Deep Waters (37 page)

It would have to do. The statement wasn’t very polished, but Neville had run out of time. He read it through, quickly, to make sure he’d covered the important points, then thought about how he was going to get to the coroner’s court. The Tube would be the quickest way, he judged. On a Friday afternoon he could so easily get stuck in traffic if he took a car. Edgware Road to Baker Street, then change to the Jubilee…

He was just about to go down the steps into the Tube station when his mobile rang.

Triona, he saw.

But there was no time to stop and chat. He had to concentrate on getting to court on time. ‘Listen, I’ll catch up with you later,’ he said, without preliminaries.

‘Neville Stewart, what the hell is going on?’ she demanded in a terrifyingly quiet, yet intense, voice.

He stopped in his tracks. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I had a nice lie-in, tidied up your pig-sty of a flat, then came back to my flat. And what do you think I found?’

‘I don’t kn—’

Oh, God. He
did
know. Andrew Linton, eager as a puppy, and any number of prospective City-dwellers, clamouring to buy her flat.

Neville sagged against the nearest wall, blocking the path of others who were in a hurry to get to the Underground. ‘Triona, I can explain,’ he said weakly.

‘This had better be good.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Listen, Triona. I really,
really
don’t have time right now. Where are you?’

‘I’ve locked myself in my loo. They’re getting angry out there because they can’t get in. I can hear them buzzing, like killer bees.’

Oh, God.

‘Go back to my flat,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. And I promise you I can explain everything.’

Mark had attended an uncounted number of inquests in a
professional
capacity, providing moral support to bereaved family members. How odd, then, it felt to him to be sitting there with Yolanda beside him, in a totally different role.

Yet, in a peculiar way, he was no less detached from the
proceedings
than when the deceased was a total stranger to him. The ‘Dr Giuseppe di Stefano’ the coroner was talking about didn’t connect in Mark’s head with Joe.

Mark listened, unmoved, as Neville read out his statement. This, too, was a part of the ritual very familiar to him. In Mark’s experience, Neville was usually quite good at delivering a
concise
summary of the facts of a case, couched in police-speak. Today, though, he seemed distracted and almost ill-prepared. He glanced at the coroner and concluded abruptly. ‘Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of ethylene glycol in Dr di Stefano’s Lucozade bottle. The police’s enquiries are continuing.’

Hereward Rice looked back at him, shrugged, and delivered the expected words: the inquest would now be adjourned until the end of April, pending further police enquiries. In the mean time, he was directing that the body be released to the family.

It was then that it hit Mark, as it hadn’t hit him before.

Joe was dead. Joe, who had been a part of his life since his childhood. Joe, whom Serena had adored and who had made
her so happy for more than twenty years. Joe, who had been such a good father to Angelina and then Chiara, cherishing them and lavishing more than the average father’s amount of attention on them.

Mark had been so angry with Joe—deservedly, he was certain—in the last few months that he’d lost sight of all of the good years. Now Joe would never have a chance to put things right, to repent the way he’d hurt Serena and atone for his sins. It was too late for Joe. Too late for all of them.

As Yolanda turned to him in surprised consternation, Mark took out his handkerchief and sobbed: wracking, unmanly tears. Tears for Joe, tears for Serena, tears for Angelina and Chiara. Tears for himself.

As soon as the inquest had been adjourned, Lilith left the press area and positioned herself by the exit, hoping for a chance to speak to Neville Stewart: it was just possible that she could catch him off-guard and get something out of him.

And pigs might fly.

Once again, as he’d been delivering his statement, she had looked at him in that strange new way, aware of him as an attractive man. How fanciable he was: she wondered why it had taken her so long to see it. The set of his shoulders in his tweed jacket; the tousled hair, as though he’d just got out of bed; the greenish-blue Irish eyes, crinkled at the corners; the lovely mobile mouth, just made for…

Stop it, she told herself sternly.

Spotting him as he approached the door, she took a step forward.

But Neville Stewart didn’t even look at her. Instead he focused his attention on the man who was standing next to her.

‘You!’ he said contemptuously. ‘What are you doing here, then? Come to look out for the interests of your precious Samantha? Did you want to make sure I wasn’t going to spill the beans about her? Well, no worries, mate. She has quite enough publicity already without me adding to it.’

Then he brushed past Lilith, close enough for her to smell his spicy aftershave, and sprinted in the direction of the Underground station.

Catching her breath, Lilith turned to the man who had been the target for DI Stewart’s contempt. He was young and
willowy
, clad in skin-tight black jeans and a leather jacket. Camp as Christmas, she said to herself, while giving him a smile. ‘What did you do to deserve that?’ she said in what she hoped was a convincingly commiserating voice.

The young man shrugged.

‘I’m Lilith,’ she said. ‘Lilith Noone.’

‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘I’m Tarquin.’

‘I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty. Can I buy you a drink, Tarquin?’

His smile turned into a grin. ‘That’s an offer I can’t refuse.’

She was waiting for him at his flat, and the expression on her face would have stopped a basilisk in its tracks. Neville took a step towards her, then stopped, outstretched arms dropping to his sides.

‘I can explain.’ The words came out on a plaintive sigh.

‘Jesus God, Stewart. You’ve pulled some stunts in your time, but this takes the biscuit.’ She crossed her arms across her chest, above the little bulge that was their baby. ‘I’m listening.’

‘Last week. You said you wouldn’t come home with me till I had a home to take you to. And that’s a direct quote,’ he pointed out.

‘And how does that relate to me coming home to my flat—
my
flat—to find it full of people opening my wardrobes and
peering
into my loo? Turning on the water in my power shower and examining the contents of my fridge? Excuse me, but somehow I’m missing the connection.’

‘I wanted to find you a house. Like you said, Triona. Like you wanted. But I realised that we’d have to sell both our flats first.’

She waited; he went on.

‘I talked to an estate agent. Andrew. He said—’

‘That annoyingly yappy little bloke, like an inbred Jack Russell on uppers?’

Neville grinned at the perfect description, heartened at the indication that she could at least see some humour in the situtation. ‘That’s the one.’ He pressed his advantage. ‘Yes, he’s annoying. But he knows his business. He’s already sold my flat. And by the end of the day he will have sold yours as well.’

She stared at him. ‘And you were going to tell me…when, exactly?’

‘I wanted to surprise you.’ He stretched his hands out to her, palms upward. ‘Honest to God, Triona. I just wanted to surprise you.’

‘Well, you’ve done that, all right.’ Her mouth, pressed together, started to twitch; she gasped, then sputtered, covering her face with her hands, doubling over at the waist.

‘Are you all right? Triona, are you all right?’ Neville covered the distance between them, terrified in that instant that she was about to lose the baby.

Triona pushed him away. ‘You eejit!’ she gasped. ‘You great clot!’

She was laughing, he realised belatedly. Laughing as he’d never heard her laugh before. Gustily, almost hysterically. Tears ran from her eyes; she had to grope her way to the sofa to sit down, and still she laughed.

It was contagious, of course. His laughter started with relief and progressed to an hysteria equal to hers.

She thought it was funny. She wasn’t going to kill him, or divorce him. Neville collapsed next to her on the sofa and howled with mirth.

Later, after they’d gone to bed and made love with an intensity somehow fuelled by the laughter, before he fell into a deep sleep, Neville remembered something. He hadn’t told her the best part: he hadn’t told her about the house he’d found to buy for her.

She was already snoring.

He would tell her in the morning.

There was a pub just down and across the road from the coroner’s court; Lilith had sought refreshment there in the past.

‘It’s a bit early to start drinking,’ Tarquin demurred, looking at his watch, but he didn’t object when Lilith returned to their table with a bottle of white wine and two glasses.

While waiting at the bar she had been overtaken by an
intuition
that verged on certainty. Thinking back to the tip-off call from her mysterious informant, she was almost sure that she recognised the voice.

The bartender had opened the bottle, so all she had to do was pour. ‘Cheers,’ she said, lifting her glass in Tarquin’s direction, and he did the same.

‘Ooh, lovely,’ he said after his first sip. ‘I do like a nice Chardonnay.’

She hadn’t skimped on it; it
was
a decent bottle of wine.

No point being flirtatious with this one. Even if she’d fancied him—and he was far too young for that, as well as being not even remotely her type—it was obvious that she would have been
wasting
her breath, barking up the wrong tree. The train was never going to stop at that station. ‘Tell me, Tarquin. What do you do?’

He took another sip of wine, put the glass down on the table, and pulled open his leather jacket with a dramatic little flourish. His tee shirt was emblazoned with the words ‘Junior Idol’. ‘Production assistant,’ he said, his narrow chest swelling with pride.

‘Oh, my!’ Lilith widened her eyes, hoping she looked suitably impressed. ‘What an interesting job!’