False Tongues (22 page)

Not that again. ‘That's just a bit of malicious gossip,' she said curtly.

‘Nicky seemed to think it was true.'

‘Nicky doesn't know everything.' And he can be a gossipy old queen, she said to herself. ‘I'd better get on,' she added, and made her escape, sensing that Jennifer was staring at her retreating back.

Callie didn't want to think about it, much less discuss it. Even if it
were
true—and there was increasing evidence to support it, she had to admit to herself—there was nothing constructive to be achieved in repeating and embroidering the gossip. And what business was it of anyone what Mad Phil did in his spare time, or with whom?

She charged up B staircase and hurried along the corridor toward her room. A few metres short of her door she came face-to-face with someone going the other way, and it was just about the last person she wanted to meet: John Kingsley.

He was, she knew, staying in the room at the far end of the corridor—the college's best guest room, with the same coveted view that Callie's room boasted, and the added benefit of ensuite facilities.

There was no way to avoid him now. ‘Good afternoon,' she said, hoping to carry on without having to make any explanations, but he stopped.

‘Oh, Callie. Well met, my dear. I was hoping to see you.'

Was he going to tell her off for missing the session? She hoped not, though he would be completely justified if he did.

The Canon smiled at her. ‘I've been thinking about you quite a bit since we chatted the other day, and there's something I wanted to tell you.'

‘Yes?'

‘We can talk more about this, maybe tomorrow if we have a few minutes. But I just wanted to say that you've been holding onto your anger for long enough. I think it's time for you to forgive Adam.'

She was completely taken aback. ‘Forgive him?'

‘Forgiveness is a gift from God,' he said. ‘And now, if you'll excuse me, my dear, I must get on to Evening Prayer.'

Chapter Thirteen

Neville couldn't stop thinking about Lilith Noone and her self-satisfied smirk.

‘Do you think she knows something?' he said, almost to himself, as Cowley negotiated traffic on the way back to the station.

‘Who? Lexie? I think we need to talk to her, Guv.'

That proved he'd been right in bringing Sid with him, keeping him out of temptation's way. ‘No. Lilith Noone. That wretched woman. Didn't you see that grin on her face?'

‘I didn't notice.'

Well, worrying about it wouldn't help, he told himself. Short of ringing her up and asking her, there was nothing to do but wait for tomorrow morning's
Globe
.

Now he needed to concentrate on his own next steps.

Danny Duffy, obviously. Whatever Danny had found on the computer, it could provide him with new leads, fresh directions for the investigation.

But before he saw Danny, before they got back to the station, there was something else he really needed to do. Unpleasant though it was certain to be…

‘We need to call at the Frosts',' he said to Cowley decisively.

‘What for?'

Neville sighed. ‘I have to ask them about the bullying. They're not going to like it, and I'm sure they'll deny it, but if I want to dot the I's and cross the t's in this case—'

‘I'm not going into that house,' Cowley frowned.

‘I'm not asking you to.' Neville shook his head. ‘You can stay in the car. She'd just chuck you back out, anyway. Unless she's softened up a bit. But I doubt that.'

He hoped the Frosts were back from the Coroner's Court; he hoped they would be able to find a place to park in St Michael's Street.

The latter was a lost cause on a Wednesday afternoon. So it was just as well that Cowley was staying with the car—he could stop on a double yellow and wait for Neville to finish.

‘No problem,' said Cowley, rolling down the window and pulling out a packet of fags as Neville got out of the car. ‘Take your time, Guv. I'll be here.'

Neville was dismayed to see a straggle of journalists on the pavement in front of the house. He recognised a couple of them from the news conference, and was determined not to make eye contact. ‘Hey, Stewart! Anything new?' one of them called out as he marched by.

‘No comment,' he stated.

‘They've just got back from the inquest,' another one volunteered. ‘And
they
didn't have any comment, either.'

Mark would make sure of that. For a moment Neville felt sorry for the Frosts, having to run the gauntlet of journalists on their doorstep to get into their house.

Not surprisingly, no one came to the door when he rang the bell. Neville fished his phone out of his pocket and rang Mark's number. ‘I'm outside,' he said. ‘Can you let me in?'

‘No problem.'

Mark was there in a matter of seconds. ‘I didn't know you were coming,' he said, opening the door just enough for Neville to slip through, then closing it quickly behind him. ‘We've just got back, actually.'

‘Sorry, it was a spur-of-the-minute thing.'

‘I was just organising some hot drinks,' Mark went on. ‘Would you like tea? Or coffee?'

‘If the coffee's coming out of that fancy machine, I'll have some of that.'

Mark ushered him into the front room, where the Frosts were evidently waiting for their drinks. The room was dark: the curtains had been drawn, presumably because of the journalists outside, but no one had bothered to put the lights on. Feeling at a disadvantage, Neville pressed the wall switch.

In the sudden glare from the overhead bulb, Miranda Frost scowled at him. ‘Is that necessary, Inspector?'

‘I think so.' He sat down across from her with an apologetic smile. ‘You may be used to finding your way round your house in the dark, but I'm not up to it.'

She seemed to unbend a little. ‘All right, then.' After a moment she went on, ‘Listen, Inspector. I want to thank you for…well, for what you said at the inquest. It was very…professional.'

‘I was just doing my job, Mrs Frost.' Neville was astonished, both at her words and at the concession they represented on the part of this stiff-necked woman. He hadn't done anything out of the ordinary; he'd only stated the facts as he knew them, and pretty woodenly at that, in his own opinion. Had she been expecting him to say something disparaging about her son?

Now, more than ever, he regretted what he was going to have to say to her now.

Neville waited until Mark had returned with the coffee and withdrawn discreetly. He might have asked Mark to stay, but decided to brief him later; the Frosts might be less guarded if he was on his own.

‘Dr Frost. Mrs Frost,' he addressed them impartially. ‘I've come to speak to you about a rather delicate matter, and I apologise in advance if it offends you. I hope you'll understand why I have to ask.'

He could almost see the guard going up, the barriers being erected. ‘Yes?' Miranda said, narrowing her eyes at him. Richard put his head down, showing Neville nothing but his brown curls.

‘We've had an anonymous phone call to our hot line. It suggested, in fairly…strong…terms, that Sebastian was involved in bullying.'

‘Bullying!' Miranda stared at him in astonishment. ‘You
are
joking, aren't you?'

‘It's not a joking matter, Mrs Frost.'

‘But it's ridiculous! Laughable.'

‘We've spoken to some of his friends,' Neville admitted. ‘To Hugo and Tom. They more or less said the same thing. Do you mind telling me why you think it's so ridiculous?'

He wouldn't have been surprised if she'd shown him the door there and then, accompanied by a stream of furious invective. But she considered the question thoughtfully for a moment, twisting her coffee cup between her hands, and answered with obvious care.

‘Bullying is for losers,' she said at last. ‘And Sebastian wasn't a loser.'

Losers? Instinctively, he would have thought just the opposite. In his experience, bullies were big and strong. Sure of themselves. Connor O'Brian, Fergal Flaherty, Donal Ryan. And Sid Cowley, he reminded himself.‘What do you mean?'

‘They're inadequate people, damaged in some way, who are compensating for something. Something they lack. The only way they can feel good about themselves is to tear down other people and make them feel bad.' She gave him a bitter, knowing smile. ‘I'm a doctor, Inspector. I've studied psychology, and I've seen things you can't imagine. I know what I'm talking about. Trust me. From what you know about Sebastian, can you honestly say that he fits the profile of a screwed-up loser?'

***

Forgive Adam?

Forgive
him?

Callie couldn't get the words out of her head. She went into her room and dropped the posh shopping bag on the bed; it tipped over, spilling a creamy froth of lace and silk over the institutional geometric duvet cover. She ignored it, plopping down in the comfy chair, all thoughts of going to Evening Prayer vanished.

Forgive Adam.

Had John Kingsley talked to him—to Adam—then? Had Adam indicated that he was deeply sorry for what he'd done to her?

Forgiveness. A gift from God.

And a big step, indicating a new phase in their relationship—if you could call what remained between them a relationship. Coming to terms with what had happened. Moving on.

Repentance, forgiveness.

Was he sorry enough to deserve her forgiveness?

Adam had been the one with the power in the relationship, when he had so abruptly terminated it.

Now, Callie realised, she was the one with the upper hand: the power to forgive him for what he had done and the hurt he had inflicted.

If he really
was
sorry…

Without conscious thought, Callie got up from the chair and went to the window, leaning on the sill. Cambridge in its spring glory virtually flaunted itself: the greening grass, the profusion of bloom and blossom. Cherry-blossom pink and daffodil yellow, all providing nature's set-dressing for the magnificent architecture of King's College Chapel, beyond the cut of the river.

She had known such happiness in this room…

As previous springs had come and gone, shading into the lush growth of summer, she had rejoiced in the growing sense of her vocation to the priesthood, and her growing love for Adam. Twined together somehow, coming to fruition. All of a whole, the future before her. Before
them
. A shared future.

A future that was not to be, for a love that had proved as fleeting as spring sunshine, as transitory as the fragile cherry blossom.

She'd had a lucky escape—of course she had, and she knew that now. But that wasn't really the point. The point was that she had suffered, and terribly, when he had rejected her so cack-handedly. His blithe dismissal of all she had thought they meant to each other had made her question seriously her worth as a woman, as a potential priest, and even as a human being.

Adam Masters had a lot to answer for.

Could she forgive him?

She opened the window a crack and breathed in deeply.

There was a knock on her door; Callie started guiltily. Was Tamsin back already, then?

She went to the door and pulled it open .

Adam was lounging against the wall in the corridor, hands in his pockets. ‘Can I come in?' he said. ‘I think we need to talk.'

***

‘She has a point, Sid,' Neville said as they drove the short distance back to the station. He'd never been comfortable with the bullying scenario, he reminded himself. He'd immediately dismissed it as rubbish. Everything that Miranda Frost had said about the psychology of bullying had reinforced that belief, had given solid backing to his instinctive rejection of the anonymous caller's claims.

‘Then what do we have left, Guv? Where does that leave us?'

Cowley was frowning. He'd liked the bullying angle, Neville realised. It was something he could relate to.

‘It leaves us with bugger all,' he admitted. ‘Square one.' Then he remembered Danny Duffy, with his sheaf of papers, and felt a surge of optimism, not unlike a caffeine-induced jolt of adrenalin.

They found Danny in his lab, surrounded by all of his techy bits and bobs. He had some piece of computer kit on his work table and was bent over it with a tool, performing an operation as delicately as a surgeon might do. An A and E surgeon like Miranda Frost, even.

‘Oh, hi,' he greeted them, straightening up. ‘I wondered whether you'd got lost.'

‘Not lost. Just delayed,' Neville said.

‘I'm glad you caught me. Another half an hour and I'll be out of here. But I think you'll be interested in what I've found.' Danny was wearing latex gloves; he stripped them off, dropped them on the work table, and went to his piled-up desk in the corner. He picked up a paper-clipped stack of print-outs. ‘That kid, Sebastian? Awesome stuff.'

‘Awesome?' Neville echoed.

‘The most egregious case of cyber-bullying I've ever seen.'

‘Egregious?' Cowley frowned. ‘What the hell does that mean?'

At the same time, Neville said, ‘Cyber-bullying? What the bloody hell is that?'

Danny Duffy grinned. ‘Cyber-bullying. You know. On a computer.'

As far as Neville was concerned, bullying required face-to-face contact. Words might be involved—hurtful, hurtful words, in spite of the ‘sticks and stones' rhyme—but so, often, were fists. And other parts of the anatomy. A swift knee to the groin, a sneaky foot stuck out to trip you. It wasn't possible to beat someone up on a computer. Was it?

‘Explain,' he demanded.

‘It's all the thing now. Works pretty much like old-fashioned bullying, except that it's much easier to do. People gang up online.'

‘My nephew knows about this, ‘Cowley confirmed. ‘He was telling me that someone in his class got bullied by e-mail.'

‘But how can that hurt someone?' Surely, Neville reasoned, if someone sent you a nasty e-mail, you'd just delete it? And the next time you had one from that person, you wouldn't even open it.

‘Oh, it can be pretty effective. I'll show you.' Danny flipped through his sheets of paper. ‘Our Sebastian, now, he was pretty clever. Covered his tracks—he knew his way round a computer, all right. He didn't send e-mails. He did it all on Facebook.'

‘On Facebook? Is that one of those social network things they keep going on about?'

Cowley gave a great, condescending sigh. ‘Surely you know about Facebook. Even you, Guv. It's where you go to catch up with everyone who was ever important in your life,' he explained pityingly. ‘And to meet new people, as well.'

Why should he know? Why would he be interested? The last thing he wanted to do was to hook up with Connor O'Brian or any of his thuggish mates to share reminiscences about the old days. The past was the past, over and done with, and that was the way it was meant to be, thank you very much.

‘By meeting new people, I suppose you mean women,' he sneered. ‘Fine for you, Sid. But I'm a married man now, remember?'

Danny intervened. ‘Okay. I'll show you what I mean.' He waved the papers round to get their attention. ‘He didn't use his own regular Facebook account for this. He opened a new account, using the name Darth Vader.'

‘How original,' said Cowley.

Neville was listening now, refocusing, his skin starting to prickle. This could be important, he realised. ‘And you have proof of this?'

‘Absolutely.' Danny put the papers on his work table, removed the paper clip, and thumbed through them till he found the sheet he was looking for. ‘Here's the account information. Then he—as Darth Vader—started a page on Facebook, called “Red Dwarf Must Die.”'

‘Red Dwarf?'

‘It was a show on the telly,' Cowley told him in the same patronising tone of voice. ‘Back when I was a kid.'