Deep Waters (40 page)

‘Thank you,’ Neville said, genuinely grateful. If the di Stefano case were still as clear as mud, this meant that they might be able to tidy up the loose ends of the Betts case before the resumption of the inquest.

As Callie returned to her breakfast, Neville made a quick call on his mobile. ‘Sid?’ he said. ‘I have a little job for you.’

‘But Guv, I’m—

‘I don’t care what you’re doing right now, or who you’re doing it with. I need for you to track down a Kevin Betts. Last known address, London. Look in the phone book. When you’ve found him, let me know, and have him brought in. I’d like to have a few words with Mr Betts.’

Mark hadn’t had an appetite earlier that morning, especially after Mamma’d had a go at him, but now he found himself devouring the breakfast that Frances had put in front of him, just barely restraining himself from picking up the plate and licking it.

He watched Neville doing the same, silently and with
concentration
. When Neville had finished, and Triona had been supplied with toast and coffee, Mark chose his moment to speak. ‘Have you seen today’s
Globe
?’ he asked Neville.

‘No. Do I need to?’

‘Yes, I think you do.’ He looked at Callie, who pulled the
tabloid
out of her bag and handed it across the table to Neville.

‘Bloody hell,’ were his first words. ‘That damned, bloody, interfering woman. If you reverends will please excuse my French.’ He read through the story while Mark watched his face.

Neville wasn’t very good at hiding his emotions, particularly when it came to anger. He was, Mark saw, furious.

‘Who told her?’ he demanded, obviously not expecting an answer from the people round Frances’ kitchen table. ‘Who are her sources? If I find them, I’ll murder them myself.’

‘Is she—Samantha—a suspect?’ Mark asked. ‘Or is Lilith Noone just making a mountain out of a molehill?’

Neville stared across the table at Mark, his lips pressed together. For a moment he was silent, seemingly debating with himself. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I thought that she couldn’t have done it. I thought she was just pissing me about for fun. But this morning I’ve learned something that might just change everything I thought about this case.’

Callie spoke. ‘Can you tell us?’

Again a moment of silence, then Neville said abruptly, ‘What the hell,’ flinging his hand out in a gesture of abandon.

What he told them was that Samantha Winter, who had ended her affair with Joe some weeks before, had had the
opportunity
to murder him. A reliable witness had overheard a row, and had seen Samantha in circumstances that were not incompatible with her having administered the fatal poison to Joe.

‘So what you’re saying,’ Mark simplified, ‘is that Samantha could have done it.’

Neville nodded. ‘That certainly seems entirely possible, from what I’ve just been told. But what I can’t seem to get my head round is the motive.
Why
would she poison him? As she told me, she’d broken it off with him at least a month before, and she already had a new boyfriend.’

‘Blackmail,’ Callie said promptly. ‘What if he was
blackmailing
her? To get her back? You said there had been a row?’

‘But there are plenty of other fish in the sea,’ Mark said
bitterly
. ‘I’m sure that he’d already found someone else. Some other pretty undergraduate.’

Neville turned to Mark first. ‘That’s what I thought. But my source…she said that Dr di Stefano—Joe—really loved Samantha. That she was the only one, ever—the only affair—and he was devastated when she broke it off. She was sure of it. “Besotted” was the word she used.’

Mark felt as if he’d just been kicked in the stomach. All of his preconceptions about Joe over the past few months—he’d just assumed that the fling with Samantha was part of a selfish pattern of behaviour. Having his cake and eating it, over and over again. Not a one-off. Not something genuine, that had caused Joe pain. Not real love, challenging a lifetime of fidelity and loyalty, but a heedless, ego-driven expression of his disregard for the vows he’d made to Serena.

Had he been wrong, then?

If Joe had really loved Samantha, that changed everything. Mark wasn’t sure why it should make such a difference, but it did.

Neville had turned to Callie. ‘I thought about blackmail,’ he said. ‘He might have threatened to make their affair public, unless she came back to him.’

‘He wouldn’t have wanted it to be public, though,’ Callie pointed out immediately. ‘It would have devastated his family. Chiara—I just can’t imagine that he would have wanted that.’

‘No. That’s what I thought.’ Neville picked up his fork and tapped it on his empty plate. ‘And besides, she wouldn’t have that much to lose if he did go public. That’s why I decided that she couldn’t have done it. No motive. Now, though…I just don’t know.’

There was something nagging at the back of Callie’s brain. Tantalisingly close, yet just beyond her grasp. Something…

‘What if you looked at it in a slightly different way?’ she said slowly, working through it in her head.

Neville raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Samantha. Say it doesn’t have to do with him threatening to tell about their affair?’

‘Then what?’

She was getting there. She could almost…‘I’ve never met Samantha,’ Callie said. ‘I’ve only seen her on the telly. So I could be way off base. You’ve met her, though, Neville. What would you say is the thing that drives Samantha? The most important thing in her life?’

‘Apart from herself, that is? Fame,’ Neville said promptly. ‘Celebrity. She wants to win “Junior Idol”. She wants to be a household name.’

‘So what if…it has to do with that? What if Joe somehow threatened that goal? Would she kill him to keep that from happening?’

Neville replied without hesitation. ‘She would.’

‘Fame,’ Callie repeated to herself, trying to jog her memory. ‘Celebrity. “Junior Idol”. Tori Morpeach. Hilary Dalton’s
god-daughter
, who worked for Reality Bites. They just want to be
celebrities,’ she’d said. ‘The extents they’d go to…’ And then, ‘The lies people tell…’

‘What if,’ Callie said, ‘She’d lied about something to get on “Junior Idol”? And Joe found out about it?’

Triona spoke for the first time, sarcastically. ‘You mean like saying she had talent?’

Neville ignored his wife’s comment. ‘What could get you disqualified from “Junior Idol”?’

Callie thought back to the conversation with Tori Morpeach. ‘I had one contestant recently who asked me what would happen if we found out they’d lied about something,’ Tori had said.

‘Lying. About something important,’ she stated.

‘But what could be that important in qualifying for “Junior Idol”?’ Frances chipped in.

‘What if she’d been working in a strip club to pay her
university
fees?’ Neville hypothesised wildly. ‘Lap dancing? Or in porn films, having it off with a herd of sheep? Or what if she’d been banned from driving for running down a little old lady in a zebra crossing after tossing back a dozen tequila slammers?’

‘Any of those things would just add to her mystique,’ Frances disagreed. ‘Publicity is publicity, good or bad, for someone like her. The legend of Samantha.’

‘It’s right here in front of us.’ Mark leaned forward, an
expression
on his face like—Callie thought—Moses coming down off the mountain with his stone tablets. Glowing with certainty. ‘Age.’ He jabbed his finger at the front page of the
Globe
, which Neville had flung contemptuously on the table. ‘Under the age of twenty-one. It says it right here.’

‘It also says that Samantha is twenty,’ Neville pointed out, then his jaw sagged as the implications sank in. ‘Good God,’ he said, weakly.

What if she’d lied about her age—claimed she was a year, or even a few months, younger? Was that the sort of thing she would have confessed to her lover, then regretted? ‘But age is a
matter of public record,’ he said. ‘Surely if she’d lied about her age to get on “Junior Idol”, lots of people would know about it. Parents, family, friends.’

‘But only a desperate lover would threaten to use it to get her thrown out of the competition,’ Mark stated.

Callie was pulling a phone out of her bag. ‘I’d like to make a couple of calls,’ she said. ‘Just to verify something.’

She left the room for a few minutes; they all just sat there,
looking
at each other, until she returned with a triumphant grin.

‘I’ve spoken to Victoria Morpeach, whose god-mother is one of my parishioners. Tori works for the company that makes “Junior Idol”, amongst other things. And she’s confirmed that when Samantha Winter auditioned, she asked what would happen if the producers found out that a contestant had lied about something.’

‘Why would an innocent person even ask a question like that?’ Mark demanded.

Neville’s question was more direct. ‘And what did Miss Morpeach tell her?’

‘She told her,’ Callie said, ‘that if it was a matter that affected the contestant’s eligibility, they would be dropped from the competition.’

‘So it would behove her that the producers not find out,’ Neville said thoughtfully, stroking his chin. ‘But this is all speculation, plausible as it is. Now it’s time for
me
to make a phone call.’

He went back into the vicarage’s front room and speed-dialled Sid Cowley again.

‘Guv, I was just going to ring you,’ Cowley said, his voice smug. ‘We’ve got Betts. I ran his name through the system—didn’t even have to look in the phone book. He’s in the nick in Hackney. Got picked up a couple of days ago, flogging
cut-price
fags round the pubs. Said they fell off the back of a lorry, of course. Couldn’t make bail, so he’s not going anywhere for a while. You can talk to him whenever you want.’

‘Good job,’ Neville said, though he knew it was really down to good luck rather than good police work. ‘Just as well you’ve cracked it, because I have another little job for you.’

Cowley groaned. ‘Give me a break, Guv. It’s Saturday.’

‘This has to do with your own favourite Idol, Samantha.’

‘I saw the
Globe
,’ Cowley said, sounding more eager. ‘You want me to go and talk to her, Guv? See if I can get anything more out of her?’

‘You wish. No, Sid, I’d like a few facts checked. First, take a look at her bio on the “Junior Idol” web site—I’m sure you have it book-marked,’ he added snidely. ‘See what it says for date of birth. And place of birth, if it gives that. Then cross-check it with the General Register Office. I want to know exactly when and where she was born.’

‘She’s twenty, Guv,’ Cowley told him. ‘Everyone knows that.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Neville.

Neville had rushed off; Triona had stayed behind to drink coffee with Frances.

Bella was dancing round the door, clearly ready for her walk. ‘Shall we take her to the park?’ Callie suggested to Mark.

That was why he’d come, and what he wanted to do. But he realised, suddenly, that there was something else that he needed to do first. Something that couldn’t wait. ‘Can you hold on for an hour or so?’ he pleaded. ‘I wouldn’t ask you if it weren’t important. I’ll be back as soon as I can—I promise.’

‘All right,’ Callie agreed. ‘I can join the girly coffee morning. Bella will just have to cross her legs.’

The Tube journey across town was slower than he would have liked, with all of the Saturday shoppers heading to Oxford Street. By the time he got to Clerkenwell he realised that there was no point going to the di Stefano house; instead he went straight to La Venezia.

It was too early for the first of the lunch-time crowd. Mark found Serena checking the diary for bookings and putting ‘Reserved’ signs on the appropriate tables. ‘I’d like to have a word,’ he said. ‘In the private dining room, if that’s all right.’

She shook her head. ‘After lunch, Marco. Come back later.’

‘Now.’ He said it so firmly that she looked up from what she was doing, startled.

‘But there’s a party of eight due in…’ She checked her watch. ‘…Quarter of an hour.’

‘Pappa can deal with it. And this won’t take long, I hope.’

Serena shrugged and followed him.

He’d been thinking, on the cross-town journey, about what he was going to say to her. It would be premature to tell her that Neville thought he’d solved Joe’s murder, but there were other things that needed to be said.

‘I’m worried about Chiara,’ he said bluntly, as soon as Serena had closed the door behind her.

‘She’s having a difficult time,’ Serena admitted. ‘But we’ll get through it. It’s partly her age, you know.’

‘She blames you for her dad’s death.’

Serena gave a mirthless laugh. ‘So do your friends in the police, evidently. Is that what this is about?’

‘You know it’s about a lot more than that.’ Mark pulled out a chair and sat down; Serena continued to stand. ‘It’s about you…and Joe. And what that situation has done to the family, and to Chiara.’

‘And
you
know,’ she said, ‘that I’ve done my utmost to keep it all from them. From the girls and
i genitori
.’

‘You’ve dumped it all on me instead.’ Mark tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘Which I wouldn’t mind, except that I don’t think you’ve been totally honest with me.’

She looked surprised at that. ‘What do you mean, Marco?’

‘You led me to believe that Joe had had a string of affairs over the years.’

‘And?’ she challenged.

‘It’s not true, is it?’

Serena’s reply didn’t answer his question. ‘What difference does it make?’

‘It makes all the difference! I’ve been hating Joe for months because I thought—you let me think—that he was a serial
philanderer
. And you’ve known all along that it was just the one affair.’

She didn’t deny it. ‘He was unfaithful to me. To our
marriage
vows. What difference does it make if it was once, or a hundred times?’

Mark could see how Serena would feel that way, as a betrayed wife, but to him—as a man—the difference was vast. Joe hadn’t set out to deceive Serena, systematically and repeatedly. He had been broad-sided by feelings he couldn’t control. His actions hadn’t been exemplary or even excusable, but he had tried to do his best by his family.

Why, then, had Serena as much as told him that Samantha was just the latest in a series of infidelities? Because she wanted him to believe it? Because she couldn’t, or didn’t want to, deal with the truth? But why?

‘Wouldn’t it have been worse?’ Mark asked aloud. ‘If there had been lots of girls, wouldn’t it have been worse?’

‘Is that what you think?’ Serena leaned her back against the door and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘It would have been bad, yes. To think that I couldn’t…satisfy him. That he had to go
elsewhere
for his physical needs. But this wasn’t like that, Marco.’

‘No,’ said Mark. ‘He loved her.’

Serena’s eyes widened. For a moment she stood there, staring at her brother, then she crumpled into the nearest chair.

‘Serena!’ He jumped up and went to her side.

‘He loved her!’ Serena’s voice rose in pitch. ‘Don’t you see, Marco? He would have left me. Left
us
. For her. She bewitched him, that
puttana
. I wasn’t enough for him. After all those years together, suddenly I wasn’t enough.’ She pounded her fist on the table. ‘The bastard! And then he goes and dies on me, and what am I supposed to do?’

For the first time since Joe’s death, Mark witnessed his sister’s tears. They started as a trickle; the trickle soon became a flood.

Mark knelt by her chair and put his arms around her, his anger towards her evaporating.

It had been a long afternoon. Neville didn’t believe Sid Cowley when he rang to tell him that the General Register Office had, in fact, moved, and was proving difficult to track down. Yes,
they had a web site. No, they weren’t answering their phone on a Saturday afternoon.

While a grumbling Cowley dealt with the dilemma, Neville took advantage of the lull in the proceedings to cross London and pay a visit to the Hackney police station, where the
helpful
custody sergeant fixed him up with an interview room, set up the recording equipment, and brought Kevin Betts through from the cells.

Kev, Neville was interested to see, resembled Chazz in his wiry build, and provided a rather sobering hint of what his son might look like in another twenty-five or thirty years: receding hairline, weatherbeaten face. Then again, Chazz had the money to keep the years from taking their toll in quite that way. Kev’s three-day growth of beard in no way resembled Chazz’s designer stubble, and with Chazz’s contract promoting a famous men’s fragrance, it would be surprising if he ever smelled like Kev did now, probably not even back when he was working as a removal man.

‘Would you like to have your solicitor present, Mr Betts?’ asked the custody sergeant.

‘No need. I’m not saying nothing.’ Kev sat down, leaned back, and folded his arms across his chest, glaring truculently at Neville. ‘Them fags fell off the back of a lorry. End of story.’

Neville smiled. ‘I see. Was it by any chance a French lorry?’

Kev Betts looked at him with suspicion, as if sensing a trap. ‘Might of been,’ he said cautiously. ‘I didn’t get a butcher’s at the number plate, like.’

‘Well, that would certainly explain the French writing on the fag packets.’

It was a shot in the dark, but it clearly hit home. Kev exercised his right to remain silent.

Neville sighed, tired of the game. ‘Listen, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m frankly not interested where or how you choose to spend your days off. If you want to take a little trip on a ferry, I don’t give a toss. I’m just here for a friendly chat.’

At that, Kev seemed to relax.

‘By the way, what sort of work do you do?’

‘I’m in the building trade,’ Kev said. ‘A bit o’ this and a bit o’ that, you know?’

That probably wouldn’t amount to a very steady income, then. But Neville wanted to steer the conversation—such as it was—away from the touchy subject of money, and the
implication
that Kev would need to supplement his income by illegal means.

After a quick look round to make sure that the custody
sergeant
was well out of the way, Neville fished in his pocket and brought out a packet of fags, picked up on his way for this very purpose. He opened it and held it out to Kev Betts.

‘Thanks, mate.’ Kev gave him a conspiratorial grin as he expertly fingered one out of the packet. ‘Decent of you. These new laws—it’s like a bleedin’ police state. If you’ll pardon the expression.’ He chuckled, pleased with his own wit.

He was going to have to smoke one himself, Neville realised, just so Kev wouldn’t think of it as bait. Ah, well, the things he did for his job. This one was for justice: justice for baby Muffin. He struck a match and lit both cigarettes, then waited while Kev sucked deeply and exhaled.

‘You have a family?’ Neville asked, as casually as he could.

‘A brother. We work together, like. We’re good mates, as well. Go down the pub together and all that.’

‘No wife or kids?’ It had been a while since Neville had smoked a cigarette; he savoured the taste of the first lungful.

Kev shrugged. ‘Technically. I have a wife. We split up years ago, but there weren’t never no point in getting a divorce. We never got round to it. And kids—yeah. You might of heard of my son. Chazz. He was on that “twentyfour/seven” on the telly. Won, and all. Good-looking lad, if I say it myself.’

Neville tried to look impressed. ‘You must be very proud of him.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Kev turned his head and dragged on his cigarette. ‘To tell you the truth, mate, I ain’t been much of a dad to Chazz and his sister. I ain’t proud of it, but that’s just the way it is.’

‘Raising kids is tough,’ Neville sympathised. ‘My wife—she’s expecting our first in a few months. And I have to tell you that it scares the hell out of me.’ In his head he apologised to Triona, though there was more than a grain of truth in it. As far as he’d come in the last few months, he still had a way to go, and he knew it.

‘I know where you’re coming from.’ Kev’s words were
heartfelt
. ‘Bren and me, we got married on account of the baby on the way. Then it turned out to be twins. Jesus. One, I might of managed, but not two.’

‘Bad luck,’ Neville said. ‘Must have been a shock.’

‘God—I ain’t thought about that day in a long time. Day of the bleedin’ Royal Wedding, wasn’t it? I was working when Bren went to hospital, and afterwards I couldn’t hardly get there for all the people in the streets. And then when I get there, Bren tells me it’s twins, and she’s naming them Charles and Diana, because of the flippin’ wedding. That near finished me off, then and there—saying she was giving my kids toffee-nosed names like that.’

Well, I’ll be, thought Neville.

‘Then the nurse brings ’em in and hands ’em to me. Screamin’ their heads off, both of them. Like they was being tortured or something. Little red things, ugly as sin. And screamin’ like they’d never stop.’

Neville tapped some ash into a styrofoam cup. ‘What did you do?’

‘Handed ’em right back. “I’m outta here,” I said to Bren. Straight out, I said it. “I told you I’d stand by you and the baby, but I never counted on two, and I just can’t do it. A man can only take so much.” And I ain’t never seen her again, not from that day to this.’

‘And your kids?’ Neville asked. ‘You haven’t seen them, either?’

Kev rubbed his chin with his hand; it made a rasping sound. ‘Nah,’ he said.

‘But Chazz—he must have quite a lot of money,’ Neville pointed out.

That produced a scowl from Kev. ‘I wouldn’t ask him for no money. That wouldn’t be right.’ He smoked in silence for a moment, then said reflectively. ‘I did want to see my
granddaughter
, though. His baby, Muffin. After I seen her photo in a newspaper. I thought she looked like me, a bit. I wanted to see her, just once.’

‘And did you?’

Kev had reached the end of his fag; he smoked it down to the last half-inch, holding it carefully between thumb and
forefinger
, then stubbed it out on the table. Judging from the ancient burn-marks, he wasn’t the first one to use that particular table as an ash tray. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I did.’

It was as perfect a day as early spring ever provided, with temperatures so mild that a jacket was scarcely required. Though the trees had yet to clothe themselves in green, pink and white blossom was much in evidence, and daffodils showed their yellow faces in flower beds everywhere. Crocuses—white, purple, lilac and yellow—dotted the grass, opening to the sun.

Callie and Marco, with Bella on the lead, strolled round Holland Park: it was not too far from Frances’ house, and there was ample space to give Bella a good long walk.