Читать книгу: «After She Fell: A haunting psychological thriller with a shocking twist»

CHAPTER 2

The small mews house was a stone’s throw away from Harrods and the moneyed part of Knightsbridge. Alex could smell the cash as she found the right address. Blood-red door flanked by two rose trees in square pots. The petals were a blush pink and when Alex bent to smell them they gave off a cloying scent. The woodwork of the windows was in the same blood-red, as were the garage doors. The other houses in the row had either the red or dark green wood. Three storeys of perfection. Not bad for a set of buildings that was once a line of stables.

She knocked on the door.

The woman who answered looked as though she hadn’t slept for days. Heavy make-up couldn’t disguise her grey skin and sunken eyes, the black shadows underneath. She was dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, diamond studs in her ears. Her perfume was expensive though overlaid with the smell of cigarette smoke.

‘Alex. Thank you for coming.’ The woman held onto the door as if by letting go she would fall down.

‘Cat,’ Alex said, reaching out to hug the woman who had once been her closest friend. ‘Of course I came.’

There had been no question about her going to Grosvenor Place Mews, even though she should have been hunting for stories, chasing commissions, chasing the cash.

She’d been in her news editor’s office pitching an idea for looking into a story about people being trafficked for illegal organ removal when he’d leaned back in his chair and looked at her from under unruly eyebrows. ‘I had a call this morning.’

‘Right,’ said Alex, not sure what that had to do with her.

‘Someone looking for you.’

‘Right.’ Typical Bud, he liked to think he was being mysterious, building up the tension – all it succeeded in doing was to make her impatient. Even so, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of winning the game. ‘Anyway, Bud, about the organ removal story. It’s early days, but I heard from a reasonably reliable source—’

‘Don’t you want to know who it was?’

She looked at him: sitting in his cubbyhole in a dark corner of the office ‘so the bean counters can’t find me’; overweight, paunch almost resting on the desk. Computer pushed right to the back; the front of the desk piled high with editions of The Post going back years. And a higgledy-piggledy heap of press releases, cuttings, jottings, and God knows what. Coffee mugs littered the desk too, dark slime at the bottom of some. All Bud Evans needed to complete the ‘I’m an old-fashioned editor and I don’t take any nonsense’ look was a green eyeshade. Bloody rogue. But he’d been good to her: employing her when nobody else would after it had all come out about Sasha and she felt she needed to leave Sole Bay and lose herself in the anonymity of London. Having taken her under his wing once in her life – when she was a raw recruit – Bud had come to her rescue again. She owed him.

She grinned. ‘What if I said no?’

He made a gruff noise, somewhere between a snort and a cough. ‘You want to know. Of course you do.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Go on then.’

‘A Member of the European Parliament,’ he said with a flourish. ‘Asking for you personally. Said she was an old friend of yours. Didn’t know you moved in such illustrious circles. Or have you gone native on me? Hobnobbing with the enemy?’

‘An MEP?’ Her heart began to beat faster. There was only one such person who could be asking for her personally: Catriona Devonshire.

She and Cat Devonshire had been inseparable through primary school and on into high school. Cat had been the sister to her that Sasha hadn’t been. They had shared secrets, problems, worries. They swore to look out for each other forever. They went their separate ways to uni, but they still kept in touch. When Gus came along, Cat made no judgements, but left her new husband, Patrick, at home, put her fledgling political career on hold and came to stay. Her presence had been a soothing balm on Alex’s soul.

And then the twins had been murdered and Alex’s life had been consumed by guilt and the need to look after Sasha. Her world began to narrow; she had no time, no room in her head for anyone but Sasha, so she excluded everything and everyone else from her life, including Cat. And when Cat’s daughter, Elena, had been born, a few short weeks later, Alex had broken off all contact.

‘But I want you here,’ Cat had pleaded. ‘I want you to be Elena’s godmother.’

‘Cat,’ Alex kept her tone deliberately without emotion, ‘you have your family. Your career. Any association with me would spoil both those things. We need to put distance between us.’

‘But Al—’

‘No, Cat. I have to be with my family.’ And then the sentence that had sounded the death knell on their friendship: ‘I don’t need you any more, Cat. I’ve got Sasha to look after. Gus. They are my family. They are the ones I need to look after now.’ It had almost killed her to say the words, to know that she was losing Cat’s friendship, but she didn’t want the events of her life to taint Cat’s. It had to be done.

And Cat had removed herself from Alex’s life.

But Alex had followed Cat’s career. Had felt proud of her friend as her political star rose and rose. Had grieved for her when Patrick died suddenly, and grieved even more when Elena was found dead at the bottom of the cliff. She’d wanted to go to Elena’s funeral, but had been in Spain chasing a story.

Now Cat was getting in touch with her again. Alex felt something shift inside her. Perhaps here was a chance for her to mend their relationship, for Cat to forgive her for pushing her away. Whatever the reason, Alex knew she’d been given a second chance.

‘Alex? Alex? Did you hear what I said?’

Alex blinked. ‘Sorry Bud. What were you saying?’

‘MEP? Wants to talk to you? Hasn’t got your number? Said she might have a story?’

‘Of course, the MEP—?’

‘Catriona Devonshire. Is she a friend of yours, then?’

‘She was.’

‘She was talking about an exclusive. For the paper. The paper you work for.’

Clever.

‘So you’ve got her number?’ Alex asked, as casually as she could.

‘Yep. Personal number, she said. Though God knows why she trusted me with it.’ He gave his bark of a laugh. ‘She must be desperate to talk to you.’ He picked up his e-cigarette, beginning to suck hard on it. ‘Bloody hell I hate these things,’ he said gloomily, vapours of steam curling up into the air. ‘Why does the sodding government have to spoil it for the rest of us?’ He took it out of his mouth and looked at it soulfully. ‘Nothing like the real thing.’ He put it back between his lips.

‘But we’re a lot healthier in this office, aren’t we?’ Alex said sweetly. ‘Now, Cat’s number?’

‘Cat is it now? Hang on. I wrote it down here somewhere.’ He began to sift through the papers on his desk. Not a chance, she thought. Her shoulders sagged.

‘Hah! Here we are.’ He waved a piece of paper triumphantly.

‘Thanks Bud.’ She breathed again as she plucked it from his fingers and turned to go.

‘And Alex?’

‘Yes?’ She tried not to laugh. Him and his e-cigarette just didn’t look cool.

‘She sounded desperate. Don’t know what she wanted, but stories involving corrupt MEPs always sell. Better if it’s a sex scandal. Didn’t she marry that much younger man recently?’

‘Mark Munro?’

‘That’s the one. Some city whizz-kid.’

‘They got hitched about this time last year. Whirlwind romance and a summer wedding abroad.’

‘And he’s younger than her.’ Bud looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe—’

Alex raised her eyebrows. ‘I thought The Post was a serious paper, not given to Hello!-style splashes or sidebars of shame reporting. And no one gives a toss if a man marries someone considerably younger than himself.’

‘Ach, cut your feminist whining. And in these days of falling circulation we’ll take anything.’ He grinned. ‘Almost anything. As long as you write it in the right way. So, if there’s a story there—’

She grinned back at him. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be the last to know.’ She winked before closing the door, knowing the story about organ trafficking would have to wait until she’d seen Cat.

So the next day Alex found herself sitting on the white leather settee inside the Devonshires’ mews house. It was a house furnished for comfort: deep pile carpets, squashy sofas, one of those artificial fires that hung on the wall and cost a fortune. Tasteful paintings, from emerging artists she presumed, covered the neutral walls. A table here, a large pendant lamp there. A desk in the corner that was covered with bits of paper (rather like Bud’s, Alex thought) was the only discordant note in the room. But there was no mistaking the atmosphere of deep sadness; the grief like a weight pressing down and squeezing out the air.

Catriona Devonshire perched on the edge of the settee, sucking on a cigarette as if her life depended on it. The fingers that held the cigarette trembled. The nails were bitten, nail varnish chipped. Her husband, Mark, tall, dark-haired and with the boyish good looks of a thirty-something film actor, stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, his shoulders tense with … what? Worry? Anger? It was difficult to tell. She could still remember the snide headlines in the papers about cradle snatching and toy boys. His expression, as he looked at his wife, was one of concern. It must have been difficult for him – headlines when he married Catriona – headlines when her daughter died.

‘Coffee?’ said Catriona, suddenly leaping up, manically stubbing her cigarette out in an ashtray perched on the arm of the settee. The ashtray wobbled, but stayed put.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ said Alex who could have done with something, but the preponderance of white around her made her certain she would spill it. ‘But you have one.’

‘I’ve already …’ she indicated a table by her side. ‘Everyone who comes makes me coffee. Even Mark makes me coffee. As if coffee could help.’ She sat down again. ‘Thanks for your letter, by the way. About Elena.’ Her eyes glistened.

‘It was the least I could do. I’m so sorry.’

‘Yes.’ She stared at nothing, twisting her hands together. She turned her head and looked directly at Alex. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘Cat—’

‘You weren’t here when I needed you.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Alex wanted to say more: to explain about Sasha, about how her life had been, about how much she had missed her best friend. But today wasn’t about that, wasn’t about her. It was about Cat and what she, Alex, could do to help. She blinked away tears as she leaned forward. ‘Cat,’ she said gently, ‘you asked me to come here.’

‘Yes.’ She began tapping her foot.

‘Against my better judgement.’ This from Mark, who turned to give her what Alex could only think of as a sorrowful look mixed with annoyance. Interesting.

‘Mark, please—’

He sighed. ‘Oh Cat, you know my views on this.’

‘I do. But I have to try and understand, don’t you see? She was my daughter.’ Catriona scrabbled down the side of the leather cushion and brought out a rather squashed packet of cigarettes. Taking one out, she lit it with shaking hands. Alex caught Mark’s frown of disapproval. Surely he couldn’t begrudge her this?

He looked directly at Alex. ‘But to bring a journalist into the arena is asking for trouble.’ His voice was calm.

Alex wondered what arena she had been brought into. Was she here as a friend or as a journalist? It was obvious which side of the fence Mark thought she sat on. She shifted on her seat.

Catriona looked pleadingly at Mark. ‘She can help. She’s my oldest friend. I trust her.’

Mark shook his head. ‘Oh, very well, Cat. I can see you’re not going to budge.’

Catriona smiled sadly at Alex. ‘Mark doesn’t think I should be talking to you; he says we should go to the police. But I really don’t think they’ll do anything. When it happened, when Elena died …’ her voice faltered, ‘I told them it was impossible for Elena to have killed herself. She wasn’t depressed or anorexic or bulimic. She would have told me. She was looking forward to coming home. We were going skiing in the New Year with another couple and their two daughters. She was thinking about university. Everything. She had everything to live for.’ More desperate sucking on the cigarette. ‘She didn’t kill herself. I know she didn’t.’

Alex tried to keep her expression neutral. So this was what it was about: Catriona’s daughter. She had seen the results of the inquest and knew the verdict had been suicide.

‘Cat,’ she said. ‘The inquest—’

Catriona leapt off the sofa, knocking her cup over, spilling the coffee. ‘Fuck the inquest,’ she shouted.

The three of them watched as the brown liquid spread across the white leather. Alex wondered if it would stain and how much it would cost to get out.

Catriona looked out of the window. Alex knew she wasn’t seeing the London street, but was seeing her daughter, her beautiful 17-year-old daughter. ‘Fuck the inquest,’ she said, quietly this time.

‘Was it an accident?’ Alex kept her voice neutral.

Catriona rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

Mark stood impassively. He sighed. ‘My wife thinks Elena was murdered,’ he said.