Waldo will return, but by then it will be too late. Devon will probably be married with kids.
Cody has already had a word with himself about accepting that and moving on. For now, he’s adhering to that advice. Later, when he’s alone in his flat, he might have a re-think.
So it’s not Devon. And yet something is definitely bothering him.
He’s sitting at his desk in the Major Incident Room, but he’s not doing any work. Actually, that’s not true. He’s thinking about the case, and that counts as work, right? The great detectives do tons of thinking. Sherlock Holmes spent a great deal of his time just smoking and cogitating on his investigations. It’s what gets results. You can type up all the reports you like, but it’s the careful consideration of the clues that leads you to the killer.
That’s how Cody justifies his current inaction. He wonders if he should put on a deerstalker. Maybe take some cocaine.
Problem is, he doesn’t know what he’s contemplating. Something about the case is nagging him, tugging at a corner of his brain. Something he saw or heard. Perhaps something somebody said. Or didn’t say. That kind of thing.
Sherlock Holmes would be embarrassed.
Cody shakes his head to bring himself back into the here and now. He looks down at his action list, which seems to be growing bigger by the minute. One of the items is to call Claire Somerville. He picks up his phone and taps in the number that Webley had jotted down at the house.
The phone rings and rings. Perhaps Claire has forgotten to turn her notifications back on after her journey. Or perhaps she’s consoling her terminally ill friend.
He’s on the verge of giving up when the call is answered.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello. Am I speaking to Claire Somerville?’
‘Yes. Who’s speaking, please?’ Her voice is quiet. Timid-sounding. Cody finds it difficult to visualise it coming from the mouth of a statuesque ‘stunner’, as Leah described her. But then the woman is unlikely to be full of beans given her circumstances.
‘My name’s Nathan Cody. I’m a detective sergeant with the Major Incident Team at Merseyside Police.’
‘Oh. Yes. My brother said you’d probably call.’
‘Yes. I just want to check a couple of things with you, if that’s okay?’
‘Yes, that’s fine.’
‘We’re making some enquiries about your former employer at the jewellery shop in Heswall. Oliver Selby?’
‘Yes. My brother gave me the news about Oliver’s wife. He said she’s been found dead, and that Oliver has gone missing.’
Cody is surprised she had to learn of it that way. It’s a story that’s now all over the news. But again, Claire has probably had other things on her mind.
‘You didn’t know?’
‘No. It came as quite a shock.’
‘Yes. Obviously, we need to contact Mr Selby as a matter of urgency—’
‘Of course.’
‘—and so we were wondering if you might be able to provide us with any information that could help us to locate him.’
‘Not really. I haven’t seen Oliver for about a month. Not since I stopped working at the shop.’
‘No contact from him at all? Not even a text or a phone call?’
‘Well… maybe a few messages for a short while after I left but nothing to speak of.’
‘I see. But nothing recent? He hasn’t come over to your house, for example?’
‘Oliver has never been to my house, recent or otherwise.’
‘Okay. How was your relationship with Oliver?’
‘My relationship? He was my boss. I did my job, and he paid my wages. That’s it, really. I’m not sure what—’
‘But you got on well?’
‘Yes. Definitely.’
‘How well?’
‘What? I don’t know what you—’
‘Did that relationship ever become more than simply a professional one?’
Cody sometimes reflects on the fact that his is one of the few jobs in which asking such personal and probing questions is standard practice. There was a time when it used to bother him. Now, it’s just part and parcel of his workday.
‘What do you mean?’ Claire says.
Cody makes it as plain as he can. ‘I mean, did you ever have an intimate relationship with Oliver Selby?’
