A Place of Hiding

“What are you looking for, then?” She heard the trepidation in her voice, and she knew he heard it as well, because when he looked at her, his eyes had grown darker, the way they always did when he was worried. He said, “The way it came to Guernsey.”


He turned back to the rubbish and continued to spread it out till he’d found what he was apparently looking for. It was a tube some thirty-six inches in length with an eight-inch diameter. At both ends its circumference was ringed by a serious-looking metal washer whose sides lapped down to fasten snugly and immovably against the tube itself. Simon rolled it from the rubbish and bent awkwardly to pick it up. Turned on its side, it revealed a slice from the top to the bottom in the surface of the tube. The slice had been widened to a gaping incision with frayed edges where the external skin of the tube had been forced open to reveal its real structure. What they had was a tube secreted within another tube, and it didn’t take a nuclear scientist to deduce what the resulting hidden inner space had been used for.

“Ah,” Simon murmured. He looked at Deborah.

She knew what he was thinking because she was thinking it herself and she didn’t want to think it. She said, “May I have a look...?” and she took it from him gratefully when he handed the tube over without comment. Inspected, the tube revealed what Deborah thought was a most important detail: The only way into the inner compartment was clearly through the outer shell. For the rings on each end of the tube had been fixed so immovably in place that prising them off would have damaged the entire structure irreversibly. It would also have told anyone else who looked at the tube—namely, the recipient of it if not customs officials—that someone had tampered with it. Yet there was not a single mark round the metal rings on either end. Deborah pointed this out to her husband.

“I see that,” he said. “But you understand what that means, don’t you?”

Deborah felt flustered by the intensity of his scrutiny and the intensity of his question. She said, “What? That whoever brought this to Guernsey didn’t know—”

“Didn’t open it in advance,” he interrupted. “But that doesn’t mean that person didn’t know what was in it, Deborah.”

“How can you say that?” She felt wretched. Her inner voice and all of her instincts were shouting no.

“Because of the dolmen. Its presence in the dolmen. Guy Brouard was killed for that painting, Deborah. It’s the only motive that explains everything else.”

“That’s too convenient,” she countered. “It’s also what we’re meant to believe. No”—as he started to speak—“do listen, Simon. You’re saying they knew in advance what was in it.”

“I’m saying one of them knew, not both.”

“All right. One. But if that’s the case—if they wanted—”

“He. I’m saying he wanted,” her husband put in quietly.

“Yes. Fine. But you’re being single-minded in this. If he—”

“Cherokee River, Deborah.”

“Yes. Cherokee. If he wanted the painting, if he knew it was in the tube, why on earth bring it here to Guernsey? Why not just disappear with it? It doesn’t make sense that he’d bring it all this way and then steal it. There’s another explanation altogether.”

“Which is?”

“I think you know. Guy Brouard opened this package and showed that painting to someone else. And that was the person who killed him.”

Adrian was driving too fast and far too close to the centre of the road. He was passing other cars indiscriminately and slowing for nothing. In short, he was driving with the deliberate intent to unnerve her, but Margaret was determined not to be provoked. Her son was so lacking in subtlety. He wanted her to demand that he drive differently so that he could continue to drive exactly as he pleased and thus prove to her once and for all that she had no suzerainty over him. It was just the sort of thing one would expect of a ten-year-old engaged in a game of I’ll-show-you. Adrian had infuriated her enough already. It took every ounce of selfcontrol Margaret had not to lash out at him. She knew him well enough to understand that he wasn’t about to part with any information which he’d decided to withhold because at this point he would believe that parting with anything was an indication that she had won. Won what, she didn’t know and could not have said. All she had ever wanted for her eldest son was a normal life with a successful career, a wife, and children.