A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(50)
“But you couldn’t have known what would happen,” Deborah protested.
“I know that. But it doesn’t make me feel any better. I’ve got to get her out of there, Debs.” And with an earnest smile at her and then at St. James,
“Thank you for helping me out. There’s no way I can ever repay you.”
St. James wanted to tell the other man that his sister wasn’t out of gaol yet and there was a very good chance that even if bail was offered and paid, her freedom at that point would constitute only a temporary reprieve. Instead, he merely said, “We’ll do what we can.”
To which Cherokee replied, “Thanks. You’re the best.”
To which Deborah then said, “We’re your friends, Cherokee.”
At which point the man seemed struck with emotion. It flashed across his face for an instant. He managed only a nod and he gave that odd clenched-fist gesture that Americans tended to use to indicate everything from gratitude to political agreement.
Or perhaps he used it in that moment for something else. St. James could not keep himself from that thought. Nor had he truly been able to since the moment he’d glanced up to the gallery in Courtroom Number Three and seen his wife and the American above him: the two of them shoulder to shoulder with Deborah murmuring to Cherokee’s bent and listening head. Something wasn’t right in the world. St. James believed that at a level he couldn’t have explained. So the sensation of times out of joint made it difficult for him to affirm his wife’s declaration of friendship to the other man. He said nothing, and when Deborah’s glance in his direction asked him why, he offered her no answering glance as reply. This wouldn’t, he knew, improve things between them. She was still at odds with him about their conversation in the Old Bailey.
When they arrived in town, they established themselves in Ann’s Place, where a former government building had long ago been converted into a hotel. There they parted: Cherokee and Deborah to the prison where they hoped to make contact with China in the remand section, St. James to the police station where he wanted to track down the officer in charge of the investigation.
He remained uneasy. He knew very well that he didn’t belong there, insinuating himself into a police investigation where he wouldn’t be welcome. At least in England, cases existed to which he could refer a police force if he came calling and requesting information from them. You recall the Bowen kidnapping? he could murmur virtually anywhere in England...And that strangulation in Cambridge last year? Given enough opportunity to explain who he was and to seek a common river of knowledge in which to swim with the police, St. James had found that the UK officers were generally willing to part with what information they had while remaining unruffled in the face of any attempts he might make to find something more. But here things were different. Garnering if not the cooperation of the police then at least their grudging acceptance of his presence among those people closely connected to the crime would not be a matter of jogging their memories of cases he’d worked on or criminal trials in which he’d been involved. That put him in a place he didn’t like to be, relying on his least developed skill to gain admittance into the fraternity of investigators: the ability to establish a connection with another person.
He followed the curve of Ann’s Place as it gave onto Hospital Lane and the police station beyond. He pondered the entire idea of connection. Perhaps, he thought, that inability of his which created a chasm between himself and other people—always and ever the cool damn scientist, always and ever looking inward and thinking, always considering, weighing, and observing when other people occupied themselves with just being... Perhaps that was the source of his discomfort with Cherokee River as well.
“I do remember the surfing!” Deborah had said, her face altering in an instant when the shared experience came to her mind. “All three of us went that one ti me...D’you remember? Where were we?”
Cherokee had looked reflective before he’d said, “Sure. It was Seal Beach, Debs. Easier than Huntington. More protected there.”
“Yes, yes. Seal Beach. You made me go out and flail round on the board and I kept shrieking about hitting the pier.”
“Which,” he said, “you weren’t anywhere close to. No way were you going to stay on the board long enough to hit anything unless you decided to sleep on it.”
They laughed together, another link forged, an effortless instant between two people when they acknowledged that a common chain existed that connected the present to the past.
And that was how it was between everyone who shared any kind of history, St. James thought. That was just how it was. He crossed the street to the Guernsey police headquarters. It stood behind an imposing wall hewn from a stone that was veined with feldspar, an L-shaped building with four banks of windows climbing its two wings and the flag of Guernsey flying above it. Inside the reception room, St. James gave his name and his card to the special constable. Would it be possible, he asked, to speak with the chief investigating officer on the Guy Brouard murder enquiry? Or, failing that, with the department’s Press Officer?
The special constable studied the card, his face a declaration that indicated a few select telephone calls were going to be made across the Channel to ascertain exactly who this forensic scientist on their doorstep was. This was all to the good, because if phone calls were made, they would be made to the Met, to the CPS, or to the university where St. James lectured, and if that were the case, his way would be paved. It took twenty minutes while St. James cooled his heels in reception and read the notice board half a dozen times. But they were twenty minutes well spent, because at the end of them, Detective Chief Inspector Louis Le Gallez came out personally to lead St. James to the incident room, a vast hammer-beamed former chapel in which departmental exercise equipment vied with filing cabinets, computer tables, bulletin boards, and china boards.