Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (9 page)

‘That’s good,’ Callie said, feeling utterly inadequate.

‘But the treatment won’t be pleasant. Lots of drugs with nasty side-effects.’

Bella trotted on ahead of them through the park, ecstatic to be there, not minding the cold. Callie wished that her
ordination
training had provided a course on the right thing to say in moments like this; as it was, she had to feel her way through it, relying on common sense and empathy—and on God. ‘Isn’t it lucky that your son is nearby. Your family. They’ll help you through it, Morag.’

The older woman’s laugh was loud, but totally without mirth. ‘Angus? You must be joking.’

Yolanda Fish had not always been in the police force. For more than twenty years she had been a midwife. Then, after the
notorious
murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence and the enquiry which followed, the Metropolitan Police had made an active effort to recruit minorities and train them as Family Liaison Officers in accordance with the enquiry’s formal
recommendations
. Yolanda’s husband Eli, a career policeman, had learned about the initiative and had encouraged her to apply.

Ready for a mid-life career change, she’d never looked back. ‘It was either this or the Church,’ she often quipped. ‘And I don’t look good in black.’

The job fitted her like a glove. She had all the necessary qualities in abundance: compassion, tact, common sense. Yolanda was, in the true sense of the word, a wise woman, and a caring one. Her maturity and experience brought an extra dimension as well.

Yolanda’s greatest sorrow was that she and Eli had not been blessed with children. In her earlier career, all of those babies she’d helped to bring into the world had been the outlet for her maternal instincts. Now she lavished her nurturing skills on those with whom she worked, including her police colleagues, who regarded her as something of a mother figure. And because she was not ambitious for promotion—was content to remain a Detective Constable and to do her job as well as she could—she was not perceived as a threat to anyone else’s dreams of
advancement
. She was, as a result of these factors, held in high regard by everyone who knew her.

So Neville Stewart smiled—with pleasure as well as relief—when they arrived at the mortuary and spotted Yolanda waiting for them as promised.

It would have been difficult to miss her. A tall dark-skinned woman with a statuesque figure and a head full of tiny braids, she held herself upright, and she gloried in bright colours.
Today she was wearing a vibrant shade of turquoise, everything co-ordinated from her trousers and jumper down to the dangly earrings and chunky necklace.

With a discreet smile at the two officers, she moved quickly to Rachel Norton’s side. ‘Oh, lovie,’ she crooned. ‘The baby. When is it due?’

‘Christmas Eve.’ Rachel’s lip trembled; her eyes welled with tears. ‘Trevor…he said it would be the best Christmas present ever. And now Trevor…oh, God.’ She looked around her, as though suddenly realising where she was and why she was there. It seemed to Neville that she was coming out of her earlier state of blank shock, almost like waking from sleep.

Yolanda’s capable arm encircled the young woman’s shoulder. ‘Oh, lovie. Lovie.’

‘I can’t bear it,’ Rachel sobbed. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘You can, lovie. It will be difficult, but you can do it.’ Yolanda gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘For Trevor.’

It was quickly accomplished. They went into an inner room; the face was exposed; Rachel gave a nod, then buried her head in Yolanda’s neck. No words were necessary.

Now the postmortem could take place, and they’d have a better idea of what they were dealing with.

At this point, the one thing that they knew for sure was that Trevor Norton had not died of natural causes.

Alex Hamilton came home from school to an empty flat. That was nothing new, at least not in the months they’d lived in London: her father worked long hours, and her stepmother lived her own life. The most Alex could expect in the way of nurturing was a selection of ready meals in the fridge; Jilly didn’t cook at the best of times, not for herself or Alex’s dad, and certainly not for Alex, who, she often said, was not her child.

Alex wasn’t particularly hungry, anyway. She seldom was: food wasn’t important to her, and as a result she was thin as a rail, subsisting on crisps and sweets at school, and foraging in the
evenings. The ready meals were easy to prepare in the microwave, and if she didn’t fancy one of those she could always eat a bowl of cereal or a piece of toast.

What
was
important to Alex was her computer, her lifeline to the world. Her dad had got it for her, and she didn’t know what she would have done without it.

Dumping her rucksack just inside the front door,
shedding
her coat and tossing it over the nearest chair in the sitting room—Jilly would tear a strip off her for that later on, but she didn’t care—Alex headed for her bedroom. She shut the door behind her, even though there was no one else in the flat.

The computer was on, but the screen was password-protected. Just in case, though Alex reckoned that Jilly, even if she were interested enough in her step-daughter to look at her computer, was too stupid to have the first idea of how to use it. Dumb as a box of rocks, that was Jilly. Dad certainly hadn’t married her for her brains: Alex knew that much.

Quite frankly, Alex didn’t know why he
had
married her. Yes, she was beautiful, but not
that
beautiful. Not if you scraped all that make-up off. Certainly not as beautiful as Alex’s mum. Compared to her mum, Jilly was a painted doll. She’d overheard Granny saying that to Grand-dad once, and it had stuck in her mind. A silly, vain doll. And stupid, stupid, stupid.

Alex tapped her password in and looked eagerly at the screen. Two new e-mails! She would look at the one from Kirsty first.

Kirsty was her best friend—her very best friend in all the world, and had been for as long as she could remember. They were only a few weeks apart in age, and had grown up together in Gartenbridge. Constant companions, they’d always been in the same class at school, and during school holidays they’d played together every day, exploring the countryside and sharing the worlds of their imaginations.

Alex missed Kirsty desperately. Almost as much as she missed her mum, though in a different way. Her longing for her mum was a deep chasm, walled off in her mind, too painful to be
approached except in the dead of night, in the worst of
nightmares
. The absence of Kirsty she lived on a day-to-day basis.

There was no one like Kirsty at her new school. No one she could imagine as a soul-mate, as a companion. They were all so sophisticated, so sure of themselves. So snobbish. She held herself aloof from all of them, knowing that they found her odd and unapproachable. She didn’t look like them, all
well-groomed
and clothes-conscious. And she didn’t talk like them, either. They mocked her accent behind her back, making sure that she could overhear them.

Alex didn’t care—that’s what she told herself. She didn’t want any of them as friends. Through the magic of electronics, she still had Kirsty.

At first, in those horrible few weeks after the move, they’d
emailed
each other at least a dozen times a day. Alex had poured it all out to Kirsty, all of her agony, and Kirsty had responded with the comfort Alex needed so badly. It wouldn’t be for long, she’d assured Alex. Alex’s dad was sure to get tired of boring, stupid Jilly. He’d realise what a mistake he’d made, and before Alex knew it they’d be back in Scotland. Back in Gartenbridge, with everything the way it used to be.

The frequency of the e-mails had tailed off gradually, as had their emphasis. Kirsty now kept Alex up-to-date with what was going on at school and in the village, filling her in on things that had changed, were changing. The corner shop where they’d bought sweets after school had closed down. One of their
favourite
teachers was getting married and wouldn’t be returning for the next term. The people who had bought Alex’s old house had painted it yellow.

Yellow! Her least favourite colour. It must look terrible. Alex didn’t like to think about anything changing, didn’t want to imagine anyone else living in
her
house. The only house she’d ever known, the house of her happy childhood. A few months ago. A million years ago.

Still less did she want to think about Kirsty changing. Yet there were hints in recent e-mails. Kirsty’s periods had started;
Alex hadn’t yet reached that milestone on the road to being a grown-up. And more and more of Kirsty’s chatter now centred round Ewan Fraser, a boy whom they’d both once despised, with his sticky-out ears and his freckles. According to Kirsty, he had improved vastly in recent months. He’d started hanging round, walking home from school with her. Ewan Fraser! It made Alex gag, just thinking about it.

Kirsty with a boyfriend—unthinkable. How they’d laughed at the girls in the next form, mooning round after boys.

And yet Alex herself had a secret—one she had shared with no one, not even with Kirsty.
She
had a boyfriend. A boyfriend!

She hugged herself with the deliciousness of the secret.

Jack—he hadn’t yet told her his other name—was very good looking, not like that sad Ewan Fraser. He was funny, he was nice.

Not that they’d actually met face-to-face. Not yet, anyway. So far she’d only seen his photo. But there was no rush. He was her friend, her confidant, someone she could pour her heart out to. She would meet him eventually.

And for now, there was an e-mail waiting from him. Smiling, as she hadn’t smiled in months, exposing her hated tooth brace, Alex clicked to open it.

Much as Neville hated to admit that Sid Cowley was right, he was inclined to think that Sid had hit the nail on the head when he said that Trevor Norton was probably killed for his iPod.

Just one of those senseless crimes—in the wrong place at the wrong time. They’d seen it over and over again. Some poor sod goes for a drink at his local on a Saturday night, finds himself in the middle of a fight, and ends up on a slab. Or a mum takes her kid out in the push-chair, just like she’s done a hundred times, and some tanked-up wanker’s car jumps the curb and kills them both.

Death. Out of nowhere, unpredictable. And for no good reason at all. It could just as easily have been the next bloke with an iPod—they were everywhere these days—and it would have been some other poor woman crying her eyes out instead of Rachel Norton, not much more than days away from having the dead man’s baby.

He and Sid talked about it on their way back to the Nortons’ house, after the postmortem. The results had been much as expected: Trevor Norton had drowned, but only after being hit on the head with a blunt instrument.

There was no reason to suspect that it had been anything other than a random crime, and that was going to make it a pig to solve. Trevor Norton could have been killed by anyone, and they could now be just about anywhere. Unless the samples taken at the postmortem revealed some unexpected DNA, or
the blunt instrument turned up, or the murder had been filmed on a CCTV camera, there might be nothing to link the killer to the crime apart from that iPod. One iPod in a city full of iPods, anonymous and untraceable. Needle-in-a-haystack stuff.

Yet all possibilities had to be explored, and that included a thorough search of the Nortons’ house.

And asking Rachel Norton a lot of questions. Questions she understandably wouldn’t want to answer right now. Neville knew that they’d have to contend not only with Rachel in her bewilderment, but with Yolanda Fish in protective mode, like a mother hen with a chick.

Mark Lombardi had just finished his lunch in the police canteen and was on his way back to his desk when his mobile vibrated in his pocket.

Callie! he thought, smiling. But as he pulled it out, he saw on the display that it was his sister.

He punched the button to accept the call. ‘
Pronto. Ciao
, Serena.’

‘Marco! Sorry to bother you.’ There was a great deal of
background
noise—cutlery, crockery, people talking. ‘Can you hear me all right?’

‘No bother. I can hear you fine. What’s up?’

She sighed audibly into the phone. ‘I need to ask you a huge favour, Marco.’

‘What?’

‘Are you busy tonight?’

That didn’t sound good. He’d promised Callie that this evening he would bring over all the ingredients to teach her how to make fresh pasta from scratch. ‘I have plans,’ he said cautiously.

‘You know I wouldn’t ask this if I weren’t desperate, but can you cancel them?’

‘Go on,’ he said. Babysitting? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been asked at the last minute to look after his niece Chiara.

‘I told you how busy we are with all of these special Christmas

parties.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, one of the students who waits tables for us came in this lunch-time with a terrible cold. It was putting everyone off—you just can’t have someone blowing their nose over the food and sneezing on the customers.’

Mark thought he could see where this was going, and it wasn’t babysitting.

‘So I sent her home,’ Serena went on. ‘And I’ve been on the phone ever since, trying to find someone else.’

He had reached his desk. Closing his eyes, Mark mentally let go of the alluring image he’d been carrying round with him all morning: himself and Callie in the close quarters of her kitchen, both up to their elbows in pasta dough. Callie, with a smudge of flour on her cheek…‘Let me guess. You want me to wait tables tonight.’

His sister’s voice was pleading. ‘We’re fully booked. We just can’t be short-staffed. Not tonight. If you could…’

‘Yes, all right,’ he said, trying not to sound grudging about it.

Now her sigh was one of relief. ‘Marco, you’re a star. Really.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘I’ll owe you one,’ she acknowledged. ‘Can you be here by six? Or better yet, half five? All the tables will have to be laid after the lunch crowd goes, and the crackers—’

‘I’ll be there. Worry not,
mia sorella
.’

Yolanda opened the door to Neville Stewart and Sid Cowley reluctantly. She was a police officer; she knew they were doing their job, and that it couldn’t wait. But her instincts to defend Rachel, to keep them away from her, were strong, intensified ten-fold by Rachel’s pregnancy.

There was a paradox at the heart of Yolanda’s job as Family Liaison Officer, and it was one which she was usually able to embrace without much difficulty. Her role in a murder enquiry
was as the human face of the police, nurturing the bereaved and keeping them informed of the progress of the case. She was to be there for them, on their side, more like a social worker or a priest than an officer of the law.

And yet…Yet it remained an undeniable fact that most murder victims were killed by someone they knew. In many cases, of course, by someone within their family. And that meant that the people Yolanda was looking after were also often suspects themselves. Sometimes one of the people whom she plied with cups of tea and comforted in their grief turned out to be a
murderer
. As a police officer, she had to be aware of that possibility, and to be open to it. At times she’d had to exploit her position of trust within a family to come up with something that would help to solve the crime, something to which the investigating officers would not have access—a few words uttered in extremity, an insight into family dynamics. And she had no problem with this; it was part of the job, even if it meant that a bit of her had to remain detached from the people she was trying to help.

But Rachel Norton was different. Rachel was totally vulnerable, and utterly alone. She had no one but Yolanda to look after her. Her parents, she told Yolanda, were on holiday in Greece. Her sister lived in Leicester and had a family of her own to worry about, and besides, they’d never been close. She didn’t get on well enough with Trevor’s family to want them around, and since leaving work she didn’t really have any friends she felt she could call upon.

So Yolanda felt even more protective than usual, with the wholeheartedness that made her so good at her job. Eli wasn’t going to be seeing much of her over the next few days, she knew, whether they caught the killer right away or not.

‘You’re not going to be hard on her now, are you?’ she said severely to the two officers at the door. ‘She’s had a great shock. She’s very fragile.’ It wouldn’t do any good to ask them to wait till tomorrow.

‘We’re not totally insensitive, you know.’ Neville stepped past her with Cowley in his wake. ‘But there are a few things we have to ask her, so we can get on with what we have to do.’

Rachel was in the lounge; she hadn’t moved since Yolanda had left her to answer the door. She sat in the middle of the sofa, hunched forward, her head down. Yolanda resumed her
position
at her side and took one of her hands as the two policemen settled into the chairs.

‘Mrs. Norton,’ said Neville. ‘I know this is difficult for you. But I’m sure that you want to help us catch the person who did this.’

She nodded, her face concealed from Yolanda’s scrutiny by a curtain of loose blond hair. With her free hand, Yolanda smoothed the hair back and tucked it behind Rachel’s ear to afford herself a clear view of her charge’s expression.

‘Mrs. Norton, did your husband have any enemies?’

‘Enemies?’ She sat up straight, startled. ‘But he was mugged! You should be out on the street looking for a mugger instead of wasting your time asking me such ridiculous questions!’

‘We have to ask,’ put in Cowley, who had taken out his notebook.

‘Did he have any enemies?’ repeated Neville. ‘Say, any
business
rivals?’

She shook her head decisively. ‘No. Nothing like that. He was respected. By his clients. By everyone.’

Neville drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. ‘So you can’t think of anyone who would have wanted to kill him.’

‘Of course not.’

‘All right, Mrs. Norton.’ Neville looked across at Sid Cowley, who was scribbling away. ‘Now I have to ask you something that could be very upsetting.’

Yolanda could feel the tension in Rachel’s body as she
tightened
the grip on her hand; she shot a warning glance at Neville. ‘Easy, now.’

‘We can’t discount any possibility at this point, so we have to ask some difficult questions. Don’t take it personally.’ Yolanda felt the words were directed as much towards her as to Rachel.

Neville shifted in his chair. ‘Was Trevor…um, I mean…’ He cleared his throat. ‘Is it possible that there were…any other women in his life?’

Rachel’s reaction was not what Yolanda would have expected: anger, indignation, ‘how dare you.’ No, Rachel slumped over and the tears began again. ‘You just don’t understand, do you?’ she sobbed.

‘Don’t understand what?’

She swallowed hard, reached for a tissue, and dabbed at her eyes. ‘That Trevor…he loved me more than anything. That there was never anyone else for him. Never. I was the first woman in his life. The only one.’ She blew her nose. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever loved anyone like that, Inspector. I can’t expect you to understand.’

Neville, observed Yolanda, looked uncomfortable at that. He didn’t seem able to bring himself to make eye contact. ‘And…and the baby?’ he asked. ‘Trevor was happy about the baby?’

‘Over the moon. I’ve already told you that.’

‘Was it…planned?’

Rachel glared at him. ‘That isn’t really any of your business, Inspector. But…yes. We’d been trying for a while. And it finally happened.’ She gulped. ‘As I said, Trevor was…thrilled. He couldn’t have been happier.’ She turned and addressed her next words to Yolanda, gripping her hand. ‘It was like he finally had everything he’d ever wanted. Me. His own business. Success. This house. And now the baby.’

Neville rose, followed by Cowley. ‘If it’s all right with you, Mrs. Norton, we need to have a look round the house. We may need to call in some other officers to conduct a thorough search.’

‘Whatever for?’ She released Yolanda’s hand and struggled to her feet to face the two policemen. ‘Trevor wasn’t killed here. Why on earth should you need to do that? Haven’t you done enough, with your…your nasty insinuations? Why do you have to invade my home as well?’ Now the anger that Yolanda had expected earlier was definitely there.

‘Mrs. Norton,’ Neville said, and the Irish lilt in his voice was all the more evident as he spoke formally. ‘We have procedures. We can’t discount anything yet. We want to find the person who killed your husband. I’m sure that’s what you want, as well.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘We can do this with your permission. Or we can go to the magistrate and get a warrant. It’s up to you. But I’m sure that you understand why we have to do this.’

Rachel’s shoulders slumped; she covered her face with her hands. ‘Yes. All right.’

‘And Trevor’s computer,’ Neville went on. ‘We’ll need to take it away.’

She lifted her head sharply. ‘Why?’

‘It’s routine. We’ll need to examine the files, the hard drive.’

‘We’ll give you a receipt for it,’ Cowley put in. ‘You’ll have it back soon.’

Yolanda watched them leave the room. She put her arms round Rachel’s shoulders, shaking now with silent tears. ‘There, there,’ she crooned. ‘Yolanda’s here to look after you, lovie. Yolanda’s here.’