A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(205)

“They got there, di’n’t they?” she asked with some concern. They certainly had.

How had they been packaged? St. James asked.

Regular way, she told him. Oversize mailing tube of heavy cardboard.

“It didn’t get wrecked on the way, did it?” she asked with equal concern. Not in the way she was thinking, St. James said. He thanked Crystal and rang off thoughtfully. He punched in the next number and had immediate success when he asked for William Kiefer: In less than thirty seconds, the California attorney came on the line.

He disputed Crystal’s version of events. He hadn’t sent someone to pick up the architectural drawings at all, he said. Mr. Brouard had told him explicitly that the plans would be delivered to his office by someone from the architectural firm when they were ready. At that point, he was to make arrangements for the couriers to carry the plans from California to Guernsey. That’s what happened and that’s what he did.

“Do you recall the person who delivered the plans from the architect, then?” St. James asked.

“I didn’t see him. Or her. Or whoever it was,” Kiefer answered. “The person just left the plans with our secretary. I got them when I came back from lunch. They were packed up, labeled, and ready to go. But she might remember...Hold on a minute, will you?”

It was more than a minute during which St. James was entertained by piped music: Neil Diamond misusing the English language in the cause of maintaining a dreadful rhyme scheme. When the phone line crackled to life again, St. James found himself talking to one Cheryl Bennett. The person who brought the architectural plans to Mr. Kiefer’s office was a man, she told St. James. And to the question of whether she remembered anything particular about him, she giggled. “Definitely. You hardly ever see them in Orange County.”

“Them?”

“Rastas.” The man who brought the plans was a Caribbean type, she revealed. “Dreads down to his you-know-what. Sandals, cut-offs, and a Hawaiian shirt. Pretty odd-looking for an architect, I thought. But maybe he just did their deliveries or something.”

She hadn’t gotten his name, she concluded. They didn’t talk. He had headphones on and was listening to music. He reminded her of Bob Marley.

St. James thanked Cheryl Bennett and soon rang off. He walked to the window and studied its view of St. Peter Port. He thought about what she had said and what it all might mean. Upon reflection, there was only one possible conclusion to be reached: Nothing they’d learned so far was anything like what it appeared to be.





Chapter 28


Simon’s distrust was a spur to Deborah, and an additional spur was the fact that he would probably justify that distrust by telling himself it was owing to her not delivering that Nazi ring to the local police on his timeline. Yet his current doubts were not a reflection of the real situation. The truth was that Simon distrusted her because he always distrusted her. This was his reflex reaction to anything that came up which asked her for a bout of adult thinking, of which he seemed to believe her incapable. And that reaction was itself the bane of their entire relationship, the outcome of her having married a man who’d once acted in the role of second parent. He didn’t always return to that role in moments of conflict. But the galling fact that he fell back upon it at all —ever— was enough to encourage her to take whatever action he most didn’t want her to take. This was why she went to the Queen Margaret Apartments when she could have window-shopped on the High Street, climbed the slope to Candie Gardens, walked out to Castle Cornet, or browsed in the jewellery shops tucked away in the Commercial Arcade. But she got no results from her visit to Clifton Street. So she dropped down the steps that rose from the market precinct below and told herself that she wasn’t searching for China, and even if she was, what did it matter? They were old friends and China would be waiting to be reassured that the situation in which she and her brother found themselves was well on its way to being resolved. Deborah did want to offer her that reassurance. It was the least she could do.

China wasn’t in the old market at the base of the steps, and she wasn’t in the food shop where Deborah had come upon both of the Rivers earlier. It was only when Deborah gave up entirely on the thought of finding her friend that she located her as she herself was turning the corner from the High Street into Smith Street.



She began ascending the slope, resigned to returning to the hotel. She paused to buy a newspaper from a vendor, and as she was tucking her purse back into her shoulder bag, she caught a glimpse of China halfway up the hill, stepping out of a shop and heading farther upwards, towards the point where Smith Street fanned out at its apex, creating a plaza that accommodated the World War I memorial. Deborah called out her friend’s name. China turned and scanned the pedestrians who were also heading upwards, well-dressed businessmen and -women at the end of their working day in the many banks below. She lifted her hand in greeting and waited for Deborah to join her.

“How’s it going?” she asked when Deborah got close enough to hear her speak. “Anything?”

Deborah said, “We don’t quite know.” And then to direct their conversation into another area, one which didn’t put her at risk of wanting to offer specifics in the cause of reassurance, she said, “What’re you doing?”

“Candy,” she said.

Deborah thought at first of the gardens, which made little sense since China was nowhere near them. But then her mind did the little sidestep that she’d learned to do while she was in America, making a quick translation of China’s version of English into her own. She said, “Oh. Candy. ”