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‘Mary, please go down and open the door. Pete’s pulse is very weak – we’re going to need that ambulance quickly, OK? You let Steph in and I’ll radio for help. Go!’
She leans over Pete, her fingers touching the side of his neck now, checking his pulse again I assume, and a fresh wave of fear swirls in my stomach.
Please don’t die. Please don’t die. I repeat the words over and over as I stumble down the stairs, tears pricking my eyelids. As soon as I open the door, Steph is pushing past me, her face tense.
‘Where is she, Mary?’
‘She?’ I’m confused.
‘You mean Jess?’
I gesture vaguely down the hallway, and Steph looks around and then back at me.
‘No, Jess is fine,’ I say. ‘It’s Pete. Something’s wrong with him, Steph, and I’m so scared. I think Megan must have drugged him, and we can’t wake him up. Jess is calling for an ambulance …’
‘Christ!’ Steph runs her hands through her hair, takes a step towards the kitchen and then turns back.
‘He’s still alive though, right?’ she says. She sounds panicked, I realise. She’s normally so calm, so focussed, and a shiver runs through me.
Is there something she’s not telling me?
‘Yes. He’s upstairs. Steph, what’s wrong?’ I say.
She bites her lip, her gaze flitting towards the staircase and then back to me.
‘Mary, look, I don’t even know how to say this, but I think we’ve screwed up, big time. I think … I think it’s Jess. Did Pete eat that cheese?’
I wrinkle my brow, wiping the tears from my cheeks with the backs of my hands.
What on earth is she talking about?
‘Did Pete eat thecheese? The cheese Jess brought? Yes, he had some earlier. I don’t understand. What’s that got to do with anything? And what do you mean, you think it’s Jess? You thinkwhat’sJess?’
Her hands are in her hair again, fingers clawing at her scalp.
‘Oh God, Mary. I mean, I think it might be Jess who’s behind all this. Jess who’s the killer …’
‘Wh-what?’
What did she just say? No, come on …
She takes a step towards me and presses a finger to her lips.
‘Shhhh, please.’
She looks over her shoulder, towards the stairs, then back at me.
‘Look, I know it sounds impossible, but hear me out.’
Her voice is low and urgent.
‘Think about it. It’s something that’s been niggling at me for the past day or so, but just now when she volunteered to come over here to see if you two were OK, I don’t know … it all makes sense, Mary. She’s been so quiet in all of the Operation Shearwater meetings, listening, taking it all in. But what if it was her, all along? She’s a runner. She doesn’t work nights generally, so she could easily have travelled to all the murder scenes overnight and been back at her desk the next morning. She knows every inch of your house, and all the security measures we’ve installed. She even said early on that if you wanted to go to a safehouse, she’d go with you, do you remember that?’
I nod, and feel a wave of nausea.
But Jess? Really? I wasn’t sure about her at first, but recently … Am I seriously that poor a judge of character?
And then I remember the morning after David’s murder in Cardiff, and how I couldn’t get hold of Jess, and how when she finally rang me back she told me she’d been late to work because she’d slept through her alarm.
