I saw Vivian brace herself, like I was an insolent child playing up. But I also caught the slightest, almost unnoticeable, bit of nervousness as she needlessly arranged some of the paperweights on her desk. No one fidgeted quite like Vivian. She twisted a glass apple to one side before pushing it back to its original position.
‘Gareth, I do understand that you’re upset?—’
I groaned, scrunching my nose and flicking a little bit more of the innards of the chair handle onto the carpet, watching Vivian’s eyes as she tracked its descent. I could see she was getting agitated. Part of me was enjoying it, forgetting that my wife was a murderer awaiting trial with potential life imprisonment on the table. Only last week we had still been happily married, trying for a baby to complete our vision of domestic bliss… Shit, what if Fran was already pregnant? I hadn’t thought about that.
‘Gareth, I think you may need a few more days off. I feel like you can’t be expected to…’ Vivian began, breaking my quick brain spiral of wondering how I would raise a baby on my own.
‘Okay,’ I said, nonchalantly rising from the seat as if I didn’t have a care in the world. ‘But I guess everything about this whole fraud syndicate is all going to have its day in the sun.’
Vivian winced as if I had just struck an uppercut to her face. I’d hit a nerve. Oh, maybe this was the reason the superintendent was getting involved with the case? Another corruption scandal would be the last thing they needed, even if itwas from decades ago. I had handed the evidence over to Cis and Steve, initially thinking Fran might have killed the two men for the money or something. Bunch of rich guys who liked to flaunt their cash made for high-value murder targets. But maybe not. Maybe this went a lot deeper than I’d ever realised.
‘You know how we work, Gareth,’ Vivian said after a pause. ‘And you know that we wouldn’t have arrested Fran if we didn’t have enough evidence against her. Do you think that maybe your feelings right now are coming from a place of…guilt?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Gareth, come on. I know you were the one that gave Cis the photograph of the two men outside the children’s home, connecting Fran to the murders, and I know you two worked together on this case. Do you think I’m stupid? That gave us evidence beyond reasonable doubt. I mean, Fran is suspected of killing two men, and both men happen to be linked as benefactors to the children’s home she grew up in. Both men are murdered and somehow Fran is a likely suspect in both. That’s no coincidence.’
Vivian’s reaction to the way my face must have shifted told me that she instantly regretted her remarks to a husband who was going through a lot right now. Was she saying I was to blame for his? Her mouth dropped a little before she caught herself, straightening her back against her office chair. I could see that, out of the corner of her eye, she was trying to skim-read the piece of paper, refreshing herself on the best thing to say next.
‘Are you aware of our Employee Assistance Programme?’
I saw myself out.
I glanced again at the copy of the photo Maeve had let me take away, comparing it to the Wikipedia image on my phone. For what was probably the eighteenth time today, I scanned betweenthe two images. It was definitely him – Abe Clark, MP, wildcard Leader of the Opposition some forty-odd years ago.
I could see Vivian standing sentinel, watching me from the office to make sure I was leaving the building. I gave her a wave, gesturing to all the necessary work equipment I was leaving behind on the desk. Her face wore an expression of both suspicion and relief. I didn’t much care what she thought any more. I walked across the office, still feeling the stares, their gazes following me into the bathroom. I pushed open one of the stalls and flicked out my phone to have a look through Clark’s file in private. Unfortunately, I couldn’t print out Clark’s record or email it to myself: that would send alarm bells across our very secure network. The man’s file was pretty standard for a pensioner: no police record of convictions, cautions, warnings, or reprimands.
Before I even had time to process the discovery, I heard a loud noise coming from the cubicle next to me – a long sniff that evolved into a hearty cough. I knew that sound. It was the sound of a very particular type of substance being insufflated as it lined the nasal passages.
I flushed the loo, left the stall and waited as I washed my hands, looking at the shadow of the person still inside in the cubicle.
He coughed heartily again.
‘You all right in there?’ I asked.
No answer.
I finished washing my hands and waited for a few moments longer.
‘You sure you’re all right, buddy?’
Still no answer.
I stepped away from the sink and towards the door, opening it and letting it go as I kept my feet planted to the same spot within the small alcove by the door.
I heard that long, loud sniffing again as I watched the lock on the cubicle door flick open and Steve timidly strolled out, his nostrils flared and red. His eyes expanded in panic as he saw me waiting by the door.
‘Come on, man,’ was all I could say, a little crestfallen.
Steve was too shocked to see me to even think of some kind of excuse. Instead, we both stood there, looking at each other. I wasn’t so far gone in my police career that I could be apathetic to a man sniffing up the very stuff we were policing.
‘Don’t tell Vivian,’ he muttered softly, his lips barely moving as his limbs stayed frozen to that position. ‘It’s just been really hard with everything going on.’
I didn’t have any words to say to him, so I just shook my head and yanked open the bathroom door, leaving him standing there. I wondered how long he would remain stuck in that position.
The radio continued to crackle and screech, offering little more than static as I drove down the never-ending, winding country lanes towards the town. My only option in the old CD player was one of Adele’s early albums, which – while lovely – wasn’t exactly the vibe I needed to pull me out of my mental health crisis.
When I arrived, it didn’t take me long to find the shop. It sat not too far up the high street. I pushed open the door, which was suitably festooned with leaflets and adverts for events that went as far back as the early 2010s. The small, cramped interior was piled high to the ceiling with useless nonsense, the kind of place you could spend a fortune without actually purchasing anything worthwhile. Chad Dangerfield was the identity I was about to inhabit; a private eye who investigated cases out of his own moral obligations. But not only did it sound a little porny, it hadalso turned out to be very close to the name of a fictional Lego character when I’d googled it. So, I had decided to keep my name secret if anyone asked. After all, it was something of a legally grey area I was currently operating in.
