Twenty-One Days (Daniel Pitt #1)(63)



Graves was white and his chest was heaving. There was a sweat of terror on his face, and showing wet on his neck and chest, where Daniel could see his skin. ‘God help me, I didn’t kill her!’ His voice was almost strangled. ‘But you’re going to be guilty of my death. You’ll wear that for the rest of your life. Connive at murder, just like your father!’

Daniel looked at him with sudden chill. ‘You are in the wrong place to be abusing me. I’m the only thing between you and the rope. You want me on your side. And you are calling me stupid?’

Graves looked as if he had been struck, and a dull tide of colour swept up his face. His eyes burned with hatred. ‘You’re going to let me hang?’

Daniel leaned forward over the table. ‘Someone hated you enough to kill your wife, burn her face off and get you hanged for it. Please God, there aren’t many people with that potential for hatred around! Concentrate. We’ve got to find who it is.’

‘You? And who else? fford Croft? Kitteridge?’

‘If my father still has Narraway’s list of people, I’ll let him do it,’ Daniel replied. ‘He’ll know just how dangerous any of them really are. If there actually is such a list, we should make it work for us, shouldn’t we?’

Graves was seething with anger, but he was trapped, and he knew it.

‘Yes.’





Chapter Fifteen


Daniel went straight from the prison back to Lincoln’s Inn, and then, a little after six, to his parents’ home on Keppel Street. He wanted to give his father a copy of the names Graves had given to him, and it was best to do this away from his father’s office. Daniel was still deeply afraid that someone in Special Branch had leaked the information to Graves, and flattered, bribed or threatened him into using it in the most damaging way, not only to inflict harm on Special Branch now, but to cast shadows over most of its past as well. He could only imagine what that reputation for corruption and blackmail would do to its ability to function at home, never mind abroad.

But most of all, he had to ask his father for the full story of Luz dos Santos. How much was Graves only guessing, and how much did he know? At some level, it would hardly matter. The damage of suggestion would be enough. And his father could not explain it publicly. Rightly or wrongly, he would be disgraced, perhaps even worse.

Daniel sat across from his father in his study, and reached over the desk with the list of people whom Graves had mentioned as sources for the book in his hand.

Pitt took it from him, looked at the names, and thanked him.

Daniel waited for something more.

‘Who I expected,’ Pitt said. ‘One or two I didn’t. It’s time to see if I can find any corroborative evidence. I wouldn’t damn anyone on Graves’ words alone.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘But it casts a shadow, and that may well be all they expect of it. Thank you, Daniel.’

‘I don’t think Graves killed his wife,’ Daniel said. It came out sounding like an excuse, and he had not intended that. ‘I can’t . . . let him hang just because he’s a swine.’ He wanted Pitt to understand. ‘I wish he were guilty!’

‘Letting him hang because he’s a swine is roughly the same as killing him yourself,’ Pitt answered. ‘I dare say he felt like that about his wife. It’s not an excuse.’

‘Actually, she sounds rather nice,’ Daniel answered. ‘I think I would’ve liked her. She was far better than he. Interested, funny, brave, according to her children.’

‘How old are they?’

‘Why?’

‘A lot of children view their parents uncritically for a time, and at others find them totally boring,’ Pitt said a trifle ruefully.

‘Oh . . .’ Then Daniel saw the wry smile and felt himself flush. ‘We all take a little while to grow up. They are sixteen and nineteen. The girl is the elder, and takes care of her brother. He’s in a wheelchair, and looks terribly frail.’

‘Don’t let pity slant your vision,’ Pitt told him gently. ‘It’s only part of the truth.’

‘They need their mother,’ Daniel replied, as if he were defending them against some charge. ‘She’s only a girl, and has a heavy responsibility, now that her mother’s gone, not least for poor Arthur.’

‘I’m sorry. We take our health for granted. But don’t let your pity rule you.’ Now there was humour in his face. ‘I’ve liked some people who have killed, a lot more than I liked their victims. Find all the mitigating facts you can, but do not lose the truth. Listen to me, Daniel! Most of any case has right on both sides. It’s your job to find as much of it as you can, not to weigh it, and not to hide it.’

‘Did you ever hide it?’ Daniel asked, and his disbelief was plainer in his voice than he meant it to be, but the murder of the Portuguese woman was crowding his mind.

Pitt stared at him very steadily. ‘Yes. I’m part of the country’s defence against those who would spread terror and anarchy. You are not. Your part is to defend individuals against wrongful accusation, and to mitigate their punishment when their convictions are correct, in fact at least, if not in cause.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Daniel agreed. ‘And I don’t think that it was her husband. Which is a shame. I very much would have liked it to have been. He’s a dangerous and vicious man. He loves the power to destroy, and he’s hellbent on using it. Starting with Narraway and Vespasia, and going on to you, and then Special Branch in general.’

Anne Perry's Books