Free Death in Dark Waters by Patricia Hall Page B

interview which had been promised by Grantley Adams, only to have the man brush her off without a word of apology at five o’clock as he strode angrily out of the hospital, stonyfaced and unbending. His wife, a fragile-looking woman much younger than her grey-haired husband, who had been following almost at a run, hesitated when she saw Laura with her tape-recorder at the ready.
    â€œWe can’t stop now,” she said. “Grantley has a meeting in half an hour he can’t miss.”
    â€œHow’s Jeremy?” Laura had asked, but the boy’s mother had shrugged wearily, pushing wisps of what Laura guessed would usually be elegantly coiffed hair out of her eyes.
    â€œThere’s no change,” she said, and scuttled after her husband who had glanced back impatiently from the swing doors. She had tried calling the Adams family home a couple of times later but had only got an recorded message telling her that Grantley and Althea Adams and family were not available. Eventually she drove out to Broadley and parked outside the Adams’s substantial stone house, set well back from the road, and pressed the answerphone on the heavy iron gates. Somewhat to her surprise, Mrs. Adams responded and opened first the gates and then the front door. But it turned out to be an unsatisfactory encounter. Althea Adams had taken her into the kitchen and poured herself a gin and tonic which she drank quickly with shaking hands while she made Laura a coffee. Somewhere else in the house the sound of pop music indicated the presence of the Adams daughters but they did not appear and Jeremy’s mother seemed almost incoherent with anxiety.

    â€œI only came home because of the girls,” she had said. “I ought to be at the hospital. I shouldn’t really have let you in. Grantley would be furious …”
    â€œYour husband couldn’t have cancelled his meeting, with Jeremy so ill?” Laura asked curiously, but Mrs Adams simply shrugged.
    â€œIt was very important,” she said.
    â€œYou don’t work yourself,” Laura asked.
    â€œI used to before we were married. I was an accountant. I worked for Grantley for a couple of years, that’s how we met. But there’s no need now and with three children there’s a lot to do here.” She smiled faintly. “Grantley’s first wife had her own career but I don’t think that worked out very well. He’s a very demanding man. I should know. I worked for him before his divorce.”
    â€œAnd neither of you had any idea Jeremy was into drugs?”
    â€œNo of course not,” Mrs. Adams said sharply. But when Laura suggested that a profile of the family might help others in a similar situation, she panicked.
    â€œGrantley would hate that,” she said. “In fact he’d hate you being here. Perhaps you’d better go now.”
    And with that Laura had to be content, although she knew it would in no way satisfy Ted Grant’s desire for an in-depth interview for the next morning’s first edition. But before she could get too broody about the fragile state of her career, her mobile rang and she heard her grandmother’s voice again, full of emotion.
    â€œHave you got time to come up to the Project after work, pet?” Joyce asked. “I won’t keep you long but there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Laura had smiled to herself as she agreed. Even at almost eighty her grandmother, with the bit between her teeth, was a formidable force. So for the second evening running she had ground her way up the steep hill to the Heights and picked her way across the puddled pathways to the Project where she found Joyce and Donna Maitland drinking tea with a
small dark man with deep pouches under fierce black eyes.
    â€œThis is Dr. Khan,” Donna said. “He wants to tell you about the drug problems up here.”
    â€œDonna tells me you’re going to write something in