A Place of Hiding

“Then...” Graham stepped away from his son and wiped his cheeks on the sleeve of his tweed jacket.

Frank put his arm round his father’s shoulders and said, “We’ll talk about it later, Dad. We’ll find a way.” He urged him towards the door and, the “journalists” being gone from his sight, Graham cooperated as if they were completely forgotten as, indeed, they probably were to him. Frank took him back to their own cottage where the door still stood open. He assisted his father inside and to his chair.

Graham leaned fully against him as Frank turned him towards the chair’s comfortable seat. His head drooped as if it had grown too heavy, and his spectacles slid to the end of his nose. “Feeling a bit queer, lad,” he said in a murmur. “P’rhaps best to have a bit of a kip.”

“You’ve overdone it,” Frank told his father. “I mustn’t leave you alone any more.”

“ ’M not a dirty-arsed infant, Frank.”

“But you get up to no good if I’m not here to watch you. You’re as stubborn as gum on a shoe sole, Dad.”

Graham smiled at the image, and Frank handed him the remote for the television. “Can you keep yourself out of trouble for five minutes?” Frank asked his father kindly. “I want to see what’s what out there.” He indicated the sitting room window, and hence the out-of-doors, with a tilt of his head.

When his father was absorbed once again by the television, Frank tracked down River and the redhead. They were standing near the tattered deck chairs on the overgrown lawn behind the cottages. They appeared to be in deep discussion. As Frank approached them, their conversation ceased.

River introduced his companion as a friend of his sister’s. She was called Deborah St. James, he said, and she and her husband had come over from London to help China. “He deals with this kind of thing all the time,” River said.

Frank’s main concern was his father and not leaving him alone to get up to further mischief, so he replied to the introduction with as much courtesy as he could muster. “How may I help you?”

They answered him in concert. Their visit apparently had to do with a ring that was associated with the Occupation. It was identified by an inscription in German, by a date, and by its unusual design of skull and crossed bones.

“D’you have anything like that in your collection?” River sounded eager.

Frank looked at him curiously, then at the woman, who was watching him with an earnestness that told him how important the information was to them both. He thought about this fact and about every possible implication of every possible answer he might give. He finally said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything like that.”

To which River said, “But you can’t be sure, can you?” When Frank didn’t affirm this, he went on, gesturing to the two additional cottages that grew out from the water mill. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of stuff in there. I remember your saying not all of it’s even catalogued yet. That’s what you guys were doing, right? You and Guy were getting it ready to show, but first you had to have lists of what you have and where it is right now and where to put it in the museum, right?”

“That’s what we were doing, yes.”

“And the kid helped out. Paul Fielder. Guy brought him along now and then.”

“As well as his son once and the Abbott boy as well,” Frank said. “But what’s this got to do with—”

River turned to the redhead. “See? There’re other ways to go. Paul. Adrian. The Abbott kid. The cops want to think every road leads to China, but it damn well doesn’t, and here’s our proof.”

The woman said gently, “Not necessarily. Not unless...” She looked pensive and directed her next remarks to Frank. “Is there a chance you’ve catalogued a ring like the one we’ve described and merely forgotten it? Or a chance that someone besides yourself catalogued it? Or even that you had one among your things and have forgotten you have it?”

Frank admitted that there was that possibility, but he allowed himself to sound doubtful because he knew the request she was likely to make and he didn’t want to grant it. She made it straightaway, nonetheless. Could they have a look among his wartime artifacts, then? Oh, she knew there was no realistic way they were going to be able to go through everything, but there was always a slim chance that they could get lucky...