Chapter 51
Fifty-One
Tuesday
EMILY
Stephanie arrives at the house without calling first. I’m sitting on the kitchen sofa pretending to scroll on my phone while Lara sets up her next shoot. Tim is out.
I know it’s someone official before Lara even opens the door. The knock is brisk and professional. It carries down the hallway and into my chest.
I sit up and listen. The front door opens, high heels click and voices murmur. Then Stephanie Cartwright appears in the doorway.
‘Hello, Emily,’ she says. ‘May we talk?’
She is dressed in the same sharp suit she wore yesterday. The jacket is buttoned, her hair immaculate. She is holding her briefcase in one hand and a phone in the other as if she has just stepped straight out of one crisis and into another.
‘Of course,’ I say, and start to get up off the sofa.
‘It’s fine,’ she says. ‘We can talk in here.’
Stephanie strides across, and Lara follows her like a jittery shadow.
Stephanie places her briefcase on the coffee table, but doesn’t open it. She looks at me regretfully, like someone bracing herself.
‘Oliver has been re-interviewed this morning,’ she says. ‘This time under significantly different circumstances.’
I fold my arms. ‘You said they were running out of time to hold him much longer.’
‘They were.’ She blinks. ‘They aren’t any more.’
I wait. I’ve learned that much, at least.
‘For something this serious, they can get an extension—which they have done—but there is a hard limit. A maximum of ninety-six hours in police detention.’
‘They can only keep him until tomorrow at the latest, then?’
‘Yes. After that they must charge or release him.’ She hesitates. ‘If they charge, they’ll then start looking at remand or bail decisions.’
Stephanie opens the briefcase and takes out a slim folder.
‘Detectives have completed an accelerated digital forensic review of Oliver’s devices.’
My throat tightens. ‘And?’
She doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, she opens the folder and takes out a sheet of paper.
‘They’ve identified multiple historical email accounts,’ she says. ‘Usernames and profiles linked to Oliver, some of which he appears to be operating under different surnames.’
I frown. ‘Different surnames?’
‘Yes.’
‘That will be for work,’ I hear myself say quickly. ‘He’s always had projects that require him to be discreet.’
Stephanie’s gaze flickers. ‘Some of the identities go back several years,’ she says carefully.
My skin prickles. Shit.
‘That can’t be right,’ I say, even though my own name changes will show I knew this. ‘I mean, he wouldn’t—’
‘Emily,’ she interrupts gently, ‘I need you to listen before you try to defend him.’
That stops me dead. She knows.
Stephanie continues. ‘The forensic team also recovered evidence of third-party data-wiping software. It was installed and executed approximately twelve hours after Vanessa Lambert’s estimated time of death.’
I stare at her. ‘But surely that’s impossible? Oliver was in police custody then.’
‘Indeed. But someone deliberately destroyed recoverable material,’ she says. ‘Beyond ordinary deletion, I mean.’
My heart begins to thud, hard and uneven.
‘He told me he’d cleared out a lot of old stuff months ago,’ I say. ‘Before we moved.’
‘That’s not what the forensic timeline suggests. This was very recent.’ Stephanie looks at me in a way I don’t care for. ‘I have to ask, Emily, if this is something you did yourself?’
‘What? Absolutely not!’ Something hot writhes in the pit of my stomach. ‘I don’t know how that can have happened.’
Stephanie stares at me. ‘That’s exactly what the police are saying. If Oliver didn’t do it, then who did?’
She takes out another sheet and hands it to me. On it are numbers and columns. A name I don’t recognize.
‘What’s this?’
‘Details of an offshore holding account registered in Jersey,’ she says.
‘The police were sent anonymous information from someone claiming to have hacked into an email thread between Vanessa Lambert and your husband that shows a transfer being scheduled and agreed.’ She glances at the file again.
‘One hundred and fifty thousand pounds was set to be paid from Vanessa Lambert’s account by way of a Spanish property deposit.
She received an email with details of how to make the transfer the day before she died, but she must have changed her mind because the transfer never took place. ’
For a moment, the walls seem to rush in at me.
It isn’t shock exactly . . . it’s the sickening click of something lining up far too neatly. My breath catches halfway in, as if my body has understood what she’s saying before my mind is willing to follow.
Jersey.
Offshore.
The timing.
‘But it wasn’t paid?’ I say, and I’m grateful my voice comes out steady. I keep my face blank, give nothing away. I’ve had years of practice at that.
But inside, I’m full of fault lines.
‘Fortunately not. For some reason, it seems Vanessa got cold feet and pulled the transfer at the last moment.’
This isn’t just bad news. It’s catastrophic. What was Oliver planning to do with that money? Was he planning to leave me?
I think of Oliver’s accounts. The access. The assumptions they’re already making about me.
I press my fingers together in my lap, grounding myself, and look back at Stephanie as if I’m processing this for the first time.
‘There has to be another explanation,’ I say carefully. ‘Some mistake that’s been made.’
She doesn’t argue. She just watches me.
And that, more than anything else, tells me how bad this really is.
‘He said he was helping Vanessa with something,’ I hear myself say, scrambling now. ‘A property in Spain.’
Stephanie’s eyebrows lift a fraction.
‘Did you see any paperwork?’ she asks.
I shake my head.
‘Emails? Contracts? Estate agents?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ask him?’
‘No! I had nothing to do with it.’
I look down at my hands. They’re trembling.
‘The police will argue that Vanessa changed her mind about transferring a large sum of money to Oliver,’ Stephanie continues, ‘and that within twenty-four hours of that, she was dead. That’s a very big coincidence.’
‘But . . . why would Oliver kill her? That would be a sure-fire way to ensure he didn’t receive any money.’
Stephanie studies me for a long moment.
‘We don’t know the details yet. But the police are thinking that possibly Oliver went around there to confront her and tried to force her to make the transfer. Perhaps things got out of hand, I don’t know. I’m trying to look at it from their end.’
I fold my arms. ‘There’s no way. He’d just walk away if the deal was lost.’ I obviously don’t elaborate, but I’ve seen him do it countless times.
‘Emily,’ she says, ‘I have to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly.’
My mouth goes dry.
I should have known this was coming. I think back to creating a cursory timeline and bullet points.
I should have gone much further. Rehearsed, mapped out the safest version of the truth and decided in advance where the lines were.
Instead, I’ve walked in here unarmed, trusting that sincerity might be enough .
. . a rookie mistake I thought I’d outgrown.
And now I have seconds to catch up.
‘Did you know anything about what Oliver was doing under the other names he’s used?’
‘No.’ I swallow. ‘Only that he sometimes used aliases for work.’ I’m aware of how dodgy it sounds, but I’m thinking on my feet here.
She nods slowly. ‘Did you know about the offshore account?’
‘No.’
‘Any reason he might have felt under pressure recently? Financially, emotionally?’
Images flash. Oliver tense and distracted. The constant texts and phone calls in the middle of the night. His insistence that we had to move quickly one final time.
‘I can’t think of anything,’ I say.
Stephanie sighs. ‘Emily, I need you to understand something. I am Oliver’s solicitor. My duty is to defend him to the best of my ability, and you are the person who knows him best.’
The air feels suddenly thinner.
‘So, if there is anything—anything at all—you know that hasn’t yet been disclosed, you need to tell me now. Not later. Not when the police ask, because that’s too late.’
There are things I’ve never told anyone. Things I buried because they didn’t fit the version of us I wanted to believe in.
I lift my chin. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’
Stephanie watches me for a moment or two longer, then closes the folder.
‘All right,’ she says, standing. ‘Then this is where we are. Oliver has been formally charged.’
I’ve known to expect this, but it’s sobering to hear the words spoken out loud.
‘With murder?’
‘Yes.’
My breath stutters, and I press a hand flat to my chest.
‘What happens now?’ I hear Lara say in a small voice.
‘He’ll be remanded in custody,’ she says. ‘There will be a court appearance. And I’m afraid bail is unlikely at this point.’
Stephanie picks up her briefcase.
‘Emily,’ she says, softer now, ‘sometimes, the people closest to a suspect think they’re protecting them by keeping quiet. But in reality they are simply exposing themselves and making things worse.’
It strikes me that, for a few moments, the house is utterly silent.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Stephanie says, breaking the spell. ‘If anything comes back from their general forensic deep-dive, I need to know immediately if it rings any bells for you.’
Then she’s gone.
The door clicks shut.
I stand alone in Lara’s kitchen, the hum of the fridge suddenly deafening.
Oliver is in a police cell. Charged with murder.
And for the first time since I met him, a terrible, unwanted thought forces its way through.
What if the man I’ve built my life around is not the person I thought he was at all? What if he is a monster, capable of killing an innocent woman just for the big payday?