‘What did Cory say, when he came here? You didn’t tell me on the phone.’
Rowan hoped her eyes wouldn’t give away the frantic mental calculation going on behind them. How much should she say? ‘He didn’t give a lot away,’ she said. ‘He told me that he’d been spending quite a bit of time here, getting to know Mazz, sketching.’
‘Do you think they were having a thing? An affair?’
‘No, Pete, I don’t. Honestly. Stop tormenting yourself – please.’ She wondered why the idea bothered him so much. It wasn’t as if he’d ever stood a chance with Marianne; she’d been straight with him about it years ago. ‘And you told me yourself you thought she was happy with Greenwood.’
‘I know. I know. It just sticks in my craw, the idea of that . . . slippery, opportunist creep coming here, trying to expose her.’
‘What was there to expose?’ She looked at him sharply.
He shrugged. ‘Nothing. I mean, nothing extraordinary, nothing we don’t all already know, her friends and family. Just . . . she was fragile, wasn’t she, the breakdown, what Seb did, and Cory’s . . . predatory. You only have to look at his record. He’d use all that, her past – he wouldn’t hesitate.’
‘Pete, did Mazz ever talk to you about dying?’
‘What?’
‘Exactly that – did she ever talk about dying? Death.’
His eyes didn’t leave her face for a moment. ‘What are you saying? That she spoke to him about it? Cory?’ His voice was rising quickly. ‘For fuck’s sake, Rowan – did she talk to him about suicide? Did he know she was going to . . . ?’
‘No. No. That’s not what he said. He just said it was a subject she came back to a lot. I think it was because of the anorexics, that it made her think about . . .’
‘If he knew – if he was pushing her, mining her for . . .’ Turk stood up from the table, the legs of his chair screeching against the floor.
‘Stop it!’ Rowan’s voice came out louder than she’d planned. ‘Just stop it, Pete,’ she said more quietly. He was radiating anger; it came off him like a heat haze over tarmac. ‘Come on – sit down.’
His breathing was high and shallow, and he glared at her for several seconds before capitulating and reaching for the chair.
‘I asked him specifically,’ she said when Turk was sitting. ‘I called him on it. He knew about the breakdown, obviously: it was in the newspapers, even if she hadn’t told him herself – which, for the record, she had. I asked him if she’d ever seemed suicidal and he said no.’
Turk considered that. ‘And was he telling the truth? You believed him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because if . . .’
Rowan put up a hand. ‘He told me about Greta Mulraine,’ she said. ‘Straight up, unprompted.’ She saw surprise cross Turk’s face. ‘He said he knew what suicidal looked like. Actually, he asked me if I thought he was the kind of person who would do that, know someone was desperate and stand by. He asked if I thought he was a monster.’
‘And do you?’
She paused. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not like that.’
‘What was Marianne’s costume?’
‘Her what?’
‘For the party, when she borrowed the cufflinks.’
‘Oh, right.’ Turk nodded. ‘Al Capone. It was gangsters and molls.’
Rowan remembered Marianne standing in front of the long mirror in her parents’ room forcing a safety pin through the back of a cardboard dog collar.
‘I’m not dressing like a stripper just because Martin decided it was fancy dress. Tarts and vicars? What is he, a middle-aged swinger?’
‘That’s my girl,’ said Rowan. She picked up the mugs and carried them to the sink. ‘I had a look for them yesterday. I don’t know if she had a jewellery box – she never used to – but there weren’t any cufflinks in the tray on her dresser, which seemed like the obvious place. Or her bedside table – there are some bits and pieces in the top drawer. Maybe they got mixed up with Seb’s – his things are still there, in their old room.’
‘All right. Thanks for trying, anyway. Okay if I run up and have a quick look?’
‘Of course.’ She turned the tap on then glanced over her shoulder. ‘You’ve got the advantage of knowing what you’re looking for.’
She washed the coffee pot and put it on the rack to dry, trying to think. In that momentary glance, she’d seen something odd though she hadn’t quite registered what it was. When the last of the water gurgled away, she stood still, hands on the edge of the sink, and listened for movement in the house overhead. Nothing – silence.