Deep Waters (41 page)

‘I wonder if Samantha
did
lie about her age,’ Callie said. ‘There’s no proof as yet, but it makes sense of everything.’

Marco raised his hand. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said. ‘Not now. Let Neville get on with it. If there’s anything to be found, he’ll find it.’

‘What do you want to talk about, then?’

‘Us.’ Marco stopped, forcing Callie to stop as well. Bella’s lead grew taut as the cocker spaniel carried on, then she turned round and trotted back to them with a quizzical look, wagging her tail.

Callie waited, looking not at him but at the cherry tree which flaunted pink blossom at the side of the path.

‘First of all,’ Marco said, ‘I want to apologise. What I said to you about Chiara—it was totally out of line. You were doing your job, thinking of her welfare, and I had no right to try to interfere with that.’

‘You were just carrying out orders,’ Callie said with a weak smile.

‘I shouldn’t have done that. I was wrong.’

Well, she thought. At least he recognised that. But was there any hope that things would be different another time? His loyalty to Serena was unshakeable, and Serena would always do everything in her power to exploit it. ‘So you want us to…carry on seeing each other, like before?’ she said.

‘Not exactly.’

Perhaps it
was
unrealistic, after what had happened. She would try to pretend it didn’t hurt, though she was sure she would break down later. ‘All right, then,’ Callie said bravely. ‘I suppose we should acknowledge it now, and be realistic about it. Your family will always come first with you, and that’s…just the way it is.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Marco.

Callie turned her head to look at him. ‘But I do. You love your family. That’s…a good thing. And I don’t want to be the one who puts you in the middle, between me and them.’

‘I want you to be my family,
Cara mia
,’ he said. ‘You and Bella.’

Callie swallowed hard as Marco took her free hand, then went down on one knee. ‘This isn’t the way I planned it,’ he apologised. ‘I’ve dreamed about taking you to Venice, and asking you in a gondola. I don’t even have a ring. But I have to do this now. So you’ll know I mean it.’ He raised his eyes to meet hers. ‘Callie Anson, will you marry me?’

Bella jumped on him, licking his face and knocking him off balance. He rolled over and landed under the cherry tree.

Ridiculous as he looked, Callie couldn’t help grinning. Marco laughed out loud, lying on his back with an ecstatic dog on top of him, her feathery tail flailing away.

‘I suppose Bella’s answered for both of us,’ Callie said.

‘I’d like you to answer for yourself, if you don’t mind.’

She reached out a hand to help him to his feet. ‘Then yes, Marco. Yes, please.’

Eventually some high-level phone calls had produced the result that Neville had been half-expecting—and hoping for. The date of birth claimed by Samantha Winter on the ‘Junior Idol’ web site was not corroborated by her birth certificate, as held by the General Register Office. She had in fact been born six months earlier, which meant that she had passed the milestone of twenty-one years some two months ago.

In spite of Sid Cowley’s pleas, Neville left him behind in favour of a WPC when he repeated the drive to the suburban ‘Junior Idol’ studios. She was a star-struck young woman,
overjoyed
at the prospect of entering into that Holy of Holies, and she chattered all the way about the relative merits of the finalists. Not a great improvement on Sid, then, Neville thought glumly. But he tuned her out and thought about Kev Betts.

Kev had admitted it, in the end. It had taken another fag and some delicate probing, but Kev had admitted it, and the act of doing so had seemed to come as something of a relief to him.

He hadn’t meant to shake her. Everything had been fine at first: Jodee had gone; Muffin had slept. When she woke up, though, she wouldn’t stop crying. He’d held her, jiggled her, talked to her, begged her to stop. Finally, desperate, he’d shaken her. ‘Not that hard,’ he insisted. ‘Just till she stopped. It couldn’t of hurt her none. She was fine by the time her mum come back. Sleeping again, like there’d never been no peep out of her.’

He didn’t know, Neville realised suddenly. Kev Betts might have seen the newspaper coverage of the inquest, the ‘Home Alone’ headlines. But by the time ‘Home Alone’ had been superseded by ‘Shaken to Death’, Kev had been banged up in Hackney nick. He had no idea that his actions might have been indirectly—or even directly—responsible for Muffin’s death.

Well, he had the confession on tape, and they had Kev in custody. Now it was up to the coroner and the CPS to decide, in the light of the rest of the post-mortem test results, whether Kev Betts would be up on a charge of involuntary manslaughter—maybe even murder.

What Neville wasn’t expecting was the huge tail-back as they approached the studio. ‘Must be the studio audience for tonight,’ burbled the WPC. ‘Those lucky people. Some of them win the tickets in competitions. Some of them just have the right
connections
. I don’t know anyone who could afford to buy a ticket. I think they sell for about five hundred pounds.’

Eventually they reached the gates, where security was carefully checking each and every ticket—hence the tail-back.

‘Tickets?’ asked a uniformed man.

Neville showed him his warrant card.

‘Oh, we didn’t realise you would come straightaway,’ the man said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘About the counterfeit tickets. We only reported them about an hour ago. This is good service, it is.’

Neville didn’t bother to disabuse him. He drove through the gates and pulled the car up in a disabled parking space near the entrance of the building where he’d gone the last time.

‘Look at that!’ said the WPC, pointing to a huge crowd of cameras and other media types gathered round the entrance.

The press corps and paparazzi must have deserted their
fruitless
watch at the Betts house and moved their operations here, Neville realised. He wondered how much of it was in response to this morning’s
Globe
story and to what extent it would have happened anyway. ‘Ignore them,’ Neville instructed her, keeping his eyes straight ahead and marching through the double doors with her following behind.

Inside he bulldozed his way through security, waving his warrant card like a talisman. ‘But sir—you don’t know where you’re going,’ one of the uniformed phalanx protested.

‘Oh, yes I do.’

‘But you can’t go that way. That’s where the dressing rooms are.’

‘Exactly.’ Neville tried to recall the circuitous route on which he’d been guided by Tarquin, and had almost made it to the door that said ‘Samantha’ when he was overtaken by Tarquin himself.

‘They called me,’ Tarquin said breathlessly. ‘Security. They said some man with a warrant card had pushed his way through. And it’s
you
.’

‘It’s me, all right.’

‘You can’t go in there. Sam’s in makeup.’

‘I think I’ll be able to deal with the shock,’ Neville said. ‘Though I’m not sure about my young colleague, here.’

‘But…’ Tarquin sputtered as Neville pushed the door open.

She was in the chair, having the final touches applied to her flawless face. Samantha’s brow lowered when she saw Neville.

‘Don’t do that,’ chided the makeup artist. ‘You’ll ruin
everything
if you frown.’

‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ snapped Samantha in Neville’s direction.

‘I’ll wait.’ Neville sat down on the chaise longe and patted the space beside him; the WPC sank onto it with an awestruck sigh.

Eventually the makeup artist finished, and Sam got out of the chair, fluffing her hair and checking the results in the mirror. She nodded to the makeup artist to go, then turned to confront Neville.

‘How dare you barge in here?’ she said, though the dramatic effect or her words was spoiled by her determination not to frown. ‘I said everything I have to say to you the other day. Just go away and leave me alone. I’m going on stage in less than an hour.’

Neville smiled. ‘Ah, but it’s not that simple. Things have changed a bit since Thursday, Miss Winter.’

She tossed her head. ‘I don’t see how.’

He reached into his pocket and produced a bit of paper. ‘Miss Winter. I believe this is your birth certificate?’

Her eyes widened, and she hesitated for just a second before replying, but her voice was still aggressive. ‘So?’

‘So the date on this birth certificate does not quite tally with the one on the official “Junior Idol” web site,’ he pointed out, still smiling.

‘Big deal.’ She shrugged. ‘Women lie about their age all the time. It’s not a hanging offence.’

‘But it’s a bit more serious than that, isn’t it? Would you like me to show this to the producers of this programme? I’m sure they’re in the building.’

‘No!’ she said, taking an involuntary step towards him.

‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’

She dropped gracefully into the makeup chair and glared at him, no longer bothering to preserve her perfectly smooth brow. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded.

‘I want you to tell me why you went to Joe di Stefano’s office last week.’

‘That nosy old cow,’ Samantha glowered. ‘I should have known she’d have her ear pressed against the door.’

‘From what I hear, you were talking loud enough that she didn’t have to do that.’

‘He wanted me back,’ she said, sneering. ‘He was pathetic. He said he loved me, more than anything. He said he was willing to leave his wife and family for me, if only I’d come back to him. As if I would! As if I’d want that pathetic middle-aged man.’

‘And you told him that.’

‘He still wouldn’t believe me.’ Samantha spun the chair around so that she was facing the mirror.

‘So what did you do?’

‘I…left,’ she said, looking into her own eyes.

‘But you went back.’ When she didn’t reply, Neville
continued
, ‘The secretary saw you. She’ll testify to it. And then,’ he added, deliberately and ambiguously, ‘there’s the little matter of fingerprints.’

Samantha recoiled. ‘But I—’ She clamped her mouth shut.

‘You were wearing gloves? Is that what you were about to say?’ he guessed. The oldest trick in the book, and she’d fallen for it—almost.

Still she didn’t turn round, glaring into the mirror.

‘I suppose you felt that he left you no choice.’

Her expression changed; a whole spectrum of emotions played across her face. ‘He said he’d tell,’ she murmured, so softly that Neville had to lean forward to pick up the words.

‘About the birth certificate,’ he prompted.

‘Yes. He knew. I’d told him. Pillow talk, you know.’ Samantha gave herself a cynical smile in the mirror. ‘I’d only found out myself, not that long before. My parents lied to me. They didn’t want me to know that they had to get married. Bun in the oven. So they just changed my birthday. As far as anyone else knew, I was born in July, not in January. But I’d told him, so I had to kill him.’

As simple as that, thought Neville. ‘Why anti-freeze?’ he asked. ‘Not a very nice way to kill someone.’

‘I’d seen it on the telly. Someone finished off his wife that way, putting it in a glass of wine. It’s easy to buy, and obviously it works quite well. Seeing the Lucozade bottle on his desk gave me the idea.’

The cold-hearted bitch, he said to himself. That beautiful face masked the black soul of a narcissistic sociopath.

She stood up. ‘Are you going to let me go on tonight? Are you going to let me sing?’

‘No. I’m taking you to the police station, where you’ll be cautioned and charged.’

Samantha spun round to face him. ‘Tell me something. Are there many photographers out there?’

The WPC answered—the first word she’d spoken. ‘Hundreds,’ she said.

Neville didn’t fancy running that gauntlet himself. ‘We can try to get you out by the back, if you like,’ he offered.

She laughed. ‘You don’t get it, do you, Detective?’ She ran her fingers through her hair to fluff it up, examined the results
in the mirror, then held her wrists out to Neville. ‘Cuff me,’ she said.

‘I don’t think that’s necessary, Miss Winter.’

‘But
I
do. And it’s front door or nothing.’

The WPC produced a set of handcuffs and clicked them in place.

Samantha Winter tossed her head and moved towards her dressing room door. ‘I might not be the winner of “Junior Idol”,’ she said defiantly. ‘But at least I’m going to be famous.’

K
ATE
C
HARLES
, who was described by the
Oxford
Times
as ‘a most English writer’, is an expatriate American, though an unashamedly Anglophilic one. She has a special interest and expertise in clerical mysteries, and lectures frequently on crime novels with church backgrounds. Kate lives in Ludlow with her husband, and is a former Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Barbara Pym Society.

www.katecharles.com