by Susan Lewis
She looked at the phone. The digital clock beside it showed seven thirty-one. It was already a minute past the time he’d said. Please God, he wasn’t going to let her down. He couldn’t have brought her to this point only to destroy her all over again. It was going to ring any second. Her heartbeat skimmed the top of her chest. She was so tense her whole body hurt. She tried to imagine what they would say. What did a wife say to a husband who was in prison for killing his girlfriend? A part of her wanted to run away from it, flee into oblivion, but nothing was going to make her get up and leave that room now.
The phone rang.
The noise jolted through her like volts. She stared at it, feeling sick with dread, and so full of relief and love that she wanted to cry. He was so close now, at the other end of the line. All she had to do was pick it up.
‘Hello?’ she said softly into the receiver.
‘Beth? Is that you?’ It was his voice, low and intimate, and so profoundly familiar it could break her heart in two.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘It’s me.’
‘How are you?’
She took a breath, but for a moment her voice failed. ‘I’m not sure how to answer that,’ she finally managed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She swallowed hard, and dashed away the tears. ‘How are you?’ she asked.
There was a pause before he answered and she wondered if someone at his end was listening. ‘We need to talk,’ he said. ‘Will you come?’
She wouldn’t turn him down – she couldn’t – but nor could she say yes right away. ‘Why now? Why not before?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. Then after a beat, ‘I didn’t kill her, Beth.’
Tears were clogging her throat. She could see his face, tense, pale, needing her to believe him.
‘She was dead when I got there,’ he said.
She thought of his missing trousers, his hands on the tights, the lack of any evidence to say anyone else had been there before him. She didn’t know what to say. Then suddenly all the emotion she’d been struggling to suppress broke through the dam. ‘Oh God,’ she cried brokenly. ‘Colin. Oh God …’
‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘It’s going to be all right. We’ll get through this.’
But they wouldn’t, surely he must know that. Even if he got out of this horrible mess nothing was ever going to be all right again. How could it be?
‘Has anyone called you?’ he asked.
‘You mean from … No.’
He was silent, and once again her heart began filling up with despair. She wished she knew how to make this easier for him, but she couldn’t. None of his colleagues had called, not even to ask where they might send his personal belongings. She wondered if Bruce had told him that they’d already cleared out his office, and that Alan Dowling had now resumed his former position.
‘So will you come?’ he asked softly.
‘Yes.’
His relief was almost audible and her arms felt heavy with the desire to hold him. ‘Bruce will let you know when,’ he said. ‘He’ll bring you.’
They were silent for a few moments then, not knowing what else to say, but not wanting to let go yet. She wondered again who might be listening.
‘Will you bring some things for me?’ he asked.
‘Of course. What do you need?’
‘Cigarettes. Phone cards.’
‘Is there anything else?’ she asked, thinking how pathetic his needs were now.
‘No.’
She waited, knowing he was going to tell her he loved her. But then the line went dead and his failure to say it was more heartbreaking than anything else.
Chapter 6
IT WAS GAINING fast on midnight and Laurie was exhausted. For more than a week now, whilst whizzing through all her official assignments, which had taken her up and down the country, over to Ireland once and to Holland twice, she’d been trying desperately to find out why no one had run the minicab driver’s story. She knew for a fact that Elliot Russell had it, because Pinkton had confirmed it when she’d refrained from clocking him one the day after he’d reneged on giving her the exclusive. So where was it? Why hadn’t it made a single paper or broadcast yet?
Obviously it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that someone was blocking it, but no amount of inveiglement, threats, or even limited begging had so far managed to extract a credible reason from Wilbur as to why Pinkton’s story didn’t make the grade. After all, she had it now, and if Elliot Russell wasn’t going to run with it, there was no reason why they shouldn’t. OK, she understood that since the man wasn’t prepared to name names it might not be wise to start throwing mud when it might stick on the wrong faces. But it wasn’t only about the high-fliers Pinkton claimed to pick up regularly from significant political locales, was it? It was about Sophie Long providing sexual favours in return for money. Now that was a story.
So why all the secrecy?
‘Laurie, just leave it alone,’ was what Wilbur had instructed when she’d taken it to him for the third time in as many days, twice on the phone, then in person. ‘It’s not for us.’
‘Why?’ she’d demanded.
‘I’m just telling you, leave it alone.’
‘Wilbur, for God’s sake …’
His hawkish face came over the desk at her. ‘You don’t think someone out there,’ he growled, pointing towards the politicos’ desks, ‘isn’t already on this? You think the first time I heard it was when you brought it up?’
She flushed at the allusion to her junior, outsider status. ‘So just tell me why you’re not running it,’ she challenged.
‘I don’t have to tell you anything. Just let it drop and go back to where it’s safe.’
At that her eyes boggled. ‘Safe?’ she repeated.
‘From them out there,’ he snarled. ‘They don’t like the way you’re treading on their toes, and I don’t blame them. You’re overstepping the mark, Laurie. You haven’t earned your place yet, so don’t screw it up before you even get there.’
Her face was taut. ‘I come to you with a perfectly good story and you tell me to drop it, because one of those precious baby-boomers, who think they’ve got a God-given right to the world, might not like me getting there first?’
‘I told you, I’m already aware of who, or what, Sophie Long was. It’s not going to change anything, so –’
‘You’re in on the cover-up!’ she suddenly cried. ‘You’re a part of it, aren’t you?’
At that his head dropped forward in exasperation. Then sitting back down in his chair he said, ‘Laurie, you’ve got to learn to hold some things in. You’re too hot-headed, and outspoken, and it’s not doing you any good. Now, take my advice and let this go.’
‘What if I can find out who else Pinkton drove?’ she challenged. ‘If I can get some more names –’
‘You’ll be wasting your time,’ he responded. ‘You won’t get them, and you could do yourself a lot of harm trying. Now take your backside out of here and don’t let me see you again until you’ve got the five hundred words on Concorde I asked you for first thing this morning.’
And that was as far as she’d got, which wasn’t quite a brick wall, but for the little it had told her it might just as well have been. However, it was interesting to know that others in the office were aware of Sophie Long’s status, and Pinkton’s taxi service, though no one, besides her, it seemed, was trying to get it its place in the sun. She wondered if any of her colleagues on other papers, or in TV were having the same problem, but she could hardly ask when it would be tantamount to tipping them off if they didn’t already know about Sophie and Pinkton. So what she needed to find out was why the boomers were happy to sit on the story.
Stretching and yawning, she sat back in her chair, rubbing her tired eyes. She’d heard her parents going to bed a while ago, but knew even if she tried to sleep right now she’d be unable to, for her mind was just too fired up over this. Sophie Long’s family had lo
ng since returned to their home in Essex, though no one had managed to get near them yet, which was weird when the family in these cases generally had something to say. She’d been calling their number day and night, but to no avail, and every trip out there showed the same thing – the place surrounded by press, but no one even getting close, since the police were guarding the front and back of the house, and there were rumours that not all the helicopters buzzing overhead were weather, traffic and news.
She yawned again. There was a real mystery going on there, with what had happened to that family, where they’d gone during those first days after Sophie’s death, and why they’d been so heavily guarded since. She’d give anything to be the one to crack it, though she had to admit the chances of her getting to the Longs before anyone else were about as likely as her getting to the Prime Minister, with whom she wouldn’t mind discussing his few decades of friendship with Colin Ashby. However, perseverance was the better part of valour, or something like that, so she wasn’t going to stop trying just because she was a no one.
Flipping down the cover on her mobile, she dialled the number to retrieve her messages, and turned back to her computer screen. She needed to find out where she was supposed to be tomorrow so that she could work out how she was going to make it fit in with her Ashby investigations. Not that she’d been officially removed from the Ashby story, but Wilbur was piling her up so high with trivia and dross he might just as well come right out and admit he was blocking her. And sure enough, the first two messages she replayed were from Lucy, the news co-ordinator, telling her what she was down for the next day, which was something about some rat-infested tower blocks in Romford, and a new form of laser eye surgery being carried out at a clinic in Suffolk – both stories located out of London.
Throwing her pen down in disgust she began pacing as she moved on to the third message, which was from Andrew and Stephen, her gay friends from Limehouse, asking her to call back for an offer she couldn’t refuse. Making a mental note, she moved on to the fourth message, from Rhona, her closest friend, asking where she’d been lately, and the fifth was from her contact at the Yard who sounded characteristically reluctant to see her, though to her inexpressible delight he was agreeing to.
She was just clicking off the line with a little victory punch into thin air, when she heard the bedroom door open behind her, and turned to see her mother, bleary-eyed and dishevelled from sleep, belting her dressing gown and shaking her head.
‘Laurie, for heaven’s sake, girl,’ she grumbled, her gentle face only partially visible in the semi-light. ‘You’re driving me nuts, pacing up and down, then tapping away on that computer. Get some sleep, will you?’
‘Sorry,’ Laurie grimaced. ‘Just another half-hour and no pacing. OK? I’ve still got some prepping to do for tomorrow. Shall I make you some tea?’
‘No, I’ll make you some cocoa. It might help you switch off. What are you working on, anyway?’
‘Oh, just the usual stuff,’ she answered, turning back to the screen and reclipping her hair. ‘Is Dad awake?’
‘No, but he will be if you carry on like this.’ Mindy Forbes hesitated, then said, ‘Did you call Greg back?’
‘No.’
‘Laurie, you can’t treat him like this. He’s –’
‘Mum, it’s over between us,’ Laurie interrupted, ‘which is why I’m here, remember? It won’t be for long, though. As soon as I’ve got time I’ll find myself a place nearer to the office.’
Mindy looked long into her daughter’s face. How, she was wondering, did Laurie manage even to come into this room now, when just to stand in the doorway caused such an ache in her own heart it was as though that terrible event in their lives had happened a mere week ago, rather than a year. But Laurie had her own way of dealing with her twin sister’s death, which seemed to entail shutting it out most of the time. It was what had made her choice to return to this room when she’d broken up with her boyfriend so surprising. Mindy had dared to hope that it might prove some sort of therapy, being back in the private world the twins had always shared, but if it had, she had yet to know about it, for Laurie still wouldn’t discuss Lysette’s death with anyone, not even her father, whom she’d always found it so easy to talk to.
Even without looking round the room Mindy could sense Laurie’s chaos, spread out over the twin beds where she and Lysette had slept since they were old enough to have a room of their own. As children they’d been inseparable, even as teenagers they’d done most things together. They were so alike physically it used to turn people’s heads in the street, though their characters could hardly have been more different. Mindy had often thought that it was their differences even more than their similarities that had made them so close. They could fight too, like any sisters, but Lysette was always the one to back down first, never Laurie, and it was always Lysette who gave in when they were making such crucial decisions as to which pop idol posters to plaster over their bedroom walls, or which university they should try for, Bristol (Lysette’s choice) or London (Laurie’s choice and where they’d ended up). But for all Laurie’s bull-headedness and domineering ways, Lysette had loved her more than anyone else alive. And the same went for Laurie. Though only ten minutes older, she’d always been fiercely protective of Lysette, constantly shielding her from the beastly world out there that Lysette had never been able to see any harm in. Indeed, it had been as though Laurie’s main purpose in life was to make sure nothing bad ever happened to Lysette, which was why this past year had been so very hard on Laurie, since Lysette had taken her own life.
‘Mum?’ Laurie said softly.
Mindy’s eyes had drifted to Joe, her dead daughter’s teddy bear, lying on the rose-coloured bedspread that never got turned back now.
Getting up from her chair Laurie came to hug her.
‘I still miss her so much,’ Mindy sighed tearfully. ‘I know you do too.’
Laurie didn’t answer, she just held her mother and waited for the moment to pass.
After a while Mindy pulled back, wiping her eyes with her fingers. ‘Dad’s not getting any better,’ she said.
At that Laurie’s heart turned over. She wished her mother wouldn’t tell her these things; she couldn’t bear to hear them. ‘He’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘You just fuss too much.’
Mindy smiled. ‘I worry about you too,’ she said. ‘You work too hard. You haven’t turned out the light before two o’clock in the last three weeks.’
‘There’s no need to worry about me,’ Laurie assured her. ‘I’m fine. I enjoy my work, you know that.’
Mindy cupped her cheek in one hand. Yes, she knew that, but it was an escape too, and Mindy wasn’t sure how far she should allow it to go. Not that making Laurie face up to her pain would ever be easy, but the longer this denial went on, the harder it was going to be, especially when her beautiful, headstrong daughter had such a clever and wilful mind of her own. ‘Life’s for living as well as working,’ she said, ‘and even if it is over with Greg, there are others out there –’
‘Mum, no,’ Laurie cut in gently. Living at home was too hard. She had to find somewhere else soon.
Mindy’s eyes were still watching her, seeing more than Laurie would want her to. ‘Laurie, you know it wasn’t your –’
Laurie’s fingers pressed against her lips. ‘Don’t go there, Mum,’ she said. ‘Not now.’
Resigning herself for the moment, Mindy kissed her on the forehead. ‘I’ll go and make the cocoa,’ she said. ‘Try to be finished by the time I come back.’
Moments later Laurie was absorbed in her story again, typing furiously as though the speed of her fingers would somehow help her outrun those last few horrible minutes. She was making herself think about Beth Ashby now, wondering if the pain of her husband’s betrayal had left her feeling as though an integral part of her had been damaged, or maybe even lost. That was how she herself felt about Lysette – damaged and unworthy, alone, incomplete, lost without a soul. But this wasn’t about h
er and Lysette. Nothing would ever be about her and Lysette again. It was about Beth and Colin Ashby, and the fact that Beth surely had to know, or at least suspect, that there was more to Sophie Long’s death than was being reported, by the press and by the police. If only she could get Beth to see her, talk to her … but she might just as well put her wish list in to Santa for all the headway she was making with the Ashby lawyers. She wondered if anyone had told Beth about Brad Pinkton, or Sophie’s real profession. Of course, Beth might not have to be told; she might already know.
‘What Beth Ashby does or doesn’t know remains locked inside Beth Ashby’s head,’ Chilton, her police contact, told her when she put it to him the next day. ‘But even if she is aware of Sophie Long’s real profession, what difference does it make? Her husband still killed the girl, and whether the victim was a sinner or a saint the crime and punishment remain the same.’
Laurie wondered how she’d feel in Beth’s shoes, whether she’d want her husband’s girlfriend to be a prostitute or a paragon. She thought probably a prostitute; it seemed, oddly, less of a betrayal.
‘What about all this ferrying back and forth to orgies Pinkton claims to have done?’ she said. ‘How is that linked to the murder?’
Chilton shook his head. He was a large man in his mid-fifties, square-jawed and partially bald, with long, cumbersome eyebrows that gave him a permanent scowl. ‘Pinkton dropped Ashby off at the flat,’ he said, ‘and less than fifteen minutes later he was picking up a customer at Paddington Station. There’s your link.’
She watched him as he drank. They were in a secluded corner of a dingy North London pub, where they were currently the only clientele. They’d met here once or twice before; Chilton felt comfortable in the place as it was far enough away from the office, and close to his home. As a high-ranking administrative officer with the force, he was an extremely useful contact to have, though she was never in any doubt of how deeply he disapproved of their arrangement, which he would never have entered into were it not for Mindy, his beloved only cousin. It was why Laurie never pushed him too hard, for fear of losing him altogether. However, she had him to thank for the tip-off that had led her to Beth Ashby’s front door, and for several other titbits since, so presumably something in him condoned their liaison or he wouldn’t be here. ‘Will you have another drink?’ he offered.
