Read Online Closer Still by Jo Bannister - Free Book Online Page B

Increasingly she was convinced it was a coincidence, that Deacon had nothing to hide. For the moment it made her tone conciliatory. Before long, though, that would give way to the annoyance that was her default position. ‘I was shocked and scared. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I needed to talk to you alone first. Just in case. I’m sorry if that feels like an insult. It wasn’t meant as one. I just … Dead or alive, Joe Loomis means nothing to me. You do. I wanted to be sure.’
    But Deacon was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You really thought I could have settled an argument like that. With a knife, in the dark. We’ve known each other for three and a half years, Brodie. We’ve had a child together. And you haven’t the foggiest notion who I am.’
    Daniel winced at the spark in Brodie’s eye that said
she’d done apologetic quite long enough. ‘Or maybe,’ she retorted, ‘I have a better idea who you are than you do. Don’t tell me you’ve never got physical with a thug before. Don’t tell me you’ve never got physical with this thug before! I didn’t think it was likely – I thought it was possible. I didn’t want to put something on record if there was even an outside chance it would come back to haunt you. Hate me for that if you must. All I knew was what Loomis had said, and that you weren’t at home when I knocked at your door and you weren’t with Charlie Voss when he arrived. Motive and opportunity. You’d have suspected you in the same circumstances!’
    Her angry eyes held his. Deacon broke the contact first. He looked away and, shoving his hands deep in his trouser pockets, muttered something to the wall.
    â€˜What?’ demanded Brodie.
    â€˜I said, I was at the hospital. In the car park, underneath his window. I didn’t go in because I knew there was nothing I could do. But I wanted to be near him for a bit. That’s where I was when Charlie called.’
    He’d managed to startle her to silence. He was not a sentimental man. He was in many ways the antithesis of a family man. That act of quiet devotion told Brodie something about Jack Deacon that she hadn’t discovered even in three and a half years; and reminded her what it was about him that she liked enough to put up with all the things that she didn’t. She bowed her head. ‘What do you want me to do?’
    He didn’t hesitate. ‘I want you to call Charlie Voss right now. He’s still at the office. Tell him everything.’

Chapter Eight
    At first the investigation proceeded along well-worn lines. Forensics. Interviews with people who might, but probably hadn’t, seen anything significant. The establishment of a timeline.
    The autopsy revealed, unsurprisingly, that Joe Loomis died of a knife driven deep enough into his armpit to sever two major arteries. The assailant was a right-handed man who’d attacked him from the front – or, just possibly, a left-handed man who’d attacked him from the rear.
    The knife itself had a ten-centimetre blade and a fancy mother-of-pearl handle that was covered with fingerprints. Unfortunately, half of them were Joe’s and the others were Brodie’s. No record survived of the killer’s hand.
    Diligent police work – in this case, looming threateningly over Wally Briggs – established that the knife belonged to Loomis. That he always carried it, and often pulled it out to emphasise a point or simply to toy with. Raising the distinct, and unsurprising, possibility that Joe himself started the altercation that led to his death.
    So far, so predictable. The murder of a decent law-abiding citizen is extremely unusual; of someone like Joe Loomis, less so. People who knew him only casually
spent the next few days nodding sagely at one another and agreeing it had only been a matter of time. There was no real public interest in who’d done it. The