One of the policemen was waiting outside and smiled sympathetically as he opened the door for them. He got in next to the driver and they started off for Simon’s.
As they rode in silence, she got the feeling Simon was uncomfortable. Occasionally, the policeman in the passenger seat turned and offered up some friendly comment or sympathetic inquiry. Inappropriate as it was, Ella wanted to laugh at the effort he was making. She found herself thinking of Lucas and missing him, his abruptness and strange social tics.
She thought of Chris too, how two days ago in Switzerland, they’d made love in the woods, sex that had been passionate and desperate, perhaps because there’d been a sense of finality about it. She wanted to call him, see him, touch him.
‘Do you mind if I call Chris later?’
Simon turned to her and said, ‘Ella, you don’t even need to ask. As long as you’re staying with us, and that’s as long as you like, you treat it as your home. We’ll get your computer and everything, set it up in your room. We’ll even get a separate phone line put in for you.’
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek but then the police officer on the passenger side cleared his throat and said, ‘Uh, I’m sure it’s only a temporary measure, but I think we’ve taken the computers that were in the house for analysis.’
‘You’ve taken my computer?’
‘All of them. It’s not that they’ve been seized or anything. It’s just in case they contain anything that might help with the inquiry.’
Simon said, ‘Inquiry into what?’ He sounded angry. He took out his phone and punched in a number. ‘Tim—Simon. The police have taken the computers from Mark’s home, including Ella’s, which has her college work on it and, I would imagine, strictly personal information. Get them back, would you? And fire a shot across their bows—remind them what they’re investigating here: the murders of three innocent people.’
Ella was reeling. She couldn’t understand why the police were being like this, helping her on the one hand and then treating her as someone who was a suspect. She’d seen it in the eyes of all the police personnel she’d met—a curiosity, wanting to know how much she knew.
Until last week she’d considered herself to be completely ordinary, a student from a comfortable middle-class family, respectable. Now their property was being impounded, the whole family being treated like they were in organized crime, a rumor that had even been leaked to the newspapers. Lucas had told her otherwise, though, and she had to hold on to that, at least until she could get to the truth herself.
The policemen at the house seemed more genuinely friendly, but then Lucy had been doing her classic country wife routine, giving them tea and cakes, and George and Harry had been harassing them. As they walked in, the boys went careering through the hall, shouting to Ella as they ran upstairs. Lucy came out to meet them and said, ‘I thought I heard them call your name. How did it go?’
‘Okay, I suppose. It’s a strangely empty experience, isn’t it? They’re there and yet not there.’
‘I know.’
‘Luce, Ella and I need to talk business. I think as it’s a beautiful day we’ll sit out in the garden.’
‘Of course,’ she said, as if acknowledging a coded message. Then she added, ‘I’ll bring some drinks out. Is it too early for a gin fizz?’
‘That’d be nice, actually,’ Ella said. She found Lucy endearing like that; brought up in the city, she’d fallen in love with an idea of affluent country life that was about fifty years out of date.
This whole thing had probably shaken Lucy as much as it had any of them, forcing her to see how easily all of this could be taken away from her. She seemed to be holding up well enough now, but Ella could imagine how hard it would be once the police protection ended.
Simon led her across the large open lawn to the table and chairs under the oak tree. Ella wasted no time getting started. ‘You need to tell me what kind of business we do. If I’m going to be speaking to the police and having my computer confiscated, I need to know the truth.’
‘Of course.’
‘No, wait. Two more things. First, before you give me a censored version, remember I’m entitled to find out for myself now. And second, I already know about the drugs and the arms trade, so don’t spare me.’
Simon looked intrigued. ‘How do you know about all of that?’
‘The guy who protected me in Italy—he knew Dad a long time ago.’
‘Did he now? Tell me more about this chap.’
She shook her head. ‘First, you tell me about the business. Are we criminals?’
He laughed and said, ‘Absolutely not. Look, Mark was involved in the drug business when he was young but that’s ancient history. So is the arms business, but he never broke the law there anyway—some dubious export licenses here and there, but more often than not that was with the cooperation of the government.’