A Place of Hiding

He didn’t add that his own wife had been the courier because he was in the process of steadying himself to hear the inevitable from the DCI. He was already asking himself what that inevitable meant, although he thought he knew the answer.

“Haven’t seen it,” Le Gallez told him, and he picked up the phone and rang reception to make sure the ring wasn’t waiting for him below. He spoke to the duty officer in charge, describing the ring as St. James had done. He grunted when the officer made a reply and he eyed St. James as he listened at some length to a recitation on one subject or another. He finally said, “Well, bring it up here, man,” which allowed St. James to breathe easily again. He went on with “For God’s sake, Jerry, I’m not the person to grouse to about the bloody fax machine. Just sort it out and have done with it, will you?” and he slammed down the phone with a curse and dashed St. James’s peace of mind a second time in three minutes when he next spoke.

“No ring in sight. Want to tell me more about it, then?”

“There may have been a misunderstanding.” Or a traffic accident, St. James wanted to add, although he knew this was an impossibility since he’d taken the same route his wife would have taken to return from Le Reposoir and there hadn’t been so much as a broken headlamp on the road to suggest a car crash had kept Deborah from fulfilling her duty. Not that anyone drove fast enough on the island for a car crash, anyway. A minor collision, perhaps, with bumpers crunching or wings denting. But that would be the extent of it. Even that wouldn’t have kept her from bringing the ring to Le Gallez as he’d instructed her to do.

“A misunderstanding.” Le Gallez spoke with far less affability now.

“Yes. I do see, Mr. St. James. We’ve got ourselves a misunderstanding.” He looked up as a figure appeared in his doorway, a uniformed officer bearing paperwork in his hand. Le Gallez waved him off for a moment. He got up from his seat and shut the door of his office. He faced St. James with his arms crossed over his chest. He said, “I don’t much mind if you nose about, Mr. St. James. It’s a free you-know-what, and if you want to talk to this bloke or that bloke and he doesn’t mind, it’s fine by me. But when you start messing about with evidence, we’ve got another situation entirely.”

“I do understand. I—”

“I don’t think so. You’ve come here with your mind made up, and if you think I’m not aware of that and where it can lead, you’d best think again. Now, I want that ring. I want it at once. We’ll deal later with where it’s been since you lifted it off the beach. And with why you lifted it, by the way. Because you know bloody damn well what you ought to’ve done. Have I made myself clear?”

St. James hadn’t been reprimanded since adolescence, and the experience—so similar to being dressed down by an outraged schoolmaster—

wasn’t pleasant. His skin crawled with the mortification of the moment, made worse because he knew he richly deserved it. But that didn’t make the ordeal any less chastening, nor did it go any length to soften the blow this moment could do to his reputation should he not be able to handle the situation expeditiously.

He said, “I’m not sure what happened. But you have my most profound apologies. The ring—”

“I don’t want your bloody apologies,” Le Gallez barked. “I want that ring.”

“You’ll have it directly.”

“That, Mr. St. James, damn well better be the case.” The DCI stepped away from the door and swung it open.

St. James couldn’t remember a time he’d been dismissed with so little ceremony. He stepped out into the hall, where the uniformed officer stood waiting with his paperwork in hand. The man averted his eyes, as if with embarrassment, and hurried into the DCI’s office.