Perfect Sins (14 page)

She meant
if you fail
, and Ash knew she meant that. He took a moment to marshal his thoughts. Then he said quietly, “You didn't know me a year ago. In a way I wish you had. Not because that's how I like to be remembered. And not because I think you could do with a shaking, although sometimes I do think that. But because then you'd know what a difference you've made to me. You, and Patience.

“I know that … how I am … exasperates you sometimes. It exasperates me. But I remember how I was a year ago, and I don't think you have any idea. I
have
a life now. It may not be what I hoped for when I was at Oxford, but it's worthwhile and even rewarding in a modest way, and when I think back to how I was before I knew you, I can't believe how far I've come. It's like I spent three years trying to drag my face out of the gutter, and now I'm walking on the pavement with the normal people—and you want to know why I'm not riding a skateboard!”

Hazel had been determined not to apologize for caring about him. But he'd shamed her into it. “Gabriel, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to belittle the progress you've made. I mean well, you know, even if it doesn't always seem like it. What is it they say about good intentions?”

“That the road to hell is paved with them,” said Ash. “They don't know what they're talking about. Intention is the only difference between an accident and murder. Good intentions is about all we
can
promise one another. None of us knows how things will work out—all we can do is try to do what we think is right.

“I know you're on my side. I know, and I don't think you do, that if I'd never met you and someone else had taken Patience home from the animal shelter, I would still be facedown in the dirt. I wish I could explain to you how much richer my life is for having you in it.”

Warm with pleasure, on impulse she reached out and laid her hand over his wrist. Ash replied with his solemn, studious-child smile. Under the table she felt the soft rhythmic thump of the dog's tail against her ankle. “If I need slapping down sometimes,” she said, “feel free to slap.”

“If I need a poke with a sharp stick,” said Ash, “poke away.”

From under the table Patience murmured hopefully, And if I need a nice bit of fried liver sometimes …

Hazel helped herself to fruit from the sideboard. She looked up at the ceiling. “I wonder how that's going.”

Ash winced. “Not easily. I can't see the countess throwing an arm around him and telling him it was a mistake anyone could make.”

“She never was an easy woman to get on with.”

“And by and large, people—unlike wine—don't improve with age.”

The meal having been done as much justice as two people could do it, Hazel headed for the kitchen door. “Say good night to Pete for me, will you?”

Ash glanced at the shot-silk evening sky. “Can we walk with you? Patience likes a stroll before bedtime.”

At first they walked in a companionable silence. But Ash was still pondering the enigma of the Byrfield family dynamic. “Pete's mother might not be the sweetest-natured woman in the world,” he said, worrying at it like a troublesome tooth, “but it's a big step from being sharp with the staff to murdering your own child. What has she ever done to make Pete think she was capable of that?”

Hazel hadn't told him about Byrfield's fears, which had been shared with her as a confidence. She stopped, thunderstruck, and stared at him in the deepening twilight. “What … why … what makes you think…?”

Ash blinked at her. “I haven't passed the last six days in a drug-induced coma! When David was so certain it couldn't be
his
brother he'd dug up, and Norris said the child was disabled, Pete started to worry. Really worry. He called his sister up from London, and had a stand-up argument with his mother. Bits of which percolated through shut doors and plastered ceilings. There might be other explanations, but that seemed the likeliest one. Are you saying I got it wrong?”

“Well—no,” admitted Hazel. “But it was supposed to be a secret. I wouldn't want Pete thinking I'd been gossiping about it.”

“Of course not.” It was one of the things he was good at: keeping his own counsel. And another was this: putting together snippets of overheard conversations and significant exchanges of looks, and the things people were about to say and then didn't, and arriving at a conclusion that might have occurred to almost no one else. Sometimes he
was
wrong, but not often. Being right was the basis of both his careers, first as an insurance investigator, then as a security analyst. It was hard to keep secrets from him, even now.

Especially when it meant keeping them from Patience as well.

Hazel, recovering her composure, decided there was nothing to be lost now by answering his question. “I've never heard that she's done anything dreadful. But then, I didn't grow up in her house. Pete would have a better idea what she's capable of than I would.”

“People seem to remember his father more fondly. You said he helped David get to university?”

She nodded. “It was the sort of thing he'd do from time to time—identify a need and step in. He didn't have to. But he recognized that David had the brains to do well, and maybe needed to get away from Burford, but wouldn't have made it on his own.”

“Diana couldn't help?”

“Diana's talented, but I don't think she makes a lot of money from her painting.”

Again, Ash seemed to hear what she hadn't said. “Do you suppose she'd have helped him if she could?”

Hazel had her mouth open to say “Of course she would,” then shut it again and thought. “I don't know. That's another family that doesn't enjoy the easiest relationship.”

“David's convinced his mother doesn't like him. I wonder if he knows why.”

“Apart from him being a loudmouthed smart-arse, you mean?” In the dusk they smiled at each other. Hazel went on thoughtfully. “I suppose losing her elder son—I know she thought he was safe with his father, but she'd still lost him—was bound to affect how she related to the one she had left. She might have smothered him, kept him close for fear of losing him, too. Maybe what she did instead was put a distance between them so that if Saul came back for David, she wouldn't be hurt as much. And once she started telling herself that losing her younger child would be less of a wrench, the rest followed. She convinced herself that Jamie was the precious one, the perfect one. David was an also-ran.”

“He didn't know that his brother was disabled,” murmured Ash.

“I suppose he was too young to have noticed. And Diana may have edited her memory of him—really does remember him as perfect. Which is a lot easier to do with someone you've lost than someone you see every day.”

They'd nearly reached the gate lodge. A battered horse box rumbled past the end of the drive.

“I wonder what happened,” Hazel mused. “Saul Sperrin hardly went to the trouble of coming back here to murder his elder son. And then there's that grave—that took time, and trouble, and love. He must have wanted Jamie with him. But something went wrong. Perhaps the child panicked, started yelling for his mother, and Saul tried to hush him and managed to suffocate him. Something like that?”

“It's possible,” agreed Ash. “Jamie might have been his son, but he was breaking the law by abducting him. It would have been important to get away without causing a disturbance.”

“It's the cards that break my heart,” admitted Hazel. “Thirty years' worth of Christmas and birthday cards that he shopped for and sent, all the time knowing Jamie was buried a short walk from his mother's house.”

“I suppose the search for a man who'd taken his own child back to his own country was never going to be as intense as a murder hunt. While Diana thought Jamie was safe, Saul was safe, too. At least”—he paused as another trailer rattled past—“safer than he would have been with the police forces of two countries hunting for him.”

“Well, they'll be hunting for him now.”

“Do you suppose they'll find him?”

“It's not easy to disappear for good,” said Hazel. “So many things these days mean having to prove who you are—financial transactions, traveling, getting a child into school—and a flag comes up on a computer to say you're being sought. It was easier thirty years ago.”

“Yes. But that applies more to people like us—the settled community.” Ash said it with hardly a trace of irony. “Travelers are still hard to keep tabs on. It's the nature of their life—it suits them, and you have to conclude it suits the authorities, too. If Saul Sperrin hadn't been a gypsy, he'd have been found years ago. But for someone wanting to assume a new identity, the traveling community is a good place to do it, and thirty years should be time enough.”

Though Hazel nodded, her attention was elsewhere. She was looking up the Burford road with a puzzled expression. “Isn't it a bit late for people to be going to a horse show?”

“Er—I suppose.” Her ability to ride two trains of thought at the same time always unsettled Ash slightly.

“And here comes another,” said Hazel, stepping back to let the trailer pass and then craning on tiptoe. “And … yes, it's another black-and-white one.”

Ash frowned. “The trailer?” He'd have put a fair bit of money behind his judgment that it was, although in need of painting, brown.

“The occupant of the trailer. In the three trailers that have passed us there were a total of five horses, and three of them were black and white. What does that tell you?” She looked at him expectantly.

Ash was slowly smiling. “Not a horse show—a fair. A gypsy horse fair. They're going to park up somewhere overnight and trade tomorrow.”

“Exactly.” Hazel sounded like a schoolteacher who's finally got one of her dimmer pupils to recognize the difference between
there
and
their
. “Now, if those trailers are passing every couple of minutes, it seems likely that the fairground isn't too far from here. Come on, the car's right here—let's follow.”

“Now?” Ash had always been someone who planned ahead. Hazel's impetuosity startled and often alarmed him.

“Of course now.” She had the gate lodge door open and was shouting to her father. “Why not—do you turn back into a pumpkin at midnight?”

“I just feel we ought to think this through.”

“I have,” she assured him. “I think those trailers are going to meet up with a whole lot of other trailers, and about half the people towing them are going to be related, one way or another, to Saul Sperrin. If they don't know where he is, or even if he's still alive, no one will.”

“You're probably right,” conceded Ash. “But Saul Sperrin is now a murder suspect. Looking for him is the job of the police.”

“I
am
the police.”

He took in her determined expression and refrained from pointing out that she was a fairly recent component of the police and was currently on sick leave. “I mean Detective Inspector Norris won't thank us for interfering in his investigation. If there are people at the fair who know where Sperrin is, he'll want to be the one asking them.”

“But he isn't here,” she explained, unnecessarily, “and we are. If we don't follow these trailers, they'll disappear into the countryside and Norris won't know where to begin looking for them. Plus, even if he finds them, if the police show up at that fair tomorrow, no one will admit to knowing anything. Tonight, in the dark, with people arriving from all over England, with people unloading ponies and unhitching caravans, and everybody tired and wanting something to eat, it'll be chaos. There'll be lots of strange faces about. Anybody could wander around asking a few questions, as long as he doesn't seem too pushy and doesn't look like a policeman. Neither of us looks like a policeman. You look like a gypsy at the best of times. And Patience is the perfect dog for the job. No one who sees us walking our lurcher will challenge our right to be there.”

Ash was horribly afraid that she was right. Afraid, because he knew that what she was proposing was dangerous. He knew he couldn't talk sense into her when Hazel was in this mood. He looked down at his shoes. All he could do was refuse to go, and if he did that, she would go alone. “I should let Pete know.…”

“We'll phone him. You know—that little gismo I made you buy, that you're supposed to carry with you but which, in fact, leaves home even less often than you do? It's really clever. You tell it some numbers, and then you can talk to somebody even farther away than the end of the street. Get in.”

Hazel was already starting the engine. Ash let Patience onto the backseat and climbed in the front. “All right, so we're going to a gypsy horse fair and we're going to ask if anyone knows where Saul Sperrin is. Even if we ask someone who knows, do you really think he's going to tell us?”

“Probably not,” she said ironically, “if I say he's wanted for murder! I'm not stupid, Gabriel. I've no intentions of starting a fight. I'll just say”—she slowed down, thinking it through as the words came—“I need to talk to him about a horse. I'll say someone died and left him a horse, but if I can't find him, it'll go to someone else. The gypsy hasn't been born who'd pass up the chance of a gift horse. Rather than let that happen, someone will remember where Saul Sperrin hangs out these days and how to get in touch with him.”

Ash was unconvinced. “He was Saul Sperrin thirty years ago. He may have been someone else for most of the time since.”

“He may have been someone else as far as the authorities are concerned. My bet is, among people who've known
his
people back to Finn MacCool, he's
still
Saul Sperrin. Or at least they'll know who I mean. Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll be here. But if not, maybe someone will let him know he's due a horse and he'll come looking for me.”