‘I … I think so, yes.’ His eyes dart around the room. Scanning for possible escape routes, maybe.
I want to run at him, grab him, shake the truth out of his mouth. ‘Olly, did Marianne have a different bit on the side, also called Oliver?’
‘No. She’d never have been unfaithful to your dad.’
I laugh. ‘And you know this how?’
‘She cares about family more than anything else. You must know that. That’s why she hated the words “stepmother” and “stepdaughter”. She wanted it all to be … you know.’
‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’
‘Proper,’ says Olly. ‘Perfect. She loves you, Jemma, believe it or not.’ He holds up a hand, seeing my mouth open in protest. ‘Andshe’s wrong to think that accurately describing the relationship – step-parent and stepchild – would make anything less proper or perfect, and she was breathtakingly stupid to have tried to grab the “mother” label from the second she met you, when your mum had just died.Andher love for you in no way excuses her appalling treatment of people.’
‘Did she treat you appallingly too?’ I ask him. That was how it had sounded, as if that’s what he meant.
‘There are things I’m never going to be able to talk about,’ he says in a tight voice. ‘I have to be upfront about that. I’m very sorry I can’t tell you everything, Jemma, but I can’t.’
Impossible.He’s seriously sitting there saying that he plans to leave me in the dark.
‘Could the other Oliver tell me?’ I’m desperate enoughto throw out a wild guess. ‘The one with the curly grey hair and the beard that’s sort of half-blond and half-ginger? Sturdy build, late fifties? Well, he’d be older now. That was how he looked more than a decade ago.’
The flinch is unmistakable. ‘Wh-what?’ Olly manages to say.
‘You know who I mean, then. Good.’Please let this work. Let it lead somewhere.‘Thanks for making it so obvious. Why don’t you tell me who he is, the man I’ve just described?’
19
Wednesday 1 November 2023, 10.15 a.m.
CHARLIE
‘Icould be deferential and beat around the bush, or I could just come out and ask for what I want,’ Charlie told Superintendent Fran Whittingham.
‘So which is it going to be?’ Whittingham asked. There was little expression in the voice or on the face. She might have been curious to know what was coming next, or she might have been containing a yawn in her pouchy gerbil cheeks, entirely uninterested in Charlie’s thoughts. Her delivery was as grey as the decor in her newly refurbished office, every inch of which screamed, ‘I am the work of an interior designer whose idea of taste comes from a magazine in a dentist’s waiting room’.
To be fair, there were some touches of other colours in the room too: black and white, if they counted, and a lot of silver that was no doubt meant to add luxury and sparkle – the frame of the large mirror on one wall, the shiny candle holder on the edge of the desk, labelled ‘Jasmine’, from which a pristine, fat, cream-coloured candle protruded.
Sadly, no sort of shine stood a chance in here; the lustre-extinguishing atmosphere was all-pervasive. The monotonous sound of the super’s voice was enough to hurry anyone to thedepressing conclusion that silver was no more than grey with fraudulent inclinations. The row of three windows, overlooking leafy Blantyre Park and the lido, only made you feel worse about being in here instead of out there.
As if the presence of a smelly candle on the desk wasn’t bad enough (no police superintendent’s office should be artificially scented, and anyone who would respond to that statement with a ‘Why not?’ didn’t deserve an answer), there was a framed wedding photograph by its side that Charlie couldn’t help viewing as unbearable provocation.Pretend it’s not there, she told herself, resolving not to look at it again, but the temptation was too strong. The bride in the picture was Fran Whittingham as a much younger gerbil, and the groom was a fair-haired man in a pale grey suit who had a slightly unnatural, bolted-together look about him. Both he and the super appeared to be not just laughing but cackling like nutters, and were bent towards each other at awkward angles, clutching their stomachs, as if they’d recently been poisoned in a way they found especially hilarious.
The picture was bad enough, but far worse was the implausible caption attached to the photo’s mount at the bottom, inside the frame. Printed in cursive letters were the words:
Hands down the most magical day of my life. Fran looked like a princess from a dream – Lloyd Whittingham
Charlie was fighting an almost overpowering urge to ask questions about the framed abomination. Was it some kind of test?Did you never get promoted if you failed to spot that it was a joke? Or did the super really decide the photo would be improved by a quote from her husband, about her and their special day?
‘Well?’ said the super, expressionlessly.
Charlie dragged her eyes away from the picture. Might aswell be direct, she decided. ‘I’m not trying to mess you around, but I can’t say yes or no to the CID job offer until I know what’s happening with Simon,’ she said. ‘Are you planning to fire him?’
‘Sergeant Zailer—’
‘Because there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d be happier doing detective work. In almost every way, it’s a move I’d love to make. Problem is … I can’t accept a promotion from someone who’s about to fire my husband. And since I know you’ll have noticed that he’s currently doing his best to get himself kicked out of the job …’ Charlie shrugged. ‘Frankly, I won’t blame you if you’re considering him for the chop, but I’m here to say: please, please don’t do it. If you can promise me you won’t fire him or … go after him in any disciplinary way – if you can just, like, leave him to come round in his own time and not make a fuss if he’s a bit strange in the interim—’
‘Then what?’ Fran Whittingham asked. ‘What are you offering me, Sergeant, if I agree to ignore the basic standards of professional behaviour and the responsibilities of my position?’
That didn’t sound promising, though the super’s delivery, as always, was as bland as that of a saleswoman showing prospective buyers around a show home.
