‘By last Sunday, you mean—’
‘The day before the murder,’ said Jemma. ‘God, it seems like years ago. We were at Dad and Marianne’s for a family lunch: me, Paddy, Lottie, Dad and Marianne. I had my laptop in my bag, which was hanging up in the boot room under my coat all afternoon. Anyone on their way to or from the downstairs loo could have got it out and had a good nosey. And if it was Marianne, she could have told Ollie.’ Jemma’s face twists in apparent pain. ‘What if it’s not true that they’ve done nothing but send Wordle scores to each other since last year, with no other contact or communications? That could easily be a lie.’
‘It could,’ said Simon.
‘And then there’s Suzanne, who knows absolutely everything thanks to me always opening my big gob and telling her everything. But …’ Jemma stood up, started to pace around the room. ‘I can’t see why anyone would do it, apart from Marianne. I think it must have been her. Who else would get a kick out of taunting me by changing the spelling of Ollie’s name? That’s got Marianne written all over it.’
‘Does that mean you think Ollie Mayo’s the most likely murderer?’ Simon asked. ‘She told him the plan she’d read about in your diary, and he decided to put it into action?’
Jemma came to an abrupt stop in front of him. ‘What? No. Ollie’s not a killer. He’s … Ollie is lovely. I just … no, he wouldn’t kill anybody.’
‘I suppose Marianne could have read your diary and told any of them, couldn’t she?’ Simon speculated aloud. ‘Your dad, your husband, your daughter, Oliver Mayo—’
‘If Marianne was the one who broke into the diary, then yes, she must have told someone,’ Jemma agreed. ‘Didn’t stab herself to death, did she?’
‘What about Oliver Mayo’s dad?’ said Simon. ‘Mark Rowan Mayo?’
Annoyance flashed across Jemma’s face. She’d told Simon while making his latest cup of tea how disappointed she had been when the mysterious man she’d seen, both in the grounds of Devey House and outside Oliver Mayo’s therapy practice, had turned out to be nothing but a giant red herring. This had struck Simon as an odd conclusion for her to draw; how could she be as sure as she seemed that Mayo Senior wasn’t the person who had twice tried to kill Marianne?
‘What about him?’ she said. ‘I told you: I’ve seen him twice – once outside Dad and Marianne’s house in 2006, quite awhile after Ollie and I split up. He didn’t see me. Then I saw him again in late June in Cambridge, coming out of the Cedarwood Centre where Ollie works.’
‘And you never met him when you were seeing Ollie in 2006?’
‘No. He was desperate to introduce me to his dad and tried to arrange it twice, but the selfish shit-bag cancelled both at the last minute – found something better to do.’
‘And Mayo wouldn’t tell you why his dad had visited Marianne in 2006?’ said Simon.
‘No.’ Jemma looked angry. ‘Are you saying Mark Mayo might have killed Marianne?’
‘Well …’ Simon thought about it. ‘He’s worth adding to the list of who might have known what was in your diary file. If Marianne could have told Mayo, then Mayo might have told his dad. Can’t rule it out.’
Jemma shook her head. ‘It’s not only the who that I’m worried about. There’s a more important question to answer first.’
Simon waited.
She sat down again, further away from him, in the chair nearest the window. She didn’t look at him as she spoke, but stared out at the patchwork of fields in front of her house. ‘Whoever killed her … did they do it for themselves, for their own reasons – or did they do it to help me? Or …’
‘What?’ Simon had thought of another ‘or’ but didn’t want to be the one to say it.
‘Or do they want me to get the blame?’ said Jemma. ‘It’s like Sergeant Zailer told me: the murder happened just before half past five on Monday, and where was I, the only person who seems to want Marianne dead? At the police station, spilling the beans about a plan I’d made to have her killed at that exact same time. That could look pretty incriminating to anyone who wanted to see it that way: like I’m some sort ofcriminal mastermind who thinks she’s been oh-so-clever and committed the perfect crime.’
‘Possible,’ Simon conceded. ‘I’d say the opposite’s equally likely: someone thought, “I’ll do Jemma a favour, do what I know she wants done while she’s at the police station, so she can’t be suspected for it. She’ll have a rock-solid alibi.”’
Jemma nodded. She was still facing towards the window, her shoulders shaking slightly. Simon was glad he’d decided not to tell her about Marianne’s attempted bribing of Tom Tulloch. The last thing Jemma needed was to have her emotions stirred up any more than they were already.
‘I’d just like to know,’ she said quietly. ‘Whoever did it, are they my enemy or my friend?’
23
Wednesday 1 November 2023, 4.20 p.m.
JEMMA
Even if I couldn’t hear her talking, I would know it was Suzanne at my front door from the chaotic sound of metal hitting wood, then metal, then wood again as she repeatedly misses the lock. She never stops talking, and rarely looks at a door while trying to insert a key into it.
Eventually I hear the door open, followed by her voice and Lottie’s quieter one, and then a scuffle of coat and bag divestment in the hall: rucksack scraping against wall, shoes hitting the floor.
‘I’m in here making supper,’ I yell, squeezing the juice of half a lemon over the mixture in the bowl in front of me: turkey mince, feta, parsley, garlic, red onion and mint. I decided to cook a proper meal – one of my regulars, homemade healthy hamburgers – because after Simon left, cooking was the last thing I felt like doing. I decided that choosing the opposite of what felt tempting and easiest in the moment was probably the right call, since all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry forever, in preparation for perhaps spending the next twenty years in prison.
