“Margo, you remember Arden,” Nigella said diplomatically.
She gave a short sniff as an answer. Without paying me any more notice, she began to fill Gella in on the current lay of the land. “There’s the girl who does the politics reports onBBC South West Tonight. Too much blush. The ITV one is around here somewhere, too. I saw himearlier. Awful tie. There’s some local news, not any national newspapers, though.”
Looking around, I noted Katrina Pettigrew a few metres away from us. She seemed stressed from the number of people around her. I waved, but she looked past me as she focused on what was happening at the front of the crowd.
Ahead of us, several members of the press were trying to grab Guy and Riz’s attention. Simon was standing nearby but off to the side. Guy approached the raft of microphones. “Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for coming. It means so much to us here in Lilbury that so many of Jed’s friends have come out to pray for his swift recovery—”
Before he could say more, a reporter interrupted. “Jenny Begood-Toomey,Bournemouth Times– Mr Frobisher, are you and Mr Patel suspending your campaigns?”
Guy was annoyed but plastered on a smile. “Of course not, Riz and I agree on certain actions for this, but we will not be suspending the campaign—”
Another reporter perked up. “Terry Cloth,Bristol Online– Mr Patel, does the Labour leadership approve of you running campaign events with the Tory candidate?”
Riz plastered on his own smile and joined Guy, but you could tell he was suppressing a sigh. “This isn’t a campaign event. We’re both here to send good wishes to Jed and urge anyone who might have information to contact the police—”
The impromptu press conference carried on in this vein for several more minutes. Both candidates fielding increasingly bizarre claims of what not jointly laughing over the body of a man left for dead meant for British democracy.
That’s when I noticed the evening was about to turn to real shit. A plain car, which screameddriven by the coppers, pulled up nearby and out hopped two officers. “Shit,” I said too loudly, and several people turned around to glare at me. Archie and Luca giggled at the swearing.
Getting out of the car was DI Gary Neuberger. The man who had been happy to try and pin Arabella’s murder on me.
“What’s he doing here?” I whispered to Nigella.
“He’s leading the investigation, I assume,” she said giving him a glare as well.
The detective walked over with the other officer. Neuberger was middle-aged with short spiky grey hair. He dressed a little too cool to be a policeman in my view. The man beside him … wait, man? A few months ago, he’d had a different partner, a woman, the perma-sour-faced DS Wales.
“She must have had the baby,” Nigella said, reading my mind. “Mat leave. I wonder if the baby was born with a face like a smacked arse, too.”
I sniggered as I took in the man. He was … not unattractive. A big bruiser would have been an accurate description. He was wearing a shiny suit, which did nothing to make him look less like a gorilla. He was forty-ish and had short brown hair combed down in a Caesar cut and a square jaw. He wasn’t ugly, but you wouldn’t call him handsome. The kind of man one went to when one wanted a brutal encounter.
They made a beeline for me.
“Oh, come on, I barely know Jed,” I muttered. I grabbed Kenny’s lead off the boys. “Here, gimme. I need him more than you two.”
“Mr Forrest, what a surprise to see you here,” said Neuberger as they came up to us. We were quite far back, and the journalists’ flurry of questions were sucking all attention away from any conversations in the crowd.
“I live here, detective. So, is it, really?” I could be a sarky bastard to them now. I was completely clear of any suspicion. There was nothing they could pin on me.
Neuberger turned to Nigella: “Mrs Pettoni, how nice to see you.” Nigella bared her teeth in an approximation of a smile.
“Are you working on the vicar’s case?” she asked. “I do hope you’ll do better this time. Arden can’t solve all your crimes for you.” And with that, she turned back to the scene in front of us, dismissing the men.
Neuberger ignored the snub. “This is my new partner, DS Jack Maslin, recently transferred from the Met.”
Maslin gave me the once-over and then the most perfunctory smile I’d ever received.
“Pleasure,” I said.
“DS Maslin will be working with me on the Fulford case. I do hope we won’t be seeing too much of you.” He nodded his head, and they took their leave. Maslin gave a look over his shoulder as they made their way through the crowd.
“Ugh,” Nigella muttered in my ear. “What ghastly men.”
I couldn’t agree more. Just Neuberger being near me made my skin crawl. Alright, I hadn’t been completely innocent towards the end of the … shall we say … Arabella/Tarquin debacle, but I was when it started, and Neuberger had still decided I was a person of interest.
Even when I’d stopped Tarquin from killing both myself and Eleanor Hetherington, and given a wealth of evidence to convict him for Arabella’s murder, Neuberger had spent a day in a police interview room trying to find a way to pin some sort of obstruction of justice or aiding and abetting charge on me. The duty solicitor had been flabbergasted by his attempts to spin my relationship with Tarquin into some sort of murderous partnership. Something she had basically toldhim to knock off unless he wanted an official write-up of his conduct to be made when the interview concluded. Which it did, not long after she’d threatened that. I really should have sent her some flowers.
I put the man out of my mind and returned to the press conference.
