Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (23 page)

He shook his head. ‘No, I mean
why
would you think this, all of a sudden? Has something happened? I mean, do you have some reason to think that this case is anything other than straightforward? Other than what it looks like? Yobbism, random crime, whatever?’

‘Well, yes,’ Yolanda said slowly. ‘I’m not mad, Neville. I didn’t come up with this out of the blue.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It was something I overheard.’

Neville felt suddenly alert, his brain firing on all cylinders. As she recounted the conversation, he was way ahead of her.

‘“We just have to be patient, that’s all.” That’s what she said,’ Yolanda finished.

‘So you think that Trevor has done a runner, is laying low somewhere until it’s safe for him and Rachel to be together again? And she’s in on all this with him?’

‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘It fits with what she said.’

‘It
does
raise a few other questions, though,’ Neville pointed out.

‘I know,’ she admitted. ‘Like whose body did she ID?’

If you started questioning that, Neville realised, it opened a huge can of worms. Was it merely a co-incidence that a body was pulled out of the canal which matched the description of her missing husband? Or had it all been some sort of massive misdirection on her part, with a more sinister and complex operation behind it? Had Trevor, in fact, murdered an
innocent
jogger—one who looked a bit like himself—to provide himself with an escape mechanism? ‘The CCTV footage!’ he recalled suddenly. The cameras didn’t lie. There were two men
in those shots, even if the poor weather conditions rendered them unrecognisable.

‘I’ve thought of that,’ Yolanda said. ‘What if Trevor was the guy in the hoodie, and not the jogger at all?’

‘Bloody hell.’ He closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the
possibilities
. Topsy-turvy. That’s what this was. Trevor, a murderer rather than a victim? Rachel, a liar?

As if echoing his thoughts, Yolanda said, ‘Whatever
interpretation
you put on it, what I overheard means she’s a damned good actress. She sure had me—had all of us—convinced with that grieving wife routine. What a bunch of idiots she must have taken us for.’

Neville recognised the bitterness in her voice and wondered about it in passing.

‘Idiots.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘That’s exactly what we are! We’re forgetting something!’

‘What?’

‘We still have the body! Or at least the Coroner does.’ Neville grinned, suddenly jubilant. ‘The camera may or may not lie, but DNA pretty damn well tells the truth.’

Yolanda nodded. ‘Yessss…’

‘So all we’ve got to do now is get hold of a bit of Trevor’s DNA, and we’re away.’

She stood up. ‘I suppose that means me.’

‘Too right it does.’ He made a broad sweeping gesture with both hands. ‘Off you go. Back to Rachel’s. Grab a toothbrush, a hairbrush, whatever. I’ll send Sid round a bit later, and you can hand over the goods. Just try not to raise her suspicions—I wouldn’t want her to think we’d rumbled her.’

Maybe, thought Neville, this was just the break they needed. Not exactly the one he’d been hoping for, but sometimes police work was like that.

Mark had known Joe as long as Serena had, if not as intimately; like his sister, he’d thought he knew him.

Eventually Serena managed to tell him the details, or as much as she’d discovered.

She’d found a note—a love letter, really—in Joe’s pocket when she’d taken his jacket to the dry cleaner. For a few days she’d pondered it, then she’d confronted her husband. Faced with the evidence, he’d admitted everything. Yes, he was having an affair. With one of his graduate students, a girl—a young woman—called Samantha Winters. It didn’t mean, Joe told her, that he didn’t still love her. He was committed to his marriage, to his wife and his daughters. This was just one of those things.

Serena had tried to accept that, she confided to her brother, even if she didn’t understand it. She was trying not to be angry. But it was hard. So hard. The stability of her marriage was something she’d always taken for granted. That, and the fact that she and Joe both viewed marriage in the same way: as a life-long commitment made before God, as exclusive as ‘forsaking all others’ implied. Now it seemed that Joe was inclined to take a broader view of it.

‘He says he still loves me,’ she wept. ‘But how can he, Marco? If he’s doing that. I just don’t understand.’

Mark didn’t know what to say, didn’t feel he was equipped to answer adequately for one of his sex. He listened to her
outpouring
of pain, soothed her with sympathy and love, and supervised as she pulled herself together to face Chiara’s return from school
and an evening at the restaurant, during which she would have to continue to present a calm face to the customers and—more importantly—to her parents. Mamma and Papa must never know, must never even suspect. That much was evident to both Serena and Mark.

By the time he left her, he was seething. Usually the most reasonable of men, Mark was incensed on his sister’s behalf, his bewilderment crystallised into anger. How dare Joe treat her like that, after so many years of marriage?

He stood on the pavement for a moment, watching the pedestrians in their heedless progress, the cars inching along through traffic, trying to re-orientate himself after his world had been turned upside-down.

What now?

In his rage, Mark’s first instinct was to go to Joe’s office and confront him: to scream at him, to punch him in the face and call him every name he could think of. Then break every bone in his treacherous body and tear him limb from limb.

His second, more rational, impulse was to go to Callie, to throw himself into her arms, hold her close and pour the story out to her as Serena had poured it out to him, to take comfort from her sensible and compassionate view of life. To let her soothe his anger from him.

But what if Callie wasn’t there? And what about Peter? For a moment he’d forgotten about Peter, now ever-present in Callie’s flat.

He had no right, really, to impose on Callie. This was a family matter.
His
family. He needed to deal with it, not pass it on to her.

He
would
see Joe. He’d try not to beat the crap out of him, but he needed an explanation. For himself, as much as for Serena.

Joe’s office, at the university, wasn’t far from the restaurant. Mark walked it in ten minutes—briskly, as the temperature seemed to be dropping—during which he began to have doubts about the wisdom of this mission. Would Serena want him to do this, or would she be upset for Joe to know that she’d confided in
her brother? He stood for a moment at the door of the building, watching the students coming and going. Unprepossessing boys in tattered jeans and anoraks, rucksack-toting girls looking
impossibly
young. Was
this
one Samantha Winters? Or that one?

It was too cold to stand around for very long so he followed a gaggle of half a dozen students into the building, then hesitated again, trying to remember the location of Joe’s office; he’d been there once or twice on family errands, but had little reason to visit him here over the years. There was a board near the front door, which he consulted. Second floor.

Maybe Joe wasn’t in his office, Mark told himself as he climbed the stairs: he might be lecturing, or even at home. He might be in the middle of a tutorial. By the time he reached the door, he was almost hoping for an excuse to avoid this confrontation.

He rapped on the door with his knuckles; there was an
immediate
response. ‘Come in,’ called Joe’s familiar voice.

Joe was behind his desk, pen in hand, with a stack of exercise books in front of him; he looked up as the door opened. ‘Oh, Marco. Hi.’ He sounded surprised: was he expecting someone else? ‘End of term,’ he went on with a grimace, indicating the exercise books. ‘I hate marking anyway, but the end of term is the worst.’

‘I’ve just been to see Serena,’ Mark said baldly. He was in no mood for friendly chat or any other preliminaries.

‘Oh,’ said Joe, putting down his pen.

‘She’s upset,’ Mark said. It wasn’t what he’d planned to say, but it was what came out as he struggled to control a rising swell of fury. How could Joe just sit there when he was ruining his family’s life?

Joe raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes, I believe she is. She’s made that fairly clear.’ His voice was mild, with a hint of irony.

Swallowing hard, Mark clenched his fists in his jacket pockets, then the words burst out of him. ‘How could you do it, Joe? She’s your wife! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

‘It means a great deal to me. It always has.’ He shook his head. ‘Surely you’re not that naïve, Marco. These things happen, especially in a position like this. It almost goes with the job.’

Mark stared at him as the words and their implication sank in. ‘Does this mean…?’ he asked slowly. ‘This isn’t the first time, is it?’

‘You’re not going to get me to answer that,’ Joe smirked. ‘Let’s just say I’m sorry that Serena has become involved.’

‘You’re sorry you got caught, you mean.’

Joe inclined his head. ‘I never wanted to hurt her. You must understand that.’

‘Not hurt her? You’ve ruined her life!’

‘She’ll get over it,’ Joe stated, picking up his pen and fiddling with it. ‘She’ll have to. What else is she going to do? Leave me? I don’t think so. That’s not an option. “For better or for worse,” remember? And she’d die rather than have your parents find out. So,’ he added, ‘nothing is going to change. Not really.’

He was right: Serena would never leave him, no matter what he did to her. ‘Except that she’ll never be able to trust you again,’ Mark said with bitterness. ‘You’ve betrayed her, and she’ll have to live with that knowledge.’

‘As I said, I’m sorry about that. I love Serena, and I never wanted to hurt her.’

‘You
love
Serena? You can say that, after what you’ve done?’ Without waiting for an answer, Mark went on, ‘What about this…this girl? Don’t you love her?’

‘Oh, Marco. Marco.’ Joe shook his head wearily, as though he were tiring of the conversation. ‘You sound just like your sister. Why do women have to go on so about love?’

Stung by the condescending tone, Mark retorted, ‘Because love is everything. It’s what holds us together, what keeps
families
going—’

‘You
are
naïve.’

The door flew open and a young woman rushed in, burbling breathlessly. ‘Darling, I have some good news. Those theatre tickets I was trying to get—’ She stopped abruptly as she realised that Joe wasn’t alone. ‘Oh.’ She looked at Mark, then her head swivelled back to Joe. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

She was a wispy sort of blonde, and she was so very young. Scarcely older, Mark realised, than Angelina.

‘It’s not a good time, Sam,’ Joe said without looking at her.

But Mark couldn’t bear it any longer. There was nothing more to be said, and never in his life had he been more tempted to exercise physical violence; he knew that if he stayed for one more second, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. Shoving his hands more deeply in his pockets to keep them from going for Joe’s throat, he spun round and left the room.

Going back to Rachel Norton’s house, knowing what she now knew, was one of the most difficult things Yolanda had ever been called upon to do as a police officer. No longer could she take Rachel at face value; whatever the truth about the body in the canal, and about the person at the other end of that telephone call, Rachel had gone to great lengths to conceal something from her. And she had to pretend not to know that, to continue to treat Rachel as she always had.

With a blast of cold air the clouds had come in, and to Yolanda’s eyes they looked like snow clouds. Quickly she let herself into the house with the key Rachel had given her, careful to make enough noise with the door to alert Rachel that she was there. ‘I’m back,’ she called out for good measure, unwrapping her scarf and shedding her coat.

There wasn’t any sign of Rachel; eventually Yolanda found her upstairs in her bedroom, stretched out on the bed and
looking
rather done-in.

‘Oh—you’re back,’ Rachel said groggily.

Yolanda realised that she’d been gone far longer than she’d
originally
intended or indicated. ‘Sorry. Sorry it’s taken me so long,’ she apologised. ‘Are you okay, lovie? Can I get you something?’

‘I’d love a cup of tea.’ She struggled into a sitting position with some difficulty.

‘I’ll be back with it in a few minutes,’ Yolanda promised. ‘You don’t need to get up.’

To her relief, Rachel obeyed and didn’t follow her to the kitchen. Automatically she filled the kettle and switched it on, glancing at the clock in the gathering gloom. Just gone three, and already it was dark enough in the kitchen to need the lights on. Yolanda had been in London for most of her life, but she had never truly become accustomed to the brutally short days of the British winter.

She could do with a cup of tea herself. Retrieving the tea pot from the draining board, she popped a couple of bags in, then fetched the milk from the fridge.

Rachel liked her tea weak, so Yolanda poured a cup for her and left the rest in the pot to brew to her own taste. Carefully she carried the cup upstairs. ‘Here you are, lovie,’ she said,
putting
it on the bedside table.

‘Thanks.’ Rachel smiled her gratitude.

Yolanda went back downstairs and poured herself a mug of tea. Hot and strong—just what she needed. She sipped it
appreciatively
as she drew the curtains, put on a few more lights, and puzzled over her course of action.

As a matter of urgency, she had to get her hands on something with Trevor’s DNA. And as Neville Stewart had suggested, she had to do it without arousing Rachel’s suspicions. That might not be easy: with Rachel in the bedroom, her access to the ensuite bathroom, the most likely place to find Trevor’s toothbrush, was problematical. And would she even know which toothbrush was his?

The empty evidence bag was in her pocket; Sid Cowley was waiting for her call. She had to do something, and soon.

Alex didn’t linger on her way home from school. Apart from the fact that it was too cold to hang about, she was in a hurry to get home. During maths, the last period of the day, instead of listening to the boring teacher she’d been plotting out what she could do to find her mum. It all depended, she decided, on her ability to sound like a grown-up on the phone.

She practised as she climbed the stairs to the flat, lowering the pitch of her voice and speaking in a considered way. ‘Good afternoon,’ she attempted, turning her key in the door. It didn’t sound all that convincing, she decided, dropping her bag inside the door as usual, but she had to try.

‘I’m home,’ she called in her normal voice, not as a greeting but by way of testing the waters to see if anyone was there.

No reply, thank goodness. That meant Jilly was out, and Alex would have the flat to herself.

She didn’t bother with food today, grabbing the cordless phone, then going straight to her room and her computer. After typing in her password, she brought up the screen with the list of care facilities she’d compiled.

Start at the beginning, Alex told herself. She punched in the number for a residential care home in Jedburgh.