Deep Waters (31 page)

Lilith’s heartbeat quickened; as far as she knew, DI Neville Stewart hadn’t yet stooped to investigating unsightly facial blemishes. ‘And?’

‘He insisted on interviewing one of the finalists. Samantha Winter. He said she was an important material witness in a murder case. I thought you’d like to know.’

‘Thanks,’ said Lilith, smiling. ‘Thank you very much. Now, if you could…’

But her mysterious informant had already rung off.

Joe’s death: murder? Callie didn’t believe it. But Chiara evidently believed it, and that was the important thing.

She couldn’t
not
go, Callie told herself as she made the bus journey to Islington. Chiara needed her, and that had to come above all other considerations.

And she hadn’t given any promises to Marco that she wouldn’t see Chiara.

He’d made it clear what Serena’s wishes were in the matter. But he hadn’t asked her to promise to honour them.

If there’d been any chance of salvaging her relationship with Marco, she realised, this would probably sink it, once and for all. As soon as he found out that she’d defied Serena’s edict, he’d never speak to her again.

This was, Callie reckoned, a pastoral matter: something she had to square with herself, and then deal with the consequences. There would be times in her ministry when she had to do things
that other people wouldn’t like, and this was one of them. Whatever it cost her personally, she couldn’t abandon Chiara.

Chiara was waiting for her at the school gates: standing alone, looking so forlorn that Callie had to resist an urge to give her a big comforting hug.

‘Thanks,’ said Chiara, with a watery smile. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘You’re sure you’re allowed to do this? To come out of school?’

‘In Year Eight we’re allowed to go out at dinner time. Sometimes we go down to the chippy—me and my friends. Or to one of the fast food places. Or we just eat crisps and go shopping.’

Callie could imagine—a gaggle of uniformed girls cutting a swathe through the neighbourhood, giggling and leaving a litter of empty crisp packets in their wake. ‘Where would you like to go now?’ she asked.

‘Somewhere quiet. Where we can sit and talk.’

‘Didn’t I come past a sort of ice-cream shop?’ Callie recalled. ‘Round the corner and down the road?’

‘That would be perfect.’

It was the kind of place Callie remembered being taken to as a child, for a special treat—with formica counters and little individual tables. When given a choice, Callie had always asked for a Knickerbocker Glory, mostly because it sounded so splendid. She loved saying the name: ‘I’ll have a Knickerbocker Glory, please.’

One such instance was as clear in her mind as if it had
happened
last week. Her mother had protested. ‘You won’t be able to finish it, Caroline. You never do. It’s so wasteful. Why don’t you just have a dish of ice cream with chocolate sauce?’

‘Let the girl have what she wants, Laura,’ her father had intervened.

‘I’ll eat it all. I promise.’ And she had—every last bite of ice cream, fruit, jelly, syrup, nuts and whipped cream—though she’d had to force it down towards the end, and later that day she’d been sick. Horribly sick.

After that, Knickerbocker Glories had never appealed to her in quite the same way again.

‘What would you like?’ she asked after Chiara had studied the printed menu card at their table for a few minutes.

‘I believe I’d like a Knickerbocker Glory,’ Chiara decided. ‘If that’s all right.’

Callie smiled. ‘Good choice. And I’ll have a dish of ice cream. With chocolate sauce.’

She placed the order at the counter, then returned to the table.

‘Mum probably wouldn’t let me order a Knickerbocker Glory,’ Chiara confessed.

‘It’s a great deal of ice cream. And all of the other bits as well.’

Chiara sighed. ‘Mum would be furious if she knew I was here. With you.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Did she tell you not to talk to me?’ Chiara gave her a shrewd look.

Callie’s eyes prickled at the unwelcome memory. ‘Indirectly. I got the message.’

‘She told me not to talk to
you
. But I don’t care,’ Chiara added fiercely. ‘She can’t tell me what to do. And I’m glad you didn’t listen to her, either.’

Callie knew she’d never be able to make Chiara understand that it wasn’t that straightforward. She wasn’t just defying Serena, or taking sides with Chiara against her mother. It was so much more complicated than that. ‘I care about you,’ she said simply. That was the best she could do.

‘I’m glad
someone
does.’ Chiara leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. ‘Mum doesn’t.’

‘That’s not true. Your mother loves you,’ Callie said. ‘And there’s Angelina, and your Nonna and Nonno, and Uncle Marco…’

Chiara clearly wasn’t having it; she changed the subject. ‘Angelina’s come home,’ she said. ‘Yesterday.’

‘Oh, that’s good.’

‘She’s broken up with her boyfriend. Li. She told me. I was surprised,’ Chiara confessed. ‘I thought she loved him.’

Callie bit her lip. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘even when people love each other, things just don’t work out.’ She swallowed hard; there was a painful lump in her throat.

‘You mean like Mum and Dad?’

It was a welcome relief that the ice cream arrived at that moment, before Callie had to answer. The Knickerbocker Glory was an awesome concoction, crowned with not just a biscuit fan stuck into the whipped cream but a little paper umbrella as well.

‘Wow,’ said Chiara, and picked up the long-handled spoon. But she wasn’t going to let Callie get away without answering her question. ‘Like Mum and Dad?’ she repeated.

Callie scooped up a spoonful of ice cream and dunked it in chocolate sauce, taking her time. ‘Your parents stayed together. No matter what bad things happened between them—and you can’t know that; no one can—they stayed together.’

‘Maybe.’ Chiara put down her spoon and pushed the tall glass away from her, untouched. ‘I’m not really very hungry.’

‘What do you mean, maybe?’

Chiara didn’t look at her; she stared down at the table. ‘You remember I told you, a few days ago, that I thought Mum had been responsible for Dad’s death? That she drove him to a heart attack by the way she treated him? I don’t think that any more.’

‘I remember. I know you were in shock when you said it, and I’m glad you’ve realised that it was—’

‘No,’ Chiara interrupted her fiercely. ‘No. You don’t
understand
what I’m saying.’ She turned her face in Callie’s direction, and her expression was enough to stop the spoon halfway to Callie’s mouth. ‘I don’t think that any more because now I know that Dad was murdered. Now I think that Mum killed him. Not just by accident, or by being hateful to him. I think she really,
really
killed him.’

Instead of going to the hospital cafe for lunch, Frances ate a sandwich at her desk, relishing a few moments of solitude. Her morning had been tiring and highly emotional: she’d been with a young man as he died after a road accident, then had had to deal with his understandably distraught mother, who had expected her to come up with answers for the unanswerable questions. ‘Why my son? How could a loving God take away my son, in the prime of his life, when he had so much to live for? How can you believe in a God who could do that?’

There were no answers. Only more questions.

And after the past twenty-four hours, Frances felt she was qualified to hang out her shingle as a relationship counsellor—or at the very least an agony aunt.

It had started with Callie, pouring out her heart about her relationship with Mark. Admittedly, Frances had prompted her to confide in her, and she knew that it had cost Callie a great deal to do so: up till that point, Callie had seemingly managed to escape from thinking about it, but putting it into words had made it concrete, unavoidable.

And again, Frances had no easy answers for her. She could merely listen and act as a sounding-board for the things Callie already knew. The only advice she’d offered had been, ‘Don’t give up on it yet. If you really love him, you can work it out. Don’t do anything hasty, or say anything you’ll regret.’

Easy to say, when you had a good, stable marriage. She could only imagine Callie’s pain, facing the prospect of life without the man she’d come to love.

Her other experience, at breakfast this morning, had been a happier one. Triona had been smiling as she sipped her coffee.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Triona said. ‘And I think I’ve been awfully hard on Neville.’

Frances had been of that opinion all along, but she didn’t say that. ‘He means well,’ she said. ‘And he does love you. Very much. I’m sure of it.’

‘It’s his bloody job,’ admitted Triona. ‘I hate it. I hate the way he’s at their beck and call, day and night. How can we have a decent life together if I never know when I’m going to see him?’

‘That’s the way it is. Not everyone can work nine to five,’ Frances pointed out. ‘Someone has to do that job, just like someone has to be the doctor who’s called out in the middle of the night to save a life.’ Or a priest who was called out to hold a dying person’s hand, she added to herself.

‘That’s what I keep telling myself. And I know he loves his job.’

‘And he’s good at it,’ Frances reminded her. ‘Most of the time. When he’s not arresting innocent people.’

That brought a wry laugh from Triona. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Cut him a bit of slack.’

Frances couldn’t help wondering what had brought about this change of mind. Ever since her heart-to-heart with Neville she’d been looking for an opportunity to have this conversation, but any attempt she’d made had been rebuffed. Now Triona had actually brought up the subject herself. ‘I’m glad,’ Frances said. ‘I think you can make each other happy, if you give it a chance.’ They would also almost certainly make each other miserable at least half of the time, but she didn’t mention that. ‘And there’s the baby,’ she added.

Triona smiled again, stroking her belly with both hands. ‘Yes, there’s that. He—or she—deserves a dad.’

‘So…what are you going to do?’

‘Well, the first thing is to get out of your hair,’ Triona stated. ‘I’ve abused your hospitality long enough.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Oh, absolutely. The reason I came here was so Neville wouldn’t find me, remember? But he tracked me down days ago, and I’ve stayed on anyway. I suppose,’ she confessed, ‘I’ve just enjoyed being pampered a bit, and having some company.’

‘You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. You know that.’

‘I’ll go back to my flat. Probably this afternoon,’ Triona said. ‘Then I’ll ring Neville, and we can start talking things through.’

So that, Frances fervently hoped, was that.

Now her thoughts returned to Callie.

Tomorrow was Callie’s day off, she knew. Callie wouldn’t want to spend it at the vicarage, and in her current frame of mind she certainly didn’t need to inflict her mother on herself.

It would be good if they could spend a bit of time together. Frances usually didn’t work on Friday mornings; she was owed plenty of time from the extra hours she’d put in and could easily take the afternoon off as well.

In her lingerie drawer at home, Frances had a voucher for a ‘Pamper Day for Two’ at a day spa in Chelsea. It had been a Christmas gift from Graham—a generous and thoughtful gift for a chronically over-worked wife who didn’t get to spend as much time with her friends as she liked. While she had
understood
and appreciated the impulse behind the gift, Frances had been so busy since Christmas that she hadn’t even thought about redeeming it.

This, she decided, was the time. She and Callie could soak in a whirlpool bath, have facials, get manicures and pedicures. A girly day, with no churchy shop talk allowed.

Bliss.

Frances reached for the phone.

Driving back into London, Neville brooded on what had just happened at the ‘Junior Idol’ studio. It wasn’t something that he
experienced very often: the feeling that he’d been bested. That bloody girl had toyed with him, manipulated him, taken the mickey. And she’d enjoyed every minute of it.

It shouldn’t have happened. He was the one in control, asking the questions. But she’d twisted him round her elegant little finger. In short, she had humiliated him.

He was only glad—fervently—that Cowley hadn’t been there to see it. He would never have lived it down.

Not that Cowley would have fared any better at the hands of that ruthless little bitch, Neville told himself.

It was just a shame that he didn’t have a good reason to arrest her and teach her a little lesson. She might not be so ready to take the piss if she were locked up in a cell for a day or two. But she’d been quite right in saying that she would have had nothing to gain by killing Joe di Stefano, a discarded lover. He was out of her life, ancient history, not even worth thinking about. She’d moved on: to fame, fortune and Tarquin. Tarquin, the simpering little fop.

What if, Neville asked himself, trying hard to put her in the frame, Joe di Stefano had threatened Samantha that he would go public about their affair? It was the sort of thing Lilith Noone and her ilk would have a field day with: ‘“Junior Idol” star had it off with professor’. But at the end of the day, though it might have embarrassed her a little to be linked with an unglamorous middle-aged man, it was all about publicity. And wasn’t there a saying that there was no such thing as bad publicity?

Besides, di Stefano had surely been as anxious as she to keep it all quiet, if nothing else for the sake of his family. He would have had nothing to gain from going public about it, and it would have broken his daughters’ hearts. Whatever you could say about Joe di Stefano, Neville was convinced, from what he knew of the man, that he’d loved his daughters.

No, he would have to look elsewhere for Joe di Stefano’s killer. More the pity.

He wondered what Cowley had turned up at the university. Probably nothing that would switch their focus away from the family.

At the end of the day, Neville told himself, Serena di Stefano was almost certainly the one they were looking for. Much as Mark Lombardi might disagree, in his eagerness to protect her, she was the person who’d had the best reasons to want di Stefano dead. How humiliating it must have been for her to know that—
beautiful
as she was herself—her husband preferred a younger model. And she’d been bending over backwards to keep it from the family. Bottling up her hostility and hurt, revealing her feelings only to her brother. Not surprising that she’d cracked. Seeing him going out jogging every morning to keep in shape for his mistress…

And there was the opportunity, right there. The Lucozade bottle. Unscrew the top, empty a bit out, fill it up with
anti-freeze
—readily available at any auto supply shop or even at the supermarket.

Problem solved.

She was such a cool customer. She could have done it, just like that. No tears shed, just a problem solved.

But how could they prove it?

And however it played out, this was going to tear a family apart. That was unavoidable, inevitable.

Driving past a McDonald’s, Neville realised, suddenly, that he was hungry. He turned into the car park on impulse and went in, queued up, and ordered a bacon-and-cheese
quarter-pounder
with fries.

He was trying to tear open a packet of tomato ketchup when his phone rang.

‘Neville Stewart,’ he answered.

‘Mr Stewart, this is Andrew. Andrew Linton.’ Andrew sounded even more ebullient than usual.

‘Yes?’

‘I managed to reschedule those viewings from yesterday. And we have two offers!’

‘Offers?’

‘To buy your flat! The first couple this morning—they loved it so much that they offered the asking price. On the spot. Two six-nine nine-fifty.’

‘Wow,’ said Neville, scribbling the number on his serviette to help him visualise it better. ‘Great.’

‘And then the next people. I told them we had an asking-price offer on the table, so they put in an offer of two seventy.’

Two hundred and seventy thousand pounds. Unbelievable.

‘So I went back to the first couple. They really want it, Mr Stewart. Really. It ticked all their boxes. They upped their offer to two seven-five. Best and final, off the market today,
completion
within eight weeks.’

Whatever that meant in plain English. ‘You think I should take it?’

‘They’re cash buyers, Mr Stewart,’ Andrew said, as close to reproachful as Neville had ever heard him. ‘No chain. You’d be mad not to take it.’

‘I’ll be guided by you, then. Tell them we have a deal.’

‘Brilliant! Brilliant.’ He paused for breath, then went on. ‘And your wife’s flat. I have a huge amount of interest from people on my books, like I said. So I’m scheduling an open house
tomorrow
afternoon. Sealed bids at the end of the day.’

‘That’s…excellent.’ Neville felt almost dizzy with the speed of it.

‘So you’ll be needing a new property soon. I’ve pulled a few details out for you to look at. I’ve left them at your flat, to save you a trip into the office.’

‘Thanks,’ said Neville. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

Callie was horrified at Chiara’s readiness to believe her mother was capable of murder. Still unconvinced that Joe’s death had been anything other than natural, she wished she could ring Marco and ask him what was going on. Now that she’d expressly defied his wishes and talked to Chiara, though, she knew that wasn’t possible.

Frances’ phone call, inviting her to spend her day off at a spa, provided a welcome distraction and gave her something to look forward to.

But today wasn’t over yet, and as she rode the bus back across town from Islington, Callie pondered something that had been bothering her since she’d read the
Globe
story about Jodee and Chazz. It had made her think back over her conversations with Brenda, and given her the glimmer of an idea about what might have happened to Muffin. Little more than an instinct, an intuition…

It was none of her business, Callie told herself. Her
involvement
with the Betts family was pastoral, not investigative. That was the police’s job.

Yet when the bus terminated at Oxford Circus, before
switching
to the Tube, Callie bought a bunch of spring flowers from a street seller. And when she came out of the Tube station at Lancaster Gate, instead of heading for the vicarage she turned towards the Bettses’ house. She fought her way through the photographers: still there, still waiting. For a moment Callie felt sorry for them. How many days had they been there besieging the house, with no one of interest coming out or going in? Were they there on the basis that sooner or later one of the Bettses would have to show their face?

Brenda opened the door a crack to let her in. ‘We wasn’t expecting you,’ she said.