Chapter 8
GIBBS / SELLERS
‘Wordle,’ said Suzanne Lacy. She and Gibbs hadn’t moved from their spot just past the turning circle in front of Devey House.
Gibbs fought back the urge to say the rudest thing he could think of: something to make her shrivel up and feel shame forever.
She’d led him on, if only very briefly – allowed him to believe he was on the verge of an important discovery in the case.
Her mention of a twisted game that Oliver Mayo and Marianne Upton had been playing together had raised his hopes, which plunged right back down, like a lift that reaches the top floor and then has its cables cut, at the mention of something as anodyne as the world’s favourite online word game.
‘Ask Jemma when she gets here,’ said Suzanne. ‘It was the first thing Marianne did when she woke up every morning: solved that day’s Wordle puzzle. She kept trying to get Jemma to play it, but Jemma wasn’t interested. And … I think Ollie must have been, though I can’t prove it.’
‘So, you’re saying Marianne and Oliver Mayo … what, had some kind of Wordle thing going on? Is that what you meant by a twisted game they were playing?’
‘I think that was an element of it, yeah,’ Suzanne said. ‘A harmless game within the twisted game.’ She looked at her right wrist, which had a pale watch-shaped mark on the skin, but no watch. ‘I’d better go and check the lasagne isn’t burning.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Gibbs stood in front of her, stopping her leaving. ‘You need to explain.’
‘I need to get back to the kitchen.’
‘I’ll come with you, then,’ he said. Together, they started to walk towards the house. There was no sign of Paddy Stelling when Gibbs turned to look. He must have gone back in.
‘All I’ve got is a theory, and absolutely no evidence that it’s the truth,’ Suzanne warned him.
‘Go on.’
‘One night last year, I stayed over at Jemma’s after we’d had a bit of a boozy night,’ Suzanne said. ‘Next morning we’re having breakfast and Jemma’s phone buzzes. Marianne. And she’s sent her Wordle result for that day, the grid. I don’t suppose you know …?’
‘Know it well, unfortunately,’ said Gibbs. ‘My wife does it religiously every night before bed, then sends that stupid box thing to everyone she’s ever met since the day she was born.’
‘Oh God, one of those,’ said Suzanne.
‘I wouldn’t care, but it’s like she expects me to get excited. She’ll go, “It’s bread. Today’s word is bread!” Like, so what? I don’t play it, and I don’t give a shit.’
‘Here’s the strange thing,’ said Suzanne.
‘Marianne’s been doing Wordle since it started, but she’d never sent her result to Jemma before.
Not once. But this particular morning she did, and she sent a message with it too: “Send to Jemma. No words, only the grid.” Jemma said, “Why’s she telling me to send this to myself?
” I said, “She obviously meant to send it to someone else. She must have got mixed up and pressed the wrong contact on her phone because you were in her mind. Freudian slip of the finger.” Jemma replied to her, saying, “I’m Jemma.
Have you sent this to the wrong person?”, to which Marianne sent back a stupid-yellow-face-crying-tears-of-laughter emoji and a “Yes, sorry! Meant to send it to Paddy!” Which was a fucking lie. ’
Suzanne’s expression hardened. ‘She’s never texted Paddy in her life, according to Jemma.
The whole thing was just … odd. I figured it must have been a pretty important word, if Marianne thought it worth sending to anybody with that instruction: “Send to Jemma”.
What could it possibly be? I wondered. So, later, when I wasn’t with Jemma any more, I found Wordle and had a go. Guess what the word turned out to be?’
‘No idea.’
‘“Howdy”.’ Suzanne stopped walking. They’d reached the front door.
‘We probably shouldn’t discuss this inside,’ she said.
‘Can you think of any reason why Marianne would encourage her son-in-law to send the word “howdy” to his wife? Because I can’t.
I think – no, I’m sure – that message was meant for Ollie Mayo, not Paddy.
I just can’t prove it. I think it was Marianne telling Ollie, “Here’s a clever, cryptic, flirty way to get in touch with Jemma after all the years the two of you haven’t spoken.
” Why she wanted him to do that, I’ve no idea.
She’d been dead against him and Jemma getting together – like, basically gave the impression she’d die if it happened, and almost insisted Jemma and Paddy stay together – so I’ve no idea why she’d suddenly encourage Ollie to get in touch with Jemma. ’
‘What did Jemma think?’ Gibbs asked.
‘That Marianne was trying to mess with her head for some reason. It was one of her favourite hobbies – but she didn’t agree with me that Ollie had to be the person that message was meant for.
Said there was no proof, and she’s right – there isn’t.
Look, even if it’s true, and I know in my bones that it is, that doesn’t mean Ollie killed Marianne.
All I know is, Marianne said on the night of the attack in 2012 that he was the one who’d done it, before she started insisting it wasn’t him. ’
‘Why would she lie to protect the person who’d cut her throat and left her bleeding to death on the floor?’ Gibbs asked.
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ said Suzanne. ‘Jemma agrees with me, for what it’s worth. She’ll tell you herself when she gets here: she’s thought for a long time that Marianne and Ollie are keeping some kind of secret from her – that there’s something dodgy going on between them.’
‘Her stepmother and her ex-boyfriend?’ Gibbs frowned.
‘I know. Gross, right? But Jemma’s convinced, and I’ll admit, after everything she’s told me, I am too.’
‘Can I ask you something else?’ said Gibbs. ‘How come it was you who brought Lottie here, not her dad?’
Suzanne’s mouth flattened to a disapproving line.
‘For some reason, Paddy decided he couldn’t bring Lottie with him.
Probably thought he could protect her, I don’t know.
Instead of ringing me and asking me to sit with her – I mean, I was at work, but I’d have dropped everything – Paddy rang an old acquaintance of dubious character.
A bloke.’ She shook her head. ‘Effectively a stranger, too – Lottie’s barely spoken to him.
The only thought in Paddy’s head was who could get there soonest. Fine, he wasn’t thinking straight after hearing about Marianne’s murder, but I mean, when is he?
Look, did you take in what I said about Ollie before?
Whichever client gave him his alibi in 2012 needs putting on the spot, big time, to see if they’re telling the truth or not. Are you going to do that?’
‘You still haven’t told me how you ended up bringing Lottie here.’
‘Why does it matter?’ said Suzanne impatiently.
‘She was freaked out by being dumped in the care of this dude immediately after hearing her gran had been killed, so she texted first Jemma, who didn’t respond, and then me.
I rescued her and brought her here, where she obviously needs to be, with her family.
Not with a not-even-close-any-more male friend of Paddy’s, the very last person Jemma would ever trust with …
’ She seemed to change her mind mid-sentence.
‘Well, she’d never entrust Lottie to him. That I’m sure about.’
She started to move towards the house, saying, ‘I’ll have to apologise to everyone for a charred lasagne if I don’t get in that kitchen right now. Please follow up on the Ollibi, okay?’
‘What? Oh – right. Mayo’s alibi.’
‘Since she went to see him in July, Jemma’s been insisting he didn’t do it in 2012,’ said Suzanne, ‘but that’s not what she thought at the time. Very much not.’
Gibbs followed her in the direction of Devey House, falling gradually further behind as she sped up.
He wondered if he’d read too much into her words or if she had meant to imply that Jemma had trusted the not-even-close-any-more friend with something, if not her daughter. Or that Suzanne thought she might.
Gibbs shook his head, deciding he’d probably read too much into what she’d said, and put it out of his mind.
‘Will you take all of them away?’ Gareth Upton asked Sellers in a deadened voice, looking around his home office.
By ‘all’, he meant the various … Sellers didn’t even know what to call them.
Technological devices, maybe – though that description brought to mind smaller things like phones and the Nintendos his kids had played with when they were little.
Upton’s home office was full of enormous monitors and large grey and black hard drives the size of filing cabinets.
‘I built most of them myself. I don’t suppose … ’
‘What?’ asked Sellers.
‘Nothing. I was just going to say, I don’t suppose it matters. I don’t feel up to doing much. Can’t see myself … You know.’ Speaking seemed to be an effort for him. He wasn’t crying at the moment, but there were still wet patches on his face.
‘Would you maybe like to go and lie down for a while, Mr Upton?’
‘No. I’d have to wake up again, wouldn’t I?
Don’t want to do that.’ He looked around, as if to remind himself where he was.
This room had been designed to look as masculine as possible, thought Sellers, with none of the colourful, elaborately patterned wallpaper that filled most of the house.
Even the study that Marianne had stripped bare, which Sellers could see across the landing, was somehow more feminine.
He wondered if it had been furnished and full or empty in Lottie’s dreams. She’d said she ‘used to’ dream about it, which implied long ago, when presumably the room had some stuff in it – but if Lottie had never been in there …