A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(129)

Chapter 18


Paul Fielder was mightily relieved to see Valerie Duffy charging across the lawn. Her black coat flapped open as she ran, and the fact that she hadn’t buttoned it told him she was on his side.

“See here,” she cried as the police constable seized Paul by the shoulder and Taboo seized the policeman by the leg. “What are you doing to him? This’s our Paul. He belongs here.”

“Why’s he not identifying himself, then?” The constable had a walrus moustache, Paul observed, and a bit of his breakfast cereal still hung from it, quivering when he talked. Paul watched this flake in some fascination as it swayed to and fro like a climber dangling from a perilous cliff.

“I’m telling you who he is,” Valerie Duffy said. “He’s called Paul Fielder and he belongs here. Taboo, stop that. Let the nasty man go.” She found the dog’s collar and dragged him off the constable’s leg.

“I ought to have you both in for assault.” The man released Paul with a shove that thrust him towards Valerie. This set Taboo barking again. Paul flung himself to his knees by the dog and buried his face in the smelly fur of his neck. Taboo gave off barking at this. He continued to growl, however.

“Next time,” the walrus moustache said, “you identify yourself when you’re spoken to, boy. You don’t, I’ll have you in the nick so fast...That dog’ll be put down as well. Should be anyway for what he did. Just look at these trousers. He’s ripped a damn hole. You see that? Might’ve been my leg. Flesh, boy. Blood. He had his shots? Where’re his documents? I’ll have them off you right now.”

“Don’t be a mad fool, Trev Addison,” Valerie said, and her voice was sharp. “Yes, I know who you are. I was at school with your brother. And you know well’s I, you do, that no one walks round with their dog’s papers on them. Now, you’ve had a fright and so has the boy. The dog as well. Let’s leave it at that and not make things worse.”

The use of his name seemed to do something to settle the constable, Paul saw, because he looked from Paul to the dog and to Valerie, and then he adjusted his uniform and brushed his trousers. He said, “We’ve got our orders.”

“You do,” Valerie said, “and we mean to let you follow them. Come with me, though, and let’s get those trousers repaired. I can do it for you in a wink and we can let the rest go.”

Trev Addison glanced along the edge of the drive where one of his colleagues was thrusting back shrubbery, bent over to the task. It looked like tiresome work that anyone might have wanted to take ten minutes away from. He said reluctantly, “I don’t know as I ought...”

“Come on with you,” Valerie said. “You can have a cup of tea.”

“In a wink, you say?”

“I’ve two grown sons, Trev. I can make repairs faster than you can drink that tea.”

He said, “All right, then,” and to Paul, “Mind you stay out of the way, hear? Police business’s going on in these grounds.”

Valerie told Paul, “You go to the kitchen in the big house, love. Make yourself a cocoa. There’re fresh ginger biscuits, as well.” She gave him a nod and set off back across the lawn with Trev Addison following behind her. Paul waited, rooted to the spot, till they disappeared back inside the Duffys’ cottage. He found that his heart had been pounding like thunderbolts, and he rested his forehead against Taboo’s back. The musty, damp dog scent of him was as welcome and familiar as the touch of his mother’s hand on his cheek whenever he’d been feverish as a child. When his heart at last slowed, he raised his head and scrubbed at his face. When the policeman had grabbed him, his rucksack had been shaken loose from his shoulders and it now lay on the ground in a heap. He scooped it up and trotted towards the house.

He went round the back, as usual. There was much activity going on. Paul had never seen so many policemen in one location before—aside from on the telly—and he paused just beyond the conservatory and tried to sort out what they were doing. Searching, yes. He could tell that much. But he couldn’t imagine what for. It seemed to him that someone must have lost something valuable the day of the funeral, when everyone returned to Le Reposoir for the burial service and the reception afterwards. Yet while that seemed likely, it didn’t seem likely that half the police force would be looking for that something. It would have had to belong to someone awfully important, and the most important person on the island was the one who had died. So who else...? Paul didn’t know and couldn’t reckon. He went into the house.

He used the conservatory door, which was unlocked as always. Taboo pattered along behind him, his nails snick ing against the bricks that comprised the conservatory’s floor. It was pleasantly warm and humid inside, and the dripping of water from the irrigation system made a hypnotising rhythm that Paul would have liked to sit and listen to for a while. But he couldn’t do that because he’d been told to make himself cocoa. And above all else when it came to Le Reposoir, Paul liked to do exactly as he’d been told. That was how he kept the privilege of coming to the estate just that: a treasured privilege.

Do right by me, I’ll do right by you. That’s the basis of what’s important, my Prince. Which was another reason Paul knew what he was supposed to do. Not only with regard to the cocoa and the ginger biscuits, but with regard to the inheritance as well. His parents had come up to his room when the advocate left them and had knocked on his door. His dad had said, “Paulie, we’re going to need to talk about this, son,” and his mother had said,