‘I don’t know any more than he does,’ Gibbs told her.
‘Jemma was with you lot when Marianne was killed, though, yes? At the station? Sam said she sent Paddy a text saying she was heading there at around 4.45.’
‘You seem to know as much as I do,’ said Gibbs. ‘Maybe more. Do you know why Jemma went to the police?’
Suzanne made a brisk, dismissive noise. ‘Never mind that,’ she said. ‘Someone around here needs to start thinking about Oliver Mayo in relation to what’s just happened.’
Gibbs knew who Mayo was: he’d briefly been suspected of the attempted murder of Marianne Upton in November 2012.Bonus: two unsolved crimes for the price of one.‘We’ve hit the jackpot today,’ Sam had said sarcastically, but Gibbs had heard a determination in his voice that wasn’t normally there.He knew how much Sam wanted to be able to present the super with two solves – one current, one cold – before he left for Lincolnshire.
‘I heard Sam and Colin talking about Ollie before Sam left,’ Suzanne said. Gibbs wished she’d stop with the Christian names, like she was a primary school teacher and they were kids in her class. ‘They seem to think he’s in the clear again – lucky old him. Same exact line as 2012: psychotherapy session with a client at his practice in Cambridge. All sounds very provable, doesn’t it?’
‘Meaning?’ asked Gibbs.
‘Genuine question,’ said Suzanne. ‘How many psychotherapists or people who’ve had therapy do you know personally?’
Gibbs thought about it, then answered truthfully: ‘One.’
‘I know quite a few,’ said Suzanne. ‘Clients who think the therapy’s really helped them tend to be excessivelyworshipful of their shrinks. We’re talking levels of gratitude that might well extend to fake alibi provision. So … if you want my honest opinion? I’ve never been convinced by the “Ollibi”, as I call it – Ollie Mayo’s alibi from 2012. Marianne said, “Oliver” when Jemma asked her who’d tried to kill her, when she could hardly speak. Jemma was the one who found her, after the attack.’
‘Why would Oliver Mayo want to kill Marianne?’ asked Gibbs.
‘In 2012? Don’t know. This time?’ Suzanne smiled. ‘Maybe he’d finally got sick of whatever twisted game it was that the two of them were playing.’
Even from the top floor of Devey House, the smell of lasagne was strong. Sellers knew it was pointless trying to resist; Suzanne Lacy had told him, with no equivocation, that she was a brilliant cook, and he’d never been the best at exercising willpower. He was supposed to be vegan these days, but he hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and was hungry enough be having doom-laden thoughts about how awful it must feel to be actually, truly starving if it felt this bad to be as hungry as he was, after having had only a sandwich and a small cake for his lunch.
He’d be fine. There was no way Sondra, his girlfriend, could find out he’d eaten meat if he didn’t tell her, and he was more likely to chop off his own head than ever do that.
Paddy Stelling appeared behind him. ‘I heard footsteps and I thought it might be Lottie,’ he said, looking past Sellers and through the open door to what had once been Marianne Upton’s study. ‘She really stripped it back, didn’t she?’ he said.
‘First time you’ve seen it like this?’ Sellers asked him.
Paddy nodded. ‘Jemma described it to me. She saw it in July and it was empty then. She wanted to show me – brought me up here once when we came round to see Gareth, and Marianne was out, but the door was locked.’
‘Why lock up an empty room?’ Sellers wondered aloud. He was grimly fascinated by the gutted study with the non-matching windows. He’d come up here as much to get another look atit as to avoid the smell of lasagne in the hope of preserving his veganism. The whole house seemed filled with a haunted, hollow atmosphere, as if nothing inside it was quite real, but this room was the only one that looked exactly like the feeling Sellers had had ever since arriving here.
‘Don’t know.’ Paddy shrugged, shifting from one foot to the other. He had a typically square-jawed ‘handsome man’ face, fair hair, golden stubble. Sellers didn’t doubt that most women would find him attractive, if a little on the short side – that was assuming there was still anything most women agreed about these days, which, from what Sondra had told Sellers, there wasn’t.
Having taken a few steps in the direction of downstairs, Paddy changed his mind and turned back. ‘Jemma texted me earlier, saying she was going to speak to the police.’
‘Right.’ Sellers waited.
‘Marianne hadn’t been killed, though, when she sent the text. I heard Gareth say she was killed between 5.20 and 5.30, so why would Jemma think to go and speak to the police before that? I mean … did she? Do you know where she was when Marianne was stabbed?’
This was unexpected. ‘Are you saying you suspect your wife of murder?’ Sellers asked him.
‘No.’ Paddy looked confused. ‘Just that … I’m not exactly sure where she was when Marianne was killed, and … well, I know where everyone else was. Gareth was here, in a Zoom meeting. Me and Lotts were at home – and Gareth can tell you that, too. He saw us in our kitchen when he FaceTimed to tell us the news. It’d be nice to know for sure where Jemma was, that’s all.’
He couldn’t have done a better job of implicating her if he’d tried, though Sellers was certain that wasn’t his intention. Ashrewder man than Paddy Stelling might have worked out that seeking reassurance that his wife isn’t a killer from a detective involved in a murder investigation is a dangerous route to take.
‘Did Jemma have a reason to want to kill Marianne?’ Sellers asked.
Paddy’s face tweaked in apparent irritation, as if an annoying fly had buzzed past his nose – something distracting and not worth bothering with. Without answering, he turned and headed downstairs.
Sellers was about to follow him when he heard a noise. It might have been someone whispering, and had come from behind the half-closed door of Gareth Upton’s home office, the only other room on the house’s top floor, across the landing from Marianne’s empty study. Sellers walked in and found Lottie Stelling sitting cross-legged on the floor, next to a gigantic computer, as big as Sondra’s orange Smeg fridge at home.
‘What are you doing up here?’ he asked her.
She stood up immediately, as if he’d said it was illegal to sit on the floor. ‘Nothing. What were you doing in Granny’s room?’
