Deep Blue Sea

by Tasmina Perry

Rachel hadn’t had time to see the investigating officer in person yet, although she had spoken to an Inspector Mark Graham on the phone. ‘Straightforward suicide, no reason to think otherwise,’ she confirmed. ‘The house had CCTV surveillance – no one came in or out, only Julian and Diana in the house.’

  He looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  ‘No, Ross. They don’t think she killed him either.’

  ‘She’d have enough motive,’ said Ross cynically.

  ‘Ross, this is my sister.’

  ‘Okay, okay, just saying,’ he said, raising a palm. ‘You were the one who always insisted on looking at every angle on a story.’

  ‘This isn’t a “story”. Julian was my brother-in-law. It’s personal. I want to know why he did it too.’

  ‘Mind if I get something stronger?’ he said, pointing at his tea.

  ‘Not for me.’

  She watched him get up and go to a small drinks cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of Scotch and poured himself a measure. He had always been a big drinker, but that was almost half an IKEA tumbler full of neat Famous Grouse.

  ‘How’s life treating you, Ross?’ she asked when he sat down.

  ‘A spell in jail doesn’t exactly help one’s employment prospects . . .’

  ‘Have you found anything?’

  ‘Couple of shifts behind the bar at the local pub, plus I was thinking of signing on for a course to retrain as a plumber, although you wouldn’t believe how expensive college fees are for mature students.’

  ‘Well, I might be able to help you out there.’

  He looked at her with interest.

  ‘I need help,’ she added. ‘Help to find out what was going on in Julian’s life. Money is no object. Diana will pay a generous fee, plus any expenses . . .’

  ‘Well, it’s not as if my diary’s full.’

  Rachel grinned.

  ‘Tell me what you know,’ he said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask how much I’m paying you?’

  ‘It’ll be more than my pub shifts, believe me.’

  She ran her finger down the foil of her chocolate bar and began to tell him about the past forty-eight hours, finishing her story at around the same time as he had drained his Scotch.

  ‘So you’ve not got much then,’ he said flatly.

  She frowned. ‘I thought the woman in Washington was interesting.’

  ‘Most likely a hooker. Especially if he wasn’t getting much sex at home. A leopard doesn’t change his spots and all that.’

  ‘Even if it was a hooker, it would show there were cracks in the marriage.’

  Ross scoffed. ‘Men like Julian don’t have affairs because there’s something wrong with their marriages. They have sex with other women because they can.’

  There was a few seconds’ silence as Ross seemed to turn things over in his mind.

  ‘So what do you think, Rach? Your instincts were always pretty sound.’

  ‘I think he was weak, for a start. He had an eye for the ladies. Plus I think that the CEO role at Denver Group was a big, stressful job and maybe he just buckled under the pressure. He’d been groomed all his life for it – what if he couldn’t handle it?’

  ‘I’m no rich guy, but I’ve spent enough time following them around and I’ve never seen much mental weakness. They all think they’re God’s gift.’

  ‘He did suffer from depression when he was at university,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Twenty-odd years ago?’ Ross pulled a face. ‘No disrespect to your sister, but that sounds like someone trying to find a convenient reason, not the real one.’

  Rachel looked at her friend, heard the passion in his voice. There was more colour in his face, and his hands were moving around excitedly. It was as if he was coming alive before her eyes.

  ‘So what is the real one?’ she asked.

  ‘That their marriage was horrible? Maybe she was screwing around on him?’

  ‘Ross!’

  ‘If you’re going to do this properly, you need to examine all the possibilities, not just the ones that you feel comfortable with. It’s the only way to get to the truth. Then all you have to work out is what to tell your sister.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Diana wants resolution, not the truth,’ said Ross plainly. ‘Don’t put her through any more pain.’

  ‘I think you’ve missed this,’ she said finally.

  ‘No, I’ve missed you, Rachel Miller. Even if you do drive me round the bend.’

  ‘I’ve missed you too, you old goat.’

  ‘What do the family think?’

  ‘I haven’t talked to them yet, but Diana seems to think they are blaming the depression. She doesn’t really believe it, but secretly I think that’s the answer she wants to hear.’

  ‘Well she’s not going to want to hear that he killed himself because their marriage was so bad. No one wants to hear that. So where do you want me to start?’ asked Ross.

  ‘Check out this woman in Washington.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out a fat envelope. ‘You should also look through these. Copies of Julian’s bank statements from various accounts. I want you to see if I’ve missed anything.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Apart from my astonishment at how someone can spend £4,650 at a cigar shop, there were a couple of interesting things.’

  ‘Payments to a Washington lingerie store? A transvestite brothel?’

  She laughed. ‘Wouldn’t that make life so much easier?’

  ‘Well, if we’re settling in, I’d better get myself another drink.’

  ‘Ross, go easy.’

  ‘You sound like my ex-wife.’ Ross had separated very shortly after his imprisonment and divorced twelve months later.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Okay,’ he replied without conviction. ‘Getting ready to move to Cape Town. She’s got married again; they’re all moving out there.’

  Rachel frowned. ‘That guy Phillip? She’s only been with him two minutes.’

  ‘Try two years.’

  ‘But what about the kids?’ she said, glancing at a picture of two teenagers on the TV cabinet. ‘Don’t you have any say in it? She can’t just take them to South Africa, surely?’

  ‘Sure, I could object. I could spend the money I don’t have on lawyers’ fees, but the truth is, Phillip’s a nice guy. Good job, stable, everything Kath’s always wanted. And, well . . . the kids don’t like coming here. You can’t really blame them, can you?’

  His expression wasn’t bitter, just sad, like a man defeated. She wondered if this was the right time to tell him about her life in Thailand. How she had turned things around, made a new life for herself without the people she loved in it.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked.

  ‘I want to work,’ he said simply. ‘Work gets you through.’

  She could only nod in agreement.

  They sat down at his cramped dining table and Ross cleared the piles of magazines and papers to make a space. Dark had fallen while they were talking, so he switched on an old anglepoise lamp, reminding Rachel of the newsroom late at night when she had burnt the midnight oil for a story.

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ said Ross, bending over the statements.

  Rachel pointed to an entry she had underlined in black ink. ‘This is one that jumped out at me. A payment to Flypedia, the travel booking company, on one of his credit card bills.’

  ‘Why is that unusual?’

  Rachel had given this some thought. ‘Well, why was he booking flights himself? He travelled a lot, but there’s hardly any other payments to anything travel-related. Diana told me that Denver Group have a travel agency and everything went
through that, not his personal account – besides which, the company has a private jet; why not just use that?’

  ‘Family holiday? Romantic mini-break for him and Diana?’

  Rachel smiled. ‘Men never book holidays, Ross, it’s always the wife or girlfriend. Anyway, Diana told me they use a concierge service. Look: there’re dozens of payments to them.’

  ‘You’re right.’ He frowned. ‘This one does seem random. Maybe he had to book something himself quickly.’

  ‘Exactly – but it feels like an off-the-books payment, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Hack’s instinct – it doesn’t leave you, does it?’ smiled Ross.

  Rachel swiped playfully at his arm, but she couldn’t help but feel excited; it was like slipping back into something comfortable, something natural. When she had first started in print journalism, she honestly couldn’t imagine herself doing anything else. From the very first second she had barged into that newsroom, she had just known this was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Even though she had spent more than a year running errands, making coffee and getting shouted at, she had loved every second of it – listening to the news desk, watching a story unfold, seeing the team jump into action when a news item was streamed through from Reuters or a tip-off. News was her drug and she had forgotten how much she loved it.

  ‘If we could access his travel account, we could find out what this money is for,’ she said. ‘It’s a few thousand, so it’s probably flights. What we need to know is where to, and who for.’

  She glanced up at Ross. They both knew what she was asking. He had been to prison for something very similar.

  ‘Invasion of privacy of a dead man,’ he mused. ‘Where does the law stand on that these days?’

  ‘His wife has asked me to do this,’ said Rachel hopefully.

  ‘Doesn’t make it right.’

  ‘Since when did you get all moral?’

  ‘Not a question of morals, Rach. It’s a question of what my probation officer will make of it.’

  ‘Sorry, Ross, if it’s going to put you in a difficult position . . .’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ he laughed, opening his laptop. ‘I went to a prison packed with white-collar criminals – it was like going to the Open University for computer crime. Learnt an awful lot of new tricks. Used to have a team of hackers on speed-dial. Now I’m pretty sure I can do it myself.’

  She grinned, beginning to feel a spot of headway.

  ‘In which case, I had better leave you to it.’

  17

  Diana turned the dial into the red, feeling the water get hotter and hotter as it ran down her back. She twisted it again, her skin prickling in the now-scalding water, staying under the jet for as long as she could stand. Then she spun the tap in the other direction, all the way into cold, letting the icy torrent hit her, forcing herself to stay there for a moment longer. Finally she switched the shower off and bolted for the towel rail, wrapping herself in a fluffy robe.

  The shower trick was something Rachel had taught her, some Scandinavian theory of how hot then cold could reset the body when you were feeling sluggish. Of course, Rachel had used it to combat hangovers, but Diana supposed the principle was the same. She could certainly do with a jump-start these days. She had always been an early riser, up with the lark to tend to Charlie or go to a gym class, but since Julian’s death, she was finding it harder and harder to get up in the morning. Even on the days when she had spent all night awake, going over her thoughts and memories in the bed that was suddenly too big for her, it was easier to stay under the covers when daylight broke. Today it had been ten thirty before she could bring herself to crawl from beneath the duvet, and as the day stretched ahead of her like a dark, gaping hole, it was very tempting to creep back again.

  She jumped at a thumping on the door.

  ‘Diana!’ Her mother put her head into the bathroom, her voice high-pitched with irritation. ‘Mrs Bills has been calling you for five minutes. You have a visitor. Adam Denver.’

  Her body was still goose-bumped from the cold shower, but she felt a shimmer of warmth at the mention of his name.

  ‘Adam’s here now?’ she asked, feeling suddenly panicky. ‘Get rid of him. I’m practically naked.’

  ‘Well get dressed,’ her mother whispered back. ‘I can’t very well send him away now, can I?’

  Diana hurriedly smoothed her hair back and wrapped her robe tighter, then stepped into the bedroom. She gasped when she saw Adam standing in the doorway.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’ he asked, looking embarrassed.

  ‘No, yes. No,’ she stuttered. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Perhaps I should wait downstairs?’ he said.

  ‘We’ll grab some coffee,’ said Sylvia. She touched him on the arm, and Diana realised, with horror, that she was flirting with him.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked, keeping a respectful distance at the door. He glanced at Sylvia, who took the message to leave the room.

  They listened to her footsteps getting softer and softer down the stairs.

  ‘I’m sorry about running off yesterday,’ he said when she was out of earshot.

  ‘You had a meeting.’

  ‘I don’t want you to think I abandoned you . . .’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I hope you’ve not driven all this way to apologise for that.’

  ‘No, I’ve driven all the way here to see if you’d like to come for lunch.’

  ‘I should probably get dressed then.’ She smiled slowly.

  ‘Yeah – I’m not sure how well white towelling would go down on Vogue’s best-dressed list.’

  She felt her cheeks colour.

  ‘Shoes. Wear running shoes.’

  ‘Where are we going? The athletics track?’

  ‘It’s a surprise. I’ll see you downstairs in ten minutes.’

  Diana pulled on some jeans, a short-sleeved bottle-green cashmere top and a pair of trainers.

  ‘Where are you two heading off to?’ asked Sylvia with evident curiosity.

  ‘Apparently we’re going running.’

  ‘In cashmere?’ said her mother with surprise.

  It was late morning and the sun was climbing in preparation for another warm day. Diana couldn’t remember an unbroken string of sunny days like it, and whilst she knew that the weather would never be able to shift her grief, the feeling of the sun on her face was a good one. Of strength and of hope.

  ‘How were the Qataris?’

  ‘We’ve got a deal.’

  ‘Then I’m glad we didn’t go clubbing.’

  Adam’s car was parked on the drive. It was a beauty, one that Julian, with his own collection of vintage Ferraris, had himself coveted. A 1960s convertible Aston Martin. Diana considered it a James Bond car and always thought it suited its owner perfectly.

  ‘I thought you had this shipped to America.’

  ‘No, it’s been at my parents’.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, stroking the silver paintwork.

  ‘There’s no better way of getting from A to B than in this baby,’ he grinned.

  ‘So where’s B?’

  ‘I thought we’d drive to the coast. Figured some sea air might do us good.’

  ‘The sea is quite a long way from here, you know,’ she said, climbing into the passenger seat.

  ‘Well I haven’t got any plans for the rest of the day, unless you have.’

  They took the back roads to the coast, threading through south Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and down into Dorset, through quaint, gorgeous countryside that Adam described as Hardy country. The roof of the car was down so that the sun warmed Diana’s shoulders, and the wind blew her hair out in a ribbon behind her head and rattled around their ears so that they did not need to talk.

 
Perhaps it was what they both needed – time out to clear their heads. It was good to get out of the house, somewhere far away, some place that Diana hadn’t been before, unconnected with memories of Julian. She was loath to admit it to herself, but she had not lived a very big life since she moved to Somerfold. The house was enormous, but her horizons had compressed to a very small and confined space. The renovations had taken up the first eighteen months of her time there, but when they were completed there had been very little to occupy her time, other than trips to a Pilates studio in Henley, a photography course in the village and the occasional visit to London to see friends who all seemed to have moved on with their lives since she had left Notting Hill. The irony that she had left London to live a more fulfilled life, only to have it replaced by a gilded cage, wasn’t lost on her.

  After two hours, they stopped at a pub on the outskirts of Abbotsbury. Diana’s face cracked open with a smile as she saw the glittering sea in front of her.

  ‘The coast,’ she said with glee as she looked out over a long finger of shingle.

  ‘There’s nearer coastline to your house, but nothing as special as this,’ said Adam, opening the car door for her with impeccable manners.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Chesil Beach,’ he said, guiding her into the beer garden. ‘I’m going inside to order. What do you fancy?’

  ‘You choose,’ she said, unable to tear her eyes away from the vista. It was quite perfect. To the left, the garden overlooked green fields striped with yellow shale which curved away from them over the rolling hill, dotted with farm buildings and meandering cattle; while in front of her the English Channel sparkled silver in the sun.

  No wonder the place was so busy, she thought, her eyes scanning for a place to sit. It was past one o’clock on a summer Saturday, and the garden was already full. She spotted a wooden table away from the crowds and sat down as Adam brought out a jug of Pimm’s complete with chunks of fruit.

  ‘It’s like a giant swimming pool,’ she laughed, looking up and down the coastline.

  ‘It’s a lagoon.’

  ‘How do you know about this place?’

  ‘I went to boarding school a few miles down the road.’