Chapter 3
CHARLIE
Charlie Zailer resisted the urge to follow and take charge of matters herself as she watched Jemma Stelling turn the corner and disappear after Simon.
He couldn’t do her any serious psychological harm, could he?
How resilient was Jemma? It was a question Charlie doubted Simon would be asking himself.
His mind was occupied by one thing and one thing only, and had been for the last week: the wreckage that his working life had become, in such a shockingly short space of time.
The new superintendent, Fran Whittingham, had started at the beginning of the month.
Exactly seven days ago, she’d announced that Simon’s team was to lose two members.
The jobs of DI Giles Proust and DS Sam Kombothekra were being relocated to Lincolnshire Police as part of a regional collaboration on serious and organised crime, and if Proust and Sam didn’t want to follow them to a new building and county, then Superintendent Whittingham was afraid there was nothing she could do about that; their presence at Spilling Police Station would no longer be required.
Simon had been wandering around like an upright corpse ever since he’d been told the news last Monday.
Though he kept denying it to Charlie, she was convinced he was now actively doing everything in his power to get himself fired.
‘Why not resign, if you want out?’ she’d asked him.
‘We could get by on my salary, just about.’ He wouldn’t answer, would barely speak about it.
In his present, messed-up frame of mind, would he think to check whether Marianne Upton – Jemma’s prospective murder victim – was alive and well?
Charlie had an uncomfortable feeling about Jemma Stelling, who might well be in denial about already having committed this murder she seemed so preoccupied by.
The eyes gave it away: the ‘How did I end up here?’ shock, the dark glow of something once tidy and self-contained, now spiralling …
But who was this Marianne Upton woman? If Jemma had killed someone, why wasn’t it her husband?
That’s what Charlie would have expected.
Evidently something was seriously wrong on the marriage front.
What was it Jemma had said? Her daughter would be better off parentless than relying only on Paddy?
A criticism as specific as it was devastating.
Someone needed to establish, and quickly, who was alive and who was dead. A detective – which meant not Charlie herself. Not any more, or not yet, or both. She started to move, feeling as if she was chasing her own thoughts, which were galloping twice as fast as her legs could go.
Did she want to go back to CID? To Simon’s team in particular? Trying to manage him at home was enough of a struggle. Would Simon mind? If she told him – asked him – and he responded with anything but uncomplicated delight …
Right. Great. Have you ever met your husband?
‘Who better than you to rein him in without making him feel persecuted?’ the new super had said with a warm smile. ‘He knows you’re not against him. Anyone else comes in as his new skipper, he might view them with … well, a certain amount of hostility.’
Only if, by ‘a certain amount’, you mean the biggest possible amount in the whole history of amounts, Charlie thought.
Shit, had she just blurted out something about maybe being a detective again to Jemma Stelling? Yes, she had. And now Jemma was with Simon, and it wasn’t impossible that she’d …
No, Jemma would be too busy talking about her own problems. A random police sergeant’s career plans would be the last thing on her mind.
Still, this was a ‘note to self’ moment: the outbursts and oversharing had to stop.
The more unstable Simon became – and so far today he’d been acting as if he hoped to set a new record – the more together Charlie would need to be. They couldn’t both lose their jobs.
Charlie stopped at the open door of the canteen, out of breath. A quick look around the hall revealed no Colin Sellers, no Chris Gibbs, no Sam Kombothekra.
They’re probably at The Brown bloody Cow.
There was no point trying the CID room. Simon and his team were never in it any more, which the new super would have noticed.
The unofficial boycott had started with Simon, of course.
The others, incapable these days of raising the mildest objection to anything he suggested, went along with it as if it was all perfectly fine and there would be no consequences.
Dicks. Yes, Simon was a talented detective who deserved admiration, but since he’d solved the murder at Tevendon a few years ago – or perhaps since COVID, which had been the year after – there had been a subtle shift of attitudes and power; they’d all started to treat Simon like some sort of murder-solving guru and had started to quote his wise words at Charlie whenever they got the chance, on subjects that ranged from the proposed Culver Valley congestion charge to the canteen’s new serving hatch.
This never used to happen. And Charlie had heard all of them at one time or another – Gibbs, Sam, Sellers, even DI Proust – parroting Simon’s objections to CID having been moved to a different floor of the building.
The Snowman, as DI Proust was known by all who were well acquainted with his iciest, most chilling moods, had lost the glass cubicle that had once separated him from his team, and protected them from him.
A few days ago he’d grumbled to Charlie that ‘Waterhouse is quite right: even prisoners get their own little cell, which they are compelled to share with only one other person.’ Those first four words had nearly knocked her off her feet – the Snowman had been in the habit of praising no one but himself, for as long as Charlie had known him.
That, however, was before Waterhouse worship broke out in the building and took hold of everyone like a mania.
Charlie knew for a fact that if Simon suddenly decided he loved the new CID room, the rest of them would too.
Fat chance of that. Hardly anything ever climbed any higher than its starting point in Simon’s estimation, which meant that their designated space in the building was being shunned by all of them.
No wonder the new super had decided a restructuring of the team was necessary; had they really, none of them, seen it coming?
Charlie had her phone in her hand and was about to ring Sam when she heard the sound of a male voice drifting towards her along the corridor: ‘And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time …
’ She smiled and looked up, knowing before she saw him that Gibbs was nearby.
Several years after Sellers had turned vegan in order to impress his girlfriend, Gibbs still found it entertaining to sing Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ at him, his theory being that rocket leaves must be all his friend was eating these days.
Sellers, by Gibbs’s side, told him to fuck off and waved at Charlie at the same time. ‘All right, Sarge.’
‘Got a task for one of you,’ Charlie said.
‘You’re a bit late for Daily Tasking,’ said Gibbs. ‘And you don’t get to assign us jobs – you’re not our skipper. Rumour is you might be soon, though.’
‘What?’ How the hell did they know? Heat rushed to the surface of Charlie’s skin.
‘It’s true, then.’ Gibbs grinned. He never missed an opportunity to enjoy someone else’s discomfort.
‘No, actually. Currently untrue.’
‘You’ll get a shock if you come back,’ Gibbs said. ‘Things aren’t how they used to be.’
‘I’m well aware,’ said Charlie, remembering what the two detectives standing in front of her now had looked like when she’d left CID all those years ago.
Sellers had been at least four stone heavier, with sideburns.
Now he was a gangly string bean with a buzz cut.
Gibbs, meanwhile, had discovered cycling and the gym and had bulked out.
He had muscles that bulged even when he wasn’t exerting himself.
‘God, I still can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Both Sam and the Snowman. Leaving.’
‘It’s no big deal.’ Gibbs shrugged. ‘People leave jobs all the time, don’t they?’
‘You’re gutted about it,’ Sellers told him. ‘It’s okay, you can admit it. We’re all gutted. Waterhouse has taken it hardest, obviously.’
‘He’ll get better under you,’ Gibbs told Charlie, prompting a smirk and a chuckle from Sellers.
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ He sounded indignant: how could anyone think that he, Chris Gibbs, prolific creator of obscene innuendo since the early noughties, would ever make a lewd remark?
‘I meant, she’s the only solution. She’s got to come back.
’ He turned to Charlie. ‘You know it too. Why are you holding out?’
Because it’s not my fucking job to save you lot from a mess of your own deluded making.
‘Seriously, it’d be good for all of us to work with you again,’ Gibbs snapped as if it were a reprimand. ‘Not just Waterhouse. Anyway, where is the Wandering Twat-strel? Something big’s come in. We’ve tried The Brown Cow. He’s not there. Not in the canteen either.’
‘Interview Room Four with a woman who came in to confess to a murder she hasn’t committed yet,’ Charlie said.
‘You what?’ Gibbs looked unimpressed.
‘I know. She’s hoping her confession’ll act as a deterrent. I think she’s a bit doolally.’
‘I pity her if she’s chosen today to waste Waterhouse’s time,’ said Sellers.
‘To be honest, I’d rather leave him where he is, mood he’s in, but we need him.
Murder case came in ten minutes ago. Sounds like an odd one too: massive house with the kind of garden a scrote could hide in for hours, if not days, without anyone spotting him.
We’re talking, like, acres. Woodland,’ he added, pronouncing the word suspiciously, as if he wasn’t necessarily prepared to believe in such a thing, even if other people did.
‘This one needs all of us. If we shoot off there now, can you send Waterhouse over, soon as you see him?’
‘Where?’ Charlie asked. Simon’s team’s last four cases had been drug dealers shooting each other in the Culver Valley’s murder capital, the Winstanley Estate, where there were no massive houses.
‘Sleatham St Andrew,’ said Sellers.
‘God, that’s miles away. Up near Lincolnshire.’
‘Never been a murder there before,’ said Sellers. ‘Not that I can find, anyway.’
‘That’s because there’s only about ten people living there,’ said Gibbs.
‘3,751, actually. I looked it up.’ Sellers smiled proudly.
Charlie had started to walk away. ‘If I see Simon I’ll tell him, but I can’t make him drive to Sleatham St Andrew if he’d rather mope around here ignoring all his work and freaking everyone out.’
‘Can’t you try to—’ Sellers began hopefully.
‘Nope,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a huge heap of my own admin that I’ve been neglecting, and I need to follow up on this weird non-confession, in case Simon doesn’t. Looks like I’ll be the one tracking down Marianne Upton, making sure she hasn’t been killed recently. Lucky me.’
‘Are you winding us up?’ Sellers looked ready to laugh if it turned out to be a joke. ‘Marianne Upton?’
‘Don’t tell me you know her?’ said Charlie.
‘That’s our vic’s name,’ Gibbs said. ‘The woman who’s just been murdered in Sleatham St Andrew – she’s called Marianne Upton.’