False Tongues (25 page)

‘And?' he demanded.

‘And the phone is registered to someone called Joshua Bradley. I even managed to get his address off her.' Cowley reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. ‘Using my considerable charm, it must be said.'

‘Well, then.' Neville stood up. ‘What are we waiting for?'

***

Margaret had seen the look on her secretary's face as Keith had leaned in to kiss her. She'd seen the expression of absolute horror, the mask of shock, and then an instant later the woman had fled, through the door and away.

It was like a faceful of ice water. Like a sucker punch to the stomach.

It was a wake-up call.

‘Not now,' she'd said to Keith, pushing him away.

They were already late for the first session, so he seemed to accept the rebuff with equanimity.

Now, as she sat in the back row of the lecture hall, in a seat nowhere near the one Keith had chosen, she didn't hear a word of what John Kingsley was saying.

What, she asked herself, had she done?

Her shame, her mortification must show on her face, she feared. She put her hands to her cheeks and found that they were burning. All she could hope for was that everyone else was focused on the front of the room, and not the back.

What had she done? What had she been thinking?

For a moment—a brief moment, but long enough—she had allowed herself to forget. To forget everything that had happened in her life. To forget Hal. To forget, above all, that she had forfeited the right to enjoy any man's kisses the way she had enjoyed Keith's kisses the night before. To have a man's arms round her—possessive, comforting arms—was something she'd never thought she would experience again.

She had no right to take pleasure in it. Hanna Young, with her scandalised expression, knew that, even if Keith didn't. The look on her secretary's face had told Margaret all she needed to know.

It had brought her back to her senses. Painfully, horribly.

She was a middle-aged woman, with an adult child. A professional woman, a priest in the Church of England. How could she possibly have forgot herself so thoroughly, and behaved like a hormonal teenager?

And now what?

They'd both said things last night that should never had been said, and done things that should never have been done. Things that couldn't be undone or taken back now.

How could she tell Keith, now, that it was all over, virtually before it had begun? That she'd made a terrible mistake, led him on, when she'd had no right to do so?

At the front of the room, John Kingsley thanked the people who had just engaged in a role-playing exercise, then said something that caught Margaret's attention, in spite of herself.

‘We've been exploring all sorts of different areas of ministry over the the last few days,' he said. ‘We've talked about the nuts-and-bolts things you've all experienced in your first year—the things you've expected and ones that have caught you by surprise, about time management and diary-juggling, about the challenges of sermon-writing. about your relationships with your training incumbents and your parishioners. Now we're going to move on to another area of relationships. We're going to think about the people closest to us—our families and significant others. Spouses, partners, friends—the people we care about the most, and how our call to priesthood affects those relationships. Can you be a good priest, and at the same time be a good husband, wife, parent, friend?'

What a wise man he was, Margaret said to herself. Involuntarily, her eyes sought out Keith Moody.

He was looking at her, and smiling.

Margaret looked away.

***

Miranda Frost was no longer willing to go on living in limbo, she decided on Thursday morning. What was the point of sitting round, drinking endless cups of coffee and re-living her son's death? Richard might feel differently—he probably did—but she'd had enough. What else could she do at this point? They couldn't make funeral arrangements until the Coroner gave the go-ahead; they couldn't even answer the phone themselves, in case it was the press.

The Family Liaison Officer was pleasant enough, and reasonably tidy—for a man—but his presence was irksome to her.

She would tell him not to come here tomorrow. And she would go back to work. Why not? Work would be good for her. It would keep her occupied, mind and body. She might even save a life or two. Redress the cosmic balance.

Already she'd arranged for her cleaner, Iris Bolt, to come today. Up till now she'd not been able to face Iris, who had been with them for so many years and had known Sebastian since he was born. Today Miranda was feeling stronger, and noticing the little things in the house that needed doing. There was a film of dust on the surfaces in the sitting room; the kitchen sink could use a good scrub.

She heard Iris' key in the lock, followed by her called greeting—Iris always announced herself. Just in case.

‘In here,' Miranda called back from the kitchen, where she was occupying herself by disassembling and cleaning the coffee machine. She braced herself for Iris' inevitable expressions of sympathy and sorrow. Get it over with, she told herself.

Iris dropped her bag on the kitchen table and came to Miranda, folding her in her arms—something no one else would have dared to do, even with a relationship going back nearly twenty years. ‘Oh, you poor lamb,' she crooned.

Miranda stood stiffly, enduring the embrace for as long as she could before she disengaged herself. ‘Thank you, Iris,' she said.

‘To think that someone would kill that dear boy, in cold blood! My own blood runs cold, just thinking about it,' Iris Bolt pronounced. ‘I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, not for a minute, since I heard.'

‘Thank you,' Miranda repeated.

‘And I can just imagine how it must be for you and Dr Frost. I mean, if something like that had ever happened to one of mine…oh, it doesn't bear thinking about, and that's God's truth.'

Miranda pressed her lips together.

‘I said it to my Ernie this morning. “That poor lamb,” I said. “She needs a hug, and that's no mistake.”

‘Well, there's plenty to do here, Iris,' Miranda said with forced heartiness. ‘You haven't been here since Sunday, and the house has suffered for it.'

Iris ignored the hint. ‘And I want you to know, Mrs Frost, that I don't believe a word of it. Not a word.'

‘A word of what?' Miranda frowned.

‘That rubbish about bullying. In the
Daily Globe
. Shocking lies, that's what I call it. Your Sebastian—
our
Sebastian—a bully? I never heard such a pack of lies in all my life!'

Miranda stared at her, astonished.

***

Halfway through the morning session, there was a break for coffee.

Tamsin narrowed her eyes at Callie over a cup of tepid brew. ‘You're awfully quiet,' she stated. ‘Please tell me you're not still obsessing over that toe rag Adam.'

‘No. I'm not.'

Callie had other things to worry about. She wished, in a way, that she hadn't been the recipient of Hanna Young's confidences, but on the other hand, she couldn't help feeling that it was a very good thing indeed that she, and no one else, knew what Hanna had seen.

Was there anything in it? Could there possibly be any truth in Hanna's fevered speculations?

She couldn't help herself, looking first at Mad Phil and then at the Principal, then back again.

They were not together. Mad Phil was talking to John Kingsley. It seemed to Callie that the Principal was in his line of sight, and he glanced occasionally in her direction. Was he trying to make eye contact with her?

She, though, had her back to him, and was talking—listening, mostly, from what Callie could tell—to Scott Browning. Scott, the Bishop-in-Waiting, the one in their year, it was commonly agreed, who was most likely to wear a mitre one day. It figured that he would be sucking up to the Principal, Callie thought uncharitably. He was probably telling her how useless his training incumbent was, and asking her whether she could find him a better one.

‘What's going on?' Tamsin demanded. ‘Who are you looking at?'

‘Nothing. No one.' Callie frowned. ‘I'm not looking at anyone. And there's nothing going on,' she added firmly. ‘Absolutely nothing.'

***

Neville and Cowley didn't have far to go. Joshua Bradley, it transpired, lived in the shadow of the Westway flyover, no more than a ten-minute walk from the police station.

‘We'll walk,' Neville decided. It would take less time that faffing about with a car, and trying to find a place to park it when they got there.

Their route took them through the tree-lined walkways of Paddington Green, right past the crime scene. The police tape had been removed, Neville noted, but something else was there: a shrine to the memory of Sebastian Frost, with cellophane-wrapped bunches of flowers heaped up against the iron railings of St Mary's churchyard.

He stopped for a minute to check it out. The flowers were wilting; most of them were dead and beginning to smell a bit rank. No teddy bears, like he'd seen on some of these shrines—from what he knew of Sebastian, he didn't seem like a teddy bear sort of kid—but there were a few
Star Wars
lego figures. Interesting. Darth Vader…

And there were cards and notes, of course. Badly spelled, almost indecipherable in most cases. ‘What do they teach these kids in school?' Neville asked sourly. ‘I may not be the world's greatest speller, but at least I tried when I was at school. By God, the nuns would have thrashed me within an inch of my life if I'd written anything like this.'

‘It's because of all that texting,' Cowley said with maddening patience, as if he were explaining it to some cranky pensioner bemoaning the defunct standards of his long-lost youth. ‘They don't learn how to spell properly. And they don't care. My nephew's just the same. He doesn't give a flying monkey's.'

Neville sighed. ‘Well, God help us all.' He bent over and plucked one of the notes at random. ‘“Ul B mist,”' he read. ‘Give me strength.'

‘Do you notice what's
not
here, Guv?'

‘Teddy bears?' he hazarded.

‘No. Other kids. No one's here.' Cowley gestured round the churchyard.

‘True.' Neville straightened up and looked at the empty space. Cowley had a point, he admitted to himself. Where were all of Sebastian's mates now? Had they forgotten about him already?

Someone was loping along the path in their direction, camera bag slung over his shoulder.

Neville vaguely recognised him as a photographer from one of the tabloids: not someone he necessarily wanted to engage with. ‘Let's get a move on, Sid,' he suggested, starting off at a brisk walk.

But the man with the camera bag hailed them. ‘Yo, Inspector! Hold on a second!'

‘What is it?'

‘Detective Inspector Stewart, right?'

Neville stopped reluctantly. ‘Yes.'

‘I'd really like a photo of you, here by the railings. Looking at those flowers, like. Won't take a minute, I promise.'

‘No, thanks.'

‘But it would be perfect for tomorrow's paper,' the man pleaded.

‘I have work to do,' Neville snapped, continuing on his way.

Perfect for tomorrow's paper, indeed. Detective Inspector Stewart, CIO in the Sebastian Frost case, looking at the flowers instead of getting on with catching the killer. ‘Dead Flowers for Teen Bully—Police Stop to Smell the Roses,' or something along those lines. He could just imagine it.

‘This way, Guv.' They got to the end of the green and turned into St Mary's Terrace, a road lined with a mixture of white Georgian terraces, red brick Victorian mansion blocks, and ugly post-war blocks of flats. Those German bombs again. You just couldn't get away from it in London, Neville reflected, especially this close to a railway station. It was a double shame: sad that the splendid old buildings had been blown to smithereens, and equally sad that they'd been rebuilt in an age of scarce resources and abysmal architecture.

They turned again, heading toward the flyover on a road which seemed to have suffered particularly badly from both the bombs and the rebuilding. A stretch of council housing had been thrown up on the right, six-story blocks of flats in cheap yellow brick, bristling with satellite dishes. On the other side was their destination, the gated entrance to a mews. Low rise, brown brick, still ugly. The gates were there, Neville presumed, mainly to keep unauthorised cars out, as the mews flats were blessed with ground-level garages and private parking bays—a rarity in this part of London.

Of course the gates were locked, and required a key-code to open. Neville pressed the buzzer with the palm of his hand and waited impatiently for the arrival of the attendant, who proved to be surly as well as slow. ‘Private property,' he announced. ‘No entrance.'

That required production of warrant cards, which they waved at him through the iron bars.

‘Which flat do you want, then?' the man said reluctantly, pushing a button from within to release the gates.

Neville was in no mood to be forthcoming. ‘Bradley.'

The man pointed. ‘That one there. But he's not at home,' he added, almost gleefully. 'His car's gone, see? I seen him leave this morning, like always.'

‘Thanks.' Neville headed toward the front door of the flat, in an alcove next to the garage door.

‘He's not there, I said,' the man called after them.

Neville ignored him and rang the bell. He tapped his foot, suddenly unwilling to wait a moment longer, and pushed the bell again, even as he heard the sound of footsteps descending the steps toward the door.

There was another moment of delay, accompanied by the sound of a bolt being shot and a chain being removed, then the door swung open a little way.