False Tongues (3 page)

Callie pulled her phone out of her red leather bag and pressed the button.

Nothing.

She'd forgotten to put it on to charge last night. And the charger, she now recalled, was at the very bottom of her suitcase.

Blast.

She tucked the dead phone back in her bag, then folded her hands on the table in front of her.

Her bare hands.

‘Wear the ring,
Cara mia,
' Marco had said. It was just about the last thing he'd said to her this afternoon.

The ring was on a silver chain round her neck, under her jumper. She fished it out, unthreaded it from the chain, slid it on the third finger of her left hand, then spread her fingers out to admire it.

A large sapphire, encircled by smaller diamonds, set on a gold band. Substantial, weighty, it had been worn by Marco's grandmother and her mother-in-law before her. Marco had put it on her finger for the first time about a fortnight ago, then they'd decided that perhaps she ought not to wear it until they'd officially announced their engagement. To her boss Brian, her congregation, her family, and friends. And most importantly, to
la famiglia Lombardi.

That was the biggie: Marco's Italian family. Callie had been nervous about telling them the news, and the two of them had agreed that the best occasion for the announcement would be Easter lunch, a festive meal when everyone would be round the table.

But it hadn't worked out that way.

Callie touched the sapphire, frowning at the memory.

It was, admittedly, not a good time for
la famiglia Lombardi—
too soon after the sudden death of Marco's brother-in-law Joe. Not only was the shock still raw, but his absence meant that the family dynamics were all askew. Joe should have been there at the table, teasing Chiara, joking with Angelina and praising Mamma's cooking. Instead, there was Callie in Joe's chair, feeling more of an outsider than she'd ever felt at one of their family gatherings.

This was her first Easter with them. The rest of them—Marco, his parents, his sister Serena, and her two girls—had all been to Mass together at the Italian Church, while she, of course, had been occupied with the Easter services at All Saints', so she'd arrived late. Late, self-conscious, and an Anglican curate, trying to fit in with an Italian family who were, for their part, struggling with recent bereavement on a day which was supposed to be joyful. On reflection, the enterprise was doomed to failure.

They—most of them—had tried to make her feel welcome. Marco's mother had greeted her with double cheek kisses and ‘
Buona Pasqua!
' His father had done the same, taken her jacket, and led her to the table.

The table was laden, as usual, and the food was fantastic—just as Callie had come to expect from the culinary genius who was Marco's mother. A special soup to start, then a mouthwateringly wonderful dish of stuffed artichokes.

‘
Carciofi—sempre per la Pasqua
,' explained Grazia Lombardi. ‘Always this day.'

Chiara, with the blunt candour of a thirteen-year-old, utterly without malice, asked Callie as the lamb was served, ‘Why aren't you with your
own
family today? Your mum and your brother?'

That was a difficult one to answer. It would never have occurred to Laura Anson to have offered a meal to her children, on this or any other day, unless she had some sort of hidden agenda, but Callie couldn't very well say that. She settled for ‘My mother isn't religious.'

That wasn't good enough for Chiara. ‘Pasqua's not just about religion, about going to church. It's all about families being together.'

Marco's sister Serena lifted her head from contemplation of the lamb on her plate, shot Callie a sideways glance and said, ‘Not quite,
cara
.
Natale con i tuoi, la Pasqua con chi vuoi.
That's the saying
.'

Callie, whose grasp of Italian was fairly basic and didn't stretch to folk epigrams, looked at Marco for clarification. ‘It means that you stay at home for Christmas, but can spend Easter with anyone you want,' he explained, adding, ‘And we're all glad that you've chosen to spend Easter with us.' Under the table he reached for her hand and gave it a little squeeze.

‘
Si, certo
,' affirmed Mamma.

‘
Certo
,' Pappa echoed.

‘I think it's cool that Callie's here,' said Angelina.

Chiara nodded in agreement. ‘Me, too.'

Callie raised her eyebrows at Marco, signalling that this might be a good time for their announcement, but he gave a tiny shake of his head. ‘After lunch,' he murmured.

But at the end of lunch there was
la Columba
, the traditional Easter cake in the shape of a dove. And when Mamma brought it out of the kitchen, Chiara turned to her mother. ‘Remember last year?' she said. 'Remember what Dad said about
la Columba
?'

Callie never found out what Joe had said about the
Columba
. Serena stood up, covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears—noisy, wracking sobs.

In the weeks following Joe's death, Callie had not seen Serena cry, not even once. It was not in Serena's nature to be outwardly emotional, but the fact that she could sit dry-eyed through her husband's funeral seemed extraordinary to Callie, who in the short course of her ministry had already dealt with a number of bereaved spouses, none of whom had displayed the degree of stoicism which Serena possessed.

Now, though, something had been triggered—some deep well of grief—and the floodgates were opened.

Serena wept copiously, surrounded by her family. Angelina, who seemed to have inherited her mother's stoic nature, put her arms round her, while Chiara—perhaps feeling guilty because she had said the wrong thing—began wailing as well. Mamma went in search of a box of tissues, while Pappa wiped his own eyes with his handkerchief. Marco hovered at the fringes, making soothing noises. Soon, though, they were all crying, even Marco—all but Callie. If she'd felt like an outsider before…

And she was supposed to be the professional, the one who knew what to say in situations like this. Yet she was helpless—useless—in the face of so many tears, so much emotion.

There was no question of an engagement being announced. Not that day.

Feeling utterly inadequate, Callie tried to creep away unnoticed. She'd retrieved her jacket and just about made it to the front door when Marco caught up with her. ‘I'm sorry,
Cara Mia
. So sorry,' he'd said, tears in his eyes. ‘It's too soon. We'll have to wait to tell them.' That's when he'd told her to wear the ring.

As long as she only wore it around people who didn't know his family, presumably. And this week in Cambridge met that qualification.

Cambridge. She should be there soon, Callie reckoned, trying to remember the last station they'd announced. Meldreth, or was it Shepreth?

The train was slowing down. The train stopped.

But the doors didn't open, and there was no platform in sight. All Callie could see through the smeary window of the carriage was dark, featureless countryside. No lights—no streetlamps, no houses, no station.

People who had studiously been avoiding eye-contact through the journey now looked at each other, raised their eyebrows, shrugged.

It was another ten minutes before a crackly announcement came over the tannoy. ‘We apologise for the delay,' said the disembodied voice. ‘There is an obstruction on the line. We will resume our journey as soon as possible. Once again, we are sorry for the delay, and any inconvenience it may cause.'

The man across the table from Callie frowned. ‘They're not a bit sorry,' he muttered to no one in particular.

Callie sighed. Would she
ever
get to Cambridge?

***

‘Hey, Guv, we've found something!'

Neville was still on the bench in the churchyard; he hadn't summoned up the energy to move, though he was feeling increasingly chilled. Cowley had finished his first fag—conscientiously tapping the ash and dropping the end in a styrofoam cup to avoid contaminating the crime scene—and had started on a second. They both jumped at the SOCO's shout.

She—it was a she—met them halfway, proffering an already-bagged item.

‘A phone,' she said. ‘An iPhone, in fact. The latest model, if I'm not mistaken. Smashed.'

Neville took the polythene bag from her with a skeptical frown. It was almost a matter of pride with him that he didn't see the need to follow the trends in technology. His old boxy computer worked okay, and so did his ancient mobile phone. This object didn't look anything like his phone: no key pad, no buttons at all. It was just a flat rectangular object with a screen which looked as if someone had taken a rock to it.

‘Bugger,' said Cowley. ‘Any idea how much one of them babies costs, Guv?'

Trust Sid to get to the heart of the matter. ‘Not a clue. How much, then?'

‘Five hundred, easy. Maybe six.'

‘Bloody hell.' If it had belonged to the dead kid…

He moved closer to the spotlights and examined it more closely. ‘Is that—was it—a glass screen?'

‘A touch screen,' confirmed Cowley.

‘So that means fingerprints. Have you found the bits of glass?'

The SOCO held up her hand to display a drop of blood on the index finger of her rubber glove. ‘Some of them. We're working on it now, Guv. Fingertip search. We found the glass before we found the phone. Damn sharp, too. It went right through the glove.' Her voice was rueful.

Neville scowled at her. ‘Well, for God's sake, put on a new glove before you contaminate the scene with your own blood.'

‘Yes, Guv.'

Another SOCO approached with a bag of glass shards. ‘The glass seems to be confined to that area over there,' he reported, pointing. ‘In the grass. It's a few metres away from where we found the phone.'

‘Like someone smashed it, then threw the phone,' Cowley pointed out. ‘Or dropped it.'

He hated having to defer to Sid Cowley, but in matters relating to technology, Sid was streets ahead of him. Cowley knew his gadgets, even if he couldn't afford them for himself. An aspirational techie—that's what his sergeant was. ‘Okay,' Neville said. ‘Tell me how this thing works. How do you turn it on?'

Cowley took the bagged phone from him. ‘There's a button here at the bottom,' he explained, pointing at a small indentation in the surface. He pressed it; nothing happened. ‘Broken,' he said.

‘Which was presumably what the person who smashed it intended,' Neville said patiently. ‘Does that mean we won't be able to get any information out of it?'

‘Not necessarily.' Cowley turned it over. ‘It must have a SIM card, like any other phone. If that's still in it, and hasn't been destroyed, then—'

‘The computer blokes can sort it,' Neville concluded. At any rate, it wasn't going to happen tonight. They weren't going to drag Danny Duffy, the station's resident computer boffin, out of his bed tonight. It could wait till morning.

Neville was suddenly overcome with weariness—an overwhelming tiredness in every limb of his body, down to the bone.
Everything
could wait till morning, he decided, pushing down the niggling thought of worried parents somewhere, waiting for their son to come home.

He dragged himself back to the spot where the young man lay for one last look. ‘You can take him away now,' he said to the people who were waiting on the periphery for him to give the order. ‘I'm going home.'

***

About the time that Neville headed toward his bed, Callie finally reached her destination—hours later than she'd expected. The final part of the journey was no more straightforward than the rest of it had been; by the time she arrived at the station in Cambridge, most of the cabbies had given up for the night and she'd had to wait nearly twenty minutes for one to show up. Then, arriving at the college, she'd faced the problem of getting in. Obviously she no longer had a key, and in any case the front gate was locked and barred—at midnight, she seemed to remember.

Eventually she'd found the buzzer and roused an irate and grumbling porter from his bed. ‘You should've rung to tell us you'd be late,' he said, glowering.

‘I'm
so
sorry,' Callie grovelled. ‘My phone is dead, and I never thought I'd be this late.'

She remembered him; he'd always been grouchy. Evidently he didn't remember
her
—she was just one of many who had passed through the institution through the years. One of the quiet, unexceptionable ones at that. He found his list and located her name, then made a great song and dance of getting the key off the appropriate hook and giving it to her.

‘B23. Can you find it, or do you need a map?'

B23. ‘I can find it,' she said.

She could find it in her sleep: her old room.

Callie dragged her case through the porters' lodge and out into the courtyard, its wheels rumbling noisily over the ancient, uneven pavement, echoing in the silence of the night. Fortunately it wasn't a long way to B staircase, which was in the front range of the college, the side of the rectangle closest to the road. But then she had to wrestle with the heavy oak door and get her suitcase up two flights of stairs. By the time she slid the key into the familiar lock of the room, Callie was ready to collapse with exhaustion.

Without any conscious thought on her part, her fingers found the light switch by the door.

Her room. The old stone fireplace, decorative but non-functional. The big oak desk with the wonky old chair and the book shelves above. The comfy, tattered arm chair. The basin in the corner. The battered chest of drawers, one knob missing; the imposing wardrobe which looked as if it had come out of some country house and would provide entrance to Narnia. The incongruously modern bedside table, with its cheap laminate top. The bed.