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Authors: Jo Bannister

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BOOK: The Depths of Solitude
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Which was an abiding grief to her, but didn’t alter
the fact that he’d suffer torture again before he’d hurt her.
Something dripped onto the desk causing a perfectly round translucent spot. After a moment another joined it. Brodie drew a ragged breath and pressed a tissue to her eyes as if staunching blood.
She didn’t believe for a moment that Deacon suspected Daniel. She’d annoyed him and this was what he’d hit back with. And Brodie would accuse every man on her list, jointly and severally, in public and on their own doorsteps, before she’d give it serious consideration. It was hard to say exactly what the relationship between them was – or had been, until it foundered – but she knew Daniel too well to think he’d ever want to frighten her. He was a gentle, peaceable man, a kind man; a maths teacher and amateur astronomer; unremarkable by every standard.
Until she sold him to his enemies. In a very real sense his life had ended there, before Brodie even met him. What survived was changed in every way. Things that had mattered to him, that he’d been good at, were now impossible. He was a man with no future, not much of a present, and a past he didn’t dare look back on.
Oh yes. She’d given him reason enough to hate her.
But hatred was alien to Daniel. He hadn’t managed it when they met in the hospital and she confessed her role in his nightmare. He forgave her long before she forgave herself.
But forgiving was one thing, forgetting another. He’d never forget – how could he? – one moment of what was done to him. It was there in his head, inescapable. He kept it confined, harming no one but himself, mainly for her sake. Now the relationship between them had changed, might that alter how he felt about what she’d done?
But if he wanted to cause her pain he must know that all he had to do was go out of her life and never tell her where. He didn’t have to risk the wrath of the law, not to mention the fury of Jack Deacon. He just had to vanish.
His house was for sale. He’d visited his brother, then disappeared. Brodie’s messages went unanswered. If he wasn’t trying to hurt her, it felt as if he was.
But Daniel in his right mind would never –
And that went to the heart of it. In his right mind Daniel would rather die than hurt her. But he’d been through so much, and when he needed her most she wasn’t there for him. Had her delicate conscience proved the wheel that broke him? Was Deacon right, and in the end the pain had proved too much and Daniel had to start giving some of it back?
All her senses argued with it. That wasn’t the man she knew. But a weasel voice inside her said that that was the point – that Daniel had held himself together so long thanks to Brodie’s support. Without it he’d torn himself apart like one of Geoffrey Harcourt’s models with a head of steam and the brake off. If her friend survived at all he was locked deep in a prison of pain and rage and inexpressible grief, screaming himself hoarse where no one could hear.
Brodie straightened herself, squaring her shoulders, dropping the damp tissue contemptuously in the bin. Deacon was right about one thing: Daniel should be on her list. He should be top of her list. Until she’d found him, until she’d tried to make things right between them, and found someone to help him if it was too late for her to, she had no business even wondering about these other men.
But if one of them was her stalker, she’d make him work for his fun. Tomorrow he was taking an away day to Nottingham.
She took the train. There were a lot of faces she recognised on Dimmock station, and several she could put names to, but nobody seemed to be taking an abnormal interest in her and by degrees her level of alertness fell. She looked again as they boarded the train to see if anyone followed her, but there was no unseemly shuffling in her wake. Brodie found a seat facing back down the carriage where she could expect to see any unusual activity after the train moved off, and there was none.
Until, two stations up the line, Trevor Parker got on the train, cast around for an empty seat and picked one across the aisle and two rows down from her.
Brodie had the bizarre sensation that, even though the train was picking up speed, time inside the carriage was standing still. Her insides clenched with something that wasn’t exactly fear but wasn’t exactly not. Until last night, combing the old files for someone who might want to hurt her, she hadn’t given this man a moment’s thought since she reported his creative accounting to his employers. And this morning he was on her train. She stared at him, daring him to look up, and at length he did.
Her first thought was that dismissal suited him. His clothes might have been bought in his general manager days and recently dry-cleaned, but they looked both new and expensive. He’d gained a little weight since she saw him last, and that suited him too. He had a briefcase open on his knee and was riffling through the papers when he felt her gaze. She watched expressions chase across his face: curiosity (does someone want me?), puzzlement (I’ve seen her before somewhere), shock (I know
where
I’ve seen her before!) and finally anger. It was exactly the sequence you’d expect, and far from making her doubtful only convinced Brodie he’d been practising in the mirror.
She quit her seat and was at his side in a couple of swift strides, looming over him as only a tall woman can. “Why, Mr Parker,” she said tightly, “fancy seeing you here.”
“Mrs Farrell,” he gritted. “Well, these days I’m a commuter. I used to work in Dimmock until someone told my firm I was defrauding them – but of course you know that.”
The people in the seats around him had picked up the combative tones and were looking uneasy. When Brodie offered to swap with one of them, all three vied for the privilege. She sat facing Parker and the other men subsided nervously.
“You mean you’re on this train every morning?”
“Yes,” he said. “I haven’t seen you on it before.”
“This train? At this time?”
“Yes. Why?” He snorted a bitter little chuckle. “Unearthed another non-existent crime to accuse me of?”
There was no mistaking the rancour in his manner. Of course, he was entitled to be bitter. What he wasn’t entitled to do was take out his frustrations on her. “Are you following me, Mr Parker?”
“That’s right,” he nodded immediately. “It’s a particularly cunning form of following. You buy a season ticket for a train, ride it at the same time every day and wait for the person you’re following to get on. It might take a couple of years but sooner or later she will. Then, in case she doesn’t notice, you find a seat close to hers. Anybody can follow someone. Making this much of a dog’s dinner of it takes real genius!”
She breathed heavily at him, unsure what to think. “Are you saying you’re
not
following me?”
“No,” said Trevor Parker. “I’m not saying anything to you, Mrs Farrell. I don’t want to talk to you, Mrs Farrell. If you continue to harass me I’ll have you arrested by the British Transport Police.”
“Fine,” she snapped back. “Perhaps they’d like to hear about my interesting week as well.”
They glared at one another like two dogs on leashes, pulling and pulling and hoping like hell that nobody lets go.
One of the other men said diffidently, “If it’s any help, I see this gentleman on this train most mornings.”
Brodie turned on him so quickly he recoiled. Belatedly she adjusted her expression. “Really? Then perhaps I’m mistaken. Thank you for your help.”
“You were mistaken before, too,” said Parker shortly.
Brodie regarded him without speaking for a moment. Then she nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“I wasn’t defrauding anyone. I was giving a key supplier time to get back on his feet. He’d have repaid the loan. It would have been best for everyone.”
“I know. But it wasn’t your call.”
“If I’d gone through the channels he’d have folded and we’d have taken damage.”
“He
did
fold, and everyone took damage,” Brodie reminded him. “I’m sorry if your motives were misinterpreted. But your actions were exactly as I reported them to the people who hired me. You’ve no one to blame for your situation but yourself.”
“You reckon?” He thought about it, then sniffed. “I want you to know I’m making more money today than I ever did in Dimmock. Perhaps I should thank you. I just can’t quite bring myself to.”
Which explained the new suit. The man undoubtedly had talents: if he’d found someone to appreciate them
better than his previous employers Brodie could be happy for him. Assuming, of course, that he hadn’t tried to kill her. “Mr Parker, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. This time. But if I bump into you again any time soon I could get really suspicious really quickly.”
“Yes? And you’re usually such a good judge of character,” sneered Trevor Parker.
Brodie got up, curled her lip at him and moved to another carriage. The way her luck was running, it came as no surprise that she had to stand most of the way to London.
Parker left the train before she did. He didn’t look back at her, which proved nothing.
She was still fretting over the encounter as she caught the Nottingham train, but then she made a deliberate decision to put it out of her mind and concentrate on what she was making this journey for. She would need all her wits about her to get what she wanted out of it.
From Nottingham station she phoned Simon Hood’s home. A woman answered. Lying fluently, Brodie said she was updating pension records and asked for his office number. That was almost a mistake: it transpired Hood worked for an insurance company. But unsuspecting, his wife gave Brodie the number and the useful information that he’d be in his office all day.
When Brodie dialled his number, though, she didn’t ask for Hood: she told the switchboard she had a delivery to make and needed directions. She didn’t want to give Simon the chance to avoid her. Once there, while his secretary was checking if Mr Hood could see someone about a family reunion, Brodie sailed through his door quicker than anyone could stop her.
“Sorry,” she said, “but this is too important for you to fob me off again.”
She’d been expecting someone of the same general appearance as Daniel. But Simon was taller, broader, darker and perhaps fifteen years older. “You’re Mrs Farrell.” His tone was devoid of expression.
“Yes. And I have to tell you, I’m worried sick.”
Simon frowned. “What’s happened?”
“I don’t know that anything’s happened,” said Brodie impatiently. “But I can’t find Daniel. You said he left here a week ago. But he hasn’t come home, and I can’t think where else he could be.”
“He could be anywhere,” said Simon reasonably. “He may have taken a few days’ holiday.”
“All right,” nodded Brodie, “maybe he did. Where would he go?”
The man gave a surprised laugh.
“I
don’t know! He didn’t say anything to me.”
“Well, where has he been before?”
Simon shrugged. “He’s never been a big one for holidays. A couple of school trips when he was teaching, and he went down to Cornwall for the solar eclipse a few years ago. That’s about all, as far as I know. He’s never had many friends and I suppose it’s something you tend not to do on your own.”
“Well, he has friends now,” Brodie said tartly, “and we’re worried about him. What he’s been through this last year, God knows what’s going on in his mind. But he shouldn’t be dealing with it alone.”
Simon looked unsure. “Losing his job?”
Brodie felt her jaw drop and was powerless to stop it. “You don’t
know!”
“Know what?”
She was having trouble stringing the words together. “He didn’t lose his job, he left it. And you don’t know why.”
Simon Hood was becoming irritated. “All right then – why?”
She could explain in a few words or half a day but nothing in between. Or she could not explain at all. If Daniel had wanted his family to know he’d have told them. But Brodie itched to shake Simon Hood’s complacency. “He almost died. Someone thought he was involved in something he wasn’t and brutalised him because of it. His body’s a mass of scars, and I think his mind must be too. Mr Hood – what kind of a family
are
you that you didn’t know this?”
She’d succeeded in shocking him. He shook his head, little side to side movements she thought he was unaware of. His eyes were appalled. “I didn’t know. He never said.”
“Did you ask why he wasn’t teaching any more?”
“I assumed … cutbacks …”
“He gets panic attacks. Post-traumatic stress disorder. It may pass in time. But whenever he tries to take his life back, something happens to slap him down. Now his house is for sale, and I can’t get hold of him, and he may be fine but I don’t think so. I think he’s in trouble, and if I can’t find him I can’t help him. I met him in a hospital – I don’t want to say goodbye in a morgue!”
Simon passed a hand across his face. His voice was hollow. “What are you saying? That he’s suicidal?”
“I never thought so, before now. But then, he never tried to disappear before. If he doesn’t want to see me, that’s his privilege – but only once I’m satisfied it’s a rational decision. I have to find him. You’ve talked to him recently: did he tell you he was moving? Did he tell you where?”
In an unconscious echo of his brother, Simon thought so hard it twisted up his face. Before, he’d dismissed Brodie’s
concerns as trivial. Now he was worried too. But it didn’t help if there was nothing to remember. He ran his hand distractedly through his hair. “No.”
“So what
did
you talk about?”
“He just said it had been a while, he wanted to know how everyone was. He asked after my children, and James’s children, and Ben’s job, and our mother. I told him. We had lunch. We said we shouldn’t leave it so long next time and I dropped him at the station. That’s about it.”
Brodie was watching him carefully. “So long as what?”
“Sorry?”
“When did you see him last?”
“A couple of years ago.”
“A couple of
years?
” The gears of her mind meshed. “At your grandfather’s funeral.”
“Yes.”
Her breath hissed through tight lips. “And how long since you went to any
trouble
to see him?”
Simon might have been unsettled by her visit, but not enough to let that pass. His tone hardened. “Mrs Farrell, I’m not sure what gives you the right to criticise my family. No, we’re not close. But it’s none of your business.”
“It’s my business,” she snapped back, “because if I didn’t
make
it my business Daniel would have no one in the world to confide in, to look out for him, to know or care if he’s facing meltdown. I was amazed when I found he had family he’d never mentioned, but I’m not now. Now I wonder why he thought it was worth the train-fare to come and see you at all.”
Startled by her anger, Simon struggled to defend himself. “You don’t understand. There are reasons –”
“I don’t care about your reasons!” yelled Brodie. “I don’t care who got the best trainers and who got the new
bike. I don’t care if your mother never came to your sports day because she always went to his. Do you understand? I don’t care! While you’re raking over old scores, I’m scared my friend is so tired battling his demons alone that he’s dug a hole, crawled in and pulled the earth back on top of him.
“Don’t you see why he came here? To say goodbye. Except for your grandfather’s funeral he hadn’t seen any of you in years. Whatever caused that rift, he wanted one last chance to heal it. And you took him for lunch. And hey, you gave him a lift back to the station, so that’s your conscience clear! Simon, if the reason I can’t find your brother is that he’s slit his wrists in a cheap hotel somewhere, because he tried to tell you how desperate he was and you weren’t listening, however little he meant to you you’re going to find that hard to live with.”
She snatched her bag and headed for the door. Her trip had told her nothing, except perhaps why. Perhaps she had no right to be angry. Families do drift apart: she had no way of knowing who was to blame, or if Daniel could have resolved matters if he’d tried harder or sooner. In any event, it wasn’t his family who let him down because he had no reason to think he could rely on them. That was her job, and her fault.
She was halfway through the door, drawing startled glances from the front office, when Simon Hood stood up behind his desk and said, just loud enough to reach her: “You’re right, Mrs Farrell. My family has treated Daniel badly. You want to know why? Because it would have been better all round if he’d never been born.”

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