Deep Waters (18 page)

Having a night to think about it and plan his strategy, Mark had decided that, tempting as it was to get it over with in one emotional session, it would be more useful to speak to each of them individually, the better to observe their reactions. And there might just be something one of them knew that they wouldn’t feel comfortable saying in front of the others. Their responses were more likely to be honest if they didn’t have to worry about what someone else would think.

First, though, he wanted to tell them about the inquest, and he felt that was probably best tackled rather informally, over coffee.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ he said as soon as he arrived in the white sitting room with the huge plasma screen. There was still a remnant of the media circus at the front of the house, so the curtains remained drawn and the room was in half-light. Jodee, curled up on the large white leather sofa, was flicking through a magazine while Chazz sprawled on the floor, his attention fixed on the plasma screen. One of the Spiderman films was playing; Spidey was scaling a wall, evidently planning to rescue someone
from the top of a tall building. Neither of the pair acknowledged Mark with more than a glance.

‘You will not.’ Brenda, who had let him into the house, blocked his access to the kitchen. ‘That’s my job.’

While she went to make the coffee, Mark perched on the smaller sofa and watched a few minutes of the film with Chazz. Spidey performed the rescue with aplomb, then moved on to his next adventure. No one in the room spoke.

Brenda came back with a tray. She shoved aside some
magazines
on the coffee table to make space for it. ‘You take yours black, don’t you?’ she confirmed, handing a mug to Mark.

‘Thanks.’

‘White with three sugars for Chazz, and two sugars for Jodee.’ Brenda smiled as she distributed them. Still there was no response from the couple themselves.

Mark cleared his throat. He’d worked with many bereaved people before, and was familiar with the varied manifestations of grief, from screaming rage to catatonic shock. Last night Jodee and Chazz had still been tearful, with Jodee verging on
hysteria
. Now they both seemed to have shut down. He wasn’t sure whether that would make today’s task easier or more difficult.

Jodee had put down her magazine and was watching as the scene changed and bumbling Peter Parker tried to declare his feelings to his dim-witted girlfriend.

‘Do you mind if I turn this off?’ Mark picked up the DVD remote and killed the film.

Jodee made a face, but Chazz shrugged. ‘I’ve seen it like six hundred times.’

‘There’s just something I wanted to tell you. There’s going to be an inquest.’

Jodee nodded. ‘Me mum said, like. It was in that news conference.’

‘Today,’ Mark said. ‘This afternoon.’

Brenda was the one who looked alarmed. ‘Do Chazz and Jodee need to go? And what about me?’

‘Oh, no,’ he assured her hastily. ‘None of you will be called on to give any evidence at this point. It’s just a formality, what happens today. The coroner will open the inquest. The Senior Investigating Officer, DI Stewart, will make a statement—I think he’ll just state the facts of the case. Then the coroner sets a date to continue the inquest, in about six weeks.’

Brenda put her mug down on the table. ‘You mean it won’t be all over after today?’

‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Betts. There will be various test results that take time to get processed.’ He left it at that; why upset them by mentioning toxicology, histology, virology and
microbiology
—terrifying words, even if you didn’t understand what they were about.

‘I just want it to be over,’ Brenda Betts said on a sigh.

‘It won’t never be over, like,’ Chazz stated. ‘Muffin’s gone, and we’ll never have her back.’

Brenda glanced at Chazz, then at Jodee. ‘What about the funeral?’ she asked Mark. ‘Will they let us go ahead and, you know, bury her while they’re doing all them tests?’

‘I think so. Unless you want to order more tests yourself—’

‘What would we want to go and do that for?’ Brenda cut him off. ‘Like Chazz says, she’s gone. The way I see it, it don’t really matter how.’

Mark somehow doubted that the coroner would see it quite that way. Nor DCS Evans for that matter, though they would surely both be delighted if it could be proved, this very minute, that Muffin Betts’ death was clearly attributable to natural causes, with no further action to be taken.

He finished his coffee and set the mug down. ‘I need to have a word with each of you, in private.’

If he’d expected to learn much from any of them, he was
disappointed
. Chazz, the first to accompany him into the kitchen, was polite but baffled. ‘Shaken? You’re trying to say that someone shook Muffin, like, hard enough to hurt her? But that’s just daft. Jodee and me, we loved her. From the minute she was born, and before. We wouldn’t of hurt her, not for nothing. And Mum,
neither. She’s my mum, remember? I know what she’s like. When me and Di were growing up, she never laid a finger on neither of us. Never, even when we deserved a good hiding.’

It was the greatest number of words he’d ever had out of Chazz at one sitting, and he was inclined to believe him.

Jodee was equally adamant, if a bit more scathing. ‘You’re like joking me, right? Hurt Muffin? I’d sooner cut off me own right arm than hurt me baby.’

‘And you don’t remember ever asking anyone else to watch Muffin, even for a little while? A baby-sitter? A friend?’

‘Why would we need to do that, when we have Bren? She’s always here, like, and she loves…loved…Muffin as much as me and Chazz. Bren’s brilliant. She wouldn’t of hurt Muffin for the world.’

Predictably, Brenda stood up for both of them as well. ‘They’re young, yes. But they’re not stupid. They wouldn’t of done nothing like that. They thought the world of that baby, and that’s the truth. She were their little princess.
Our
little princess. Anyway,’ Brenda added, ’Muffin were a good baby. She didn’t cry much. En’t that why people shake babies sometimes, like, to stop them crying?’

‘Yes, I believe that’s right.’

‘She were a good baby.’ Brenda Betts repeated it, plaintively, as if begging him to believe her.

Frances checked her watch and cut short her daily round of the wards: it was almost time to meet Neville Stewart in the cafe.

She was still feeling a bit ambivalent about meeting him, almost as if she were consorting with the enemy. Would Triona approve? Would she see it as a betrayal? But Frances told herself that, whatever his faults as a human being, he did love Triona. He deserved a chance to say whatever he wanted to say, and if Triona wouldn’t listen to him, perhaps it was Frances’ duty, as her friend, to hear him out. Anyway, he already knew where Triona was, so Frances was in no danger of giving away any secrets in that department.

Triona had been unforthcoming about his visit yesterday. She hadn’t divulged how he’d found her, what he’d had to say, or whether they were any closer to getting back together. If Triona wouldn’t confide in her, then maybe the only way forward was to talk to Neville and attempt to keep the lines of
communication
open. Even if Triona didn’t see it that way.

Graham might not see it that way, either, Frances
acknowledged
to herself as she hurried along the corridors towards the cafe. He might think she was interfering where she had no right to do so, and tell her to mind her own business. Was that why she hadn’t told him about Neville’s call?

Well, it was too late for second guessing. Neville was waiting for her at the entrance to the cafe.

She greeted him a bit awkwardly; shaking hands seemed too formal for the husband of a friend, but it was hardly appropriate to exchange social kisses with someone who had once arrested you—and whose wife you were harbouring as a fugitive. So Frances settled for a nod and a smile.

‘Coffee?’ suggested Neville. ‘Would you like something to eat? A sticky bun?’

‘No, thanks. Just coffee.’

Frances found a vacant table while he joined the queue. The hospital cafe was a busy venue—a source of quick refreshment for the medical personnel and a place to kill time for visitors and day-patients. For Frances it was a convenient meeting-place as well; she thought about all the cups of coffee she’d consumed there over the years with various people, remembering especially her breakfast with Triona a few months ago, when she’d
discovered
Triona’s pregnancy. Raw with emotion and sick as a dog, Triona had been much more willing to confide in her on that occasion. She’d told Frances the whole story of her relationship with Neville, going back nearly ten years.

With what Triona had told her that day, and the
developments
she had witnessed since then, it seemed to Frances that the two of them—Triona and Neville—lived their relationship on a more intense level than most people ever did. She didn’t
know how they managed to maintain that intensity; the very thought of it exhausted her.

Maybe that was much of the problem. They’d never allowed their feelings for each other to mellow into a comfortable sort of companionship. Everything was fraught, contentious. Passionate, in both the positive and negative sense: passionate love, equally passionate hate. It was in both their natures; if one of them had been like that it would have been bad enough, but putting them together was a recipe for stratospheric happiness and incendiary pain, a roller-coaster ride of emotion. Was it possible for them to settle down to being a normal family, with satisfying highs, moderate lows, and most of the time something between the two?

‘I succumbed,’ said Neville, sliding his tray onto the table. He’d bought himself a pecan danish. ‘Breakfast was a long time ago. Would you like half of it?’

‘No, thanks.’ Frances took her coffee and waited for him to speak. After all, he was the one who had asked for this meeting.

He munched his way through the danish, washed it down with black coffee, then leaned back in his chair. ‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ he said.

She nodded, still waiting.

‘I need your help,’ he said bluntly, with no further
preliminaries
. ‘I want Triona back. And she just won’t listen to me.’

‘What makes you think she’ll listen to
me
?’

‘You’re her friend. She doesn’t hate
you
.’

The poignant, self-deprecating way he said it tugged at Frances’ heart-strings; for the first time she saw his vulnerability, and found herself liking him more than she’d ever been able to. ‘Oh, Neville. She doesn’t hate
you
, either,’ she assured him.

‘Sometimes it seems like she does. I can’t seem to convince her that I really want our marriage to work. That I’ll do whatever I have to do to make that happen.’

‘Triona can be stubborn,’ Frances said.

He sighed gustily. ‘Don’t I know it. That’s the understatement of the millennium.’ He looked into his coffee cup, as if he couldn’t
bear to make eye contact. ‘I love her, Frances,’ he said simply. ‘More than anything in the world. It’s taken me years to admit that. And now…well, I just can’t face the thought of living without her. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. And I don’t want to do it any more. I want her with me, for better and for worse.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ Frances heard herself saying. ‘I’ll try to talk to her.’

Frances had gone back to work, and he’d better do the same, Neville told himself. He still hadn’t composed his statement for the Betts inquest, and that was going to take some concentrated work and careful thought.

He wasn’t sure whether his talk with Frances would bring any results, though he did feel that it had achieved one thing: she had warmed to him, for some reason. Maybe she’d seen how serious he was about his marriage; perhaps he’d convinced her of the depth of his love for Triona. Whatever it was, he felt he’d made some sort of breakthrough with her. She might not exactly be in his corner, but he was reasonably certain that at least she wouldn’t side with Triona against him.

He’d made it nearly as far as the door of the hospital cafe when he heard his name called. ‘Neville? Neville Stewart?’