Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (26 page)

Whatever else Frances had to do, it could wait. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said immediately, gratified to be asked.

Neville struggled in to work, a bit the worse for the late-night whiskey and cursing the snow. But he didn’t have the leisure to sit at his desk and drink black coffee: things started happening almost immediately.

First was the call from the lab, where they’d been working through the night. ‘Just wanted to confirm the DNA results for you,’ said the technician. ‘It’s a match.’

‘A match?’ Startled, Neville almost dropped his coffee cup. This wasn’t at all what he’d expected to hear. ‘Are you trying to tell me that our dead bloke
is
Trevor Norton?’

‘I’m telling you,’ said the patient voice, ‘that the toothbrush belonged to the man in the mortuary. It’s a definite match. 99.9 percent definite.’

So it
was
Trevor Norton. Putting the phone down with a belated word of thanks, Neville rearranged his thinking. The dead bloke was Trevor Norton. Unless Rachel had given them the wrong toothbrush, and that seemed way too fantastical to believe. Especially if you went with the theory that Trevor had murdered a random stranger. How would they have got hold of his toothbrush?

So Trevor was dead, and they were back to square one. Yolanda’s speculations were nothing more than that, with no basis in fact.

Trevor Norton was dead. Yet what about Rachel and that phone call?

Neville needed to talk to Sid Cowley. But a quick look round indicated that Sid wasn’t in yet. After a few minutes, Neville reached him on his mobile. ‘I’m stuck in traffic,’ Cowley groaned. ‘Some wanker’s gone and blocked the intersection. Skidded halfway across, and now nothing’s moving.’

‘Well, get here as soon as you can.’ Then Neville tried reaching Yolanda, first on her mobile—which a tinny voice informed him was not available—and then at Rachel’s house. No luck.

Where the hell was she, and why had she switched off her phone at such a critical time?

Rachel’s delivery, though the birth was more than a week early, was quite straightforward. Yolanda, who had attended hundreds of births, coached her through it expertly, careful not to step on the attending doctor’s toes.

Just after ten in the morning she laid a tiny but healthy baby in Rachel’s arms. ‘It’s a girl,’ she said. ‘A beautiful girl.’

‘Trevor was so sure it was a boy.’ Rachel sounded on the edge of tears.

‘What do men know?’ The cynical words were out before Yolanda had a chance to consider their possible impact, but Rachel didn’t seem to notice.
‘So much hair,’ Rachel murmured.

Yolanda had already taken note of it: a head of copious black hair. Jet black, raven’s wing black.

Mark usually preferred taking a bus to work; this morning, in view of the traffic problems above ground, he decided to go for the Tube instead.

He wasn’t the only one to make that decision: habitual drivers, cyclists, bus-riders and even walkers poured down the escalators and crammed themselves into already-full carriages.

Cheek by jowl with far too much humanity, hanging onto a few inches of a metal pole, Mark let his thoughts wander back to the pathways they’d been following, back to the day before.

Peter’s untimely entrance had prevented him from telling Callie what had happened; he was still carrying the burden of Serena’s pain and his own anger, unrevealed and unshared.

The revelation of Joe’s infidelity triggered feelings in Mark that he’d been managing to keep submerged for weeks: conflicts and uncertainty about that wonderful and terrible entity,
la famiglia
Lombardi, about his place in it and his responsibility for
maintaining
its equilibrium. Why did he feel that the onus was on him not to rock the boat? Why did he think that if he acknowledged to them—to himself—how important Callie had become to him, the world would come crashing down round all their ears?

There was something he needed to do. Something he should have done many weeks ago. He’d put it off far too long, and now he resolved to put it off no longer, whatever the consequences. Today. It would happen today.

Once Rachel was settled on the maternity ward, Yolanda excused herself to look for a telephone. ‘I need to let them know where I am,’ she explained to Rachel.

Exhausted but radiant in the glow of motherhood, Rachel only nodded.

Unlike most of mobile phone-dominated London, where pay phones were an endangered species, the hospital, as a mobile-free zone, was well equipped with pay phones.

Well equipped, Yolanda told herself, except when you were in a hurry. Not surprisingly, the phones near the maternity ward were in great demand. She got into a queue behind several young men and one new granny.

The men, proud and voluble new fathers, were bad enough, but the granny was the worst. She made three calls, one after the other; Yolanda was right behind her and able to hear every word. The phone calls were roughly the same: detailed descriptions of the labour, followed by rapturous paeans of praise to the baby, surely the most wonderful baby ever born. Finally there was speculation on the baby’s name. ‘Sal wants Benjamin, but she says Nige won’t have it. Says it sounds too much like a poncy git, does Nige. Nige is sure he’s gonna be a footballer, in’t he? Says he may as well be called Wayne. He’s got a little football jersey for him, to take him home from hospital in, has Nige. Cutest thing you ever seen.’

In other circumstances Yolanda might have found it mildly amusing, even after the second repetition, but impatience was getting the better of her. ‘Come
on
,’ she muttered under her breath, looking at her watch. They
were
going to be wondering what had happened to her.

At long last the gran finished her final recitation of the name dilemma and flounced off without a backwards glance. Yolanda lunged for the phone and rang Neville Stewart’s number.

‘Where the hell are you? And where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. You’re not at the Nortons’ and your mobile’s switched off!’

‘Yes. I know. Sorry.’

‘Where are you?’ Neville repeated.

‘Hospital,’ she said tersely. ‘Rachel’s just had the baby.’

‘Oh.’ There was silence on the other end of the phone as he digested this information.

‘It’s a girl, in case you’re interested. Small but healthy. Mother and baby are doing well.’

‘Never mind about that. You need to get here to the station. Right away. There are some things you need to know about. The DNA and all that. We have to decide where we’re going from here.’

‘I was wrong about Trevor being alive, wasn’t I?’ she guessed.

‘You sure were. A million miles off.’

‘Then…well, never mind. But I don’t really feel comfortable leaving Rachel here on her own,’ Yolanda said. ‘Not even now. Especially not now.’

Neville laughed. ‘I don’t suppose she’s going anywhere for a while, but don’t leave her alone. Find someone who can sit with her and keep an eye on her until…well, we’ll have to talk about that.’

‘Like who? Can’t you send an officer?’ Yolanda suggested. ‘A PC?’

‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ he said. ‘Find a nurse. A
chaplain
. Tell them it’s important. And it shouldn’t be for long.’

More easily said than done, Yolanda reflected as she hung up the phone, glancing over her shoulder at the impatient young man who was next in the queue. Everyone in this hospital had a job to do. Did Neville Stewart seriously think there were nurses hanging about, waiting to be called upon to do the police’s job for them?

Then, like an answer to an unspoken prayer, she spotted a woman in a dog collar, walking down the corridor.

Two minutes later she was back at Rachel’s bedside. ‘Rachel, lovie, I need to…be away for a little while.’

Rachel turned her head and smiled dreamily. ‘That’s all right. I’ll be fine.’

‘This is Frances.’ Yolanda introduced the woman who
followed
behind her. ‘She’s a chaplain. Frances is going to stay with you while I’m away.’

‘But I’m not religious.’

‘It doesn’t matter. She’s just going to…keep you company. You don’t have to talk to her or anything.’

Rachel shrugged, too tired to argue.

Mark waited till late morning to ring Callie; it was, he knew, her day off, and perhaps she was having a lie-in. But it was Peter who answered.

‘She’s not here,’ Peter announced. ‘She’s gone off to do some Christmas shopping. Left me to look after the dog,’ he added plaintively. ‘I had to take her out in the snow.’

‘The snow didn’t put Callie off?’

‘It’s stopped coming down now, and it’s melting already. She shouldn’t have any trouble—traffic seems to be moving pretty well, and the buses are running. Try her on her mobile,’
suggested
Peter.

Mark followed that advice, and reached Callie on the third ring.

‘I’m in Oxford Street,’ Callie confirmed. ‘It’s actually a good time to be shopping. The snow has kept quite a few people away.’

‘About tonight,’ said Mark, then stopped to take a deep breath.

‘If you can’t make it, don’t worry.’

‘That’s not it.’ He’d made his mind up; now he may as well get on with it. ‘I wondered whether you’d…come out to dinner with me.’