False Tongues (33 page)

Surely girls didn't do that sort of thing?

‘Do you know why she doesn't want to be disturbed?' he couldn't help asking.

Georgie shrugged. ‘None of my business.'

Which meant, Neville suspected, that she knew very well, but chose not to say.

‘You could send her a text,' Georgie suggested helpfully. ‘Sometimes that works.'

Neville fished his phone out of his pocket and handed it to the girl. ‘You do it for me.'

She looked at his phone with disapproval. ‘This phone is really old,' she said. But she pressed a few buttons, then her thumbs worked rapidly over the keys. ‘Done,' she pronounced.

‘Does your mother know that Lexie shuts herself in her room like this?' Neville asked, to satisfy his own curiosity.

‘No. She doesn't do it when Mum's at home,' admitted Georgie.

‘Just like your mum doesn't know that she used to leave you here alone to…visit her boyfriend?'

Georgie looked at him blankly. ‘She's never left me alone. Mum really would kill her if she did that.'

‘What?' Neville was baffled. Lexie had admitted it to him. Maybe, he reasoned, she had managed to sneak out somehow so that her sister didn't know she was gone. ‘Are you sure, Georgie?'

‘Course I'm sure. Her mates come here sometimes and hang out while Mum's at work, but Lexie doesn't go out. Not that I'd care if she
did
leave,' Georgie added. ‘I can look after myself. But she wouldn't. She'd be afraid that I'd tell Mum. Then she'd be grounded for like the rest of her life.'

‘What's going on? Who wants to see me?' Lexie appeared in the doorway. ‘Oh, it's
you
,' she said flatly, glaring at Neville. ‘This had better be important.'

‘And now,' said Jeremy Kyle, on the screen, ‘for those all-important DNA results.'

Neville sighed; he supposed he would never know now whether Tiger was Den's son, or his brother.

***

‘What about
you
? What have you been doing with your life?' Guilia asked him.

Mark hardly knew where to begin. It had been so many years since he'd seen her, and how interested was she, really, in what those years had held for him? Not very, he suspected.

‘I'm a police officer,' he said—the easiest option. ‘I'm with the Met.'

‘Oh, I wouldn't have guessed that. Was it what you always wanted to do?' She was smiling encouragingly.

‘Actually, it was,' he confirmed.

‘My mother-in-law thinks it's regrettable, but I love watching police dramas on the telly,' Guilia confided. ‘Tell me about your job. Are you a beat cop, or something else?'

‘Something more interesting, you mean?'

‘I suppose that
is
what I meant,' she admitted.

Chiara and Emilia, who had been walking in front of them, suddenly turned and waited for them to catch up. ‘Ice cream,' said Chiara to her uncle, pointing at a van by the side of the path. ‘There's an ice cream van, Uncle Marco. Please, can we have an ice cream?'

‘Please, Mum?' Emilia entreated Guilia.

Mark reached for his wallet. ‘Sounds like a good plan. What would you like, ladies?'

They placed their orders; he paid the vendor, collected the ice creams, and handed them round with a little bow to each, which delighted the girls and seemed to embarrass Guilia. ‘You didn't have to pay for ours,' she said, shaking her head.

‘My pleasure.'

‘Then thank you.'

They resumed walking. Guilia ate her cornetto daintily, nibbling round the edge of the cone. Mark wished he'd made a more sensible choice as he peeled the paper from his Magnum bar and bit into it, shattering the chocolate covering. Bits of chocolate went everywhere, most of it onto the pavement.

‘I should have had a cornetto,' he said ruefully.

‘You were telling me about your job,' Guilia reminded him.

Giving up on the Magnum bar before the rest of it melted all over him, Mark took one last bite out of it and dropped the remainder in the nearest bin they passed, then scrubbed at his hands with the flimsy serviette he'd been given.

‘I'm a Family Liaison Officer,' he said, licking a blob of chocolate off his finger. ‘Abbreviated to FLO. That means I deal, mostly, with bereaved families.'

‘How fascinating. I've seen FLOs on some of the police dramas. I'd love to hear more.'

Mark found her interest flattering, and was persuaded to tell her about some of his previous cases. Before he knew it, they were circumnavigating Hyde Park, heading for Kensington Gardens.

‘I'm sure I've bored you enough,' he said at last, with a self-deprecating laugh.

Guilia gave a vigorous shake of her head. ‘Not at all. It's better than watching telly.'

‘I'm glad you think so.'

‘But what about your personal life, Marco?' she turned her face to look at him. ‘Wife?
Bambini
?'

‘No. None of the above.'

‘The police on telly always seem to have such complicated personal lives,' she said before he could elaborate. ‘Have you never married, then?'

‘Not yet,' he said. He thought about Callie, and knew he was smiling. The next words slipped out before he could stop them. ‘But I'm engaged. I hope to be married quite soon. Maybe some time this summer.'

Guilia's eyes widened. ‘Oh! I didn't…Serena didn't…' She rushed on, seeming flustered. ‘But who? Who is the lucky woman, then?'

‘
I'm
the lucky one—she's the most wonderful woman in the world. She's called Callie Anson.' Just saying her name made him ridiculously happy. And she was coming home tomorrow! The week without her had seemed interminable; he couldn't wait to see her.

***

Lexie led Neville to her bedroom again. This time, aware as he'd become of the strict rules governing the interviewing of juveniles, he wondered about the wisdom of this. What if she were to accuse him of something improper? Legally, he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

‘So what's this about, then?' she demanded, taking a seat on the bed and folding her hands primly in her lap. ‘I told you everything I could about Seb. And I saw on the Internet that you've arrested Josh Bradley. What more do you need from me?'

‘Just tying up loose ends,' Neville said, as reassuringly as he could manage.

‘All right, then.'

He decided not to beat about the bush; there wasn't time for that. ‘It seems that you haven't been entirely honest with me, Lexie.'

With one hand she flicked the fringe out of her eyes, momentarily obscuring her face, but her voice maintained her attitude of bravado. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Why didn't you tell me that your so-called boyfriend was gay? You must have known.'

Her eyes widened. She pressed her lips together.

‘I've read his journal,' Neville added. ‘He wasn't interested in girls. At all. He might have fooled his parents, and his mates, but I don't see how he could have fooled
you
.'

Lexie's expression changed as a variety of emotions played themselves out on her face, in the space of a heartbeat. Then her shoulders slumped and she turned her face away. ‘Yes, all right,' she said softly. ‘I knew. Of course I did.'

‘Do you want to tell me about it?'

She shrugged. ‘Seb's dead. I suppose it doesn't matter now. But I promised, see. I promised him I'd never tell a soul.'

‘If you tell me what you know, it might help me to understand what happened to him,' Neville pointed out.

Now she looked confused. ‘But you've arrested Josh!'

For what that was worth. ‘There are still a lot of questions to be answered. Like for instance, what
was
your relationship with Sebastian? He wasn't really your boyfriend, was he?'

‘No,' Lexie admitted. ‘We were friends, though. Mates. I liked Seb.'

‘Why did you tell me you'd shagged him?' Neville pressed her.

She gave him a faint, ironic smile. ‘I didn't tell you that. Think about it, Inspector. You're the one that said it, and I went along with it.'

Neville cast his mind back to their earlier interview: she was right. It was Hugo who had told him that Seb was shagging Lexie, not Lexie herself.

‘But I went along with it because I'd promised him,' she added. She opened her hands out in a gesture of appeal. ‘You have to understand about me and Seb,' she said. ‘He was like a brother to me. He talked to me, told me things he couldn't tell his other mates.'

‘Like the fact that he was gay.'

‘Yeah.' Lexie smiled again. ‘And there was another reason I hung out with Seb, to be honest. You know he was in love with Tom?'

Neville nodded. ‘His journal made that pretty clear.'

‘Well, me too. That is, I fancy Tom something rotten. So we had that in common, I guess. It was, like, a bond between us, I s'pose you'd say.'

And by spending time with Sebastian, Neville reasoned, she'd have a better chance of seeing the object of their mutual lust.

‘There's something else I'd like to ask you about,' he said. More to satisfy his own curiosity than anything else, he admitted to himself. ‘You didn't go out and meet Sebastian at night, then. When his parents were working.'

‘No. Never. We talked a lot at night, though—on our mobiles, some, but mostly on the web cam.' She indicated the laptop computer on her desk, its lid shut.

‘There's a camera on that thing?'

‘Sure.' She gave him a pitying look.

‘Your sister says that when you put the ‘do not disturb' sign on your door, it's more than her life is worth to interrupt you. What's that about, then?'

Lexie frowned and evaded his eyes. ‘I don't have to tell you.'

‘No, you don't,' he agreed. ‘Not if it isn't relevant to Sebastian's death. But is that what you did when you were talking to him? Put the sign on your door?'

‘Sort of.' She played with the ends of her hair, still not looking at Neville.

‘I won't tell your mum, if that's what you're worried about. I'd just like to know.'

Lexie got up and opened the lid of her laptop. ‘My mum doesn't have much money,' she said defensively. ‘The pay at Tesco is crap. And like I said before, my dad pays our school fees out of guilt for dumping Mum. And buys me stuff like this computer. But I need cash for clothes and stuff. I can't get a job, 'cause I have to stay at home with Georgie while Mum's working. So I have to do something to earn a bit of spending money.'

She was using her computer to earn money? What an enterprising girl, Neville said to himself.

‘There's a lot of randy old blokes out there,' she went on. ‘All you have to do is find them. Sad, but there it is. And I've got the equipment, so why not?'

What on earth was she talking about? ‘I don't understand,' he admitted.

She gave him another pitying, condescending look. ‘Simple,' she said. ‘I put the web cam on. Then I take my clothes off. Not all my clothes—just my shirt, usually. Then I dance round a bit. And they pay me—straight into my PayPal account. It's like, free dosh. It doesn't hurt anyone. In fact, it's kind of a public service. But,' she added, ‘if my mum found out, she'd kill me.'

***

The Fun Walk had ended—quite successfully—at Marble Arch. There the walkers had dispersed. Guilia Bonner and her daughter had boarded a bus to take them back to her mother-in-law's suburban home, and a few minutes later Mark and Chiara caught the Number 55 toward Clerkenwell.

Mark flourished his Oyster card, but Chiara had left hers at home, which meant that Mark had to come up with enough change to pay her fare. They found a pair of empty seats; Chiara took the window seat and sighed happily.

Still thinking about Callie, Mark pulled his phone out and rang her, though he didn't really expect her to pick up the call.

She answered after the first ring. ‘Marco!'

‘
Cara Mia!
' He smiled. ‘I'm glad I caught you.'

‘We've just finished the afternoon session,' she said. ‘The final session, in fact. Now I'm on my way to have tea.'

Again, he was overwhelmed with the need to see her. ‘If it was the final session, can't you leave now?' he suggested. ‘You could be home by early evening.'

‘I wish,' she said with an audible sigh. ‘But there's a dinner tonight. A posh, dress-up dinner to finish off the week in style.'

‘Too bad.' He could imagine her, wearing a filmy frock. Sitting next to Adam.

As if reading his mind, she said, ‘I have to tell you something, Marco. About Adam.'

Mark's heart gave an unpleasant lurch.

‘I'm free of him,' she stated. ‘I've come to terms with it all, and I'm ready—really ready—to move on. With you. And I've told him, basically, that I don't want to have anything more to do with him. Ever.'

‘Oh! That's wonderful.' The best news in a long time.

‘And I'll see you tomorrow,' Callie added. ‘I should be home by lunchtime, if you're—' She broke off, then said. ‘Sorry, Marco. I've got to go now. Love you.'

‘Love you,
Cara Mia
.' He caressed the phone, unthinkingly, before stowing it back in his pocket.

He would have preferred to spend the rest of the bus journey in silence, savouring the prospect of seeing Callie in less than twenty-four hours, but with Chiara sitting beside him, it wasn't going to happen. ‘Wasn't that fun, Uncle Marco?' she said as soon as he'd put his phone away.

‘Super,' he agreed. ‘We were lucky that it didn't rain.'

‘Isn't Emilia nice?'

He hadn't had much meaningful interaction with Emilia, but he nodded agreement. ‘Very nice.'

‘And her mum.'