The Touch of Innocents (13 page)

‘I have only one. My daughter.’

Izzy could feel a coil winding within her.

‘And our relationship is not what I would want.’ He clenched his jaws, keeping tight rein on himself. Stiff upper lip. ‘My fault, probably. Too busy for her problems. She needed a mother; perhaps I should have remarried, but …’ He shrugged. ‘Hasn’t lived at home for a long time. Funny things, families.’

The damp blue eyes swam with pain and he reached out for support, to draw strength from her. She let his hand remain on hers; he had touched something inside her, too. They were two lonely people, sharing pain about something they had in common and cared very much for. Family.

She knew he wanted her. And she hadn’t the slightest idea how she would respond.

‘Tell me about your daughter.’

The question hung over them. He stared fixedly, remembering, struggling with something. Then a door closed inside. He sat up straight and withdrew his hand.

‘No, not now.’ He shook his head as though to clear it of sorrows. ‘Perhaps later.’

He had taken control once more and she knew it would be foolish to press him, for the moment, at least. As he said: later.

‘Later’ came as he opened the creaking oak door which led into the great hall of his home. The long room was lit only by the glow of a banked fire in the inglenook. As they entered he took her wrist, turned her, brought her into his arms, and she did not resist, even when his lips sought hers. She wanted him, even though she could not trust him.

His body pressed into her, she could feel him hardening, his hands moving round from her back to find the softness of her breasts. No objection – how long had it been since someone had sought her like this, since she had smelt the heat of a man? She needed him, too. For all sorts of things.

But most of all for Bella.

Was his attention cover-up? Or coincidence? Her suspicions struggled with her lust.

‘Paul …’ She drew her head back, but his tongue still pursued her. She had to test him, not knowing how, confused by her own feelings. His body was still hard against her.

‘I’m not sure I’m ready for this. So soon after the accident.’

‘You’re ready. I can feel you’re ready.’

‘Perhaps we should get to know each other a little better,’ she whispered, but her body displayed no such caution, pressed into him, egging him on. He was right, she was ready. And he was on fire, youthfully impatient. He would have her on the nearest chair.

‘I need a little more time,’ she gasped as his fingers manoeuvred like scouts across a battlefield. Soon she would have let him go too far easily to stop him, if he insisted. ‘I want to help you, Paul, with
everything.’ A button gave way and rattled across the floor. ‘Everything, Paul.’ Time to test him. ‘Even with your daughter, Paulette.’

And against her she felt his desire ebb. The moment was gone.

‘Izzy, we’re both consenting adults, let’s be realistic. God’s sake, you’re going home. Now
is
the time, the only time. Or was.’

He attempted a smile as she adjusted her clothing.

‘Don’t worry,’ he added, ‘I do understand. Hope I haven’t embarrassed you.’ The English gentleman again.

‘Maybe there is time, Paul. I’m not sure I should rush anything. Even going back home.’

‘What?’

‘I might stay.’

In the darkness it was difficult to see the anxiety creep across his face, but she felt him tense. Then he drew back and there was no contact.

‘I’m told you’re making excellent progress. Surely home is the best place. Complete your recovery.’

‘Home is where the pressure is. And the job. I could do with the break. Just a week or so longer.’

‘I’m really not sure that would be wise, Izzy. The doctors know best, you should listen to them. Home for Christmas.’

‘Maybe.’

His tone was moderate, reasonable, in no way threatening, but in the spitting embers of the fire his eyes seemed wine spilled, a little bloodshot, their liquid turned incandescent. The fire spat once more, casting harsh shadows across his face.

There was a silence, filled only by the scythe-like ticking of the great clock that echoed off flagstones and rebounded from hard plaster walls, counting
down to the next move in what had become their game.

She moved her body back towards him, within his reach, offering. He did not respond.

She had to be sure.

She moved again, closer still. This time he retreated.

‘Staying on would create difficulties, I’m afraid,’ he was saying. ‘I have house guests arriving in little more than a week; it would not be possible for you to stay on longer here. I’m sorry.’

‘Of course, I understand. You have already been more than generous. Perhaps I could find a small hotel …’

‘Unless you have sorted out your finances, that will be difficult. Sadly our social services couldn’t help. Very restrictive rules. Surely the thing to do is to return home, Izzy, sort everything out there, rather than hanging on in this country without any visible means of support. Living in clothes which have been begged or borrowed, camping in a draughty seaside hotel. And over Christmas? Not what you are used to, I’m sure. Or Benjamin. I hear he’s finding it difficult to adjust.’

He was as accurate as he was well informed. Inevitably Benjy had been badly scarred by the sudden disappearance of those he loved most, and the return of his mother had served only to increase his confusion and apprehension that she might desert him once again. His sleep was fitful, riddled with anxiety that she might leave; his waking hours were spent either clinging to her or fretting for her return. Every time she left the room he was anxious, when they parted he was in tears, at night he woke and screamed until she was there to comfort him. A hotel would be a terrible idea.

‘Perhaps you’re right. Let’s see what the doctors say on Monday.’

‘Of course. I’m so sorry I can’t be of any further help to you.’

But, without intending it, he had. His conviction in urging her to return to the States had been as inflexible yet as persuasive and moderately argued as his original invitation to Bowminster. Confronted with the choice between her body and her departure, he had not hesitated. He wanted her gone. No man she had ever known would have done the same. Devereux was lover turned gamekeeper.

Locking her out.

He was a player in this game, trying to move her around like a pawn on a board. She knew none of the game’s rules, didn’t comprehend its objective, yet as long as the prize was the truth about Bella she knew there was no alternative but to play.

She also knew that, if he had taken the risk of offering her his home, it must have been because the risk of leaving her in Weschester was still greater. She didn’t know what she was looking for but now, at least, she thought she knew where to look.

The inspector at Weschester Constabulary smiled as she and Benjamin were shown into his cluttered office. But men always smiled at her. The secret was to know when they meant it.

She had telephoned for an interview and it had been readily granted – one of the more productive calls she’d made that morning. Katti was uncontactable, no one seemed to know where she was. The credit card company had been difficult when she was unable to give them detailed information such as the number of her card, in any event the
account was based in the United States ‘and, madam, you really should have reported the loss at the time, not weeks later. That’s your legal responsibility, you know.’ The girl on the other end of the phone didn’t seem to understand the meaning of the word coma, responding as if she were on the verge of one herself, but eventually informed Izzy that she might be held liable for any misuse of the card since its loss and could pick up a replacement tomorrow at a local bank. Izzy had been unable to get through to the editor of the local newspaper, who didn’t appear to surface much before lunch, so she had left a message accompanied by her WCN credentials expressing the hope that he might have time to see her later that afternoon.

She had used the bus to cover the fifteen miles between Bowminster and Weschester; Chinnery’s constant scowl depressed her, and she didn’t care for him or others to know what she was about.

Along with the inspector’s smile Izzy and her son were offered machine-dispensed coffee and Coke in plastic cups and a homily about how local authority cuts had denied the police vital investigative tools such as fresh tea and biscuits. The station had an air of Victorian gentility about it, no Yankee hustle, no chaos of suspects being dragged inside to account for their crimes, no wailing of sirens or protestations of innocence and, apparently, no kitchen. But, she had noticed, there was a brewery next door.

The inspector listened attentively, sipping tea in between his attempts to inflict further damage with his teeth upon the end of a much-mangled pencil. He did not take notes.

‘I can’t be specific, Inspector, but something is – I don’t know how best to describe it – going on. I want your help in tracing the truth about my baby.’

‘I see,’ he mused. ‘And you think Paulette Devereux may be at the bottom of it?’

‘Of course, I have absolutely no proof, but …’

‘That’s right, you don’t. Let me ask you a few further questions, about the accident. In fact, that’s why I thought you were coming to see me.’

‘I spoke to one of your constables in hospital.’

‘Yes, I know. We were rather hoping your memory might have improved somewhat. After all, it was a serious affair, someone was killed.’

‘That’s what I’m not sure about …’

‘But you are sure you were driving?’

She nodded hesitantly. ‘I must have been.’

‘How was the accident caused?’

‘You know that already. Apparently the car went off the road. No one seems to know quite why.’

‘No other vehicles involved, no collision?’

She shook her head. ‘I simply can’t remember.’

‘You see, Miss Dean, I have a problem. A baby was killed in a car accident with no apparent cause in which you were the driver.’ The pencil was pointing directly at her. ‘That makes you liable to be charged with death by dangerous driving. Unless you can find some reason to explain the accident.’

‘But what about my baby …?’ she gasped, taken aback by the suddenness of the assault.

‘Let me put it to you bluntly, Miss Dean. You are faced with potentially very serious charges to which you have no answer, pleading amnesia. Instead you blame everyone else, from the doctors who saved your life to the hospital mortician. You even seem to accuse our local MP and his daughter of some unspecified crime which involves spiriting off the very baby for whose death you are alleged to be responsible.’ The pencil snapped in two. ‘By the way, aren’t you staying at Mr Devereux’s house?’

How did he know …?

‘Your accusations might strike some as lacking a certain gratitude, don’t you think?’

‘Inspector, I came to you for help in clearing up what has happened to my child.’ She was flustered. The sudden tension in the office had caused Benjy, until then patiently sitting in his mother’s lap, to start wriggling, and she lunged to prevent his drink spilling down the front of her dress. She was doing battle on two fronts at once; Clausewitz would not have approved.

‘You have other responsibilities, Miss Dean, to your surviving child. Our law is very protective about impecunious parents subjecting children to unnecessary hardship, and overstaying your welcome in these parts might be deemed by our social services to be just such an unnecessary hardship.’

‘I am not impecunious!’ she snapped.

‘No, I’m sure you’re not. But I want to remove as much possibility for misunderstanding from this matter as I can. You have already caused far too much. Some might even deem your accusations to suggest a measure of instability on your part – temporary, I am sure, the after-effects of your medical condition, an understandable depression. But enough to cause good people concern about the welfare of little Benjamin here. They might feel it wise to consider taking him into care.’

‘What are you trying to do to me?’

‘It’s what you are doing to yourself, Miss Dean. Can you not see that?’

‘You won’t help me search for my baby?’

‘There is nothing to search for. Forgive me, but I have a hospital report, a death certificate, reports from the autopsy and the Coroner’s Office, even a
certificate of cremation, all testifying to the fact that your baby
is dead
. You refuse to believe it but haven’t a single shred of evidence. The obvious answer is that your medical condition is adversely affecting you, and may therefore be endangering the welfare of your child.’

‘You are not taking Benjamin away from me. Never!’

‘The alternative proposition is that you are deliberately seeking to confuse matters in order to cover up your guilt and responsibility for the accident. That is what a court might conclude.’

‘You are going to charge me with my own baby’s death?’ She could barely believe what she was hearing. Benjy had begun to whimper.

The inspector looked at her over the broken ends of his pencil, encouraging her to imagine the worst. When eventually he spoke, his tone was more conciliatory.