“Um, what are you doing here?” he said to me. “And who are you?”
Simon scowled. “We need to speak to you.”
Ollie gave me a look, and I held up my hands. “Can we come in? It’s important, I swear.”
He moved out of the way, and I came in, followed by Simon. I took in the familiar scene. The apartment was rectangular. The hallway to the front door was in the middle between the spare bedroom on the right and the bathroom on the left. The hallway opened to a large room, with the kitchen in the corner, and the dining table and living space in an open plan configuration. Double-height windows ran the length of the right-hand side of the room, giving big clues to the building’s former life as a factory. A staircase sat snugly in the corner, which led up to the main bedroom and bathroom en suite, with a large mezzanine-style opening over the living room.
It was a big, light, airy apartment with oodles of space and had been a lovely home. I missed it terribly.
Just as Ollie had said when we’d been in Surrey, he’d made a few changes. A couple of pieces of furniture were in different places, and some others were gone completely. A wall was a different colour. A rug was new. I tried to remind myself I didn’t live here anymore, and my opinion on this didn’t matter.
Ollie was staring at me. Then staring at Simon. Simon was looking blithely at me, like he really couldn’t care less.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting …” Ollie caught my eye and looked down at himself. “I’ll go change.”
He disappeared up the stairs and a minute later appeared in a nicer shirt and a pair of jeans.
“So, um, right, what’s happening?”
“Okay, Ollie, this is Simon. Simon Anson, Ollie Ross.”
“Nice to meet you,” they said together, neither looking at the other.
Ollie frowned. “You’re the handyman, right? The one who did Ard’s kitchen?”
“Handyman,” I scoffed.
“More or less,” Simon said, giving me a look.
“Which means … oh, shit. You’re—”
“Yes, he is, and yes, he did, and yes to every other question,” I snapped. “Which brings us to why we’re here.” I flourished the paper. “We’ve been trying to find out what happened to Riz ourselves.”
Ollie’s face fell. “Arden, not again.”
I ignored that and kept talking. “We found this. We think the murder was linked to the leaking of Guy’s sex tape and the attempted murder of JedRev.”
“What?” he said, looking confused. “Who or what is a JedRev?”
“The vicar, obviously,” Simon said.
I scrubbed my face. “We’re not explaining this very well.”
“No, not at all.” Ollie cocked his head to the side. “Arden, can I speak to you for a second … in private?”
“Um, we’re kind of in a hurry—”
“No, this trumps that.”
“We don’t have time,” Simon said.
I groaned. “Fine.” I stormed past them both. Ollie made for the staircase up to the main bedroom, but I carried on into the spare room, which doubled up as a study. I had never used it when I lived here, always preferring to work at the dining table, and let Ollie keep it as his office.
He’d been working here this afternoon; his laptop was open with a half-written email, and papers were all over the desk. As well as a nearly empty iced caramel latte frappe thingy from Starbucks.
“Arden, what the hell?” he whisper-snarled, closing the door.
“Sorry to disturb you like this, and you shouldn’t worry, I’m not doing anything dangerous—”
