Free Echoes of Lies by Jo Bannister Page B

was you’d have talked; and if you’d talked
this” - one finger flicked at the prints as if he still couldn’t credit what they showed - “wouldn’t have gone on for two days. Of course, if you’d talked sooner they might have been in less of a hurry to wrap it up and you mightn’t still be alive. Funny old world, isn’t it?”
    The money. Whoever ordered this paid Farrell three thousand pounds; maybe he paid the woman in red another thousand. But two days’ torture would have come pricier; probably dearer than murder. The man Sophie had fled - if that was what happened; Deacon had to remind himself that he didn’t know that yet - had the resources, both of money and of anger, to spend fifteen or twenty thousand pounds to get her back. Other deserted husbands and lovers might care as much but have to settle for an advert in the personal column of The Dimmock Sentinel. This wasn’t just an angry man, he was a rich one.
    And more than that, he had contacts that the average millionaire-next-door didn’t. The go-between might just have been an out-of-work actress, hired over the phone and paid with a manilla envelope under the door, but the interrogator was a professional in a highly specialised field. His number wasn’t printed in The Yellow Pages or pasted up in phone-boxes: probably the only way to find him would be through personal recommendation. The man who hired him, the man with the money, knew the kind of people who knew this kind of people. He wasn’t just rich and angry: he was rich, angry and dirty.
    â€œWhat are we talking here,” Deacon asked himself softly, “the mob? Drug money?” It would go some way to explaining what happened, but not why it happened to Hood. Someone had run off with a Mafioso’s squeeze? - well, reckless but not impossible. But someone had run off with a Mafioso’s squeeze and there was reason to think a comprehensive school maths teacher knew where they were? That really was straining the bounds of credulity. They were two worlds that hardly ever collided.
    He needed to see Hood again. There had to be a connection, however tenuous, between him and someone with that kind of power. If he knew about Hood, Hood should know about him. He couldn’t possibly know so many rich, angry, ruthless men that he wasn’t sure which of them had had him turned inside out.

    Breathing heavily, Deacon filed away the photographs. “Either you’re being dim, Danny, or you’re being deceitful. Let’s have another little natter, see if we can work out which it is.”
    But though he spoke to Hood three more times over the next thirty-six hours, he still wasn’t sure.
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    A point comes in any convalescence where recovery seems to stall. The better you get the worse you feel. Daniel reached that point when he’d been in hospital for four days. Physically he was making good progress: the burns were healing, the hole in his chest was closing to a scar and he was gaining strength visibly.
    But the mending of his body was not matched by a healing of his spirit. At first just staying awake was an effort, when he had energy to spare for thought he didn’t get much further than amazement at what he’d survived. He had neither the physical nor mental resources to dwell on those responsible: when Detective Inspector Deacon made him try he found his thoughts glancing off, like shot deflected by armour. It was too hard, too painful, and he didn’t persevere. Almost he was resigned never to knowing who they were or why they used him as they did.
    By Thursday, however, he was able to think about his ordeal in greater depth, and the relief at being safe gave way to a fury that filled him to bursting-point. Anger wasn’t a natural emotion for Daniel, so it overwhelmed him easily. When the flash-backs came, which they did increasingly, hatred raced through him like nausea. The calm man who