The Depths of Solitude by Jo Bannister

would be damaged by that.
    “So he came to Dimmock and made a new life for himself as a teacher. Now that’s gone. But there was me. I owed him, and I promised I’d always be there for him. But I let him down. He’s alone again. And I know he has guts to spare, but if he doesn’t want to go on that may be what gets him from making the decision to carrying it out. Suicide takes courage too. Most people who wish they were dead never do anything about it.”

    “Daniel Hood is not going to kill himself,” said Marta firmly. “You got my word. If you ever believe anything I say, believe that. So he’s acting crazy – but not that crazy. Maybe he wants a fresh start. There’s not much keeping him in Dimmock now. Maybe he’s thought of something else to do with his life.”
    “And he won’t tell me about it? Even though he knows how worried I am?”
    Marta gave a bony, expressive shrug. “Brodie – you don’t think, when you called him a murderer, you lost the right to be consulted about his plans?”
    Brodie’s cheek flamed as if her friend had slapped it. “I didn’t – !” And she hadn’t, not in so many words. But she as good as did. She’d reached in and ripped the heart out of him. She could have lied. She did it often enough when it hardly mattered, but not to salve the battered soul of a man she cared for. Deacon was right and so was Marta. What Daniel did was justified; what she did was not. She fought back tears.
    Marta’s long arm went consolingly about her shoulders. Brodie shook it off more roughly than she meant. “I’m sorry. I know you’re right. About me, anyway – I just hope you’re right about Daniel. But if you are …”
    “What?”
    Brodie’s long-fingered hands were prayer folded before her mouth as she thought it through. “Tell me I’m stupid. Tell me I’m wrong about this too. That it’s a coincidence, that nobody goes to that much trouble, that there are simpler, quicker and more satisfying ways of hurting someone .”
    The older woman frowned and shrugged. “No. Maybe if you said it in Polish, but …”
    Brodie knew she wasn’t making much sense. She hoped it was because the whole idea made no sense. But
there was some logic to it that she couldn’t quite dismiss. “Suppose you’re right, Marta. If you are, maybe when Daniel left Nottingham he came back here. There was nowhere else for him to go, and no reason. He’d decided to leave Dimmock but not like a thief doing a moonlight flit. He had the estate agents to deal with. Maybe he meant to deal with me too. He came back a week ago. But somebody got to him before he came to us.”
    Marta’s forehead was like corrugated paper. “What are you saying, Brodie? That he’s been kidnapped? Again?”
    Brodie gave a desperate snort though it was no laughing matter. “It doesn’t seem entirely fair, does it? Lots of people go their whole lives and never get kidnapped once.”
    But it wasn’t a joke and Marta knew it. “Spit it out, Brodie. You think someone’s hurt him? Who? Why?”
    “The same person who’s doing the rest of it. If someone wants to hurt me, harming my friends would be a good way.”
    Now she understood Marta’s thin brows rocketed. “The stalker? You think he’s got at Daniel?”
    Brodie felt sick with fear. “It’s a week since anyone saw him. Simon thought he was coming home. Maybe he did, or at least tried to. Maybe he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere, and not because of anything he’s done but because of something I’ve done. And I don’t even know what!”
    For long seconds Marta just breathed in and out through the O of her lips. But behind the stunned mask she was thinking. There had been times in Marta Szarabeijka’s past when her life depended on being able to think fast and get the right answer, and she’d never lost the knack.
    “What’s the point?” she asked. “If someone killed
Daniel to hurt you, he’d need you to know. To see what he’d done. Why hide the