‘Maybe it started off like that. She couldn’t exactly accost him and demand that he take his new drug off the market. But they met up a few times, and I guess they started to like each other. The most important thing was that Julian Denver seemed to take what she was saying seriously. He said he’d look into the drug and its side effects.’
‘How long were they sleeping together? Do you know?’
‘From that first night, I think.’
‘And did Julian know about the baby?’
‘I don’t know,’ Laura said quietly. She had finished her Coke. ‘I should go.’
‘You can’t go,’ said Ross
, putting his hand up to call the waitress.
‘Do you think it’s strange?’ said Laura, suddenly looking anxious.
‘What’s strange?’ asked Rachel, trying to meet her gaze, trying to read her mind.
‘Strange that she got killed,’ Laura replied, her voice barely a whisper. ‘I told her it wasn’t a good idea taking these people on, challenging them about a drug that was probably worth billions. But she wouldn’t listen.’
‘You don’t think it was an accident? You think she was targeted?’ said Rachel incredulously.
‘I know it sounds paranoid, but when I first heard she’d been killed, I thought she might have been, yeah. But since the bad guy would have been your brother-in-law and he’s dead too, I guess it’s nothing like that. I wonder if he did know about the baby,’ she offered softly.
Rachel kept silent.
‘I’m very sad for your sister,’ said Laura finally. ‘Now I really have to go.’
23
He stepped out into the road, his hand raised, hailing a taxi. Diana did a double-take, jabbing at the brakes, swerving to the right, her wheel hitting the kerb, bouncing to a halt. Damndamn damn! A horn blared and a van driver leant out of his window, gesturing wildly.
‘Bloody women drivers, shouldn’t be on the bloody road!’ he yelled.
Diana put her head down on the steering wheel and felt her heart thumping. Her hands were trembling violently and for a moment she couldn’t catch her breath. She watched him stepping into a black cab, and as he turned to see what the disturbance was behind him, she knew that it was not him. Of course it wouldn’t be him. Julian was dead. The man in the sharp dark suit was just a lookalike, and she was hallucinating.
Exhaling slowly to calm her nerves, she glanced in her rear-view mirror and pulled back out into the traffic. She knew she should have listened to her mother and allowed Mr Bills to drive her into central London, or at least got the train. Instead, she had managed to convince herself that it would do her good to drive herself – blow away the cobwebs or something like that – but she was clearly in no fit state to ride a bicycle, let alone negotiate the Range Rover through the busy streets of London.
She found a place to park, taking several attempts to reverse the car into the space. She was still shaking and her head was sore. Whiplash: that was all she needed.
She looked up at the tall Bloomsbury mews house in front of her. A short flight of stone steps led to the front door, which had a small bronze plaque next to it reading Wilson and Nedwell, Solicitors.
She paused for a moment to compose herself. She had known this day would come, but hadn’t appreciated how nervous she would be. A week earlier, she had thought she would be able to predict the contents of Julian’s will. It was something that they had occasionally discussed. Julian had always maintained he would look after Diana and Charlie in the event of his death. And whilst she didn’t doubt that he would be true to his word, she was more anxious about what other provisions his will might contain. There was almost certainly a mistress on the scene. One that Julian had loved so much he had killed himself over her death. She had seen enough courtroom dramas, read enough family sagas to know that wills were often a hotbed of surprises.
Diana swung her bag over her shoulder and walked up the steps with as much purpose as she could muster. A secretary came to meet her at reception, and she was ushered to Stuart Wilson’s office on the top floor. She had met the genial lawyer several times before. He was a friendly-looking man with highly coloured cheeks and a very smart suit. The very picture of a Dickensian solicitor, in fact. Diana wouldn’t have been surprised to see a top hat on the old-fashioned wooden coat-stand by the door. Fitting in with the image, his office was lined from floor to ceiling with heavy leather-bound legal books, although the technology dotted around the room – the iPad, computer and plasma television screwed to the wall – indicated that this was definitely a twenty-first-century operation.
‘Diana, I am so glad you came.’
‘I wanted to get out of the house,’ she said, appreciating Stuart’s offer to come to Somerfold. ‘Thank you for this,’ she added anxiously. ‘I don’t think I could have faced one of those public readings of the will.’ She imagined Julian’s family all squashed into the room, Elizabeth Denver no doubt taking charge of proceedings.
‘Julian wanted it this way. I think he understood the family dynamics,’ he said simply.
He sat forward and passed Diana a slim bound document about six pages long. She read the cover slip. The Last Will and Testament of Julian Edward Denver, dated March of that year. So it was recent, but not something hastily arranged after Madison Kopek’s death. She wondered what – if anything – that might mean.
‘You can of course read it in private if you’d prefer, but I thought you might prefer to go through it together?’
Diana nodded. She could already see that it was written in impenetrable legalese and that she would need the solicitor to decipher it. Besides, he had drafted the document in the first place; what was the point of her reading it in private? Unless he really has left everything to his American mistress, said a voice in her head.
‘Yes, that’s fine, talk me through it if you would, Mr Wilson,’ she said, her palms beading with sweat.