18
‘Bloody hell, I feel like I’ve come on a mini-break,’ said Ross McKiney, standing in the doorway of the boathouse, casting his eyes from side to side to take it all in. ‘Look at this place. It’s like something from one of those posh interiors magazines.’
‘Gorgeous, isn’t it?’ smiled Rachel, beckoning him inside. ‘Although I think I’m only here because Diana doesn’t want me in the big house. This is supposed to be my punishment.’
‘I wouldn’t mind some punishment like this,’ said Ross, his eyes still wide.
Rachel shook her head. ‘Anyone would think you’ve never seen a tree before,’ she teased.
‘We don’t have trees where I live,’ said Ross. ‘Council cuts.’
‘Let me open the doors,’ she said, pulling back the floor-to-ceiling plate glass so that balmy evening air tumbled into the house. She was willing to bet that Ross hadn’t been on a holiday in the last five years – the least she could do was make this evening as convivial as possible.
‘I can’t believe you’ve driven all the way out here,’ she said, noticing that he’d had a haircut in the twenty-four hours since they had last met. He looked smart, professional, not the neglected, semi-employed hermit she had seen yesterday.
‘You said daily updates.’
‘A phone call would have done,’ she grinned.
‘You know me. I give you more bang for your buck.’
‘That’s what all the ladies say,’ she teased, clearing the mess off the sofa so that he could sit down. ‘So. I see you’re driving. I have some zero-alcohol beer if you fancy one.’
‘Go on. We can pretend.’
She went to the kitchen, returning with drinks and bowls of crisps and nuts. She hadn’t found the local shop yet and had been subsisting on the snacks that Mrs Bills had originally left for her.
‘Seen your mum yet?’ asked Ross as he opened his laptop.
‘Saw her the day I came to Clapton to see you.’
‘So you survived the encounter?’
‘Barely,’ she replied. ‘She’s been avoiding me since I got back from Thailand. Diana engineered a meeting where she practically accused me of being Satan. She came back to Somerfold this morning. Curiosity couldn’t keep her away, I bet.’
She watched Ross click open some files on the desktop.
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘I don’t mess around,’ he said.
Rachel gulped down her Becks Zero, anxious to see what he had come up with. She had been trying to do things the proper way – interviewing Julian’s friends and colleagues, searching through his possessions – but she had yet to make a breakthrough. By any means necessary, she thought, looking at Ross and remembering an old maxim from the newsroom.
‘So I managed to get into Julian’s Flypedia account,’ he said, sticking a pencil behind his ear.
‘I won’t ask how.’
‘Here’s what those payments you circled were for.’ He started to read from the screen. ‘One economy flight from Washington Dulles airport to London Heathrow in the name of Madison Kopek. Flight from Washington to Montego Bay also in the name of Madison Kopek. One flight London to Montego economy class in the name of Julian Denver. One return flight economy to Bucharest, Julian Denver.’
Rachel looked at him with puzzlement.
‘Julian was flying economy? He was worth a few billion quid and he had a Gulfstream V. What the hell was he doing flying economy to Jamaica and Romania?’
‘No idea what he was doing in Romania, but you can guess what he was up to in Jamaica.’
‘A nice little assignation in the sun,’ she said as her brain caught up with her mouth.
‘And imagine you’re well known, you’ve been in the papers, but you want to travel abroad without an