Deep Waters (14 page)

‘Callie,’ came Brian’s voice from the sitting room. ‘Could I have a word?’

She sighed and pushed the door open. ‘I’m really sorry, Brian. I didn’t mean to be so late,’ she said sheepishly. ‘You didn’t need to wait up for me, you know.’ Her apology was followed by an unexpected spurt of anger: she was a grown woman, after all, who shouldn’t have to explain, let alone grovel.

Brian and Jane were sitting together on the sofa, as they’d been that afternoon when they’d watched the old movie. This time, though, the telly wasn’t on.

A look passed between them and Brian spoke again. ‘We saw you on the news tonight,’ he said.

Oh, no—just what she’d been afraid of. Callie’s momentary anger evaporated, replaced by defensiveness. She crossed her arms across her chest and waited.

It was Jane who spoke next. ‘What were you doing at that house?’

Callie addressed her reply to Brian. ‘It’s in the parish. It was your day off. And they asked to see me.’

‘What about?’ he demanded.

She took a deep breath. ‘About their baby’s funeral.’

‘I’m the parish priest,’ said Brian. ‘If they live in the parish they’re entitled to have the funeral at the church, but I’m the one who will be taking it.’

‘It was your day off,’ Callie repeated, wondering whether she dared go on. ‘And they specifically said they want me to take the funeral. I’m sorry, Brian, but they’re the parents.’

‘And Brian is the parish priest,’ Jane interposed. ‘How did they contact
you
, anyway?’

‘My…um…friend Mark is their Family Liaison Officer.’

Jane’s disapproval was visible. ‘And he suggested that they should talk to you?’

‘That’s right.’ Suddenly Callie’s anger flared again. Why should she have to explain herself to Jane Stanford? Jane wasn’t her boss. And she was just doing her job, dealing with people who had been bereaved in the most dreadful way imaginable. Petty matters of seniority and protocol seemed ridiculous in the face of what the Bettses had suffered. Brian should be
glad
that she was looking after their parishioners on his day off, rather than engaging in some stupid turf war, spurred on by his wife.

But she didn’t want to say that, not at this moment. ‘I’m going to bed now,’ she said instead, turning and walking towards the door. ‘If you want to discuss this further, we can do it in the morning. After church.’

Mark’s return home was also quiet, if not stealthy; he had no wish to disturb Geoff, awake or asleep, and was relieved to find his flatmate was nowhere in evidence.

He went to his room, flopped down on the bed, and pulled his mobile phone from his pocket. During the course of the evening it had vibrated, but he had chosen not to answer it; whatever it was about, he didn’t want it to interrupt his dinner with Callie. After all, he told himself, it was Saturday night and he was off duty. The call was unlikely to involve a work emergency, or anything that couldn’t wait for an hour or so. And surely the caller would have left a voicemail message.

The call, he saw, had been from Neville, and there
was
a
message
. Mark sighed and punched the button to listen to it.

‘Nothing urgent, mate,’ Neville said in a rather precise voice. Mark knew him well enough—from endless off-duty bachelor evenings at the pub—to recognise that Neville had been
drinking
, and probably rather a lot. He held his alcohol well, did Neville, and had a prodigious capacity for Guinness, but there were signs. Most people’s speech grew slurred the more they drank; with Neville it was the opposite.

‘Just wanted to let you know about the preliminary
post-mortem
report on Muffin.’

Mark wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this just now, but he resisted the temptation to cut off the message and postpone listening to it until morning.

‘Just between us, there were…indications…that something else was going on. Can’t go into it now. Ring me tomorrow and I’ll tell you about it. It’s going to mean that you’ll need to ask them some difficult questions. Ring me,’ Neville repeated, adding, ‘Sorry I didn’t ring earlier, mate. It’s been a bugger of a day.’

Mark frowned, his first reaction incomprehension and
disbelief
. Difficult questions? What on earth did that mean? He would have sworn to anyone who asked that Jodee and Chazz were above board, their grief genuine. That had been his gut feeling
from the beginning, and even Mrs Betts’ revelation that Muffin had been left alone hadn’t shaken that. It had been a mistake, a one-off misunderstanding, not a deliberate abandonment. There was no pattern of neglect or abuse in that family. Apart from anything else, Jodee and Chazz weren’t bright enough to dissemble convincingly about it. If they’d hurt Muffin, Mark was sure, they would have blurted it out immediately, or at least given themselves away within the first few minutes.

His second reaction was a purely selfish one. If difficult
questions
were to be asked, and by him, did that mean he’d have to do it tomorrow? Cancel his day off, miss Chiara’s birthday party?

Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Sorry as he would be to miss it, disappointed as Chiara would be, it would at least remove him from yet another temptation to punch Joe’s lights out.

Then he noticed that there was another voicemail message. From the di Stefanos’ home phone number. Joe? Serena? But the call had come through before Serena would have been home from the restaurant. He pushed the button and put the phone back to his ear.

‘Uncle Marco?’ came Chiara’s voice, whispering. ‘I just wanted to let you know that Samantha is through to the final. Maybe it was our votes that did it. Isn’t that brilliant? See you tomorrow,’ she added, and made a kissing noise.

Mark smiled, in spite of himself.

When Lilith Noone awoke in the middle of the night, the first thing she realised was that she was not alone. Rolling over, she stifled a groan.

It had been one of those things. They’d met at the police news conference, where he’d squeezed into the chair next to her. She’d not run across him before, probably because he worked for one of the broadsheets and their paths were not likely to cross often. The Muffin Betts story, with its universal interest, had quite literally created strange bedfellows.

They’d both had stories to file, and quickly, after the press conference; the deadlines for the Sunday papers were early and there wasn’t any time to waste. Lilith hadn’t even had much time to think about the spin she was putting on her story. Just get it in: that was the priority, and she could work on fine-tuning and elaborating on it at her leisure for the Monday
Daily Globe
.

Hasty plans had been made for them to meet up later for a drink. One drink had turned to two, then they’d moved on to another venue for a few more, and finally, inevitably, they’d ended up at her flat. The flat was a mess as usual, but he hadn’t really noticed. And it didn’t much matter whether he did or not; she wouldn’t be seeing him again.

He’d been a disappointment, she conceded to herself. A
three-minute
wonder, and that was being generous. Excessive alcohol hadn’t helped his performance, though he probably wasn’t much better at the best of times. It wasn’t that she’d especially fancied him, either. It was more a matter of proving to herself that she could still pull a bloke if she wanted to.

Not that she’d wanted to all that much recently, and that in itself was a bit of a worry. Was she getting past it? Past that itch that needed to be satisfied?

She’d actually felt the itch that afternoon. Not for the sodden lump beside her, snoring now with his mouth open, but—improbably—when DI Neville Stewart had come into the room to read his statement. She’d suddenly been aware of him—not as her adversary, and someone who surely and quite justifiably hated her guts, but as an attractive, even sexy, bloke. For the first time she found herself wondering about him as a man. Was he married? Somehow she doubted it. With those looks, and that Irish charm to burn, he didn’t seem the sort to tie himself down to one woman. Then he smoothed back his hair with his left hand and she saw the wedding ring.

Ah, well.

At that point she’d turned to the broadsheet bloke beside her and favoured him with a smile.

And here they were.

The second realisation followed on from this train of thought, but it was more gradual.

DI Neville Stewart.

She had scored a point against him, and that always pleased her. He’d been discomfited by her question, though he’d handled it fairly gracefully. Was it police-speak, or was he really
holding
something back from the press? She’d had a strong feeling, backed by years of experience as well as instinct, that he wasn’t telling them everything.

Lilith Noone revelled in her reputation for being a thorn in the side of the police. She took every opportunity to go after them in print: pointing out their failures, decrying lack of action or information, hinting at cover-ups.

But…

In this case, if she attacked the police, what would she be saying? That they were concealing something about the death of baby Muffin? That what had appeared to be SIDS was…what?

It suddenly struck Lilith that to go down that path—the
natural
one for her—would bring her dangerously close to implying that Jodee and Chazz had something to hide.

And once she was on that path, others would follow. Questions would be asked, conclusions would be drawn. Speculation would run riot.

Public opinion could turn on Jodee and Chazz, as quickly as sympathy had arisen. Whether there was anything in it or not, overnight they could go from being the pitied darlings of the nation to the monsters who had done something to their baby.

She, Lilith Noone, would be responsible. Where would that leave her?

Outside of the charmed circle that she now inhabited as a family friend of Jodee and Chazz, certainly. No more exclusive interviews. No personal invitation to the funeral.

She had been about to walk into a trap of her own making. Lilith broke into a cold sweat as she realised how close she had come to forfeiting her favoured position.

It wouldn’t happen. She had to be very careful to make sure that it didn’t.

Writing her story for Monday’s
Globe
would require all of her skill and cunning. But she could do it. Lilith was certain of that. Now that she knew what was at stake, she would step back from the edge of the abyss.

Sunday morning.

Mark stretched and hit the snooze button on the alarm. It was a luxury he allowed himself on his day off: an extra ten minutes in bed. Then he’d indulge in a long soak in the bath, instead of the quick shower he had on work days. Sometimes he would even have a cooked breakfast—but that was something he’d never admit to Mamma.

Mamma was old-fashioned about things like that. In the first place, cooked breakfasts were an English thing, a bad habit—in her opinion—he’d picked up in the police. And to eat anything at all, even a simple Italian breakfast of bread and fruit, on Sunday before Mass was anathema to Mamma.

Eleven o’clock Mass at the Italian Church, followed by a huge family lunch which more than made up for the lack of breakfast: that was the pattern for
la famiglia Lombardi
, and had been for all of Mark’s life. In recent years, with his erratic work schedule, he hadn’t always been able to take part in the weekly ritual, but it was still an ingrained part of him and he did it whenever he could.