by Susan Lewis
Laurie looked at Simon, whose unfortunate spots and sullen expression weren’t made any more attractive by the scythe of silver studs adorning one ear, or the tattoo of West Ham United on his upper left arm. She smiled at him, but his eyes merely slid off to nowhere, while he tapped an impatient foot on the floor and seemed to sink lower into his teenage slouch.
‘Sit down here,’ Daphne whispered, pointing Laurie to one of the empty chairs the other side of the breakfast niche. ‘Chas, get her a drink. It’s so bloody hot out there, innit?’ she grumbled. ‘Haven’t had a summer for years, and now they’re like bloody buses, all coming at once … Hello? Hello,’ she said into the phone, her cockney twang more discernible now she’d stopped whispering. ‘Who? Oh, yeah, Mr Russell.’ She paused and looked at Laurie. ‘That’s right, Daphne Long. I know, tomorrow, but … No, I’m not cancelling … It’s just we got your girl here – hang on.’ She covered the mouthpiece and said to Laurie, ‘What’s your name again?’
Laurie told her.
‘We got your girl Laurie Forbes here,’ Daphne told him. ‘She said you was supposed to call and change … What? Oh no, it’s all right. I mean, we was here, so … No, well we wasn’t quite ready for it, but she’s here now … Oh, it’s OK. No need to apologize. I just wanted to check. We’ve had so many people trying to trick their way in here. All right, cheers then.’
As Daphne hung up, Laurie didn’t waste too much time feeling grateful to Elliot, since he more than owed her this. However, she was thankful that no one, including Daphne, could see her squirming inside as she wondered what Elliot was thinking now, if he was angry, or … Well, there was no fathoming Elliot, and what did she care anyway? He’d obviously call her some time in the next few hours, so she’d just make sure her mobile stayed off.
Daphne Long was watching her with small, limpid eyes and an attractive, though sad little smile. ‘I’m Daphne,’ she said, touching a bejewelled hand to her chest. ‘And this is Simon, my boy. Well, I expect you recognize us from all the publicity.’
Laurie smiled. ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she responded. ‘And thank you for agreeing to this. There was obviously some kind of mix-up –’
‘It’s all right,’ Daphne said, clipping a shiny gold ball back on her earlobe now she’d finished with the phone. ‘Makes no difference really, does it? Today, tomorrow, we’re still going to say the same things.’
Laurie thanked Chas as he placed a tall, frosted glass of Coke and ice in front of her. After gulping down several refreshing mouthfuls she thanked him again, then to Daphne she said, ‘I understand what a very difficult time this must be for you. As if it’s not bad enough losing your daughter the way you did, then all this attention from people like me … I’m really sorry you’re having to go through it.’
‘I got to tell you, it is you people who make it worse,’ Daphne confided. ‘We didn’t want to talk to none of you, actually. I mean, this isn’t the kind of thing you want people sticking their noses in, is it?’
‘No, of course not,’ Laurie responded with feeling.
‘But I know you got a job to do. It’s not your fault. I’m just saying … The way they all hang around out there … It’s like vultures innit, Chas? Like bloody vultures. Poor Princess Di, is all I can say, because we’ve had a taste of it now so we know what it’s like.’
Laurie’s expression was a picture of understanding. ‘What changed your mind about doing an interview?’ she asked, reaching casually into her bag and taking out her tape recorder.
‘They told us it was probably the only way of getting you to leave us alone. We had to say something, because that’s the way it is, these days, innit? You people in the media, you don’t go away until you’ve got what you came for.’
She was eyeing Laurie’s little Sony player with such marked distaste that Laurie said, ‘I can use a notepad and pen if you prefer.’
‘No, it’s all right. I suppose we’re used to them now, after all that time with the police.’ Her eyes flicked towards her husband, who’d settled in next to her, creating an awkward and incomplete family picture of father, mother and son.
‘We can’t talk about our interrogation,’ Chas said crisply. ‘I told Elliot Russell that. It’s private.’
Laurie’s pleasant expression remained intact, as she wondered what other conditions she might blunder into.
She was about to open up the interview when Daphne said, ‘She was a good girl, weren’t she, Chas?’ She dabbed away the tears that had welled in her eyes. ‘Can’t stop thinking about her,’ she said woefully. ‘We was so close, we was more like friends or sisters really, than mother and daughter. Where’re you going?’ she said to Simon as he got up.
‘Let him go,’ Chas advised as Simon scuffed sulkily out of the kitchen. ‘This has been really hard on him, poor lad. Been hard on us all.’
‘Of course,’ Laurie responded. She looked at them both, then as gently as she could, she said, ‘Did you know Colin Ashby? Did you ever meet him?’
‘No, not personally,’ Daphne answered, speaking over Chas who was saying, ‘What I wouldn’t like to do to that bastard.’
‘Chas, don’t,’ Daphne said, putting a wifely hand on his arm.
Laurie gave them a moment, then judging it OK to continue, she said, ‘Did you know Sophie was seeing him? I mean before all this?’
‘Oh yeah,’ Daphne answered. ‘Me and my Sophes never had no secrets. We told each other everything.’
Laurie wondered how true that was, and hoped she was about to find out. ‘So you know how they met?’ she said.
‘Course I do. It was like fate, that’s what she said. Bloody bad fate it turned out to be, didn’t it? But anyway, she thought it was special at the time. She had this friend, Brad, not boyfriend and girlfriend or anything, just mates, you know. He’s a minicab driver. Well, there was this one night when he was giving Sophes a lift home after they’d been out clubbing or somewhere, and he gets a call from Colin Ashby asking him to come and pick him up at the Houses of Parliament. So Brad asked if he minded Sophes being there, cos he couldn’t just abandon her, could he? Anyway, it didn’t turn out to be a problem, so Sophes went along too, and that was how they met. In the back of a minicab, of all places. She said they hit it off right away. Chatting and laughing. He was a real easy bloke to talk to, she said. She always said that, didn’t she, Chas? That he was real easy-going.’
Chas only grunted.
‘She was right excited when he called Brad a couple of days later to ask for her number,’ Daphne went on. ‘An important man like that. Everyone knew who he was. She was dead chuffed, she was. Rang me on my mobile to tell me. “He just called me, Mum,” she said. “That one I told you about. He wants to see me again.”’ Daphne’s eyes were filling up again and, ripping off a square of kitchen roll, she added brokenly, ‘If only she’d known how it was all going to end, she’d never have seen him.’
Well, she was certainly right about that, Laurie was thinking as she looked down at the small islands of ice floating in her Coke. She wondered if they genuinely didn’t know that their daughter had been a professional escort, or if they’d been instructed to give this watered-down version of Brad Pinkton’s role in it all. Since that particular aspect of Sophie’s life still hadn’t been made public, she dispensed with the idea of asking them straight out if they knew, because if they didn’t, it wasn’t going to help them, or her, to add to their suffering with such a painful revelation.
‘Did Sophie know Colin Ashby was married?’ she asked after a while.
‘Yes. He told her straight away,’ Daphne answered. ‘It took her a few weeks to tell me, though, and I didn’t like it one bit, when she told me, did I, Chas? I said to her, “You can’t go getting yourself mixed up with a married man, it’s not right, and you’ll only end up getting hurt.” I never thought it would be like this, though,’ she added tearfully.
Laurie kept her compassionate face going, then bracing herself, she said, ‘Do you know if t
hey became intimate on their first date?’
Daphne’s eyes shot to Chas, whose jaw went so tight it turned his face pale.
Daphne’s hand moved back to his arm. ‘Course they was,’ Daphne answered. ‘You’ve seen pictures of her. She was gorgeous. No man was going to resist her, was he? She called me after he’d gone. Full of it, she was. Said he thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever met, that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since the first time he saw her … He had all the lines. Later she told me he said him and his wife weren’t hitting it off. They didn’t have no sex, or nothing any more. He’d had other affairs, he said, but he’d never felt like this before. I told her she was soft in the head if she believed all that, but there was no getting through to her. Still, for all that, he was good to her. Generous, you know. Bought her loads of clothes, but I haven’t had the heart to sort through them yet. They’re upstairs in her room. The police let us have them back after they’d finished, you know, whatever they have to do with them.’
Laurie nodded. Would they be worth looking at, she wondered. Possibly, but since she could imagine all too easily what kind of clothes they were, she didn’t think she could bear to be there when Daphne unpacked them.
‘She was besotted with him,’ Daphne suddenly went on. Her tanned, leathery face was becoming much more strained now, reminding Laurie of how deep and real her loss was. ‘She didn’t want to meet anyone else. As far as she was concerned he was going to leave his wife and go and live with her. That’s what he said, so she believed him. Well, why wouldn’t she when he kept saying it, and in the end he did, didn’t he? He left his wife and turned up at her flat in the early hours of the morning, saying he couldn’t stay away a minute longer.’ Her voice almost gave out then as she said, ‘She was so happy when he came to her like that, then a week later she was … dead.’
Chas put an arm round her shoulders. ‘If I could get my hands on that bastard …’ he snarled at Laurie. ‘She was just a kid. Less than half his age. He had a responsibility to take care of her. She didn’t know nothing of the world, like he did. What did he think he was doing? I’d like to kill him, I would. Same as what he did to her.’
‘Sssh,’ Daphne sniffed. ‘It don’t do no good talking like that. They’ve got him, so at least we know he hasn’t got away with it.’
‘Do you have any idea why he might have done it?’ Laurie asked gently.
‘No. None,’ Daphne said. ‘We keep asking ourselves that. But what reason could there be? If he’d wanted to go back to his wife she could hardly have stopped him, could she? He’s twice her size, never mind twice her age, and anyway, she wouldn’t have stood in his way. She wasn’t like that, hanging on to a bloke if he didn’t want to stay.’
‘Did the police give you any idea why they think he might have done it?’ Laurie said.
Daphne looked at Chas. ‘We don’t know what they think, do we?’ she answered. ‘They don’t tell you nothing. They just asks questions.’
‘Did Sophie know about Heather Dance and her little girl?’
‘What, the woman who was in the paper the other day? No. She couldn’t have done. She’d have told me if she did.’
‘So the suggestion that Sophie might have been blackmailing him –’
‘Is bloody nonsense,’ Chas growled. ‘They make me sick with the effing tripe they come up with. Blackmail! Anyone who knew her would tell you what a load of bollocks that is.’
Daphne looked down at the kitchen roll she was shredding. ‘Honest to God, I don’t know why he’d have done that to her,’ she said. ‘It just don’t make any sense.’
Laurie took a breath before asking the next question. It was probably one they’d heard before, and she wondered if, over the past few weeks, their answer might have changed at all. ‘Do you think there’s any chance it might not have been him?’ she said tentatively. ‘I’m sure you know he’s denying it.’
Chas’s face turned puce. ‘The bastard was caught red-handed,’ he practically shouted. ‘He did it all right, and I’ll tell you this much, they ought to bring back hanging for blokes who go round doing that to innocent young girls. I was never for it before this, but I am now. It’s different when it’s your own. Believe me. I’d do time just to get my hands on that bastard.’
Daphne’s eyes were bleak. ‘Yeah, we know he’s denying it,’ she said. ‘Well, I suppose he would, wouldn’t he? But he did it all right. They caught him right there, didn’t they?’
Laurie nodded, for there was no disputing that. ‘Did the police mention anything about blackmail?’ she asked. ‘I don’t mean about Heather Dance, I mean about anything else.’
‘We told you already, she wasn’t blackmailing him,’ Chas said testily. ‘She wasn’t that kind of girl.’
Laurie looked at Daphne again. ‘So the police didn’t mention it?’ she prompted. ‘As a matter of procedure, it would have made sense for them to.’
‘Why don’t you tell her?’ Simon suddenly shouted, startling them all as he burst in the door. ‘Tell her the truth, what’s really been happening …’
‘Simon! Shut it!’ his father barked.
‘Yeah, they reckon she was blackmailing him,’ Simon cried. ‘That’s why they think he killed her. She knew something she shouldn’t have and –’
Chas was on his feet. ‘Simon, go to your room!’ he bellowed.
The boy was already backing away. ‘Why are you helping them?’ he sobbed furiously. ‘All they’re interested in is protecting him. They don’t care about us. They just want us to keep our mouths shut, that’s all.’
‘Simon!’ Chas roared, advancing with his fist in the air. ‘Don’t make me do this!’
‘Chas!’ Daphne cried, scrambling after him and grabbing his fist in both hands. ‘Stop it. Just stop,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t stand all this … Simon, just go to your room.’
‘Not till you start telling the –’
‘Simon!’ she shouted.
The boy’s face was twisted with rage and frustration. Laurie could see he wanted to say more, but didn’t quite dare. In the end, he banged the door open again and stormed out, snarling ‘Fuck off, all of you. Just fuck off.’
For several minutes after he’d gone there was only the sound of Chas breathing as he stood with his hands resting on the sink, and the muted whirr of the tape as it absorbed these moments of calm after the storm. Laurie sat very still, feeling desperately sorry for them in their confusion, while trying to decide how best to proceed from here.
‘Maybe you’d better turn that thing off,’ Daphne said, pointing to the tape recorder.
Immediately Laurie put her hand over it and made it click.
Chas’s eyes were blazing with anger as he turned them on his wife. ‘You’re not going to tell her any more,’ he snarled. ‘Jesus Christ, woman, you know what they said …’
‘Calm down!’ Daphne snapped. ‘I’m not telling her anything. Anyway, we don’t know anything, do we? Not what it’s about, anyway. We just know there was something …’
‘And they don’t want us telling people like her,’ he raged.
‘Well, it’s a bit late now, innit?’ she shouted back. ‘She knows now, thanks to your big mouth son.’
‘And where does he get that from?’ he sneered. ‘You’ve never been able to keep your mouth shut.’
‘Fuck you!’ she spat. ‘Just fuck you.’
‘Fuck you too.’ He turned away, but not before Laurie had seen the tears in his eyes.
Daphne moved back on to the padded bench seat, and looked across at Laurie.
‘If it helps,’ Laurie said, ‘I already knew there was some kind of cover-up, so you haven’t told me anything you need to feel concerned about.’
Daphne nodded, then turned her head to stare out at the garden. It was several minutes before she spoke, and when she did she continued to look outside. ‘They didn’t threaten us, or nothing,’ she said. She jerked a thumb towards Chas. ‘He just made it sound like t
hey did, but they didn’t. They just made it plain that they didn’t want us going into any kind of detail with the press about –’
‘Daphne!’ Chas warned.
‘Look, it all comes down to the same thing in the end, don’t it?’ Daphne cried. ‘Sophie’s dead and he killed her. What does it matter what she did or didn’t know? She can’t tell anyone now, can she?’
‘Did she know anything?’ Laurie probed.
Daphne shook her head. ‘If she did she never told me. I mean not anything that could do anyone any harm. I don’t know if they believe that, but it’s the truth. She never told me nothing like that.’
‘What about the police? Did they give you any idea what they thought she might be blackmailing him about?’
‘No,’ Daphne answered shaking her head. ‘Like I said, they never told us nothing. They just kept asking us all these different questions. It was a bloody nightmare, I can tell you.’
‘What kind of questions?’ Laurie prompted, choosing to forget that she wasn’t supposed to ask about their interrogation.
‘I don’t know. All kinds. If she’d ever met any of his friends. If they’d –’
‘Had she?’ Laurie interrupted, surprised that Chas hadn’t jumped in yet.
‘Some. You know, his colleagues, when he took her to show her the Houses of Parliament, and places like that. She met some of them then.’
‘Do you remember their names?’
‘Daphne!’ Chas growled. ‘This is the very stuff they told us not to talk about.’
‘What difference does it make now?’ his wife cried. ‘It’s not going to bring her back, is it? And we don’t know none of their names anyway.’
Laurie could easily believe they didn’t, but the kind of questions they’d been asked could tell her a great deal. She might make more headway were she able to get rid of Chas for a while, but since that wasn’t possible she resigned herself to treading carefully through the minefield of possibilities she was now facing. ‘These friends he introduced her to,’ she said, ‘did they ever go to her flat, do you know?’