A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(64)

Deborah said, “D’you mind if I watch?”

The boy shook his head. He was, she saw, about seventeen years old, and his face was marred by serious acne, which grew even redder as she joined him on the rock. She watched the fish for a moment, their greedy mouths pumping at the water, instinct making them snap at anything that moved on its surface. Lucky for them, she thought, to be in this safe, protected environment, where what moved on the surface was actually food and not a lure.

She said, “I don’t much like funerals. I think it’s because I started at them early. My mum died when I was seven and whenever I’m at a funeral, it all comes back to me.”

The boy said nothing, but his process of throwing the food into the water slowed marginally. Deborah took heart from this and went on.

“Funny, though, because I didn’t feel it very much when it actually happened. People would probably say that’s because I didn’t understand, but I did, you know. I knew exactly what it meant if someone died. They’d be gone and I’d never see them again. They might be with angels and God but in any case, they’d be in a place that I wouldn’t be going to for a long, long time. So I knew what it meant. I just didn’t understand what it implied. That didn’t sink in until much later, when the mother-daughter sorts of things that might have happened between us didn’t happen between me and...well, between me and anyone.”

Still he said nothing. But he paused in his feeding of the fish and watched the water as they continued to scramble for the pellets. They reminded Deborah of people in a queue when a bus arrives and what once was orderly collapses into a mass of elbows, knees, and umbrellas all shoving at once. She said, “She’s been dead almost twenty years and I still wonder what it might’ve been like. My dad never remarried and there’s no other family and there are times when it seems it would be so lovely to be part of something bigger than just the two of us. Then I wonder, as well, what it could’ve been like if they’d’ve had other children, my mum and dad. She was only thirty-two when she died, which seemed ancient to me when I was seven but which I now see meant that she had years ahead of her to have had more children. I wish she had.”

The boy looked at her then. She pushed her hair back from her face.

“Sorry. Am I going on? I do that sometimes.”

“You want to try?” He extended the plastic container to her.

She said, “Lovely. I would. Thanks.” She dipped her hand into the pellets. She moved to the edge of the rock and let the food dribble from her fingers into the water. The fish came at once, knocking one another aside in their anxiety to feed. “They make it look like the water’s boiling. There must be hundreds of them.”

“One hundred twenty-three.” The boy’s voice was low—Deborah found she had to strain to hear him—and he spoke with his gaze back upon the pond. “He keeps the stock up because the birds go after them. Big ones, the birds. Sometimes a gull but they’re generally not strong enough or fast enough. And the fish are smart. They hide. That’s why the rocks’re laid out so far over the edges of the pond: to give them a place when the birds show up.”

“One has to think of everything, I suppose,” Deborah said. “It’s brilliant, this place, though, isn’t it? I was having a wander, needing to get away from the grave site, and suddenly I saw the roof of the teahouse and the fence and it looked like it might be quiet in here. Tranquil, you know. So I came in.”

“Don’t lie.” He set the container of pellets down between them as if he were drawing a line in the sand. “I saw you.”

“Saw...?”

“You were following me. I saw you back by the stables.”

“Ah.” Deborah upbraided herself for being so careless as to give herself away, even more for proving her husband right. But she damn well wasn’t out of her depth, as Simon would doubtless declare her, and she determined to prove it. “I saw what happened at the grave site,” she admitted.

“When you were given the shovel? You seemed...Well, as I’ve lost someone as well—years ago, I admit—I thought you might want to...terribly arrogant, I realise. But losing someone is difficult. Sometimes it helps to talk.”

He grabbed up the plastic container and dumped half of it directly into the water, which burst into a frenzy of activity. He said, “I don’t need to talk about anything. And especially not about him.”

Deborah’s ears pricked up at this. “Was Mr. Brouard...? He would have been rather old to be your dad, but as you were with the family...?

Your granddad perhaps?” She waited for more. If she was patient enough, she believed it would come: whatever it was that was eating him up inside. She said helpfully, “I’m Deborah St. James, by the way. I’ve come over from London.”

“For the funeral?”

“Yes. As I said, I don’t much like funerals as a rule. But then, who does?”

He snorted. “My mum. She’s good at funerals. She’s had the practice.”

Deborah was wise enough to say nothing to this. She waited for the boy to explain himself, which he did, although obliquely.

He told her his name was Stephen Abbott and he said, “I was seven as well. He got lost in a whiteout. You know what that is?”

Deborah shook her head.