There was a shocked silence round the table. Gill, who had been in the middle of handing around plates of meat, froze briefly and the smile fell off her face.
‘It’s just a figure of speech,’ she said, her voice brittle.
‘Of course!’ Patrick jumped to his feet and helped her pass a plate to Simon. Carmella noticed him take his e-cigarette from his shirt pocket and heave a long, desperate drag into his lungs when he turned away to fetch another serving spoon from the cutlery drawer. There was a prickly feeling in the air, like pre-storm static electricity, and her scar started itching again in recognition of it.
Suzanne didn’t apologise, but, in a noticeable effort to be conciliatory, said, ‘It’s a pretty stressful time . . .’ Her husband glared at her.
Jenny pitched in. ‘I heard that Shawn Barrett’s got form . . . And as for that creep Mervyn Hammond!’ Then she glanced at Suzanne. ‘I mean, I didn’t hear any of that from Carmella, obviously, she never tells me anything either, just the kids at school, rumours, you know . . .’
Carmella felt like sinking her head into her hands. She waited for Suzanne to tear Jenny off a strip, but the boss merely smiled and said, ‘It’s OK, Jenny. We all talk to our other halves.’
‘Pat never talks to me,’ said Gill, overly brightly, dishing up a bowl of steaming peas. She somehow managed to make it sound simultaneously like a compliment and an accusation.
As they ate, Simon and Patrick engaging in a desultory discussion about Brighton and Hove Albion’s surprisingly good recent form, someone’s mobile began to buzz, just audible over the sound of scraping cutlery and the bass thumping through the walls.
They all looked around at each other.
‘Whose is that?’ Suzanne asked.
The women delved into handbags and Patrick slipped his hand into his back pocket.
‘It’s mine,’ he said, extracting it and frowning at the screen. ‘Sorry, it’s the station, need to take it.’
He stood up and walked a little way away over to the French windows where he leaned against the glass, his back to them all.
‘Lennon.’
Carmella watched him intently, her glass halfway to her lips. She suddenly had a horrible premonition – as her granny would have said, a ghost walked over your grave – and Patrick’s reaction confirmed it. Although he was facing away from them out towards the dark garden, she saw the reflection of his face in the window and for a second, it crumpled like a child’s as he listened. Then his shoulders slumped and Carmella thought he was going to fall. She leapt to her feet.
‘What is it?’ Her voice came out in a croak of alarm and everyone fell silent.
‘Right. Thanks for letting me know,’ he said faintly into the phone, clearly dazed. His hand dropped down by his side and when he turned back to the room, his face was chalky white.
‘Oh God,’ Suzanne said. ‘Don’t tell me there’s another dead girl?’
Patrick couldn’t speak. Carmella had never seen him looking so shocked. ‘Pat?’
He sank down onto the sofa as though his legs couldn’t hold him. Gill rushed over to sit by him, sliding a protective arm around his waist, but he then immediately stood up again and Gill looked crushed.
‘We have to go,’ he said to Suzanne and Carmella.
‘Patrick, tell me now,’ Suzanne barked, making a move towards him as though she wanted to shake him. Carmella was already on her feet, dreading his next words.
When they came, they were far worse than she could have imagined.
‘There’s another murder, yes . . . But – oh God, I can’t believe it – it’s Wendy Franklin. Our Wendy . . .’
Carmella swallowed into the silence, unable to prevent tears flooding her eyes. She thought of the tenacious, down-to-earth DC with her Black Country accent and slight figure; how hungry she was for success and approval; how desperate to be taken seriously. Wendy hadn’t been Carmella’s favourite person – keen to the point of being irritating – but it seemed inconceivable that she was gone.
‘What happened?’ she croaked, wiping her eyes on her napkin.
‘She’s been stabbed, in a private car park behind the Kingston Rotunda. One of the residents came down to get his car and found her body by the front wheel. Come on, let’s get moving.’
Patrick recovered himself, grabbing his coat from the peg in the hall, but Suzanne stood. ‘Pat, no. There’ll be a team on it already; we’ll only be in the way if we pile in.’
He faced her, coat half on, glaring. ‘Try to stop me. Carmella – you coming?’
Carmella jumped up. ‘Yes, boss. Sorry, Gill.’ Jenny reached out a hand to her, but whether out of sympathy or restraint, Carmella wasn’t sure and didn’t really want to know.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ Suzanne said. ‘Gill, I’m so sorry. Come on, then, you two, we’ll take my car.’
The last thing Carmella saw when she glanced back over her shoulder was Simon, Gill and Jenny sitting in stunned silence at a table covered with half-full plates, meat already beginning to congeal in the gravy.
Chapter 34
Day 11 – Patrick
Patrick was sitting in his car again, his forehead resting on the steering wheel, his eyes squeezed tightly closed. He hadn’t felt this terrible since the day he’d found Gill incoherent on their stairs, and Bonnie half-dead upstairs in her cot.
His team’s offices were a taped-off crime scene now, so they had all been relocated to an empty office downstairs, provided with hot desks and computers to log onto the intranet to carry on with Operation Urchin while a different MIT swarmed over Wendy’s workspace. Over at the Rotunda, reporters with cameras and microphones jostled together trying to keep warm in the chill dawn light, laying claim to the best pitches, waiting for someone to come out and make a statement.
Patrick had held it together all night, listening to the SIO who had been assigned the investigation into Wendy’s murder, a sombre-faced DCI called Vanessa Strong, briefing the other murder investigation team.
He had held it together while DCI Strong instructed Daniel Hamlet to fast-track the post-mortem, feeling deeply relieved for the protocol that insisted a different team investigate a colleague’s death. He wasn’t sure he could have stomached watching Hamlet dissect poor Wendy.
He’d even held it together when Wendy’s mum, Sheryl, had rung from Wolverhampton and asked for him by name because she ‘knew how much Wendy had admired you, she talked about you all the time’. Through her sobs, Sheryl had brokenly repeated, ‘Why? Why? How could you let this happen? She was only twenty-five! Twenty-five!’
He hadn’t been able to tell her how he had let it happen, because he didn’t know. All he did know was that he had let it happen. He hadn’t stopped Wendy from going off under her own steam to meet God-knew who, or why. Hopefully he would know soon, once her mobile phone provider had sent over the records from her stolen phone, and once the lab had thoroughly gone through her computer, but he knew that even then it wouldn’t make him feel any better, not in the slightest.
One of his officers was dead, and he felt utterly responsible. If he hadn’t cut her off when she called him . . .
Winkler pitching up and shaking his head sadly and ostentatiously in his direction hadn’t helped either, the sanctimonious bastard, Pat thought.
But the final straw, after a very long night of straws, came when Suzanne summoned him into her temporary office. As he trudged across, he saw her standing in the doorway, holding an evidence bag containing a bright pink envelope. She had changed out of the grey dress she’d been wearing last night, but her hair was still in the same long, loose curls. Patrick wondered if she had been home, or whether perhaps Simon had brought her in a change of clothes.