every angle. Leaning into the dark, stuffy room that smelled of Domingo’s woody aftershave, she pushed Simon to one side so that she could get a shot of the wicker chair through the open door, the blue and red blanket draped over it.
That’s where I was sitting when you ruined my honeymoon, you selfish bitch.
‘I’ll try to get Sam later,’ Simon was saying. ‘I’ll have to go to Puerto Banus, find another phone to ring him from. I feel under pressure here, with the caretaker waiting to get his gaff back. Can’t really concentrate. What? There are no other rooms, only this one and the bog. For as long as I’m on his phone, he has to stand outside.’
Get Sam later? Charlie frowned. Sam was the person Simon had said he was phoning. Had he rung somebody else afterwards? The Snowman? No; the rigid hatred was missing from his voice, so it couldn’t be Proust. Colin Sellers, then. It had to be.
Simon grunted goodbye. He didn’t put the phone down straight away. Charlie took a photo of him tapping it against his chin, mouthing words to himself – that was always a sign that his obsession levels were soaring, well on their way to being off the graph. ‘Smile, you nutter,’ she said.
‘I thought you weren’t taking any photos till the last day.’
She laughed. ‘You think this isn’t our last day? Don’t kid yourself.’
Simon took the camera from her hand. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You want to go home.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘It’ll be a few hours before you admit it to yourself, a few more while you pluck up the courage to tell me we’re going.’
‘That’s crap. We’re going nowhere.’
‘Sellers just told you something about a dead woman. You want to be there, where the action is. Where the rigor mortis is, rather.’
‘I want to be here. With you.’
Charlie couldn’t allow his reassurances to penetrate her wall of resentment. It would hurt too much if she believed him and then he went back on it. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to go home?’ she said angrily. ‘Your friend Connie witnessed a murder and wants to tell you all about it. What a coincidence that she just happened to stumble across the body. Is the dead woman her husband’s girlfriend, by any chance?’
‘Nobody knows anything.’ Simon sighed. ‘Least of all you. Connie Bowskill saw a dead body lying face down on a bloodstained carpet on the Roundthehouses website. In one of the interior shots of 11 Bentley Grove – the house her husband had in his SatNav as “home”.’
Charlie stared at him. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re actually serious.’
‘Friday night, this happened – early hours of Saturday morning.’
‘Simon, Roundthehouses is a property website,’ Charlie spelled it out as if for a child or a fool. ‘There aren’t any dead bodies on it, only houses for sale. And for rent – let’s not forget the lettings side of the operation. Apartments, maisonettes . . . no dead women. Did Sellers . . .’ Charlie stopped, shook her head. ‘It’s a wind-up, isn’t it? He’s probably been planning it for months.’
‘I haven’t spoken to Sellers. That was Gibbs on the phone.’
Gibbs. Charlie felt as if an invisible hand was closing around her throat, gripping tightly so as to let nothing out. Probably a good thing if it was; sensible of the human body to put a system in place to prevent a person from screaming all the way through their honeymoon.
It was Chris Gibbs who, four years ago, had uttered the words that had brought Charlie’s world to a standstill. He and only he had seen the look on her face as she realised what she’d done, as her life began to unravel – in public, in broad daylight, in the fucking nick of all places. Perhaps Gibbs had thought nothing of it, unaware that he was witnessing the destruction of the thing Charlie held most dear: her sense of herself as someone who was worth something. It hadn’t been Gibbs’ fault; all he’d done was provide her with information she’d asked for and that he’d found for her. Logically, she knew he’d done nothing wrong, but she held it against him all the same. He’d been front row and centre, spectator at the scene of her humiliation.
‘You said you were going to ring Sam.’
‘His phone’s switched off.’ Simon leaned forward to see Charlie’s face. ‘What? Don’t look like that. I didn’t say anything about Olivia. You heard the conversation – it was about Connie