A Place of Hiding

That most of all.

And then there was how. How had she come to get her hands on that fairy wheel that she’d used to choke Brouard? Had he shown it to her? Had she known he carried it? Had she planned to use it? Or had that merely been a moment of inspiration during which she decided to muddy the waters by using, instead of the ring she’d brought with her to the bay, something she found that morning in the pocket of his discarded clothes?

Some of these questions St. James hoped that his wife would be able to answer in time. Others, he knew, they could never answer. Deborah’s hearing would return, he was told. It might or might not have been permanently damaged by her proximity to the explosion, but they would ascertain that over time. She’d sustained a severe concussion, the complete recovery from which would take a number of months. Doubtless she would experience some memory loss about the events immediately surrounding the detonation of the hand grenade. But he wasn’t to press her about those events. She would recall what she could when she could, if ever.

He phoned her father hourly with reports. When every chance of danger was passed, he spoke to Deborah about what had happened. He spoke directly into her ear, his voice low and his hand covering hers. The dressings were gone from the cuts on her face, but the stitches from a gash on her jaw were still to be removed. Her bruises were frightening to behold, but she was restless. She wanted to go home. Home to her dad, to her photography, to their dog and their cat, to Cheyne Row, to London and all that was most familiar to her.

She said, “China’s dead, isn’t she?” in a voice that was still uncertain of its own strength. “Tell me. I think I can hear if you get close enough.”

Which was where he wanted to be anyway. So he eased himself onto the hospital bed next to her and he told her what had happened as far as he knew it. He told her all that he’d withheld from her as well. And he admitted that he’d withheld that information in part to punish her for going her own way with the skull-and-crossed-bones ring and in part for the dressing-down he himself had received from Le Gallez about that ring. He told her that once he’d spoken to Guy Brouard’s American attorney and learned that the person who’d brought the architectural plans to him was not Cherokee River but a black Rastafarian, he’d managed to persuade Le Gallez to lay a trap to catch the killer. It had to be one of them, so release both of them, he’d suggested to the DCI. Let them both go free, with the proviso that they must leave the island by the first transport available to them in the morning. If this killing is about the painting that was found in the dolmen, the killer will have to fetch it before dawn...i f the killer is one of the Rivers.

“I expected it to be Cherokee,” St. James said into his wife’s ear. He hesitated before admitting the rest. “I wanted it to be Cherokee.”

Deborah turned her head to look at him. He didn’t know if she could hear him without his lips at her ear and he didn’t know if she could read his lips, but he spoke anyway while her eyes were on him. He owed her that much: that precise degree of intimate confession.

“I’ve asked myself over and over if it’s ever not going to come down to that,” he said.

She heard him or read him. It didn’t matter which. She said, “Down to what?”

“Myself against them. As I am. As they are. What you chose as opposed to what you could have had in someone else.”

Her eyes widened. “Cherokee?”

“Anyone. There he is on our doorstep, some bloke I don’t even know and can’t honestly remember your even mentioning in the years you’ve been back from America, and he’s familiar to you. He’s familiar with you. He’s undeniably part of that time. Which I am not, you see. I never will be. So there’s that in my head and then there’s the rest: this decent-looking, able-bodied bloke coming to fetch my wife to Guernsey. Because it’s going to come down to that, and I can see it, no matter what he says about the American embassy. And I know anything can come of that. But that’s the last thing I want to admit.”

She searched his face. “How could you ever think I would leave you, Simon? For anyone. That’s not what loving someone is.”