A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(217)

“Too much,” Ol Fielder said. “You see that, don’t you, Paulie? Me and your mum...We can’t manage it, lad...A fortune, we’re talking about. We haven’t got...I’m that sorry, Paul.”

Mr. Knight squatted and ran his hand along Taboo’s tousled fur. He said, “He’s a good dog, though. Aren’t you, boy?” And as if he understood, Taboo sent his pale tongue forth again. He shivered and wheezed. His front paws twitched. “We’ll need to put him down, then,” Mr. Knight said, rising. “I’ll fetch the jab.” And to Paul, “It’ll be a comfort to both of you if you hold him.”

Paul bent to the dog again, but he didn’t lift Taboo in his arms as he otherwise might have done. Lifting him would do him more damage, and Paul meant no more damage to be done.

Ol Fielder shuffled on his feet as they waited for the vet to return. Paul gently drew the cover up over his hurt Taboo. He reached out and moved the electric fire closer, and when the vet rejoined them with two hypodermics in his hand, Paul was finally ready. Ol Fielder squatted. So did the vet. Paul reached out and stayed the doctor’s hand. “I got the money,” he said to Mr. Knight so clearly, he might have been speaking the first words ever spoken between two people. “I don’t care what it costs me. Save my dog.”

Deborah and her husband were just tucking into their first course at dinner when the ma?tre d’ approached them deferentially and spoke to Simon. There was a gentleman, he said—he seemed to be using the word loosely—who wanted to speak to Mr. St. James. He was waiting just outside the restaurant door. Did Mr. St. James wish to send him a message? To speak with him now?

Simon turned in his chair to look in the direction the ma?tre d’ had come from. Deborah did the same and saw a lumpy man in a dark green anorak lurking beyond the doorway, watching them, watching her, it seemed. When her eyes met his, he shifted them to Simon. Simon said, “It’s DCI Le Gallez. Excuse me, my love,” and he went to speak to the man.

Both of them turned their backs to the doorway. They spoke for less than a minute and Deborah watched, trying to interpret the unexpected appearance of the police at their hotel as she also tried to gauge the intensity—or lack thereof—of their conversation. In short order, Simon returned to her, but he did not sit.

“I’ve got to leave you.” His face looked grave. He picked up the napkin he’d left on the chair and folded it precisely, as was his habit.

“Why?” she asked.

“It seems I was right. Le Gallez has new evidence. He’d like me to have a look at it.”

“That can’t wait? Till after...?”

“He’s champing at the bit. Apparently he wants to make an arrest tonight.”

“Arrest? Of whom? With your approval or something? Simon, that doesn’t—”

“I must go, Deborah. Continue with your meal. I shouldn’t be gone long. It’s only the police station. I’ll just pop round the corner and be back directly.” He bent and kissed her.

She said, “Why did he come personally to get you? He could have...Simon!” But he was walking off.

Deborah sat for a moment, staring at the single candle that flickered on their table. She had that uneasy sensation that tends to fall upon a listener when she hears a bald-faced lie. She didn’t want to race after her husband and demand an explanation, but at the same time she knew that she couldn’t just sit there docilely like a doe in the forest. So she found the middle ground, and she left the restaurant in favour of the bar, where a window overlooked the front of the hotel.

There she saw Simon shrugging into his coat. Le Gallez was speaking to a uniformed constable. Out in the street, a police car stood idling with a driver behind the wheel. Behind that car waited a white police van through whose windows Deborah could see the silhouettes of other policemen. She gave a little cry. She could feel the pain of it and knew that pain for what it was. But she had no time to assess the damage. She hurried from the bar.

She’d left her bag and her coat in their room. At Simon’s suggestion, she realised now. He’d said, “You won’t be needing any of that, will you, my love,” and she’d cooperated as she always cooperated...wi th hi m so wise, so concerned, so...what? So determined to keep her from following him. While he, of course, had his own coat somewhere quite close to the restaurant because he’d known all along that Le Gallez was going to come calling in the midst of their meal.

But Deborah wasn’t the fool her husband apparently thought she was. She had the advantage of intuition. She also had the greater advantage of having already been where she believed they were going. Where they had to be going, despite everything Simon had said to her earlier to make her think otherwise.

With her coat and her bag, she flew back down the stairs and out into the night. The police vehicles were gone, leaving the pavement empty and the street free. She broke into a run and raced to the car park round the corner from the hotel and facing the police station. She wasn’t surprised to see no panda cars or van standing in its courtyard: It had been highly unlikely from the first that Le Gallez had come with an escort to fetch Simon and to transport him less than one hundred yards to the offices of the States police.

“We rang the manor house to let her know,” Le Gallez was saying to St. James as they sped through the darkness towards St. Martin, “but there was no answer.”