Chapter 18
Honestly, he was such a drama queen.
The way he carried on. It was like I’d said we should sacrifice Mungo to the gods to find the killer.
“It’s illegal,” he said, spitting feathers he was so outraged.
“I take it that you don’t have a key?”
More feather spitting. “So, you do have a key?”
“The police have already looked at everything there,” he said as he pulled up outside my house. This conversation had already been going around in circles for fifteen minutes. Honestly, reader, be glad I skipped ahead.
He got out of the car and, without even stopping to ask if he could, unlocked my front door and let himself in. “Just move in, why don’t you?” I muttered.
He was already feeding Kennedy – delirious to see us, obviously – when I followed him in.
“Can you feed the cats, too?” I asked. He nodded.
The cats, it will shock you, had neither the inclination, nor, it seemed, the physical energy, to greet us on our return.
I gave their entangled fluff a nudge on the chair they were curled up on and received a chirp of displeasure in response. Good, still alive.
Simon sat on my sofa, Kennedy between his legs, looking again through the papers I’d been reading on the way to Marina’s.
“Neuberger searched his flat already.”
“Neuberger’s a dick,” I countered. “We know what we’re looking for.”
“Which is?”
“Mmm, dunno, stuff?”
“Oh my God,” he said and put his hands around Kennedy to steady himself. “You’re not even taking this seriously. Remember when someone broke into Arabella’s house? They never managed to get Tarquin to admit to it.”
I went very quiet.
“Oh my God,” he said.
“Yeah …”
“Oh my God!” he said for a third time, really taking the Lord’s name in vain, here. “It was you?” His eyes were bulging. I shrugged.
“It worked,” I said.
He went silent for a few minutes. And then he paced my living room. And then he went upstairs to the toilet for several minutes, where I heard him pacing in there as well. And then he went out to the garden to pace there too. And then he came back inside.
“If you don’t stop fucking pacing, I am going to kneecap you,” I said. “And you’ve seen what I did to Tarquin, you know I can.”
He looked at me with an expression of wonderment. Oh yeah, never explained to him how I know how to do that. How a nice guy like me could fire guns like that. Well, that’s not a story for right now.
“If you’re not keen, I’ll do it myself.” I put my hand out. “Give me the keys, and I’ll go tonight. I’ll have a mosey and report back.”
He shook his head. “It’s stupid. Unsafe.”
“You don’t have to come with me.”
“I meant for you as well.”
“Ehhhhh. Not the first time I’ve done it. And with keys, it’s a cinch.”
Simon’s eyes narrowed. “What are you expecting to find?”
I shrugged. “Anything about this mysterious other Marina.”
This seemed to do the trick “The police showed me his phone records, said the calls were from an unregistered number. That’ll be who they are looking for as well,” he said.
Nigella’s voice was in my head. This was all to distract him until the mania of his grief had passed. But here I was, getting sucked in all over again.
“Fine,” he said. “But I don’t have the key on me. Come to my place later, and I’ll get it for you.” He stood to leave.
I nodded. “I’ll be over about midnight then.”
He looked pained at this. “You know this stuff is dangerous, right? It’s not a game.” He looked me up and down.
I jutted my chin out in mock resolution. “I’m a big, brave boy, Simon. I’ll be fine.”
He nodded slowly. “I’ll see you at midnight then.” With no warning, he leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Thank you for your help today.” Before I’d quite processed what had happened, he was out the door.
Neither Kennedy nor I knew quite how to deal with that. Instead, Kenny waited downstairs while I took a long shower and, um, worked through some feelings while I was in there.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I snapped at him when I came back downstairs almost an hour later.
I wandered around the house in a towel and grazed at various things in my fridge.
I was ravenous but too jittery to cook. In the space of a few weeks, I’d gone from an insomniac who never ate to someone who slept twenty hours and ate constantly without even realising I was doing it.
After a snack, I took a long nap and awoke when it was starting to get dark. I read through Simon’s notes again – he had the handwriting of a teenage boy. He pressed into the page too hard with the pen, and his letters were bunched up in thin shapes.
“I thought a spy would have nicer penmanship,” I told Kenny. It was at least legible, unlike my loping scrawl.
That evening, I parked my car at the top of Simon’s street and then walked around the back to where I’d entered with Nigella that day. Several trips in the dark and a very bruised shin later, I knocked at Simon’s door.
He answered in the most circumspect manner.
“Key?” I asked, hand out.
“This is such a stupid idea,” he told me.
“Uh-huh. Key?”
“Can you at least take Kenny with you?”
“Take my anxious dog, who gets scared of the sound of a packet of bacon being opened? Who whines if he can’t see me for five minutes, so I can’t even take a dump in peace? Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I’m sure he won’t make any noise.”
Simon looked heavenward with a pained expression on his face. Something I was sure he would claim I was the frequent cause of.
“I’ll come with you.”
I rolled my eyes. “So benevolent. I’ll be fine, I don’t need protection.”
“Yeah, well, I’m coming with you. Give me two minutes.”
“Fine, meet me at the car. I’m parked around by the house with the ugly rose bushes on the corner.”
“Mildred’s house? God, she’ll be watching you through the curtains.” He sighed.
Five minutes later – hey, who was counting – a hulking great beast of a man, all clad in black, slipped silently into my car. Which was impressive, considering his size. Simon said nothing, so neither did I.
We’d been driving about fifteen minutes when the silence became too much for me, and something that had been burning a hole in my head since I’d heard it came tumbling out.
“Riz had profiles on a bunch of dating apps then.”
Simon said nothing, but the air changed.
“He had several … it was a lot to sign up to in the couple of months you guys were broken up. Were you two … were you guys open?”
Oh, the longest of silences.
“We had certain understandings.” It now made sense why Riz’s mysterious phone calls potentially being another man hadn’t been that worrisome for Simon.
“Right,” I said.
“You don’t approve.”
I flexed my hands on the steering wheel. “It’s not my place to comment.”
“You’re judging.”
I swallowed. “No. It’s just not my thing.
Open relationships and me. It’s not my cup of tea, but I don’t have any negative opinions on those who do like them.
” That was a lie. I hated the idea of it.
The thought of someone I loved coming home smelling of another man.
It made me angry to imagine it. But plenty of people had happy, healthy, open relationships, so my job was to shut my mouth.
“Bullshit,” Simon said. “You are a one-hundred-per-cent-monogamy type of guy, and anything else is less than in your eyes.”
I could have argued. I should have argued. Should have said anything. But I didn’t. I let a silence emerge, and then I let it grow.
I could sense Simon getting more and more tense.
“It’s none of your business,” he snapped.
“I know, I’m sorry I asked—”
“And for your information, I’ve had plenty of monogamous relationships. But sometimes they’re not. It depends on me, on them, on the situation. Riz and I started exclusive, but then we opened up, okay?”
I held up my hands in defeat. “Sorry that I asked. I wasn’t trying to offend.”
He sneered. “I suppose in your world it’s boy meets boy and then if one of you even looks at someone else it’s tears and handbags at dawn.”
It was my turn to be offended. “I think this conversation has run its course.” You don’t fucking know me, you prick. “Like I said, sorry I asked.”
After forty minutes of driving, we passed signs for Salisbury.
The mid-sized town, which, due to English anachronisms, was a city because it had a cathedral.
It was advertised as being pretty, but was a very plain town with a modern centre and a plethora of ugly housing.
Riz lived in the southern area near the hospital.
We parked up a few streets away. “Arden,” Simon said. He’d been quiet for twenty minutes. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I was rude.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry.” I closed the car door quietly when, really, I wanted to slam it hard enough to wake the dead.
“Arden,” he said again.
“It’s fine.” I began to walk but then stopped to add more. “We have differing views. Just as well we don’t think of each other in that way because we’re clearly not compatible.” I turned from him and started to walk again. But slow enough to see his face fall.
Good. Don’t insult me and then think you’re in with a chance.
What Riz and he did or didn’t do was their business. But if I could manage the lip service to pretend that it didn’t bother me, then he could show me some basic compassion, too.