‘Who?’
‘Mayo’s client from five o’clock on Monday,’ said Charlie. ‘Ollibi number two. She was having her therapy session with Mayo when Marianne Upton was killed, and she’s already emailed Sellers her Cedarwood Centre car parking receipt to prove it. The receptionist saw her … Rock solid. And she had only good things to say about Mayo: best therapist ever, already changed her life in just a few weeks, blah blah.’
Simon managed to stop himself from asking,But did anyone see Mayo himself at around 5 or 5.30?It wasn’t impossible that he and Farida Suleyman had—
Stop. Give up. It’s not Mayo, however much you want it to be.Which meant it had to be somebody else.
‘So what should I do about Dooper?’ Charlie’s voice in his ear sounded uncharacteristically whiny.
‘Apologise by email,’ said Simon. ‘Or leave her a voicemail, message, whatever.’
‘Tempting. I did the damage face to face, though, so the apology needs to be face to face too, or I’ll feel like a coward.’
‘So when it suits you, being in the room with someone counts for something?’ Simon said.
‘Er … when it means I don’t have to drive all the way to Cornwall, mainly.’ Some exasperated mumblings followed. ‘Maybe I’ll just stand outside her office until she agrees to have a conversation.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Simon. ‘Easiest thing’s to stop feeling sorry about what you said. No further action required.’
‘Do you think I haven’t tried that, as my first resort? I failed to convince myself. I said at least one thing that was inexcusably cruel. Simon? Are you there?’
He was, but he could no longer hear her because he’d moved his phone away from his ear and was now staring at it, trying to take in the words. And the numbers. Never had a gigantic motive for murder had quite so many zeros at the end of it.
Sam had sent a text that read:
‘From Marianne’s lawyer: money Jemma and Paddy aren’t getting isn’t going to Gareth, Lottie or charity. Going to Oliver Mayo instead. The whole £1,500,000.’
27
Thursday 2 November 2023, 5.15 p.m.
JEMMA
‘Iknew what Marianne had been doing, yeah,’ says Paddy. ‘Never saw her, but who else could it have been?’ He’s taken the day off work and might or might not be going in tomorrow, or ever again, for reasons I couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to when he reeled them off.There goes another bar job.
We’re at Lazy Cave in Little Holling, the only café-bar that’s walkable from our house. It’s tiny: two small square rooms with low, beamed ceilings, sea-green-painted walls and lots of small, uncomfortable wooden chairs like the ones Van Gogh liked to paint. The mug of tea in front of me is cold, and was tepid when it arrived at the table.
This place is incapable of delivering a hot drink that’s actually hot.
‘I didn’t know Lottie had seen it, though,’ Paddy says. ‘If I’d known …’
You’d have done nothing.
‘Where would Marianne have got weed from?’ I say. ‘It makes no sense. A woman of her age who never took an illegal drug in her life? How many teetotallers do you know who have drug dealers in their contacts lists?’
‘Anyone can get hold of weed. It’s not hard. Jemm, I never smoked any of it. I chucked it away every time. Unless you got there first, which you sometimes did. And I told you, I don’t know how many times, that I hadn’t bought it and wasn’t smoking it again. You never believed me.’
‘Because you were lying, Paddy.’ He shouldn’t need me to explain. It’s so glaringly obvious. ‘I think I’d remember if you’d ever said, “These bags of weed keep appearing in my clothing and I’m not putting them there, so I think Marianne must be.” That’s not what you said, though, is it? Instead it was always, “Oh, that’s funny, I don’t know how it got there, it must be from ages ago.” And that I knew wasn’t true, because I do all your laundry and ironing.’
‘I was telling the truth when I said I wasn’t smoking it,’ he says. ‘Look, maybe I should have told you the whole—’
‘Maybe?’ I can hardly stand to look at him.
‘All right, then, I should have,’ he snaps. ‘But you wouldn’t have believed me. You never do.’
‘I don’t believe you when youlie to me.’
I hear him take a series of deep breaths. ‘How could I prove it was Marianne when I hadn’t seen her do it? I knew what you’d say – you’ve just said it: there’s no way Marianne’d buy drugs when she doesn’t even drink alcohol. And God knows what she’d have done to me if I’d tried to turn you against her.’
