Chapter 16
I didn’t see Simon for a few days after that.
In fact, the next several days were eerily quiet. This meant that I managed to get quite a lot of work done. I took Kennedy to a dog obedience class in Sittingston, where the instructor gave him one look and moved us up to their special ‘Premium Deluxe’ package.
There was no news from Verity. Not a single piece of correspondence passed between us for almost an entire week, which was unheard of in all the years we’d known one another.
Fine. If she wanted to be like that, then I’d show her how the silent treatment was done.
The heat refused to break. The opposite, actually, it kept building. Every day, I opened my curtains to blinding sunshine and perfect, blue, cloudless skies.
I even took to writing in the garden with my top off. Maybe if I tried hard enough, those deep recessive Mediterranean genes that I’d discovered in Valencia all those years ago would come back to the forefront.
One afternoon, the next week after our trip to see Jed, the lawyer that Ollie had found for me rang, and she and I had a productive conversation.
Her name was Constance Cropper. She was apparently the best in the business.
“Can I afford you?” I asked.
“Only some can, so do your sums before you engage,” she told me in a crisp RP accent, which gave me all the confidence in the system I needed. “Now that you’ve told me what you’re up against, I think we can handle it, and I don’t think I’ll need to bankrupt you in fees fighting it.”
Oh, well, that’s one positive thing.
“Leave it with me, and we’ll make them regret this whole action,” she said and hung up before I could get a word in edgeways.
Later that week, I arrived home from Kennedy’s second obedience training class (“A mild improvement,” the instructor said. “Like how there are different strains of the bubonic plague.”), when a text from Nigella came through.
Riz’s funeral is on TV.
I switched on the news channel to see a reporter outside the Hindu Temple in Bournemouth talking about the delays in releasing the body.
They showed footage of several high-ranking politicians arriving and other dignitaries. There was no sign of Simon.
I rang Nigella. “Haven’t you heard?” she said when I asked where he was.
“No,” I said. “Clearly not, like I told you, we haven’t spoken since that day we went to see Jed.”
“He went back up to Scotland with his parents to stay for a while. I don’t know how long for. They left at the weekend; I thought you knew.”
Oh.
Well. He’s under no obligation to tell me where he goes. None of my business.
And if that was the case, why did I go have a long shower and stand under the hot water, feeling sorry for myself?
That night, as I lay under a single sheet, sweltering in the heat, I gave myself my first real opportunity to think things through.
So, Riz was an extremely ambitious man. He was a doctor who’d risen through the ranks of his chosen career and the local Labour Party to be put forward as a candidate. Even if he was cannon fodder in an unwinnable seat, it was a big deal to get nominated.
Was his ambition what drove him away from his family?
And, then there was Simon, apparently, he was willing to play the game enough to get back together with an ex purely for political reasons.
I thought back to the other day when Neuberger had mentioned Riz’s accounts on dating apps.
Were he and Simon even together properly?
Was that why Simon hadn’t seemed that fazed by the idea the phone calls meant he was carrying on with another man?
Were they open? They had only been broken up for a couple of months, and yet Riz had amassed a fair collection of profiles and subscriptions all tailored to discreetly getting his end away.
Open relationships, polyamory, and all that jazz was something that had never really appealed to me.
Some of the guys I’d dated in my early twenties …
well, I was very aware that I was far from the only person warming their bed, and a few of them, I knew, had someone more long-term waiting for them at home, which was why I was happy to be nothing more than casual.
I’d like to think I was fairly live and let live, but if Simon were someone who thought monogamy was a social construct … then I’d keep my opinions to myself and purse my lips in private.
Okay, so back to Riz. He was ambitious. What did that mean? Had he leaked the photos of Guy and Tarquin? It would have been in his interest to do so, but he had been investigated to an extent, and no one suspected him.
What about Marina Holt?
Now, there was someone I’d have been interested in as the leaker.
But how? Did she know someone from Guy’s past?
Had they paid someone? Who would know about some photos of Guy and Tarquin?
It’s not like they’d have ever been spread about.
Presumably, they had sat on a USB stick or, maybe, a folder on Guy’s hard drive for all these years … maybe he’d been hacked?
Then what happened … she and Riz fought? Maybe Riz felt bad as the photo leak led to a national crisis. He got cold feet and wanted to come clean, and Marina couldn’t take that …
I turned this over. In my head, I slowly convinced myself that Riz must have leaked the photos. But how? Was he working with someone? Marina? Another candidate. Who else stood to gain …
The snoring dog next to me on the bed fidgeted in his sleep, but it didn’t stop my mind from whirring. Riz was expected to come third after Guy and … Suzy Rabbit. And whose campaign manager had been very cosy to a certain someone from Tarquin’s past – me.
Neither of the last two remaining candidates had a chance of winning, and neither had a prior relationship with Riz. Suzy did, through both of them working in healthcare.
Errol could have helped her. My blood ran cold at the thought. Apparently, I was destined to sleep with every murderer going. It would have been easy for him to slip out early that morning. Maybe he’d expected me to sleep the night through and …
I shook my head. It was logistically impossible for Errol to have been involved. He was beside me for upwards of nine hours that night and only left my sight in the pub to use the loo and then in the room to shower. If he was involved, his role had been to – I gulped – keep me out of the way.
But what if all the photos were a double bluff? I’d been fooled by one murderer before; why not a second?
Had Guy suspected Riz as the leaker? Had he attacked Riz after figuring out that the man who swore he was there to help him was really out to get him?
I thought back to that interview with Riz that I’d watched the week before his death.
The smug smile, the cool demeanour as he, well, kinda, threw Guy under the bus.
But wait. Had Guy released his own photos? Could there be some devilish plot? Maybe an attention grabber that backfired? I found it easier to believe that Guy would murder someone than to leak his own nude photos.
So – Suzy and possibly Errol. Marina Holt. Guy. And the last person on my list.
Simon.
The ex-boyfriend who had become a fiancé. Who had argued with him that night. And who was no fan of the spotlight that being engaged to a politician would bring.
I didn’t even know what Simon did for a living. Was he a spy? Why had he been working as a handyman in Lilbury if that was what he really did?
Ollie had told me when I looked into Arabella’s death that the majority of murders were committed by a person known to the victim.
That partners were more often than not involved, which I knew Maslin at least entertained the idea of.
The police seemed to suspect Simon, but not enough that they stopped him from going to Scotland.
The very public, orchestrated, manner in which Riz was killed must have dampened their suspicions.
Eventually, with these horrible thoughts swirling, I drifted off. But it wasn’t a long sleep, and it definitely wasn’t restful.
The next day was, you guessed it, boiling hot and still. Perfect blue skies. It was a Friday. I hadn’t seen Simon in over a week. It was two weeks this weekend since Riz’s murder.
The papers had quietened down on it. The world had kept moving. No arrest, despite huge resources.
The police gave updates. The gun was brought into the country illegally, and the police were chasing leads of criminal gangs who imported weapons in the hope of finding who did it.
But even then, they needed to discover who it had been sold to, and then maybe who they sold it to, and who they sold it to …
There were no cars on the CCTV coming into the car park.
There was no DNA from the killer left at the scene.
For such a brazen murder, the perpetrator had been very clever in their planning.
I was sitting in my garden, topless, with my laptop on my stomach as I typed away in the mid-afternoon sun when my phone rang.
“Sonia,” I said. “What a lovely surprise.”
“I need a drink.”
“Right. Abrupt. Now?”
“Preferably. I’m finishing up in about twenty minutes, fancy meeting in a pub in Sittingston?”
I checked my watch. It was a little after four o’clock. “Sure. Is everything okay?”
She started laughing at that, which I took as a bad sign.
An hour later, my taxi pulled up outside a pub in Sittingston where Sonia had suggested we meet.
It was already thrumming with people. The Lucky Feather, Sonia had once told me, was the closest around these parts to a proper club, though she assured me that up until 8 p.m. on a Friday it remained a typical, if noisy, pub.
The driver gave me a wave as he tore off, and I sighed at the thought of having to use that taxi company on the way home.
I made my way in through groups of teenagers who didn’t look old enough to tie their shoelaces, let alone drink, and searched for Son.
I found her off to the side, bopping to the music at a table while sucking her drink down through a straw and texting with her other hand. She noticed me and waved heartily.