Deep Blue Sea (13 page)

It was so tempting to say yes. She didn’t fancy clubbing or dinner, but right now all she wanted to do was sit by this pool and watch the ripples and feel the warmth of someone besides her who knew exactly what she was going through, and who cared enough to drop whatever he was doing to come and see her.

‘In which case, do you mind?’ he said, already straightening his tie and smoothing out the creases in his trousers.

‘It’s been good to see you, Adam.’

He kissed her cheek and she noticed how good he smelt.

‘We’ll do it again, all right?’

‘I’d like that very much indeed.’

16

Rachel sat on the train and smiled to herself. A twenty-something couple sitting opposite her started kissing, then pulled apart and giggled, their eyes locked, oblivious to the people around them: happy and in love. She caught the expression of a City gent standing peering down at them: the curl of the lip and the roll of the eye. A few years ago, Rachel knew she would have thought the same, but things had changed since then. A lot of things. She closed her eyes and thought about that night in Thailand, her lips on Liam’s, the smell of him, his hot breath on her skin.

Yeah, a lot of things have changed
, she thought, opening her eyes.
And not all for the
better
.

She was glad the day was almost over. Meetings with both her mother and Greg Willets had left her feeling raw. She wanted to see a friendly face. Not that she was guaranteed that at the other end of her journey. Rachel hadn’t seen Ross McKiney in three years, and they hadn’t parted in the best circumstances; she wasn’t at all sure what sort of reception she would get.

She got off at Clapton station, squinting in the early evening sun. Across the road was a fried chicken outlet, a minimart and a booth proclaiming ‘We unlock all phones’. This was not the fashionable part of the East End, made hip by art and music or gentrified by the presence of the Olympic Park, and given that it would be getting dark soon, it was a little scary.

Come on, Rach,
she scolded herself, stealing a look at her A to Z. She’d walked around the back streets of Bangkok; this was Beverly Hills by comparison. Following her map, she came to an estate, a mixture of sixties terraces and tower blocks that made her quicken her pace, and within a few minutes she was outside an end-of-row house with a wonky gate and a rusty motorbike in the tiny front yard.

She knocked, and as the door creaked open, a ball of fluff slid out of the house, brushing past her leg. Ross McKiney stood in the door frame in jeans and an old jumper.

‘You have a cat.’ Rachel smiled at her old friend.

‘Things change. You know that, look at you. Hair, short?’

‘Men don’t usually notice that sort of thing.’

‘I’m just your typical metrosexual,’ he said as his face slowly creased into a smile. He reached out and pulled her into a hug. ‘Come on into the palace,’ he said, ruffling the top of her hair.

She followed him inside, blinking in the gloom.

‘You’ll have to excuse the mess, maid’s day off and all that.’

It was a small living room, dominated by an overlarge Dralon sofa. It had the air of having been recently – and hurriedly – tidied, but no amount of hoovering could disguise the peeling wallpaper and the faint smell of cat pee. Rachel felt awkward standing here in his private space. No, not just awkward, guilty. Over the last three years, she had barely spoken to Ross McKiney, despite the fact that they had once been such good friends. She had written to him several times in jail, and had begun emailing him when he was released. Both types of communication were rarely answered. For months there would be nothing, then long, unpunctuated, rambling replies talking about things and people she had never heard of. She looked at her old friend; his hairline had receded since they had last met, his mouth scored with heavy smoker’s lines. Six months in prison had aged him by ten years at least. She wondered how she might have looked now if she hadn’t had such a good lawyer.

‘Sit down,’ said Ross, and Rachel perched on the edge of an armchair. ‘Nice tan, by the way. What on earth possessed you to leave Paradise?’

Rachel laughed, and felt herself relax a little. She and Ross had been close once – as her favoured investigator and fix-it man, he had worked side by side with her on dozens of stories. He was ex-forces, off-the-book intelligence; he could extract computer files, obtain criminal records within the hour and had a hotline to the most ruthless paparazzi. He was like a cut-price James Bond, but you’d never know to look at him. Broad nose, broader Midlands accent and a bit flabby around the middle, he looked like someone’s dad at the school gates.

‘All will be revealed if you want to put the kettle on,’ she said, relaxing back in the chair. ‘Got any Kit Kats?’

As Ross disappeared into the kitchen, Rachel got out her notebook and pen. She would have been happy to spend time laughing and joking – you didn’t sit for hours in a car staking out some politician’s house, fuelled by Lucozade and packets of prawn cocktail crisps, without developing an honest and easy friendship – but she knew that Ross would want to get straight down to business. He had always been no-nonsense; that was why he had been good at his job. In fact, when Rachel had seen him that day in court, before he was sentenced for phone-hacking – her newspaper’s phone-hacking – he had just shrugged. ‘Well, at least I’ll be able to catch up on my knitting,’ he had said.

Ross was a pragmatist; he knew someone had to go to jail for the scandal, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard for him. Rachel had spent the last three years wishing she could have done something more to help him. Wishing he hadn’t been a scapegoat, not just for her, but for many others in the industry who hadn’t merely known what he did, but had condoned and encouraged it. He was simply a contractor, someone the newspapers paid to do the leg-work on stories: surveillance, covert photography and, yes, phone-tapping. He was there to incubate the investigations, flesh them out; without private investigators, many stories would just remain as rumours.

Ross came back into the room and handed her a steaming mug.

‘Listen,’ said Rachel, ‘I just wanted to say—’

‘I know, I know.’ He shrugged. ‘You feel guilty, it shouldn’t have been me, you wish it hadn’t turned out the way it did.’ He shook his head. ‘I know, but it’s all water under the bridge now, okay? I don’t blame you.’

‘I just wish that more of the bastards had suffered . . .’

She didn’t want to name-check any of the senior journalists and management – they both knew who they were. The ones who had demanded juicier scoops to boost the paper’s circulation, who were reckless about how stories were got hold of, but who had been quick to raise their hands in disbelief and say that they had had no idea that their staff had broken the law and phone-hacked to get their information. Who had been paid off with hefty retirement pots or shunted upstairs to escape the scandal when it had come home to roost.

‘But they didn’t, did they?’ said Ross. ‘And it wouldn’t have made me feel any better if you’d gone down too, hand on heart, Rach. So let’s move on, okay?’

He took a Kit Kat out of his pocket and threw it towards her.

‘Have your sugar fix, then you can start to tell me about Julian.’

‘How do you know this is about my brother-in-law?’ She hadn’t told him on the phone.

‘I do still read the papers, Rachel. Julian Denver commits suicide, two weeks later you appear on my doorstep; it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to put two and two together.’

‘Diana asked me to find out what happened.’

‘He killed himself, didn’t he? Your sister doesn’t suspect foul play, does she?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘No, but she wants to know why. According to Diana, he was happy, looking forward to the future. Things happen for a reason, especially things as awful as suicide, and she’s angry and sad and bewildered that she doesn’t know what that reason was.’

‘And she doesn’t trust the inquest to find out.’

She nodded, knowing that an investigator as experienced as Ross would be able to fill in the gaps. They had both attended inquests in the name of work, and knew that open verdicts were quite regularly recorded in cases like this, which was often both heartbreaking and frustrating for the families concerned.

Ross looked thoughtful. ‘What do the police think?’

Rachel hadn’t had time to see the investigating officer in person yet, although she had spoken to an Inspector Mark Graham on the phone. ‘Straightforward suicide, no reason to think otherwise,’ she confirmed. ‘The house had CCTV surveillance – no one came in or out, only Julian and Diana in the house.’

He looked at her, eyebrows raised.

‘No, Ross. They don’t think she killed him either.’

‘She’d have enough motive,’ said Ross cynically.

‘Ross, this is my sister.’

‘Okay, okay, just saying,’ he said, raising a palm. ‘You were the one who always insisted on looking at every angle on a story.’

‘This isn’t a “story”. Julian was my brother-in-law. It’s personal. I want to know why he did it too.’

‘Mind if I get something stronger?’ he said, pointing at his tea.

‘Not for me.’

She watched him get up and go to a small drinks cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of Scotch and poured himself a measure. He had always been a big drinker, but that was almost half an IKEA tumbler full of neat Famous Grouse.

‘How’s life treating you, Ross?’ she asked when he sat down.

‘A spell in jail doesn’t exactly help one’s employment prospects . . .’

‘Have you found anything?’

‘Couple of shifts behind the bar at the local pub, plus I was thinking of signing on for a course to retrain as a plumber, although you wouldn’t believe how expensive college fees are for mature
students.’

‘Well, I might be able to help you out there.’

He looked at her with interest.

‘I need help,’ she added. ‘Help to find out what was going on in Julian’s life. Money is no object. Diana will pay a generous fee, plus any expenses . . .’

‘Well, it’s not as if my diary’s full.’

Rachel grinned.

‘Tell me what you know,’ he said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

‘Aren’t you going to ask how much I’m paying you?’

‘It’ll be more than my pub shifts, believe me.’

She ran her finger down the foil of her chocolate bar and began to tell him about the past forty-eight hours, finishing her story at around the same time as he had drained his Scotch.

‘So you’ve not got much then,’ he said flatly.

She frowned. ‘I thought the woman in Washington was interesting.’

‘Most likely a hooker. Especially if he wasn’t getting much sex at home. A leopard doesn’t change his spots and all that.’

‘Even if it was a hooker, it would show there were cracks in the marriage.’

Ross scoffed. ‘Men like Julian don’t have affairs because there’s something wrong with their marriages. They have sex with other women because they can.’

There was a few seconds’ silence as Ross seemed to turn things over in his mind.

‘So what do you think, Rach? Your instincts were always pretty sound.’

‘I think he was weak, for a start. He had an eye for the ladies. Plus I think that the CEO role at Denver Group was a big, stressful job and maybe he just buckled under the pressure. He’d been groomed all his life for it – what if he couldn’t handle it?’

‘I’m no rich guy, but I’ve spent enough time following them around and I’ve never seen much mental weakness. They all think they’re God’s gift.’

‘He did suffer from depression when he was at university,’ said Rachel.

‘Twenty-odd years ago?’ Ross pulled a face. ‘No disrespect to your sister, but that sounds like someone trying to find a convenient reason, not the real one.’

Rachel looked at her friend, heard the passion in his voice. There was more colour in his face, and his hands were moving around excitedly. It was as if he was coming alive before her eyes.

‘So what is the real one?’ she asked.

‘That their marriage was horrible? Maybe
she
was screwing around on
him
?’

‘Ross!’

‘If you’re going to do this properly, you need to examine all the possibilities, not just the ones that you feel comfortable with. It’s the only way to get to the truth. Then all you have to work out is what to tell your sister.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Diana wants resolution, not the truth,’ said Ross plainly. ‘Don’t put her through any more pain.’

‘I think you’ve missed this,’ she said finally.

‘No, I’ve missed you, Rachel Miller. Even if you do drive me round the bend.’

‘I’ve missed you too, you old goat.’

‘What do the family think?’

‘I haven’t talked to them yet, but Diana seems to think they are blaming the depression. She doesn’t really believe it, but secretly I think that’s the answer she wants to hear.’

‘Well she’s not going to want to hear that he killed himself because their marriage was so bad. No one wants to hear that. So where do you want me to start?’ asked Ross.

‘Check out this woman in Washington.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out a fat envelope. ‘You should also look through these. Copies of Julian’s bank statements from various accounts. I want you to see if I’ve missed anything.’

‘What did you find?’

‘Apart from my astonishment at how someone can spend £4,650 at a cigar shop, there were a couple of interesting things.’

‘Payments to a Washington lingerie store? A transvestite brothel?’

She laughed. ‘Wouldn’t that make life so much easier?’

‘Well, if we’re settling in, I’d better get myself another drink.’

‘Ross, go easy.’

‘You sound like my ex-wife.’ Ross had separated very shortly after his imprisonment and divorced twelve months later.

‘How is she?’

‘Okay,’ he replied without conviction. ‘Getting ready to move to Cape Town. She’s got married again; they’re all moving out there.’

Rachel frowned. ‘That guy Phillip? She’s only been with him two minutes.’

‘Try two years.’

‘But what about the kids?’ she said, glancing at a picture of two teenagers on the TV cabinet. ‘Don’t you have any say in it? She can’t just take them to South Africa, surely?’

‘Sure, I could object. I could spend the money I don’t have on lawyers’ fees, but the truth is, Phillip’s a nice guy. Good job, stable, everything Kath’s always wanted. And, well . . . the kids don’t like coming here. You can’t really blame them, can you?’

His expression wasn’t bitter, just sad, like a man defeated. She wondered if this was the right time to tell him about her life in Thailand. How she had turned things around, made a new life for herself without the people she loved in it.