False Tongues (23 page)

‘And it was the name he used for another boy, it would seem,' Danny explained. ‘The target for the cyber-bulling.' He shook his head. ‘Man, he did not like this kid.'

Neville snatched the paper and scrutinised it. It was a print-out of a series of messages: scurrilous, scatological, crude. And cruel—deliberately, excruciatingly cruel. Written in the almost indecipherable shorthand of texting, they painted a very ugly picture indeed.

‘Bloody hell,' he said with feeling.

‘You'll see that not all of the messages are from Darth Vader,' Danny pointed out. ‘Lots of other people joined in.'

‘Let's see.' Cowley craned his neck over Neville's shoulder. ‘Luke Skywalker. Chewbacca. Han Solo. Padmé. Princess Leia. Do I detect a theme here?'

This, Neville was beginning to realise, changed everything. Sebastian Frost had not been what he appeared, had not been the sunny darling his mother portrayed. There was something dark and deeply unpleasant in all of this. Something that made Neville want to drop the paper and wash his hands. With strong carbolic soap.

Cowley was beginning to catch up with the content of the messages. ‘This is nasty stuff, Guv,' he said, stating the obvious. ‘If I was this Red Dwarf kid, and read all this, I think I would have killed myself.'

Or someone else.

‘I just have one question at this point,' Neville said slowly.

‘Ask away,' Danny invited with a smug grin. ‘I'll do my best to give you an answer.'

If Danny could do that, Neville would be a happy man. He swivelled his head and looked Danny in the eye. ‘Who is Red Dwarf?'

***

For a long moment Callie just stared at Adam. ‘We need to talk?' she echoed at last.

‘Can I come in?' he repeated.

She stood back silently and he entered her room, seeming to fill it with his presence.

Callie looked involuntarily at the bed, suddenly conscious of the tangle of lace and silk spilling out of the shopping bag. Turning her back on Adam, she swept her purchases back into the bag, then moved it to the floor beside the bed.

Her legs, she realised, were no longer capable of holding her up. She sat down in the chair.

That might have been a mistake, she decided as soon as she'd done it. Her sponge bag and dressing gown were on the desk chair, leaving nowhere but the bed for Adam to sit.

The bed. Oh, God. He must be as conscious as she was of that narrow bed, and all it represented. How many nights they'd spent there, snuggled together like spoons…

But Adam didn't sit down; he began pacing the length of the room—with his long legs, it didn't take more than a few strides for him to cover it in each direction. It made her nervous, but it was better than having him on the bed.

How strange it was for him to be here, Callie thought with one part of her brain. It had been strange enough for her to re-inhabit this room, but adding him to the oh-so-familiar setting, when he no longer had a part in her life, was bizarre.

John Kingsley, wise man that he was, had been right. It was now time for repentance and forgiveness. Time to move on. And what better place than this room, where they had shared so much?

Judging by his pacing, Adam was obviously nervous about asking her to forgive him. She could have made it easier for him, but decided that the words needed to come from him first.

‘I wanted to talk to you,' Adam finally said.

Callie prepared her face with an encouraging smile. ‘Yes?'

‘The thing is, Callie…' He turned and paced the other way. ‘The thing is…I've missed you. I'd like to start…you know. Seeing you again.'

Those certainly weren't the words she'd expected. ‘Seeing me again? But…but you're
married
.'

By which she meant: you made your choice. And it wasn't me.

Adam stopped, frowned, and waved his hand as though banishing a pesky insect. ‘I'm not talking about sleeping together, if that's what you thought I meant.'

She stared at him. ‘What
do
you mean, Adam?'

He ignored her question and carried on. ‘Because, apart from the fact that it would be wrong, and sinful in the eyes of God, that's one area in which I have been truly blessed in my marriage. Pippa is a wonderful lover. Our sex life is brilliant. God has been very good to us.'

Way
too much information, Callie said to herself in shocked disbelief. She wanted to cover her ears, but found her muscles incapable of movement.

Adam didn't seem to notice. He turned and traversed the room again. ‘What I miss about you, Callie, is your…I don't know. I suppose your brain. We used to have such interesting discussions about all sorts of things. We were on the same wave-length. Remember how we used to talk half the night, about theology and our vocations?'

She remembered, but her vocal chords were as paralysed as the rest of her.

‘I just don't have that with Pippa,' he said, with a baffled shrug. ‘In every other way she's a wonderful helpmeet, and of course she's the wife God chose for me. But lately I've been missing those talks we used to have, you and I.'

In other words, Pippa was thick. The realisation gave Callie a little thrill of guilty pleasure, and somehow unfroze her stunned brain—that brain that Adam so unexpectedly valued.

He turned toward her with a gesture of appeal, and a smile that once would have melted her heart. ‘How about it?' he said. ‘Shall we be friends again, then?'

He had not come to apologise, Callie said to herself. He had not come in repentance, to ask for her forgiveness. To turn over a new leaf, to move on.

He wasn't sorry for what he'd done to her. He didn't even seem to realise that he should be.

It was all about him, and his needs. All about Adam.

‘How dare you?' she said quietly.

Now it was Adam's turn to stare. ‘I beg your pardon?'

Callie stood up, and found that her legs were capable of holding her after all. She moved toward the door. ‘It's time for you to leave, Adam,' she stated as she yanked the handle open. ‘Go. Now.'

***

‘Who is Red Dwarf?' Danny echoed. ‘Ah. Unfortunately, that's not such an easy question to answer.'

‘Why not?' Neville demanded.

‘Like I said, this Sebastian—Darth Vader—was really good at covering his tracks. Everything was done through Facebook. And I reckon quite a few of the messages were posted from his phone,' he added. ‘He might have sent texts, as well, if he thought they couldn't be traced.'

‘His phone! Then we can get his phone records, can't we?'

Danny sighed and shook his head. ‘Think about it.'

‘His phone was smashed,' Cowley reminded him. ‘We don't even know what his number was.'

‘I can try to get the information off the SIM card,' Danny offered. ‘As I said the other day, it will take some time, the condition it's in, but if it's important…'

‘The first thing we need is his phone number,' Neville stated. ‘Then we can get the ball rolling with his service provider. It's a murder investigation. They'll give us his records, no questions asked.'

Danny slapped his palm against his forehead. ‘Duh. If all you need is his phone number, why can't you just ask?'

‘Ask who?' Cowley demanded. ‘He's dead, in case you forgot.'

‘His mates. His girlfriend. His mum.'

Of course. ‘Get on to it, Sid,' Neville said. ‘Not his girlfriend,' he added hastily.

‘And not his mum,' Cowley reminded him, scowling.

‘Hugo, then. Ring him. Get the number. Don't ask him any other questions—nothing more about the bullying.' Neville said, thinking aloud. Hugo, he knew instinctively in his gut, was Luke Skywalker—that floppy blond hair made it a dead cert—but getting him to admit it was going to require some careful strategy. ‘We don't want to go there just yet. Not till I've had a chance to absorb all of this.' He waved his hand at the print-outs. ‘And when you have the number, you can contact his service provider.'

‘I'll stay on for a while and make a start on resurrecting the SIM card,' Danny volunteered.

‘Good man.' Neville scooped up the pile of print-outs. ‘And I'll get on with these.' He stopped before he got to the door. ‘Thanks, Danny,' he said belatedly. ‘I really appreciate this. You've done great work.'

***

John Kingsley was the first of Margaret's guests to arrive. She met him at the door and took him upstairs to the drawing room, then went to the kitchen to get him a drink.

She returned, a glass of wine in each hand, to find him at the table by the oriel window, studying the framed photos of Alexander.

‘Thank you so much,' John Kingsley said, accepting a glass and indicating the photos with his other hand. ‘This is your son?'

‘That's right,' she confirmed. ‘Alexander. He lives in London. He's an architect.' Margaret smiled, as she always did when she thought about her son. ‘You have a…a daughter, isn't it, in London? You were visiting her before you came here?'

He nodded. ‘Yes. Lucy. Her husband is a vicar, and pretty tied to his parish, so if I want to see them, I have to be the one who does the travelling. Especially at the major festivals like Easter,' he added. ‘You know how it is.'

Margaret did know. ‘I've been a parish priest.'

‘I have three sons as well,' John Kingsley volunteered. ‘So I do a fair bit of travelling about these days, now that I've retired. It's good to be able to keep up with the grandchildren.'

‘Oh, you have grandchildren?' she asked obediently.

‘Yes. I'll spare you the details.' John Kingsley gave her a charming, self-deprecating smile. ‘There's nothing more boring than hearing about other people's grandchildren. Especially if you don't have any yourself…?' he added with a lift in his voice, inviting a reply.

‘No. I don't. Alexander…is gay.' She went on hastily. ‘Don't get me wrong. I don't mind. It's the way he is, he's happy, and I'm absolutely fine with it. But there won't be any grandchildren.' She indicated the photo of Alexander and Luke. ‘Here he is with his partner. Luke.'

‘In my experience, mothers usually cope quite well with gay sons. Sometimes their fathers have a more difficult time.'

Margaret recognised the truth of that. With Alexander, it was as if she had always known—on some level—so that when, as a teen, he'd summoned up the courage to tell his parents, it had taken her a mere split second to assimilate it and reconcile it with her understanding of him as a person. Hal had found it much harder; for months he'd struggled to come to terms with something he'd never even suspected.

‘Maybe because mothers usually know their sons better than their fathers do,' she said, half to herself.

‘Exactly.' John Kingsley nodded, then took a sip of his wine. ‘You're…a widow, I believe?' he asked delicately.

‘Yes. That is…' Her voice trailed off as a stab of pain, almost physical, shot through her, and she gulped at her wine to gain a few seconds. She was, suddenly, filled with an almost irresistible urge to tell this empathetic man the whole distressing story, to pour out the things she'd never dared to tell anyone else. She sensed, somehow, that he would listen and not judge her—not as others would judge her. Not as she judged herself. It would be such a relief to tell him.

Margaret took a deep breath. ‘My husband, Hal…' she began, and then the doorbell rang, cutting across her words.

‘Oh. That must be Keith,' John Kingsley said.

She sighed. Disappointed? Relieved? ‘Yes,' she agreed. ‘I'd better get the door, hadn't I?'

***

Neville rubbed his face with both hands, unconsciously shaking his head.

He was at his desk, alone with the print-outs from Sebastian Frost's computer, turning over one page after another.

It didn't get any better. If anything, it got worse.

Neville didn't consider himself particularly shockable; by this stage in his life and career, he'd thought he'd pretty much seen it all. His job brought him, day after day, cheek by jowl with the underbelly of life. He'd seen brutal death, in all its permutations. He'd seen bullying, up close and personal. He'd seen blood flying, heard the crack of flesh against bone. He'd been exposed first-hand to the things people were capable of doing to each other, in the name of hate—or in the name of love.

Yet this shocked him, more than he'd thought possible.

The shock he'd felt when he'd first seen the messages—visceral and raw—was reinforced over and over again as he turned the pages. Part of it, he suspected, had to do with the age—fifteen? sixteen?—of the people involved. Kids could be cruel—of course he knew that, from his own childhood. But the language they employed, the filthy words they so deliberately directed at another human being…

Had he known words like that at fifteen? Hell, he didn't even know all of them
now
. But he was in no doubt about their intent, if not their exact meaning.

Much of it was homophobic, of course. Neville was amazed at the variety of unpleasant ways that a hatred of homosexuality could be conveyed. Queer and poofter were the mild ones, just the beginning. It went on from there to heights of descriptive vulgarity.

Was Red Dwarf gay? It didn't much matter. They thought he was, and that was all that counted.

Neville had witnessed homophobia before—casual, offhand usually. It wasn't uncommon in the police force, to say the least. His own feelings about it were largely unexamined. Secure in his own sexuality—his strong heterosexual impulses—he had never felt particularly threatened by homosexuality in others. Live and let live, he'd always said, with perhaps a hint of condescension.

But now that he was about to become a father…

What if he had a kid who was gay? It could happen.