Black Widow (19 page)

Nobody did. The recording could have been a still image but for minor flickering, until the door opened shortly before four o'clock. It was a burly male in biker leathers, his helmet under his arm.

‘It's like that some nights,' Brenda said apologetically. ‘You need a good book.'

Ali got her to run the file backwards until reaching her own appearance again, playing at half the speed of before to make sure they hadn't missed even the briefest of visits. Still nothing.

‘Maybe she changed her mind and went home,' Rodriguez suggested. ‘The crash could have spooked her, especially knowing her kid was in the house alone.'

This was true. On the tape, Matheson said she had told her daughter she would only be half an hour. Having seen the crash and stopped to make the call, had she decided she'd been away too long and turned around? But if her kid was sick enough for her to have ventured out in search of Calpol in the middle of the night, would she really go back empty handed?

It was something else that wouldn't sound like much if she was presenting it to Bill Ellis, but she couldn't help thinking the wrong notes were starting to accumulate.

Parlabane strode up the driveway of a neat redbrick modern detached house in an upmarket estate on the western outskirts of Inverness. His phone had told him the address. It had also told him it would take five minutes to walk from the hotel, but after a brisk ten he checked again and saw that he had looked at the driving time estimate by mistake. He thought the walk would clear his head, but as he approached the front door, clutching a bottle of wine, he was still feeling anxious, awkward and slightly guilty.

Lucy had given him as much information as she could collate with regard to Peter and Diana's work and social circles. The theatre nurse quoted in a couple of press reports was not among the names she supplied, and nor had she ever heard the woman mentioned. It was Lucy's suspicion that she was an attention-seeking busybody who had sought to insinuate herself into the story, but Parlabane had the more prosaic notion that she happened to be the one who answered the phone when a reporter called the hospital. Rather than exaggerate her own connection to Diana, it was likely she said as much as she knew and the reporter made it sound like she was a bosom buddy.

Parlabane wanted to speak to the people who genuinely knew the couple, and the briefest scan of Lucy's notes gave him his first break. The name Austin Waites leapt out at him from a list of Diana's colleagues, as he used to work alongside Sarah in Edinburgh way back when they were both registrars. Parlabane and Sarah had socialised with Austin and his partner Lucas semi-regularly in those days, and had kept in touch at Christmas card level after their respective consultant posts took them elsewhere.

It had always felt like they were more Sarah's friends than his, falling into the category of people he never saw without her. Thus he guessed that whatever they had heard about the divorce, he was unlikely to have come out of the dispatches well.

That covered the anxious and awkward aspects of how he was feeling. The guilt part derived from the fact that he had only made the effort to get in touch after all these years because he suspected they might have information. In fact, it went double because he was pretending otherwise. He had called Austin to say he was staying in Inverness for a couple of days' climbing (lie number one) and had remembered (actually just learned, so lie number two) that he and Lucas lived there now, so would they mind meeting up for a drink.

Austin insisted he come for dinner instead, which reminded Parlabane that Lucas loved to cook. He remembered huge noisy groups gathered around their kitchen table in Marchmont, candles jammed into wine bottles and the Lemonheads on the CD player. Lucas always squeezed in next to Parlabane as a non-medical ally and sole hope of taking the conversation elsewhere. He was a radio producer in those days, working on news and current affairs for BBC Scotland.

They got on well enough, but Parlabane remembered with a further pang how he had always bodyswerved Lucas's overtures towards meeting up at other times because he tended to act like a bit of a fanboy. That was a hazard he'd never need to worry about again.

The front door opened before he could reach the bell, and they welcomed him inside with a warmth he felt he didn't deserve for any number of reasons. It was an indication of how bad things had got after the Leveson Inquiry that he was always surprised when anyone gave the impression they still liked him.

As soon as he walked into their living room, he clocked the photo taking pride of place on the mantelpiece. Suits, smiles and a blizzard of confetti.

‘You guys got married?' he asked.

‘Soon as it became legal,' Lucas replied, his Canadian accent still not softened by twenty years in Scotland.

‘Congratulations.'

Parlabane felt an upspring of emotion that he hoped they interpreted as being all about them.

It wasn't, though: it was merely another thing that brought home the scale of what was gone. Austin and Lucas had been together roughly as long as he and Sarah, but it turned out they had been beginning married life round about the time he and Sarah were ending it. Christ, he wondered: was life fucking with him right now by tossing these things in his face, or was it just that you inferred cruel parallels and painful significance all the more when you were feeling so raw?

At least it turned out he needn't have worried about awkwardness deriving from what they had heard about his divorce, as there was far more awkwardness to be derived from them having heard nothing.

Lucas was setting down their main course on the kitchen table when Austin said it.

‘So, how's Sarah these days? She took an academic post for a while, didn't she? But last I heard she was back in the clinical side of things.'

If there was a positive to be gained from the ensuing confessional, it was that it provided plausible cover for him to turn the conversation towards another recently ended marriage.

‘Still, there's always someone worse off than yourself. I gather you're a colleague of Diana Jager's. I read about her husband. Must be devastating.'

Austin nodded, finishing a glass of wine and placing a hand over the top as Lucas offered a refill.

‘Did you know her?' he asked.

‘No. Sarah used to show me her blog. I didn't know she ended up in Inverness until I read about the accident.'

‘I've known her for about five years. I saw her today, in fact. It's awful. Awkward too: nobody knows what to say to her. Sorry for your loss? Can you say that? His body may never be found, they reckon. I don't even know how it works: is it still seven years before he can be declared dead?'

‘Not necessarily,' Parlabane told him, ‘if the police and the coroner conclude that death was probable. But even so, it's a horrible limbo to endure. And you say she's back at work?'

‘Yeah. I guess that's how she's dealing with it: staying busy, concentrating on something that will occupy mind and body.'

Kind of ironic, Parlabane thought, given that it all blew up for her over an article criticising a colleague for being back at work too soon after childbirth. He decided it would be politic not to share this, however; nor what it might indicate regarding her being not quite so devastated as people assumed.

‘It's so terribly, terribly sad,' Austin said. ‘We were all delighted for her when she got married, you know? All the things she wrote in that blog, it was the truth. You see it all the time: women giving the best of themselves to the profession, so they can't find someone, or can't find someone who'll put up with what the profession demands.'

Parlabane wondered if he was being subtly got at here, despite the non-judgemental sentiments offered earlier. If so, these particular barbs wouldn't pierce his armour. It had never been Sarah's job that was the problem. She was the one who had issues with what
his
profession demanded, but given that they were issues unique to the way he chose to exercise that profession, there was still no way he was coming out of this well.

‘I gather they hadn't known each other that long.'

‘About a year all told. That's what makes it all the more tragic. She found someone and very quickly they both just knew. She was happy. She
deserved
to be happy. And then a few months after the wedding, this comes out of the blue. Bang.'

‘Die young, stay pretty,' said Lucas, earning an odd look from his husband and a more guardedly curious one from Parlabane.

‘I don't mean Peter,' he clarified. ‘What I mean is, they say that about people, but can't it be true about a marriage also? They might have grown old and died together, but equally they could have been broken up within a year. Point is, we'll never know.'

‘Why would you say that?' Parlabane asked.

‘Ignore him,' said Austin. ‘He's winding me up. It's a running gag ever since I once confessed to an irrational insecurity that something would break us up now that we're married, after being contentedly together for so long before.'

‘There should be a word for the fear of ironic twists of fate,' Parlabane said, though he wasn't convinced that an affectionate dig at Austin was the whole reason for Lucas's remark.

‘We had Diana and Peter here for dinner,' Austin said. ‘Maybe a month after their wedding. We squeezed ten around this table, if you can believe it. It was great to see her out like that. She wasn't always the most sociable before then, but she seemed determined to make more of an effort after Peter came along. He had a really positive effect on her.'

Austin looked away and sighed, a glum but searching expression on his face.

‘We'll need to try and reach out to her now. Make sure she doesn't retreat into herself.'

By way of drawing a line under an uncomfortable subject, Austin got up and began clearing the dishes. Parlabane ignored protestations to stay in his seat and helped ferry a few items to the kitchen.

‘If you're in an obliging mood,' said Lucas, ‘perhaps you could spare an hour to give a talk to my students.'

Lucas had explained how he was now a senior lecturer in media studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Parlabane knew quite a few journalists who had moved into academia as work dried up in their own fields, many of them doing so with resignation and regret. Lucas, by contrast, seemed utterly content; indeed Parlabane couldn't recall seeing him so enthused in talking about his work. It fitted his longstanding fascination with Parlabane's activities back in the day, which always seemed to exercise him more than the subject of his own endeavours. Lucas, it seemed, was more comfortable as an analyst and an observer of the media than as a hands-on practitioner.

‘I don't know, Lucas. It's not something I could do without a bit of preparation.'

‘Oh, no, you wouldn't need to give a lecture. Just a kind of Q and A. I would tee you up with the questions.'

Parlabane felt horrible now. He was indebted to his hosts for their hospitality, but strangely uncomfortable about the prospect of what Lucas was requesting, and he couldn't tell him the truth about why. It wasn't inexperience in speaking to students, as Lucas knew Parlabane had done plenty of that during his stint as rector of a university a few years back. It was the fear that this was what awaited him.

With so many doors closing all around him, it had already been in the back of his mind as a possible option offering a regular salary and even the chance to salvage some respectability. But it also represented a final surrender. It would be like being put out to stud, when he wanted to believe he still had races left in him.

‘I'm sorry. It's not a good time, you know? Between the work situation and what happened with Sarah, that's why I'm up here climbing: trying to get my head together.'

‘That's okay, forget about it.'

But he could tell Lucas wasn't going to. There was a glint in his eye as he spoke, ostensibly of bonhomie but somehow calculating. Parlabane's explanation hadn't cut it.

Austin got to his feet and announced his intention to have an early night as he was operating the next morning. He gave Parlabane a hug, a look of sincere regret on his face as he said: ‘So sorry again about you and Sarah.'

Austin headed up the stairs as Lucas crouched down in front of a cupboard and produced a bottle of single malt. He poured them each a generous dram of Glenfarclas. Parlabane recalled a line in a song about clearing your conscience with Speyside. So far the highland air hadn't done it. Might as well let the highland spirit take a shot.

‘It really is great to see you again,' Lucas said, sitting down opposite. ‘Let's not leave it so long in future.'

‘Absolutely. Next time I'm up this way, I'll definitely give you guys a shout.'

‘Where was it today? The Cobbler? Angel's Peak?'

The question confused Parlabane for a moment, until he remembered the false pretext he had given for getting in touch.

‘The Cobbler.'

Lucas had that glint again. It made him uneasy.

‘Ranger service was advising strongly against climbing today due to high winds.'

Lucas sat back in his chair, helping himself to a sip, all the time keeping his gaze trained on his mortified guest.

‘Why were you lying to us, Jack?'

Parlabane couldn't bring himself to argue, as that would be to lie again.

‘The usual.'

Lucas nodded, thin-lipped and glowering. He let Parlabane shrink under his admonitory stare for a few seconds then couldn't keep it up any longer.

‘Sneaky sonofabitch,' he said, with a dirty laugh. ‘I goddamn knew it.'

Parlabane gave a bashfully apologetic smile.

‘Thanks for not calling me on it during dinner.'

‘Didn't want to ruin the atmosphere. But I'm calling you on it now. The price is you're singing for your supper. UHI, Inverness Campus. Shall we say eleven tomorrow?'