Chapter 18
SIMON
Simon had been to Cambridge before, and found he liked it more each time he was here.
At first, he’d thought that feeling of being able to breathe more easily was down to being nowhere near home.
No one was going to recognise him or approach him.
It was true, he’d always felt more relaxed – though also lonelier, that was the disadvantage – in places where he had no ties, but the more often he came to Cambridge, the clearer it became that he liked it for other reasons too.
It was colourful and felt alive in a way that Spilling didn’t, and the snatches of overheard conversation were eye-opening.
Two men walking in front of Simon were having a vigorous argument about whether a treasurer’s wife had any right to insist that the organist write an essay justifying his refusal to take communion from a female priest. The focus of the discussion wasn’t changing church traditions but rather whether one person could reasonably impose essay-writing duties on another when they had no structural authority over them.
Simon knew where he stood on the matter: unequivocally, no.
If his map wasn’t lying to him, the Cedarwood Centre, where Oliver Mayo worked, was going to be coming up any second now on the left.
Yep, here it was. As he approached the front door, it opened and two women came out, one addressing the other over her shoulder: ‘… and I told her, I can’t believe any woman likes it.
It’s like being dipped in the tepid remains of a bowl of cereal. ’
Simon hoped Oliver Mayo would prove to be as loud and forthright as the rest of Cambridge, because he had a lot of questions he wanted to ask Jemma Stelling’s ex-boyfriend. Was it a good sign that Mayo had willingly agreed to the appointment?
He found himself feeling disappointed as he shook the hand of the man he’d driven for two hours to meet.
His first impression was of a cautious, reserved person – shy, even – who had no intention of shouting his mouth off about anything.
There was something uncomfortable, also, about his intense focus on Simon.
Normally, in the presence of a police detective, particularly after a serious crime had been committed, people experienced a lot of internal drama, whether they were guilty or innocent; their attention would switch back and forth between their interior world and the external one.
Sometimes it made them difficult to talk to; they would lose concentration and keep having to reorient themselves.
Not Mayo. His large, brown eyes were two still pools, and Simon sensed nothing behind them apart from a sort of …
force of observation was the only way he could describe it.
This felt like a deeper and, frankly, more threatening level of attention than he’d ever had focused on him before. He wanted to shake its weight off him.
‘This won’t take long,’ he said, then silently berated himself for his defeatist attitude. He’d been here less than five minutes, and he was already convinced Mayo would, as politely as possible, give him nothing. ‘Thanks for agreeing to see me at such short notice.’
‘Happy to help,’ said Mayo. ‘Is there a new lead? I’m assuming you’re here about Marianne’s murder, if you’re from Culver Valley CID.’
‘You’ve spoken to my colleagues, then? DS Kombothekra?’ Simon still hadn’t made contact with his team, still hadn’t responded to any of the dozens of messages they kept leaving for him.
‘Name doesn’t ring a bell, and I think it probably would.
’ Mayo smiled. ‘Someone phoned me yesterday evening – sounded young enough to be my daughter. And a lad with a big, round baby face was here this morning from Cambridge Police, spoke to me and the reception staff. Both experiences made me feel very old, and I didn’t appreciate the déjà vu.
Because of 2012,’ he added, in case Simon didn’t get it.
‘It was uncanny, talking to them. Felt as if I was pulling out an old play script and reciting the same lines as eleven years ago: I was with a client, here, nowhere near Sleatham St Andrew.’
Which is why you got delegated to Cambridge Police.
Simon could see the logic: Sam, Sellers and Gibbs would all be thinking of Mayo as having been conclusively eliminated.
Still, one of them would probably come and talk to him tomorrow, given that Marianne had briefly accused him eleven years ago before taking it back, and Simon was glad to be getting in first. Beating them to the solve would be …
He found he couldn’t feel the uncomplicated relish he was aiming for.
Dooper was the one he wanted to crush with a resounding victory, not his team.
He hated knowing he couldn’t help them without adding another solve to the list of cases she was so proud of, those successfully closed since she took over; none of which she’d had any direct hand in, of course.
‘Have a seat,’ said Mayo. ‘Can I make you tea, or coffee?’ He gestured towards the small navy-blue kettle on his desk.
Simon wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of holding either of the two mugs sitting beside it.
One had a slogan – ‘As I Suspected, I Was Right About Everything’ – and the other, a soppy picture of two green elephants linking trunks and stretching out their front legs towards each other.
‘Ordinary tea, milk, no sugar,’ he said. ‘Thanks. How are you bearing up?’
‘Marianne?’ said Mayo. ‘Shocked but also okay. She meant a lot to me once, but … not any more. Not for a long time. My only concern is for Jemma, Marianne’s stepdaughter.
That’s why I was keen to see you today. Neither of the other two, the young ones, could tell me anything about how she is and she’s not answering my calls or texts. ’
‘I doubt she’ll have her phone on her today – we’ll have taken it.’
‘That’s a good point.’
‘I can’t tell you how Jemma’s doing, I’m afraid,’ Simon said. ‘Haven’t spoken to her since before she knew about the murder.’
Stupid. Now Mayo was bound to ask him why he’d had cause to speak to her before that.
Thankfully, he didn’t. He said, ‘Jemma and I used to be …’
Did he want Simon to finish the sentence for him?
Or to say or do something else? His eyes were searching, questioning, even though he hadn’t asked anything.
‘She means a lot to me,’ he said eventually, and though the words meant something different, what Simon heard was a plea for him to do something, anything, to put Mayo out of his misery. This was not a happy man, he thought.
‘Tell me about Marianne Upton meaning a lot to you,’ Simon said as Mayo started to make their cups of tea.
‘When I first met her, I thought – incorrectly – that I’d give anything to have a mum like her.
Mine had no interest in children or family life.
And she’d died by the time Jemma and I met.
My dad tolerates me at Christmas and buys me the odd lunch, and that’s about it.
He only really seeks me out when he wants to criticise me.
He didn’t want me to join the fire service – very opposed to that, he was.
Then, not too long afterwards, he didn’t want me to leave the fire service and pursue psychotherapy.
’ Mayo shrugs, as if still puzzled by the contradiction.
‘But the main thing he didn’t want me to do was expect him to be a proper father.
And Marianne was the opposite of all that.
In every way. All she wanted was a happy family.
I don’t think I realised how much I wanted that too until I met her.
I’d never known anyone before who … had it as an ambition in that way. ’
‘She didn’t think she already had a happy family?’ Simon asked. ‘Husband and stepdaughter?’
Mayo’s expression darkened. ‘Gareth was as devoted as she wanted him, but she couldn’t accept Jemma as she was.
Jemma’s always had a mind of her own. Look, I need to make it clear: Marianne was a dangerous person.
Definitely borderline. Some kind of Axis II personality disorder.
I’m trying to explain why I didn’t see it straight away, that’s all.
She had something I wanted: a … a shared priority.
A yearning in common, I suppose you’d call it.
So … I didn’t spot the danger she presented for a very long time. ’
Presumably because he wasn’t a therapist when he was initially impressed by her, Simon thought. He suspected not many firemen went round diagnosing people with Axis II personality disorders, whatever they were.
‘I’ve looked at the files from 2012,’ he said. ‘You and Jemma Stelling split up in 2006, yet you were in touch with Marianne after that, visiting her regularly immediately before the attempt on her life in November 2012.’
‘That’s right.’ Mayo handed Simon the slogan mug. It was better than the amorous elephants, Simon supposed, though not by much.
‘That’s unusual, isn’t it? Keeping in touch with your ex’s mother?’
‘Very,’ Mayo agreed. ‘Unusual, inadvisable … Perhaps just plain wrong.’ He sighed.
‘I couldn’t see it at the time. I thought Marianne and I were …
friends. Confidantes, really, more than friends.
Before you ask, there was nothing romantic or sexual between us, ever, though we both understood without having to say so that nobody could know about our …
meetings. No one at Devey House,’ he clarified.
‘Jemma didn’t know. Marianne didn’t tell anyone, I don’t think.
Not even Gareth, who would never have gone against her on anything, or expressed disapproval. Oh!’