Deep Blue Sea

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘Hi, Laura, can we talk?’

  She glanced up, startled, looking back and forth between Ross and Rachel, then her face darkened and she turned back to her task.

  ‘Sorry, do I know you?’

  ‘Rachel Miller, journalist. We spoke on the phone. I got your address from Pamela Kopek.’

  ‘Pamela didn’t have this address.’

  Rachel didn’t want to go into how Ross had tracked her down. The charming phone call to her parents, who had told him that Laura was working in Chesapeake Beach for the summer.

  ‘Please, we need to talk,’ she said simply.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ Laura replied.

  Rachel took hold of the handlebars of her bicycle. ‘We guessed that, but we only want to ask a couple of questions about Madison.’

  ‘Yeah, I guessed that,’ said Laura, throwing her chain into the basket and wheeling the bike away. ‘I have nothing to say.’

  Rachel and Ross exchanged a look, then followed her.

  ‘I know you must be upset,’ said Rachel, trotting to keep up. ‘It must be hard to lose a friend so suddenly.’

  The girl stopped and turned to face Rachel. ‘What do you want?’

  She was sharper, shrewder than Pamela Kopek, that was for sure. But Rachel could tell that she was also a shy, gentle sort of girl – the sort that came to a quiet, relaxing town like Chesapeake Beach for the summer rather than the noisy student favourites like Ocean City – and that her truculence and annoyance was because she was scared and upset.

  ‘I want to find out about Madison’s relationship with my brother-in-law.’

  ‘Your brother-in-law? And who’s that?’

  ‘Julian Denver.’

  Laura’s eyes widened and she shook her head.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ she said, moving away again. ‘I have to get home.’

  ‘Stop, please,’ said Rachel, jumping ahead and blocking the girl’s path. ‘This is important.’

  ‘Madison is dead. Leave me alone.’

  ‘Julian is dead too, Laura. Just talk to me, please.’

  Laura’s expression was confused and fearful. ‘Dead?’

  ‘Two days after Madison.’

  ‘How?’ she whispered.

  ‘He commited suicide.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘It’s what we’re trying to work out. Please, help us make sense of it,’ she said slowly.

  They retreated to a pizza restaurant across the road. Laura sat opposite them in a booth, out of earshot of the other diners. Her shoulders were hunched and she slowly sipped at the Coke that Ross had ordered for her.

  ‘You were one of Maddie’s best friends,’ stated Rachel carefully.

  ‘We were room-mates for a year at college. Stayed good friends ever since, yeah.’

  ‘I spoke to her mum yesterday. She told me Maddie was pregnant. Did you know that?’

  Laura nodded. ‘I was there when she took the test.’

  Rachel took a deep breath. ‘Did she say who the father was?’

  ‘Maddie wasn’t promiscuous,’ Laura said fiercely.

  ‘But she was sleeping with Julian,’ said Rachel, almost scared to say it out loud.

  The younger girl nodded again. ‘Your sister is Julian’s wife, right? Does she know about Maddie?’

  ‘Yes . . . no. Well, she saw the . . . No. It’s complicated.’

  ‘More than you think,’ said Laura quietly. ‘Maddie wasn’t a bad girl, a husband-stealer. It didn’t start out like that. She went to Julian Denver for help.’

  ‘Help?’

  Laura chewed her lip, as if she were debating whether to say more.

  ‘She didn’t tell me everything, but it was to do with her brother,’ she said finally.

  ‘Billy. He died recently too, didn’t he?’

  ‘Heart attack,’ said Laura. ‘He was twenty and he had a heart attack, can you believe that?’

  ‘What was it? An undiagnosed heart defect or something?’

  ‘Maybe. But Madison didn’t believe that. Billy was an athlete, you see, on a football scholarship at Riverdale College. Anyway, his coach had told him he was getting too big, that he had to lose weight. Well, Billy didn’t want to spend six hours a day training – who does when they’re twenty, right? – so when someone told him there was a new drug he could take to control his weight, he jumped at it.’

  ‘A weight-loss drug? What was it?’

  ‘Rena-something. No, Rheladrex, that’s it. All I know is that it was new, maybe experimental. And nine months after starting on the pills, he was dead.’

  ‘And Madison thought there was a link?’

  ‘She was convinced it was the drugs. She got obsessed about it, researching stuff about chemicals, the drugs industry, everything. She majored in chemistry, so it wasn’t tough for her to process it all.’

  Despite herself, Rachel was beginning to feel the old instincts stirring. It was probably just coincidence, a grieving woman looking for answers that weren’t there, just like Diana. But even so, could there be something in it?

  ‘Did she discover anything?’

  ‘The drug was pretty new to the market. Maddie found that at least three other people who had been taking it had died suddenly. When she heard that, well, she started planning all this crazy stuff.’

  ‘Crazy?’

  Laura looked at Rachel, her eyes wary. ‘She decided to track down Julian Denver.’

  Rachel’s mind raced ahead. ‘So you’re saying this drug was manufactured by the Denver Group?’

  Laura nodded. ‘Their pharmaceuticals division.’

  ‘And that’s why she contacted Julian – because he was CEO? What did she want? Money? Compensation for Billy’s death?’

  Laura looked doubtful. ‘I think by then it had gone beyond that. Maddie was convinced the drug was bad and all she wanted was for it to be taken off the market. It was like a crusade for her. She’d lodged a complaint with the FDA, but very little happened. She’d spoken to some fancy lawyer in DC who said it was expensive to take on the drugs companies and there weren’t enough people to start a class action.’

  ‘So she thought she’d go straight to the top. Ballsy girl. Did she write him a letter?’ asked Rachel, thinking of the boxes of correspondence that Anne-Marie Carr had shown her. Had Julian himself picked Madison’s letter out of the mountain of mail?

  Laura smiled sadly. ‘Jeez, no. She wasn’t going to wait around for that. No, she wanted to speak to Julian Denver directly. She’d read a lot of interviews with him, heard how much he did for charity, thought he might be a decent guy who would listen to what she had to say. She found out he was coming to a conference in DC, which wasn’t far from college. Found out he was staying at the Four Seasons, so she hung around the bar there. And she was beautiful. She got talking to him, and I think one thing just led to another.’

  ‘She seduced him?’ Rachel said, with reluctant admiration that Maddie could have done something so brazen. It was the classic honey-pot sting. Gorgeous woman tricks powerful businessman into her confidence.

  ‘Maybe it started off like that. She couldn’t exactly accost him and demand that he take his new drug off the market. But they met up a few times, and I guess they started to like each other. The most important thing was that Julian Denver seemed to take what she was saying seriously. He said he’d look into the drug and its side effects.’

  ‘How long were they sleeping together? Do you know?’

  ‘From that first night, I think.’

  ‘And did Julian know about the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Laura said quietly. She had finished her Coke. ‘I should go.’

  ‘You can’t go,’ said Ross
, putting his hand up to call the waitress.

  ‘Do you think it’s strange?’ said Laura, suddenly looking anxious.

  ‘What’s strange?’ asked Rachel, trying to meet her gaze, trying to read her mind.

  ‘Strange that she got killed,’ Laura replied, her voice barely a whisper. ‘I told her it wasn’t a good idea taking these people on, challenging them about a drug that was probably worth billions. But she wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘You don’t think it was an accident? You think she was targeted?’ said Rachel incredulously.

  ‘I know it sounds paranoid, but when I first heard she’d been killed, I thought she might have been, yeah. But since the bad guy would have been your brother-in-law and he’s dead too, I guess it’s nothing like that. I wonder if he did know about the baby,’ she offered softly.

  Rachel kept silent.

  ‘I’m very sad for your sister,’ said Laura finally. ‘Now I really have to go.’

  23

  He stepped out into the road, his hand raised, hailing a taxi. Diana did a double-take, jabbing at the brakes, swerving to the right, her wheel hitting the kerb, bouncing to a halt. Damndamn damn! A horn blared and a van driver leant out of his window, gesturing wildly.

  ‘Bloody women drivers, shouldn’t be on the bloody road!’ he yelled.

  Diana put her head down on the steering wheel and felt her heart thumping. Her hands were trembling violently and for a moment she couldn’t catch her breath. She watched him stepping into a black cab, and as he turned to see what the disturbance was behind him, she knew that it was not him. Of course it wouldn’t be him. Julian was dead. The man in the sharp dark suit was just a lookalike, and she was hallucinating.

  Exhaling slowly to calm her nerves, she glanced in her rear-view mirror and pulled back out into the traffic. She knew she should have listened to her mother and allowed Mr Bills to drive her into central London, or at least got the train. Instead, she had managed to convince herself that it would do her good to drive herself – blow away the cobwebs or something like that – but she was clearly in no fit state to ride a bicycle, let alone negotiate the Range Rover through the busy streets of London.

  She found a place to park, taking several attempts to reverse the car into the space. She was still shaking and her head was sore. Whiplash: that was all she needed.

  She looked up at the tall Bloomsbury mews house in front of her. A short flight of stone steps led to the front door, which had a small bronze plaque next to it reading Wilson and Nedwell, Solicitors.

  She paused for a moment to compose herself. She had known this day would come, but hadn’t appreciated how nervous she would be. A week earlier, she had thought she would be able to predict the contents of Julian’s will. It was something that they had occasionally discussed. Julian had always maintained he would look after Diana and Charlie in the event of his death. And whilst she didn’t doubt that he would be true to his word, she was more anxious about what other provisions his will might contain. There was almost certainly a mistress on the scene. One that Julian had loved so much he had killed himself over her death. She had seen enough courtroom dramas, read enough family sagas to know that wills were often a hotbed of surprises.

  Diana swung her bag over her shoulder and walked up the steps with as much purpose as she could muster. A secretary came to meet her at reception, and she was ushered to Stuart Wilson’s office on the top floor. She had met the genial lawyer several times before. He was a friendly-looking man with highly coloured cheeks and a very smart suit. The very picture of a Dickensian solicitor, in fact. Diana wouldn’t have been surprised to see a top hat on the old-fashioned wooden coat-stand by the door. Fitting in with the image, his office was lined from floor to ceiling with heavy leather-bound legal books, although the technology dotted around the room – the iPad, computer and plasma television screwed to the wall – indicated that this was definitely a twenty-first-century operation.

  ‘Diana, I am so glad you came.’

  ‘I wanted to get out of the house,’ she said, appreciating Stuart’s offer to come to Somerfold. ‘Thank you for this,’ she added anxiously. ‘I don’t think I could have faced one of those public readings of the will.’ She imagined Julian’s family all squashed into the room, Elizabeth Denver no doubt taking charge of proceedings.

  ‘Julian wanted it this way. I think he understood the family dynamics,’ he said simply.

  He sat forward and passed Diana a slim bound document about six pages long. She read the cover slip. The Last Will and Testament of Julian Edward Denver, dated March of that year. So it was recent, but not something hastily arranged after Madison Kopek’s death. She wondered what – if anything – that might mean.

  ‘You can of course read it in private if you’d prefer, but I thought you might prefer to go through it together?’

  Diana nodded. She could already see that it was written in impenetrable legalese and that she would need the solicitor to decipher it. Besides, he had drafted the document in the first place; what was the point of her reading it in private? Unless he really has left everything to his American mistress, said a voice in her head.

  ‘Yes, that’s fine, talk me through it if you would, Mr Wilson,’ she said, her palms beading with sweat.

  If the last few horrible weeks had taught her anything, it was that she couldn’t take anything for granted. Diana hadn’t married Julian for his money. She had fallen in love with him, pure and simple. She had loved his patrician looks, his educated cleverness, his alpha-male poise and his power – not because of the cash he had in the bank but the confidence he had in a room, the way it felt to be at his side.

  But still, she had enjoyed the financial security that life as a Denver had brought her. She would be a liar to say she did not love the exotic holidays, the money-is-no-object shopping sprees, the ability to buy her dream house at the click of her fingers. And yet here she was, sitting in a stranger’s office, waiting for the axe to fall. Even from beyond the grave, Julian had the power to take everything away from her. If there was already an American mistress, why not more of them, one in every port? For all she knew, there could be love-children, each one given a share of his estate. Perhaps he had even bequeathed something to Rachel – the one temptation who had refused him. The last weeks had been so unpredictable – she knew the will could contain anything.

  Her mouth felt dry as Stuart Wilson cleared his throat and flipped open his own copy of the will.

  ‘I’ll go through the nitty-gritty in a few moments, but I should probably cut to the chase, as they say, shouldn’t I?’

  Diana gave a tight nod.

  ‘Well, the long and the short of it is that Julian left all his personal possessions to you, Mrs Denver.’

  Diana felt as if all the air had been sucked from the room.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ she croaked. ‘Everything?’

  ‘Well, not quite,’ said Wilson, licking his fingers and turning to the back page of the document. ‘He has left a few specific bequests: his cars, motorbikes, some small cash payments, a charitable fund – mainly a tax loophole, that one – and a particular, important bequest for your son, which we will come on to. But in the main, yes, everything goes to you. Somerfold and all its grounds and buildings, the house in Notting Hill, all his investments here and offshore and a sizeable amount of money in a number of bank accounts, including – ah – three in Switzerland.’

  He looked up.

  ‘All as expected, I should imagine?’

  Diana couldn’t reply. Her head was pounding. She had gone from believing that Julian had rejected her and their family to discovering that he had, in fact, made her a very wealthy woman. She felt lower than a snake for ever doubting him. He had loved her, and the thought of it made her feel suddenly heady.

  ‘Are you all right? You look quite pale,’ said Mr Wilson, standing and
going to a side table to fetch Diana a glass of water. ‘I know these occasions can be emotional,’ he said, handing it to her.

  Diana sipped the water and handed back the glass.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Wilson, you’re very understanding.’

  ‘Not at all, dear lady,’ said the lawyer. ‘Between the two of us, in the past month I have had to deal with a couple of will readings where the wife in question was left nothing at all, in favour of a nanny and a work colleague respectively. All very unpleasant. Things were thrown.’

  Diana rubbed her temples. It was all too much to process. Then suddenly something pushed through the fog.

  ‘What about Charlie?’ she said. ‘You mentioned that Julian had left him something?’

  ‘Julian wants his shareholding in the Denver Group to go to Charlie.’

  ‘What, all of it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Stuart Wilson ran his finger down the page, then tapped it. ‘All of his Class A and Class B shares in Denver Group and its subsidiaries. Left in trust for Charlie until he turns twenty-one.’

  Diana shook her head. ‘He’s giving it to Charlie?’ Her heart felt as if it was about to burst with love.

  ‘With you as the trustee. I’m having a meeting with Ralph, Adam and Elizabeth Denver to let them know.’

  ‘You mean they don’t already?’ she asked with a surge of nerves.

  ‘The shareholding structure of the Denver Group is complicated. Much of the voting class of shares is held in family trust. However, when Ralph Denver suffered his stroke and stepped down, he handed ten per cent of the Class B voting shares to Julian, with a provision that those shares can only be transferred to other members of the family. Whether Ralph specifically knows that his grandson is to be the beneficiary of such a valuable shareholding I don’t know . . .’

  ‘When you say valuable – what are you talking about here?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘Current valuation of the Class A shares would be around £850 million. The Class B shares are potentially more valuable because of the control they allow within the company. There is also a letter of intent expressing his wish that Charlie should one day be CEO of the company.’