Free Lethal Profit by Alex Blackmore

mean?’
    â€˜I’m sorry, I don’t know all the English. My English is not that good.’ Valerie pushed the ashtray away in apparent frustration.
    â€˜What kind of ugly?’
    â€˜Mentally ugly. In his mind.’
    â€˜Violent?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    Eva felt the colour slowly drain from her face as Valerie quietly finished her coffee.
    â€˜Did he hurt you?’
    Valerie looked at Eva for a second and dropped her eyes. ‘No.’
    Well, at least that was something.
    â€˜But I thought he might.’
    â€˜When did he start to change?’
    â€˜Maybe three weeks before he killed himself.’
    â€˜Right.’ Suddenly Eva had lost her appetite. She pushed away the remainder of her food.
    â€˜I did care for him, Eva.’
    They stared at each other and then Valerie looked away. Eva followed her gaze to the street outside and suddenly realised that, around the two women caught up in this tragedy, life just carried on. No one else felt the aching bruise of the loss, and no one cared. They all had their own problems.
    Suddenly Valerie began to speak again. ‘Just before he disappeared we had a lot of fights. I thought he had gone that day because of the fighting.’
    â€˜What, just walked out?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜I searched his mobile phone a couple of times.’ Valerie looked down at the table. ‘I know it’s not… the right thing to do… but I was desperate. I had heard him on the telephone in our flat – we had two handsets and, when I picked the other up, it was always a woman’s voice. Each time I listened he would suddenly hang up as if he knew I was there. So I looked at his mobile.’
    â€˜So he was cheating on you too?’ Eva remembered the photo Leon had shown her that seemed to show Valerie spying on Jackson. This could well explain her suspicious behaviour. She considered mentioning it but thought better of it.
    â€˜I think he was. He wouldn’t tell me who it was on the phone. He said that I would have to trust him.’
    Eva raised an eyebrow. It still all sounded a bit cloak and dagger for Jackson.
    â€˜I have seen men do this, Eva.’ Valerie’s voice suddenly became hard, her face almost flint-like. ‘When they cheat, they lie. They don’t care what the lie is that they tell, they just lie to save themselves. It has happened before. I can read the signs.’
    The waiter came and cleared the table and Eva watched Valerie who seemed to be unable to look her in the eye. She keenly remembered her own family’s shame when her father’s affair with Irene Hunt had been revealed. It was all a sixteen-year-old Eva could do to stop her mother hurling him down the stairs. She had never seen anger like that which she had witnessed in her mother’s bright blue eyes during that time. After that the light had gone out of them altogether.
    â€˜Did you confront him?’
    â€˜Yes. He told me he wished I would just trust him and that I was making his life more difficult by asking so many questions. I tried to ignore it, but it was always there.’
    â€˜So, what happened?’
    â€˜I looked through his phone numbers and texts and found a message from a French number – “Sophie”. No surname.’
    â€˜What did the message say?’
    â€˜3pm. Sacré Coeur. As usual.’
    â€˜Did you go there?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Didn’t you want to find out what was going on?’
    â€˜No,’ Valerie repeated determinedly.
    Eva stared at her, nonplussed. Her mother had wanted to know everything about her father’s affair. Even though each word seemed to wound more, she wouldn’t let her father stop until she knew where, how long and why. Although he had never been able to answer the last question.
    â€˜Do you know anything about Sophie?’ asked Valerie suddenly.
    Eva looked up, surprised, as Valerie asked the question.