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‘Can you?’ Daniel asked, but he was really wondering if Blackwell already knew, or guessed, far more than Daniel did.
‘You can do most things, if you know the right people to ask.’ Blackwell smiled, pouring himself another cup of tea. ‘And, of course, the right questions.’
Daniel thought of a lot of things to ask, and a lot of warnings and rules for Blackwell to keep, or at least not to break too badly, and ended up simply saying, ‘Thank you.’ He took a sip of his own tea, still very hot, and a bite of the bacon sandwich. It was so good he realised how hungry he was, and ate the rest of it before speaking again.
Blackwell was following his own train of thought. ‘Wonder what axe the publisher has to grind. He won’t be so stupid as to think he could avoid causing a furore.’
Mercy put down the piece of toast she was buttering. ‘There could be a lot of interesting things to find out about that,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘And a lot of reasons for doing it, or not doing it.’
Daniel turned to look at her. The white stripe in her hair caught the light and shone dazzlingly, then she moved her head and it was shadowed again.
‘Apart from money, what?’ he asked. ‘A personal revenge? Pretty deep hatred to take revenge on the dead, isn’t it? Someone who was too scared to do it while they were alive?’
‘Your father’s head of Special Branch, right?’ Mercy said thoughtfully, moving her own slice of toast away from the open door of the oven fire.
‘Yes.’
‘His intention would be protecting the reputation of his friends, not protecting his own. It’s a good distinction. Oldest trick in the book,’ she added.
‘He’d see through that,’ Daniel answered, but as he said it, he wondered if it were true. Friends, real friends who had fought battles beside you, after they were exhausted, but fought on to protect, stood by you. Even if the end was defeat, they did not leave you, they stayed with you. Friends knew your flaws, as you did theirs, but stood by you anyway. You laughed together, and mourned together, celebrated victories and grieved for losses. Pitt would never let them down. Perhaps if they were guilty you could not protect them from the carrion creatures who dared not attack them when they were alive. But still you would protect what you could. That’s what friendship is, not lies, sometimes not silence either.
He had seen it in his father, as long as he could remember. His mother, too. She was even quicker to defend the vulnerable. It did not often occur to her to wonder if they deserved it. In fact, he could not remember her ever doing that. She had defended him when he was wrong, but punished him herself afterwards! He smiled at it now, but he had been scared stiff of her anger at the time.
Strange thing, loyalty; defence of the vulnerable, whether right or wrong. Who to trust? Loyalty to what? Which were the ideals to follow? There were so very many! What were they worth, if mercy were not one of them?
He sipped his tea again, and another bacon sandwich appeared on his plate. ‘Thank you,’ he said appreciatively, and began eating it immediately.
‘We must find out where Graves got his information, starting with those things that are true.’ Blackwell resumed.
‘There’s not much of it true!’ Daniel said too quickly.
Mercy patted him on the arm. ‘Whatever is. It’s the only starting place that we know of. Get those things, and you may get the people. And find something we would like to have been true, and wasn’t, and that’s a point to fix the moving pieces!’
Daniel began to see what she was meaning. ‘But if we do find out who was giving Graves the information, what good will that do us?’
Mercy was absolutely direct. ‘What good do you want?’
Daniel hesitated. What he wanted most was to prove beyond doubt that his father was not guilty of concealing a murder dishonourably, that he had a compelling reason, one that any decent person would understand. Graves had implied that this reason did not exist. There was nothing to expose, if there were such a reason. He knew perfectly well that Pitt would never have sanctioned the killing of Ebony Graves. That was not even a question. Nor would he have intentionally looked the other way while someone else did.
And did not that amount to the question, in the end, of whether Narraway was guilty of any of the things he was accused of?
Another thought occurred to him. If Narraway was guilty, had the person behind this known that at the time? Had they colluded in it?
And did he, Daniel, want to prove Graves innocent, or not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Or did he really want to see him hanged, but with a clean conscience?
Mercy was waiting, watching his face.
Perhaps the last was really the truth, and he wanted to see him hanged.
‘I want lots of things,’ he said. ‘In order? I want to prove Graves killed his wife and we would be right to hang him. That if he didn’t, I want to know who did, and prove that. And I want to prove that my father didn’t—’ He stopped.
He had said too much already. Was betrayal really as easy as that – a careless word because you could not carry the weight of a secret alone? The doubt in it was too much for you?
‘And you would like it in the next fifteen days,’ Mercy said in black humour.
‘Sixteen,’ Daniel corrected, his own smile twisted.
‘Fifteen,’ she repeated. ‘Eight o’clock in the morning, sixteen days from now, he’ll be hanged.’
