Chapter 17
Of course, it isn’t quite that easy to run up to a prospective MP in a race when one of their fellow candidates has been killed.
But we gave it a shot. “Follow my lead,” Simon said as we parked up on a side street in Bogford twenty minutes later.
We made our way to the village green, where the fete had been set up. It was a fairly chintzy-looking state of affairs that reflected Bogford’s status as the rather déclassé incomer of the local villages.
Suzy was easy to spot. The Lib Dems had set up a booth with a table.
There were around a dozen volunteers, all clad in various hues of orange and yellow.
We began to make our way over. Halfway across, Simon tapped my arm and gave a tiny inclination of his head.
Over to his left was a cop car, with two familiar police officers standing beside it, enjoying an ice cream in the sun.
Ade and Lauren looked like friendly local coppers, but they’d probably be less than happy to see us.
“Let’s not let them know we’re here,” I said quietly. That plan had a good chance of lasting, oh, about forty-five seconds.
Because as we got closer to the stand, Errol Mottley turned from where he’d been barking orders at a volunteer, and his eyes found me. His face turned to thunder.
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” Simon said.
“You know what you said about taking the lead. Could you do that now, please?” I asked.
Errol made his way over and looked like he was about to punch me.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“We’re not here for you, Mottley; we want to speak to Suzy,” Simon said.
“She’s not available.” He was dripping with smarm.
Simon smiled politely. “Unfortunately, I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Errol’s eyes danced over to Ade and Lauren, but Simon shook his head.
“Uh-uh-uh. Not unless you want to explain to them how you violently threatened Arden last night in the Lucky Feather and how he should have lied to cover up for you. Not sure your bosses would be glad to hear about that. So, why don’t you lead us over to Suzy so we can all have a nice chat? ”
Errol looked like he wanted to kill us both.
But after a long few moments where he considered all his possible plans of action, he acquiesced.
“Fine, come around to the cars.” He led the way, and we were soon at the back of a hideous orange van with Suzy’s face plastered over it.
The woman herself sat on a lawn chair beside the door of the van.
She made notes on her papers as she nodded along to whoever she was talking to on her phone.
Simon gave me a look that I took to indicate do nothing.
So, we waited. Errol became flustered as we continued to stand there silently.
He tried to get Suzy’s attention for several seconds.
Eventually, he burst into her conversation.
“Errol, what is it?” she snapped. He jerked his head.
Her face turned from a scowl to shock and back to a scowl as she saw Simon and me.
Up close, she was a brassier woman than I’d expected. The blond hair was a little yellower from lack of toner. The make-up a bit thicker, the eyes a little shrewder. She was more of a politician than she pretended.
She hung up her call. “Simon, good to see you. So sorry about what’s happened. God, I can hardly believe it.”
We remained silent. “What can I help you with?” she asked. Errol was at her side, about to burst from anxiety.
“I was interested in your history with Riz,” Simon said eventually, but without looking at her.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, painting on a smile.
Simon and I glanced at each other, and I shrugged. “Well,” Simon said, dragging out the word. “You two were old friends. Both in the race together, now he’s dead, and no one knows why. And you stand the most to gain.”
“Are you— Are you seriously … I can’t believe this, Errol, get rid of them,” she said and turned away. Dismissing us with the flick of a hand.
“You’re saying the leaked photos had nothing to do with you?” I said. “Because Guy was the front-runner, and all of a sudden, he’s out, and then Riz, who was your only other competition, is a goner. Bizarre that – the path to your seat opening up so quickly.”
Suzy stiffened. “How dare you! I’ll sue you for that, I’ll—”
“I haven’t said anything slanderous, merely that you’re a lucky woman, all your rivals are out of the way. It makes one wonder how that came to be.”
“Maybe Riz knew you were ambitious,” Simon said, taking in the van.
The doors were open, and a plethora of campaign materials, all with Suzy’s face emblazoned on them and only a tiny logo of the party, filled the space.
“And you may have buried your history, but it’s there if you want to find it.
You were a Tory up until a couple of years ago.
You had a falling out with Macauley Sheridan and so decided to jump ship. ”
I couldn’t help it; my jaw fell open with shock. Now that was a surprise. She scoffed at him. “I think it’s time you leave, Mr Anson.”
“You can’t get far as a Lib Dem in this country,” Simon carried on, ignoring her completely.
I wasn’t sure if it was a spy thing, but every comment he gave came after an excruciatingly long pause, which only he seemed to be immune to the awkwardness of.
He didn’t make eye contact either, preferring to make his statements to the middle distance.
“But what if you jumped back once you were ensconced in Parliament? All that publicity, all that backslapping. All that experience in the NHS. They’d be stupid not to promote you.
“I wonder what the falling out was,” he continued, as Suzy’s face went redder and redder.
“Was it that he was a bit of a sexist, was it that he was a snob, that he liked pretty young men, like, say, Guy Frobisher?” Simon took his time saying the rest. “Posh, handsome, male. Guy caught the eye of our lecherous old MP, and capable, mumsy Suzy was not who he wanted to pass the baton to.”
Suzy was so red I thought she might be about to explode.
“You listen here, you little meddling prick,” she said, her tongue slithering about her mouth. “Riz was a nasty piece of work, and even worse, he was stupid. He knew what he wanted like I did, but the trouble was that he wasn’t willing to work for it and bide his time.”
“Suzy,” Errol whispered.
“Shut up, Errol, you fool,” she spat. She never took her eyes off us. “I worked my way up to this position. Your Riz, well, he got here by doing what he did best. Blackmail. He sold his soul to the devil to get his shot at Parliament, and it came back to bite him in the arse.”
She shook her hair and returned to her paperwork. “And now, gentlemen, I suggest you leave. Before I call those lovely officers over and tell them about this … harassment.”
Simon smiled. “Of course, thank you for your time, Suzy.”
I glanced at Errol. He looked ashen-faced. He’d been as shocked as I was at Suzy’s past. Good.
He gulped a little and wouldn’t make eye contact as Simon and I slowly turned and took our leave.
As we walked back to the car, I was buzzing. “Holy shit! That was amazing,” I said, dragging Kennedy away from the cake stall he was desperate to investigate.
Simon said nothing and kept looking straight ahead. “How did you know all that stuff about her?” I asked.
He frowned. “Because I researched her. Isn’t that how you found out everything about Tarquin? I thought you would have known all of that. It’s in my notes at your house.”
“Ahhhhh,” I said. This was awkward. “I’ve been a bit … distracted.”
“Well, I’ve had a week to stew on it and think things through. Certain comments Riz made about Suzy over the past few months led me to believe she wasn’t the loving mum and hospital administrator she was presenting to the world.”
We arrived back at my car, and I unlocked it. We both sat with the doors open to let it cool down in the baking sunshine.
“It’s like the Sahara,” I commented. “Speaking of hotter than hell. What was that she said about deals with the devil?”
Simon scrunched up his face.
“No idea. But I know who to ask.”
The election was five days away, this coming Thursday, and here we were on a Saturday afternoon, trailing candidates for answers.
“I’ll pull in up here,” Simon said, as we came to a stop near the extremely picturesque house a few miles to the east of Dorchester.
It was an hour later, and after a spirit-rallying sandwich and iced coffee, we’d traversed through several laneways and exceedingly narrow roads to a village called Forstenmitre.
We’d stopped off at my house on the way here and collected Simon’s notes. Hence why he was driving. And pulling faces at everything my car did. While I sat in the passenger seat and read through his dossier.
I finished reading what he’d said about Suzy – only a bit late – and felt a fool. If I hadn’t been busy swanning about the place, feeling sorry for myself since Riz’s death, I might have been able to help.
Simon parked my car on a tiny verge near an intersection.
The fields around us were overgrown, and trees hung over the road.
The stone walls that lined the laneway were crumbling.
With the sunshine blaring down on us, it was almost too perfect an English idyll.
If I got out of the car and there were butterflies in the wildflowers, then I’d know we were in a dream.
“This village is forgotten about,” Simon said. “Long ago, there were more people here. Half the houses are boarded up.”
That seemed unusual in southern England, where every spare scrap of land was accounted for and marked up at a huge profit as we tried to cram in more houses. Because heaven forbid the English learned to live in mid-rise apartment blocks like their continental cousins.