A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(49)

“Thank you for such an elegy, Ana?s,” she settled upon saying to the woman. “To know you knew he was goodness itself...” And he was, he was, Ruth’s heart cried out. “It’s an act of kindness for you to come here and tell me. I’m terribly grateful. You’re very good.”

Ana?s opened her mouth to speak. She even drew breath before she appeared to realise there was nothing more to say. She couldn’t directly ask for money at this point without appearing grasping and crass. Even if she had no regard for that, she probably wasn’t going to be willing any time soon to set aside the pretence that she was an independent widow for whom a meaningful textured relationship was more important than what funded it. She’d been living that pretence too long. So Ana?s Abbott said nothing more and neither did Ruth as they sat together in the morning room. Really, at the end of the day, what more could they possibly say?





Chapter 7


The bad weather continued to abate during the day in London, and it was this that allowed the St. Jameses and Cherokee River to make the journey to Guernsey. They arrived by late afternoon, circling round the airport to see spread out below them in the fading light grey cotton thread roads unspooling haphazardly, twisting through stony hamlets and between bare fields. The glass of countless inland greenhouses caught the last of the sun, and the leafless trees on valley and hillside marked the areas where winds and storms reached less fiercely. It was a varied landscape from the air: rising to towering cliffs on the east and the south ends of the island, sloping to tranquil bays on the west and in the north. The island was desolate at this time of year. Holiday makers would fill its tangle of roads in late spring and summer, heading for the beaches, the cliff paths, or the harbours, exploring Guernsey’s churches, its castles, its forts. They would walk and swim and boat and bike. They would throng the streets and swell the hotels. But in December, there were three kinds of people who occupied the Channel island: the islanders themselves who were bound to the place by habit, tradition, and love; tax exiles who were determined to shelter as much of their money as was possible from their respective governments; and bankers who worked in St. Peter Port and flew home to England at weekends.

It was to St. Peter Port that the St. Jameses and Cherokee River took themselves. This was the largest town and the seat of government on the island. It was also where the police were headquartered and where China River’s advocate had his office.

Cherokee had been loquacious for most of their journey that day. He veered from subject to subject like a man who was terrified of what a silence among them might imply, and St. James had found himself wondering if the constant barrage of conversation was designed to keep them from considering the futility of the mission in which they were engaged. If China River had been arrested and charged, there would be evidence to try her for the crime. If that evidence went beyond the circumstantial, St. James knew there was going to be little or nothing he could do to interpret it differently to the way the police experts had already done. But as Cherokee had continued his dialogue, it had begun to seem less like distracting them from drawing conclusions about their objective and more like attaching himself to them. St. James played the watcher in all this, a third wheel on a bicycle lurching towards the unknown. He found it a distinctly uneasy ride.

Cherokee chatted most about his sister. Chine—as he called her—had finally learned to surf. Did Debs know that? Her boyfriend, Matt—did Debs ever meet Matt? She must’ve, right?—well, he finally got her out in the water...I mean far enough out because she was always freaked out about sharks. He taught her the basics and made her practise and the day she finally stood up...She finally got what it was all about, mentally got it. The Zen of surfing. Cherokee was always wanting her to come down to surf in Huntington with him...i n February or March, when the waves could get gnarly, but she would never come because coming to Orange County meant going over to Mom’s in her mind and Chine and Mom...They had issues with each other. They were just too different. Mom was always doing something wrong. Like the last time Chine came down for a weekend—probably more’n two years ago—it became a major big deal that Mom didn’t have any clean glasses in the house. It’s not like Chine couldn’t wash a glass herself, but Mom should have had them washed in advance because washing the glasses in advance meant something. Like I love you or Welcome or I want you to be here. Anyway, Cherokee always tried to stay out of it when they went at it. They were both, you know, really good people, Mom and Chine. They were just so different. However, whenever Chine came to the canyon—Debs knew Cherokee lived in the canyon, didn’t she? Modjeska? Inland? That cabin with the logs across the front?—anyway, when Chine came over, believe it, Cherokee put clean glasses everywhere. Not that he had too many of them. But what he did have...everywhere. Chine wanted clean glasses, and Cherokee gave her clean glasses. But it was weird, wasn’t it, the kinds of things that set people off...

All the way to Guernsey, Deborah had listened sympathetically to Cherokee’s rambling. He’d wandered among reminiscence, revelation, and explanation, and within an hour it seemed to St. James that over and above the natural anxiety the man felt because of his sister’s position, he also felt guilt. Had he not insisted that she accompany him, she wouldn’t be where she was at the moment. He was at least in part responsible for that. Shithappens to people was the way he put it, but it was clear that this particular shit wouldn’t have happened to this particular person had Cherokee not wanted her to come along. And he’d wanted her to come along because he needed her to come along, he explained, because that was the only way he himself was going to be able to go in the first place and he’d wanted to go because he wanted the money because finally he had a job in mind for himself that he could bear to think about doing for twenty-five years or more and he just needed a down payment to finance it. A fishing boat. That was it in a nutshell. China River was locked behind bars because her * brother wanted to buy a fishing boat.