Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (32 page)

It was time, Neville decided, to get out his notebook. He opened to a blank page. ‘Her cousins?’

‘Step-cousins, really,’ she corrected herself. ‘Beatrice and Georgina. My sister’s girls. Melanie’s quite a few years older than me,’ she added, as if an explanation were necessary. ‘And she was married young. So her girls are about Alex’s age. I’d hoped they would be great friends. I mean, they’re so close in age, at the same school, and they just live a bit up the road.’ Jilly pointed vaguely towards the window. ‘But she’s so different from them. They’re
proper girlie girls. Like I was. Clothes, makeup, boyfriends. Pop groups. Not computers and books, like Alex.’

Neville picked one word out of her rambling monologue. ‘Boyfriends?’

‘Beatrice and Georgina have loads.’ She gave him a smug smile. ‘Just like I did at their age.’

‘But Alex? Does she have any boyfriends?’

‘Oh, that’s a laugh.’ Jilly produced a tinkly, artificial giggle. ‘Not a chance, Inspector.’ She hesitated, looking sideways at her husband. ‘As a matter of fact, that’s sort of what the whole
argument
was about. I mean, her saying she did when she didn’t.’

He frowned. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’

‘Please, Mrs. Hamilton,’ said Neville, thoroughly confused. ‘Could you explain?’

‘Well, it was silly, really.’ That alluring shrug again. ‘According to Beatrice and Georgina, Alex insisted that she had a boyfriend. She said he was called Jack, and lived in London. She said she had a photo of him in some old locket she was wearing.’

‘Her grandmother’s locket!’ Angus Hamilton said, sitting up straighter. ‘Must have been. I didn’t know she still had it.’

Jilly continued. ‘Her cousins said they asked to see it, and she showed them some picture she’d obviously cut out of a magazine or something. I mean, did she really think they’d believe her?’

‘Did it ever occur to you that she might have been telling the truth?’ Neville asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. ‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘Alex is very young for that sort of thing,’ her father stated. ‘I know that some lassies of her age are interested in boys. But my Alex is young for her age, if you know what I mean. Give her a year or two—but not now.’

Neville decided it was time to move on; having written down
Jack
?, he flipped over to an empty page in his notebook. ‘All right. No boyfriends, then. But what about girl friends? Other girls at her school, or in the neighbourhood? Any girls who would come home from school with her, or drop over in the evenings
to study or watch television?’ That comprised the sum total of Neville’s vague concept of pre-teen female friendship.

‘No, nothing like that,’ Jilly said. ‘She doesn’t have any friends.’

‘She’s a solitary sort of lass,’ Angus Hamilton added. ‘Though she had a good friend in Scotland. Kirsty, I think she was called. Alex wasn’t happy about leaving her.’

‘Anyone else she’s close to? Family?’

‘Alex loves her granny,’ Angus Hamilton said, almost
grudgingly
. ‘But she doesn’t see her very often. Not any more.’

‘Not since we moved to London,’ Jilly added.

Grandmother in Scotland
, Neville wrote in his notebook. He’d get the address later, if necessary. ‘Has Alex ever done this sort of thing before?’ he went on. ‘I mean, gone out without telling anyone?’ He looked at Angus Hamilton, whose eyes were fixed on his wife, so Neville shifted his gaze accordingly.

She gave a dismissive shrug. ‘All of the time. I mean, Alex comes and goes as she pleases. She’s a free agent. We’re not her keepers.
I’m
certainly not.’

Something else occurred to Neville. ‘I suppose I should have asked straightaway. Does Alex have a mobile phone?’

‘I offered to buy her a mobile,’ Angus Hamilton stated. ‘Any one she fancied. She said she didn’t want one.’

‘She just couldn’t be like everyone else,’ Jilly added tartly. ‘What girl doesn’t have a mobile these days? It’s perverse.’

That was it, then, Neville realised. He was clearly wasting his time here. The stepmother didn’t give a damn where the girl was or what she did, and this wasn’t the first time Alex had
wandered
off—only, perhaps, the first time her father had become involved, and only because he’d come home from work early that night. Who knew how often the kid had gone out when he wasn’t aware of it? ‘I suppose I’d better have a look at her room,’ Neville said, snapping the notebook shut.

Angus Hamilton nodded. ‘Of course, Inspector. But I’ll warn you: it isn’t very tidy.’

‘It’s a disgraceful tip,’ Jilly whispered to him, out of her husband’s hearing.

Neville himself was no exemplar of domestic tidiness, but even he found Alex’s room a bit daunting. It was as if she had gone out of her way to create chaos out of order. Perhaps, he thought, recalling the immaculate state of the rest of the flat, she was doing just that. As an act of defiance.

He stood in the door, trying to process everything he saw, just in case he should need to investigate further. He realised that ever since he had arrived at the Hamiltons’ flat, he’d been listening with half an ear for the door to open, expecting Alex to return at any moment. Now that he understood the reason for her
departure
— a row, and an unpleasant one at that, with an unsympathetic stepmother—he was more than ever convinced that her absence was only temporary. Once she’d cooled off, once she’d blown off steam, when she knew her father would be home, she’d be back. She would appeal to her father, hoping he’d take her side and she could score some sort of points off her stepmother.

In one way, Neville did not envy Angus Hamilton: caught between two determined females who doubtless hated each other’s guts.

In another way, he envied him very much. To have the
delicious
Jilly in his bed every night…

He didn’t dare to allow his thoughts to wander down that particular road. That would be fatal.

Picking his way through the clothing on the floor, Neville crossed to the desk. Perhaps, he thought, she’d left a note there, explaining where she’d gone.

Nothing of that sort was immediately evident.

The computer, then?

He pressed a key at random; the screen saver disappeared and in its place was a box asking for a password to be entered.

It was way too soon to be invading a young girl’s privacy like this. If she came back—
when
she came back—she would probably be furious that her father had let a policeman tromp round her room.

Neville picked his way back out again. ‘Mr. Hamilton,’ he said, and it wasn’t just the vision of the six-pack that motivated him. ‘Here’s the way I see it. No one has come into your flat and abducted your daughter. She’s gone out of her own free will, and there’s no reason to think she won’t come home soon.’ He proffered a card. ‘My mobile number. Please ring me as soon as she’s back.’

‘Inspector.’ Angus Hamilton ignored the card, staring into Neville’s face with an expression as cold as his voice. ‘It’s not good enough. We’re talking about a child here. My Alex is twelve years old. She’s been missing since this afternoon. It’s now…’ He dropped his eyes long enough to consult his Rolex. ‘It’s now nearly eight p.m. If that’s the best advice you can offer me, be assured that I will be on the phone to the Assistant Commissioner as soon as you’re out of that door. I
will not
be fobbed off.’

‘Where do I begin?’ Mark sighed. ‘I suppose I’d better start with what I was going to tell you yesterday.’

The wine was already beginning to go to Callie’s head; she remembered that she hadn’t had lunch and had forgone that tempting tea-cake. ‘All right,’ she said.

‘My brother-in-law. Joe.’

‘Married to your sister?’

‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘They’ve been married for ever. More than twenty years. I’ve known Joe even longer than that. Since I was a kid. Joe…well, let’s say I’ve had a shock.’

He was looking down into his wine glass, not meeting her eyes. Callie touched his hand. ‘Tell me, Marco.’

‘I’ve always thought they had a great marriage. Two girls. They would have liked more kids, but Serena’s had problems with her pregnancies. Like Mamma.’

That was news to Callie; she admitted to herself that she’d wondered why, in this seemingly traditional Italian family, Marco had only one sibling.

‘They’ve always been, like, the perfect couple, in my mind. Devoted to each other and the family. But now…’ He shook his
head. ‘Everything’s turned upside-down. I found out that Joe’s been…playing around.’

‘Maybe you’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ she offered. ‘Things aren’t always what they seem.’

He looked up. ‘You don’t understand,
cara mia
. He’s
admitted
it. To Serena, to me. He’s been having it off with one of his students.’

Betrayal. With her own recent history, it struck at Callie’s heart. Poor Serena, she thought. ‘Well, if he’s sorry…’ she began.

‘But he’s not!’ Mark stated furiously. ‘He’s absolutely
unrepentant
. He laughed at me for taking it seriously. And he as much as admitted that it wasn’t the first time. And it won’t be the last, either.’

‘But Serena…’

‘He said that Serena will just have to live with it. That’s the worst thing of all.’ He paused, breathing deeply. ‘No, the worst thing is that she
will
. She’ll live with it. Put up with it. Send him off to work every day, with the knowledge that he might be
shagging
one of his students on the sofa in his office while she’s…oh, I don’t know. Ironing his shirts. Putting someone’s credit card through the machine at the restaurant. Helping Chiara with her homework. All the while pretending that nothing’s wrong. That their marriage is perfect. Pretending to their girls. Pretending to Mamma and Papa. Pretending to
herself
. God, Callie. I can’t stand it.’

‘Oh, Marco.’ She didn’t know what else to say.

He gulped at his wine. ‘I wanted to kill him,’ he said, more quietly. ‘For the first time, I understood what drives people to murder. To crimes of passion, as it were. I suppose it’s a useful thing for a policeman to learn.’ He gave a short, ironic laugh. ‘And this was at second hand. On behalf of my sister, not even for myself. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be
her
. To be the one betrayed.’

Callie didn’t have to imagine; she knew. She hadn’t actually ever wanted to kill Adam. Not consciously. But if he’d just
happened
to fall under a bus…

Belatedly Mark met her eyes, and must have seen the stricken look there. ‘Oh, Callie. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…’

‘Never mind,’ she said briskly. ‘That’s all in the past. But Serena…you’re going to have to help her through it, Marco. At least she’ll have you to talk to. She won’t have to go through it alone.’

Neville withdrew to the Hamiltons’ kitchen, pulled out his mobile, and rang Detective Superintendent Evans’ home number.

Not surprisingly, Evans didn’t actually answer the phone himself. It was the lovely Denise who picked up the call. Mrs. Evans number two. He recognised her voice instantly: slightly nasal, a bit common. Essex.

‘Mrs. Evans, this is Neville Stewart. DI Stewart. I need to speak to your husband urgently.’

‘It’s not a convenient time,’ she said. He couldn’t tell from her tone of voice whether she knew who he was or not—whether she remembered him specifically, as one of the hordes of young policemen who had unsuccessfully tried their luck with the lovely Denise when she was nothing more exalted than Detective Superintendent Evans’ secretary. His extremely, awesomely
well-endowed
secretary. If Helen of Troy’s face had launched a
thousand
ships, Denise’s chest might have done something similar in another day and time. But Denise had held out for the big prize—if prize he was—and had won it. Neville supposed she was in it for the long-term pay-off. Putting up with Evans now, and bearing his children, might not seem that wonderful—especially if the children all ended up looking like him; eventually, though, he would end up with a gong. A knighthood, and she’d be Lady Evans. Wouldn’t Denise’s Essex relations be proud?