False Tongues (9 page)

The coffee arrived more quickly than he would have expected, and lived up to its hype. Strong, smooth, delicious—Neville savoured it for its own sake, and as a brief but welcome respite from the difficult work of the morning.

‘Now,' he said, putting the empty cup on the nearest table with not a little regret, ‘As the Senior Investigating Officer, I do have some questions I'll need to ask you. About your son's friends, and his…lifestyle. That sort of thing.'

Richard Frost gave a weary nod, but his wife, beside him on the sofa, sat up straight and glared at Neville. ‘You're going to ask me if Sebastian did drugs, aren't you? The answer is no. Definitely not.'

Neville opened his mouth to defend himself, but she went on. ‘I read the papers, when I have time. I work in a hospital, for God's sake. I know that the kids who get stabbed are into drugs and gangs. Sebastian isn't…wasn't…like that. He was a good boy. Bright, academically gifted, good at sport.'

‘Sometimes parents are the last to know what their kids are up to,' Cowley said, stepping into the line of fire. ‘My sister had a boyfriend once. He died of a drug overdose, and his parents were the most surprised people on the planet. They had no idea—they would have sworn blind that he never touched drugs.'

It was, Neville thought, like watching a car crash in slow motion. Miranda Frost went even paler, rose to her feet, and advanced on Cowley, who was leaning against the door jamb. He stood up straighter, his face registering alarm, as she reached him. ‘Sorry,' he said hastily, ‘I didn't mean…'

‘You did.' Miranda Frost poked her finger into his chest. ‘How dare you? You didn't know him. Don't you
ever
try to tell me that I didn't know my own son.'

‘Sorry,' Cowley repeated, raising his hands in mock surrender.

‘Now get out of here,' she ordered, in the manner of one who was used to having her orders obeyed. ‘I don't want you in my house.'

Cowley looked beseechingly toward Neville, who nodded. What else could he do? ‘Why don't you step outside and have a fag, Sid?' he suggested. ‘I'm sure you're ready for one.'

‘Thanks, Guv,' Cowley mumbled, making himself scarce.

Neville sighed. He was used to Sid and his little ways—the endless anecdotes about his sister and other members of his family, his tendency to speak without thinking—but could see how other people might not find these things very endearing.

‘I'm sorry about DS Cowley,' he said by way of apology, adding, ‘He means well. And he's quite young.'

‘That's no excuse.' Miranda Frost, not in the least mollified, returned to the sofa. ‘Now, Inspector. I'm sure you'll want to speak to Sebastian's friends. I can provide you with a list of them. So what else would you like to ask us about our son?'

***

As Jane arrived home, her purchase—finally achieved—tucked safely and secretly into her handbag, the phone was ringing.

‘Can you get that, Janey?' Brian called from his study, evidently having heard her key in the lock.

She sighed, went through to the kitchen, and reached for the phone.

‘Hi, Mum,' said Charlie.

‘Oh, hello.' Jane smiled in spite of herself. She dropped her handbag and her shopping bag on the table and pulled out a chair.

It used to be that Simon was the one who rang her, just for a chat. But now that he had a girlfriend—a serious one, who seemed to consume his every waking moment—those chatty calls were few and far between. Now it was far more likely to be Charlie who made those calls. On her part, Jane was always reluctant to ring her sons, in case they were in lectures or tutorials, or busy with important course work.

‘I'm bored,' Charlie said. ‘Up to my eyes with this blasted essay. And there's no one else around. So I thought I'd ring you for a bit of a gossip.'

Well, Jane thought philosophically, it was better to be a last resort, a relief from boredom, than the alternative of no call at all. And she always enjoyed Charlie's gossip: unlike the more earnest Simon, he had a tendency to be amusingly ironic. He was observant, as well—a useful characteristic for the priesthood. That was Charlie's chosen career, though of course it would be up to the Church whether to accept him or not. From a young age he'd stated his intention to follow his father into the Church, and was reading theology at Oxford with the aim of going straight on to theological college.

‘I don't have any gossip,' Jane admitted. Charlie wouldn't be interested in the churchwarden running out of mouthwash, the only thing she could recall from her recent encounter. She emptied her shopping bag onto the table and lined up the items she'd bought as cover: a box of paracetamol tablets, a packet of sausages, a cucumber. Just in case Brian asked about her urgent errands.

‘Well, I do.' Her son paused, then went on. ‘I was in the Bodders on Saturday afternoon. After a few hours I had to go out and get some air. I stopped at a little caf to grab a cup of tea, and who do you think I saw?'

The Archbishop of Canterbury? Lady Gaga? ‘Surprise me,' Jane said obediently.

Charlie launched into a long and highly coloured account of the sighting of one of his lecturers, ‘that dry old stick,' as he described him, having tea with a pretty undergraduate. ‘Honestly, Mum,' he said. ‘You should have seen the way he was looking at her. It was exactly like something out of a Barbara Pym novel.
Crampton Hodnet
, to be precise.'

‘Oh, really?' Jane wasn't a huge fan of Barbara Pym's novels—she always found them uncomfortably close to her own life—but for some reason Charlie adored them.

‘I mean, who would have thought it of old Mathieson? He looked positively besotted!'

Ordinarily Jane would have relished this titbit, and the fact that her son had shared it with her. Today, though, with the memory of Saturday's overheard conversation—Brian, Callie—still fresh in her mind, it struck her as vaguely unpleasant, if not indecent. ‘You might be reading more into it than you should,' she heard herself saying, more sharply than she'd intended. ‘I'm sure it was perfectly innocent.'

‘You didn't see the expression on his face.' Charlie laughed. ‘Practically drooling. You know what they say, Mum—no fool like an old fool.'

That
was
close to the bone. ‘Well,' Jane said, ‘That may be, but I really ought to ring off now, and get a start on your father's lunch.'

When she'd hung up, though, she only opened the fridge to put the sausages and cucumber away, before heading to the lavatory.

In just a few minutes she had her result.

She was pregnant. Staring at the unmistakable lines on the test stick, Jane didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The one thing she wasn't going to do—not yet, anyway—was tell anyone. Not even Brian.

***

After her conversation with Marco, Callie spent a few minutes leaning on the windowsill of her room, enjoying the amazing view. King's College Chapel, in all its late gothic splendour. And spring: it was about time, she told herself, after the long, cold winter. Green grass, greening trees, yellow drifts of daffodils and concentrated clumps of crocuses, yellow and purple and white. Cambridge was a magical place in the spring, and there was no better spot to enjoy it than this window.

A bell chimed somewhere, from one of the colleges. Callie looked at her watch and realised she'd been standing there for far longer than she'd realised. She was going to be late for the first session.

No time to do her makeup properly. She took a quick look at herself in the mirror, ran her brush through her hair, put on some lip gloss, and decided that would have to suffice.

Callie clattered down two flights of stairs and headed through the courtyard toward the lecture hall. There was only one other person in the courtyard, seemingly headed in the same direction; as she overtook her, she recognised her friend Val.

‘Callie!' Val stopped and they hugged each other.

‘We're late,' Callie said, glancing at her watch.

Val put up a hand. ‘Don't worry. I have inside information. The facilitator hasn't arrived yet—his train has been delayed.'

That sounded familiar. ‘Oh, we're all right, then.'

‘We have a few minutes.' Val gestured toward the bench under the cherry tree. It was a favourite spot of Callie's; when the weather was fine she used to sit there often, reading heavy tomes for her essays.

They sat down and Callie took a good look at her friend. Val seemed much the same, with her long, mousy hair and her glasses, yet there was something different about her: that indefinable extra glow that came from happiness, from living the life she wanted to live. ‘I didn't see you at breakfast,' Callie said.

‘We usually have breakfast at home.' Val pointed across the courtyard at the block of modern flats and terraced houses, the accommodation provided for faculty, staff, and married students. ‘Jeremy doesn't much like having to make conversation first thing in the morning,' she added with unmistakeable wifely smugness.

‘How is Jeremy?' Callie asked dutifully.

Val smiled. ‘Oh, he's great.'

‘And marriage is…everything you thought it would be?'

‘And more. It's wonderful.' Val held out her hand so that her solitaire diamond sparkled in the sun, contemplating her rings intently. Then she turned to Callie with a somewhat shamefaced expression. ‘Listen, Callie. I'm really sorry that I haven't been better about keeping in touch.'

‘It's my fault,' Callie said automatically.

‘No.' Val shook her head. ‘It was me. I felt so bad for you, about…Adam. And all that. It just seemed so unfair. I had everything I wanted, and you had…nothing. It made me feel guilty, and I didn't want to keep reminding you about it, and rubbing your nose in my good fortune.'

Callie was astonished; it had never occurred to her that she was such an object of pity that her friends were deliberately avoiding her. ‘It's not like that,' she said, searching for the right way to say it. ‘I'm…fine. Really. My job is…an interesting challenge. I love parish ministry. And I'm over Adam. Truly. Good riddance to him.' It sounded to her own ears almost as if she was protesting too much.

Val, though, seemed to buy it. ‘Oh, I'm so glad!' She gave her a hug. ‘Wait a minute. What's that on your finger?'

It was Callie's turn to hold out her hand. ‘I told you I was over Adam.'

‘Oh my God!' Val squealed in an unclerical way. ‘Tell me! Tell me everything!'

***

The first thing Lilith Noone did, after taking leave of Rob Gardiner-Smith and before she departed the
Globe
's offices, was to check the Metropolitan Police's website. She did it without a great deal of optimism, and indeed the Met press office had nothing at all to say about the stabbing death of an unidentified teenager; the most recent press release on line had to do with the theft of a large quantity of Easter eggs from a corner shop in Bethnal Green. Lilith snorted in disgust and shut the computer down.

Just as well, really, she told herself as she headed for the Tube. If it were on the website, then every journalist in town would have access to the information and there would be no chance of getting in there first. She would have to employ a bit of ingenuity and lateral thinking.

The Paddington area, Rob had said. That was where she would go. Straight to Paddington Station, then up the road to the police station. Maybe she would strike it lucky there.

But she had reckoned without the heavy security on the door; the armed guard was adamant that she couldn't go in, even when she flashed her press pass, and she had to resort to her mobile phone to speak to the desk sergeant. ‘I understand that there's been a stabbing,' she said, without giving her name. ‘An unidentified boy?'

There was a palpable hesitation on the other end, measured in several heartbeats. ‘I'm afraid you've been misinformed,' came at last.

‘Identified, then?' Lilith persisted.

‘No.'

‘Could you put me on to someone else? The chief superintendent, perhaps?'

The desk sergeant cleared his throat, loudly. ‘The press office is what you want, Miss. I can give you their number, if you like.'

‘No, thank you.'

More lateral thinking. A fatality in this area would almost certainly be taken to the mortuary at the hospital, back down the road. Maybe someone at the mortuary would be more forthcoming than the police. And if she couldn't find the pathologist, or a communicative mortuary assistant, she could always ring the coroner's office. Coroner Hereward Rice had a soft spot for her, or at least she knew how to play him to get information. It had worked in the past, and she was sure she'd lost none of her powers where he was concerned.

Lilith found the mortuary, tucked behind the hospital buildings which faced onto Praed Street. Unfortunately for her, the first person she encountered there was less than helpful: a sour-faced woman who glared at her and claimed ignorance. ‘I'm just covering for Ray,' she said begrudgingly. ‘He's on break.'

‘I'll wait,' said Lilith, and sat on a metal folding chair, trying to breathe through her mouth. The place smelled of bleach, antiseptics and other fluids she didn't want to think about.

Ray, who arrived within a quarter of an hour, proved to be a middle-aged West Indian with hair like steel wool and deep, liquid brown eyes which turned down at the corners, sad pools brimming with all the sorrow he'd seen in this place over the years. But his smile was cheerful, his teeth dazzling white. ‘Can I help you?' he said.

‘I hope so.' Lilith returned his smile, feeling that perhaps her luck had changed.

‘So do I. We don't often get pretty ladies like you in here. Not live ones, anyhow.'

Lilith tried not to think about that. ‘You've had a young boy brought in recently?' she said, half statement and half question. ‘A teenager. A stabbing, I understand. Unidentified.'