Chapter 20 #4
Simon said nothing and held the door open for us instead. Inside, the cloying familiarity was almost too much. I had to stop from turning heel and bolting. The last time I’d been here was to move my stuff out.
I took a deep breath and called the lift.
In we got and I pressed the button for the third floor.
I felt sick, and that urge to bolt was still there.
What would Ollie say about me turning up on his doorstep like this?
Oh, God, it was going to give off all the mixed signals, and I had no energy for that.
No, it was for Simon. For Riz. We needed info.
Would Ollie be able to tell Simon and I had once had sex? Would we act weird? Could he smell it?
I must’ve been giving off a vibe because Simon spoke up. “Are you okay? You’re basically vibrating.”
“Yup, fine. Finefinefine.”
The doors opened and I walked down the corridor to our – Ollie’s – flat and knocked. No answer. “He might’ve gone out, we should go—”
Simon pounded on the door.
I cringed at the volume.
Footsteps approached from the other side.
The door opened. “Hi, Ollie,” I said.
He had been on the phone. “Riiiiiight,” he said slowly to either us or the person on the line. “Katharina, I’m going to have to call you back. Yup, yup, great. Bye.” He hung up and then looked at me and then at Simon.
He was wearing a pair of linen sleep pants, which I’d never seen him in before, and an old white T-shirt, barefoot and with his hair mussed from running his hands through it.
“Um, what are you doing here?” he said to me. “And who are you?”
Simon scowled. “We need to speak to you.”
Ollie gave me a look, and I held up my hands. “Can we come in? It’s important, I swear.”
He moved out of the way, and I came in, followed by Simon.
I took in the familiar scene. The apartment was rectangular.
The hallway to the front door was in the middle between the spare bedroom on the right and the bathroom on the left.
The hallway opened to a large room, with the kitchen in the corner, and the dining table and living space in an open plan configuration.
Double-height windows ran the length of the right-hand side of the room, giving big clues to the building’s former life as a factory.
A staircase sat snugly in the corner, which led up to the main bedroom and bathroom en suite, with a large mezzanine-style opening over the living room.
It was a big, light, airy apartment with oodles of space and had been a lovely home. I missed it terribly.
Just as Ollie had said when we’d been in Surrey, he’d made a few changes.
A couple of pieces of furniture were in different places, and some others were gone completely.
A wall was a different colour. A rug was new.
I tried to remind myself I didn’t live here anymore, and my opinion on this didn’t matter.
Ollie was staring at me. Then staring at Simon. Simon was looking blithely at me, like he really couldn’t care less.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting …” Ollie caught my eye and looked down at himself. “I’ll go change.”
He disappeared up the stairs and a minute later appeared in a nicer shirt and a pair of jeans.
“So, um, right, what’s happening?”
“Okay, Ollie, this is Simon. Simon Anson, Ollie Ross.”
“Nice to meet you,” they said together, neither looking at the other.
Ollie frowned. “You’re the handyman, right? The one who did Ard’s kitchen?”
“Handyman,” I scoffed.
“More or less,” Simon said, giving me a look.
“Which means … oh, shit. You’re—”
“Yes, he is, and yes, he did, and yes to every other question,” I snapped. “Which brings us to why we’re here.” I flourished the paper. “We’ve been trying to find out what happened to Riz ourselves.”
Ollie’s face fell. “Arden, not again.”
I ignored that and kept talking. “We found this. We think the murder was linked to the leaking of Guy’s sex tape and the attempted murder of JedRev.”
“What?” he said, looking confused. “Who or what is a JedRev?”
“The vicar, obviously,” Simon said.
I scrubbed my face. “We’re not explaining this very well.”
“No, not at all.” Ollie cocked his head to the side. “Arden, can I speak to you for a second … in private?”
“Um, we’re kind of in a hurry—”
“No, this trumps that.”
“We don’t have time,” Simon said.
I groaned. “Fine.” I stormed past them both. Ollie made for the staircase up to the main bedroom, but I carried on into the spare room, which doubled up as a study. I had never used it when I lived here, always preferring to work at the dining table, and let Ollie keep it as his office.
He’d been working here this afternoon; his laptop was open with a half-written email, and papers were all over the desk. As well as a nearly empty iced caramel latte frappe thingy from Starbucks.
“Arden, what the hell?” he whisper-snarled, closing the door.
“Sorry to disturb you like this, and you shouldn’t worry, I’m not doing anything dangerous—”
“What, no, I don’t care about that. I want you here. And that’s fine, but we fucked all night two weeks ago, and then I basically can’t get a word out of you, and now you turn up in London, what the hell?”
“Could you keep your voice down?”
He gave me a look. “Who is Simon? Why don’t you want him to know?”
“Because his fiancé just got murdered, so stop talking about people fucking,” I said, scrambling for a reason.
“Is that why you’ve disappeared? I have debated getting in the car and driving down to you every night since I came back.
I was sure we could have a chance. I was thinking you’d be upset, but instead, you’ve thrown yourself into this shit again, honestly, Arden, just because of what happened doesn’t mean you have to get involved every time! ”
“Get involved? What— oh. Oh, yeah, that’s what happened.”
He glared. “What do you mean?”
I grimaced. “I found Riz’s body. I’ve been involved – inadvertently – since the beginning.”
Ollie’s face fell. “Oh, Jesus, Ard. Fucking hell, that’s heavy. Are you okay?” He came up to me and hugged me. “Why didn’t you say? Bloody hell, I knew I should have come down to see you. You could’ve told me; I would have dropped everything.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’m fine, the cops were fine, everything was fine.”
He was giving me another look. “Why were the cops ‘fine’?” He sighed. “Oh, God, what have you got yourself mixed up in?”
I played for time, but Ollie was giving me his best barrister look, and I was crumbling. “I … I have history with the cops who are running the case; it is the same team who investigated Arabella’s murder.”
“So, they hate you.”
“No! Well, actually, yes.”
“And why do they think you’re involved?”
“They don’t, well, they did, a little bit, but I have an alibi and everything for who I was with at the time of the murder.”
“Which was?”
I didn’t answer. Ollie’s nostrils flared. “Him?” he yelled. “Simon?”
“What, no!” I stumbled for words. “No, anyway, that isn’t the point. The point is, we found something, and it involves you.”
“What?” He was going red. “Who was he then?”
I groaned. Why? Why was this my life? “Some guy. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we think you might be connected to someone who orchestrated this, and we need to know if they contacted you on purpose.”
“Who was the man you were with? Not Guy? Because we’ve all seen what he’s packing.” He sniffed. “I’m bigger.”
“Oh my God – fine, it was a guy called Errol! He worked on the campaign, okay? He seemed nice enough at the time, but it was nothing special.”
Ollie went quiet for a second. Then his face darkened. “Wait, you were with him the night Riz was killed. The Saturday night? So, two nights after we slept together? Wow, Arden, classy. You just jump from man to man now.” He paced the room.
“Ollie …”
“I thought that night meant something!” he yelled.
“Of course it did!”
“But you went and found someone else five minutes later.”
“Excuse me? You’re one to talk. And for your information, I slept with Errol because he …
kind of saved me from a bunch of reporters when that article about my brother came out.
I was upset, Ollie. He stayed with me and stopped me from making a huge mess of things, and one thing led to another,” my voice choked.
“Like I said, I was upset, and I wanted to forget about everything.”
Ollie was looking everywhere else but me. After several moments of silence, he spoke again. “If you were upset, then I’m right here. I was ringing you all night. But you never answered.”
I blinked back tears. Every time we spoke, I ended up feeling worse.
“This was a terrible mistake. I shouldn’t have come here. I’ll go.”
I left and walked out to the living room, where Simon was still standing in the same spot. “I assume you heard all of that?”
He shrugged. “I mean, you were both yelling.”
“Christ, this day just gets worse.” I turned on my heel and made for the door. Ollie walked out in front of me.
“Wait,” he said. “Talk to me about what you need.”