Deep Blue Sea - Page 33

‘People know more than they think they know,’ she said through slurps of coffee. ‘Besides, I need to start somewhere. I’ll have to go through his personal stuff too. Photographs, bank statements, receipts . . .’

‘I’ve already done that; it’s all in a box at the house. I went through his drawers, his pockets. I didn’t see anything suspicious, though.’

‘Good, but I’ll have to do it again. And I’ll need access to his computer.’

Diana blushed as she realised she didn’t know the password to her husband’s computer – in fact she couldn’t even have said for sure how many he had. Did he have a personal laptop as well as his company one? Would he have kept it at the London house? Did the police take it? Why didn’t she know this stuff?

‘I’ll try,’ she said haltingly. ‘But I really don’t know much about the company.’

‘I appreciate this all seems a bit weird to you,’ Rachel said soothingly. ‘But we need to look into everything, however small or irrelevant it seems to you. And most importantly, I need you to tell me everything. No secrets, no holding back because you think something is too personal or embarrassing.’ She looked at Diana. ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?’

Diana nodded, but in truth she wasn’t sure. Who would expose every last detail of their life to anyone, let alone to an unscrupulous sister? Whose marriage could stand up to that sort of scrutiny? And yet for the past few minutes she had felt a strange swell of relief. She had hoped that this was what Rachel would do – grasp the problem by the scruff of the neck and start shaking – because no one, not the police, not her family, not even the press, seemed interested in doing anything about her husband’s death. Taking it seriously; taking her seriously.

‘Yes, let’s do it,’ she said. ‘I have to do it, Rach. I won’t be able to rest until we do.’

Rachel took a deep breath and nodded towards the big desk. The setting sun was bright orange now, spilling deep golden light all around them, so that she felt as if they were floating in a summery equivalent of a snow globe.

‘Tonight we sleep and tomorrow we talk,’ she said. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you.’

Diana forced a smile and turned to leave. That was exactly what she was afraid of. She had to get to the truth – she had to, or she would go mad – but she had the unsettling feeling that the truth was the last thing she wanted to hear.

11

Rachel looked out of the window of her black cab, craning her neck to see why the taxi had stopped: another red light. Bloody London. The streets outside were dark, the lights of the shops and restaurants shining off the rain that had suddenly hammered on to the roof of the cab five minutes earlier and had just as suddenly stopped. Just like being home, she thought. In Thailand, rain came without warning, pouring down so hard it left tiny footprints in the wet sand. But out in the tropics, after ten minutes everything would be dry, the whole storm forgotten. Here, despite it being the height of summer, they would be splashing through puddles until midday tomorrow. The thought of the beach inevitably made her think of Liam. What was he doing right now? She glanced at the digital clock next to the cab’s meter – she really should get a watch – 9.12 p.m. Liam would be fast asleep. Alone, hopefully, she thought, then wished she hadn’t, forcing herself to focus on the mee

ting instead.

Rachel had arranged to meet Julian’s PA, Anne-Marie Carr, in the hope of getting some background on Julian’s movements in the week prior to his death. The woman had been decidedly chilly on the telephone, and it was only when Diana had confirmed that Rachel was acting on her behalf that she had reluctantly agreed. I hope the old battleaxe gives me more than my sister has, she thought as the cab finally cleared the lights.

Rachel had tried to interview her sister that morning, but had come away with virtually nothing of any use. Despite her pep talk the night before about the importance of openness and co-operation, Diana had persisted in presenting a picture of a perfect marriage. According to her, both she and Julian had been blissfully happy in every department; not even the problems with her pregnancies had cast a shadow over their sunny lives. Rachel supposed that for now she had to go along with it – she couldn’t reasonably expect Diana to tell her the unvarnished truth straight away – but it was frustrating: she felt as if she hadn’t got off the launch pad.

Maybe I’m not as good at this as I thought I was, she reflected, watching a single raindrop make its way down the streaked window. One thing was for sure though: however much she had tried to tell herself otherwise, Liam had been right when he suggested that she missed this dirty, cluttered, unfriendly city. Thailand was beautiful, it was exotic, it was Paradise. And yes, right now it felt more like home than here. But there was something about London: it thrummed with energy, the sense that anything could happen on any street corner at any moment; it was vital, that was the word. That was why she had come here in the first place: London was where things happened. At sixth-form college, one of her teachers had taken Rachel aside and told her – to her utter surprise – that she stood a decent chance of getting into Oxford or Cambridge. She had gone through the motions and was even offered a place at Trinity Hall, but she had never had any real interest in riding round some half-dead jumped-up tourist trap on a bicycle. She wanted the bright lights, the sounds and smells of the big city. So she had gone to UCL to do an English degree, landing in the capital just as Cool Britannia and Britpop were making it the epicentre of everything.

Rachel hadn’t paid much attention to Joyce and Chaucer; instead she had spent her time at the Coach and Horses in Soho, the middle of the epicentre. One evening she had got talking to a guy called Simon who worked for artist Darius Cooper, the controversial leader of the New British Art Movement. According to Simon, who was clearly trying to impress Rachel into bed, Darius never did any of his own work; instead he picked paintings and sculptures from a group of promising students who were then sworn to secrecy as he sold the works to galleries for hundreds of thousands, giving the students a minuscule cut of the proceeds. Drunk and giggling, Simon had let Rachel into Darius’s studio in then-unfashionable Shoreditch, where three of his artists were hard at work. Two bottles of vodka later and the students were all happy to tell her the details of the scam, even offering to pose for pictures.

By ten the next morning, Rachel had written an exposé entitled ‘The Great Art Swindle: How Darius Cooper Lied To The Nation’. She took it straight to London’s Daily Post, where she talked her way into the news editor’s cramped office. The story ran the next day with the Post’s chief reporter’s byline attached, but Rachel was up and running, trawling the bars of Soho and Camden for scurrilous gossip.

A few weeks later, she scored again with a story about the singer in a squeaky-clean girl band. Rachel had happened to see her entering a toilet cubicle in a nightclub with a notorious drug-user. Bribing the toilet attendant to close the ladies’ for an hour, she had called a friend doing a PhD in chemistry, who had rushed down with the necessary solutions and swabs to test the top of the cistern for cocaine. The positive result had been enough to create the headline ‘Pop Poppet in Drugs Quiz’ – and to get Rachel back into the news editor’s office, this time with a job offer. Her timing was perfect: the Post was low on female reporters. Besides, while there was no way the new breed of Britpop stars were going to talk to gnarled old-school hacks, they were happy to swap gossip with a pretty, street-smart girl who could match them drink for drink. Rachel quickly discovered that the newspaper was a true meritocracy: they didn’t care who you were as long as you kept the stories coming in. And the more stories you brought in, the higher and faster your promotion. She quit university and joined the Post. Within six months she had moved over to the Sunday edition as deputy features editor; within a year, she was running the showbiz desk. She had certainly been right about London being the place where things could happen.

‘This it, love?’

The cab had pulled into Finsbury Square, right on the edge of the City. The railed garden in the centre of the square was dark and locked, but the lights were still on in most of the buildings towering over it. The city that never sleeps, thought Rachel with a smile.

‘Yes, just over there, the one with the steps.’

The entrance to the Denver Group HQ was large and imposing, complete with marble pillars and three receptionists in headsets, even at this late hour. Rachel was given a security pass and shown to a lift, which opened and chose the floor without her having to touch a button. Impressive, she thought.

A tall, austere-looking woman met her as she stepped out on to the eighth floor. She was much more the old-school secretary rather than the more glamorous and dynamic MBA-wielding personal assistant favoured by the rich and powerful these days.

‘Anne-Marie?’ said Rachel, offering her hand.

‘You’re late,’ said the woman, turning on her heel.

Charming, thought Rachel as she followed her along a corridor past glass-fronted offices, some empty, others occupied by people peering intently at screens or jabbering into telephones.

‘In here, please,’ said Anne-Marie, holding open a door to a small office. Rachel sized her up as she took out her notebook. Late fifties, possibly single – no ring, anyway – certainly hostile if her expression was anything to go by. She wondered idly if Diana had demanded that Julian hire a secretary who was impossible to find attractive, even for a womaniser. She tried not to smile at the thought.

‘Well, thank you for speaking to me, Ms Carr,’ she said.

Tags: Tasmina Perry Romance
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