by Karen Guyler
The Society
karen guyler
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Did you enjoy this book?
Acknowledgments
Also by karen guyler
About the Author
1
The lipsticked smile of the queen of British morning TV shouted at Eva Janssen, you’re supposed to answer my questions.
What she wanted to hear pressed itself into Eva’s mouth, but she held it in, wrapping it up with the other things she couldn’t say. Couldn’t, wouldn’t, they’d all been on the restricted list yet here Nadia was spilling the suggestion of them into the five million plus homes who started their day watching ‘Your Good Morning’.
Eva grabbed at the failing interview. “Our new campaign, Every Drop because every life matters, kicks off tomorrow night with a charity ball—”
“You’re a bit of an anomaly, Eva, for a CEO.” Nadia swooped in again. “Setting up a charity isn’t on the agenda of most twenty-five-year-olds and, if it was, I’m sure they’d shout about it. But your profile for the last seven years, since you founded Every Drop, in fact, has been, shall we say, quiet?” She wouldn’t dare go there, would she, on live TV? “Before then, it’s non-existent. So tell us about your life before.”
She went there. ‘Your Good Morning’ must have an excellent legal team.
Eva probably only had another five minutes of this torture left, she needed to talk faster. “Every Drop’s focus needs to be on the work, not on me nor any of the amazing team I’m lucky to work with. We’re trying to put right the crime that millions don’t have access to safe water.”
Her gaze flicked to one of the cameras, don’t do that one of the production people had said. If the millions on the other end of that lens gave a small donation, Every Drop could complete all of its installation plans. What a difference to the world that would make. “Do you have the phone number for the pledge line?”
“You founded the company in honour of your father, that’s quite a memorial.”
Eva followed Nadia’s gaze as it swivelled to her left. The Tower Bridge backdrop pixellated away. Eva’s heart rapped so hard on the inside of her ribcage that her lapel mic must be picking it up. It couldn’t be the photo. They’d signed to say they wouldn’t use it.
And yet, as Eva watched, the image reformed from the white edges inwards. Her hand strayed to her jacket. Don’t touch the mic, another of the many warnings they’d given her.
The white edged into wisps of light hair blown by a long ago breeze against a distant blue sky. Her father’s smiling face leant into the top of her head where he held her five-year-old self, her back against his chest, her long blonde hair teased into a tangle with his.
Not the photo.
Eva breathed. Her hand dropped back into her lap.
Their twinned ice-blue eyes and their mirrored grins of pure delight at being together made her smile. But the tenderness in his gaze as he’d looked at her that day, and often, in the fleeting time they’d had before he was gone, prickled at the back of her eyes.
She swallowed.
Not the photo.
“For the benefit of our viewers, your father was Mathias Janssen, an investigative journalist, killed on assignment in the Middle East. You were obviously very close, are you like him?”
That part of her life wasn’t subject to the Official Secrets Act, Eva could have answered, but that was between her and her father.
“He’s big shoes to fill, isn’t he? All that he achieved.”
Eva didn’t need Nadia to remind her, particularly not this week. Get the conversation back where it should be. “He’d be proud of Every Drop’s work.”
Nadia leant closer. “Given what you said about safe water being a human right, how do you reconcile the statement released by Stuart Worthington yesterday. He’s your Chairman of the Board, isn’t he?”
“Which statement is that? Stuart’s in the news a lot.” Part of the reason Charles was right that he was a good fit for the Board.
Eva and her father morphed into blue pixels overwritten with white letters spelling out a disastrous message: “On an overpopulated planet of limited resources, access to water cannot be an inalienable right.”
Eva took a breath. She had to remember where she was. “I can’t speak to the context of Stuart’s remarks. We have a donation campaign run—”
“If your own Chairman doesn’t believe it is, how can you sustain your position?”
“Our position? We’re stopping people dying, shouldn’t that be everyone’s position? What would you, your viewers, what would they do to ensure the safety of their loved ones? It’s easy for us, we turn on a tap and know we can trust what comes out of it but for too many of the world’s population, if they even get access to water, they’re risking sickness, or worse, if they drink it.”
Eva caught herself, not so emotional, dial it down. She tried again.
“Climate change means water is on everyone’s agenda. Take our ingenious distribution method,” she looked at the poisonous words between her and Nadia. “Do you have a picture of that?”
Movement in front of them distracted her, the production assistant waving at Nadia, flicking her hand across her neck in a cut, cut, cut gesture. Was it going that badly?
“I’m afraid we’re out of time.” Nadia responded. “Eva Janssen, CEO of Every Drop, thank you very much.”
Filling Eva’s unused minutes, Nadia announced part two of their special feature right after the news headlines, dismissing Eva with most of her message unsaid. She’d blown it. The production assistant beckoned her, come on, come on. Eva fought the urge to lunge in front of Nadia and shout out the donation number.
A wave of noisy busyness reached for them as they left the TV studio behind, welcoming them from that sterile vacuum back to real life. The production assistant marched along as though they only paid her for the minutes she spent by the cameras.
A flick of a glance to her right stopped Eva. She took a step towards the glass wall that separated the open plan office from the corridor. The world disappeared. Except for the computer screen that displayed the photo no ch
ild should ever see. The last one taken of her father.
Eva’s heart rammed a whirling churning through her. She closed her eyes against the hammer blow of his loss. But the image had been inscribed on her mind, the betrayal in that moment when he—
A banging on the glass shocked her back to the present, the production assistant gesturing furiously at the desktop user. The photo winked to a minimised icon.
“Sorry about that. They’re waiting for you, hurry up. Must be serious if they’ve tracked you down here.”
Eva followed on not quite steady legs. “Can I—”
“No time, in here.” The production assistant flicked a sliding sign so the door proclaimed the room was occupied. She pushed it open and Eva saw that it was, by a man looking at a complicated coffee machine and a woman sitting at the table writing in a small notebook. “Right, I’ll leave you to it.” She slammed the door.
“Eva Janssen?” The woman’s dressed for anything dark suit gave no hints about what must be serious.
Eva nodded, trying to catch up. The woman pulled something out of the inside pocket of the parka drying on the back of the chair next to her.
“DC April Truman.” Her warrant card.
“DI Elliott Smith.” The man held up what was presumably an identical ID, though Eva couldn’t read it from where she was. “We need a word.”
2
Police at the TV studios to talk to her? Eva grabbed at the back of the closest chair. “My family? What’s happened? Lily and Charles, are they okay?”
“We’re not here about them.” DC Truman gestured at the chair opposite her. “We’d like to talk about your relationship with Eric Hill.”
“Eric Hill?” Eva parroted, as if she didn’t know who he was.
“Please sit.” DC Truman waited.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“Do you?” With grey eyes and light brown skin, DI Smith was arresting to look at. A quip like that, Eva should have been seeing BBC comedy. He watched her as though he could read her stupid thought. She felt herself flushing, not the time. Hopefully, he wasn’t as hard as his shaved head claimed. A man used to getting results that much she recognised from being married to one.
“It’s your right, we’d be happy to meet them at the station. That makes it more formal then.” DC Truman stood up, making Eva decide what she wanted. “Right now we just have a couple of questions.”
Eva took her time pulling the chair out, sitting. Why were the police asking about Eric? The back leant too far backwards; she fidgeted upright, perched on the edge of the cold wooden seat.
DC Truman sat down, pen poised. “What’s your relationship with Mr Hill?”
“We don’t have one.”
“Yet you saw him yesterday.”
“Yes, I did, I mean before then I hadn’t seen him for years.”
“Why would he note your appearance here in his calendar then?” It wasn’t so much her question that sideswiped Eva, or even that Eric had noted this—had he wanted to ask her again, persuade her to change her mind?—but how had the police got access to it? And why?
DC Truman might seem young—dark hair caught up in a probably more messy than regulation bun, no make-up, fresh-faced, serious brown eyes—but her gaze was sharp, hard to not squirm beneath.
“I have no idea.” Eva’s brain was still playing catch-up, the sense she was searching for lost beneath the glimpse of that photo. “Maybe he wanted to watch me make a fool of myself on national TV?”
“You have that kind of relationship?” DC Truman’s pen was busy.
“We used to work together. Apart from yesterday, I haven’t seen him for years.”
“You said that already.” DI Smith threw the remark over his shoulder, as though he was only interested in the huge pink and blue neon scribble sign on the end wall he was now examining. “Why yesterday?”
“Has something happened?”
He turned around to watch her reaction. “Mr Hill died last night.”
“Died? But he, we were, he was good.” Eric dead, how was that possible? “How?”
“Did you get on?”
“Yes, we did. What—”
“Why did you stop working with him?”
“I left to set up my charity. What happened?”
“What did you talk about?” DI Smith continued his rapid-fire questions, strolling around the room as though the answers were inconsequential. He had to be aware of who Eric worked for, but Eva couldn’t confirm it.
She fished for something to convince, but she only had what she couldn’t say. “It’s not, it’s so hard to take in. He was only in his forties.” Which left a disturbing truth. “Was it an accident?”
“What did you do when you worked together?” DI Smith pressed.
“Nothing special, we analysed data, wrote reports.” Eva caught herself glancing away. Look him in the eye, own the lie.
“Had his family situation changed?”
Eva shrugged. “I don’t think so, we—”
Should she say they hadn’t done small talk like normal people? Wouldn’t that lead to more questions she couldn’t answer? The detectives waited.
Eric dead on British soil. Gordon could tell her what she couldn’t ask the police.
“You were the last person to see him alive.” DC Truman fixed her with that uncomfortable gaze again. DI Smith was training her well.
“Apart from the people in the street when we left—”
“You were the last person to see him alive who knew him. Why do you think that is?”
“We what?” DI Smith had reached her side in his slow checking out of the meeting room. “You said ‘I don’t think so, we’, we what?”
Sorry, Eric, but they’ll find out anyway. “Eric’s an incurable philanderer. He dates, dated, he dated more than one woman at the same time.”
“Did you try to cure him?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You said he was an incurable philanderer. Suggests you tried to mend his ways.”
“No, I’m happily married. I meant he had no intention of changing. He’s, he was, a one-off, charming, which is perhaps why so many would share him.”
DI Smith walked behind her, resuming his stroll around the room. “Do you know their names?”
“Not current ones.” Saucy Sue, what doesn’t she do? She remembered he’d been with her for a long time. Eric, did you hurt someone you shouldn’t?
“Why would you want him dead?” DC Truman’s expression didn’t change, even though she was asking the worst question.
“What? I don’t, I didn’t.”
“Last person to see him alive though.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I think you’ll find it does.”
“Nothing sinister.” Eva was losing her second interview of the morning. “How did Eric die?”
“You met where?” DI Smith arrived back at the neon scribble.
“Coffee Espresso on Russell Street. We had one coffee each, he had cake.”
“What time was this?”
“I got there at five fifteen, he was already there. I’m sure the staff can verify that, Eric would have tipped well.”
“Is money important to you?”
Eva frowned at his unexpected question. “I run a charity, I’m used to trying to wring as much as I can out of our budgets, the donations. The good use I can put it to is important to me. How did he die?”
Again he ignored the most important question. “Any of his ex-mistresses have it in for him?”
“I’d be surprised, Eric always looked after them.”
“That’s it for here.” DI Smith’s comment had DC Truman closing her notebook.
That was it? Eva tried to tame the hurricane in her mind. Had she said anything she shouldn’t? She wasn’t sure of the protocol for this situation—
“Ms Janssen?” He was holding the door open for her.
“Thank you.” She looked up and down the corridor. Where was the gr
een room that housed the locker with her things in it?
“I believe we can get out this way.” DC Truman gestured that Eva should precede them to the left.
Past the open plan office with that computer in it. She needed a minute. “After you.”
DI Smith shook his head. “You’re coming with us, I’m sniffing obstruction in your answers. At the station you might feel more inclined to be truthful.”
3
“You’re popular.”
Sitting directly behind him in the detectives’ car, Eva couldn’t see DI Smith’s face, but he didn’t sound thrilled at her receiving yet another call. She messaged Dario, ‘what’s up?’
‘Are you still at the BBC? We need you here now.’ Not what she expected, being unflappable was one of the reasons he was her deputy.
‘A friend of mine’ Eva deleted the words. ‘I’m with the police.’ Her thumbs paused on ‘helping them with their enquiries’, trite words she’d heard on the news a hundred times that made her shiver now she was on the wrong side of them.
Never suppose, her father had said it often enough, one of the many life instructions he’d drilled her with.
She deleted the words, tried again. ‘Anything to do with donors, you deal with, everything else delegate to Vaishali. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’