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Terry sighed. Was his brother still alive? He had sometimes thought of trying to find him, but it was all so long ago. A lifetime. His parents were both dead, years ago. That old world had gone. He and Jim would have nothing in common, except their shared childhood. What had Jim been doing all this time?
Terry’s life was too good, too unbelievable, for him to risk adding an unpredictable element which might ruin everything. His father had become a crook – maybe Jim had, too? You could never tell with heredity.
Behind him he heard a door open and close, then footsteps on the patio.
He looked over his shoulder and relaxed, smiling in satisfaction at the boy coming towards him. That smooth, fresh, young skin, that slim, active body, the expensive grey suit, the gold cufflinks, polished shoes, dark red tie – he was such a good-looking kid. The way he walked, held his head, told you he had cool self-confidence.
A man could be proud of a son like Sean. Terry would have moved mountains for him. In a way, he had, over the past ten years. He had built the business up so that his boy should have a golden future. He had never laid a finger on him, either, from the day of his birth. He did not want his son scared of him, the way Terry had feared his own father. He wanted Sean to be his buddy, to like him, enjoy being with him.
‘Hi, Sean – come and have a glass of champagne.’
There was no time to think about it. Miranda knew she had to go back. The road was empty. She drove out of the layby, turning the way she had come.
‘Back again? Forgot something?’ the porter said in surprise, letting her in again.
She managed a smile and hurried across the foyer to the lift. Up in the office again she glanced at the window. There wasn’t a sound over in the flat now. Sean must have gone.
She picked up the phone and dialled the emergency number.
‘Police, please,’ she told the operator.
Almost at once a calm, measured voice said, ‘Police emergency service – what is your phone number, please?’
She plunged straight into what she had to tell them. ‘I overheard a fight in a room opposite. I think a girl is dead.’
‘First, can I have your phone number, please?’
‘What?’
She blanked on it – what was the number for the whole building? She could only think of her office extension. ‘I . . . it . . .’ she stammered. What on earth was the firm’s main number? She knew it, of course she did. Why couldn’t she remember it now?
The operator did not seem surprised by her dithering. ‘Try to stay calm. Let’s start with your name – what’s that?’
‘Miranda,’ she said, relieved to have an easy answer to give. ‘You see, I was working, doing overtime, just me – I was alone in the office, and then they arrived, I heard it all . . .’
‘Sorry to interrupt, but I must know your surname, Miranda.’
‘Oh, yes, sorry – Grey.’ She spelt it and as she did so her eye was caught by the printed heading on the office writing paper, giving the address, telephone, fax and e-mail numbers.
Eagerly, she gave the phone number to the policeman at the other end of the line, then began again on her story. He seemed to take forever to take all the details, but eventually she was told to wait where she was, they would be there soon.
They arrived a quarter of an hour later. A CID sergeant, in his forties, grizzled, burly, and a young woman police constable with sculptured features and short, dark, straight hair, came to her office. Others went straight to Terry’s flat. She saw them open the bathroom window and look across.
‘Is that the window?’ the sergeant asked her and she nodded, shivering.
‘Yes. Yes, that’s it.’
The sergeant opened her window and called across to one of his colleagues. ‘OK, that’s the room.’
They did not answer, but their expressions were odd and they immediately looked away. Miranda shivered. They seemed to be staring at something – the bath? What did someone look like when they had drowned?
She hadn’t seen Tom afterwards, she had been too ill, but she had often thought . . . wondered . . . what he had looked like, how the sea had dealt with him.
That was the stuff of nightmares, the thought of what the sea had done to Tom. It had kept her awake, night after night, torn between wishing she had seen him so that this everlasting question could be answered, so that it would stop beating in her head – and being glad she had not seen him dead, disfigured, terrible, as he must have been.
One of the men in the bathroom reappeared at the window, tapped, waved, beckoning in a peremptory way.
‘They want us over there,’ the sergeant said unnecessarily. ‘Do you mind coming along, Miss?’
