A Place of Hiding

Deborah couldn’t understand why the police did nothing. She murmured to Simon, “What...?”


His hand closed on her arm. She couldn’t see his face, but she had the distinct sense that he was intent upon the dolmen’s door. Three minutes passed, no more, when the candles within were suddenly extinguished. The steady and small pool of light from the torch took their place, and it approached the door of the dolmen from within just as DCI Le Gallez whispered, “Steady now, Saumarez. Wait. Easy. Easy, man.”

As the figure emerged and then stood upright, Le Gallez said, “Now.”

Nearby in their cramped little space, the officer in question rose and in the same movement switched on a torch so powerful that it blinded Deborah for a moment and did much the same to China River, caught both in its beam and in Le Gallez’s trap.

“Stay where you are, Miss River,” the DCI ordered. “The painting’s not there.”

“No,” Deborah whispered. She heard Simon murmur, “I’m sorry, my love,” but she didn’t quite take it in, for things happened too quickly after that.

At the door to the dolmen, China spun as a second light from the wall behind them picked her out like a hunter’s quarry. She said nothing. Instead, she ducked back inside the earthen mound and shoved the door closed behind her.

Deborah rose without thinking. She cried out, “China!” and then in a panic to her husband and to the police, “It’s not what it seems.”

As if she hadn’t spoken, Simon said in answer to something to Le Gallez asked him, “Just the camp bed, some candles, a wooden box holding condoms...” and she knew that every word she’d spoken to her husband about the dolmen was something he had relayed to the Guernsey police.

This somehow—illogically, ridiculously, stupidly, but she could not help it, she could not help it—seemed like an even greater betrayal to Deborah. She couldn’t think through it; she couldn’t think past it. She could only charge out of their hiding spot to go to her friend. Simon grabbed her before she got five feet.

She cried, “Let me go!” and wrested away from him. She heard Le Gallez say, “God damn it. Get her away!” and she cried, “I’ll get her for you. Let me go. Let me go!”

She twisted from Simon’s grasp but she didn’t leave him. They confronted each other, breathing hard. Deborah said, “She has nowhere to go. You know that. So do they. I’m going to fetch her. You must let me fetch her.”

“I don’t have that power.”

“Tell them.”

Le Gallez said, “You’re certain?” to Simon. “No other way out?”

Deborah said, “What difference does it make if there is? How’s she going to get off the island? She knows you’ll phone the airport and the harbour. Is she supposed to swim to France? She’ll come out when I...Let me tell her who’s out here...” She heard her voice quaver and hated the fact that here and now she would have to battle not only with the police, not only with Simon, but also with her blasted emotions, which would never for an instant allow her to be what he was: cool, dispassionate, able to adjust his thinking in a moment on the edge of a coin, if it came down to it. Which it had.

She said brokenly to Simon, “What made you decide...?” But she couldn’t finish the question.

He said, “I didn’t know. Not as a certainty. Just that it had to be one of them.”

“What haven’t you told me? No. I don’t care. Let me go to her. I’ll tell her what she’s facing. I’ll bring her out.”

Simon studied her in silence, and Deborah could see the extent of the indecision that played on his intelligent, angular features. But she could also see the worry there of how much damage he’d done to her ability to trust him.

He said over her shoulder to Le Gallez, “Will you allow—”

“Bloody hell, no I will not. This is a killer we’re talking about. We’ve got one corpse. I won’t have another.” Then to his men, “Bring the sodding bitch out.”

Which was enough to spur Deborah on her way to the dolmen. She shot back through the bushes and reached the door into the mound before Le Gallez could even shout “Grab her.”