Deep Waters (10 page)

The phone rang. She looked at the caller display; it was not a number she recognised. ‘Lilith Noone speaking,’ she said.

‘Ah, good. You’re not an easy woman to track down.’ The voice—female—at the other end chuckled.

That, Lilith could have informed her caller, was quite
deliberate
. In her line of work, the last thing she needed was a stream of phone calls from people with a grievance against her. She’d been ex-directory for years, and gave out her number only to people with a legitimate reason to ring her. Her curiosity was piqued. ‘And you are…?’ she asked.

‘Addie McLean. Editor of
HotStuff
magazine.’

HotStuff
! The ultimate celebrity gossip magazine. Addie McLean was a legend in that world; she’d left a safe job at
Hello!
to start a publication that was altogether more incendiary.
HotStuff
went where other gossip mags never dared to tread, and as a result they were constantly in court on libel charges. It was all good publicity, Addie McLean had been quoted as saying more than once. Everyone knew about
HotStuff
; celebrities dreaded seeing their names in it almost as much as they feared
not
being in it.

‘Oh,’ said Lilith, unusually at a loss for words.

‘I enjoyed your story in today’s
Globe
,’ said Addie McLean. ‘It was a good piece of work.’

‘Thank you.’ Lilith’s chest swelled as she took a deep breath.

‘And I was wondering whether you ever do any free-lance work? Does your editor allow it?’

It had never come up before, but Lilith didn’t want to admit that. ‘I don’t think it’s a problem,’ she improvised.

‘I’d really like to commission a piece from you. Jodee and Chazz, of course. Since you seem to have an inside track there. Would you be interested?’

Would she be interested? Did the woman think she was
dim-witted
? ‘Yes, of course.’

‘It’s the funeral I’m keen on,’ Addie McLean went on. ‘Muffin’s funeral. You’ll be going?’

Lilith hadn’t even thought about the funeral, but of course that would be the big set-piece. She should be covering it for the
Globe
. That didn’t mean, though, that she couldn’t write a piece for
HotStuff
as well, did it? Find a different angle?

‘Yes, I’ll be going.’ With any luck, not just as a member of the press but as a family friend. Just like the wedding.

‘Good. Then are we agreed? You’ll cover the funeral for
HotStuff
?’

She’d square it with her editor somehow. Rob wasn’t totally unreasonable. It would be all right. This wasn’t something she could say no to, after all. ‘Yes,’ said Lilith firmly. ‘I’d be delighted to do that.’

Putting the phone down, she performed another act that would have surprised people who knew her: Lilith punched the air with her fist and uttered one loud syllable. ‘Yesssssss!’

Callie had been hoping to hear from Marco; she had so much to tell him, and she was still carrying around the CD for Chiara’s birthday.

When he rang, though, he was focused. ‘Listen, Callie,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve sort of landed you in it. With Jodee and Chazz.’

‘What? Me?’

‘The funeral,’ he said. ‘One of my jobs is to help people with funeral arrangements.’

‘Yes,’ said Callie. She knew that; Marco had mentioned it before. It was one way he could offer practical assistance to the families he was dealing with. ‘But what does that have to do with me?’

‘They live in your parish.’

Jodee and Chazz. Her parishioners. She was silent as the implications of that sank in.

Marco went on, ‘They’d like to see you. This afternoon. To talk about the funeral.’

‘But it’s Brian they should be talking to. He’s the vicar.’ And he’d have kittens if she got involved in this without his permission.

‘It’s Brian’s day off, isn’t it?’ Marco pointed out.

Brian’s Saturdays were sacrosanct, fiercely protected by Jane. If the church burnt down on a Saturday afternoon, Brian wouldn’t know about it until the Sunday morning unless he happened to look out of the window of the vicarage.

Callie tried again. ‘But can’t it wait a day or two? The funeral surely won’t be happening for a while. Brian could come, say, first thing Monday morning.’

‘Jodee wants
you
.’ Marco sighed apologetically. ‘I told her about you,
Cara mia
. I suppose my enthusiasm carried me away. And she really likes the idea of having a woman take the funeral. She wants
you
, not Brian. Not “some old vicar geezer”, she said, to be precise.’

Brian would go spare. Not to mention Jane. Celebrities in his parish, by-passing him in defiance of all protocol. And Callie landed squarely in the middle of it.

‘She’s in a bad way,’ he added. ‘And Chazz, too. They could really use someone to talk to.’

She tried once more. ‘But
Brian
—’

‘Please, Callie.’

That simple appeal, and the emotion behind it, convinced her. People in her parish needed her. Brian might not like it, but he’d have to deal with it. ‘The parishioners come first’: how many times had Brian said those words to her, whether he meant them or not?

‘Yes, all right,’ she capitulated. ‘I’ll come.’

‘You won’t be able to miss the house,’ Marco said, with a hint of a smile in his voice. ‘It’s the one with the crowd out front.’

‘Crowd?’

‘The press,’ he amplified. ‘Dozens of them. And television cameras. Not that they’ve had anything much to film. Until you get here, that is.’

‘Oh, brilliant.’ That was all she needed: for Brian to see her on the evening news.

The news conference had already been scheduled and announced: it would be held at three p.m. on Saturday. Neville had taken the decision to schedule it after talking to Mark, who had been unsuccessful in dispersing the press from in front of the Betts’ Bayswater town house.

‘I asked them to leave, but they weren’t having it,’ Mark told him by phone. ‘Maybe if we can give them a time for the news conference, they’ll settle down a bit.’

‘And if we hold it here, in the briefing room at the station…’ Neville added. Then they’d have no choice but to leave the Betts family alone, at least for a bit.

So three o’clock it would be. The trouble was that by lunch time there was still no preliminary pathology report, and the pathologist wasn’t answering his phone. Neither was the coroner, though Neville eventually managed to reach the coroner’s deputy, who reported—unhelpfully—that the coroner was away for the weekend. On a romantic country get-away with his wife,
apparently
; that news did nothing to help Neville’s mood.

It was nearly two when the pathologist turned up at Neville’s office, in person, with a sheaf of papers.

Dr Colin Tompkins was, in Neville’s experience, a man of few words, but those words he chose to utter were carefully considered and not to be ignored.

‘First of all, as I explained to you yesterday, this is only a preliminary report,’ he said, skipping the polite small talk. ‘The results of all of the specialist tests—toxicology, microbiology and so forth—will take weeks to come through.’

‘I understand.’

‘But I did find something…unusual. And I wanted to be sure of this before I spoke with you,’ he went on. ‘I’ve been over everything twice, at least.’

Neville didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Go on,’ he said.

Dr Tompkins spread the papers out in front of Neville, on the very small bit of his desk that was clear of clutter. His movements were precise; his hands were surgeon’s—or musician’s—hands, with long, tapering fingers.

‘Hairline fracture,’ he said, pointing at an x-ray. ‘Here, in the neck.’

Oh, God. That was something Neville definitely didn’t want to hear. ‘So…she was murdered? Is that what you’re saying?’

The pathologist shook his head. ‘No. What I’m saying is that there is strong evidence that Muffin Angel Betts was shaken, hard, at some point in her life. Not immediately before death. Possibly a week or two before. That injury might or might not have contributed to her death.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Neville.

‘Without that fracture, it most likely would have been pretty straightforward. As straightforward as SUDI—sudden death in infancy—can be. Pending the results of the other tests, of course. And that will take a few weeks. With it, though…who knows?’ Dr Tompkins shrugged. ‘It’s up to the coroner to say.’

The bloody coroner, who was off somewhere shagging his wife. Neville thanked Dr Tompkins, snatched up the papers, and went in search of DCS Evans.

Unusually for a Saturday, Evans was in the building. Neville found him in his office, unprotected by his secretary.

‘Not good news, Sir,’ Neville greeted him, terse as Dr Tompkins.

Evans squinted his piggy eyes at the x-ray as Neville reported the pathologist’s findings, concluding, ‘I’m afraid it’s not
straightforward
, as we hoped it would be.’

‘Bugger. So there
will
be an inquest,’ Evans extrapolated.

Neville nodded reluctantly. ‘The coroner is…unavailable… today. And his deputy is unwilling to commit himself. He’s a new bloke—didn’t want to take the decision himself. But I can’t imagine that the coroner won’t order one, under the circumstances.’

Evans leaned back in his chair. ‘So, Stewart. What are you going to tell the press?’

‘I haven’t drafted my statement yet, obviously. I came straight to you. What do you suggest, Sir?’ he asked diplomatically.

‘Something as vague as possible.’ Evans stroked his massive chin. ‘You could say that the post-mortem examination was “inconclusive”, and that an inquest will be opened this week.’

‘They’re sure to ask whether the death is being treated as suspicious,’ Neville stated.

‘Don’t give a yes or no answer to that one—don’t let them pin you down. Just something like “nothing has been ruled out”. You’ll know what to say.’

Neville wished he were as confident of that as Evans seemed to be. He wished, in fact, that Evans would take the damned press conference himself. But Evans, profoundly untelegenic with his prognathous jaw and his enormous eyebrows, liked to stay in the background. Less charitably, he preferred to put someone else in the firing line.

‘What about that…other matter, Sir?’ Neville asked.

‘You mean the fact that she was home alone?’ Evans scowled. ‘For God’s sake, man, don’t mention that. It will probably come out eventually, at the inquest. But
we’re
certainly not going to tell them.’

‘And as far as the family goes?’

‘They’re going to have a few questions to answer,’ Evans acknowledged. ‘Talk to the FLO. DS Lombardi, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘He’ll be the best one to do it. Maybe not straightaway, if the parents are still hysterical. I doubt he’d get anything out of them just yet. But tell him to keep his ears open. If one of them has been shaking that baby, he’ll be the person to get to the bottom of it.’

Well, thought Neville, that was something to be thankful for. He might have to face the fearsome press, but at least he wouldn’t have to ask Jodee and Chazz whether they’d killed their baby.