A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(17)

“I know China River perfectly well.”

“And her brother? Cherokee? What the dickens sort of name is that anyway?”

“The one he was given at birth, I expect.”

“Parents from the days of Sergeant Pepper?”

“Hmm. Their mother was a radical...some sort of hippie...No. Wait. She was an environmentalist. That’s it. This was early on, before I knew her. She sat in trees.”

Simon cast a wry look in her direction.

“To keep them from being cut down,” Deborah said simply. “And Cherokee’s father—they have different fathers—he was an environmentalist as well. Did he...?” She thought about it, trying to remember. “I think he may have tied himself to railway tracks...somewhere in the desert?”

“Presumably to protect them as well? God knows they’re fast becoming extinct.”

Deborah smiled. The toast popped up. Peach scooted out from her basket in the hope of fallout while Deborah crafted soldiers.

“I don’t know Cherokee all that well. Not like China. I spent holidays with China’s family when I was in Santa Barbara, so I know him that way. From being with her family. Dinners at Christmas. New Year. Bank holidays. We’d drive down to...Where did her mother live? It was a town like a colour...”

“A colour?”

“Red, green, yellow. Ah. Orange, it was. She lived in a place called Orange. She would cook tofu turkey for the holidays. Black beans. Brown rice. Seaweed pie. Truly horrible things. We’d try to eat them, and then afterwards we’d find an excuse to go out for a drive and look for a restaurant that was open. Cherokee knew some highly questionable—but always thrifty—places to eat.”

“That’s commendable.”

“So I’d see him then. Ten times altogether? He did come up to Santa Barbara once and spend a few nights on our sofa. He and China had a bit of a love-hate relationship back then. He’s older but he never acted it, which exasperated her. So she tended to mother-hen him, which exasperated him. Their own mother...well, she wasn’t much of a mother mother, if you see what I mean.”

“Too busy with the trees?”

“All sorts of things. There but not there. So it was a...well, rather a bond between China and me. Another bond, that is. Beyond photography. And other things. The motherless bit.”

Simon turned down the burner beneath the soup and leaned against the cooker, watching his wife. “Tough years, those,” he said quietly.

“Yes. Well.” She blinked and offered him a quick smile. “We all muddled through them, didn’t we?”

“We did that,” Simon acknowledged.

Peach raised her nose from snuffling around the floor, head cocked and ears at the ready. On the window sill above the sink, the great grey Alaska—who’d been indolently studying the worm tracks of rain against the glass—rose and gave a languid feline stretch, with his eyes fixed on the basement stairs which descended right next to the old dresser on which the cat frequently spent his days. A moment later, the door above them creaked and the dog barked once. Alaska leaped down from the window sill and vanished to seek slumber in the larder.

Cherokee’s voice called, “Debs?”

“Down here,” Deborah replied. “We’ve made you soup and soldiers.”

Cherokee joined them. He looked much improved. He was shorter than Simon by an inch or two and more athletic, but the pyjamas and dressing gown sat on him easily, and the trembles had gone. His feet were bare, however.

“I should have thought of slippers,” Deborah said.

“I’m fine,” Cherokee replied. “You’ve been great. Thanks. To both of you. It must be a real freak-out, me showing up like this. I appreciate being taken in.” He nodded to Simon, who took the pan of soup to the table and ladled some into the bowl.

“This is something of a red-letter day, I must tell you,” Deborah said.

“Simon’s actually opened a carton of soup. He’ll usually do only tins.”

“Thank you very much,” Simon remarked.

Cherokee smiled, but he looked exhausted, like someone operating from the last vestiges of energy at the end of a terrible day.

“Have your soup,” Deborah said. “You’re stopping the night, by the way.”

“No. I can’t ask you—”

“Don’t be silly. Your clothes are in the dryer and they’ll be done in a while, but you surely didn’t expect to go back out on the streets to find a hotel at this time of night.”

“Deborah’s right,” Simon agreed. “We’ve plenty of room. You’re more than welcome.”

Cherokee’s face mirrored relief and gratitude despite his exhaustion

“Thanks. I feel like...” He shook his head. “I feel like a kid. You know how they get? Lost in the grocery store except they don’t know that they’re lost till they look up from what they’re doing—reading a comic book or something—and they see their mom’s out of sight and then they flip out. That’s what it feels like. What it felt like.”

“Well, you’re quite safe now,” Deborah assured him.

“I didn’t want to leave a message on your machine,” Cherokee said.

“When I phoned. It would have been a real downer to come home to. So I decided to try to find the house instead. I got totally screwed up on that yellow line on the subway and ended up at Tower Hill before I could figure what the hell I’d done wrong.”