Deep Waters (27 page)

They headed for the cafe and went through the queue. Frances selected a salad, while Callie asked for a jacket potato with tuna mayo. It was a bit early for lunch, so they didn’t have any trouble finding a table.

‘All right,’ Frances prompted. ‘Tell me about the bag. Was it a gift?’ Maybe, she thought, Callie’s extravagant brother had bought it for her; it was obviously expensive, and she couldn’t imagine Callie spending that much money on herself, certainly not as long as there was any life left in the black bag Callie had been carrying as long as Frances had known her.

‘I bought it,’ Callie confessed. ‘And I’m already wondering whether I was mad to do it. But I did need a new one.’ She told her, then, about the theft of her old stalwart.

‘But that’s dreadful!’

Callie sighed. ‘It wasn’t the bag so much, or even the
inconvenience
of having to make all the phone calls and go to the police. It was the things I can’t replace.’ She hesitated, looking miserable. ‘I just hate to tell you, Fran. The prayer book was in it. The one you gave me. I’ve always carried it with me, and now it’s…gone. I’m so sorry.’

Frances felt a stab of regret, quickly masked with a brisk shake of her head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you another one.’

‘But that book meant something to me. And to you.’ Tears welled in Callie’s eyes.

‘Things,’ Frances said firmly. ‘Possessions. “Treasures on earth”. We must never let them possess
us
.’

‘That’s what I tell myself. But I can’t help it.’ Callie fumbled in her pocket for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes.

At least, thought Frances, it explained why she hadn’t heard from Callie in more than a day. She’d been expecting Callie to call round and take Bella for a walk; now she knew there was a good reason why it hadn’t happened.

Suddenly the trickle of Callie’s tears turned into a flood. ‘It was just a bag,’ she sobbed. ‘Just a book.’

Frances looked on with concern, sure with the instinct of a priest that there was more to it than that. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ she probed. ‘Tell me, Callie.’

Mark had expected that by now, five days after the tragedy, the media circus in front of the Bettses’ townhouse would have dwindled. If anything, though, the numbers had increased, and there was a buzz of expectancy, even excitement, as he pushed his way through them to the front door.

He was taken aback to find Brenda Betts in a state of anger—and mightily relieved that it wasn’t directed at him. He wouldn’t have been all that surprised if it had been, after his dereliction of duty. But he seemed to have been forgiven for that.

Over the past days he’d seen Brenda in the grip of a variety of emotions: shock, raw grief, bewilderment, contrition,
protective
mother-love, defensiveness. This was the first time he’d seen her truly angry.

Ignoring his apologies and his proffered Tesco bags, she waved a tabloid newspaper at him. ‘Have you seen this? The
Globe
?’

‘No,’ Mark admitted. Catching up on tabloid gossip was the last thing on his mind that morning.

‘Jodee’s mum rang, of course. Spiteful cow. I just couldn’t believe it, not even when she read out every word. So I rang our Di and she brought it round, like. Had to get through that lot out there, and her photo will probably be in tomorrow’s papers. “Baby killer’s sister”!’

‘What?’ He wasn’t following her at all, so he took the paper from her and glanced at the headline, then read through the story.

It was an appalling piece of sensationalist journalism—exactly what he would have expected from Lilith Noone and the
Globe
—but the facts were essentially correct, and that horrified Mark. So few people knew about the post-mortem findings. Did she think that he’d been the one who’d spilled the beans?

‘Disloyalty,’ Brenda spat, her arms flailing. ‘When you think someone’s on your side, and then they stab you in the back… People like that are dirt. Hanging’s too good for them.’

‘Mrs Betts, I didn’t talk to the press,’ Mark assured her. ‘They didn’t get this from me. I haven’t discussed it with a soul.’

‘I know that.’ She gave him a scathing look. ‘It was that Lilith Noone.’

‘Yes, but…someone talked to her. This information…it’s highly classified. Not many people…’

Brenda’s arms dropped to her side. ‘We thought she were our friend, like,’ she said simply, the anger seemingly drained out of her. ‘We trusted her.’

In an instant Mark understood: Brenda Betts herself,
presumably
along with Jodee and Chazz, had told Lilith Noone about the post-mortem x-rays. The sheer daft naivety of it stunned him into silence.

‘We told her about them questions you asked us, if anybody shook Muffin. We was upset—I admit it. She were all sympathetic. Butter wouldn’t melt, like. I never thought she’d do this to us.’

No wonder the feeding frenzy on the other side of the door had stepped up. This was going to get worse before it got better, Mark realised. And there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Maybe a press statement. If he helped the Bettses to draft a statement, denying the allegations of shaking and asking to be left alone, and read it out to the gathered media…

It wouldn’t satisfy them, and they wouldn’t go away. Mark knew that. But it was something to do, something to distract Brenda for a short time.

She put the kettle on and made instant coffee, then they sat at the kitchen table with Mark’s notebook. ‘The Betts family deny…’ he said as he wrote. ‘Should we say “absolutely” deny?’

Brenda nodded. ‘Yeah. That’s good.’

Mark’s phone rang, and taking it from his pocket he saw that it was Neville. Reluctantly he went out into the corridor to answer it, aware that he should have kept Neville informed of his whereabouts without being asked. ‘Listen, Nev, I’m at
the Bettses’ house,’ he said pre-emptively. ‘I should have rung. They’re pretty spun up about Lilith Noone. I suppose you’ve seen the
Globe
—’

Neville cut him off. ‘Never mind about that.’ He paused, then produced the words that were a horribly prophetic echo of Serena, the day before. ‘Mark, mate,’ he said. ‘We have to talk. Now.’

Acting on a tip from the duty sergeant, Neville tracked Sid Cowley down in the forlorn little outside yard at the back of the station where smokers congregated. Knowing the extent of Sid’s nicotine addiction, Neville reckoned he probably spent a fair amount of time there, now that the entire station was
off-limits
for smokers. That would explain why it had been so easy to avoid him over the past few days.

In the end, though, Sid Cowley didn’t say a word. Not ‘I told you so’ or anything like it. Neville couldn’t even detect a smirk, suppressed or not.

No, Sid greeted him without comment, and seemed happy to see him. ‘I hope you have something we can get our teeth into, Guv,’ he said. ‘Things have been dead dull round here without you.’

‘We’re going to Clerkenwell.’

‘Clerkenwell’s a bit out of our patch,’ Cowley observed.

‘Isn’t it just,’ agreed Neville. ‘But the bloke died in hospital down the road, so that makes him ours.’

Neville filled the sergeant in as he drove across town. ‘Mark Lombardi’s brother-in-law, which could be a bit awkward,’ he said.

Mark hadn’t taken the news well: either the fact that Joe di Stefano had been murdered, which he’d refused to believe, or his own suspension from work, which he had strenuously protested. ‘Evans,’ Neville had told him. ‘Nothing to do with me, mate. I’m just passing along the word from on high.’

Mark had, though, told him where he could find the widow—at the family restaurant—and had said that he would meet them there.

‘As long as you don’t say anything to her before we get there,’ Neville had warned him. ‘I want to tell her myself.’ It was
essential
that he be able to see her face when he told Serena di Stefano that her husband had been murdered.

‘Not that I think she did it,’ he said to Cowley, thinking aloud. ‘Not necessarily.’

‘But it usually is the wife, isn’t it, Guv? Or someone in the immediate family. In cases like this. Poison and so forth.’ Sid nodded sagely. ‘Grieving widows—I never trust ’em.’

That said, Neville reflected, from what he had observed Cowley rather liked grieving widows, especially young and pretty ones. They seemed to bring out what little gallantry the man possessed.

‘Mind if I have a fag?’ Cowley asked.

Neville shrugged. As an ex-smoker himself, he was vociferously anti-smoking, but he was not actually averse to a bit of
second-hand
smoke from time to time. ‘Kill yourself if you must. As long as you hold it out of the window,’ he warned: theoretically the police car was an extension of the work-place and smoking was therefore prohibited. If they brought the car back stinking of stale tobacco, he would be the one who’d have to answer for it.

‘Bloody fascists,’ Cowley grumbled, rolling the window down. As they were pretty much stuck in slow-moving traffic on Oxford Street, hemmed in on all sides by red buses, that let in the exhaust fumes. ‘Bloody diesel fumes are more likely to kill me than fags,’ he added.

They arrived at La Venezia at the end of the lunch hour, just as the ‘closed’ sign was going up at the entrance, and managed to find a place to park on the street right in front of the restaurant, newly vacated by the last customer.

‘Good timing,’ said Neville, locking the car.

Cowley dropped what was left of his latest fag on the
pavement
and ground it out with his heel. ‘Show time, then,’ he
said, with some relish—obviously looking forward to this more than Neville was.

Mark met them at the door and escorted them to a small private dining room, furnished with one long table and about a dozen chairs. ‘I’ll get Serena,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for Mamma to know about this—it would upset her too much. She’s in the kitchen, clearing up. And Pappa’s helping.’

Neville forbore to say that Mr and Mrs Lombardi—Mamma and Pappa—would have to be questioned at some point as well; no member of the family was going to escape. And that included Mark.

But Serena was definitely the first order of business. The grieving widow, in Sid Cowley’s parlance.

Mark brought her in and performed the introductions, almost as though he were the host at a posh dinner party. ‘Detective Inspector Stewart, Detective Sergeant Cowley. My sister, Serena di Stefano.’

Neville nodded awkwardly at her and was aware that Sid was staring. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected: not dark like Mark, but golden-haired and quite beautiful.

She regarded them levelly. ‘How can I help you, gentlemen?’

‘Mrs di Stefano,’ Neville said, wanting to get it over with, ‘there’s no gentle way to say this. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your husband’s death wasn’t from natural causes—he was murdered.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Joe? That’s absurd. I was with him when he died. It was a heart attack.’

‘A heart attack brought on by ethylene glycol poisoning.’

She frowned. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Joe wasn’t poisoned.’ Turning to Mark, she said, ‘Tell them, Marco. I don’t know whose idea of a joke this is, but I don’t find it very funny.’

Mark looked uncomfortable, glancing between his sister and Neville. ‘They say the post-mortem results have confirmed it,’ he told her.

‘Ethylene glycol,’ Neville repeated. ‘Better known as
anti-freeze
. Do you keep anti-freeze in your home, Mrs di Stefano?
Or here, at your business? I believe it’s used in industrial
refrigeration
units.’

‘Certainly not!’

He’d talked to Hereward Rice, as Evans had suggested, and had even spent a few minutes on the internet checking the facts. Anti-freeze, it seems, has a sweet taste, not at all unpleasant, and can be administered rather easily by mixing it with various beverages. ‘Did your husband drink anything before he was… taken ill?’ He asked. ‘To your knowledge?’

‘No. Just…I don’t know.’

‘Was he taken ill at home? Or somewhere else?’

‘At home,’ she stated. ‘He’d just come in from his run.’

Neville glanced at Cowley, who had taken out his notebook and was dutifully jotting it down.

‘His breathing was funny,’ Serena di Stefano went on. ‘Ragged. He said he felt sick. Then he…collapsed. He was unconscious. I rang 999 straightaway.’

‘And the paramedics came?’

‘Yes. They said it was a heart attack. A heart attack.’ She repeated it like a mantra. ‘They took him to hospital. He died the next day. Another heart attack, and I was with him.’

‘So you were with him when he had
both
heart attacks,’ Sid Cowley chipped in for the first time.

She gave him a filthy look. ‘I wasn’t pouring poison—
anti-freeze
, or whatever—down his throat, if that’s what you mean, sergeant.’

Neville interposed. ‘Could you tell me who else was in the house when your husband was taken ill?’

‘Just my daughter. Chiara. She’s twel—thirteen,’ Serena stated. ‘And she didn’t poison her father, either,’ she added
sarcastically
. ‘She adored him.’

‘There wasn’t a row or anything?’ Cowley asked, unabashed. ‘Teen-age stuff? I know that teen-aged girls can be funny.’

Neville hoped Sid wasn’t going to tell one of his stories about his sister: they were without number, and all equally boring. Neville didn’t like to think how many of them he’d endured over
the years, from her first unsuitable boyfriend to her protracted and painful experiences in childbirth.

He thought that Serena di Stefano hesitated for a
micro-second
before she said, ‘No. Not with her father. As I said, she adored him.’

‘I’m afraid we’ll need to talk to Chiara,’ Neville said
apologetically
.

‘She’s just a child.’ Her voice was sharp, protective.

‘Serena can be with her when you talk to her, can’t she?’ Mark interposed.

‘Of course.’ Neville shot him a grateful look. ‘And I’m afraid we’ll have to search your home, Mrs di Stefano,’ he added. ‘I hope you understand.’

‘You won’t find anything,’ she stated, defiant. ‘You can search all you like. You won’t find anything.’

Now came the hard part, the part he’d been dreading. ‘Would you like to sit down, Mrs di Stefano?’ he suggested, pulling out one of the chairs from round the table.

‘No,’ she said, but she sat anyway, as if aware that something unpleasant was about to unfold.

‘You know I have to ask you this. How was your relationship with your husband?’

‘I loved him,’ she said simply, not at all defensive now. ‘We were married for twenty-two years.’

‘And you didn’t have any problems?’ Neville thought,
unbidden
, about Triona, and realised what a stupid question it was. How could anyone be married for longer than about five minutes and not have problems? Let alone twenty-two years. ‘More than normal, anyway,’ he amended.

Serena turned and looked at Mark; he gave her a little nod and put a hand on her shoulder. She sat for a moment, scarcely moving a muscle, then spoke quietly. ‘He was having an affair,’ she said. ‘With one of his students. We rowed about it when I found out, a few months ago. I was…hurt. I felt betrayed.’ She raised her chin and her eyes met Neville’s. ‘But I loved Joe. Always. Even when he hurt me.’

Neville waited. Bloody hell, he thought. Why didn’t Mark tell me?

‘Inspector Stewart,’ she said, enunciating carefully, ‘Let me make one thing very clear. I did not kill my husband.’

Lilith felt as if she was floating on a cloud of happiness.

Her work day had begun with a summons into the boss’ office, but it couldn’t have been more different than the day before.

‘You’ve played a blinder,’ Rob Gardiner-Smith said with relish. ‘Your story’s blown the competition out of the water. I knew you could do it.’

Mixed metaphors, thought Lilith, even as she allowed
herself
to smile in acknowledgement. And hadn’t he changed his tune?

‘We had to go back for an extra print run,’ Gardiner-Smith exulted. ‘It’s selling like hot-cakes.’

He’d given her an assignment for the day: while the rest of the tabloids were playing catch-up, she was to re-write and amplify the ‘shaken to death’ story for tomorrow’s front page, and do another story for the inside centrefold. That was to be a retrospective on Jodee and Chazz, into which they’d drop lots of photos. ‘A recap of the whole story,’ he said. ‘“The rise and fall of a celebrity couple” sort of thing.’ And, he’d added, when she’d finished that, Lilith was to go home and put her feet up. ‘You’ve earned a few hours off.’

She’d knocked off the two stories—it hadn’t taken her very long—and had left the
Globe
offices before midday. On her way home she’d stopped for lunch. She’d considered going to an elegant little bistro, but in the end she chose a much more down-market cafe, where the patrons were more likely to be discussing subjects close to her heart. Indeed, from the snatches of conversation she could overhear all round her as she tucked into her fry-up, Jodee and Chazz were the topic of the day. ‘Who would of thought they could of done that? It’s unnatural.’ ‘Poor
little mite, that Muffin. I always did worry about her, you know.’ ‘I never trusted that Jodee. She looks hard.’

At home she indulged in a prolonged bubble bath, ignoring the phone when it rang, getting out only when the water cooled. She wrapped herself in a fluffy towel, deliciously warm from the heated towel rail, then swapped it for her cosiest dressing gown.

Time to check her phone messages.

The first one was from Addie McLean, editor of
HotStuff
magazine
. ‘Ring me,’ she said succinctly, and added her number.

The second one surprised her, if only because, in her
experience
, he was so taciturn. ‘It’s Chazz,’ the voice said. ‘Mum’s that upset. Couldn’t trust herself to ring, could she? And Jodee—you’ve broke her heart, like. She can’t stop crying. We thought you was our friend, like.’ There was a pause, as if he were considering his next words, then he spoke softly but precisely. ‘I hope you’re happy, you effin’ bitch.’

Taking a quick, temporary leave of Serena, Mark caught up with Neville and Cowley at their car.