‘The crime scene photos from the Jonathan Wrigley murder, minus the gore. Don’t ever say where you got them from.’ He reached across and took the fob back for a second, as if having second thoughts. ‘Do you want to tell me why you need them first?’
‘Oh, sure. No secret. His widow is getting accused of murder but she’s innocent. She wanted me to look at the crime scene with her. I think I found the spot in the forest and I found out what happened. I just needed to confirm I was in the right place.’ Edward coughed, not sure how to phrase the next part. ‘The moment may have passed, because now I’ve told her what I know and I think she can move on.’ Something stopped him going into details with Jordan Callintree. ‘I’m still grateful for this, though, thank you.’
Again, the police officer barely managed to look interested. ‘It’s out of my area, thank God, so not another of our fuck-ups.’He gripped the steering wheel. ‘Where are you going? Where is this wedding?’
Edward told him the name of the church. Callintree started the engine with a roar and tore away from the layby. ‘I’ll tell you what I want. I need your eyes on this Toppings case. My officers have lost interest. If I was an ordinary copper, I’d be out doing it, but being acting chief means I can’t leave the building for a second.’
‘You want me to investigate it for you?’
The policeman did not reply. But he did not need to. He gunned the car. Edward felt a bloom of excitement in his stomach. He had solved one case, and now he had another. But then he remembered the two enormous assailants in his garden who beat him black and blue, and his excitement was engulfed by fear.
Stevie stood at the front of the church. She had found the dress online and made adjustments, but she was still self-conscious in it. Above the waist it was pure rockabilly. The boned bodice was a quilt of musical notes, mainly black and red, and the neckline crumpled lace in the shape of a heart. The material was cinched brutally at the waist, but where a classic rockabilly dress would have sprung a skirt from below the belt, the lower half of Stevie’s looked like traditional white silk. She felt strange, doing this – any girl would have wanted the real thing, the ceremony plus the sweetheart, the spoken contract and the signing, the confetti, the photos (my God! she had forgotten to cancel the photographer), the big lunch after. Friends, speeches, dancing, glitterballs and motorized party lights. It was not to be, although she would have a solo version of some of it.
Her parents would have to pay for the lot, but it was too late to retrieve the deposits anyway. She was feeling a little more self-conscious than she had hoped, sensing the congregation in the church had never seen anyone marry themselves. Therewas not even a Google result for ‘self-marry’. The church was only a quarter full, but she’d spotted Kim and Barbara (bought along to bump up the numbers? Stevie didn’t mind, someone had to eat one of those spare salmon en croûtes later), though she couldn’t see Edward.
Her parents, in prime position on the front row, had been quietly ecstatic at Roddy’s exit, but her father baulked at the ‘irreligious nature’ of her plan to marry herself. He handed the job to his curate, which was actually perfect: the youthful Reverend Noah Dobson, still in training and a part-time retail worker in Exeter, totally understood what this ceremony needed to be.
Once the ceremony was under way, it all seemed to pass in a blur. Stevie sensed her mother and father’s discomfort, a slight creaking from their seats, as Dobson went as close as he could to, ‘Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?’
Her father, to his credit, had walked her up the aisle, although withdrew quickly once she had arrived at her destination, as if he had suddenly come under fire. The vows made people smile. ‘I, Stevie Jane Mason, take me, Stevie Jane Mason, to be my lawful wedded wife …
‘To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do bring together …’
And best of all: ‘With this ring, I me wed.’
Then, as Revd Dobson began to preach, a sweet sermon on the theme of loving oneself as God loved us, Edward Temmis arrived alongside a dishevelled Jordan Callintree. She felt a flutter of annoyance at Edward (how could he miss the start, leaving her on her own?) and then excitement that Devon’s top policeman had found time to mark her special day. So that made the number thirty. Half the bridal dinners would be eaten. She wondered if there was a way of summoning another thirty from the surrounding villages.
No, she would keep her mind on the words of the young curate who was – she suddenly realized – praising her.
‘A beautiful, steady, polite young woman.’
Stevie heard someone laugh. She was trying not to.Polite?At least he had not called her tall or sweet. In her mind she was the exact opposite of all the listed qualities. She was impulsive and explosive. The preacher was evidently ahead of others in his training, expertly dispensing little lies in a house of God.
When it came to presenting the married, ahem, bride, to the congregation, Stevie turned to face her friends and family, a delighted smile on her face. She’d done it! But then her expression changed.
Roddy was framed in the church doorway with a wine bottle dangling from his hand and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The sharp light behind him made the cleanest silhouette, his head in a cloud of smoke. He brought the bottle upwards and put it to his lips, tipping it vertically as if polishing off the final drops. Then he brought the bottle across his chest and smashed the glass backhand against the thick wooden frame of the church entrance.
The noise – and Stevie’s horrified expression – made everyone turn around.
Roddy stumbled a little, back into the sun and then forward. There he was, her rejected lover, a blob of jet black cut out from the sun, one arm seeming longer than the other, ending not in a hand but a jagged bouquet of glass.
Jordan Callintree was the first to run towards him.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Ten days later, Kim was in Spice Route, the Indian Restaurant in Budleigh Salterton famous for its car park. It was drenched in summer flowers, and the customer joke was always that if the cooks swapped places with the gardener, the place would win a Michelin star. She had a text from Edward’s new number:
Ten minutes sorry. Order me the Chicken Disaster.
Disaster already ordered
She tutted and asked for more poppadoms. On her phone was an email notification: ‘Thirdfield Terrace & Slater-Glynne’.
What was that thing men used in a marriage that kept appearing as a hashtag on Instagram: ‘Weaponized incompetence’? Where the guy kept saying, ‘Oh luv, I’m no good with the dishwasher, I’ve just broken another three plates’, and the wife is forced to take over all the chores?
Well, it was working a treat with Tank and Fire, the suspect buyers. Kim had made up her mind, and she rarely changed herview when she did that. She did not want their dirty money or their filthy lies, and so she had got Emily, a crinkle-haired puffball of bespectacled McFlurry, who took at least four days a month off sick with anxiety, to do the sale ‘as a priority’. Emily had many good qualities – she volunteered with rescue animals and had all the time in the world to listen to her colleagues’ troubles – but she had no future as an estate agent. Every bank account number was transcribed wrong, every phone number in her notepad was missing a digit. She had once sold a couple the wrong house by making a mistake with the Land Registry filing. Emily’s incompetence was as weaponized as a scrambled SAS unit. But the delays did not put off Tank and Fire, and no other offers had come in. Tank and Fire just kept pushing the price higher, as if bidding against themselves. The vendor was in no rush because the leasehold on the apartment block was owned by an investment syndicate.
‘Hey, lovely.’
