wondered what Kate Kombothekra had thought of what she’d said; would it be a thumbs up or a thumbs down from the person who’d put her up to making a laughing-stock of herself in the first place?
The door opened. ‘Talk me out of what?’ said Simon. He didn’t look happy. He never looked happy.
‘Dumping me. Here’s your ring.’ Charlie dragged it off her finger. ‘I’m not going to haggle over the world’s smallest diamond. ’
‘I’m not… that’s not what I’m trying to do. Look, I’m sorry. I got angry.’
‘Really? I must have missed that part.’ Charlie would sooner have died than let him see how relieved she was. She was furious with herself for being relieved at all. How many men might she be engaged to at this very moment who would have found her Grace story hilarious? Billions. Dozens, at least. Most of whom would probably want to have sex with her.
‘I had a bad day at work,’ Simon told her. ‘I had to tell a man-’
‘Oh, diddums! Did the canteen run out of steak and kidney pie before you got to the front of the queue?’
‘Shut the fuck up and put your ring back on,’ said Simon.
‘I had an evil day yesterday, as it happens,’ Charlie snapped. ‘It totally fucked up my day off today, in fact, but in spite of that, I seem to be able to behave like a civilised human being. Or rather, I
‘I spent all afternoon with a man who’s confessed to a murder, ’ said Simon. ‘Trouble is, the woman he reckons he murdered isn’t dead.’
Charlie’s mind flattened out; all other thoughts fell away. ‘What?’
‘I know. Strange. Actually, it gave me the creeps-he wasn’t someone I enjoyed being in a small room with.’ Simon opened his can of lager. ‘Do you want a drink, or is this the last beer?’
‘Tell me,’ Charlie heard herself say. It was as if the party and their row had never happened; she was back in the reception room at the nick, trying not to stare at the ribbons Ruth Bussey had wound round her thin ankles. Ruth Bussey with her limp and her frail, reedy voice, who was frightened something was going to happen, but didn’t know what…’
‘I wasn’t there for the beginning,’ said Simon. ‘I only got dragged into it today. When he came in yesterday, Gibbs talked to him.’
‘Yesterday? What time? What’s his name, this man?’
‘Aidan Seed.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Not exactly. What time did he come in yesterday?’
Simon screwed up his face, thinking. ‘Must have been some time between one and two.’
Charlie let out the breath she’d been holding. ‘At ten to twelve, his girlfriend was waiting for me when I turned up for my shift.’
‘His girlfriend?’
‘Ruth Bussey, she said her name was.’
Simon nodded. ‘He mentioned her. Not her surname, just as Ruth. What did she want?’
‘Same as him, by the sound of it. Told me her boyfriend was adamant he’d killed a woman called Mary Trelease…’
‘Right.’ Simon nodded.
‘… but that he couldn’t have, because Trelease is still alive. I thought she was deranged at first, so I asked a few background questions. The more she talked-’
‘The more you thought she seemed sane?’ Simon cut in. ‘Preoccupied, upset, but sane?’
‘Preoccupied’s an understatement. I’ve met human wreckage before, but this woman was in a worse state than anyone I’ve seen for a long time. Shaking with fear, crying one minute, then staring into the distance as if she’d seen a ghost, telling pointless lies that made no sense. She had something wrong with her foot, and claimed at first that she’d sprained her ankle. When I said it didn’t look swollen, she changed her story and said she had a blister.’
Simon paced the room, chewing his thumbnail as he often did when he was concentrating. ‘Seed was the opposite-not changeable at all. He was very controlled. At first I thought he had to be asylum material, but… he didn’t seem it, even though he was insisting on the impossible and wouldn’t listen to anything I said. Twenty-eight times, he told me something I knew couldn’t be true; tried to use logic, even, to make me believe it.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Charlie.
‘I asked him to describe the woman he killed, which he did in great detail. Point for point, his description matched the woman I saw and spoke to this morning.’
‘You’ve met Mary Trelease?’ The idea made Charlie feel funny; she wasn’t sure why.
‘I have and Gibbs has. We’ve both seen her passport, her driving licence. Today she showed me the deeds of her house with her name on, all the paperwork from her solicitor from when she moved, her bank statements…’
‘Why so much?’ said Charlie. ‘Passport and driving licence should have been enough.’
‘I think she was worried one of us was going to turn up every day and ask her to prove all over again that she’s who she says she is. She gathered together a stack of stuff to show me how absurd the whole thing is. She acted like… like she was afraid I was trying to steal her identity or something.’
‘Afraid, literally?’
Simon considered it. ‘Yeah, underneath her chippiness, I reckon there was some fear there.’
Two frightened women. Charlie didn’t like the feel of this at all. ‘So how did you get dragged in? You said Seed saw Gibbs first?’ She waited to be told that Seed had at some point requested Simon’s involvement, asked for him by name. She wasn’t quite ready to believe this wasn’t all a cruel hoax aimed at her. If Ruth Bussey and Aidan Seed knew she and Simon were engaged…
‘Kombothekra said Gibbs was needed elsewhere,’ Simon told her, ‘Reading between the lines, he didn’t trust him with it.’
‘He doesn’t think Gibbs is capable of checking if someone’s alive or dead?’
‘Mary Trelease wouldn’t let him in,’ said Simon. ‘He didn’t see the house. Most importantly, he didn’t see the master bedroom, the one facing the street. According to what Seed told Gibbs yesterday, that’s where he left Mary Trelease’s dead body, in the bed in that room…’
‘Hold on. When did he say he’d killed her?’
‘He wouldn’t say. Nor why, though he did say how: he strangled her.’
‘Ruth Bussey said Seed had told her he’d killed Mary Trelease years ago.’
Simon blinked a few times. ‘Sure?’
‘Me or her? I’m sure she said it, and she seemed convinced that was what he’d told her. I think she quoted his exact words as, “Years ago, I killed a woman called Mary Trelease.” ’
‘Makes no sense,’ Simon muttered, turning to face the window. Which was why Sam Kombothekra hadn’t wanted Gibbs on it, thought Charlie. Most of what CID were called upon to investigate had some logic behind it. People hurt or killed each other over money, or drugs, usually some combination of the two. They stole from shops, disturbed the peace or terrorised the neighbourhood because they saw it as the only way out of a hopeless life-it was grim, but you could see the reasoning.
Charlie was about to ask Simon what he’d meant about Seed trying to use logic to convince him Mary Trelease was dead, but Simon was already saying, ‘He killed her years ago, left her body in the front bedroom at 15 Megson Crescent, and expects it to be there, undisturbed, for us to find several years later when he decides to confess? No.’ Charlie watched him junk the hypothesis. ‘Trelease didn’t live in that house years ago. She bought it in 2006, from a family called Mills.’
‘That’s two years ago,’ she pointed out, knowing what the response would be. Would she ever be able to hear ‘2006’ without experiencing a small earthquake in the pit of her stomach?
‘The phrase “years ago” implies longer,’ said Simon, on cue. ‘You know it does.’
