Moorhouse was talking about his great relationship with Jesus again. The laces of one of his trainers was undone. The newness and shine of them made Simon wonder where he’d last seen … That was it: Marianne had been wearing gleaming white trainers too, in the background of her husband’s Zoom meeting, before she left the house and walked over to her car and to her death.
‘How long have I been here, and no one’s offered me so much as a bread roll?’ Moorhouse said suddenly.
‘Sorry, I should have thought,’ said Simon, hoping he wouldn’t be required to watch him eat, or eat in front of him.
‘I hate hotels,’ said Moorhouse. ‘Horrible, impersonal places, most of them are. No one cares about good service any more. I’m glad Belynda and I aren’t reliant on hotels now we’re down here. I live alone now, so … I tell you, the amount of money the Gresham Hotel in Cambridge made out of us.’ He whistled. ‘We never spent a single night there either, that was the saddest part. All those nights we could have had together that were ours by right, all bought and paid for … but we both had to sleep at home, keep both sham marriages intact with no one wondering where we were overnight.’
Simon wasn’t fully paying attention. Something was wrong. It was the trainers, the untied laces … No, not the laces …
Then everything rearranged itself in his head and he knew what he’d missed. Not just him, either – they’d all missed it.Unbelievable.
Not wanting Moorhouse to think his attention had wandered, he said, ‘You and Belynda saw each other in the day, then?’
‘Yep. Still do. Midday on the dot. That’s always been our time.’
‘Before, you said …’ Simon shook his head. ‘Forget it.’ He was clutching at straws.
‘No, go on,’ said Moorhouse. ‘Ask me. Open book, me.’
It couldn’t do any harm, could it? Just to make sure. ‘You said you didn’t like seeing Belynda on Thursdays after she’d had a therapy session with Mayo. I was just thinking: those sessions were 7.30 at night – so if you’d ever seen her after one, that would have been 8.30 or later – evening, not daytime.’
Moorhouse looked surprised, and was shaking his head. ‘No, she always saw him first thing in the morning on Thursdays, before the receptionists were in, even. “I’m his early bird”, she used to say.’
Simon leaned forward, his heart hammering.Unless there was something he was missing, Ollibi number one had just fallen apart.
He needed to move, quickly. ‘Excuse me a sec,’ he told Moorhouse. ‘Got to make an urgent call.’ Less than a minute later he was standing in the hotel’s main car park in the dark, wishing he had more than two bars of phone reception.
Sam Kombothekra picked up on the second ring.
‘Oliver Mayo wasn’t with a client on the evening of 8 November,’ Simon told him.
He raced through a summary of his day so far.
‘Incredible,’ said Sam. ‘We’ll need to look more closely at this other client, then, the one he was allegedly with on Monday between five and six.’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Simon. ‘That one’s legit. Mayo’s not the killer.’
‘How do you know?’
Shit. In his excitement, Simon had forgotten he’d vowed not to help any crimes get solved.
‘Don’t ask me that yet,’ he said.
‘Can I tell you something instead?’ Sam sounded hopeful.
‘Go on.’
‘The whole of Devey House and its grounds have been searched, top to bottom. Among other things, we’ve found lots of photos, quite a few with Jemma Stelling in – but she’s smiling in none of them.’
‘So?’ said Simon.
‘Gareth Upton told Sellers that Marianne had kept all the photos of Jemma smiling and looking happy in her locked study. He also said that when she stripped everything out of her study, the photos were moved somewhere else, put with the rest of the photos. But they’re not. No happy, smiley photos of Jemma anywhere.’
‘In that case …’ Simon thought as he spoke. ‘They might be in the same place as the killer’s bloody clothes and the murder weapon. Bet you haven’t found those yet either, have you?’
‘No,’ said Sam. ‘Where are they, then?’
‘Look closer to home,’ Simon told him.Shit.He had to stop giving the game away. How, exactly, was he going to resist the urge to tell Sam everything the moment they were face to face?
