Page 194 of Private Lives

‘Remember what Louise Allerton told me about Amy? That she’d found Peter sobbing about a friend’s death. He told her he thought it was his fault.’ Anna looked up at Amir, desperate for answers. ‘How can that be?’

Amir shrugged. ‘I don’t know yet.’

‘So what else do we know about Douglas Faulks?’

‘We know it was a tragic death. Lots of people in the City thought that Faulks had been set up. You know, let one man take the blame instead of the entire company.’

‘He should have got himself a better publicist,’ she said sombrely.

‘Pogex have a good PR company. Auckland PR. They are usually experts at keeping bad news out of the media, although they had a job on their hands stopping the Pogex Oil share price going into freefall. They act for Dallincourt Engineering Services as well. They are the bigger client actually, as Pogex are a relatively small oil company.’

‘Auckland PR?’ Anna repeated. She’d heard that name in the last few days. She took a minute to think where. ‘Auckland’s chairman. What’s he called?’ she said, remembering.

‘Paul Morgan.’

‘No, not him.’

‘Simon Cooper? He’s the CEO.’

‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘Apparently he’s having an affair with our senior partner Helen Pierce.’

Anna felt her whole body tingle as she connected all the evidence. She began to think out loud while Amir started furiously writing her thought processes down on his whiteboard.

‘Simon Cooper acts for Dallincourt. Peter Rees, who works for Dallincourt, thinks he is responsible for Douglas Faulks’s death. Amy Hart is blackmailing Rees, possibly about Douglas’s death. Amy is found dead but the story goes largely unnoticed because of the Sam Charles affair.’

For a second she hardly dared think where this was all leading, but one glance at Amir told her that he had made the connection too.

‘I think we know who leaked your Sam Charles story,’ he said quietly.

She closed her eyes and nodded, knowing that she had come here to solve one mystery, and had somehow solved two.

61

Despite the bucolic surroundings of his country estate, Sam Charles was feeling thoroughly miserable. He walked down from the house, kicking listlessly at stones on the winding path through the gardens. It was a perfect summer’s day, with a cloudless pebble-blue sky and the smell of cut grass coming from the striped lawns. The gardener had also made a fine job of tidying up the flower beds, and in the soft sunshine, the bright sunflowers and nodding delphiniums looked like a display from the Chelsea Flower Show. Yet Sam couldn’t find pleasure in any of it; he was determined to wallow in self-pity, however cheerful the world looked. The source of his dark mood – as ever, he thought bitterly – was women. Specifically, one woman: Anna Kennedy. He had assumed that a down-to-earth lawyer might be easier to work out than his previous actress girlfriends. But clearly not. She was neurotic, paranoid and completely baffling. As least you knew where you stood with actresses like Jessica; you just needed to shower them with constant attention, gifts and compliments and agree with everything they said. But Anna was at the opposite end of the spectrum: fiercely independent and apparently impervious to flattery and Sam’s not inconsiderable charm.

I mean, what right-minded woman wouldn’t want to come and spend the weekend at a luxurious Wiltshire manor with me? thought Sam, pulling the head off a flower as he walked past. After all, he’d thought his fledgling romance with Anna was going so well. He’d certainly been pulling the stops out – calling when he said he would, inviting her to Provence after she had won that libel trial. So when he’d asked her to come to Wiltshire for the weekend after their trip to Mougins, he had assumed that she would jump at the chance of spending the bank holiday in his bed. Instead she had made some vague excuses about having to work.

Of course, Sam did suspect she was still miffed from their argument in the restaurant – and yes, perhaps his suggestion that the only reason he had helped her with the Amy Hart case was because he fancied her hadn’t helped much – but he knew the real reason she’d turned him down was to attend James Swann’s party.

A cabbage white butterfly flitted across the path and Sam threw the flower head at it. Amy bloody Hart. He just couldn’t understand why Anna cared so much about some dead party girl. No, correction: he couldn’t understand why she cared more about Amy Hart than about him.

He walked over to the grass tennis court, hidden in the shade of a large spreading copper beech. Setting up the ball machine, he took a spot on the opposite baseline and practised his forehand, slamming each ball angrily yet accurately across court. Then, feeling a little better, he sat down on a wooden bench, wiping his face with a cold towel he pulled from the little ice box next to his seat.

Why am I even bothering with a woman at this point in my life? he thought, leaning his head back to look up through the branches and leaves of the tree. Yes, Anna Kennedy was a great girl, smart, very sexy, but she was definitely too uptight for him. And yet . . . and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about how lovely she’d looked in that blue dress in Provence. How great she smelled, how enthusiastic she was when he’d told her about his script ideas. He’d never met a woman who was so supportive on the one hand, but so single-minded about what she wanted to do. Sam just couldn’t work her out one bit, and that possibly added to her appeal.

Sighing, he reached back into the little fridge and cracked open a bottle of cold lemonade. Just then, his mobile phone began vibrating in his pocket. Tutting, he pulled it out.

‘Yes?’

‘Hey, Mr Sunshine, how’s things in England?’

Sam recognised Jim Parker’s voice immediately and softened his tone.

‘Sorry, Jim,’ he said, taking a long drink. ‘Just a bit distracted. B

een concentrating on the script since I’ve been back here.’

‘Is that why I haven’t been able to get hold of you since last Friday?’