A wave of noisy busyness reached for them as they left the TV studio behind, welcoming them from that sterile vacuum back to real life. The production assistant marched along as though they only paid her for the minutes she spent by the cameras.
A flick of a glance to her right stopped Eva. She took a step towards the glass wall that separated the open plan office from the corridor. The world disappeared. Except for the computer screen that displayed the photo no child should ever see. The last one taken of her father.
Eva’s heart rammed a whirling churning through her. She closed her eyes against the hammer blow of his loss. But the image had been inscribed on her mind, the betrayal in that moment when he—
A banging on the glass shocked her back to the present, the production assistant gesturing furiously at the desktop user. The photo winked to a minimised icon.
“Sorry about that. They’re waiting for you, hurry up. Must be serious if they’ve tracked you down here.”
Eva followed on not quite steady legs. “Can I—”
“No time, in here.” The production assistant flicked a sliding sign so the door proclaimed the room was occupied. She pushed it open and Eva saw that it was, by a man looking at a complicated coffee machine and a woman sitting at the table writing in a small notebook. “Right, I’ll leave you to it.” She slammed the door.
“Eva Janssen?” The woman’s dressed for anything dark suit gave no hints about what must be serious.
Eva nodded, trying to catch up. The woman pulled something out of the inside pocket of the parka drying on the back of the chair next to her.
“DC April Truman.” Her warrant card.
“DI Elliott Smith.” The man held up what was presumably an identical ID, though Eva couldn’t read it from where she was. “We need a word.”
2
Police at the TV studios to talk to her? Eva grabbed at the back of the closest chair. “My family? What’s happened? Lily and Charles, are they okay?”
“We’re not here about them.” DC Truman gestured at the chair opposite her. “We’d like to talk about your relationship with Eric Hill.”
“Eric Hill?” Eva parroted, as if she didn’t know who he was.
“Please sit.” DC Truman waited.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“Do you?” With grey eyes and light brown skin, DI Smith was arresting to look at. A quip like that, Eva should have been seeing BBC comedy. He watched her as though he could read her stupid thought. She felt herself flushing, not the time. Hopefully, he wasn’t as hard as his shaved head claimed. A man used to getting results that much she recognised from being married to one.
“It’s your right, we’d be happy to meet them at the station. That makes it more formal then.” DC Truman stood up, making Eva decide what she wanted. “Right now we just have a couple of questions.”
Eva took her time pulling the chair out, sitting. Why were the police asking about Eric? The back leant too far backwards; she fidgeted upright, perched on the edge of the cold wooden seat.
DC Truman sat down, pen poised. “What’s your relationship with Mr Hill?”
“We don’t have one.”
“Yet you saw him yesterday.”
“Yes, I did, I mean before then I hadn’t seen him for years.”
“Why would he note your appearance here in his calendar then?” It wasn’t so much her question that sideswiped Eva, or even that Eric had noted this—had he wanted to ask her again, persuade her to change her mind?—but how had the police got access to it? And why?
DC Truman might seem young—dark hair caught up in a probably more messy than regulation bun, no make-up, fresh-faced, serious brown eyes—but her gaze was sharp, hard to not squirm beneath.
“I have no idea.” Eva’s brain was still playing catch-up, the sense she was searching for lost beneath the glimpse of that photo. “Maybe he wanted to watch me make a fool of myself on national TV?”
“You have that kind of relationship?” DC Truman’s pen was busy.
“We used to work together. Apart from yesterday, I haven’t seen him for years.”
“You said that already.” DI Smith threw the remark over his shoulder, as though he was only interested in the huge pink and blue neon scribble sign on the end wall he was now examining. “Why yesterday?”
“Has something happened?”
He turned around to watch her reaction. “Mr Hill died last night.”
“Died? But he, we were, he was good.” Eric dead, how was that possible? “How?”
“Did you get on?”
“Yes, we did. What—”
“Why did you stop working with him?”
“I left to set up my charity. What happened?”
“What did you talk about?” DI Smith continued his rapid-fire questions, strolling around the room as though the answers were inconsequential. He had to be aware of who Eric worked for, but Eva couldn’t confirm it.
She fished for something to convince, but she only had what she couldn’t say. “It’s not, it’s so hard to take in. He was only in his forties.” Which left a disturbing truth. “Was it an accident?”
“What did you do when you worked together?” DI Smith pressed.
“Nothing special, we analysed data, wrote reports.” Eva caught herself glancing away. Look him in the eye, own the lie.
“Had his family situation changed?”
Eva shrugged. “I don’t think so, we—”
Should she say they hadn’t done small talk like normal people? Wouldn’t that lead to more questions she couldn’t answer? The detectives waited.
Eric dead on British soil. Gordon could tell her what she couldn’t ask the police.
“You were the last person to see him alive.” DC Truman fixed her with that uncomfortable gaze again. DI Smith was training her well.
“Apart from the people in the street when we left—”
“You were the last person to see him alive who knew him. Why do you think that is?”
“We what?” DI Smith had reached her side in his slow checking out of the meeting room. “You said ‘I don’t think so, we’, we what?”
Sorry, Eric, but they’ll find out anyway. “Eric’s an
