Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

It didn’t to Dan either, but he fought my corner as he’d promised he would. My only leverage was the fact that we’d known each other for years. I’d first met him in South Africa when I joined the Cape Times as a rookie sub-editor from Oxford, and he was a columnist. We overlapped for a year before he moved abroad to join Reuters, but we knocked into each other regularly when he was sent to cover an “Africa” story. He came from Johannesburg, but his primary place of residence-according to his tax returns-was County Wexford, Eire, where he “lived” with his Irish wife, Ailish, and their daughter, Fionnula.

It was a strange relationship. His visits to Ireland were even more intermittent than the occasional postings that brought him and me together. I asked him once how he came to marry an Irish girl, and he said it was a shotgun wedding when she fell pregnant. “She was a student in London and was frightened to go home without a ring. Her father believes in hellfire and brimstone. He’d have kicked her out to fend for herself.”

“Why didn’t she have an abortion?”

“Because Ailish believes in hellfire and brimstone more than her old man does.”

“It didn’t stop her sleeping with you.”

“Mmm…except some sins are smaller than others”-he grinned-“and my charm might have had something to do with it. It’s worked out for the best in the end. Fee’s a grand kid. It would have been a crime to abort her.”

“If you feel like that why don’t you make more of an effort to see her?”

He shrugged. “It causes too many problems. The only time the family argues is when I’m there. They all approve of the monthly cheque but not the lodger.”

“Does she live with her parents?”

“Not quite. Three houses down. They’re a close-knit bunch. She has three brothers within a two-mile radius who turn up in force every time I visit to make sure I’m not going to renege on my responsibilities. I feel a bit like Daniel entering the lions’ den whenever I go there.”

It all seemed very peculiar to me. And rather sad. “Do you still sleep with Ailish?”

His eyes crinkled at the edges. “She lets me stay in the spare room, but that’s about as far as her hospitality goes…apart from keeping her lover at arm’s length for the duration.”

“You’re crazy,” I said in disbelief. “Why don’t you get a divorce?”

“What for? There’s no one else to marry…except you…and you won’t have me.”

“You can’t cook.”

“Neither can you.”

“Precisely, which is why we’d make a lousy couple. We’d starve.” I bared my teeth at him. “Are you sure it’s not a scam to avoid paying income tax? Everyone knows writers and artists are zero-rated in Ireland.”

“Only creative writers…and you have to spend six months a year in the country to qualify. Journalists are excluded.”

I couldn’t see that stopping him. He’d worked on a Reuters financial desk at one stage in his career and claimed to know every tax-dodge going. “Are you planning to live there when you write the great novel?”

“It’s crossed my mind.”

“With Ailish?”

Dan shook his head. “I’d rather have a cottage in Kerry, overlooking Dingle Bay. I took Fee there the last time I was over, and it was beautiful. We walked along the beach.” He paused. “By the time I take the plunge- if I take the plunge-she’ll be a grown woman. What do you think she’ll make of her father then? Will she still want to walk in the sand with me?”

It was said in the same amused tone that he’d used throughout, but the words suggested something else. A feeling for his child that he wanted reciprocated. It surprised me. I thought he was like me, determinedly unwilling to commit as the only way to stay sane in a life that was nomadic. Perhaps his daughter had given him roots. I envied him suddenly.

And I envied Fee. Did she know how Dan felt about her? Did she know who he was? What he’d done? What he’d written? How he was viewed outside the narrow confines of her mother’s family?

“She’ll be a strange woman, if she doesn’t,” I said. “It’s feminine nature to be curious…comes from centuries of having nothing to do except analyse male behaviour. As to what she’ll make of you”-I paused-“I hope you’ll always be a mystery to her, Dan. That way, she’ll keep coming back for more.”

He made a passing reference to that conversation as he waited with me at Baghdad airport. “How am I going to get in touch with you? The only contact number I have is your mobile…and that’s gone. I’m beginning to realize how little I actually know about you, Connie. I need your parents’ details.”

I forced a smile. “I wrote their address and number on the pad in your flat when I called home,” I lied, “but you can always find them in the personnel files under next of kin.” In fact I hadn’t updated the details since my parents left Zimbabwe, so the only address on record was Japera Farm, and I couldn’t see Mugabe’s crony forwarding correspondence.

Dan nodded. “OK. And you’re happy with the arrangements? Harry Smith will meet you at Heathrow and steer you through the press conference. After that, he’ll ask for you to be left alone…although you’ll certainly be chased for quotes if and when Adelina Bianca’s released.” He reached for my hand. “Can you cope with all of that?”

I tried not to show how much I hated being touched. “Yes.”

“You’ll be asked about the length of time you were held. That’s the issue that’s going to interest them. Why only three days? Were you given the reason for your release? Who negotiated it? Was any money paid?” He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. “It might be worth thinking it through on the plane. You can legitimately plead ignorance on most things, but they’ll want to know what you said to your kidnappers and whether you think that influenced your treatment.”

Twenty feet away, a woman smacked a toddler on the back of his head. I couldn’t see what his offence was, but the heavy-handed blow seemed disproportionate to any crime a two-year-old could have committed. I felt a rush of sadness in my throat-the precursor to tears-but I’d lost the ability to cry and gazed dry-eyed at Dan as I slipped my hand from his and hunched inside my borrowed jacket. Underneath, I was still wearing my “abduction” clothes, a cotton skirt and shirt, which I’d washed before Dan took me to the police station. I’d accepted the jacket from a female colleague in case it was cold in London.

“Are you asking me to make something up?”

He looked away. “I’m suggesting you get your story straight, Connie. You told the police you couldn’t speak because of the duct tape over your mouth…but in the next breath said you were given water regularly. That can only have happened if the tape was removed, so why didn’t you speak then?”

“Because it wouldn’t have made any difference. If they’d wanted to kill me they’d have killed me.”

“Then, yes,” he said with sudden impatience. “I’m suggesting you make something up. You know the deal. It’s all about column inches, so give them the best story you can.”

I dug my hands into my pockets. “Otherwise what?”

“They’ll compare you with Adelina, Connie, and look for bruises. They’ll ask for the doctor’s report-clean bill of health, with minor bruising on your wrists and some redness round your mouth and eyes from the duct tape-and they’ll want to know why you got off so lightly. What are you going to tell them?”

I ran my tongue across my lips. “That I don’t know.”

“And when they ask what you were wearing-which they certainly will-how are you going to answer that?”