Her response was cold and uncaring. ‘If I didn’t prosecute, Gareth, I wouldn’t have been able to have my honeymoon in the Maldives.’
You know, I didn’t think I actually liked Isla at all. She’d never even thanked me for looking after her milk snake.
I went back into the office. The stares from other detectives had now seemingly subsided, but I still felt a little like a gazelle in the lion enclosure. Steve and Darren had mostly kept to themselves ever since I’d started, but over the past few days, Darren had seemed to make a conscious effort at communicating with me. Telling me how the case was progressing, updating me every chance he got. He’d even offered to get me a drink from the cafeteria. I didn’t want to commend myself, but I did wonder if my personable efforts with him had finally paid off in some way. Maybe he felt bad about the lasagne; maybe he’d realised I wasn’t such a bad guy after all. I walked across the office and sat down at my desk, though any pleasant, warming feeling of potentially being liked by a colleague was swiftly cut down by the thick wad of case files in front of me. From gleaning through the notes, it seemed that there were three points of information that had emerged over the past few days.
Number one: they had recovered the doorbell footage from Beryl’s son, who had all the video streamed right into his laptop, and sure enough, we had video confirming that Fran was the last person to go and see Mr O’Neill. Just before, he had exited a taxi with his grocery shopping, which had set off the motion detector on the doorbell. She had followed behind him as he entered his house only a few moments later. They had both gone in ataround 3pm, but only Fran had come out, an hour and a half later, carrying some enormous bin bags. Which was longer than Fran had implied she had helped him for. Darren and Steve had combed through the rest of the footage, before contacting the taxi driver in question to ask some questions about Mr O’Neill, but had found nothing of interest.
Fran had smashed the doorbell camera a few days later in quite an impressive form of clumsiness, meaning that any footage after that point was through a shattered, iridescent lens. However, O’Neill hadn’t been picked up by the camera between returning with his shopping and Fran’s accident. Although he could easily have left his house without the motion-detector picking it up. We had been told by Beryl herself that the camera was extraordinarily incompetent.
Number two: they had begun conducting very casual interviews with a few of the neighbours, and it had all come back that Mr O’Neill was – to put it mildly – a bit of a weirdo. There had been repeated stories of Mr O’Neill being antisocial, reclusive and aggressive, often shouting obscenities at the small children who lived on the other side of his house if they ever built up enough courage to trespass one inch onto his property on their bikes.
Number three: they had done a little digging on his business, but the fact that the Heart of Hope records were close to half a century old had meant a lot of it had got stuck through hard-copy bureaucracy, with a bunch having been ravaged by the festering mould that made O’Neill’s attic smell like a dog’s armpit. Nevertheless, it was understood that O’Neill’s business hadn’t gone under because of financial difficulties; there had been something else at play there. My assumption: not something that was exactly legal.
I spotted more case work and paperwork on my desk to sign off. On the top of it was a handwritten note:
Vivian wants to see you at some point. Good luck, darling. C.
Archives had sent through everything they could find on O’Neill. Most of it was records of his various charity works. Pictures of him donating books to schools, opening community centres. I was surprised there weren’t pictures of him healing the sick at this rate.
When I’d finally gathered enough courage, I took a big breath, put on my big-boy pants, and walked across the office. I executed the classic two knocks on Vivian’s office door. She was seated at her desk, gazing slack-jawed at her computer, and gestured me in without even attempting to acknowledge me or generally try and look in my direction.
‘Are you okay, Gareth?’ she asked in a monotone as I skulked into her office and slumped into the chair that I felt must have gained an imprint of me by now. Her words may sound nice on paper, but her voice didn’t have one iota of empathy. It was as if she was passively analysing how much spark I had left in the tank before becoming a complete crash, the way you’d ask a mechanic how many more miles you’ve got left in your Toyota Aygo before it breaks down on the M4.
‘I’m okay,’ I muttered, trying to rally my energetic, work-efficient self. ‘Just cracking on, you know.’
‘Okay,’ she said slowly, repeating my word but elongating the vowels to indicate that she clearly didn’t believe what I was saying. She shuffled some papers in front of her and began to speak, her eyes not even bouncing up to meet mine.
‘I spoke to the chief superintendent last night about the way this case was progressing. We think there is a high chance that we may have only just uncovered the tip of the iceberg, and for a case like this, where there is a particular…set of circumstances behind it, we’ve decided to go in hard.’
I didn’t want to feel any more smug, but I had begged and begged for Vivian to investigate this case, and now it had the attention of the chief superintendent. Although, that did seem peculiar – those at such high levels never normally got involved in cases like this. Was this because of the letter from the police chief that I had found in O’Neill’s attic? How were they connected to this?
Vivian paused and looked upwards, still avoiding my gaze, but I saw her eyes rapidly scanning left to right. She had memorised this whole speech already. This was simply a monologue she was reciting, that I was being forced to listen to.
‘With this case, Gareth, I think you’re too closely connected…’
True.
‘…and I believe it goes above your experience level.’
Dick.
‘Not only has this happened right on your doorstep, but there is also a likelihood that your wife could be brought in as a suspect.’
What? Fran? They thought Fran could have killed him? Were they on crack?
‘I want you to have complete and utter ignorance to this case. Darren, Steve and Cecilia will be briefed this morning about not involving you in any aspect of it. Let me say that if you do try and get involved, it may be grounds for severe disciplinary action. Do I make myself clear?’
I stared back at her for a moment. She was ready for a fight. I could see her fingers drumming on the pen nervously, and I could just about make out the vibrations that her tapping foot was causing across the carpet floor. This was all completely ridiculous, but little did Vivian know, I was a total and utter people-pleaser.
‘Absolutely,’ I said, trying to muster something of a polite and understanding smile. ‘Not a problem.’
Vivian leaned back on her chair, folding her arms and slipping her hands against her ribs as if she was trying to hug herself in a weird kind of comfort embrace. I hadn’t known her long, but she looked nervous, as if she was the one in the wrong about doing this.
‘You’re not going to fight me on this?’ she asked, somewhat in disbelief.
‘I could put up more of a fight if you’d like?’ I replied. ‘I can get a little mad, maybe storm out and slam the door as hard as I can?’
She didn’t even attempt to crack a smile at my comedy attempt. I’d thought five years of marriage with Fran had given me some great sarcasm skills or, as Fran would describe it, ‘elegant sardonic wit’. And here it was, being used on people who didn’t even appreciate it.
