Silent Truths (22 page)

She detected no movement of the nets, either upstairs or down, as she walked up the Longs’ crazy-paved front path. Nor was there any sound from within after the resonance of the doorbell’s
four Beethoven chords finally died away.

She waited, listening hard and feeling much more apprehensive than she wanted to admit. Was someone watching her through the little brass peephole? If so, did she look friendly, or menacing in its distorting lens? What a terrible job this was really, trying to force her way into a family’s private grief. It made her think of the time Gino had told her she had too much human decency to make a really good reporter, which had made them all laugh when he’d said it, but she was starting to wonder if he might have a point.

She pushed the bell again, waited for the percussive vibrations to fade, then turned an ear towards the door without actually touching it. Nothing. No radio, TV, voices, vacuums or even footsteps, just the whine of a strimmer in the next street and the sluggish subsong of a young chaffinch somewhere nearby. She wondered if the Longs were in the back garden, and if so could she get round there. There was a gate at the side, but it didn’t only look locked, it had such an air of unscalability that surely not even a burglar would try. For one hilarious moment she had an image of herself tumbling into their back garden, bruised and dishevelled, startling them out of their wake.

‘Who is it?’ a male voice suddenly shouted.

Startled, she called out her name, adding, ‘Elliot Russell said I should come.’

‘Elliot who?’ the voice called back.

‘Russell,’ she answered, her heart sinking with anger and dismay. This man, presumably Chas Long, hadn’t even heard of Elliot Russell, so the bastard had set her up. He’d guessed she’d do this,
had no doubt informed the world, and now she could already see the boomers’ smirking faces as she walked back into the office. ‘He said you’d prefer to talk to a woman,’ she added, not quite ready to give up yet.

There was a long pause, then the same voice said, ‘We was expecting you tomorrow.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she cried, taking heart. ‘He said he’d called to change it to today. Didn’t he speak to you?’

‘Hang on,’ the man said.

Silence resumed. She continued to stand there, waiting, burning in the sun’s scorching rays and hardly daring to breathe as with all her might she willed those inside to let her in.
Please, please, please, God
, she fervently prayed. Any minute now her tabloid colleagues would arrive back from lunch, first one, then two, then in droves, ready to pick a fight on the doorstep, either to get in there first, or to ruin it for her. They’d surround the place, as they had for weeks, anything to totally decimate what little chance she stood of getting over that threshold.

Time ticked relentlessly on. Someone backed out of a garage down the street, threw her a suspicious look, then drove away. Her skin was on fire, there was no shade, not even from the small slab of an overhead porch. Maybe they thought if they kept her waiting long enough she’d just go away. Should she ring that dreadful bell again, remind them she was still there? She could call them on her mobile if she had their new number.

Then quite suddenly the door swung open and a short, narrow-faced man in his mid-forties, whom
she recognized as Chas Long, told her to come in.

‘He should have called,’ he said grumpily. ‘We’re trying to get him on the phone, but the missis says we can’t leave you standing out there in that heat.’

Laurie hid her horror well. It hadn’t occurred to her that they might call Elliot to check.
Shit
. What was she going to do now? He would be bound to blow her cover, and she’d be back out the door a lot quicker than she’d managed to get in.

‘Thank you,’ she said, as Chas Long closed the door behind her. ‘I hope it’s not inconvenient. I didn’t realize no one had got your agreement to the change.’

‘Then it’s lucky for you we was here,’ he grunted. ‘Go on through to the kitchen. The wife’s holding on to speak to Elliot.’

Deciding that all she could do now was brazen it out, Laurie walked along the thickly carpeted hallway towards what must be the kitchen. Chas Long followed, then suddenly lunged awkwardly ahead of her to open the door.

‘Thank you,’ Laurie smiled.

The fake walnut wood kitchen wasn’t large, but was spotlessly clean and seemed to have all the modern gadgets and appliances, which included a cosy little breakfast niche over by the back door, where Daphne Long and her fifteen-year-old son, Simon, were sitting, almost huddled together behind two giant glasses of Coke.

Seeing Laurie, Daphne waved her to come in and pointed to the neat little cordless phone she had pressed to one ear, indicating she was on it. She was a petite, peroxide blonde with a sun-weathered
face, a taut little body and chunks of gold jewellery on her fingers, wrists, one ear and throat.

Laurie looked at Simon, whose unfortunate spots and sullen expression weren’t made any more attractive by the scythe of silver studs adorning one ear, or the tattoo of West Ham United on his upper left arm. She smiled at him, but his eyes merely slid off to nowhere, while he tapped an impatient foot on the floor and seemed to sink lower into his teenage slouch.

‘Sit down here,’ Daphne whispered, pointing Laurie to one of the empty chairs the other side of the breakfast niche. ‘Chas, get her a drink. It’s so bloody hot out there, innit?’ she grumbled. ‘Haven’t had a summer for years, and now they’re like bloody buses, all coming at once … Hello? Hello,’ she said into the phone, her cockney twang more discernible now she’d stopped whispering. ‘Who? Oh, yeah, Mr Russell.’ She paused and looked at Laurie. ‘That’s right, Daphne Long. I know, tomorrow, but … No, I’m not cancelling … It’s just we got your girl here – hang on.’ She covered the mouthpiece and said to Laurie, ‘What’s your name again?’

Laurie told her.

‘We got your girl Laurie Forbes here,’ Daphne told him. ‘She said you was supposed to call and change … What? Oh no, it’s all right. I mean, we was here, so … No, well we wasn’t quite ready for it, but she’s here now … Oh, it’s OK. No need to apologize. I just wanted to check. We’ve had so many people trying to trick their way in here. All right, cheers then.’

As Daphne hung up, Laurie didn’t waste too much time feeling grateful to Elliot, since he more than owed her this. However, she was thankful that no one, including Daphne, could see her squirming inside as she wondered what Elliot was thinking now, if he was angry, or … Well, there was no fathoming Elliot, and what did she care anyway? He’d obviously call her some time in the next few hours, so she’d just make sure her mobile stayed off.

Daphne Long was watching her with small, limpid eyes and an attractive, though sad little smile. ‘I’m Daphne,’ she said, touching a bejewelled hand to her chest. ‘And this is Simon, my boy. Well, I expect you recognize us from all the publicity.’

Laurie smiled. ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she responded. ‘And thank you for agreeing to this. There was obviously some kind of mix-up –’

‘It’s all right,’ Daphne said, clipping a shiny gold ball back on her earlobe now she’d finished with the phone. ‘Makes no difference really, does it? Today, tomorrow, we’re still going to say the same things.’

Laurie thanked Chas as he placed a tall, frosted glass of Coke and ice in front of her. After gulping down several refreshing mouthfuls she thanked him again, then to Daphne she said, ‘I understand what a very difficult time this must be for you. As if it’s not bad enough losing your daughter the way you did, then all this attention from people like me … I’m really sorry you’re having to go through it.’

‘I got to tell you, it is you people who make it worse,’ Daphne confided. ‘We didn’t want to talk
to none of you, actually. I mean, this isn’t the kind of thing you want people sticking their noses in, is it?’

‘No, of course not,’ Laurie responded with feeling.

‘But I know you got a job to do. It’s not your fault. I’m just saying … The way they all hang around out there … It’s like vultures innit, Chas? Like bloody vultures. Poor Princess Di, is all I can say, because we’ve had a taste of it now so we know what it’s like.’

Laurie’s expression was a picture of understanding. ‘What changed your mind about doing an interview?’ she asked, reaching casually into her bag and taking out her tape recorder.

‘They told us it was probably the only way of getting you to leave us alone. We had to say something, because that’s the way it is, these days, innit? You people in the media, you don’t go away until you’ve got what you came for.’

She was eyeing Laurie’s little Sony player with such marked distaste that Laurie said, ‘I can use a notepad and pen if you prefer.’

‘No, it’s all right. I suppose we’re used to them now, after all that time with the police.’ Her eyes flicked towards her husband, who’d settled in next to her, creating an awkward and incomplete family picture of father, mother and son.

‘We can’t talk about our interrogation,’ Chas said crisply. ‘I told Elliot Russell that. It’s private.’

Laurie’s pleasant expression remained intact, as she wondered what other conditions she might blunder into.

She was about to open up the interview when
Daphne said, ‘She was a good girl, weren’t she, Chas?’ She dabbed away the tears that had welled in her eyes. ‘Can’t stop thinking about her,’ she said woefully. ‘We was so close, we was more like friends or sisters really, than mother and daughter. Where’re
you
going?’ she said to Simon as he got up.

‘Let him go,’ Chas advised as Simon scuffed sulkily out of the kitchen. ‘This has been really hard on him, poor lad. Been hard on us all.’

‘Of course,’ Laurie responded. She looked at them both, then as gently as she could, she said, ‘Did you know Colin Ashby? Did you ever meet him?’

‘No, not personally,’ Daphne answered, speaking over Chas who was saying, ‘What I wouldn’t like to do to that bastard.’

‘Chas, don’t,’ Daphne said, putting a wifely hand on his arm.

Laurie gave them a moment, then judging it OK to continue, she said, ‘Did you know Sophie was seeing him? I mean before all this?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Daphne answered. ‘Me and my Sophes never had no secrets. We told each other everything.’

Laurie wondered how true that was, and hoped she was about to find out. ‘So you know how they met?’ she said.

‘Course I do. It was like fate, that’s what she said. Bloody bad fate it turned out to be, didn’t it? But anyway, she thought it was special at the time. She had this friend, Brad, not boyfriend and girlfriend or anything, just mates, you know. He’s a minicab driver. Well, there was this one night when he was
giving Sophes a lift home after they’d been out clubbing or somewhere, and he gets a call from Colin Ashby asking him to come and pick him up at the Houses of Parliament. So Brad asked if he minded Sophes being there, cos he couldn’t just abandon her, could he? Anyway, it didn’t turn out to be a problem, so Sophes went along too, and that was how they met. In the back of a minicab, of all places. She said they hit it off right away. Chatting and laughing. He was a real easy bloke to talk to, she said. She always said that, didn’t she, Chas? That he was real easy-going.’

Chas only grunted.

‘She was right excited when he called Brad a couple of days later to ask for her number,’ Daphne went on. ‘An important man like that. Everyone knew who he was. She was dead chuffed, she was. Rang me on my mobile to tell me. “He just called me, Mum,” she said. “That one I told you about. He wants to see me again.”’ Daphne’s eyes were filling up again and, ripping off a square of kitchen roll, she added brokenly, ‘If only she’d known how it was all going to end, she’d never have seen him.’

Well, she was certainly right about that, Laurie was thinking as she looked down at the small islands of ice floating in her Coke. She wondered if they genuinely didn’t know that their daughter had been a professional escort, or if they’d been instructed to give this watered-down version of Brad Pinkton’s role in it all. Since that particular aspect of Sophie’s life still hadn’t been made public, she dispensed with the idea of asking them straight out if they knew, because if they didn’t, it wasn’t
going to help them, or her, to add to their suffering with such a painful revelation.

‘Did Sophie know Colin Ashby was married?’ she asked after a while.

‘Yes. He told her straight away,’ Daphne answered. ‘It took her a few weeks to tell me, though, and I didn’t like it one bit, when she told me, did I, Chas? I said to her, “You can’t go getting yourself mixed up with a married man, it’s not right, and you’ll only end up getting hurt.” I never thought it would be like this, though,’ she added tearfully.

Laurie kept her compassionate face going, then bracing herself, she said, ‘Do you know if they became intimate on their first date?’

Daphne’s eyes shot to Chas, whose jaw went so tight it turned his face pale.

Daphne’s hand moved back to his arm. ‘Course they was,’ Daphne answered. ‘You’ve seen pictures of her. She was gorgeous. No man was going to resist her, was he? She called me after he’d gone. Full of it, she was. Said he thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever met, that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since the first time he saw her … He had all the lines. Later she told me he said him and his wife weren’t hitting it off. They didn’t have no sex, or nothing any more. He’d had other affairs, he said, but he’d never felt like this before. I told her she was soft in the head if she believed all that, but there was no getting through to her. Still, for all that, he was good to her. Generous, you know. Bought her loads of clothes, but I haven’t had the heart to sort through them yet. They’re upstairs in her room. The police let us have
them back after they’d finished, you know, whatever they have to do with them.’

Laurie nodded. Would they be worth looking at, she wondered. Possibly, but since she could imagine all too easily what kind of clothes they were, she didn’t think she could bear to be there when Daphne unpacked them.

‘She was besotted with him,’ Daphne suddenly went on. Her tanned, leathery face was becoming much more strained now, reminding Laurie of how deep and real her loss was. ‘She didn’t want to meet anyone else. As far as she was concerned he was going to leave his wife and go and live with her. That’s what he said, so she believed him. Well, why wouldn’t she when he kept saying it, and in the end he did, didn’t he? He left his wife and turned up at her flat in the early hours of the morning, saying he couldn’t stay away a minute longer.’ Her voice almost gave out then as she said, ‘She was so happy when he came to her like that, then a week later she was … dead.’