Flawed (7 page)

And at first glance, that was roughly what he got. She was big-framed without being heavy, and she wore a checked
jacket, tailored trousers and brogues. In point of fact, she didn't wear lipstick. On a girl of twenty it might have been hailed as the next big thing: on a woman of maybe forty the effect should have been inescapably butch. Instead it was just a different sort of femininity – strong, unconventional, idiosyncratic even. But Voss doubted anyone ever took her for a man.

Anyone who's worked in a police station will know what conclusion the pundits in the canteen came to. ‘Of course, she's a lesbian.’

‘Oh yes, she's a lesbian. Not even hiding it.’

‘Definitely a lesbian.’

‘My mum had one once.’

‘Hardly seems fair, does it? When they're at it with one another, that's two less for the rest of us.’

‘What?’

Detective Constable Huxley, who'd made the last contribution but one, realised he was the object of everyone's attention. He looked mildly surprised. ‘It was only little but boy, was it hairy!’

He was doing nothing to shift people's gaze off him, or even make them blink. He breathed at them in exasperation. ‘You know – one of those spaniel things. Tibetan. Isn't that what they call them?’

Voss considered. ‘I think they call them Lhasa Apso, Hux.’

‘Isn't that what you said?’ Huxley hadn't been listening.

Voss made an effort to move on. ‘Do you talk about me when I'm not here? Wondering whether I'm queer?’

They were positively affronted. ‘Of course not. You've got a fiancée.’

This was true. It was one of the life-altering decisions he'd made in the year of his thirtieth birthday. That, and buying a flat. As a single man he'd happily rented bedsits at some of Dimmock's least glamorous addresses, on the basis that working as a policeman – and particularly working for Detective Superintendent Deacon – didn't leave him time or energy enough to care about the decor. Being engaged to a charming but strong-minded Chinese nurse gave him a new set of priorities.

Which didn't invalidate his point. ‘Jack Deacon's middle-aged and unattached. Do you sit here discussing his sexuality when he's safely out of earshot?’

A wave of fear swept through their eyes. ‘Christ, no!’

‘Then maybe we shouldn't be discussing Detective Inspector Hyde's. Because (a) it's none of our business, and (b) who gives a shit?’

‘She had one of those, too,’ Huxley muttered darkly. ‘My mum.’

‘A Shih Tzu?’ hazarded Voss patiently.

‘No, it was a Pekinese.’

Deacon wasn't in the canteen when all this was going on. Somebody told him about it later. It was all he could do to hold himself together until he was alone. Even so, people who heard him laughing in the privacy of his office were reminded irresistibly of Mrs Rochester in the attic. Deacon had been twenty-five before he worked out what a lesbian really was. Until then he thought the word for women who wouldn't sleep with him was Discriminating.

Later, finding Voss alone in the office that had been cleared for Alix Hyde's inquiry, he asked how it was progressing.

‘You know what these things are like,’ said Voss, wrinkling his freckled nose, ‘it's all paperwork at the start. Collating files. We've been to see Walsh a couple of times. He was very polite – well, he didn't laugh in our faces. He just kept insisting the rumours about him weren't true.’

‘He said he was keen to cooperate,’ guessed Deacon.

Voss nodded. ‘He said the sooner he could satisfy us, the sooner he'd get us off his back.’

‘He offered to give you access to his accounts.’

‘He did. He gave us written authority…’ Voss was an intelligent and astute detective. He. didn't believe in lucky guesses. ‘You mean, these are not necessarily the actions of an innocent man?’

Deacon chuckled. It sounded like the rumble of a distant avalanche. ‘What I told DI Hyde, I wasn't making it up. I really have tried to nail Terry myself. I found him enormously cooperative, and his accounts a model of bookkeeping practice, and he may not have laughed in my face but he nearly had a stroke not doing. Don't let me put you off, Charlie. Nobody's fire-proof, keep plugging away at it and you may well get a breakthrough. We all know he's as bent as a dog's hind leg: nothing would give me greater pleasure than visiting him in Pentonville. But it isn't going to be easy and it isn't going to be quick. He likes being a rich crook. He isn't going to give it up without a fight.’

‘You can't think of any angles I could try?’

Deacon regarded him. ‘If I could, don't you think I'd have mentioned it?’

Voss hastened to apologise. ‘I didn't mean…’

‘I know. You've got to remember, Charlie Voss, this has
been tried before. More than once. He won, we lost. That means we go into the rematch with him confident but us hungry. That's the only edge you're going to get. Now you've started, go into everything. Take nothing on trust. Try to find a way of turning his confidence into a weakness.’

Voss was nodding slowly, taking mental notes. ‘One more question. How hard can we push before he turns violent?’

Deacon shook his head. ‘I don't think he will get violent. I think he'll get very, very sneaky. Let me tell you a story. When Terry was fifteen he invented what he called the
doppelgdnger
scam. You know how some things come in pairs, and lose most of their value if one piece gets lost or broken? He'd find someone with a pair of Ming vases, or garden urns, or crystal chandeliers – anything. Then he'd find a reason to visit the house – as a gardener or decorator or something – and accidentally damage one of the pair. Profuse apologies all round, the householder's insurance will pick up the tab, but he's left with one piece that's comparatively worthless.’

Deacon watched to see if Voss was anticipating where this was going. But there was no sign of it yet. ‘In an effort to make amends, the remorseful gardener or window-cleaner or whatever says he knows a man who does restoration work, and he'd like to pay for the damaged piece to be patched up -just for the look of it, it'll never be worth anything but it'll stop the place looking lop-sided. And after the loss adjuster's been he takes the broken bits away.

‘About now an accomplice, someone with a posher accent than Terry's, calls on the mark with a proposition. He heard about the recent misfortune because he's in a similar position. He too has lost one of a pair of Greek urns/Wedgwood
vases/you name it of the same pattern, and he offers to buy the mark's surviving piece in order to restore his own set. But he's only offering what the single piece is worth. The mark figures that if he offered a bit more,
he
could have the pair, he'd be back where he was and he'd still have change from the insurance. They dicker a bit, but in the end the mark offers enough and they make the deal.’

‘And there isn't another piece?’ puzzled Voss.

‘Of course there is. He's not stupid, he's not going to buy sight-unseen. He has an expert verify its authenticity. Money changes hands and our man spends a week admiring his new acquisition.’ Deacon gave a sombre smile. ‘Only then does he notice that his own urn has been in the wars. Whole chunks have been broken off and glued back. It's a neat enough job but it wouldn't pass as perfect. But then, it didn't have to. That one was never going to get the microscope treatment from the expensive expert.’

Then Voss understood. ‘He switched them,’ he breathed, awestruck. ‘At some point he switched the broken one that he'd had restored for the intact one. Then he sold the mark his own urn.’

Deacon nodded. The story obviously afforded him some satisfaction. ‘Terry Walsh won't get violent if you back him into a corner. He will get inventive. You really don't want him getting inventive.’

‘I have a friend,’ said the boy.

Daniel nodded encouragingly. ‘Yes?’

‘He's worried about something. He wanted my advice. I didn't know what to tell him.’

‘So you thought you'd look for someone who might. That's good thinking.’

Abruptly the boy changed the subject. ‘I've been to the dentist.’

Daniel blinked. ‘Yes? Painful?’

‘Just a check-up. But that's why I'm not in school. I don't skip school. If my father thought…’ The sentence petered out in a crackle of alarm like static.

‘I'm with him,’ Daniel said firmly. ‘But if you had to take the morning off anyway, it was a good chance to check things out.’

‘That's what I thought.’ Relief worked on the small body like a muscle relaxant.

‘So you were wondering how best to help…’ Daniel gave the odd little shrug that was the last memento of a broken collar-bone. ‘You don't have to tell me his name. You don't have to tell me
your
name. But it would help if I had something to call you.’

This made sense. ‘You can call me Tom.’

‘You can call me Daniel. And what shall we call your friend?’

The fractional hesitation confirmed what Daniel already knew, what anyone who'd worked with children would have known. ‘Zack.’

So Tom just might be called Tom, except that his parents probably insisted on Thomas, but Zack was a figment of his imagination. Or rather, a device. He could say things about Zack's situation that he would never volunteer about his own.

‘And Zack's got problems. At school?’

‘Oh no,’ said Tom, with an unwitting arrogance that would have reminded anyone else of Daniel himself.

‘At home, then.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Brother, sister, mother, father?’ Daniel marked the precise moment at which the brown eyes blinked. ‘Zack's worried about his mother?’

‘He wants to help her,’ ventured Tom in a low voice. His eyes dropped too, and he picked nervously at a scab on the back of his wrist.

‘Of course he does,’ agreed Daniel. ‘If something's troubling her, naturally he wants to help. As long as he doesn't get the idea that looking after adults, even parents, is the responsibility of kids. It isn't. It's the other way round. They look after you, and in due course you look after your kids.’

‘They shout,’ the boy mumbled. ‘All the time.’

So that was it. Daniel nodded sympathetically. ‘It's pretty scary, isn't it? You just have to remember that it may not be as serious as it sounds. I dare say a fair bit of shouting goes on between you and your friends as well. It doesn't mean you
don't like one another. Sometimes it's like that with parents. It sounds worse than it is.’

Tom didn't contradict but Daniel didn't think he was buying it. ‘Tom – is anyone getting hurt?’

‘No!’ The promptness of his response should have been reassuring. Somehow it wasn't. It was too immediate, too dogmatic. As if he'd rehearsed. As if he'd known this was one question he'd be asked and was ready for it. ‘No. Just shouting. But it's getting worse. They're both great people, you know? They both have really important jobs. I think that's part of it. They're so tired when they get home that anything sets them off.’

‘Sounds about right,’ murmured Daniel. ‘And I guess Zack thinks that maybe two people with important and tiring jobs shouldn't have to worry about him. But Tom, you tell him from me that raising their children is the most important job either of his parents have – and they'd be the first to say so. I think you're right. I think they're too tired to see how difficult things are getting. I think if they knew how it was affecting Zack, both of them would want to quit their important jobs and take up road-sweeping or shelf-stacking or anything that would leave them time to make him happy.’

This child had spent too long keeping his feelings to himself to burst into tears now. But Daniel was pretty sure he wanted to. ‘You think so?’

‘A fair bit of time, effort and money goes into raising kids. And it's not compulsory. All the same, most people do it. Do you know why? Because most people love their kids to bits. It's just that, sometimes, when they're tired, they forget to say so. They may even forget just how important their families are
to them. Sometimes it takes a bit of a crisis to remind them.’

Tom managed a shy smile. ‘You think I should start sniffing glue?’

Daniel laughed out loud, and didn't draw attention to the fact that Zack had quietly disappeared. ‘Not quite what I had in mind.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Do you know what I'd do if it was me? I'd write them a letter. That way I could take as much time as I wanted putting down exactly what I wanted to say, and there'd be less chance of us all getting upset and saying things we didn't mean, and it would give us all a focus to start talking about the problems. What do you think? Could you write them a letter saying how much you care about them and how much it upsets you to see them angry all the time?’

The boy was nodding slowly. ‘I guess I could.’ But when he looked up the shadows were still in his eyes. ‘What if it makes things worse?’

‘It won't. Trust me.’

‘You don't know them. What if it does?’

It was a reasonable question. Daniel considered. ‘Well, maybe that would be the time to get another adult involved. What about your grandparents? Would they help?’

Tom shook his head disconsolately. ‘My dad's parents live in Spain. My mum's dad is dead and her mum's in a nursing home.’

‘What about aunts and uncles?’

‘Not that we're still talking to.’

‘How about a teacher?’ suggested Daniel. ‘Would they discuss this with one of your teachers? It must be affecting your school-work.’

Tom gave an awkward little shrug. ‘They're all right,’ he
said doubtfully. ‘My teachers. They're all right at teaching. They know about punctuation and algebra and stuff. I don't think any of them would help with this. I don't think I'd want to ask them.’

And strictly speaking it was no part of a teacher's job. Perhaps, if they managed to teach them punctuation and algebra, they'd done as much for their pupils as could be expected, especially in today's climate of mistrust. Almost the first thing student teachers learn now is how not to leave themselves open to violent confrontations and allegations of impropriety. Why would anyone who'd completed his classroom hours, and done his night's marking, then troop round to Tom's house to tell his parents that their inability to manage their own workload was making an intelligent, caring and sensitive boy miserable? Daniel might have done it, but that was getting to be a while back…