The Silent Widow

‘A description, then. Did you ever see any of them in person?’

She shook her head, biting her lower lip. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t.’

‘You must have taken phone calls at least,’ Williams pressed her. ‘Are we talking men or women? Two or twenty?’

‘You don’t understand—’

‘Does the name Lenka Gordievski mean anything to you? This lady?’ Getting up, Williams waved his iPhone in front of her frightened face. Despite herself, Tina looked at the image, the same one Williams had shown Haddon Defoe of Lenka, Haddon and Doug Roberts at the New York fundraiser, the night Lenka and Doug first met. The recognition in Tina’s eyes was obvious and instant.

‘I cannot talk about this, Derek. I’m sorry. I’ve already said too much.’

‘Give me a company name, at least. Something I don’t already know, one piece of this puzzle. Please, Tina. Tell me what you told Robin Sanford.’

Jerking her head up, she looked him square in the eye. ‘They’ll kill me!’

Williams held her gaze in silence for a few moments. Then he said quietly:

‘Maybe they will. Maybe they’ll kill both of us. But what if they’re out there, killing other, innocent people right now, just to keep whatever this is a secret? Isn’t the only way to be rid of them to uncover that secret? To bring it out in the open? You must have believed that when you called Sanford in the first place.’

‘I did,’ Tina acknowledged. In her lap, her hands trembled.

‘I know you’re scared, Tina. I’m scared too. But if we don’t speak up, who will?’

Derek Williams watched the inner battle raging inside the poor woman opposite him. Tina Drayton was a brave person. She’d already proved that. But everybody had their limits.

‘All right,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll tell you. But after I do you must never contact me again. Never. Not for any reason.’

Williams sat down and pulled out his pen again. ‘You have my word.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Gretchen Adler eased herself down into the warm water and felt the tensions of her day and the long drive downtown melt away.

Gretchen and Nikki had discovered Lucky Hot Springs in their senior year of High School and had been coming to the women-only, strictly naked Korean spa for girls’ bonding sessions ever since. As teenagers, back when both their bodies were perfect, the whole ‘naked’ thing had felt weird and embarrassing. Now, in middle age and with pretty much everything sagging more than she would have liked, Gretchen couldn’t care less about taking her clothes off, or about the other women and girls, from aged two to ninety-two, lazily wandering past her in the buff.

In fact, stepping into the naturally heated water as naked as God intended felt incredibly freeing, and one of the many reasons Gretchen Adler loved this place. It didn’t matter to Gretchen that Nikki’s body seemed to have stood the test of time far better than her own. Nikki with her cellulit

e-free thighs and small, pert breasts that bobbed like two apples on the surface of the water above a stomach so flat and taut you could have used it as a trampoline. Gretchen’s own breasts were more like two sandbags, instantly submerging like a ship’s ballast, and her belly was more stretchmark than skin at this point, courtesy of her three kids. But really, who cared? She was thirty-eight, and happily married to a very successful producer. Unlike lonely, widowed Nikki, who in recent years had seen her life lurch from one tragedy to the next, poor thing.

Sliding into the hot pool beside Gretchen, Nikki kicked off the girls’ gossip session with a bombshell.

‘Haddon Defoe tried to sleep with me the other day.’

Gretchen’s jaw dropped open, cartoon style. ‘Whaaat?? He did not!’

‘He did,’ said Nikki. ‘It was at the End Addiction Ball. We were outside, and he was comforting me about Doug and then, I don’t know,’ she shrugged, ‘suddenly he was kissing me and declaring his love, telling me how Doug never deserved me. He was kind of forceful.’

‘Do we like “kind of forceful”?’ Gretchen asked, astonished. She’d known Haddon Defoe for almost a decade, through Nikki and Doug, and was having immense difficulty picturing the scene Nikki described.

‘Not from Haddon we don’t!’ Nikki blushed. ‘I mean … Haddon. I had no idea.’

‘Why would you?’ said Gretchen.

‘And obviously I could never. I’m not remotely attracted to him for one thing, but even if I was, he was like a brother to Doug. That would be too weird.’

‘Biblical,’ Gretchen agreed. ‘Like in the Old Testament, when people die and the widows marry the brother? It’s a thing!’ she added defensively, seeing Nikki’s baffled face.

‘The truth is, I’m nowhere near ready to be with someone new,’ said Nikki, dipping her whole head under the water and then rising up again, her hair sleek like an otter’s. ‘I’m not sure I ever will be.’