Read Online A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George - Free Book Online Page A

looks like shoplifting. Something like that.”
    â€œHe can't have meant to go to the American embassy over shoplifting, Simon. And she's not a shoplifter anyway.”
    â€œHow well do you actually know her?”
    â€œI know her well,” Deborah said. She felt the need to repeat it fiercely. “I know China River perfectly well.”
    â€œAnd her brother? Cherokee? What the dickens sort of name is that anyway?”
    â€œThe one he was given at birth, I expect.”
    â€œParents from the days of Sergeant Pepper?”
    â€œHmm. Their mother was a radical . . . some sort of hippie . . . No. Wait. She was an environmentalist. That's it. This was early on, before I knew her. She sat in trees.”
    Simon cast a wry look in her direction.
    â€œTo keep them from being cut down,” Deborah said simply. “And Cherokee's father—they have different fathers—he was an environmentalist as well. Did he . . . ?” She thought about it, trying to remember. “I think he may have tied himself to railway tracks . . . somewhere in the desert?”
    â€œPresumably to protect them as well? God knows they're fast becoming extinct.”
    Deborah smiled. The toast popped up. Peach scooted out from her basket in the hope of fallout while Deborah crafted soldiers.
    â€œI don't know Cherokee all that well. Not like China. I spent holidays with China's family when I was in Santa Barbara, so I know him that way. From being with her family. Dinners at Christmas. New Year. Bank holidays. We'd drive down to . . . Where did her mother live? It was a town like a colour . . .”
    â€œA colour?”
    â€œRed, green, yellow. Ah. Orange, it was. She lived in a place called Orange. She would cook tofu turkey for the holidays. Black beans. Brown rice. Seaweed pie. Truly horrible things. We'd try to eat them, and then afterwards we'd find an excuse to go out for a drive and look for a restaurant that was open. Cherokee knew some highly questionable—but always thrifty—places to eat.”
    â€œThat's commendable.”
    â€œSo I'd see him then. Ten times altogether? He did come up to Santa Barbara once and spend a few nights on our sofa. He and China had a bit of a love-hate relationship back then. He's older but he never acted it, which exasperated her. So she tended to mother-hen him, which exasperated him. Their own mother . . . well, she wasn't much of a
mother
mother, if you see what I mean.”
    â€œToo busy with the trees?”
    â€œAll sorts of things. There but not there. So it was a . . . well, rather a bond between China and me. Another bond, that is. Beyond photography. And other things. The motherless bit.”
    Simon turned down the burner beneath the soup and leaned against the cooker, watching his wife. “Tough years, those,” he said quietly.
    â€œYes. Well.” She blinked and offered him a quick smile. “We all muddled through them, didn't we?”
    â€œWe did that,” Simon acknowledged.
    Peach raised her nose from snuffling around the floor, head cocked and ears at the ready. On the window sill above the sink, the great grey Alaska—who'd been indolently studying the worm tracks of rain against the glass—rose and gave a languid feline stretch, with his eyes fixed on the basement stairs which descended right next to the old dresser on which the cat frequently spent his days. A moment later, the door above them creaked and the dog barked once. Alaska leaped down from the window sill and vanished to seek slumber in the larder.
    Cherokee's voice called, “Debs?”
    â€œDown here,” Deborah replied. “We've made you soup and soldiers.”
    Cherokee joined them. He looked much improved. He was shorter than Simon by an inch or two and more athletic, but the pyjamas and dressing gown sat on him easily, and the trembles had gone. His feet were bare, however.
    â€œI should have thought of slippers,” Deborah