Chapter 13
‘I’m bored,’ says Rosie. ‘Entertain me, Stevie. Do you tap dance?’
‘No such thing as bored,’ says Steve. ‘Only boring. Have a nap.’
‘A nap?’ says Rosie. ‘How old do you think I am?’
‘Genuinely no idea,’ says Steve. ‘Low hundreds?’
It’s good to get a sense of a criminal before you meet them and Steve has insisted on tailing Georgie Glazier all day.
Rosie was all for confronting Vern’s ex-wife (‘My God, I’ve been confronted by a lot of ex-wives in my time.
Be nice to turn the tables’), but Steve’s wisdom prevailed.
What’s to be gained by riding straight in?
If Georgie has just travelled to Italy, murdered a bodyguard, pinned it on Jakob Eriksson and flown home, then she’s hardly likely to come straight out and tell them.
Questioning her would alert her to their suspicions, warn her off doing anything incriminating.
Better to get a sense of the woman. Who is she?
What is her routine? Who does she associate with? Does she seem like a criminal?
Steve once had his suspicions about a serving police officer, for example.
Thought the man was taking money from a local drug gang in return for information.
He could have confronted him, but instead spent three days following him.
During those three days under surveillance, the officer visited a car dealership, a travel agent, a jeweller’s and an estate agent.
As if that wasn’t enough, on day three Steve saw the man doing his weekly shopping at Waitrose and decided he finally had enough evidence that the man had come into some money.
Georgie Glazier has a very different vibe, however.
Steve and Rosie are currently waiting outside a pottery workshop in suburban Hertfordshire. They have just enough of an angle to see Georgie wearing an apron featuring a duck saying ‘I’m Quackers about Pots’, while the woman herself is painting a rainbow on to a newly fired plant pot.
‘You could drive your car through the front window?’ suggests Rosie. ‘That would perk me up.’
Georgie’s stop before this had been a volunteer shift at a food bank on a nearby housing estate, and before that she had returned her library books.
Up to this point Georgie has yet to steal a car, buy a bag of drugs, throw a business rival off a building or dispose of a used firearm in a canal. And it’s almost teatime.
That dodgy Met officer, all those years ago, had very quickly shown Steve his true colours. Confirmed every suspicion. So far Georgie hasn’t raised a single red flag. In fact, the only thing she has in common with that corrupt officer so far is that she too popped into Waitrose this morning.
‘If it’s an act, it’s a good one,’ says Rosie.
‘It has to be an act,’ says Steve.
‘She’s very pretty,’ says Rosie. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘I’m on a stakeout,’ says Steve. ‘Not at a nightclub.’
‘When was the last time you were at a nightclub?’ Rosie asks, as Georgie starts petting a dog in the pottery shop.
‘I raided one in the late nineties,’ says Steve. ‘And I had my Covid jab at the Southampton Pump Shed.’
It really does have to be an act though, surely?
The little information you can find about Georgie Glazier online tells you the truth of Vern’s story.
They were husband and wife, and Georgie was involved in the same business as her husband.
Those were facts. Here she is, early fifties, doesn’t look it – not that Steve has an opinion either way about how old she looks, or indeed about how she looks in any respect.
She’s a suspect, pure and simple. Looks don’t come into it.
Typical of Rosie not to understand that.
‘Are you seeing “murderer”?’ he asks Rosie. Rosie has a pretty good eye for this sort of thing at least. Georgie has taken her plant pot up to the counter. ‘Plant pots and library books?’
‘Murderers paint plant pots,’ says Rosie. ‘Murderers go to the library.’
‘I don’t know,’ says Steve.
‘Murderers don’t just go around murdering people all day,’ says Rosie. ‘If a murderer has a toothache, they don’t murder someone, they go to the dentist.’
‘I never go to the dentist,’ says Steve, feeling a hole in a back tooth with his tongue.
‘That’s because you’re British,’ says Rosie.
‘You’re British too,’ says Steve.
‘You take that back,’ says Rosie. ‘I’m just saying, you can volunteer in a food bank and still shoot a bodyguard in the head.’
Steve nods. Why else would Vern send them on this chase?
He must have reasons to be suspicious of Georgie.
Unless it’s misdirection? But Vern would have no possible reason to ask them to investigate Esteban’s murder simply to lie to them.
Would he? Best not to rule anything out.
If twenty-five years in the police taught Steve anything, it’s that other people can be very weird.
And also that petrol stations do the best food.
Perhaps Steve himself is weird? He doesn’t think he is. Sure, he speaks to his dead wife every day, but it would be weirder not to do that. Yes, she talks back, but why wouldn’t she? His heart is still her heart.
Georgie exits the pottery shop and walks back to her ?koda. She actually is very pretty, if women being pretty is your thing. They follow her at a safe distance (a ‘boring’ distance, according to Rosie), and it appears that she is heading home.
Steve is thinking. The ?koda, when you really start getting into it, is interesting.
It’s not a cheap car exactly, but it’s not the sort of car you’d expect Vern’s ex-wife to drive.
You’d think something bigger, surely? Something flashier?
Is that why Georgie is looking for Vern’s money?
Georgie pulls into her road and stops outside a very pleasant, if nondescript, semi-detached house.
Same thing as the ?koda. Georgie clamps her key ring in her teeth as she carries her bags to the front step, puts them down, opens the door and goes in.
‘The house doesn’t fit,’ says Steve. ‘Blackwood in that villa, and Georgie in suburbia?’
‘Perhaps women don’t need to buy big houses,’ says Rosie. ‘Ever thought of that?’
‘Rosie, your house in Dorset has two moats,’ says Steve. ‘Your moat has a moat.’
‘You’re obsessed with my moats,’ says Rosie. She opens the passenger-side door. ‘Come on, then.’
‘Come on what?’
‘Let’s introduce ourselves,’ says Rosie. ‘I’m not going to sit out here while she crochets a blanket for the homeless. Let’s see if she’s a murderer.’
Rosie is out of the car, and Steve feels duty-bound to follow her. He has made her sit still all day, and he knows that’s torture for her. He follows her up the small path to Georgie’s front door.
‘What will you do if she recognizes you?’ Steve asks.
‘Darling,’ says Rosie, turning and clutching a hand to her chest. ‘What will I do if she doesn’t recognize me?’