Echoes of Lies by Jo Bannister Read Free Book Online

quietly out of the flat and went upstairs.
    Marta Szarabeijka was watching television. A music teacher by profession, she had remarkably eclectic tastes. Sometimes when
Brodie came up here she was listening to the Berlin Philharmonic, sometimes she was watching Emmerdale. Brodie suspected this was where Paddy got her taste for tractors.
    Tonight it was a game-show. Beside herself with excitement, Marta waved Brodie to a chair. “Sit down, sit down - one more inflatable reindeer and he gets to go to Lappland!”
    Brodie remained standing. “Marta,” she said faintly.
    Marta Szarabeijka knew a real crisis from a show-biz one even in the sound of a word. She turned off the television and put her arm about Brodie’s shoulders in the same fluid movement. She was a tall, bony woman in her fifties, as strong as a mule and about as obstinate, and Brodie’s life would have been poorer with almost anyone else living upstairs. Marta was her child-minder, her signer-for-unexpected-parcels, her confidante, her friend. The generation separating them was no obstacle: they enjoyed a kind of pick-and-mix relationship that was partly that of sisters, sometimes more like mother and daughter, most often that of a couple of college girls. They laughed together, complained about men to one another, dried each other’s tears when the need arose.
    Marta peered into Brodie’s red-rimmed eyes with real concern and said quietly, “What happened? Is Paddy all right?”
    â€œPaddy’s fine,” Brodie nodded. “Though I’ll have to get back. I came to see if you’ve got anything for burns.” She held out her hand. The red spot was barely visible but the word destroyed her. She fell on her knees on the carpet, hugging herself and rocking, and crying and crying and crying.
    Marta dropped beside her, folding her in long bony arms, talking softly into Brodie’s hair. “Is all right,” she crooned in her oddly gruff and accented voice, “is all right. Marta’s here. Cry as much you want. Then we go downstairs and you tell me what this is all about. A little burn like that? - I don’t think.” But before they left her flat she collected a jar from the bathroom cabinet.
    Brodie had got her breath back enough to start feeling guilty. “What about the reindeers? Come down when it’s over.”
    â€œFock the reindeers,” said Marta Szarabeijka briskly, shutting her door.

    Paddy was still asleep, dreaming of combine harvesters. They tiptoed back into the living room and Marta turned her attention to Brodie’s hand. “You want to tell me what happened?” She pronounced her Ys like Js.
    Brodie wanted desperately to tell her what happened. But DI Deacon’s warning echoed in her ears. She’d have trusted Marta with her life, but she’d given her word and wouldn’t break it to get a little sympathy.
    â€œI can’t tell you much,” she mumbled. “I promised, and someone’s safety could depend on it. But I did something in good faith that helped someone else do something terrible.” She looked down at her hand, comforted by Marta’s potion. “Somebody got burned. I was trying so hard to rationalise it - I didn’t know, there was no way I could know what they intended. And then I did this, and somehow it didn’t matter who was to blame, what I knew and didn’t know, only the pain. They couldn’t have found him without me, and when they did they hurt him so much …
    â€œOh Marta,” she moaned, “I’m saying too much now, don’t breathe a word of this outside, only I can’t bear it. This - it’s nothing but it really hurt. And him … And I didn’t even know him. I just did it for the money. It was a job: you give me some money, I find who you’re looking for - and it’s hardly my fault if you nearly torture him to death, is it? Only it is. They