‘Oh, God, the worst excesses of hippy bullshit. Mother was a drug addict who eventually died of an overdose, and his dad ran a martial arts school as well as a small publishing company – really tiny, books held together with staples in the middle kind of thing. I can’t remember its name. It was something really bonkers like, I don’t know, Lamp-post Pistachio Press. Not that, but not far off. They mainly published weird, political screeds, Jemma said. Ollie spent most of his childhood in a kind of commune-type house in Manchester where everyone slept with everyone else’s husband or wife and told themselves it would help to smash the bourgeoisie or some such crap.’
Gibbs felt grateful for his own dull childhood in Swindon: just him, his parents and his brother, doing nothing especially interesting or controversial.
‘Ollie’s dad had lots of interests, but being a dad wasn’t one of them,’ said Suzanne. ‘He buggered off when Ollie was three,then reappeared fourteen years later, saying, basically, “Soz I abandoned you, do you want to hang out now and then?” To which Ollie replied with an enthusiastic “Yes!”, but I mean, it really was just now and then, Jemma said. Christmases, Ollie’s birthday, that was it, pretty much. Ollie was always talking about how much he wanted Jemma to meet his dad, but the useless git kept cancelling on them. Look, I’m not saying Ollie didn’t want Jemma for her own sake, because he was clearly besotted from the get-go, but getting to be part of the Upton family would have been irresistible to him too, I reckon.’
‘So Paddy and Jemma were done,’ said Gibbs. ‘Ollie and Jemma started dating when?’
‘2005,’ said Suzanne. ‘And for a while – nearly six months – she seemed really happy with him. She and I had hundreds of discussions where we listed the trillions of ways in which Ollie was so much better than Paddy, but unfortunately Paddy hadn’t disappeared altogether. He was still popping up, getting in touch with Jemma every few months and when he did, of course, the inevitable always happened. Sex,’ Suzanne clarified. ‘God, I still get angry when I think about how that poor, beautiful ultimatum got trashed.’ She pressed the flat palm of her hand against the bottom of her neck. ‘Once or twice Paddy was even here, at the house, at the same timeas Ollie. Jemma spun it as “It’ll do him good to be introduced to my actual boyfriend as nothing more than a friend of the family”, but Paddy didn’t care how he was introduced as long as he got his shag later. I just kept thinking “Surely it’ll click into place for Jemma one day. Surely she’ll wake up one morning and think, ‘Of course, I cannot sleep with Paddy Stelling or think about him for one more second of my life, and look, here’s this lovely boyfriend who really appreciates me and treats me well …’” Ugh.’ Suzanne covered her face with her hands for a moment.
‘Did you tell her what you thought?’ Gibbs asked. He knew women cared more about their mates’ love lives than men did. Even so, it struck him as strange for Suzanne to be as obsessed with Jemma’s romantic machinations as she evidently was: Paddy was wrong for Jemma, Ollie was right for her – though not any more, because now he was a killer, if Suzanne was to be believed.
Gibbs tried to turn his misgivings about Suzanne into a suspicion that she might have killed Marianne Upton, but couldn’t. She, like everyone else, was provably somewhere else at the time: at work, and it was looking likely that this Tom Tulloch person Sam was liking for it was the one they were after – him and Jemma Stelling.
It was a bizarre story – just strange enough to be true, Gibbs thought. He didn’t believe in normal anything or anyone any more.
‘I told Jemma what I thought, yeah, for as long as she kept asking me,’ Suzanne said. ‘Then one day she said, “Guess what?”, and I knew immediately what it was from the excited, confused look on her face: Paddy had asked her to be his official girlfriend, at last. Thing is, she really did love Ollie by then, but … something weird must have happened in her love-addled brain, because, next thing I knew, she’d ended it with Ollie and she was Paddy’s girlfriend. She’d been so sure she’d never be able to have Paddy all to herself, and then suddenly she saw she could.’ Suzanne made a face that suggested unfortunate inevitability. ‘Never underestimate the allure of the unavailable.’
Or the anti-allure of a person you take for granted, who’s been a given in your life for as long as you can remember, Gibbs thought.
‘Fast-forward a bit more: Jemma and Paddy get married. Ollie makes no secret of the fact that he still loves Jemma andalways will – though to give him his due, he didn’t crowd her. Even said he hoped she and Paddy would be really happy together, but … yeah, he also said he loved her and if she ever wanted him, he’d be there. Here’s the thing …’ Suzanne leaned forward, nearly knocking over her mug of tea. ‘I don’t think Jemma’s love for Ollie ever really went away. It was like … for a while it got forced into hiding, but it never died. And soon she was living with Paddy day in, day out – which can’t have been anything but a very undramatic, uneventful nightmare – and Ollie was suddenly the one she wanted but couldn’t have. Ollie also had a career: brave fireman! He was dynamic, witty, and charming …’
And, according to you, a killer.
‘Anyway, long story short, Jemma got in touch with him in 2010, asked if he wanted to meet for a drink. Just as friends. Yeah, right! They ended up spending the night together, after which she rang me in tears, wailing about how Ollie was the one, and she had to be with him, right now. “Perfect!” I said. “Divorce Paddy, marry Ollie – all sorted.” And it would have been, if it weren’t for Marianne and the fact that Jemma was pregnant at the time, though she didn’t know she was when she slept with Ollie.’
‘Baby was definitely Paddy’s, then?’
Suzanne nodded. ‘Jemma and Paddy were living here at the time, with Marianne and Gareth. Paddy didn’t notice anything was amiss, but Marianne saw that something was very wrong with Jemma. Christ, that woman was like a KGB interrogator when she realised something was afoot that she didn’t know about. She bullied Jemma into confiding in her, then started weeping likeherheart had been broken – like, for hours, Jemma said. SheinsistedJemma stayed with Paddy and made it work, and how could she even consider ending the marriagewhen a baby was on the way, and only a terrible mother … etc., etc.’
‘So Jemma stayed with Paddy,’ said Gibbs.
Suzanne nodded. ‘Yup. Struggled on miserably until Lottie was born, and it wasn’t any less of a struggle after, to be honest. Marianne bloody-mindedly refused to consider that the marriage might end, so, get this: she designed andfundeda rescue plan. She’d look after Lottie overnight every Thursday, and pay for Jemma and Paddy to spend those nights in a posh London hotel. The Great Date-Night Marriage Repair Initiative, I called it.’
‘Did it work?’
‘Not really,’ said Suzanne. ‘If you’ve realised you don’t want to be with someone, it’s not going to help to be holed up with them once a week even in the most luxurious hotel, where you can’t get away from each other. I’ll tell you what did work, though – can you guess?’
Gibbs couldn’t.
‘Marianne nearly getting murdered in November that same year. After that, Jemma clamped down on what she called her “silly daydreaming”. The Ollie dream was over and she was going to make it work with Paddy, whatever that took. “I’m not going to launch a destructive attack on our family when someone else has just done that in the most horrific way”, she said.’ Suzanne was shaking her head. ‘It was an excuse. Do you want to know why she really changed tack?’
‘She suspected Ollie was the one who’d tried to kill Marianne?’ Gibbs guessed.
‘Hundred per cent,’ said Suzanne. ‘Not unreasonably, since Marianne had said, “Oliver”, when Jemma had asked her who. You know it happened in here, right?’ Suzanne pointed. ‘Just behind where you’re sitting now.’
Gibbs turned and looked. Unsurprisingly, he saw hardly any trace of the incident, eleven years later, only a patch that was lighter and shinier than the surrounding area, as if it had been damaged, then sanded down and re-varnished.
Turning back to Suzanne, he said, ‘Does the name Tom Tulloch mean anything to you?’ He was expecting to hear from Sam any time now that Tulloch had been found and was being taken in for questioning. He wondered if Jemma Stelling was under arrest yet.
Suzanne nodded. ‘Tom was at school with us too: with me, Paddy and Jemma. He was the one I was telling you about.’
‘When? What do you mean?’
‘Remember I said Paddy left Lottie with someone she’d barely met, when he came here? And Lotts texted me, and I went and rescued her? That was Tom I was talking about.’
12
Monday 30 October 2023, 9.15 p.m.
