Deep Blue Sea (10 page)

Diana had thought that Thailand might have calmed her sister down, but she was still like an alley cat – constantly restless, constantly on edge, as she had always been as a child.

‘This is a great place to start,’ Rachel shouted. ‘You say he used to work here? What sort of work?’

Diana shook her head. ‘I don’t really know. He didn’t discuss business with me. But there’s a couple of filing cabinets in the other room. They’re locked; I tried, but I’ve no idea where the keys are.’

‘We can get your driver to break them open. He looks brawny enough.’

Rachel walked through with two mugs of coffee. Mrs Bills must have stocked the fridge, thought Diana, noticing that her sister had a Kit Kat sticking out of her pocket.

‘I need to know everything else. Home life, sex life, family life, social life. And I’ll need you to put me in touch with anyone who can fill in the rest, like someone who can tell me what projects he was working on at the company.’

‘Okay,’ said Diana. ‘I think I know who to ask.’

‘Good. I’ll need to speak to as many people who knew Julian as I can. His colleagues, his friends, particularly any close friends, the ones he’d tell his secrets to.’

Diana looked doubtful. ‘Men don’t have those sorts of friendships.’

‘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 meeting 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.

‘You can dispense with the niceties, Miss Miller,’ said the woman. ‘You are only here because Mr Denver’s wife specifically requested that I co-operate with you.’

‘I am only trying to find out the truth about Julian, Ms Carr,’ said Rachel as pleasantly as she could.

‘I imagine that’s what you said to yourself the last time too. You’ve got a nerve, you know that? Do you know how much damage you did to that family?’

Rachel nodded slowly. ‘It’s why I’m here. To try and make amends.’

The secretary’s expression clearly communicated that she was sceptical about whether that was possible.

‘Can we go into Julian’s office?’ asked Rachel. She wanted to see his personal space.

‘Very well,’ replied Anne-Marie disapprovingly.

She led Rachel to a corner office that was as big as her entire flat in Ko Tao. It had floor-to-ceiling windows through which the City glittered with dots of light and shadow.

‘I’ve started packing,’ she said more softly. Rachel noticed the pile of boxes along one side of the room. The contents of the desk remained untouched. She could see a photo of Diana in a silver frame; one of Julian, Diana and Charlie in another. There was a copy of the
Economist
, a stack of Post-it notes, and a bottle of water by the phone. A desk waiting for its owner to return.

Anne-Marie blinked hard, as if shutting out emotion.

‘So,’ she asked more briskly, ‘what do you want to know?’

‘You sat outside his office twelve hours of every day. How did he seem in the weeks leading up to his death?’

‘You mean did he seem suicidal?’

Rachel nodded.

‘If he had done, I would have alerted somebody to that, of course. But he didn’t seem any different. A little stressed and short-tempered sometimes, but that goes with the territory with this job. Sadly I was not privy to his inner thoughts. Who knows what made him do such a thing.’

‘So he didn’t seem down or upset by anything?’

‘The day of the . . . incident, he came into the office as normal. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary. He was a little distracted, perhaps. Then again, he had his wife on the phone a lot about the party. Julian never really enjoyed socialising in the way that his siblings do.’

‘So he wasn’t looking forward to the party?’

‘I never said that.’

Rachel tried a different approach.

‘Julian and his team were doing a great job at Denver, weren’t they?’

Anne-Marie couldn’t hide a small smile at that.

‘Julian was always too modest to blow his own trumpet, but he was doing a good job considering . . .’

‘Considering what?’

She looked thoughtful. ‘Well, like many companies you see around the City, the group had been affected by the recession.’

‘I was under the impression it was doing well.’

‘It is, considering the climate. I’m not an accountant or an analyst, but the mood around here has been buoyant. I put that down to Julian. He was a good leader.’

Another small smile.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a little bit in love with my brother-in-law
, thought Rachel.
Anne-Marie, you dark horse
.

‘Why do you think he did it?’ she asked.

‘I’ve no interest in gossip,’ Anne-Marie said quickly, but Rachel could see that she was becoming emotional.

‘Anne-Marie, please. You must have known him as well as anyone.’

‘I don’t know what pushed him over the edge. What I do know is that he was doing an incredibly high-pressure job and perhaps all it took was the tiniest of things.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You might think differently, Miss Miller, but Julian was a very decent man. Let me show you something,’ she said, standing up and beckoning Rachel to follow her into a side room stacked with files and boxes. She pulled a cardboard storage container off a top shelf and placed it on the table. ‘This is only a small sample,’ she said, taking out a sheaf of papers.

‘What are they?’

‘Letters to Julian. Or rather, to the CEO of Denver Group. Complaints, gripes, suggestions, even proposals.’ She pulled one out and handed it to Rachel. It was written in red ink, a scrawled angry hand, and it began ‘Dear Blood-sucker’.

‘We used to get a lot of this on the newspaper,’ said Rachel. ‘People with too much time on their hands.’

Anne-Marie pursed her lips at the mention of Rachel’s previous career. That was a misstep, thought Rachel, cursing herself.

‘Not all of these letters are from attention-seekers,’ Anne-Marie went on, her tone noticeably less warm. ‘In fact, many are genuine.’ She pulled out a thick file and opened it on the table.

‘All these are complaints about a helipad that serviced some of the more remote Scottish islands. Denver owned the heliport and were closing it down; someone in management believed it was no longer viable since North Sea oil has begun to run out. There are people here accusing Julian of destroying their lives, their communities, their relationships. Some are quite vitriolic; others are just downright heartbreaking. He’s even had death threats. You know, Miss Miller, if Julian had been murdered, there would be hundreds, if not thousands of suspects in these files. But he always tried to do his best for them.’

Rachel frowned at her. ‘He knew about these letters?’

‘He got someone on the team to answer every single one of them.’

‘
All
of them?’ said Rachel incredulously.

‘You know, we get all these hotshot business school graduates in here: Harvard, Stanford, INSEAD. And they all want to be CEO. They see the prestige, the money, the power, and they think that’s all there is to it. Yes, Julian Denver was wealthy, but I wouldn’t have swapped my position with him in a month of Sundays.’

She put the letters back in the box.

‘You see, Miss Miller, to be a really great CEO you have to be tough. Thick-skinned, ruthless, but not in the way you think – stabbing people in the back, insider dealing, all that. Yes, Julian could do that too if the situation required it, but it’s much harder to have to make unpopular decisions; you have to be able to lay off a thousand people before Christmas and then sleep easy at night.’

‘Do you think that bothered him?’

The woman shook her head to indicate her disapproval.

‘Do you really believe any of these questions will bring him back?’ she asked, her face set in stone. ‘What good do you imagine it will do?’

‘It will set his wife’s mind at rest.’

‘Really? Is that what you think?’