Deep Waters (28 page)

‘You won’t need to drive,’ he said. ‘The house is just round the corner. I’d leave the car where it is.’

‘Thanks,’ said Neville. He wasn’t smiling as he re-locked the car. ‘Any reason why you didn’t tell me about the affair?’

‘She needed to tell you herself,’ Mark said defensively.

‘It would have helped if I’d known.’

Mark recognised the truth of that, even as he tried to explain. ‘I knew she’d tell you. And if she didn’t…well, of course I would have.’

‘Is there anything else you haven’t told me?’ Neville crossed his arms and looked at him.

‘The girl. I can give you her name.’ Mark didn’t understand why, a few minutes ago, when Neville had asked Serena for the girl’s name, she’d said she didn’t know. Had she really blotted it so successfully from her mind? She had certainly known it at one time.

Cowley got out his notebook and waited.

‘It’s Samantha,’ Mark said.

‘That narrows it down,’ Neville said sarcastically.

Mark prodded at his memory, thinking back to when Serena had first told him. ‘I believe her surname is Winter.’

‘We’ll ask at the university. I’m sure we’ll be able to track her down.’

‘You can find her more easily than that,’ Mark suddenly recalled. ‘“Junior Idol”. She’s one of the contestants.’

That elicited an instant reaction from Cowley. ‘Bloody hell! Samantha!’

Neville turned and stared at him. ‘You’re not a “Junior Idol” fan, Sid?’

‘I do watch it now and then,’ Cowley muttered, as an
improbable
flush crept up from his neck.

‘I would have thought you’d have better things to do on a Saturday night.’ Neville grinned, seeming to enjoy the sergeant’s discomfiture.

‘Samantha,’ Cowley repeated, ignoring him. ‘Guv, she’s hot. I mean really hot.’

‘Your point being?’

‘This di Stefano bloke. He was…what? Forty-four, forty-five? How would an old bloke like that pull a hottie like Samantha?’

Neville glared at him; Mark knew him well enough to realise what that was about. Neville, as he drew dangerously close to the dreaded age of forty, was very sensitive about the issue of age, especially with the not-yet-thirty Sid Cowley. ‘There’s no accounting for taste,’ Neville said coldly. ‘I believe there are some girls who even fancy
you
, Sid.’

‘Quite a few, as a matter of fact.’ Cowley gave a smug smile, confident of his own attractiveness. ‘Let me have a go at Samantha, Guv. I’ll show you how it’s done.’

Neville raised his eyebrows.
Over my dead body
, his
expression
said.

Mark brought the subject back to his real purpose in
following
Neville to the car. ‘There’s something else I wanted to
mention,’ he said. ‘The girls. Chiara and Angelina. I realise you have to talk to them, but…be careful, please. They don’t know anything about their dad’s affair. About the problems between their parents. Neither do Mamma and Pappa. Serena’s done everything possible to keep them all from finding out. She’s just carried on as normal with Joe. For the sake of the family.’ He didn’t know how she’d done it, as a matter of fact. He—her brother—was the only one who was aware of what was going on. The only person she could talk to.

But now—now that Joe was dead—would it be possible to keep her secret? Murder: it had a way of laying things bare, of dredging up things that had been long submerged in the deep waters of secrecy.

Mark didn’t particularly care about protecting Joe, in death. It was too late for that, and Joe had made his own bed. But he cared deeply about protecting Serena—and perhaps even more about protecting the two innocent girls who thought that their father had been a good and honourable man, faithful to a
marriage
that was as near as possible to being perfect.

‘If there’s any way you can keep them from finding out…’ he pleaded.

Neville stared at him. ‘That might not be possible. A man’s been murdered. We have to find out who killed him. And other people might get hurt.’ He reached out a hand and touched Mark on the arm, not without a certain gentleness. ‘You know that as well as anyone, mate.’

Lilith knew she shouldn’t have been surprised by Chazz’s phone message, and in one way she wasn’t. His reaction was
predictable
, even understandable. What surprised her more was her own reaction.

She was quite frankly shaken by his venom. It took the shine off her day of triumph; it let the air out of her balloon of euphoria.

And it made her think about the dilemma she’d been firmly pushing out of her mind all day.

What was she going to do now?

Now that she’d killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, now that she’d burnt her bridges, and now that she had churned out the definitive re-hash of the story of Jodee and Chazz—from its literally steamy beginnings to its tragic down-spiral—there was nothing else to say.

Yes, the other papers were, as Rob Gardiner-Smith described it, now playing catch-up. But when the next chapters in the story unfolded—the funeral, the resumption of the inquest— they would all be on an even playing field. No advantages for Lilith any more. Nothing but her cunning and her journalistic skills to fall back on.

And the free-lance story Addie McLean had commissioned for
HotStuff
magazine? The insider account of Muffin’s funeral? Toast.

Dejected, she picked up the phone and dialled Addie McLean’s number. She might as well get it over with.

‘Thanks for returning my call,’ Addie McLean said. ‘I wanted to congratulate you on your story. “Shaken to Death?”—it was dynamite.’

‘Thanks,’ Lilith acknowledged, then pre-empted what she was sure was coming next. ‘But about the inside story on the funeral—I don’t think I’ll be able to do it.’

Addie McLean gave a dry laugh. ‘I shouldn’t imagine so.’

‘I’m sorry to let you down.’

‘Never mind about that.’ She made a dismissive noise, blowing it off. ‘Small potatoes. That’s not why I wanted to talk to you, Lilith.’

‘It’s not?’

‘No. I was really impressed by your gutsiness. You went for it, no holds barred. And as I read that article, I realised that your talents are wasted in tabloid journalism—even on a paper as sleazy as the
Globe
.’

‘They are?’ She couldn’t figure out whether she was meant to be flattered or insulted by that.

‘You’ve got balls, Lilith,’ Addie McLean declared, in a way that left no doubt she was paying her a massive compliment. ‘The kind of balls we need at
HotStuff
.’ She paused, and when Lilith didn’t say anything she went on. ‘What I’m saying is that I’m offering you a job. Full time, on the staff. If you want it. And what ever Gardiner-Smith is paying you, we’ll beat it. Can’t say fairer than that.’

Now he knew for sure why he’d been so reluctant to take on this case, Neville realised. It was going to be messy. No matter how carefully he handled it, Mark wasn’t going to be happy. Mixing work and friendship was a recipe for disaster.

How could he possibly do a thorough job, ask all the questions he needed to ask, without letting those girls know that their adored father was something other than they thought him to be?

It was inevitable. Murder didn’t allow people to hang on to illusions. And the truth often hurt.

But he could at least delay the inevitable by a few minutes. He would give Serena di Stefano a chance to get home and prepare her daughters for the arrival of the police.

Neville stopped on the pavement before he got to the di Stefano house and switched his phone on. He had turned it off so it wouldn’t interrupt their interview with Mrs di Stefano; now he could make use of the hiatus to put some things in motion. ‘Go ahead and have a fag,’ he said to Cowley. ‘You know you want to.’

Cowley lit up with alacrity while Neville rang the officer in charge of the Scene of Crime team. ‘We’ll need a thorough search of the house,’ he explained. ‘I’ll meet the SOCOs there. We’ll be looking for ethylene glycol, and anything else that’s relevant. And we’ll need to search his office, as well,’ he added. ‘At the university. Computer, diary, papers.’

His phone beeped at him: a missed call. ‘Damn,’ said Neville, accessing the voice mail.

‘Mr Stewart? This is Andrew Linton,’ said a plaintive voice. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you. You haven’t signed the papers, and I have three people who want to view your flat this afternoon. I’ve
arranged the viewings for half-past three, four o’clock, and half past. If you can’t meet them at the flat, could you at least drop off the keys at the office? I’ll be waiting to hear from you.’

Neville looked at his watch: nearly four o’clock. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. Andrew’s office was at the other end of all the Oxford Street traffic they’d fought through to get here, now undoubtedly even worse as it headed into rush hour. Why hadn’t he thought to stop off on their way to Clerkenwell?

Well, there was nothing he could do about it now.

And there was one more phone call he needed to make.

If ever there was a family that required the most sensitive and discreet of family liaison officers, it was the di Stefanos. ‘Yolanda Fish,’ he said aloud as he found the number.

Sharing a quick cup of coffee with her husband in the police
station
canteen was a simple pleasure, but one which DC Yolanda Fish genuinely savoured. It was one of the bonuses of her second career as a Family Liaison Officer: seeing more of Eli, when their schedules coincided and they both happened to be in the station at the same time.

Their marriage was a rarity, in Yolanda’s experience—a union of many years’ duration and truly happy. They were more that just lovers: they were best friends as well. The only shadow over the marriage, the thing which kept it from being perfect, was the tragedy of childlessness. Much as they’d tried, they’d not had children, and for one with as deep a maternal craving as Yolanda possessed, that was tragedy indeed. She had compensated for the lack in the choice of her first career: as a midwife, she had brought many hundreds of babies into the world.

Then, after the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, which had
recommended
the recruiting of liaison officers from the minority community, she had been encouraged by Eli to change careers. Different as this job was from midwifery, she enjoyed it very much and found it provided an equally satisfying outlet for her nurturing skills. She was demonstrably good at it, and
consequently much in demand, especially when the family in question included children.

‘What are you going to make for supper tonight, doll?’ Eli asked. In the division of labours in their household, Eli left the cooking to her. Fortunately Yolanda didn’t mind; she enjoyed cooking when she had the time to do it properly.

Yolanda consulted her watch. ‘If I get out of here on time, I’ll pick up a chicken at the supermarket.’

‘Tell you what, doll. How about I take you out for a meal? That new Thai restaurant, maybe?’

‘You’re on,’ she agreed.

‘Did I tell you how hot you’re looking today?’ Eli reached across the table and playfully tweaked one of her many little braids.

‘All right, now I’m suspicious. Just exactly what are you after, Eli Fish?’ She shook her head, making the braids dance. ‘Bribing me with Thai food and dishing out compliments—what’s up with you?’