‘Julian’s secret life.’
She nodded sadly. ‘He wasn’t my favourite person by a long chalk. But he was my sister’s husband. My nephew’s father. How can you live with some
one, look them in the eye each day, knowing you have another life, another lover? It’s just all lies. Marriage. It’s one big lie.’
‘Not always,’ he said quietly. ‘Not in most cases.’
‘All right,’ she said, sniffing hard. ‘Let’s do this room by room. I’ll start downstairs. You take up here. I’m not sure I can bear to find balled-up lingerie at the bottom of the bed.
She clomped back downstairs and got to work. It didn’t take long; the house wasn’t that big. She found nothing of any note; everything was where it should be: pots and pans in the kitchen cupboards, brooms and mops under the stairs, DVDs in the cabinet by the TV. As she’d expected, the books on the shelves were pulpy boy’s own novels by George MacDonald Fraser mixed with a few sports and movie biogs: the real Julian, she supposed, compared to the ‘acceptable’ Julian she had seen in the Notting Hill bedroom. Reading Diana’s diaries, she had got the sense that her sister was living in a gilded cage. But did the same apply to Julian? Had he boxed himself into a hole he didn’t want to be in?
She was just walking back into the hall when she heard a muffled call from upstairs.
‘Rach, I think you might want to see this.’
But Liam wasn’t in the bedroom or the bathroom.
‘Where are you?’
‘In the loft,’ came the reply.
She followed the sound to a door in the corridor she had assumed was a cupboard. Inside was a set of steep stairs, and at the top, another bedroom, which had been converted into a study of sorts. More of the real Julian, she thought as she walked in. An acoustic guitar was propped in one corner, and there was another TV with an expensive-looking games console, plus a pile of games cases strewn in front of it. There was also a desk covered with piles of papers – it looked as if Liam had been going through them.
‘In here,’ he said – she could just see his feet and his bum sticking in the air. He was leaning into a storage cupboard built into the eaves of the house.
He threw her an A4-sized book. Actually no, it was professionally bound with a plastic cover, but it was obviously a business report. In fact, it was more than that. Much more.
‘“Controlled Test of Rheladrex. Report number six.” This is it,’ she gasped.
She sank to the floor and sat cross-legged to speed-read it. Much of it didn’t make sense, much of it was in impenetrable jargon. But one paragraph in particular stood out.
‘Dr Adriana Russi, formerly of Denver Chemicals, confirms that there were problems in clinical trials – before and after approval.’
Dr Russi’s number was written beneath the text in biro. Another name and cell number were scrawled on the cover page. Rachel could make out the word Maddison, spelt with a double D and with a heart over the I.
‘Well there’s someone you should probably speak to,’ said Liam, typing something into Google on his iPhone.
‘You’re right. I wonder where that area code is, though? I don’t recognise it.’
Liam looked up as if he regretted what he was about to say.
‘It looks like Adriana Russi lives in Rome.’
44
Under any other circumstances, Diana would have leapt at the opportunity to fly to the Eternal City. She adored its energy, its history, its passion. It wasn’t just a city for lovers; a market trader in the Campo de’ Fiori could sell you a bag of ripe peaches with such zeal and delight it could make you feel as if they would somehow transform your life. And perhaps for a few moments those sweet, succulent fruits actually would. The food seemed more flavoursome in Rome, the light softer, its nights more sultry and full of magic. It was a city that made you feel alive, which was why it felt wrong to be here, right now, looking for the reasons why Julian had died.
Diana had had incredibly mixed feelings about Rachel’s discovery of the report into Denver’s wonder drug. When she had found out about Madison Kopek, she had thought she would welcome any explanation about her husband’s suicide that did not involve a relationship with another woman. But the truth was that there was no comfort in any reason, and that was something she hadn’t truly appreciated when she had persuaded Rachel to look into his death.
Rachel hadn’t said out loud that she thought Julian had been murdered. It was something Diana had extrapolated from her sister’s suspicions about Madison’s death, Ross’s attack, Julian’s investigation into Rheladrex and the urgency with which she wanted to talk to Adriana Russi.
Diana wasn’t completely naïve. Julian had been the head of a multi-billion-pound company and the stakes were high. He had taken decisions that made – or cost – millions, decisions that affected people’s lives, not always in a good way. She knew that Rachel might not be too far off-base with her theories. But murder? The very idea of it haunted her thoughts and her dreams. Only last night she had woken up drenched in sweat, and for a few seconds had believed that she was still in her nightmare, a patchwork of bloody images that didn’t quite knit together. It was too gruesome a notion to fit into her world, even one that had been rocked by suicide.
They had checked into the Exedra hotel, chosen by Rachel for its rooftop pool overlooking the city, although Diana had a feeling they were not going to be in the hotel long enough to check out its facilities.
‘Dr Russi does know we’re coming?’ she asked as Rachel hailed a white taxi and instructed the driver in wonky Italian to take them to Trastevere. It had only just occurred to her.
‘Of course she does,’ said Rachel, settling into the back seat. ‘How do you think I know her address?’