“Gulliver. That poor dog has been stuck in High Tor since – ”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“What?”
“A local policeman checked on your house because Inspector Pollard was worried about you. Gulliver is apparently living it up as a guest of Fethering Police Station.”
After she finished the call, Carole grinned at Michael Brewer. “Probably as well I’m lying low. Apparently the police have taken my dog in for questioning.”
Their next task was to try to clean themselves up and get out of their petrol-soaked clothes. Michael Brewer proved to have quite sophisticated domestic arrangements in his primitive hideaway. He had a tank of water for washing in, and an array of soaps and detergents.
He also found some clean clothes. “Be a bit big for you, I’m afraid. And perhaps a bit masculine. I’ve only got one dress” – he looked wistful – “and that’s been here for over thirty years.”
“Marie’s?”
He nodded. “Little disco dress she wore. Her mother didn’t know about it. I’d pick her up in some sedate little number her mother approved of, then bring her out here to change.”
“Did Marie often come here?”
He nodded briefly, as if the recollection were painful. “Marie and I loved each other,” he said.
Carole had had some prudish qualms about washing and changing down in the cellar with Robert Coleman there, but he appeared to be asleep, trussed up against his chair. Perhaps he was concussed after Michael Brewer’s smashing him into the tree. Anyway, his eyes were closed, and he twitched and mumbled, as though in troubled dreams. And given what he’d done, Carole thought tartly, his dreams deserved to be troubled.
She managed a fairly effective basic toilette. Keeping on her underwear, to which the petrol did notseem to have penetrated, she dressed in the T-shirt, knitted jumper and jeans Michael Brewer had looked out for her. The jeans needed a lot of rolling up, giving her the look of an American bobbysoxer. Very definitely not Carole Seddon’s usual style.
In spite of assiduous washing and fresh clothes, the smell of petrol still lingered around her. She didn’t think she’d ever be free of the smell of petrol. And, as for the Renault…
She vacated the cellar for Michael Brewer to do his own cleaning-up process, and went for a little walk around Leper’s Copse as she tried to settle her mind. In the hollow of a field a little way away, she found a small blue Peugeot, presumably the car in which Robert Coleman had arrived.
When Michael Brewer emerged in his change of clothes, he suggested cooking a meal for them. To her surprise, Carole realized that she was suddenly very hungry, and accepted the offer.
Neither of them wanted to eat down in the cellar. The space felt contaminated by the presence of Robert Coleman. So Michael Brewer brought plates of hot sausages and beans out into Leper’s Copse. He said he’d offered food to Robert, who hadn’t wanted any. “Have to be humane to prisoners,” said Brewer with a trace of humour. “At least I know all about that.”
They ate their food on the edge of the copse, as far away from the smell of petrol as possible. As on the previous evening – which to Carole now seemed a lifetime away – her eyes soon adjusted to the darkness and she was aware of the greying contours of the surrounding Downs. It was a beautiful area, which kept its secrets.
Among his stores, Michael Brewer had managed to find a bottle of wine, and their little dinner a deux – the Home Office retiree and the former lifer – felt surprisingly cosy.
After they had finished eating, Carole asked, “How long have you known that Gaby was your daughter?”
He sighed. “I suppose I always suspected it…hoped it was true – hoped that there might be one positive thing salvaged from the wreck of my life. But I didn’t know for sure until Marie wrote to me in Parkhurst.”
“When was that?”
“Seven, eight years ago.”
Just round the time of Gaby’s panic about bowel cancer, thought Carole, and Michael Brewer’s next words confirmed her conjecture.
“Marie said she had wanted to keep the truth from Gaby all her life, but for some reason she’d had to tell her that Howard wasn’t her real father. She hadn’t told Gaby who her father was, but there was a lot of stuff in the press around that time about adopted children tracing their birth parents. Marie was worried Gaby might have a go at that. And I had been around at the right time, so, in case Gaby made the connection, Marie thought I should be prepared for some kind of contact from her.”
“And did Gaby contact you?”
He shook his head. “I doubt if it ever occurred to her that I might be involved. Doubt if she even knewof my existence. But, obviously, once I knew for certain she was my daughter, I wanted to make contact with her. But I couldn’t write or anything, because I didn’t know what the set-up was with Howard. I didn’t want to put Marie in an impossible situation inside her family, so…I knew I’d have to wait till I was released.”
“Why did you vanish when you were released? Why didn’t you go to your appointments with your probation officer?”
“I’ve told you!” The light of paranoia was back in his eye. “I had to get away from authority. I knew that lot would re-arrest me as easy as blinking.”
“I’m sure you’re wrong.”
“Well, I’m not. And I’ve had a lot more experience of that kind of world than you have, Carole.”
That was unarguable. “So what Gaby interpreted as you stalking her was just you trying to make contact?”
“Yes. But it was difficult. I needed to see her on her own. I needed to find out whether she knew anything about me.”
“Which was why you broke into her flat…Was it her birth certificate you wanted to see?”
“Yes, that kind of thing. Just to check whether there was any acknowledgement of my existence in my daughter’s life.”
“And was there?”
He shook his head bitterly. “Nothing. Father’s name on the birth certificate was Howard Martin.”
“And abducting me? What was all that about?”
“It was a way of getting to Gaby. She wouldn’t respond if I contacted her, but if you did…”
“Well, why on earth didn’t you tell me that? Why did you have to go through all the strong-arm routine?”
“In my experience, violence – or the threat of violence – is the only way you can get anything done.”
Carole was about to argue with this, and then she thought about what his recent experience had been. In a prison environment, the principle he had just outlined might well be the only viable one. Michael Brewer’s faith in his fellow human beings was not going to be easily re-established. So she contented herself with saying, somewhat huffily, “I still don’t see why you had to take me away from High Tor.”
“The police were looking for me – are looking for me. I had to get both of us somewhere safe.”
“Huh. Well, you could have said.”
There was a silence. It was much darker now. Carole could sense rather than see the curves of the Downs in front of her.
“There’s one thing, Mick…”
“Hm?”
“You had a lot of information. I know some of it you got from Gaby’s flat – like her mobile number, for instance. But there’s other stuff you couldn’t have known unless someone told you. For example, how did you know where Gaby’s flat was?”
He was silent for so long that she didn’t think she was going to get an answer. Then, slowly, he said, “Marie.”
“You talked to Marie?”
“Yes. After she wrote to me that first time in Parkhurst, we wrote quite a lot of letters. Couldn’t say much in them, of course, because of the prison authorities my end, and Howard at her end. But…we re-established contact. And then, when I was released…I got her phone number and rang a few times. We found it easy to talk. Marie and I always found it easy to talk.”
“But weren’t you worried about Howard answering the phone?”
“He never did. His deafness made using the phone difficult for him. He could use it, but he preferred not
