Deep Waters (5 page)

‘I suppose I’d better time my visit so I don’t interrupt.’ He laughed.

‘It’s not a joke, Marco. Fortunately for me, I’m never here on a Saturday night. Joe has that pleasure. But interrupting “Junior Idol”—well, I wouldn’t suggest it. Not if you want to remain her favourite uncle.’

Lilith Noone, a reporter with the
Daily Globe
, found out about the death of Jodee and Chazz’s baby at about the same time and in the same way as the rest of the press. But she had, she felt, a natural advantage over the competition.

She knew Jodee and Chazz.

At first she had known them in the same way as everyone else did: on the outside looking in, via the live television cameras. Lilith was no voyeur; her interest in the couple and their romance was a professional one, spawning many column inches of verbiage in every issue of the
Daily Globe
over a number of months.

It was true, she acknowledged, that the
Daily Globe
’s position as self-appointed upholder of the nation’s moral standards meant that those early stories had taken a somewhat censorious tone, while revealing everything the watching public longed to know. That, in Lilith’s mind, was the beauty of the
Daily Globe
: they could have their cake and eat it. They could draw in readers with titillating headlines—‘Naughty Romps’ and ‘Hot Tub Hotties’—and revel in the most salacious, prurient details, as long as moral outrage was expressed at the end of it. There was a real art to it; Lilith liked to think it was an art at which she excelled.

And everything had changed when the show was over, when the cameras were no longer focused on the couple’s hot tub antics. The baby was on the way, a wedding was planned, and suddenly Jodee and Chazz were exemplars of family values—and
therefore the new darlings of the
Daily Globe
. The stories became no less frequent, but now they were fawning in tone. Lilith had met them face-to-face and interviewed them on a number of occasions; she’d even snagged an invitation to their wedding, the only journalist—apart from the sponsoring celebrity magazine—to be so honoured. She prided herself that she had been invited as a friend rather than as a member of the press.

So when the shocking news that their adored baby was dead appeared on the wire, Lilith felt confident in picking up the phone and ringing Jodee’s private mobile number.

She wouldn’t have been surprised if Jodee herself didn’t take the call; she was undoubtedly in shock. But Jodee did answer, her unmistakable Geordie voice much fainter than usual. She sounded tearful, dazed, though not displeased to hear from Lilith.

‘I heard. I can’t believe it,’ Lilith said. ‘Oh, you poor things. Can I come to see you?’

Jodee didn’t wait to confer with Chazz. ‘Yeah, come,’ she said. ‘We’re at home.’

Within seconds Lilith was on her way out of the door.

Callie might not need to get up early on her day off, but that didn’t mean her dog didn’t have certain physical needs, first thing in the morning. So Callie had a quick wash in the handbasin, pulled on a pair of jeans and a fleece, and clipped Bella’s lead to her collar.

The little dog was more than ready to go out, wriggling with excitement.

‘Let’s be quiet,’ Callie whispered. ‘We don’t want to disturb Brian and Jane.’

There was no sign of either one of them as they went along the corridor and down the stairs. Taking Bella into the back garden would have meant going through the kitchen, where the Stanfords were probably breakfasting, so instead Callie checked that she had the house key she’d been issued, and headed for the front door.

Outside it was cool and damp, as if it had rained in the night and might very well rain again. ‘Let’s go to the park,’ she said to Bella, and set off in the direction of Hyde Park.

Hyde Park was Bella’s favourite place to walk, full of new smells to explore every day. There were always other dogs there as well, to be met and greeted as they trotted along with their owners. By now Callie knew quite a few of the other habitual dog-walkers by sight; often they nodded or exchanged a few words on the weather.

‘How about that storm the other night?’ said the owner of a friendly black lab, a middle-aged man who was usually out this time of the morning. Bella was wagging her tail, engaging in ritual sniffs with the lab. ‘Worst I’ve seen in years.’

‘It was bad,’ Callie agreed as the dogs parted and they went on their way.

Bad. And its after-effects were even worse. She realised that she was going to have to re-think her plans for her day off.

She’d intended to spend the morning at her computer,
catching
up with e-mail and other paperwork. Then, after lunch, she would do some grocery shopping at the local shops and the nearby Tesco Express.

The computer wouldn’t be a problem, as she’d moved it to her temporary quarters and could set it up on one of the
folding
tables from the church hall. But there was no real reason to do much shopping; after all, she wasn’t going to be cooking. Not tonight or any time soon. Jane had made it perfectly clear that, as a guest in the house, Callie would have her meals with the family and would not be expected, or indeed permitted, to use the kitchen.

No shopping, then. And a free afternoon. With a sigh, Callie accepted her fate: it was too long since she’d been to see her mother. She’d managed to avoid a visit for over a fortnight, excusing herself with pressures of the job, and her mother was starting to make pointed comments. Maybe she could get her brother Peter to go with her; it was always better with two.

Improbably, Jodee and Chazz lived in Bayswater, in an elegant Georgian townhouse which faced onto a square just off Sussex Gardens. It wasn’t the sort of address that one might have expected for a young pair who had achieved instant celebrity—and instant riches—but Lilith knew the reason for it, and indeed had written about it at some length in one of her pieces about the couple.

Though Jodee was a northern lass, Chazz was a Londoner by birth. He had grown up on a council estate in Westbourne Green, raised by a single mum who’d worked for years as a daily cleaning lady in one of the Georgian townhouses of Bayswater. He’d lived his childhood against a background of tales about her wealthy employer and her wonderful house. ‘I’ll buy you one of them houses one day, mum,’ Chazz had promised his mother throughout his childhood.

And he’d been as good as his word. When he emerged as the winner of ‘twentyfour/seven’, flush with prize money and the promise of a lucrative modelling career, even before he married Jodee, he’d bought the house and they’d all moved in together.

So it was Chazz’s mother, Brenda Betts, who opened the door to Lilith. Lilith had known Brenda even longer than she’d known Jodee and Chazz; she had interviewed her while the pair were still ensconced in the ‘twentyfour/seven’ house. She liked Brenda, whom she’d found sensible and open.

In the split second before Brenda Betts dissolved in tears and threw herself in Lilith’s arms, Lilith took in her
appearance
. Brenda had changed in very subtle ways since their first acquaintance. She was by no means ostentatious, but her
formerly
shapeless hair had been restyled in a fashionable cut, the grey threads exchanged for golden highlights, and her clothing no longer came from a High Street chain store—or a
charity
shop. The result was that she looked a good twenty years younger. Lilith put the change down to two things: the money, of course, and Brenda’s new daughter-in-law. Jodee was nothing
if not style-conscious, and that must surely have rubbed off on Brenda, living under the same roof.

‘Oh, Brenda.’ Lilith hugged her with ready sympathy. She wasn’t really a huggy sort of person, but Lilith knew that there were times when it was a professional necessity. ‘What a terrible, terrible thing.’

‘She was such a tiny scrap,’ Brenda sobbed on her shoulder. ‘Not even two months old.’ Brenda’s common accent hadn’t changed, Lilith observed; it would take more than an infusion of ready cash to effect that transformation.

After the hug had gone on for as long as Lilith deemed appropriate, she extricated herself deftly. ‘Jodee said I could come,’ she stated.

‘Come in. They’ll be glad to see you. But they sent me in case it was…someone else.’

‘Has anyone else been here?’

‘Some reporters. Photographers, of course. A television crew. I sent them all packing. Told them to have some respect. They’ll be back, of course.’ Brenda wiped her eyes with a tissue. ‘Before that, the police.’

The police! Of course, Lilith told herself, it would be a police matter. A baby dying at home, in unexplained circumstances…

‘All them forensic people. Made a mess, tramping all over the house.’ Brenda, the ex-cleaner, still house-proud in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.

She led Lilith to a room she’d been in before: a room
dominated
by an enormous plasma television screen fixed to the longest wall. On past visits the television had been playing videos of ‘twentyfour/seven’; now it was switched off, a blank black presence on the wall. Apart from the television, the room was minimally furnished with a white leather three-piece suite and a coffee table scattered with fashion magazines and celebrity gossip weeklies, most of which featured Jodee—with or without Chazz and/or the baby—on the cover. It was always easy to spot Jodee on a magazine because of her hair, even though its style was now emulated by countless thousands of teenaged girls across
the country. The cut was asymmetrical, with one side chopped off well above the ear and the other side curving down to her chin. The colour could best be described as a duality: a platinum layer underneath, her pale fringe peeking out under a black top layer as if she were wearing a dark cap.

Chazz was hunched on the edge of the sofa, staring blankly into space. He didn’t even raise his head at the entrance of his mother and Lilith. Jodee, on the other hand, paced the room, moaning like a wild animal.

She looked a bit like a wild animal as well, Lilith observed. Her eyes were panda-like, the mascara smeared round them in streaky dark circles. Her trademark hair, usually so carefully styled, was in disarray, dark and light layers carelessly
intermingled
. She and Chazz were both dressed in clubbing clothes; in her case, that consisted of skin-tight leopard-print capri pants and a halter top. Somewhere along the line she’d kicked off her stiletto shoes and paced in her bare feet.

‘Oh, God, Lilith!’ Jodee wailed. ‘Oh, me poor Muffin!’

Lilith prepared herself for another hug, even holding out her arms. But Jodee ignored the invitation and instead threw herself on the floor, beating her fists on the white carpet. ‘God, God, God!’ she screamed.

‘Exclusive Interview’. The words danced in Lilith’s head,
infinitely
alluring. She had access to Jodee and Chazz—the nation’s most famous bereaved parents—when no one else did. She was going to make the most of it. But it was going to be hard work; she had no doubt about that.

The defendant had pleaded guilty; there was to be no trial. It hadn’t been expected, but it was a relief to all concerned, not least to Mark. He hadn’t been looking forward to re-living a particularly brutal murder in the company of the bereaved family, and the trial could have gone on for days if not weeks.

The prisoner was going down for a very long time; Mark, though, was now a free man. He came out of the courtroom
with the victim’s family, stood by them outside of the Old Bailey as the press fired questions at them, escorted them to their car and said goodbye.