A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(155)

“You don’t like him, do you?” Deborah asked.

“It’s not a matter of liking or disliking. It’s a matter of looking at the facts, seeing them for what they are, and spelling them out.”

Deborah saw the truth in this. She understood that Simon’s dispassionate assessment of Cherokee River came from two sources: his background in a science that was drawn upon regularly during criminal investigations and the brief time in which he’d known China’s brother. Simon, in short, had nothing whatsoever invested in Cherokee’s innocence or his guilt. But that was not the case for her. She said, “No, I can’t believe he’s done this. I just can’t believe it.”

Simon nodded. Deborah thought his face looked unaccountably bleak, but she told herself it could have been the light. He said, “Yes. That’s what I’m worried about,” and he preceded her farther into the inn. You know what this means, don’t you, Frank? You do know what this means. Frank couldn’t recall if Guy Brouard had said those exact words or if they’d merely appeared on his face. He knew, in either case, that they had definitely existed in some manner between them. They were as real as the name G. H. Ouseley and the address Moulin des Niaux that an arrogant Aryan hand had written on the top of the receipt for food: sausages, flour, eggs, potatoes, and beans. And tobacco so that the Judas among them would no longer have to smoke whatever leaves could be culled from roadside bushes, dried, and rolled within flimsy tissue. Without asking, Frank knew the price that had been paid for these goods. He knew because three of those foolhardy men who’d typed up G.I.F.T. in the dim and dangerous candlelight of the vestry of St. Pierre duBois had gone to labour camps for their efforts while a fourth had been merely shipped to a gaol in France. The three had died in or because of those labour camps. The fourth had served only a year. When he had spoken of that year at all, he’d spoken of that time in French gaol as cruel, as disease-ridden and grossly inhuman, but that, Frank realised, was how he needed that time to be seen. He probably even remembered it that way because remembering it as a logical and necessary removal from Guernsey for his own protection once his colleagues stood betrayed...remembering it as a way to safeguard himself as a spy owing much to the Nazis upon his return...rememberi ng i t as recompense for an act committed because he was hungry, for the love of God, and not because he particularly believed in anything at all...How could a man face having brought about the deaths of his associates in order to fill his belly with decent food?

Over time the lie that Graham Ouseley had been one of those betrayed by a quisling had become his reality. He could not afford it to be otherwise, and the fact that he himself was the quisling—with the deaths of three good men on his conscience—would no doubt spin his troubled mind into utter confusion were it laid in front of him. Yet laying it in front of him was exactly what would happen once the press started leafing through the documents they would ask for in support of his naming of names.

Frank could only imagine what life would be like when the story first broke. The press would play it out over days, and the island’s television and radio stations would pick up the tale forthwith. To the howls of protests from the descendants of the collaborators—as well as those collaborators who, like Graham, were still alive—the press would then supply the relevant proof. The story wouldn’t run without that proof being offered in advance, so among those quislings named by the paper, Graham Ouseley’s name would appear. And what a delicious irony for the various media to dwell upon: that the man determined to name the scoundrels who’d caused detentions, deportations, and deaths was himself a villain of the highest order, a leper needing to be driven from their midst.

Guy had asked Frank what he intended to do with this knowledge of his father’s perfidy, and Frank had not known. As Graham Ouseley could not face the truth of his actions during the Occupation, Frank had found he could not face the responsibility for setting the record straight. Instead, he’d cursed the evening he’d first met Guy Brouard at the lecture in town, and he bitterly regretted the moment when he’d seen in the other man an interest in the war that matched his own. Had he not seen that and acted impulsively upon it, everything would be different. That receipt, long kept among others by the Nazis to identify those who aided and abetted, would have remained buried among the vast accumulation of documents that were part of a collection amassed but not thoughtfully sorted, labeled, or identified in any way.

Guy Brouard’s advent into their lives had changed all that. Guy’s enthusiastic suggestion that a proper storage facility be arranged for the collection—coupled with his love for the island that had become his home—had mated to produce a monster. That monster was knowledge, and that knowledge demanded recognition and action. This was the quagmire across which Frank had been fruitlessly attempting to find a way.

Time was short. With Guy’s death, Frank had thought they’d bought silence. But this day had shown him otherwise. Graham was determined to set off on the course of his own destruction. Although he’d managed to hide himself away for more than fifty years, his refuge was gone, and there was no sanctuary now from what would befall him.

Frank’s legs felt as if he were dragging irons as he approached the chest of drawers in his bedroom. He picked up the list from where he’d placed it and as he descended the stairs he carried it in front of him like a sacrificial offering.