’ said Daniel.

‘I didn't knock,’ said the boy quickly, as if he'd been accused of something.

‘OK.’ But Daniel didn't go back inside and close the door. He stood on the step, hunched against the cold, looking up and down Shack Lane as if there was something to see.

After a minute the boy said, ‘I've seen you before.’ ‘Yes?’

‘At school. Before Christmas. You took a maths lesson.’

Daniel smiled. ‘That's right. Were you there?’ The boy nodded. ‘What did you think of it?’

‘It was interesting.’

‘Do you like maths?’

‘No,’ said the boy.

‘OK,’ Daniel said again.

‘I might have got to like it. We all thought you were going to be teaching us.’

Daniel gave a sad sigh. ‘That was the idea. It didn't work out.’

‘So you work here instead.’

‘That's right. My friend runs it. I'm her assistant.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I make coffee,’ Daniel answered honestly. ‘I've just made some. Do you want a cup?’

The boy thought for a moment. ‘All right.’

Thank God for that, thought Daniel, who'd been about to freeze to the step. ‘I'm Daniel Hood, by the way.’

I know. I'm…’ He stopped.

Daniel didn't press him. Handing the boy a steaming mug he seemed to change the subject. ‘It's a funny business, this. No two days are the same. Mrs Farrell – my friend – always said that, but I didn't understand until I started working here. You never know what you're going to be asked next. You can be looking for a house on Monday, a vintage car on Tuesday, a piece of china to make up a damaged tea-set on Wednesday, researching the history of a valuable painting on Thursday, and on Friday…’

He let the sentence hang for a moment, hoping the boy might finish it. But he didn't. Daniel carried on. ‘Whatever.
People come here with all sorts of requests. Most of them we can meet. Even the ones we can't, usually we can tell them where to go instead.’ There was perhaps no one else in the English-speaking world who could have said that without a trace of irony.

‘Can I tell you a secret?’ he asked. The boy nodded. ‘My friend thinks we're here to make money. I haven't told her yet, I'm not sure how she'll take it, but I think we're here to help people.’

‘People who're looking for something,’ offered the boy.

Daniel smiled. ‘That's right. People who're looking for something. Even if, sometimes, they're not quite sure what it is they're looking for.’

The boy frowned, considering. Wispy brown hair was trimmed midway between a high forehead and intelligent brown eyes. ‘You mean, things that aren't real?’

Daniel demurred. ‘Things that aren't concrete – solid -perhaps. Anything that's important enough for someone to want help finding is real. Even peace of mind. Especially peace of mind.’

‘I didn't knock,’ the boy said again. ‘But I wanted to.’

‘Then tell me how I can help.’

Charlie Voss wasn't quite sure what to make of Alix Hyde. When Deacon told him his services had been requisitioned, he was neither pleased nor dismayed but intrigued to meet a female inspector from the Serious Organised Crime Agency. He was expecting something like Deacon but with lipstick.