Falling Off Air (21 page)

I hadn't had the heart to ask my overworked mother to be my babysitter as well as my lawyer. Tanya and Patrick had kids and
troubles of their own, and Lorna was hardly up to playing at bodyguard. I had called a nanny agency, but once the woman on
the other end of the phone had asked my name and inquired about my requirements it hadn't taken long for her to put two and
two together. When I had mentioned that the nanny might possibly also be required to foil a kidnapping she had cut me off
and said stiffly that theirs was not the agency for me. All of which seemed to leave me with only one option and that was
to leave Finney to get on with it. I just couldn't do that.

“Because you know,” Erica was saying, “I like your children very much, they are so sweet, and if you like I will come back.”

I leapt at it. It would cost me a fortune, but I was back on the Corporation payroll, even if I was on enforced leave. I couldn't
stand Erica, but the children seemed to tolerate her and I knew she would take good care of them. Perhaps more important,
right now, was that mention on her CV of her martial arts training. A high kick to the shoulder and Norma would cease to be
a problem. I only wished I could be the one to administer it. All in all Erica was the answer to my prayers. Even when she
asked smoothly for time and a half, “because, you know, I am afraid of the stress,” I didn't blink an eye. I welcomed her
back with open arms. She would start that evening, so that I could go and meet Jane.

“You look like hell,” Jane greeted me. She had the sense to speak in a low voice. This was a public place, and the last thing
I wanted was to draw attention to myself. Even when I'd left the house, just after dark, there had still been one dogged cameraman
outside. Soon they would get wise to my back-door escape route. I'd rung a local firm to hire a car. With mine in the care
of the police, I didn't want to have to expose myself to the gaze of strangers on the tube or on buses.

Jane unwrapped a long striped scarf and took off her coat, draping them both over the back of her chair. She frowned at the
speaker that hung over our table dispensing a particularly frenetic school of jazz.

“Isn't there anywhere quieter?”

I shook my head. The music system had been playing Handel when I got there. It had seemed like a quiet little bistro, perfectly
empty, but there's probably no such thing on Aldwych. In the twenty minutes I'd been waiting for Jane the place had filled
up with people fresh and noisy from work. I'd turned up the collar of my jacket and buried my head in the menu, but already
I was feeling the eyes of other people on me.

We each ordered a glass of white wine, but when it arrived I couldn't bear the sour taste in my dry mouth. I asked for a jug
of water, but the waiter pretended not to understand. I ordered an Evian, but that didn't come either. After a few moments
I looked around for the waiter but he was flitting from table to table at the other side of the room, looking increasingly
fraught.

“They're busy,” Jane commented.

“I can see that,” I snapped, then apologized. “I'm sorry, I just really don't want to be here.”

“Then let's not be,” Jane said. She got some money from her bag and laid it on the table to pay for the wine. We pulled coats
and scarves back on and stepped out into fresh air and what seemed like silence. We didn't talk for a long time, just walked,
following our noses down Surrey Street and toward the river. We passed a late-night deli, and Jane stopped.

“I'm ravenous,” she said. I followed her in. I didn't want to eat anything but she ordered me a toasted BLT and a chamomile
tea anyway.

“You have to eat, girl, or you'll be no good to anyone,” she said. I took the brown paper bag reluctantly and we continued
toward the Thames. It was much too cold to be out in the evening, but we found ourselves a bench under a streetlight and sipped
at our hot tea. A man on a neighboring bench eyed us dolefully. He was wrapped in cardboard and newspaper against the night
air and our conversation seemed to be disturbing him, so we dropped our voices.

“You do know I didn't do it, don't you?” Jane was at the top of my People I Trust list, and I needed her to stay there.

Her hesitation was minuscule but it was there, and when she spoke it was not what I wanted to hear.

“I need to know about the will,” she said. “That's what looks the worst. How on earth could you forget something like that?”

For a few moments I couldn't speak and she didn't hurry me. I think she knew what was going through my head. I'd needed unqualified
loyalty and she couldn't give it.

“Every instinct I have tells me you didn't do this,” she said, looking out over the dark water. “I'd trust you with my own
life, but I have a brain that's asking me these wee questions, and I can't just shut it up. All I'm asking for is an explanation.”

“I shouldn't need to explain myself when I've done nothing wrong.” My voice was gruff with anger. The silence stretched between
us, and after a few moments I calmed down a bit and made myself imagine that it was the other way around, that she was a murder
suspect and I was her friend. I supposed that I would have questions too.

“You remember,” I said, “when Adam made that program
Front Line?
”

“Afghanistan.”

“Afghanistan. About humanitarian workers who risk their lives in war zones.”

“That was when you found out you were pregnant.”

I shook my head. “That was when I told you I was pregnant. I found out a week before he went, and for that week he was the
happiest man in the world. Except that he was off to Afghanistan, and it really spooked him. He kept saying what would we
do without him if he was killed, should he call it off, and I said don't be silly you're going to be fine. Anyway, he told
me he'd contacted his solicitor and he was making a will, and I just laughed at him. I don't know why I was so blasé, plenty
of journalists did get killed, it must have been something to do with my hormones. And his insistence that he had to support
us, that he was going to be the breadwinner, that just annoyed me. Then, the day before he left, he told me if anything happened
to him I'd find a copy of his will in the desk. I didn't even take him seriously, I was just rolling my eyes and saying ‘Yeah,
yeah, you'll be fine.’ I never gave it another thought. I never saw it in the desk. It must have been pretty well tucked away.”

“But the police found it in your papers.”

I shrugged. “When I left I just grabbed all the papers from the desk—it was mainly my stuff in there, he didn't really use
it—and threw it all in a box. I didn't look at it then, and I've had no reason to touch it since, not 'til Finney took it
all. Anyway, they'd have got it sooner or later. His solicitor must have it.”

“You've told all this to the police.”

“Several times.”

“And they don't believe you? It sounds entirely plausible to me.”

“You're a sympathetic audience. Finney's not. To him it just sounds like a plausible lie.”

We were silent for a few moments, watching the patterns on the water, the constant hum of traffic like white noise.

“How do you feel now that he's gone?”

I shook my head. “I can't understand it. I feel bereft. He left a year ago, I've been fine without him, and suddenly wham,
he's dead and it hits me between the eyes as though he'd never gone.”

“Most of the world is assuming you're glad he's dead.”

“And here I am with a broken heart.”

Jane put her arm around me and I lowered my head to her shoulder and let it rest there for a moment, then forced a laugh and
rubbed my eyes.

“I'm freezing my butt off here,” I said. “Let's find a pub.”

“What you're feeling,” she said as we strode toward the Lion's Crown, “maybe it's because you never had a chance to grieve
when he left. You were too busy with the children.”

“Maybe,” I said.

The fresh-from-the-office crowd had largely departed for the commute to bed, and we found a place next to the fire. I went
to the bar and got Jane a glass of red wine and myself a whiskey. I wanted something clean and strong and straightforward.
Something that burnt a little as it went down.

“I'm going to need your help,” I told her when I returned with the drinks. She'd taken off her coat now and I did the same.

She was looking at me as though I were mad.

“Who's this then? Robin Ballantyne, ace detective?”

I refused to smile. “I'm in trouble, Jane.”

“I know. But—”

“I get in any deeper and they're going to start talking about taking the children away.”

Jane shook her head and wouldn't look at me, but she didn't say anything. She didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to
believe it myself, but Jane hadn't been there the night of Adam's murder when Mann went upstairs to check I hadn't killed
my own children. Most murders are family affairs and some murderers, once they start, can't stop.

“I'll help if you think I can do anything,” she said eventually. It was reluctant, but it was good enough.

“Okay. I think Adam's death is somehow linked with Paula Carmichael's,” I told her. She started to interrupt, but I stopped
her. “Just hear me out. It's too much of a coincidence. They knew each other, they'd worked together. If Finney's telling
me the truth, the police aren't even looking at Carmichael's death anymore. If I can do anything the police can't, it's here.
It's where Carmichael and Adam intersect, and that means the link is something professional.”

I stopped and waited for Jane's objections, but she was just looking at me, her head slightly on one side.

“Suzette doesn't know anything about a friendship between them,” I went on, “so maybe whatever happened between them only
happened after the documentary was canned.”

“Maybe they hated each other's guts,” Jane suggested. “Maybe Adam killed Paula. Did you think of that?”

I stared at her.

“I'm not sure I can think of that,” I said slowly.

“Some investigator you are,” Jane grumbled. “But if you insist, for argument's sake, let's say they loved each other.”

Silently we considered the implications of this.

“I'll talk to Ray,” she said.

“I keep leaving messages for him, but he never calls me back.”

Raymond McLean was covering Adam's murder for the Corporation. He had good contacts in the police and we used to be friends,
but it seemed that counted for nothing now.

“I'm going to tackle Maeve and Terry and try to do some digging into the background of the documentary,” I told her. She nodded,
sipping her drink, and I nodded back. We had a plan of action. Of sorts. It was progress.

I
threw myself on Maeve's mercy. I was counting on the fact that she had none, and I was not disappointed.

“No can do,” she said lifting her perfectly manicured hands up in an elegant gesture of refusal. “Of course if it was up to
me you'd have your job back right away … but it's not.”

“Maeve, I had to fight through a mob of cameramen to get here this morning, including someone from the Corporation. How do
you think that makes me feel? You saw the op-ed piece this morning calling for my arrest.” I quoted it from memory, “‘Ballantyne's
suspension from the Corporation is a clear withdrawal of their support for her. What do they know that the police do not?’
Is that what you want, Maeve? You want the Corporation to give me the thumbs-down?”

Maeve shook her head and her helmet of dark hair scarcely moved. I sensed that her position had become more entrenched since
the last time I spoke to her. I knew, although I did not want to acknowledge it, that as the evidence mounted against me those
who had sat on the fence previously were now settling on one side or the other, and Maeve was on the other. I guessed most
of the Corporation management were with her. I was too hot to handle, I'd let the side down, I was no longer Corporation material.
All these things I could hear echoing around a conference room, but whether this meant Maeve believed I had killed Adam was
strangely hard to say. She had greeted me civilly, but with no warmth. It could have been punishment for being a murderess
or simply for causing Maeve a bureaucratic headache. There was no fear in her eyes, but nor was there any friendship, even
the paper-thin friendship she so specialized in.

“If you were making the tea, or filing, we might manage it,” she said, “but what we need from an EGIE is a stainless reputation
for moral integrity. And,” she soldiered on over my objections, “you'd be dealing with highly sensitive information, and you'd
be under great stress. The answer is a simple no, you cannot return to work.”

I sighed a great breath of frustration that was no act. I'd expected it, but the injustice of my situation still burned like
acid.

“Okay then. Look, I can't sit at home all day. I'll do anything, I'll do what you said, I'll make the tea. At least it would
show you trusted me not to poison you all.”

Maeve told me that no, I could not make the tea either. So I settled into my chair and suggested a couple of other menial
jobs that I knew she'd say no to. All I wanted was to wear her down, and sure enough, after a few minutes of discussion about
potential openings for lavatory attendants, she tried to throw me out.