False Tongues (14 page)

‘Ask away.'

‘Next time you go to talk to Sexy Lexie, can I go along?'

Once again Neville put on his Evans voice, though he couldn't help smiling. ‘Not on your life, boyo. Not on your bloody life.'

***

If only he would just shut up.

Callie closed her eyes and tried to tune out the sound of his voice, to concentrate on other sounds instead: the birds in the trees on the riverbank, the rhythmic splash of the pole hitting the water, the shouts and laughter from other punts.

She didn't remember that Adam had talked this much when they were together. If he had done, how had she borne it?

Maybe he was just nervous, she told herself. After all, if it was awkward for her, it must be awkward for him as well. Yet he seemed supremely confident as he rattled on. He talked in glowing terms of his incumbent, recounted amusing anecdotes of parish life, and of course there were endless stories about the exemplary Pippa, the wonderful girl for whom he'd abandoned Callie. Pippa, his wife.

Nicky was punting, standing on the flat ledge at the front of the boat, and thus could concentrate on his steering and ignore the chatter behind him. Tamsin, for her part, tried valiantly to interject comments and to turn it into something other than a monologue.

Callie had given up. Lost the will to live, almost. She leaned back against the cushions in the punt and wished herself somewhere—anywhere—else.

‘Where are we going?' Tamsin asked brightly, in Nicky's direction, during a brief instant when Adam stopped to draw breath.

‘Grantchester, of course,' said Nicky. ‘The Orchard. I feel very Rupert Brooke-ish today. Tea under the apple trees—with honey, of course—will be just the thing.'

‘It will be crowded,' Adam stated. ‘Everyone and his granny will be there today. We might not be able to get in.'

Please God, thought Callie. In any other circumstances, sitting under the trees at the Orchard, consuming a cream tea, was her idea of heaven. If Adam didn't shut up, though, it would be more like a vision of hell.

***

Interlude: a close encounter observed

By the time she left the office, having photocopied every bit of paper required for the next day, Hanna Young was feeling both self-righteous and fed up. She had done her duty while others—many others—had shirked theirs; the moral high ground was hers, but at the cost of having missed out on enjoying the delicious afternoon. The galling thing was that no one else even noticed, or probably cared.

She locked the door to the office and headed for the car park tucked behind the terrace of houses and flats which provided accommodation for tutors and married students.

Someone was coming out of the back door of one of the houses, moving through its garden toward the car park. Hanna stopped, watching and listening.

Mad Phil Moody—it was his house—and with him a young girl. Not one of their students, but a girl Hanna hadn't seen before. Too young to be an ordinand, almost too young to be an undergraduate. Long honey-coloured hair, long bare legs, much flesh on view.

Hanna held her breath.

Mad Phil's arm was round her waist. They stopped for a moment; he leaned down and whispered something in her ear. She laughed, smiled up at him, twined her arms round his neck. He bent his head down; a kiss was exchanged, loud enough for Hanna to hear the smack, though his head obscured her view.

A tight, lingering hug, then the girl slipped away through the back gate into the car park, turning to wave as she unchained a bicycle from the railings, climbed on it and cycled away with her long bare legs.

Hanna stood for a long moment as Mad Phil looked fondly after the girl, then turned and went back into his house.

Disgusting. An old man—fifty, if he was a day. And a girl like that.

It didn't require much imagination for Hanna to determine what Mad Phil Moody had been up to on his free afternoon.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste and resumed her progress toward her car.

Chapter Eight

‘It's good, as far as it goes. I want more.'

More?

Lilith read the brief e-mail for the tenth time, fuming. She'd knocked herself out, tracking down the dead boy and getting an ID. She'd written a story, padding out the little she knew with skill: incorporating platitudes, speculation and flashes of brilliance. And no one else had the story—she was sure of that. Nothing had appeared on the Met website yet; the fact that it was a holiday was working in her favour.

Yet it wasn't good enough for Rob Gardiner-Smith. He wanted more.

What else could she give him?

An interview, that was what. Quotes. But trying to get through the police Family Liaison Officer to the family was a non-starter. He would be guarding them jealously against press intrusion, whether she rang on the phone or turned up at their door. That was part of his job.

And her job was to do what her editor wanted.

Lilith read the e-mail again. She narrowed her eyes; she tapped her well-groomed fingernails on the desk.

And then it came to her. Lilith knew what she had to do, where she had to go. She shut down the computer, grabbed her bag and headed for the door.

***

It had been an act of madness, Margaret acknowledged to herself as she stood in front of the mirror. Not like her at all. But she didn't regret it in the least.

Not even stopping to think about it, she'd grabbed the jacket from the wardrobe, stuffed it into a carrier bag, gone downstairs and retrieved her long-unused bicycle, then cycled across the river, through the narrow streets going into the town, along by the Round Church to the Oxfam shop. There she'd handed over the jacket. And there she had spied the loveliest of summer frocks: floaty, flowery, the very essence of a garden party. Her size.

She hadn't even tried it on. Margaret, who pondered over additions to her wardrobe, sometimes for weeks, before committing herself to a purchase. She'd bought it without a second thought and cycled back to the college.

After a quick, reviving shower—cycling into town had been warm work—she had slipped into the dress. It was a perfect fit.

She looked at herself in the mirror, scarcely recognising the person she saw. Her cheeks were flushed a becoming pink—from the unaccustomed exertions of cycling, she told herself—and her eyes sparkled at the joy of breaking out of her routine and doing something so utterly un-Margaret-like. A touch of lipstick was all she needed to make the transformation complete.

Margaret hoped that her secretary had gone home by now, that she wouldn't run into her looking like this. Somehow she suspected that Hanna would not approve.

But she didn't really care. She was going to a garden party.

***

Neville allowed Cowley to drive back into London, and for the first part of the journey he was silent, lost in his own thoughts.

Strangely enough, he wasn't thinking about the things Evans had had to say about the Frost case, but about parenthood. Fatherhood, to be precise.

Evans, whatever else you might say about him, was a good father, Neville realised with a sense of revelation. The way he got down on his knees to play with the toddlers, the look on his face when he held the baby…

Evans, of all people. It was beyond belief.

Of course he'd had plenty of practice, Neville reminded himself cynically. Years and years of it, with two families. Still, he seemed like a natural. And the children obviously adored him, from the grown-up ones all the way down to the baby.

Who would ever have thought it?

He wondered whether it had always been so easy for Evans—back in the beginning, with the first baby and wife number one. He must have been quite young when the first one came along. Much younger than Neville was now.

And yet Neville felt so totally unprepared for fatherhood. He was, he acknowledged to himself in his most honest moments, terrified by the prospect. The baby hadn't been planned; he hadn't even known about it until several months into the pregnancy. He still didn't feel he'd had enough time to get his head round it.

A little person in his life. Always there, dependent on him for everything.

What if he didn't know what to do? What if he didn't hold it properly, and dropped it? Those things were supposed to be instinctive, but were they really? He wasn't even sure that Triona would know what to do with a baby; he'd never seen much evidence of maternal instinct in her.

How would they cope? There were so many ways in which he could fail. So many traps for the unwary. So many ways in which he could screw up a kid's life so that he would be blamed forever.

Like my da
: the thought popped unbidden into Neville's mind and he pushed it away. He hadn't consciously thought about his father in years and wasn't about to start now.

He just wasn't ready for this baby. He hadn't had time to get used to being a husband, let alone a dad.

But it was too late for that. It was going to happen. By the end of the summer…

‘What do you reckon, Guv?'

Cowley's words cut across his thoughts; Neville turned to him. ‘Hmm?'

‘I left you alone 'cause I could see you were thinking about what Evans said. So what do you reckon?'

What
had
Evans said? ‘Remind me.'

Cowley flashed him an incredulous look. ‘About us assuming that another kid killed him,' he said with exaggerated patience.

Yes, they
had
made that assumption, as Evans pointed out. Because of the MO, primarily. Teenagers stabbing each other was an epidemic in London, and had been for several years.

Evans had warned them not to assume anything. Wise advice, when it came to detective work.

‘I see what he's saying,' Cowley went on. ‘But if some villain had done it, he would of knicked the phone, not smashed it.'

Neville nodded. As he'd said to Evans, it just didn't have the feel of an opportunistic crime. It was more deliberate than that, his instincts told him. At this point he couldn't see why anyone would have wanted Sebastian Frost dead, but someone had done it, and it was up to them to find out who. ‘If we can figure out
why
someone wanted to kill him,' he thought aloud, ‘maybe that will tell us who did it.'

‘But it's going to take time, Guv,' Cowley stated. ‘If we have to talk to all his mates, everyone at his school…'

As Evans had pointed out to them, in no uncertain terms, they'd been lucky that this had happened on a Bank Holiday. No press breathing down their necks, for a start. That wouldn't last long, Neville was well aware. Tomorrow they'd have to hold a news conference. And then all hell would break loose, for sure.

In the meantime, though…

‘Where are we going now, Guv?' Cowley asked as they crossed the river, looking to him for instructions.

Neville sighed, then made a sudden decision. ‘I don't know about you, Sid,' he said. ‘But I'm going home.'

***

The first day of working with a family after a bereavement was often the hardest, Mark reflected, before reality really kicked in, and practicalities demanded to be dealt with. At this point it was still surreal; people were in shock. They needed time to let the horrible truth sink in. His job on that first day was a matter of being unobtrusive, giving them space yet being attentive to their needs.

All too soon the press would be on their doorstep. There would inevitably be more police questioning, involvement with the coroner, funeral arrangements to be made, condolences pouring in. Friends and family to comfort and be comforted.

But not today.

This was a day for the Frosts to begin to come to terms with the fact that their son would not be coming home.

After their return from the mortuary, Mark had done little apart from making coffee. In his experience, some people dealt with the early stages of grief by talking ceaselessly, as if their words would somehow bring their loved one back to them. Others went the opposite way and retreated into their own heads, hoarding their memories internally. The Frosts—both of them—were of the latter type. They scarcely spoke to each other, let alone to him; their early tears had given way to a sort of quiet stoicism.

In some way the blabbers were easier to cope with, he reflected. Their grief might be uncomfortable to observe, but at least you knew where you were with them. The Frosts' stilted politeness was painful, heavy with the weight of what wasn't being said.

So when Mark's phone rang he looked at it eagerly, hoping for the respite of a chat with Callie. He'd had to give her short shrift earlier; now that things had quieted down—literally—he was ready to excuse himself and take her call in another room.

But it wasn't Callie, he realised as he looked at the caller display. She wouldn't be ringing him, after he'd put her off and said he would ring her tonight.

It was his niece Chiara.

Chiara had only recently obtained a mobile. Her mother had always said she was too young to have one, in spite of the fact that all of her friends did, but Serena had finally given in, buying it for her almost as a sort of consolation prize after her father died. ‘It might help her to deal with it if she can talk to her friends,' Serena had explained her change of heart to Mark.

‘Uncle Marco?' Chiara whispered.

‘
Ciao, Nipotina.'

‘Can you talk? Or are you working?'

He took his phone through to the kitchen. ‘Yes, it's fine. What's up?'

‘I just…wanted to talk,' she said. ‘I was thinking about last year. Easter Monday. Remember?'

Mark did. They'd gone to the London Eye, all of them.
La famiglia
. In that now-unimaginable time before Callie had entered his life. ‘The London Eye,' he said.

‘It was so much fun.' Chiara sighed.

‘You didn't think it was going to be,' he recalled.

‘I didn't want to go. I was scared,' she admitted. ‘It looked so high from the ground.'

There had been tears, Mark remembered. His brave little niece had revealed a previously unknown fear of heights. ‘But you did go.'

‘Dad talked me into it. He said I wouldn't even think about how high it was, once I was up there. Because it moves so slowly, and because there's so much to see.' There was a long pause. ‘And he was right. I didn't think about it at all. And it was…magic.' Chiara gulped, loudly. ‘Oh, Uncle Marco. I miss my dad.'

‘Of course you do.'

‘I just can't believe I'll never see him again.' She was crying now: he could tell from her voice.

Mark hadn't always seen eye to eye with Joe di Stefano, especially in recent months when Joe had broken Serena's heart by having an affair. But even at the lowest point of Joe's relationship with Serena, Mark had never doubted the bond between Joe and his daughters.

‘And it upsets Mum when I talk about him,' she continued before Mark could say anything. ‘It makes her sad.'

For just an instant Mark felt a twinge of resentment. Was he never to be allowed to escape from people in the throes of bereavement? It was his job; now it seemed it was going to be a permanent feature of his family life as well. He closed his eyes.

‘It's all right,
Nipotina
,' he assured her. ‘If you don't want to upset your mother, you can talk to me. Any time.'

She proceeded to take him at his word. While she was talking—and crying—Mark kept half an ear attuned to the rest of the house in case he was needed elsewhere. After a few minutes he thought he heard someone in the corridor and went out to investigate.

The front door was closing; the latch clicked into place.

No one had come in. That meant that someone had just gone out.

Well, they weren't his prisoners, he reminded himself. The Frosts were free to come and go as they liked.

***

‘You look wonderful.' Keith Moody's eyes travelled up and down Margaret, frank with admiration. ‘You should take off your cassock more often, Principal.'

It had been a long time since Margaret had been conscious of being looked at like that by a man—as a woman rather than as a priest, an asexual creature in a dog collar. The sensation was unexpected if not unpleasant, and she felt herself blushing. That was something she hadn't done in years. ‘Thank you,' she said, smiling. ‘It's not every day I'm invited to tea in the garden.'

‘We'll have to do something about that, then. Come on through to the garden. John isn't here yet.' Keith led her through the french doors in his main reception room and into the small but immaculately maintained garden, where a table and chairs had been set up to take full advantage of the late afternoon sunlight.

Margaret observed with admiration the neat, well-weeded beds of spring flowers and the pruned rose bushes, still a long way from blooming. ‘I didn't know you were such a keen gardener.'

‘I find it relaxing,' he said. ‘It clears my head. When I'm worrying about some little theological niggle—something that has come up in Tutor Group, usually—nothing is as therapeutic as an hour in the garden, pulling weeds.'

‘Well, you know that saying. “You're nearer—”'

‘“Nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth,”' he finished for her with a smile. ‘I can't tell you how often I ran into that one when I was in parish ministry. Usually embroidered on a cushion in the home of someone who never set foot in church.'

Margaret laughed. ‘It makes a good excuse, doesn't it?'

‘One of the better ones. There isn't as much folk wisdom justification for spending Sunday morning washing the car instead of going to church. But somehow it's okay if you're in the garden.'

The doorbell rang; her host went to answer it while Margaret sat down on one of the rather faded garden chairs. She should have put on some sunblock cream, she realised. With her fair skin she would soon be sorry she hadn't. But it had been so long since they'd had a day like this that she wasn't even sure she could find her bottle of sunblock without a major search operation.