Angela found it strange to be sitting in this room when there was so much tennis going on a short distance away. Knowing that a place in the inside of this world might never come her way again, she decided to step outside in case any famous faces passed her. Just for the novelty of it, she told herself. As soon as she stepped through the door, a noise on her left made her turn. A flash of black, red and blonde was tearing towards her in a fury and ready to do battle.
“Ah! Miss Bannister,” said Angela, stopping abruptly to avoid cannoning into her.
“Are you the person in charge?”
“Yes indeed, I –”
“I was Petar’s partner.” Lavinia drew her head back, raised a pair of imperious eyebrows, and seemed to be trying to give the impression that she was looking down on Angela from a higher perspective. It didn’t work. “Why haven’t you been to interview me yet? I’ve been waiting for ages.”
Angela kept her tone neutral and pleasant. “I’ve just sent one of our officers to find you,” she said. “Would you come in here, please?”
Lavinia pursed her lips and waited a moment before following. Once inside, she gazed disdainfully around before sitting on the chair in front of the desk. Clearly she thought Angela should go to her for the interview, not the other way round.
Angela called Gary and asked him to come straight back. “Sorry about that,” she said, keeping her tone bright as she finished the call. “Just waiting for one of our chaps to come and take notes.” She leaned back in her seat. Start off as you mean to go on, Angela. You’re not going to be intimidated by her and she has to realize this.
She studied Lavinia as best she could without actually staring. She was about Angela’s height with an immaculate cut and coloured chin-length bob. Her Versace top just met the slender diamanté belt adorning tight Tommy Hilfiger denims, and a pair of Jimmy Choos on her spray-bronzed feet added the finishing touch. About a thousand pounds’ worth of bulging bag – Gucci? – hung from her left shoulder. Surveying the under-eye bags, the hollow temples and fine lines etched around her mouth, Angela thought Lavinia had lived on salad and not much else for a very long time. Vinni raised her hand to push back her hair with a nervous movement, reminding Angela of Patrick’s comments about airbrushing.
“I’m really not very impressed. I’ve been distraught,” said Lavinia with a disdainful sniff as she ran a hand jerkily through her hair.
“Yes, I saw that,” replied Angela, deliberately making her voice mild and gentle. She hoped the other woman would take her comment in the sympathetic manner intended, but Lavinia obviously didn’t because she stiffened immediately, fixing Angela with a look of suspicion.
“Are you taking the mickey?” she asked.
Angela allowed a beat to pass before speaking. “No,” she said, keeping her voice quiet and kind. “I saw in the papers where you said you were distraught. And let’s face it, it’s hardly surprising.”
“Oh yes.” Lavinia sank back, somewhat abashed. She seemed to need something to do with her hands as she constantly clenched and unclenched them. Eventually she pulled her shoulder bag onto her lap, took out a gold cigarette case and held it out on her palm as if in query.
“Please do,” said Angela. She didn’t smoke herself but had no objection to witnesses doing so if it helped them to relax. No doubt club rules forbade this but she wasn’t about to tell. Lavinia took out a cigarette with one hand and was still riffling through her bag looking for a light with the other when the door opened and Gary came in. He settled himself on the seat in the corner and got out his notebook. Angela coughed and sat up straighter to indicate that they should now start talking in earnest. But suddenly Lavinia threw her bag to the ground, dropped her head forward into her hands with an angry, almost violent movement and let out a gasp of anguished frustration.
“No light?” guessed Angela. Lavinia raised her head and looked at her. Tears glistened on her eyelids and her face crumpled.
“He’s dead,” she sobbed. “She’s killed him.” She burst into a paroxysm of weeping.
Her sobbing was the only sound in the room as Angela and Gary exchanged glances over the thin shoulders and shaking mass of perfectly coiffed hair.
After a couple of moments, Angela stood up and went round to the front of the desk. She sat on the edge of it and waited until the sobbing had subsided to a series of sniffs before she spoke in a gentle voice.
“Are you OK to continue? Would you like us to get you a cup of tea or coffee or something?”
“No, no.” Lavinia shook her head and, glancing at Gary who was rising from his chair, waved away the offer. She pulled a tissue out of her bag and brought it up to her eyes. “It’s OK. I’m OK… I’m OK.” She dabbed at her eyes before looking Angela full in the face. “It’s OK. I can talk.”
“Well, then,” said Angie, still speaking calmly and quietly. “How about we start with the bombshell you just dropped. Who are you accusing of killing Petar?”
Lavinia sniffed again and opened her eyes wide. “Well, isn’t it obvious? His bitch of an ex-wife, that’s who!”
“Ah.” Angela went back to her chair and sat down. She decided not to bother pointing out that Una Belic wasn’t an ex. “What makes you think Mrs Belic killed Petar?”
A hint of panic appeared behind Lavinia’s eyes. She opened her mouth but, seeming to find nothing to say, snapped it shut again on another sniff. After a few moments she tried again.
“It’s a case of ‘if I can’t have him nobody will’,” she said finally. “She won’t let him go and can’t bear the thought of him being happy with anyone else.” There was a pause. “At least I’m being interviewed by the police first. See how she likes that!”
Angela was very aware of Gary raising his eyebrows at this. She looked carefully at the woman facing her. Late thirties, she thought, but aiming at twenty. She ran over in her mind what she knew of Lavinia from the media. The words “party animal” and “glitterati” came immediately to mind. But she funded that lavish lifestyle somehow, and Angela had no reason to suppose that Lavinia wasn’t a clever publicist with a full client list. The fact that her face was as well known – and maybe in some cases better known – than her clients was just one of those things. There was no law that said a publicist couldn’t enjoy the limelight.
“OK.” There was nothing for it but to play the whole thing straight. “Do you have any evidence to suppose that Una Belic killed Petar?”
Another sniff. Lavinia dabbed at her nose. “Well, that’s your job, surely. You’ll find that, won’t you? There must be some.”
Angela suppressed a sigh. “Oh, I can assure you that we’ll be looking for evidence. But I would like to know the reason behind your accusation.” Angela kept her voice low.
Lavinia blinked, put her unlighted cigarette in her mouth and took it out again. “He was going to come home with me. But he texted her from the restaurant and then he changed his mind about me and… and… well, now he’s dead.” She looked with a kind of defiance into Angela’s face as if to say “so that just proves it”. Angela directed her gaze towards Gary so that Lavinia wouldn’t be in any doubt that the conversation had been properly recorded. Gary seemed to sense her eyes on him because when he had finished he looked up and nodded.
“Got that, guv.”
Angela nodded and turned back to Lavinia. “Thank you, Miss Bannister,” she said. “I can assure you we will be looking into it.”
Passing on her suspicions, or at least her hopes, seemed to settle Lavinia a little. She put the cigarette back into the case and almost relaxed.
“Can you tell me, when was the last time you saw Petar?”
“Sunday evening; we had a meal together.”
“Where was this?”
“That French-type place in the village – welcome, The Big Welcome.” She focused. “Le Grand Acceuil.”
Angela knew the answer to the next question but asked it anyway. “And this was just the two of you?”
“Well, er…” Lavinia subsided a little in her chair. “No,” she said finally, in a small voice. “Other people were there as well.”
“The others being…?” Angela prepared to tick off the names in her head as Lavinia went through them.
“Er… Petar, of course; Stewart, Candy, Joanna – very odd that – and Philip.”
“What was odd?”
Lavinia gave a derisive little smile followed by another sniff. “Well, both Candy and Joanna being there together like that. I’ve known Stewart for years and we’re pretty good friends. He confides in me so I know for certain that he’s broken up with Joanna but there she was in the restaurant. I mean, clinging on or what? Some women just don’t know when to let go. She must have been taking lessons from Una.”
Her tone grated on Angela, but she remembered how Patrick had had some sympathy for her and realized that Lavinia was probably just building herself up against the eventual reality that she was, indeed, out in the cold. She let it pass. “How come Joanna was included in the invitation?”
“Oh, I expect Philip invited her. He’s a bit of a softy, Philip. He would want everyone to be friends. He also probably felt sorry for her. She’s been going around lately like the weight of the whole world is on her shoulders and it’s been quite a drag. I’m not surprised that Stewart split from her. And as for her game… I wouldn’t be surprised if she finds herself back in the satellites soon; I mean, is it off or is it off?”
Again Angela declined to be drawn into the mean and pitiable disparagement. “How was Petar during the meal?” she asked.
“Just normal.”
“Cheerful? Preoccupied? Quiet? Chatty?”
“Just normal.” Lavinia’s face began to crumple and she raised a tissue to her nose to deal with yet another sniff.
“I’m afraid I have to ask these questions.”
Lavinia flicked her hand to and fro in a rapid gesture. “Yes, yes, I understand. It’s OK.”
“I believe you left before the end of the meal,” she said.
Lavinia’s eyes opened wide and narrowed again immediately, her gaze hardening on Angela’s face. Angela glimpsed the sharp perspicacity that had built her sports promotion agency. “Yes. I had a headache.”
“I’ll need your address, please,” said Angela, keeping her tone as neutral as possible.
Lavinia gave a derisive snort. “Yes, well I’m sure you’ve already gathered that it’s not the same as Petar’s,” she snapped. “She saw to that, of course.” Angela raised her eyebrows. “Managed to persuade him that it wasn’t good for the children to see Daddy shacked up with another woman. That’s how she kept her claws in him, through those whingeing brats. ‘We need to think about Milan going into the sixth form, Petar’, ‘Lucija’s very nervous about senior school, Petar’,” Lavinia mimicked what Angela took to be Una Belic’s voice. “They came round to visit him a lot and Mummy didn’t want her darlings seeing my knickers about the place or my make-up in the bathroom cabinet. Ha! Can you believe that in this day and age?”
Angela could believe it only too well and was privately of the opinion that she would have felt exactly the same in Una Belic’s position. “So you went back to your own flat. Did you take your own car, or a taxi?”
“I didn’t have my car with me that day and the restaurant was quite near the underground. It wasn’t too late, so I took that,” said Lavinia. Angela nodded and hid her surprise. She had classified Lavinia as someone who would consider public transport beneath her. Her heart sank at the implications. If they had to verify a journey home on public transport it would be much more arduous than tracing a cab fare. They had nearly finished the interview now, to Angela’s relief. Lavinia’s wire-taut energy and venom sapped her will to live.
“And, just for the record, you spent the night alone?”
“Yes, of course!” spat Lavinia, apparently enraged at having to spell it out. She immediately seemed to realize that she was being unfair and qualified her answer. “That’s why I didn’t have my car. I had thought Petar would be driving me back to my place.”
“Was that the arrangement between you?”
“What?”
“Had you and Petar agreed to do that?”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Well, yes, of course. What else would he have done? Of course he’d take me back home.”
The silence in the room was suddenly very eloquent. It was saying, But he didn’t, did he? You left the restaurant before the meal was over. “Silly me,” continued Lavinia. “I should have known better. I’ve been spending most nights alone lately, ever since she…” She broke off and let her gaze linger for a long moment on Angela’s wedding ring. “Well, anyway… what would you know about going home to a lonely flat?”
Angela had spent all of her twenties and most of her thirties as a single woman and suspected that she’d forgotten more about going home to a lonely flat than Lavinia had yet learned. But it wasn’t relevant to the investigation and anyway, she was a police inspector, not an agony aunt. She thanked Lavinia for her time and cooperation, said she might need to speak to her again and breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed behind her.
“Phew,” said Gary, voicing Angela’s own feelings.
“I’ll say. It’s interesting, though, that she accused Una Belic.”
“Wasn’t it just hot air? Or maybe,” Gary grinned, “wishful thinking.”
“Or projection.”
“Guv?”
“Well, she thought it an acceptable hypothesis that Una would kill Petar because she didn’t want anyone else to have him. We could just as easily apply that reasoning to Lavinia.”
“Ah yes, I get it. So she’s in the frame, then?”
“Oh, most definitely; the distraught grief could be all part of the act – and she’s got no alibi.”
“Hmm, bit dodgy that, from our point of view; going home on the underground.”
“Yes, indeed. I wouldn’t give odds on our chances of finding a witness. Although you never know. She would stand out in a crowd and she’s often in the papers.” Angela took a deep breath. “Let’s talk to the rest of the people who went to this restaurant. Will you see if Philip Turnbull’s at the club and, if so, ask him if he could spare us a few minutes, please?”
Once Gary had set out on his errand, Angela sat and pieced together what she knew about Lavinia Bannister. She remembered Patrick’s description of her coming to view Petar at the coroner’s mortuary. “Hyper” – that’s how he described her and, having met her, Angela felt inclined to agree. She had only a very fragile control of herself but her manner hid a sharp intelligence; no way could she be dismissed as an airhead.
“Well, that’s Lavinia done. Now I need to meet the third person in this triangle,” she said out loud to herself. She entered the number she had been given for Una Belic, thinking all the time about the contrast between the two women. “Oh, hello,” she said, as the phone was picked up at the other end. “Am I speaking to Una Belic?”
“You are,” came the answer in a soft voice carrying unmistakable undertones of the Emerald Isle.
Angela quickly made her request and was assured that Una would be at home the following day and would be able to see her at any time in the afternoon. Angela thanked her, finished the call and stared into the middle distance as she waited for Gary.
It was impossible to tell from such a brief telephone conversation, of course, but Una Belic sounded stable and well adjusted. Petar, by all accounts and her own observations, had been an upright, model citizen. It was very odd that he’d been drawn to the train wreck that was Lavinia. The whole business of the meal on Sunday was equally intriguing. Petar had been texting his wife while sitting in a restaurant next to his girlfriend. Did men usually do that?