Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (22 page)

‘I need to go out for an hour or so. Will you be all right, or shall I get someone else to come and stay while I’m gone?’ Yolanda tried not to be hurt by the fleeting expression of relief on Rachel’s face. It reminded her of the one thing she hadn’t really allowed her to think about: the wounding things Rachel had said about her. ‘She never leaves me alone…’ And that, after she had put her own life on hold for nearly a week!

‘I’ll be all right,’ Rachel said.

Yolanda handed her a bit of paper. ‘Here’s my mobile number, in case of emergency.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ repeated Rachel.

Yesterday Yolanda would have found it very difficult to leave her, even for a few minutes. There was still a small tug of regret, the irrational feeling that she was abandoning her duty.

Still, she discovered that in spite of everything, she was
looking
forward to seeing her husband. She’d been away from home for five nights, and that was way too long for her. Yolanda and
Eli had always been close, in the way that many childless couples are; the fact that they now had a career in common had brought them even nearer together.

They had arranged to meet during his lunch hour, at a
comfortable
cafe not far from the police station; it was a favourite haunt of theirs, where they’d often eaten together as and when their schedules permitted. Eli was already there, at their preferred table in the corner. He rose to greet her, enveloping her in a bear hug that left Yolanda in no doubt that he was glad to see her.

‘Hey, doll,’ he said. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘And I’ve missed
you
.’

Oh, it was good to be with him again. They smiled at each other across the table, wordlessly, until the waitress came to take their order.

‘Ham sandwich,’ said Eli, without looking at the menu. ‘And a bowl of chips.’

‘Jacket potato, with tuna and sweetcorn,’ Yolanda decided.

When the waitress had left, Eli reached over and took her hand, squeezing it. ‘Sure is great to see you, doll. To what do I owe the pleasure, exactly?’

‘Oh, sweetie.’ She suddenly found that there was a large lump in her throat. ‘Something’s happened. I wanted to talk to you before…well, before I did anything about it. To get your advice.’

‘Tell me,’ said Eli, adding, ‘I’ve seen the papers, if that’s any help.’

‘Papers?’ Yolanda was startled.

‘Newspapers,’ he amplified. ‘Yesterday, that bit about you. Not, if you don’t mind me saying it, the most tactful thing you’ve ever done.’ Eli grinned at her. ‘Every word of it true, of course, but not the way to win Evans’ heart.’

‘I just said what I thought.’

Eli continued, ‘And today. Front page of the
Globe
.’

‘Today? What have I done
today
?’

‘Not you,’ he reassured her. ‘There was a photo of Rachel, after the inquest. I could see you behind her. The story was all
the usual rubbish about yobs and the police not doing their job to make the streets safe.’

‘Oh, Evans will love that.’ Yolanda gave a wry grin. ‘But that’s not what I need to talk to you about.’

‘Well, go ahead, then.’ Again he squeezed her hand.

She recounted to him, as nearly as she could recall it, the one-sided conversation she’d overheard. ‘I just don’t know what to make of it,’ she finished.

Eli was frowning. ‘She loves someone. Not her husband, unless he was ringing from the other side.’

‘Or unless…’ That had given Yolanda a new idea. For a moment she sat silently, trying to work it out. ‘What if Trevor isn’t really dead after all?’

‘Not dead? But his body was pulled out of the canal,’ Eli reminded her.

‘
A
body was pulled out of the canal. She’s the one who identified him.’

He ran his hand over his smoothly shaved head. ‘Oh. I see what you mean.’

‘We only have her word for it that the body was Trevor’s.’ Yolanda spoke with increasing excitement. ‘He wasn’t carrying any ID, remember. Jogging. Very convenient.’

The waitress put their food in front of them.

‘Ta,’ said Eli, giving her a smile.

Hoping he wouldn’t notice, Yolanda reached across the table and grabbed a chip.

‘Hey! Those are mine!’ Eli put his hands round the bowl in a protective gesture.

‘Yeah, but what’s yours is mine. That’s what marriage is about.’ The chip was hot; gingerly she nibbled at it, still turning over the new possibilities in her mind. ‘Okay. Say Trevor needs to disappear for some reason. Say he’s involved in some business deal that’s gone wrong. Or say he’s on the ropes financially—has over-extended himself with the business and has creditors he can’t pay.’

‘Yeeees…’ Eli nodded, encouraging her to go on, as he squirted tomato ketchup on his chips.

‘If it all gets to be too much for him and he just does a runner, he leaves a pregnant wife who has to sort everything out. If she’s a partner in the business, she may even be financially liable. That’s not very fair on Rachel. Especially if he loves her.’

‘So,’ said Eli, ‘he fakes his own death?’

‘Exactly. And she’s in on it. She reports him missing, says he’s gone out jogging. In the mean time, he’s gone into hiding. Everyone thinks he’s dead. He can lie low for a long time. Eventually, when no one is paying any attention to her any longer, Rachel can go off and join him, somewhere else, and they can make a new start.’

Eli took a bite of his sandwich, chewed it and swallowed before he spoke. ‘Plausible, I must say. Possible. But it just leaves one little question unanswered.’

‘I know.’ Yolanda forked up some of her potato. ‘What do I do about it?’

‘That wasn’t the question I had in mind.’ He quirked his
eyebrows
at her. ‘I was thinking more about the body in the canal. If it wasn’t Trevor Norton, who the hell was it?’

Knowing that Serena would be tied up at the restaurant, Mark waited until after lunch to ring her on her mobile. ‘I was
wondering
if I could come and see you,’ he suggested. Whatever the problem was, it certainly wasn’t anything they could talk about over the phone.

Serena sounded tense. ‘I’m busy this afternoon, Marco. I need to spend some time taking inventory.’

‘Inventory?’ Of her life? That sounded serious.

‘At the restaurant,’ she amplified. ‘With all of these Christmas parties, we’re running low on quite a few things, and I’ll need to place some orders before Christmas if we don’t want to run out.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Relieved, Mark nevertheless didn’t give up. ‘Could you use some help?’

‘Don’t you have to work?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’m rather at a loose end this afternoon. I was supposed to be going to court with someone, and the hearing has been rescheduled at the last minute. So I could come and give you a hand.’

‘All right,’ his sister replied, sounding grateful. ‘That would be great.’

So, a little while later, the two of them were alone in the storeroom of La Venezia. Mark was counting, and Serena was writing the numbers down.

‘How about loo rolls?’ she asked.

‘Twenty-seven. That’s two packets of twelve, and three spare ones.’

‘Oh, Lord.’ Serena sighed. ‘That won’t last us more than a couple of days, at the rate we’re going through loo paper. I’ll have to run to the cash-and-carry and stock up. I don’t know when I’m going to do that.’

She sounded so uncharacteristically forlorn that Mark turned to her, seeing his opening. ‘Look, Serena,’ he said gently. ‘Is everything okay?’

Serena looked away from him. ‘These Christmas parties. We’re so busy. I suppose it’s getting to me.’ She swallowed hard, and Mark noticed with dismay that there were tears running down her cheeks. He couldn’t remember ever having seen his sister cry.

‘It’s not just the Christmas parties, is it?’ he suggested, moving closer to her. ‘There must be something else.’

‘Bloody loo rolls!’ The words exploded from her, then as if they contained and dissipated all her resistance, she hunched over and sobbed aloud.

‘Serena!’ Mark put his arm round her shoulders. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I…just…can’t…cope!’ she wailed.

‘Tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.’

‘I…can’t.’

Mark remembered an earlier conversation. ‘Is it Angelina?’ he suggested. ‘Something to do with the boyfriend?’ His imagination
raced ahead. ‘Does she want to marry him? Is she…pregnant?’ That would explain a great deal.

‘No. No.’ Serena shook her head violently. ‘Not Angelina.’

‘And Chiara’s okay?’

‘She’s fine.’

Maybe Serena was ill, he thought with a hollow feeling in his gut. Women’s problems. Cancer, even. He couldn’t imagine his sister being unwell: apart from all those miscarriages, which she’d borne with her customary stoicism, and a cold or two, she’d never been ill.

But why, if she were unwell, would she be shouting at Joe?

Mark wasn’t sure he wanted to go there.

His sister’s marriage, like that of his parents, had always been a shining example to him. It was perhaps one reason why he hadn’t yet married: living with two such close and loving relationships as exemplars of the matrimonial state, he was not in a hurry to rush into something that would be any less satisfying.

Yet he had to ask; he had to know.

‘Joe?’ he said.

Serena fumbled in her pocket, then, not finding a tissue, grabbed a red paper serviette from a nearby stack and pressed it to her face.

‘Is something wrong with Joe?’ Mark pursued.

‘Joe!’ The name came out in an anguished, hiccoughing sob.

Mark hazarded a guess. Of all the possibilities, for him it was the least difficult to handle. ‘Is he…sick?’

His sister shook her head, slowly at first and then picking up momentum.

‘Then—’

Her words were muffled in the serviette, but Mark
understood
them all too well. ‘He’s having an affair,’ Serena choked.

Yolanda pulled a chair up next to Neville’s desk. She sat down, crossed then uncrossed her legs, and cleared her throat.

‘Yes?’ Neville said with as much patience as he could muster.

He wasn’t feeling very patient. Evans had summoned him to his big corner office and let him know in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t very impressed with the progress of the investigation, not least with the way that Lilith Noone now seemed to have the bit between her teeth on this one. That old familiar song: why aren’t the police doing their job? The last time she’d sung that tune, the chorus had been racism; now it was yobbishness. Neville had to hand it to her—she sure knew how to pick her little ditties to fit in with the public mood.

‘I’m not sure how to tell you this,’ said Yolanda, fiddling with one of her braids.

Neville’s gut twitched. ‘Tell me what?’

‘I’ve been wondering whether we’ve been barking up entirely the wrong tree with this case.’

By now he knew for certain that he didn’t want to hear what she was going to tell him. The trouble was, he respected her as a police officer; he knew she was neither stupid nor fanciful. ‘Yes?’ he repeated, apprehensively this time.

‘I know this sounds mad, but hear me out.’

Neville sighed. ‘Okay.’

‘Is it possible that…well, that the body in the canal was someone other than Trevor Norton?’

His head jerked up. ‘His wife ID-ed him,’ he said sharply. ‘You were with her. Remember?’

‘My point exactly.’

Neville stared at her. ‘Maybe I’m being thick, but I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.’

She didn’t meet his eyes. ‘What if Rachel Norton wasn’t telling the truth? What if the body wasn’t her husband at all, but someone else?’

‘Why the hell would she do that?’

‘Maybe because she wanted us to think that he was dead,’ Yolanda stated. ‘Maybe he needed to…disappear. For some reason.’

‘Oh.’ Neville was silent for a moment, as his brain kicked into another gear. What if they
had
been looking at this the wrong way round all along? It wouldn’t be the first time. ‘Yes…’ he said at last. ‘Yes, I see what you’re getting at. But why?’

‘If he had debts, or was in trouble of some kind,’ she prompted. ‘There are all kinds of reasons why people need to disappear.’