Friday, 14 April, 9.10 a.m.
As soon as she reached the office she asked Jericho to try and arrange a meeting with Gina’s business partner. She needed more information about Gina’s clients. Somewhere, in that rat hole of society’s dregs, someone knew something. She believed there was another set of photographs and she needed to scotch the snake before it hatched.
As for her theory about Erica Randall, she had to consign it to the back of her mind – for now. If she needed to act she would. But for now she would be content to wait.
Her desk was piled high with case notes; her computer, when she switched it on, displayed thirty-nine unread emails. And she still needed to prepare for Patrick Elson’s inquest next Tuesday.
‘Oh, sugar,’ she said as she faced the mountain of work ahead of her.
Well, Martha, she lectured herself. You’re not paid to sit and do nothing but look pretty. That provoked a Sam-like guffaw and an instant lightening of her mood.
Sometimes her mother’s mantras were a godsend.
She managed right through the morning not to ring either Mark Sullivan or even David Steadman, and there was no word from them either. Just a woolly silence, but it gave her a chance to clear her backlog of work.
At eleven, when Jericho brought in some coffee (no biscuits this time) and told her that Curtis Thatcher would be calling in at eleven thirty and Fred Trimble at four thirty (after school), her resistance finally broke. ‘Have you heard anything more about DI Randall’s wife?’
‘It’s gone deathly quiet,’ he said, shaking his head with his habitual pessimism. ‘I have no idea what is going on. And to be honest, Mrs Gunn, it doesn’t look good.’
Deathly quiet didn’t look or sound good to her either. She wished he had chosen a less uncomfortable phrase.
Her voice was subdued and she looked away from her assistant as she asked the next question. ‘Is he back at work?’
‘I believe not, Mrs Gunn.’ Jericho’s voice was also quiet and she caught the tone of sympathy with unusual gratitude. He continued, ‘I understand Detective Sergeant Talith is still dealing with the case.’
She turned around in her chair so he could not see her face at all as she absorbed this last piece of information. So, no more cosy chats with him. She wouldn’t be able to test her idea about Patrick or Gina – no using his position to winkle out confidences and facts. No more bouncing ideas off him, no more working together. Possibly ever. It was frustrating and she felt lonely. Already she was missing it. More truthfully, she missed him. His quiet presence, his common sense. After all the years of coping on her own there had been something terribly reassuring about having a man around. Correction: that particular man around. In weeks to come she guessed this sense of loss would intensify. And at the back of her mind was the shadow of his wife, creeping along the wall behind him. Jericho left her to her reflections.
Which was her excuse for making a silly mistake and ringing up a man she’d vowed to keep at arm’s length. Simon Pendlebury was the very wealthy widower of Evie, an old friend of hers, who had died a few years ago of ovarian cancer. Called ‘the silent killer’ by the medical profession because its symptoms presented late, which meant the diagnosis was made late and the death rate was subsequently high. After Evie’s death she and Simon had remained platonic friends, even weathering a ridiculous affair he’d had with a young gold-digger.
She’d kept him in quarantine because … Because he being a widower and she a widow, it would have been only too easy to have fallen into a relationship which would have been wrong for both of them. There was something cold and damaged deep inside Simon which felt as infectious as the flu. Somehow he had made a lot of money in a short time, which had led her for years to wonder: did anyone become that wealthy that quickly on the right side of the law? Added to that, he had an edgy personality. He was unpredictable, his direction taking turns as abrupt, sharp and unexpected as a dodgem car. Evie might have trusted him implicitly but the farther she was away from her friend’s memory, the more Martha thought of Evie as someone too trusting, almost gullible. Naive and unable to spot the flaws in the people she loved, she was subsequently blind to her husband’s true character. And testament to this flaw were Simon’s two frankly horrible, selfish and unkind daughters. Hard as she might try, Martha could see none of Evie’s sweetness in that pair of harpies, Armenia and Jocasta.
Hence Martha’s resolve to keep him at arm’s length. In her mind he was untrustworthy and the last thing she wanted to do was send him all the wrong messages by sharing not only dinner dates but also her problems with him – but she was desperate. She needed to talk to someone and that someone could not be DI Alex Randall.
Simon picked up almost immediately, recognizing her number. She very rarely called him. It was always the other way round.
‘Well, Martha, this is a nice surprise.’ He paused, waiting for her to explain why this break with the usual.
She drew in a deep breath and plunged in. ‘I don’t suppose you could manage lunch?’
‘Today?’ He sounded only mildly surprised. And she felt a pricked balloon of relief.
‘To be honest, Simon, I need to talk.’
His surprise intensified. ‘You need to talk?’
‘Please.’
‘To me? I’m flattered.’ She could feel the warmth of his smile even over the phone line.
‘Surprised but flattered. OK.’ His slightly smarmy charm oozed out then, like whitening toothpaste out of a tube. ‘If you need to talk, Martha, however unlike you it is, then I need to listen.’
Inwardly Martha groaned. Was there even a note of sincerity behind his words? But Miranda, her best friend and natural confidante, was currently away for six months on an exchange visit to Belize. Something to do with her job in public health, she’d said airily, so she was out of the picture too. And Martha did need to unburden herself. They arranged to meet at a pub overlooking the River Severn, off the beaten track, where it would be quiet.
Knowing she would be meeting him later and at least have the opportunity to talk helped the morning to slip away.