A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(19)

The man’s son was also there as things turned out, and Cherokee thought at first that Guy Brouard might be hoping that China and the son would hook up. But the son was a disappearing type who showed up only at mealtimes and otherwise kept to himself. The sister was nice, though, and so was Brouard. So Cherokee and China felt right at home. For her part, China connected big with Guy. They shared a common interest in architecture: hers because photographing buildings was her job, his because he was planning to put up a building on the island. He even took her to see the site and showed her some of the other structures on the island that were important historically. China should photograph all of Guernsey, he told her. She should do an entire book of pictures, not just enough for a magazine article. For so tiny a place it was steeped in history, and every society that had ever dwelt upon it had left its imprint in the form of buildings.

For their fourth and final night with the Brouards, a party had long been scheduled. It was a dressed-to-the-nines blowout that appeared to involve a cast of thousands. Neither China nor Cherokee knew what it was for, until midnight, when Guy Brouard gathered everyone together and announced that the design for his building—it turned out to be a museum—had finally been chosen. Drum rolls, excitement, champagne corks popping, and fireworks afterwards as he named the architect whose plans Cherokee and China had carried from California. A water colour of the place was brought out on an easel, and the partyers oohed, aahed, and went on drinking the Brouards’ champagne until something like three in the morning.

The next day, neither Cherokee nor his sister was surprised when no one was up and about. They made their way to the kitchen around eightthirty and browsed until they found the cereal, the coffee, and the milk. They assumed it was okay to make their own breakfast while the Brouards slept off the previous night’s drunk. They ate, phoned for a taxi, and left for the airport. They never saw anyone from the estate again. They flew to Paris and spent two days seeing the sights they’d only gazed upon in pictures. They were set to do the same in Rome, but as they went through customs at Da Vinci airport, Interpol stopped them. The police packed them back to Guernsey, where they were wanted, they were told, for questioning. When they asked, Questioning about what? all they were told was that “a serious incident requires your presence on the island at once.”

Their presence, it turned out, was required at the police station in St. Peter Port. They were held alone in separate cells: Cherokee for twenty four pretty bad hours and China for three nightmarish days that turned into an appearance in front of the magistrate and a trip to the remand section of the prison, where she was now being held.

“For what?” Deborah reached across the table for Cherokee’s hand.

“Cherokee, what are they charging her with?”

“Murder,” he replied hollowly. “It’s completely insane. They’re charging China with killing Guy Brouard.”





Chapter 2


Deborah turned back the covers on the bed and fluffed up the pillows. She realised that she’d seldom felt quite so useless. There was China sitting in a prison cell on Guernsey and here was she bustling round the spare room, drawing curtains and fluffing up pillows— for God’s sake—because she didn’t know what else to do. Part of her wanted to take the next plane to the Channel Islands. Part of her wanted to dive into Cherokee’s heart and do something to calm his anxiety. Part of her wanted to draw up lists, devise plans, give instructions, and take an immediate action that would allow both Rivers to know they were not alone in the world. And part of her wanted someone else to do all of this because she didn’t feel equal to any of it. So she uselessly fluffed pillows and turned down the bed. Then, because she wanted to say something to China’s brother, she turned to him where he stood awkwardly by the chest of drawers. “If you need anything in the night, we’re just on the floor below.”



Cherokee nodded. He looked dismal and very alone. “She didn’t do it,” he said. “Can you see China hurting a fly?”

“Absolutely not.”

“We’re talking about someone who used to get me to carry spiders from her bedroom when we were kids. She’d be up on the bed yelling because she’d seen one on the wall and I’d come in to get rid of it and then she’d start yelling, ‘Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt him!’ ”

“She was like that with me, as well.”

“God, if I’d only let it be, not asked her to come. I’ve got to do something and I don’t know what.”

His fingers twisted the tie of Simon’s dressing gown. Deborah was reminded of how China had always seemed like the older sibling of the two. Cherokee, what am I going to do with you, she’d ask him. When are you ever growing up?

Right now, Deborah thought. With circumstances demanding a kind of adulthood that she wasn’t sure Cherokee even possessed.

She said to him because it was the only thing she could say, “You sleep now. We’ll know better what to do in the morning,” and she left him. She was heavy at heart. China River had been the closest of friends to her during the most difficult moments of her life. She owed her much but had repaid her little. That China would now be in trouble and that she would be in that trouble alone...Deborah only too well understood Cherokee’s anxiety about his sister.

She found Simon in their bedroom, sitting on the straight-backed chair that he used when he removed his leg brace at night. He was in the midst of tearing back the brace’s Velcro strips, his trousers puddling down round his ankles and his crutches on the floor next to his chair. He looked childlike, as he generally looked in this vulnerable posture, and it had always taken all the discipline she could muster for Deborah not to go to his assistance when she came upon her husband like this. His disability was, for her, the great leveling force between them. She hated it for his sake because she knew he hated it, but she’d long ago accepted the fact that the accident that had crippled him in his twenties had also made him available to her. Had it not occurred, he’d have married while she was a mere adolescent, leaving her far behind. His time in hospital and then convalescing and then the black years of depression that followed had put paid to that. He didn’t like to be seen in his awkwardness, though. So she went straight to the chest of drawers, where she made a pretence of removing what few pieces of jewellery she wore while she waited for the sound of the leg brace clunking to the floor. When she heard it, followed by the grunt he gave as he rose, she turned. He had his crutches snapped round his wrists, and he was watching her fondly.