A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(102)

She didn’t pretend to need clarification. She knew how unlikely it was that anything else was on his mind. She said, “We still have to ask her about it.”

“They said there could be others on the island. And that guy they mentioned—the one in Talbot Valley?—he’s got a collection from the war that you wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen it myself.”

“When?”

“One of the days...He was there for lunch and he was talking about it with Guy. He offered to show it to me, and Guy talked it up, so I thought, What the hell? and I went. Two of us went.”

“Who else?”

“Guy’s kid friend. Paul Fielder.”

“Did you see another of these rings then?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. This guy had stuff everywhere. Boxes and bags of it. File cabinets. Shelves. It’s all inside a couple of duplexes, and it’s completely unorganized. If he had a ring and the ring ended up missing for one reason or another...Hell, he wouldn’t even know. He can’t have everything catalogued.”

“Are you saying Paul Fielder may have pinched a ring while you were there?”

“I’m not saying anything. Just that there’s got to be another ring, because no way did China...” Awkwardly he drove his hands into his pockets and looked away from Deborah, up the hill in the direction of Clifton Street, the Queen Margaret Apartments, and the sister who waited for him in Flat B. “No way did China hurt anyone. You know it. I know it. This ri ng...It’s someone else’s.”

His voice was determined, but what the determination was all about was a question that Deborah didn’t want to ask. She knew there was no real way round the confrontation that they needed to have with China. No matter what either one of them believed, there was still the matter of the ring to be dealt with.

She said, “Let’s get to the flat. I think it’s going to pour in another minute or two.”

They found China watching a boxing match on the television. One of the boxers was taking a particularly nasty beating, and it was obvious that the match needed to be ended. But the howling crowd clearly was not about to allow that. Blood, their screams declared, would definitely have blood. China seemed oblivious to all this. Her face was a blank. Cherokee went to the television and changed the channel. He found a cycle race being covered in a sun-drenched land that looked like Greece but could have been anywhere that was not this wintry place. He muted the sound and left the picture. He went to his sister, saying, “You okay?

Need anything?” He touched China’s shoulder tentatively. She stirred then. “I’m okay,” she told her brother. She offered him a small half-smile. “Just thinking.”

He returned her smile. “Got to stay away from that. Look where it’s got me. I’m always thinking. If I hadn’t been, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.”

She shrugged. “Yeah. Well.”

“You eat anything?”

“Cherokee...”

“Okay. All right. Forget I asked.”

China seemed to realise that Deborah was also there. She turned her head and said, “I thought you’d gone to Simon, to give him that list of what I’ve done on the island.”

Here was a simple way to address the issue of the ring, so Deborah took it. She said, “It’s not quite complete, though. That list doesn’t actually have everything on it.”

“What d’you mean?”

Deborah set her umbrella in a stand near the door and came to the sofa, where she sat by her friend. Cherokee pulled a chair over and joined them.

“You didn’t mention Potter and Potter Antiques,” Deborah pointed out. “In Mill Street. You were there and you bought a ring from the son. Did you forget?”

China cast a look at her brother as if for a further explanation, but Cherokee said nothing. She turned back to Deborah. “I didn’t list any of the stores I’ve been in. I didn’t think...Why would I? I was in Boots several times, I was in a couple of shoe stores. I bought a newspaper once or twice, and I got some breath mints. The battery went out in my camera, so I replaced it with one I got down in the arcade...the one off the High Street? But I didn’t write down any of that and there’re probably more stores I’ve forgotten. Why?” Then to her brother, “What’s this all about?”

Deborah answered her by bringing out the ring. She unfolded the handkerchief that enclosed it and extended her hand so that China could see it in its linen nest. “This was on the beach,” she said, “at the bay where Guy Brouard died.”

China didn’t attempt to touch the ring, as if she knew what it meant that Deborah had it wrapped in a handkerchief and that it had been found in the vicinity of a homicide. She looked at it, though. She looked long and hard. She was so pale already that Deborah couldn’t tell if any colour left her cheeks. But her teeth caught her lips within her closed mouth, and when she next looked at Deborah, her eyes were unmistakably frightened.

“What’re you asking me?” she said. “Did I kill him? D’you want to ask that straight out?”

Deborah said, “The man at the shop—Mr. Potter?—he said an American woman bought a ring like this from him. An American woman from California. A woman wearing leather trousers and perhaps a cloak, I suppose, because a hood was over her head. She and this man’s mother—Mrs. Potter?—talked about movie stars. They remembered that she—this woman from America?—told them that one generally doesn’t see movie stars in—”