Never Tell (35 page)

‘Was it?’ she said flatly.

I stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I knew something like this would happen.’

‘Did you?’ My heart was starting to race painfully. ‘How? I mean, we just hired her for the party. For James and Liam’s party.’

‘And you, you are married to James Miller?’

‘Yes,’ I mumbled. She made me bizarrely nervous, this thin, cross girl.

‘Well, you should ask him then.’

‘He’s in prison. That’s why I’m here. He’s in a lot of trouble, and I’m trying to understand why.’

She sniffed disdainfully and spoke in a language I didn’t understand.

‘Look, please.’ I put my hand on her arm. For the first time in a long while, I felt like maybe I was near the truth. ‘Please, you must tell me what you know. I don’t even know where Katya came from. What country, anything.’

‘What country?’ She screwed up her face. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Was she Polish, like you?’

‘I am from Russia,
actually
. And she – she was from your country.’

‘What?’ I stared at her without comprehending. ‘My—But, her name and—’

‘Kate.’

‘But I thought—’

‘Katya is just for the act. More – exotic, I guess. Katya the Flying Angel.’

Kate, from my country. Alarm bells began to ring somewhere far off. ‘Christ. You’re sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure.’ On the shelf behind Lana was a photo of her and another woman, arms round each other, smiling into the camera on a summer’s day. Katya was older than I’d realised; I’d only really registered her in all her stage finery, thick make-up slathered on. I looked closely at the wholesome scrubbed face, the cropped pixie-cut, the beaming smile and my world suddenly seemed very small. I felt my chest constrict until breathing seemed difficult.

‘And I tell you something else.’ Lana looked at me again, her grey eyes full of sadness now. ‘She loved your husband very much. Only one other man she loved that much before. I think maybe she give her life for James Miller.’

I felt a terror that I hadn’t since the night Katya died. A small pain, a nut of something rattled in my gut. I remembered the horrified guests whispering as she lay dying.
She fell on purpose
.

‘Died for him? Were they …’ I cleared my throat. ‘Did they see a lot of each other?’

‘You mean was she his mistress?’ She lit a cigarette. ‘No, but she wanted to be.’ She exhaled the smoke in a perfect plume. ‘She was confused, though.’

‘Confused?’

Lana stood with a swish of her kimono and a trail of smoke. ‘Follow me.’

I did as I was told, following her down the dark little hall. She opened a door: Katya’s bedroom. The bed was neatly made, stuffed toys and a china doll on a heart-shaped pillow, a table full of glitter and gloss, lights round the mirror like Judy Garland’s dressing room. On the shelf by the window were framed photos, the biggest of a face I recognised immediately from last night. Charlie Higham, lying on a bed, propped on one elbow, smoking, naked to the waist, staring affectedly into the lens, big brown eyes narrowed slightly against the smoke, looking very much like he was making love to the camera.

‘You know this boy?’ Lana picked up the photo. ‘This boy, he is trouble. This is boy she was in love with. I say, be careful, but he breaks her heart. Then your husband, he get involved.’

‘Get involved with what, though?’ I was more than confused myself.

Lana slammed the photo down so the glass rattled; pushed me out of the door again and shut it firmly behind us, stalking down the hall back to the kitchen.

‘I warned her.’

‘About what?’ I followed in her wake.

‘When your husband took her to that man, I knew this would – how do you say here? – be in tears?’

‘End in tears?’

‘Yes.’

‘What man?’

‘The big man.’ Again she spoke in Russian.

I stared at her, lost.

She relented. ‘Always these guys. You cannot trust them. Ever.’

‘Sorry, what guys?’ My heart was beating so fast it felt like it was going to explode. ‘Why did James take her to a – a “big man”?’

‘Why do you think? Money,’ she said grimly. ‘It always comes to money, no?’

‘And who was this man? Was he called Hadi Kattan?’

‘She would not tell me exactly who. But I know he is – very powerful.’ She ground her cigarette out so hard that it was pulverised. ‘She goes to him and asks for money – and one month later, she is dead.’

Lana’s phone began to ring. She looked at the curly pink clock on the mantelpiece and stood. ‘I have to get ready. There is nothing else I can tell you.’

‘Do you – did she have family?’

‘Her mother. She is very sad now, I think.’

‘I’m sure. Do you know where I could find her?’

‘Her mother?’ Lana shrugged. ‘She lives in that old place.’

‘Where?’

The girl clattered the coffee cups into the sink. ‘Where all the clever ones go. I can’t think – how is it called?’ She swung round triumphantly. ‘Ah yes. Oxford.’

Before I left London I went to meet Xav. I got a taxi that passed through Parliament Square on the way to the City; I stared out at the fairy-tale turrets of the building that housed our government and it jogged my memory.

I sat up straighter, thinking of Danny’s words last night. How could Kattan possibly have diplomatic immunity? It made no sense. I’d turned up so little when I was looking into him earlier this year; I’d found no mention of any kind of diplomatic status. I wondered about the secret service rumours in Iran: he’d obviously had some connections in Iran in the eighties or nineties but if anything, that surely made him a bigger threat here.

My meeting with Xavier was so tense, though, that I forgot all about Kattan. We met in a fashionably white restaurant in busy Spitalfields, the kind where children are not welcome and celebrities pretend they don’t want to be seen. From the very start, it felt uneasy. Xavier was preoccupied, but I didn’t know why – the abiding theme of my life at the moment.

‘You look very pale,’ he said accusingly after we’d ordered.

‘So do you, actually,’ I batted back. ‘Burning the candle, my dear Xav?’

The cash Liam had eventually sorted would tide me over for a while. But I needed to start earning again, that was quite apparent. The obvious solution was to go back to work full time, and Xav’s offer now made sense. I’d pack up the house and rent it out; move the children back to the flat in London for the time being. I wouldn’t be sorry to leave our stifling village, especially since the story of James’s arrest had broken. I needed to be near my old friends right now.

‘So when do you want me?’ I finished my chicken and wiped my mouth on the pristine napkin. ‘I’m going to move back in the summer holidays. But I can start from home sooner. I’ve got to get the cash rolling in pronto or we’ll be living in a cardboard box soon.’

Xav summoned the waiter and ordered an espresso. He buttered his bread roll, then abandoned it; added salt and then pepper to the tomato salad that he hadn’t touched. He did everything but look me in the eye or respond.

‘Xav. Did you hear what I said?’ I smiled at him but my heart was sinking. ‘I can come back?’

He looked at me, then away again. My old friend, so gaunt and strained.

‘Can’t I?’

Xav picked up his BlackBerry, turning it over and over on the white linen tablecloth incessantly until finally I laid my hand over his to stem the fiddling.

‘Stop, Xavier.’

He looked down.

‘I see.’ I felt the clench of nerves in my stomach. ‘So it’s a no, then?’

‘Rosie, it’s not me, darling.’ He sighed long and hard. ‘I’d have you on the staff in a shot, you know that. It’s – well, orders from above.’

‘Higham.’

‘No.’ he took a gulp of his water.

‘Xavier! At least tell the truth.’

‘I – oh, I don’t know, Rose. Things are changing radically since the downturn. Budgets have been slashed. And I have so little hiring power at the moment. My hands are tied.’

‘Not literally, I hope,’ I tried to joke. But I felt the thud of the floor come up and hit my feet away from me. I was diving through thin air, spinning away from my own world in freefall.

‘And to be honest, Rose, I’m stepping back a bit anyway. I’ve not – I can’t live for work any more.’

‘I see,’ I said slowly. ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? To take some time out?’

‘I guess.’ He drained the espresso that the waiter had just put before him and gestured for another one. ‘Is something wrong?’

He gazed into the middle distance like the answer to all our woes lay there.

‘Xav?’

‘No, no. Of course not.’

‘Are you sure?’ I felt a cold wave of fear. ‘Xav—’

‘I’m fine,’ he snapped. ‘Just leave it.’

‘Right. OK. Good. Look, I’ve been thinking. The Kattan story—’ I began.

‘Rose, for Christ’s sake. You’ve got enough on your plate.’

‘It’s just – he’s involved with James’s case.’

‘Are you mad?’ Xavier stared at me. ‘Or just paranoid?’

‘Both. Neither. I don’t know, Xav. We met him and then – well, James swears Kattan introduced him to the guy who organised the shipping of the furniture. Only he’s disappeared off the face of the earth.’

‘Christ.’ Xav rubbed his eyes; they were already bloodshot.

‘And now – now someone’s told me he’s got immunity. The police aren’t interested in him apparently. Someone’s hiding something.’

‘Who?’

I felt my frustration mount. ‘Actually make that,
everyone’s
hiding something. I want to find out the truth. And I want to bloody well know where he is.’

‘But you’ve got no evidence?’

‘What am I going to do, Xav – just lay down and die? And, Christ, let Higham ruin me professionally now because of some old grievance?’

‘What old grievance?’

‘Never mind. Something that wasn’t my fault.’

I thought of the picture of Charlie Higham in Katya’s room – debated whether to mention my new concerns to Xav, but it seemed pointless.

‘Look, I’m not going to just walk away from my life.’ I was more emphatic than I had been in months. ‘Not because they want me to.’

‘But you’d walked away from it anyway, hadn’t you? Your career, anyway,’ he said tiredly.

‘Not really. I was just … changing priorities.’

‘They’re good priorities to change,’ he said quietly. ‘Putting your kids first.’

‘Yes, I know, they’re the best priorities. But it doesn’t mean it’s OK for them to tarnish my reputation permanently. And to be honest, Xav, I
need
to work right now.’ I pleated my napkin into angel wings. ‘It’s the only thing I know how to do.’

‘Rubbish,’ he said vehemently. ‘There’s loads of other things you could do.’

‘But I don’t
want
to do anything else.’

‘Because you are addicted. You always were. That’s what gave you your edge in the first place. You were like a bloody Jack Russell down a fox-hole.’

‘Well, there you go. And now I need to ferret out this bit of truth.’

‘You’ll be sub judicious if you even try to write about James, or Kattan, if they’re investigating him too. Plus, you’re married to the defendant.’

‘I could do it under a false name.’ I knew I was desperately grasping at straws now. ‘Anonymously.’

‘Just leave it, Rose.’

‘But I
need
to know the truth. James is looking at prison, Xav, that’s become very clear. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m sick of doing nothing. I’m just sitting here letting it all happen, and I haven’t got a clue what reality is any more.’

Xav took my hand. I looked at his face and I felt a plunging in my stomach.

‘What is it?’

‘Sometimes – sometimes, angel, the truth is just too painful to know.’

Before he could say any more, his phone rang. He paled visibly when he heard the voice on the other end.

‘I’ve got to take this, Rose,’ he said, moving away from the table to stand in the window. I sighed. Something told me I wasn’t going to get anything else from Xavier that day – other than a free lunch.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Of good and evil much they argued then
,

Of happiness and final misery
,

Passion and apathy, and glory and shame:

Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!

The Devil’s Council, Paradise Lost
, Milton

I packed up our overnight bag and took Freddie to Hyde Park whilst Jen took the girls shopping for clothes. I pushed him on the swings and held him tight on the see-saw to stop him bouncing off through the air, whilst he giggled raucously, and all the time my mind rattled back to Lord Higham. Why this vendetta now? Where did this all link up? I had done nothing to hurt Dalziel; I’d loved him very much, adored him even. So why did I feel now like I was being held accountable for the past?

Something had happened somewhere, and I was missing the obvious clue. I needed to speak to James again, but there was no chance of that for at least a week.

‘Which superhero do you want to be, Mummy?’ Freddie said as I lifted him to ring Jen’s doorbell.

‘Batman?’

‘No. I’m Batman.’ He considered me kindly for a second. ‘You can be Under-woman if you like.’

‘Under-woman? OK.’ I kissed him and plopped him down on the pavement again.

‘She wears big pants actually. And a cake.’

‘Big pants and
cake?’
He meant cape. ‘My type of lady.’

A man suddenly stood behind us, too close. ‘Mrs Miller?’

My scalp prickling, I glanced round, clutching Fred’s hand tighter.

‘Would you accompany me please, Mrs Miller.’ It didn’t sound like a question. Quickly I pushed Fred between me and the front door.

‘Sorry – who—’

‘Lord Higham would very much like to see you.’ He was politely unsmiling. ‘Now.’

‘Now?’

‘It’s important.’

‘I’m sure it is, but as you can see,’ I picked my protesting son up again, ‘I’m busy right now.’