The Touch of Innocents (24 page)

‘Yeah.’ She felt an ache. She no longer had a home, indeed it seemed as though she’d never had a home. Not since the day her father had been caught with his dental receptionist and the family had cracked and frozen like a pond in winter. As her own had now done. Seasons turned full circle.

They were greeted with dignity and discretion, if also with a half-raised eyebrow when it was indicated they intended to settle the bill with cash, but Mrs Franklyn was, after all, a foreigner, Canadian, and they did things differently. Anyway, they had booked in for two weeks rather than a couple of hours, they weren’t going to use the hotel as a knocking shop. The Stafford wasn’t like that. Here one had affairs,
liaisons
, arrangements, not leg-overs.

One guest, an American, now in her mid-sixties, had been coming every year for a week with a man nearly twenty years younger than herself, to occupy a room where with the window open one could hear the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, just across the park. The sound of the military band helped keep rhythm and maintain stamina. Percussive passion.

Daniel was not to be so lucky. They took a suite in the Carriage House mews to the rear. Cobbles. Character. And two beds, Daniel noted with a look of disgust. He took himself off to the bathroom as she sat and dialled.

‘Joe, it’s me. How’s Benjy? Did you get the letter I sent with him?’

It took a moment for him to respond, in a tone more conciliatory than she remembered. But why shouldn’t he be conciliatory, he had Benjy. He’d won – and in winning had discovered that looking after a child by himself could prove to be more of a social constraint than endemic halitosis. The free time, the orderly apartment, the periods of peace that had been his were no longer his own. Like trying to screw in front of spectators. Distraction. Constant interruption. The bitter-sweet fruits of victory had taken the edge off his aggression, leaving puzzlement.

‘What are you up to, woman? We’re in the middle of a custody battle and you send the kid back, free, gratis, no charge, with a note saying you’ll want him back later. One of us has tumbled out of our tree, and it sure ain’t me.’

‘I’m the mother of two children, Joe. Bella as well as Benjy. I had no choice.’

‘You had the choice of facing reality. Bella’s dead, Izzy.’ He groaned, genuine anguish. ‘Lord, I don’t want you to suffer without cause, really I don’t, but … Grubb called me yesterday, asked if you were back, were coming back. I know what’s going down there. You’ve thrown away your kid. You’ve thrown away your job. You’re throwing your whole world away, Izzy. You’ll have nothing.
Nada
.’

‘That’s not how I see it.’

Stubborn damn woman; still, it was her problem, at least he’d tried.

‘Is that how your new friend Danny – that’s his name, isn’t it? – is that how Danny sees it?’

She bit her lip. Benjy was obviously recovering his ability to talk, fast. At least it meant he must be comfortable. ‘How is Benjy?’

‘Fine, great. Staying at my sister’s while I sort things out. But you can forget him, Izzy. I don’t want to see you hurt any more, that’s not my objective, but there’s no way I’m giving him back and you’re gonna get creamed if you take this to court. The woman who lost one child and abandoned the other …’ An edge to his voice. ‘Off with a man who’s not her husband …’

And money that was not her own, she added silently.

‘… who doesn’t even have an income. It’s a real pissy mess. The lawyers’ll make hamburger out of you.’

He didn’t like this other man, a man whom his son talked about with smiles and affection. He felt the need to retaliate.

‘And me? Well, I’ve got a huge promotion on its way. The Duster’s really coming through and they’re giving me an extra piece of the action. More salary. More status. Security for Benjy, everything you can’t give. If you fight I’ve got the custody hearing sewn up tight as a duck’s ass.’

She didn’t respond; his analysis was persuasive.

‘Don’t fight, Izzy. Don’t hurt yourself more than you need. Stop running away from the truth.’

‘I’m running
after
the truth, Joe.’

‘What truth?’

‘I’m … not sure yet, but it stinks. Bella was taken, I’m sure. They’re all hiding something; the local police and press, the bank manager, the Coroner—’

‘And the American Embassy,’ he offered sarcastically.

‘Maybe them, too. Certainly Paul Devereux.’

‘You’re kidding,’ he stammered, incredulous, his head ringing with the sound of his future crashing in flames.

‘Daniel’s another journalist and he’s helping me track down—’

She failed to notice the changing tone, his feeling that she was accusing him of parental neglect, of lacking concern, that she was screwing around with his Duster. And it was a mistake to mention another man.

‘Stop! Stop this shit!’ he cried, male pride tangled with impatience. And remorse. He had to shut it out. He couldn’t accept any suggestion of Bella being alive; Bella was for him a corrosive mixture of guilt and personal failure, and Izzy its catalyst. ‘Why am I wasting my sympathy on you? This is no more than another one of your assignments. That’s it, and that’s all of it. Izzy Dean, correspondent
extraordinaire
. You don’t give a damn about the kids, only your story. You’re not a mother, just another half-baked journalist who can’t hear breaking wind without smelling a conspiracy. Who’d pass up on anything for an exclusive – her marriage, even her kids.’

‘There
is
a story here, a huge one.’

‘Get off this nonsense, get real, woman. Get laid for all I care. But just get out of my life.’

‘Joe, I’m serious.’

‘Me, too. Damn you. So see you in court.’

Then the phone went dead.

She stared at the receiver in her hand for long moments until it started to warble in complaint, as though offering her warning –
Danger! Go no further! Do not proceed beyond this point
.

She silenced it, slowly held it up again, and redialled.

Connection. Response. A woman’s voice.

‘Hello. My name is Fiona Franklyn. I’d like to talk with Mr Gideon Fauld, please.’

Daniel came into the room naked to the waist. There was no flesh on him, just sinew, muscle, unblemished skin – never Mr Universe, but … young. She tried not to look too hard, to notice the firmness, the dark brown nipples, the ripples of tightness across his abdomen, waist so much narrower than his shoulders – territory which with Joe had been not so much forbidden as forgotten – all capped by an irreverent grin and cascade of freshly washed hair which he was towelling dry. As the towel flapped back and forth, the action presented his torso like a well-tuned keyboard begging to be played, to have hands laid upon it.

Pity. A waste. Like a vegetarian at a lobster bake.

She tried to disguise her attention by adjusting her hair in a mirror, but he had already noticed her furtive stare.

‘It’s not just physical, you know.’

‘What?’

‘You. For me. I want you to know that. I feel very strongly about you.’

‘Thanks.’ She looked sheepish, out of practice at dealing with sincere emotions. ‘It’s on. Tomorrow afternoon. Around twelve thirty,’ she added, changing the subject.

‘Fauld? That’s great,’ Daniel responded. ‘At least, I suppose it’s great. How do you reckon we handle him?’

‘
We
don’t handle him. I do it. On my own.’

‘No way.’

‘The only way.’

He looked hurt. ‘Impossible. I’m there. We go as a team. A couple.’

‘A rather odd couple, don’t you think?’

‘Why, for God’s sake?’

‘Our nationalities. Our ages, for a start.’

‘Are you trying to suggest you and I would be unnatural or something?’

‘Daniel, you don’t even know whether I take sugar in my coffee. Or even if I take coffee. We don’t have the right body language for a married couple. He might spot the deception in a hundred different ways. We can’t afford the risk: I’ve got to go alone.’

He took this badly. The towel flew angrily across the room and sulked in a corner. ‘Don’t start shutting me out. Don’t take it out on me just because I asked you to go to bed.’

‘No, Daniel. You’ve got it all wrong. You didn’t insult or offend me, I was … flattered.’ And flustered.

His scowl remained distinctly sceptical.

‘Daniel, take your mental processes out of your underwear and put them back where they belong. Fauld runs an adoption agency. So we talk to him about adoption. Babies. I’m a foreigner. But if I take you along and pretend we’re just another happily married couple, even if you know everything about me, how on earth do we explain why we’ve come more than three thousand miles just to adopt? Why not do it back home, on our own doorstep? No, if I’m to get him talking, trying to find the wrinkles in his operation, I’ve got to pretend that there’s something wrong with me. Some reason why I can’t adopt legitimately. A medical problem. A criminal record.’

‘Perhaps you could suggest you’re too old,’ he offered sullenly.

‘Thanks a bunch!’ She was about to laugh until she realized he might have a point. The laughter drowned in a minor panic tremor. ‘I go on my own. A single woman. With some reason why no legitimate adoption agency in the world will look twice at me.
Daniel, it will be much more convincing if I’m on my own. You recognize that, don’t you?’

‘And much more dangerous.’

‘How do you figure that?’

He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Look, Izzy, I hadn’t wanted to ram the point home but … If Paulette Devereux is an addict, she won’t have been working at the Mission out of charitable instinct. Addicts need supplies, supplies cost money. Lots of it. She will have found some way of making money, a large amount of it, out of the Mission. And the only asset the Mission has is the babies. Like Bella.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Bella could have been sold.’

‘You think that’s possible?’

‘I think it’s probable.’

‘Sold? For adoption,’ she whispered, the tone begging reassurance.

‘Presumably.’ But he had hesitated, his eyes dropped, the response lacking conviction.

Fear seemed to have stopped her heart, fear of the unknown. She walked across the room as though in physical pain and sank down on the edge of the bed beside him. She stared blankly at the wall, suddenly wanting to hear lies, not wanting to confront the truth she knew she would find in his eyes.

‘What else might a baby have been sold for?’

‘Izzy, I’m really not sure. I’m sorry. But you mix drugs, criminal baby bartering and a whole pile of money, and you’ve a mess that I don’t want you walking into on your own.’

She sat silently, bowed, lashed by imagination. She was back in Colombia, in the car, being driven along dusty roads and dilapidated streets towards the airport, remembering how on a bright sun-filled day the window beside her had suddenly shattered and
left her staring into the flaming barrels of three Uzis. She had thought she was going to die at that moment, felt the bullet slicing through her breast, the warm-sticky flow of blood dripping into her lap. She recalled the only words she had found as they had sped away. ‘Those bastards have ruined my favourite blouse.’

She had discovered it was possible to fight shock, and pain. At the hospital, as paramedics and nurses crowded round, she had waved them away, climbed across the fragments of shattered glass and out of the car, head held high. She hoped that from a distance some of her assailants would be watching. They might try again, might even succeed in killing her, but never in cowing her. Not Izzy Dean. She wanted them to know that.

Yet that was Colombia, by herself; now, with Bella, she was finding it altogether more difficult to be brave.

‘Don’t worry,’ she assured him. ‘I’m pretty good at dodging bullets. Only ever been caught once …’ She was about to wave lightheartedly at the scar on her breast, but decided it would not have the right effect on Daniel.

‘Aren’t you frightened?’

‘Of course,’ she responded quietly. ‘Frightened I might discover nothing from Fauld. And terrified I might discover all too much. All the more reason I have to go on my own – my baby, my risk. Whatever it takes to find the truth. That’s the only thing that matters to me right now.’

‘Let me share the risk.’

She shook her head, said nothing. It had all been said.

‘I’m in this with you anyway, whether you like it or not. Whether I like it or not.’

‘You’re a very fine person, Danny Blackheart.’ In the circumstances her compliment was not enough; she had meant to say more, but the words eluded her. She sat as though in prayer, her body bent under the weight of the thoughts and fears crowding in upon her.

‘Just one thing, Izzy. How do I know you’re not simply using me?’

She couldn’t see his face, didn’t turn. The words were squeezed dry of emotion, but there was no mistaking their importance to him.

‘You don’t, Daniel,’ she responded without looking up. ‘And you won’t know. Until later.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I won’t know myself. Until later.’