Chapter 24
SIMON
Simon would have preferred to watch it on a laptop at The Brown Cow.
He’d disliked this room since the day of its pathetic, ribbon-cutting launch, and hated it even more now that he saw Spilling Police Station as enemy territory.
Who was Joyce Magrane anyway? And what was the point of having pelmeted curtains and a cushioned window seat when no one who ever came in here gave a toss?
Simon wanted to tell the others everything he knew, but how could he without risking a solve, or two? He wasn’t prepared to contribute to any result that would make Dooper look good, and do nothing to persuade her to let Proust and Sam stay put.
‘Let’s have the bad news first,’ said the Snowman. ‘My brain is older and wearier than any of yours. The less work it has to do on the context-switching front, the better.’
‘Context-switching?’ Gibbs sneered. ‘Does that mean thinking about one thing and then thinking about a different thing a bit later on? Is that also supposed to be harmful now?’
‘Did I say anything about harm, DC Gibbs? Am I not allowed to say my brain feels somewhat fatigued?’
This might be the last ever pointless squabble between Proust and Gibbs, Simon realised, and the idea squeezed something already sore inside him.
‘I agree,’ said Sellers. ‘Bad news first.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Sam. ‘There’s still nothing from the lab on the physical evidence, so we don’t know if we’ve got anything useful there.’
‘It’s not even been forty-eight hours,’ Sellers pointed out.
‘I know, but they did say we’d have it yesterday.
Oh, and some more bad news: I can’t get this recording to play any more.
Can you have a go?’ He handed the remote control to Sellers.
‘I don’t know if it’s out of battery from the number of times I’ve watched it already today.
Marianne Upton is very much alive in it, guest-starring at 5.
10 p.m. when she appears on the screen behind her husband.
Then at 5.20 his mobile rings and you see him answer it.
That was Marianne – both their phones’ call logs corroborate.
His call to emergency services, after he found her dead, was at 5.
27. This gives us a very narrow time window for the murder: seven minutes. Narrowest we’ve ever had, I think.’
‘I’m ready for the good news,’ said Proust.
‘That also involves Marianne’s phone,’ Sam said. ‘Oliver Mayo’s all over it, proving true what Suzanne Lacy suspected: Marianne and Mayo exchanged Wordle scores – every day, first thing. Even on the day she died, and going back more than a year.’
Simon did his best to look as if he hadn’t already been told this by both Oliver Mayo and Jemma.
‘Apart from that, there was no other communication between them that we’ve found so far,’ said Sam. ‘Someone needs to go to Cambridge and talk to Mayo as a priority. I know he can’t be our man, now or then, but he could well know something that’ll help us.’
Simon gave a convincing impression of someone who hadn’t been to see Mayo in Cambridge yesterday.
‘There you go, Sarge. It’s playing now.’ Sellers handed back the remote control to Sam.
Gareth Upton’s Zoom meeting from Monday afternoon filled the large screen: a grid of faces staring out from their separate boxes.
‘This is Upton here.’ Sam pointed at the man for Simon’s and Proust’s benefit, since they hadn’t met him.
The meeting was quiet and full of pauses.
All the faces on display were men and none seemed eager to speak.
When they did, the technical language made no sense to Simon: nodes, algorithm implementations, microcontrollers.
A thin man with a white goatee beard was the main contributor, while everyone else either listened or pretended to.
Simon shuffled his chair closer to the table to get a better view of Marianne Upton’s husband – Jemma’s dad – who had a round, lumpy face that brought to mind a potato, and sandy-coloured hair that stuck out awkwardly on either side of it.
The team watched in silence until Marianne Upton appeared behind her husband, at which point Sellers made an exclamatory noise, as if a superstar had just walked onto the main stage.
‘Calm down,’ Gibbs muttered.
Gareth and Marianne didn’t communicate at first. She was wearing something lilac-coloured and floppy that could have been sportswear or nightwear, and holding a black bag.
Yoga attire, Simon guessed, knowing she’d been on her way to a yoga class when she was killed.
Big white trainers – bright and shiny new-out-of-the-box white.
Did people wear trainers to do yoga? He hadn’t thought so; he’d imagined it was a barefooted activity.
Still, she had to get there, he supposed.
Marianne bent down, disappearing from view.
When she popped up again in the distance, behind her husband’s right shoulder, there was something in her hand.
Pale blue: a cloth of some sort. She was dusting things and putting them back on a shelf – photos probably, or certificates; all Simon could see for sure was that they were a variety of sizes.
If Gareth Upton was disturbed by his wife fussing behind him, he showed no sign of it. Then he turned and it looked as if he and Marianne exchanged a few words. Then she left the picture.
‘Nothing happens now till twenty past so let me fast-forward …’ said Sam ‘… to when Gareth gets a call. As I said, we know this was Marianne. Here he is picking up his phone, talking … He’s muted himself, like most of them, and we can’t read his lips because the quality suddenly deteriorates.
It’s gone all blurry, see? But then watch. ’
Simon stared at the screen. Despite the fuzziness, which made it difficult to see Upton’s expression, it was clear that after a few seconds his body language changed. He seemed more agitated, and moved his phone away from his ear a couple of times to look at it.
‘I think this is when Marianne’s getting attacked,’ said Sam.
‘See, Upton’s looking at his phone as if to say, Where’s she gone?
And now he’s putting the phone down, and watch how he’s sitting from now on – not nice and relaxed like before.
He’s worried about her now, keeps shifting and shuffling, no doubt telling himself Marianne’s probably fine.
But he can’t convince himself, so … here he is getting up and leaving the room. He’s decided to go and check on her.’
‘And he couldn’t have stabbed her by her car when he got there?’ Proust asked.
Sam shook his head. ‘No blood on his clothes, no weapon in sight. He wouldn’t have time to wash, get changed, hide the knife. No way. Uniforms were there too fast.’
‘The house and grounds and the woods adjoining the garden have been searched,’ Sellers told the Snowman. ‘No bloody clothes have been found, nor the murder weapon.’
‘So if it wasn’t Upton, then who?’ Simon asked.
‘There are no viable suspects, unless the brother and the Domino’s pizza guy are lying to protect Tom Tulloch.
Press play again.’ He nodded at the screen.
When the video restarted, he said, ‘Look at the guy in the green tie. Bottom row, third from the right. Watch him.’
‘His eyes are moving up and down,’ said Gibbs. ‘Probably watching porn.’
‘He’s totally on his phone,’ said Sellers.
‘Interesting blue and white vase he’s got on the cabinet behind him,’ said Simon. ‘Notice anything about it?’
‘Who is he?’ Sam asked.
‘No idea.’ Stop showing off. More importantly, stop taking them closer to a solve. The know-it-all inside him couldn’t resist, though. Surely they could see it? It couldn’t have been more glaring.
‘Why are we interested in this man?’ the Snowman asked.
‘I’m not,’ Simon told him. ‘He’s no one. Notice anything about the vase?’
‘What are you on about?’ said Gibbs. ‘It’s just a vase.’
‘What’s that at the bottom of it?’
‘It’s a white square with initials on it: TKC,’ said Sam. ‘Probably the potter’s initials.’
‘Definitely watching porn.’ Gibbs chuckled. ‘He’s gone red now. Looks guilty as fuck, too.’
‘Nah, no one watching porn’s that bored. He just tried to stop himself yawning.’
‘What’s your point, Waterhouse?’ asked Proust.
Simon knew he had to come up with a presentable lie, and quickly. ‘I was just thinking: his wife’s obviously put that vase there, hasn’t she? No way a bloke arranges a Zoom backdrop like that if he’s got any say in the matter. He looks like he’s been abandoned in an art gallery.’
Sellers frowned. ‘It’s just a big vase. Nothing wrong with it.’
‘What are we supposed to notice about it?’ Sam asked.
‘Just how stupid and weird it is, that’s all,’ said Simon, hoping he’d get away with leaving it at that. There was no way he was going to tell them – not with his brain buzzing like a bomb about to go off and when he still didn’t quite believe it himself.