The Lazarus Hotel by Jo Bannister Page B

happen. I was busy. I expect she was too.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Then it was too late. I picked up the paper one day and she was dead, killed in an accident. She only twenty-six.’
    Something odd was happening. The silence was no longer a polite absence of chatter while she spoke. It had become an entity in itself, huge and oppressive, squatting in their midst like a great toad, using up the air. Waiting for it to end was like waiting for a volcano to erupt.
    Miriam scanned their expressions, reading shock and pain in equal proportions. Sheelagh merely looked puzzled at the electric silence she had provoked. Larry, his jaw clenched like a clam, showed no emotion at all.
    Will’s voice was as bloodless as his cheek. ‘A road accident. She died in a road accident.’
    Richard shook his head. ‘A car accident. She drove into the Thames.’
    Startled as if the ground had moved under her, Sheelagh looked from one to the other. ‘You knew her? Cathy?’ Her eyes hardened, sank claws into Richard’s face. ‘The woman who drowned was Cathy Beacham?’
    Richard nodded a numb assent.
    Her eyes scored him, moved on to Will. ‘You knew her too?’
    â€˜I loved her.’ Cracks appeared in his voice. ‘She drove into the river? – I never knew that. I was – out of the country when it happened.’ The fractional pause where none was called for hit Richard like a blow. With a certainty born of years listening for such clues he thought, He’s lying! Why on earth is he lying? What the hell is going on here?
    â€˜When I got back—’ For some moments Will couldn’t continue but no one jumped into the hiatus. They waited for him to regain control. ‘My secretary told me. She said Cathy died in her car. I assumed it was a crash. But it was suicide?’ His voice climbed.
    Richard nodded soberly. ‘That was the finding at the inquest.’
    Sheelagh was on her feet in the circle, her short fuse burning dangerously close to detonation. Her eyes found Miriam. ‘You don’t expect us to believe this is a coincidence? Two total strangers sharing an acquaintance I could just about swallow, but three?’
    â€˜Four,’ Tariq said emptily. ‘I knew Cathy too. I represented her for a time.’ He reached inside his jacket, drew out the letter with his picture photocopied on to it. ‘That’s her, that I had my arm around. We were celebrating her first sponsorship.’
    They looked. It could have been anyone, just the shoulder and sleeve of a white dress. It wasn’t possible to tell the age of the occupant, or even that she was black.
    As if they were playing poker, Will matched Tariq’s picture with his own. ‘She was in that one too. It was taken in Paris, the weekend we got engaged. She gave the camera to some children and they took it. She was on this side’ – he tapped with his fingertip at the uneven border – ‘with the Eiffel Tower behind her.’
    Richard’s letter made it three. ‘I don’t wear a suit that often so I’m pretty sure where it was taken. At the inquest.’
    â€˜And mine was taken at Beckenham when I went to cheer her on one summer,’ said Sheelagh. ‘Cathy took it. So who else? Larry? Joe? Tessa?’ None of them offered a contribution. Sheelagh’s voice became viperous. ‘Well, Larry, the one thing we know about you is that you’re a tennis bum. It would be pretty odd if you didn’t know her.’
    He wouldn’t answer. Will answered for him. ‘He knew her.’ The hatred that had startled Richard returned to thicken his voice. ‘He coached her. But only while it paid him. He used her, and he broke her, and when she was past mending he threw away the pieces. Not as if she was a person: as if she was a thing. A tool, something he used till it was done and he needed a new one.’ The words were running up