‘Why didn’t you ring me straight away, if it happened this morning?’
‘Will you please calm down? I didn’t ring because my goddaughter begged me not to tell you she knows, and I wanted to have a good, long think before rushing into anything.’
‘Knows what?’ I say, and my voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere remote.
‘Thing is, shedoesn’tknow it,’ Suzanne says. ‘She can’t, because it’s not true. To be honest, I don’t even think she really believes it.’
‘Just tell me.’ Nausea curls around the back of my throat. ‘What did she say?’
Suzanne takes Mum’s bowl out of my hands, puts it down on the counter top.
‘That Paddy’s not her real father. Not her biological dad.’
‘What?’ Someone must have whipped my brain out of my skull and stamped on it before shoving it back in.
‘Oh, God, don’t cry, Jemm.’
If I could speak, I’d explain that it’s not sadness, it’s relief.Thank God. Lottie hasn’t confessed to killing Marianne. Of course she hasn’t, because she didn’t. Couldn’t have. Simon Waterhouse said so.
I didn’t know until just now that I’ve been carrying that subliminal fear around with me. Once I’ve recovered a little, I try to make a joke of it. ‘So who’s her real dad, then? Let me guess – who would she most like it to be? Andy Murray, the tennis player? She likes him.’
Suzanne doesn’t laugh or smile and, suddenly, I know what’s coming. I want to shout all my objections at once –That’s impossible. Did you tell her it’s impossible?– but I can’t make any words come out, and Lottie’s feet are moving again, upstairs.
Any second now, she’ll be back and I’ll have to … I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t imagine surviving the next five seconds, let alone anything beyond that.
‘She told me her biological dad’s name is Oliver Mayo,’ says Suzanne.
24
Wednesday 1 November 2023, 5 p.m.
SIMON
‘There’s good news and bad,’ Sam Kombothekra said. ‘Who wants which first?’ He, Simon, Proust, Sellers and Gibbs were in the recently renamed, newly done-out Joyce Magrane Meeting Room, with a computer and monitor sitting side by side on the shiny fake wood table in front of them. They were about to watch the last recorded footage of Marianne Upton before she was murdered, captured in the video of her husband’s Zoom meeting on Monday 30 October.
Simon would have preferred to watch it on a laptop at The Brown Cow. He’d disliked this room since the day of its pathetic, ribbon-cutting launch, and hated it even more now that he saw Spilling Police Station as enemy territory. Who was Joyce Magrane anyway? And what was the point of having pelmeted curtains and a cushioned window seat when no one who ever came in here gave a toss?
Simon wanted to tell the others everything he knew, but how could he without risking a solve, or two? He wasn’t prepared to contribute to any result that would make Dooper look good, and do nothing to persuade her to let Proust and Sam stay put.
‘Let’s have the bad news first,’ said the Snowman. ‘My brain is older and wearier than any of yours. The less work it has to do on the context-switching front, the better.’
‘Context-switching?’ Gibbs sneered. ‘Does that mean thinking about one thing and then thinking about a different thing a bit later on? Is that also supposed to be harmful now?’
‘Did I say anything about harm, DC Gibbs? Am I not allowed to say my brain feels somewhat fatigued?’
This might be the last ever pointless squabble between Proust and Gibbs, Simon realised, and the idea squeezed something already sore inside him.
‘I agree,’ said Sellers. ‘Bad news first.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Sam. ‘There’s still nothing from the lab on the physical evidence, so we don’t know if we’ve got anything useful there.’
‘It’s not even been forty-eight hours,’ Sellers pointed out.
‘I know, but they did say we’d have it yesterday. Oh, and some more bad news: I can’t get this recording to play any more. Can you have a go?’ He handed the remote control to Sellers. ‘I don’t know if it’s out of battery from the number of times I’ve watched it already today. Marianne Upton is very much alive in it, guest-starring at 5.10 p.m. when she appears on the screen behind her husband. Then at 5.20 his mobile rings and you see him answer it. That was Marianne – both their phones’ call logs corroborate. His call to emergency services, after he found her dead, was at 5.27. This gives us a very narrow time window for the murder: seven minutes. Narrowest we’ve ever had, I think.’
‘I’m ready for the good news,’ said Proust.
‘That also involves Marianne’s phone,’ Sam said. ‘Oliver Mayo’s all over it, proving true what Suzanne Lacy suspected: Marianne and Mayo exchanged Wordle scores – every day, firstthing. Even on the day she died, and going back more than a year.’
