‘That’s right.’ Simon wished he’d brought a handkerchief to mop up the beads of sweat forming on his brow. ‘You made a plan together, to kill someone. Legally, I’m afraid that counts as doing something.’
‘But Jemma changed her mind, right? You said she came clean. So what’s the problem?’
‘One problem is that Marianne Upton ended up dead, murdered in the very particular way that your and Jemma’s plan specified, so … Put yourself in the shoes of a jury – all twenty-four of them.’
‘Only twelve on a jury, mate. Dunno what films you’ve been watching.’
‘Twelve people. Twenty-four shoes,’ Simon said.
‘Oh, right. Fair.’ Tulloch put down the beer he’d been holding and grabbed his long, wiry beard with both hands as if it were an instrument he was about to play. ‘You said the Domino’s driver told your sergeant I was here when I said I was, yeah? On Monday?’
‘He did. That doesn’t change the fact that you were involved in making a murder plan that came to fruition.’ How much, Simon wondered, would that driver have wanted in exchange for lying? Probably not a lot. And if Tulloch hadn’t done it, then who? According to Sam, they were all on the couldn’t-have-done-it list: Jemma and her husband and daughter, Marianne’s husband, Oliver Mayo, Jemma’s best friend Suzanne Lacy …
Tulloch said, ‘Look, I’ll be honest with you: I’d already decided I wasn’t going to do it – for other reasons, nothing to do with it being a crime.’
‘Yeah. Wouldn’t want to let a trivial detail like that stop you,’ said Simon.
‘I’d started to think it wasn’t worth it. I don’t mean financially – the money was generous, but I stopped believing it’d get our friendship back to where it had been. I’m not sure Jemma’s a very forgiving person, and Paddy’s neither here nor there. She makes all the decisions. And I mean, I’d passed the test, hadn’t I?’ Tulloch sounded almost offended. ‘Said I’d do it, ready to put my neck on the line. But there was still nothing said about whether I ought to move in with them for a bit, just while I got myself sorted. No one told me I wouldn’t have to live in this dive any more.’
‘So if Jemma had given you the green light, you’d have toldher you’d changed your mind?’ Simon asked. ‘Even though she’d already paid you part of the money? That’s what you told DS Kombothekra, right?’
‘Dunno. I don’t think she’d have made me give it back,’ Tulloch mused. ‘She’s loaded, Jemma. The kind of loaded that means you don’t really keep track of money – where it’s gone, if it’s coming back.’
‘Must be nice to live like that,’ said Simon.
Tulloch snorted. ‘Why’d you think I was so keen to move back in with them? It’s nice having rich friends, that’s for sure. All kinds of perks. Don’t know why Paddy bothers with the crappy bar jobs. He could live off Jemma for ever if he wanted to.’
‘Any idea who might have killed Marianne?’ Simon asked. Disappointingly, his instincts were telling him the amoral gnome in front of him wasn’t the stabber he was looking for.
‘Jemma’s the only person I know who wanted her dead,’ said Tulloch. ‘Look, if I help you out, can you make this conspiracy to murder thing go away?’
Simon couldn’t, but didn’t say so. ‘How can you help me out?’
‘Wait there.’
Tulloch left the room, not shutting the door behind him. Immediately, the heat was less intense as cooler air from the hall entered the room. Simon took the opportunity to reach over and turn off the gas fire. A whirring whine came from above his head. A printer? Was the gnome printing something out upstairs?
After a few minutes, Tulloch returned with some papers he’d rolled into a tube shape. Simon nearly retched when Tulloch tossed them into his lap and he saw they were being held in place by a black elastic hair bobble that still had quite a lot of hair attached to it: dyed red, dark brown at the root.
‘Take them out ofthat … thing,’ he said, pushing them off his knees and onto the carpet. ‘What are they, anyway?’
‘Lots of diary entries, written by Jemma – though I’ve got my theories about the typed ones, as you’ll see if you read the emails I’ve printed out for you.’ Tulloch’s stubby fingers pulled at the hairband. ‘The handwritten ones with the messy edges are from Jemma’s 2006 diary, and the rest, the typed ones, are from between July just gone and about two weeks ago. Meant to be from a diary file on Jemma’s laptop. Marianne sent me them as attachments. They’re all dated.’
‘Marianneemailed them to you?’ Simon straightened in his chair. ‘How did she get your contact details?’
‘She’d been in Jemma’s laptop, hadn’t she? Snooping around.’
‘When did this happen? When did she first contact you?’
‘Can’t remember,’ said Tulloch. ‘Everything’s dated though. You just need to read it all yourself.’
‘Oh, I will,’ Simon assured him. ‘I want to hear it from you too, though. In your own words.’
Tulloch sighed at the imposition. ‘Marianne got in touch, asked if we could meet. I was shitting it: thought she must have found out what Jemma had asked me to do, you know? Well, I knew she had,’cause she told me. Said if I told Jemma she’d contacted me, I’d regret it for the rest of my very short life.’
‘Death threat?’ said Simon.
Tulloch nodded. ‘Sounded like she meant it too. So I kept my mouth shut, went to meet her, and afterwards she sent me those.’ He nodded down at the papers. ‘All the diary bits are on the same theme: how much Jemma hates Marianne. They’re really bitter and horrible. Reading them did make me wonder …’
